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Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

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Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#261

Post by a_c_s »

gregpilling wrote: post #41

I offered 12 weeks vacation to my staff in exchange for lower wages (but paid during 12 weeks off). Nobody was interested, and they wanted to stay with the current two weeks paid. So as an employer, I have never had anyone interested in doing a 16 hour week. I have had many ex-employees (and an ex-partner) who were paid for 40 hours a week, but only worked 16. To answer your questions directly. 1. They are not easy t…

What was the difference in pay with the 12 weeks of vacation?

Given the norms in the USA I, as an employee, would never initiate such an arrangement. I feel like it would result in at the very least an indelible assumption of laziness by my new employers, if not a retraction of the original job offer.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#262

Post by ZeroFries »

VLM wrote: post #67

A request: Does anyone have actual scientific data from archeologists / biologists / doctors on what the human body was evolved to do? Not interested in commentary on what strategy maximizes profit to owners of peasants or moral/ethical arguments. Strictly looking for hard science like biochemist XYZ found human butts and spines are not operationally effective for sitting for longer than X hours due to scientific rea…

According to Chris Ryan (PhD and author of Sex at Dawn), hunter gatherers work around 20-25 hours per week, in line with the comments above of what they found was near ideal for happiness, productivity, and concentration.

There really isn't much hard science when it comes to things like human productivity standards, in the same way there's not too much hard science on ideal diet. Too many variables, highly individualized, and like all multi-objective optimization, highly context dependent.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#263

Post by dsuth »

clarky07 wrote: post #117
aidenn0 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no one is able to work productively for 8 hours, that's a fact. I disagree with your fact. I know many, many people who can do it. The simple fact that you talk about working on "side-projects" makes me think you have productive, creative hours outside the time you spend on work items. I do agree that in the current market for software developers, you'd be crazy to not try to get some of your creative time to work…

i've worked with a lot of people in a lot of places, and I think you are kidding yourself if you think most people get 8 hours of work done every day. I'm not saying nobody can do it, but most can't and don't. And that's not a problem. Most people are going to need breaks throughout the day. I suspect many of us here check out hacker news at some point during the day. In moderation that is fine as well (IMO). For me…

The cleverer managers I've worked with typically include a factor of ~ 70-80% on worker office time. So in a typical 8 hour work day, 6 of those hours would be productively spent on a task at hand.

For an engineer who is sitting at his or her desk, focussed on a single task, I think this is reasonably accurate. Obviously there are a lot of things in an office environment which can further conspire to reduce the amount of productivity much, much lower.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#264

Post by vardy »

4hr day PHP job opportunity

We're Looking for a knowledge PHP/LAMP/Symfony2/MVC/CSS developer to join our niche dating startup on 4hr/day 5 days a week basis. Offering £30k/yr and based out of London. Remote working is a possibility for the right person.

The current team of 4 is spread between London and Birmingham. We've spent the past 12 months turning around an exiting business into the leader in it's niche and have big plans for broadening the business over the next year.

Email me if you're interested and would like more details about the job/business/team: contact dot vardy at gmail dot com

Thanks, James

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#266

Post by jestar_jokin »

seivan wrote: post #155
Cederfjard wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that "hen" has spread quite so much yet that you can expect to use it in English conversation. Nu undrar ju folk varför du kallar OP för en höna. ;) If anyone is curious what I'm on about, "hen" is a gender-neutral pronoun in Swedish that has had a resurgence in the last few years. It's partly politically motivated and a little controversial, since we generally only use gender-specific ones. Sorry for th…

I don't care. Will still use it and educate. I am aware that it might mean höna for some, but I am expecting curiosity to get the better of 'em and hope they look into it.

Unfortunately, "hen" in English means a female chicken (or other bird, e.g. a peacock is male and a peahen is female), so all you achieve is giving the wrong impression that your language skills are lacking, AND you could be making a sexist remark (hen might be misconstrued as a condescending term for a woman), the complete opposite of what you intended.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#267

Post by gregpilling »

dkokelley wrote: post #166
gregpilling wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its a small manufacturing business. They would not have had to work the 12 weeks.. They simply weren't interested. I was surprised, since it is a rule I wanted for myself. So I made the rule anyway. My engineer wants to take a month off, but she is doing it as a unpaid leave. She had already saved her living expenses for the time she would be off, so it didn't matter to her.

A: Was it an even trade of days off for pay? B: What is your unpaid time off policy? Could your employees take 4 weeks off and receive their regular 2 weeks vacation pay? (Specifically, can they do this upon request. I understand that your engineer is doing this, but I don't know if that's available to everyone as a rule.) If I was given the option of making 100% pay with a relaxed unpaid time off policy, or making 8…

We are very relaxed. An employee could take 4 weeks off, get the normal 2 weeks and just have 2 weeks unpaid.
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