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This is just wacky.
"150 years of research proves that long hours at work kill profits, productivity and employees"
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_...
I changed my working arrangement to 80% recently, so now I work four 8-hour day weeks. I wholeheartedly recommend it if you can make it work. I have wednesday off, so the week is divided into two-day stretches. Not sure if I'm any more productive (maybe), but I'm a lot happier. I suspect some coworkers are going to follow my lead, now that the precedent has been set.
The question is not whether or not you're as productive, but rather, are you more than 80% as productive as you were before.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never said it was for everyone, but I suspect people magnify the expected issues a lot. Everyone knows I won't be here on wednesdays, so we try to arrange things so I'm not a bottleneck during that time. If some really important deadline shows up, I'll just work the one wednesday and take thursday off instead, it's not a big deal. I haven't needed to yet though. Besides, assuming you're not on a really tiny team, i…
Or you're an early startup. Sometimes hinged-on-one-person is all you have because there are only a few people with some non-overlapping talents.
I agree that shorter hours are likely to be beneficial, but why are people trying to achieve this by passing a law? I think that this can be achieved with a softer approach. Imagine that when you sign up for a job, you select how many days per week do you want to work, from 3 to 6, with proportionate wage scale. That you can select what hours do you want to work. That it's easy to change this arrangement while you're…
The only way to change culture is through law. Look at seatbelt use: decades of public awareness campaigns did nothing, but once it became a legal requirement people switched. Also laws are the way to prevent a race to the bottom. If it's legal to work longer hours people will, and everyone else will do so to compete with them. Compare OHSA, see http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ .
It's very hard to measure human productivity unfortunately. It's much easier to measure the cost of an employee working less hours for the same salary.
I changed my working arrangement to 80% recently, so now I work four 8-hour day weeks. I wholeheartedly recommend it if you can make it work. I have wednesday off, so the week is divided into two-day stretches. Not sure if I'm any more productive (maybe), but I'm a lot happier. I suspect some coworkers are going to follow my lead, now that the precedent has been set.
I changed my working arrangement to 80% recently, so now I work four 8-hour day weeks. I wholeheartedly recommend it if you can make it work. I have wednesday off, so the week is divided into two-day stretches. Not sure if I'm any more productive (maybe), but I'm a lot happier. I suspect some coworkers are going to follow my lead, now that the precedent has been set.
I can't imagine going to my boss and proposing I spend 20% less time working for the same amount of pay, and getting approval for that.
I agree that shorter hours are likely to be beneficial, but why are people trying to achieve this by passing a law? I think that this can be achieved with a softer approach. Imagine that when you sign up for a job, you select how many days per week do you want to work, from 3 to 6, with proportionate wage scale. That you can select what hours do you want to work. That it's easy to change this arrangement while you're…
The only way to change culture is through law. Look at seatbelt use: decades of public awareness campaigns did nothing, but once it became a legal requirement people switched. Also laws are the way to prevent a race to the bottom. If it's legal to work longer hours people will, and everyone else will do so to compete with them. Compare OHSA, see http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ .
Oh, is that why almost everyone earns minimum wage?
I changed my working arrangement to 80% recently, so now I work four 8-hour day weeks. I wholeheartedly recommend it if you can make it work. I have wednesday off, so the week is divided into two-day stretches. Not sure if I'm any more productive (maybe), but I'm a lot happier. I suspect some coworkers are going to follow my lead, now that the precedent has been set.
I don't think your plan is for everyone since if you need to be synced with a team not working on Wednesdays is negative in the long run.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We need to stop labeling the first of these persons as "successful" and second one as a "failure" It's not about judging employees from a moral standpoint, but getting the most skill and involvement going into your project/company. So, one of the questions would be: does 20h/wk + 20h/wk = 40h/wk skills+involvement, ie. is it linear? Wouldn't 20h/wk jobs be limited to inherently part-time, low importance tasks--whic…
> So, one of the questions would be: does 20h/wk + 20h/wk = 40h/wk skills+involvement, ie. is it linear? Wouldn't 20h/wk jobs be limited to inherently part-time, low importance tasks--which means you got to have plenty of funds to staff for them in the 1st place? It would seem to me that 2 people working 20h/wk offers some significant advantages over one person working 40h/wk. Firstly, it allows for fail-over; when o…
The thing is that, as you noted yourself, the analogy doesn't hold, for people are not AWS servers waiting for charge or failovers. If they chose to work 20h/wk, it's presumably to spend their time for other pursuits, eg. family, and they often won't be able to or won't agree to work more when their employer need it, perhaps unless it is planned well in advance (eg. Black Friday period).
> Basically, the company is renting two brains for the price of one.
Or, as I questioned, you might got two partly focused and perhaps less skilled people thinking about your problem, instead of someone more skilled totally focusing on it. As was brought in another comment, if you got two freelancers, then yeah, you could pick two brains, but if you have two family guys, not so much.