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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

#211

Post by yason »

graeme wrote: post #169
yason wrote: post #101

I worked at 50% capacity for some years. It was just great until I chose to want more money for the time being and returned to 70% capacity. That was just great, too, until I realized that I was as productive as a full-time guy without the full-time pay so I eventually went back full-time but trying to keep my output roughly on the same level as I had been getting good reviews all the time. However, last year I got t…

How do you manage these? I'm most productive that way too. But the trouble is I'll keep going longer than I should, and then I just get tired and unproductive and not sensible enough to rest. Are there signs you look for to leave it on a high note, or do you use hard time limits?

I kind of keep a (mostly mental) tally of the week's hours and when I've done a full week +/- N hours, I've done enough. But because of N it's a bit hazy sometimes.

If I can finish something in a day what could've easily taken three days, I'll probably end the week a bit earlier. And if I get fixated on doing some "simple thing" that ends up taking a lot longer, then I allow myself to work extra to get that squashed. It's important keep your conscience fair so that you know you can mentally match the hours with results produced.

Programming isn't strictly about wallclock hours but wallclock hours are a good starting point for measuring a fair effort because your pay is likely to be based on the wallclock too. (Such as 22 days * 8 hours or so.) But some hours are indeed "thick" and some hours are "lean" and you need to balance those somehow. Otherwise you'll be working way too much or way too little in relation to what you are paid. If you only look at the chronographic units you will realize that you can't do so. If I'm walking in the woods and figure out how to architect some component, is that work or not? And how is it work if I sit at my desk for half a day and get nothing done? That's what you have to live with as a programmer and striking the balance is delicate business, but luckily it's enough that you only need to find the balance in the average.

Then again, it's all about shit. As long as you get shit done the hours don't matter. And as long as you don't work too many hours to feel shitty yourself, the scheme is sustainable. That's the ultimate balance.

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#212

Post by arturito »

JohnCarmack wrote: post #172
xiaoma wrote: post #143

I just finished reading The Masters of Doom and really got the impression that working more hours made Carmack more productive than nearly everyone else in the field.

I find these “shorter work weeks are just as effective” articles to be nonsense, at least for knowledge workers with some tactical discretion. I can imagine productivity at an assembly line job having a peak such that overworking grinds someone down to the point that they become a liability, but people that claim working nine hours in a day instead of eight gives no (or negative) additional benefit are either being d…

I've read about you as an employer under the development of Quake. I can only relate this to you fascist way to force people work. It's a shame tho since you're such a talent and I hope you've changed.

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#214

Post by yourapostasy »

logfromblammo wrote: post #140
yourapostasy wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...I'll simply start taking days off without pay, which is something payroll seems to really hate for some reason when it concerns salaried folks. At the risk of sounding too glib, the short answer to why they hate it is it creates work for them. In the US, all of the major payroll processing services are geared towards either hourly or salaried templates. Most companies' payroll procedures are built around the cor…

If you are a salaried employee, the only thing payroll should need to know is whether or not you worked at all during the week. If the answer is yes, you get paid your full salary. If it is no, you get paid your full salary if you have a vacation week left. If it is no, and you have no vacation weeks left, you don't get paid. Simple. If taking a day off during a working week causes them additional effort, it is only…

> It seems as though many employers are abusing the legal definitions in order to bend labor laws.

This is absolutely what is going on in many US companies, no question. That's a separate can of worms for the political and legislative arenas, and not one that individual salaried employees can safely change on their own within their company. Discussions about this also tend to drag in meta-discussions about compensation, project management, management accounting, work environments, etc., adding more worms to the can, and even more cans of worms to the original can. It's messy.

What you outlined is definitely what should happen. The jobs situation is bad enough for many fields outside of our own, and even many areas within our own field, that flagrant flouting of salaried exempt labor laws is allowed by regulators, and encouraged by shareholders. Longer-term, this only hurts the companies, because they're receiving imperfect signaling of actual required effort, distorting all future projections; competitive advantage accrues to those companies that accurately and precisely calibrate their projections to known required effort. Change will come slowly and haphazardly, if only from the ongoing population growth slowdown, hopefully.

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#216

Post by brazzledazzle »

conradfr wrote: post #207
benaiah wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It likely stands for Customer Service Representative.

Yes. Maybe it's not as well known as an acronym in English as I thought.

I think I conflated your current role as a software engineer with your previous job as a CSR. Besides poor reading comprehension on my part I think assuming a position like CSR is hourly and (typically?) only salaried employees answer emails after they go home contributed to that. Sorry.

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#217

Post by mark_l_watson »

throwaway7767 wrote: post #30

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.

Just curious: why did you decide to take Wednesday's off instead of Monday or Friday, thus getting three day weekends?

Personally, for almost all of my professional life I didn't work Monday's (32 hour work week). That worked out really well for me.

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#218

Post by mark_l_watson »

Suggestion for people wanting to work a shorter week:

Ask you HR department for an employee handbook and read it carefully. I did this in the 1970s (worked for a large defense contractor) and discovered that I only had to work 30 hours a week to get full benefits. Much to the unhappiness of my bosses and coworkers, I "gave myself a 20%" cut in pay and stopped working on Mondays.

I tried to be a perfect employee the four days a week that I worked to make up for inconvenience to my bosses and coworkers.

I was able to work four days a week in most companies I have worked for, spanning about 50 years.

One advantage of part time work is that it gave me extra time to write computer science books and spend extra time with friends and family. But, I left a lot of money on the table taking a 20% pay cut.

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#220

Post by boona »

justncase80 wrote: post #160
myth_buster wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans have incredible propensity to acclimatize to the environment. That's the only reasoning I could arrive at when I was poor and saw people around willing to do the most mundane back breaking work than to seek other forms of employment. The lever that is used in society today is desperation as opposed to higher pay per hr in the "Looking Backward" case. The sanitation worker doesn't enjoy their work and no amount…

I believe convincing people to do "bad jobs" by means of desperation is named Wage Slavery. Besides being immoral and degrading, its pretty inefficient. On the other hand, some jobs that need to be done plain out unpleasant. How do you convince someone to do it? In the Looking Backwards scenario the incentive to do one of the "bad jobs" isn't being paid more per hour, everyone is paid the same, its working less hours…

Everyone needs to pitch in, you need to serve humanity so that it provides you with the things you need. If the only thing you can do to do your part is sanitation work, then sanitation work it shall be. That is, until you find new ways to serve others.

Slavery is something altogether different, and you really have to be in a position of privilege to conflate the two. The history of slavery is an incredibly dark one. Out of respect to those who've suffered under it's cruelty, I don't think it's right to use that word in this context. Doing your part is not slavery.

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