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Working fewer hours would make us more productive

theguardian.com

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Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#91

Post by marklgr »

zerebubuth wrote: post #61
marklgr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To use an incredibly bad analogy: It's like moving from a monolithic "big iron" server to a pair or farm of smaller ones. There are many advantages, but it means it's now a distributed system with all the problems that can bring. 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 t…

I think the analogy holds for the case of employees not having the capacity to give extra hours due to other commitments. However, I totally agree that people aren't AWS servers, and the reason I felt the analogy was bad was that such a mechanistic view doesn't leave room for the multitude of positive, human ways of working around such problems. For example: if an employer asks a 20h/wk employee to work extra hours,…

> It's the very point of the original article that working fewer hours can increase the quality and focus of the work done during that shorter period.

To me, it depends on how you cut the hours, and to what extent. I'm all for working shorter days, eg. 6-8h, 4-5 days a week; however, the more you get close to half-time or below, the more difficult it becomes to stay fully focused and as motivated as a (more) full-time employee. This is admittedly less of a concern if the person uses their free-time on related projects (eg. writing open-source stuff).

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#92

Post by jaynos »

lordnacho wrote: post #75

My circle of friends are what you call professionals. They spend an awful lot of time at work, most of it on looking like they're working. There's a fair number of jobs where the work itself is not hard or time consuming, but where a culture has grown where everyone needs to justify their position. This skew incentives; if you're a junior, you end up doing a bunch of little things that can pass as a laundry list of t…

>They spend an awful lot of time at work, most of it on looking like they're working.

Guilty. If I could switch to a 4 day work week, I'd get the same amount done, but spend a bit less time on Hacker News and other distractions. Hell, let me work a 2 day week and I'd cut out all distractions to finish what was needed.

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#93

Post by [deleted] »

golergka wrote: post #16
soft_dev_person wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment (point 2 especially) reflects the current widespread notion (among employers at least, it seems) that one hour of work is one hour of work, always. I think the main point of the article is exactly to counter that. > "Productivity – output per working hour – improves with shorter hours." And why should the employer get all the benefit from this? I think a lot of people would love to work fewer hours, be m…

> And why should the employer get all the benefit from this? Thankfully, we don't analytically decide who takes the benefits — labor market is working pretty well at figuring this out.

[deleted]

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#94

Post by sauronlord »

zepto wrote: post #68
golergka wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And why should the employer get all the benefit from this? Thankfully, we don't analytically decide who takes the benefits — labor market is working pretty well at figuring this out.

How do you know it's working pretty well?

I'm "paid for" 40 hours a week. However since I'm awesome, it takes me only 20-30 hours a week to accomplish more than the output of the younger software developers. Work from home, come in late, come in early, work late, leave early. Doesn't matter, it balances out.

The more I work from home, the greater productivity gains I have over everyone else that remains at the office. It's satisfying.

And I get paid more than them by at least 40%. Go figure.

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#96

Post by pc86 »

joshuacc wrote: post #78
douche wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better deal would be working four ten-hour days. Particularly if you have a long commute, this is wildly better than five eights. Eight hours isn't really enough time to get anything done, particularly during business hours.

I have done this before, but arranged my days off to be alternating Mondays and Fridays so that every two weeks I'd get a four day weekend. My bosses were very generous with my schedule. :-)

Honestly this seems like the ideal scenario. Full pay, likely no argument from superiors about the amount of work you'd accomplish, and the ability to take long weekend trips without wasting a day or two of PTO.

I only see a few possible downsides:

- Someone expecting you to be in the office and you're not, particularly if they're not familiar with your schedule.

- For developers the same issues with 60+ work weeks often come up in hours 7-10 of a single working day. Off-campus lunch for a full hour (or more) would probably be important, which pushes your full day to 11+ hours.

- Using 10 hours of PTO when you take a day off, but I guess that's what you get for getting the 4-day weekends :)

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#97

Post by zepto »

sauronlord wrote: post #94
zepto wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know it's working pretty well?

I'm "paid for" 40 hours a week. However since I'm awesome, it takes me only 20-30 hours a week to accomplish more than the output of the younger software developers. Work from home, come in late, come in early, work late, leave early. Doesn't matter, it balances out. The more I work from home, the greater productivity gains I have over everyone else that remains at the office. It's satisfying. And I get paid more tha…

How does that say anything about the labor market market mechanism?

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#98

Post by pc86 »

jhall1468 wrote: post #88
icebraining wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Oh, is that why almost everyone earns minimum wage?

Every full-time job is 40 hours, which is the maximum allowed without having to pay overtime. I think it's fair to assume companies will do anything for increased productivity. That has nothing to do with wages.

> Every full-time job is 40 hours, which is the maximum allowed without having to pay overtime.

Categorically false. I'd wager 90%+ of the (American) readers here are exempt FTEs, meaning they are paid a salary which is based on calendar days/weeks/months/year, not hours worked.

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