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Sweden reveals results from pilot of 30-hour work week

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Re: Sweden reveals results from pilot of 30-hour work week

#201

Post by mwfunk »

rebootthesystem wrote: post #177
mwfunk wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Offending people" isn't "being honest" or vice versa. If they seem to go hand in hand, that's failure on the part of the communicator almost 100% of the time. There are tons of people who are totally honest all the time, who somehow manage to not offend random people when interacting with them. It can be done, it's not magic.

No. You are wrong. Being offended is one of those really weird states of mind. It is purely one that is created by the person who becomes offended. For example, in some cultures crossing your arms while someone is talking to you can be deemed offensive. In other cultures burping is perfectly fine while in others it is not acceptable. Leaving cultures behind, people, individuals, become offended for a huge variety of…

It doesn't matter. None of it matters, even if this is all correct. Which it isn't, obviously. But it wouldn't matter even if it was.

If you can't communicate your ideas to people without muddying the waters with random stuff that distracts from whatever you are trying to communicate, you have failed. And if you don't care whether or not anyone understands you, then there's no point in even attempting to communicate with other people.

It doesn't matter if everyone else on the planet is brainwashed, or if you aren't as wise or articulate as you think you are (only one of those explanations are true, we can let Occam's Razor decide). It doesn't matter. It's your responsibility to read the room and communicate in a way that conveys whatever your meaning is without distracting from it. This applies just as much to Real Life as it does to Internet forums. This is never going to stop being a socially and professionally stunting problem for you; the rest of the world is not going to wake up one day and suddenly find you charming and insightful.

Everything you're saying could be 100% true, but you'd still be the person screwing up whatever it is you're trying to accomplish.

Re: Sweden reveals results from pilot of 30-hour work week

#202

Post by rebootthesystem »

dang wrote: post #196
rebootthesystem wrote: post #58

> In a perfect situation this would have led to higher employment numbers and happier employees. What kind of hippie logic is this? Happier employees? I don't know ANYONE who would be happier if they got a 25% pay cut except for, maybe, single hippies who want to smoke dope all day and have no responsibilities. The average person, on the other hand, and particularly those with kids, would be devastated by a 25% cut i…

Please don't start or feed any more flamewars on Hacker News. This subthread is the kind we hope to avoid, and your role has been trolling even though I'm sure you didn't mean it that way. You have a history of breaking HN's civility rule. We've cut you a lot of slack for a long time because some of your other comments are good and interesting. But eventually we have to ban accounts that behave this way, so we'd appr…

Please delete my account and all comments I've ever posted as well as any thread I've started. Not saying this out of spite at all. I think it is the right thing to do.

It is obvious that my no-nonsense approach has clashed with some on HN. I am nearly twice as old as the average HN user and have a tremendous amount more life, professional and entrepreneurial experience than most. My style isn't to coddle and tip-toe. That's not real life. And that's not who I am. I am very direct and some people can't handle it. I get that. I understand.

I don't represent the HN demographic very well. Which means there will be disagreement ever N posts depending on the topic. The problem, as I see it, isn't necessarily one-sided (just me or just the reader) but the fact that HN is no different from old USENET groups in that once a pile-up begins it feeds itself and there are few effective methods to curtail them. Defending your position against those who might misconstrue it or misinterpret it is eventually seen as trolling or just being a bad actor. If you don't fall in line and participate with a bland, non-confrontational, sensibilities-protecting style there will always be issues, sooner or later. Because you are an outsider. I work with a lot of millennials and what I see here echoes the problems I see they have navigating real life.

I do appreciate the slack you've cut me --even though I have often disagreed with the perceived offense. That said, I think it's time for all my contributions to HN --valuable or not-- to be deleted and my account closed down.

If I decide to start posting again I'll create an account knowing that all contributions must be bland and non-confrontational so as to not cause anyone any undue stress.

If you had a real email in your profile (not a general mailbox) I'd send you an email to put a real name, face and profile to this account rather than what it is.

Thank you.

Re: Sweden reveals results from pilot of 30-hour work week

#203

Post by executesorder66 »

sn0v wrote: post #199
executesorder66 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but my wife wouldn't. Why not? You'd get to spend more contiguous time together.

Maybe she doesn't get to work 4 days a week? I could see that cutting into their together time on weekdays.

Good point. I didn't think of that. Thanks.

Re: Sweden reveals results from pilot of 30-hour work week

#204

Post by donmatito »

dijit wrote: post #27
donmatito wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely false. French workers (at mid-management level and above - not hourly workers) work long hours. Longer than German and Nordic countries, for example, where leaving at 5pm is the norm and leaving later is more a sign of poor work planning than of dedication. I think workday hours are similar to American employees, but work less in the weekends and have more vacations.

This is not my experience. I work for a French multinational games company and I'm situated in Sweden. It's astonishingly common for my French counterparts to "arrive" at there computer at 10:30 each day and head out the door shortly before 17:00. Not to mention the 1.5hour or so lunch they tend to take. This is a sample of maybe 20 people, and maybe it's a culture of the company more than the country, but I've notic…

That is 180° to my own experience (CAC40 company) but hey, "company culture" :)

Re: Sweden reveals results from pilot of 30-hour work week

#205

Post by guntars »

wlll wrote: post #192
guntars wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mind expanding on why that is? I hear this often and I'd like it to be true, but I find it hard to believe.

I suspect it's a number of reasons. - I work to my own schedule. There's no artificial start time. If I feel like I've got something to contribute at any point I sit down and do so. If I feel inspired or get in the zone I'll do 6 or eight hours, if I don't I'll do none, or just a couple of hours. - Conversely, if I don't feel up to it, uninspired, tired, whatever, I can stop. Taking a break/nap and coming back to som…

I agree, working 4 hours a day will feel more effective than the last 4 hours of an 8 hour day, but the question is whether it's actually twice as effective. And perhaps it's so for very high level tasks, but I'm pretty sure for some things you just need to clock in the hours, like closing 100 tiny bugs because you're launching in a few days.

Re: Sweden reveals results from pilot of 30-hour work week

#207

Post by [deleted] »

poooogles wrote: post #82
crististm wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm commenting on rebootthesystem comment which is flagged and dead. I don't understand why - he makes a perfectly valid and coherent point.

The language used in his comment has no place on Hacker News [1]. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[deleted]

Re: Sweden reveals results from pilot of 30-hour work week

#208

Post by WWLink »

stinkytaco wrote: post #75
mordocai wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And truthfully, it is going to depend on the person to at least some extent as well. IMO, anything that doesn't include being at work as part of your actual job duties should have no number of required work hours. You either get enough work done or you don't. If you aren't getting the expected amount of work done, then you'll eventually get fired. If you can out perform everyone else on the team and work 8 hours a we…

At least part of most people's job is being available, however. If you work on a team or are even nominally in a support role, you've got to be available for questions, meetings, collaboration, and so on. Very few people at places I've worked in the past have a job that can be easily defined by "I cranked this many widgets, now I can go." Additionally, the 40 hour week protects people who got a difficult task from be…

I understand the concept of being "available" because my employer has a rule of core hours that one can be expected to be available for questions/meetings/whatever.

At the same time though, sometimes you can learn a lot by not being available. There's documentation that can be written, and sometimes users need to actually read the manual instead of interrupting you to answer a question you've already answered to them three times before.

Sigh. That last one is the worst. Especially if you've written documentation, pointed it out to them before, and been told "I don't have time to read that".

Re: Sweden reveals results from pilot of 30-hour work week

#209

Post by WWLink »

Declanomous wrote: post #97
rogerdpack wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard once anecdotally that google side projects are sometimes "supposed to be work related" so not quite as free as you'd imagine, FWIW...or perhaps they're not dunno never worked there.

I think they are supposed to be work related, but that's still a change of pace. There are things I want to fix at my job that will never be fixed because it isn't anybody's job, and nobody would let you mess around with it because it would be circumventing the normal decision making process. It would be really nice to just say "I'm just trying something out," without needing to schedule an hour-long meeting with 8 p…

Ouch. I feel lucky to have enough autonomy I can blow a few hours out of a week "just trying something out" without being grilled why I wasted a few hours over it.

If I were being grilled I'd consider a new job.

Re: Sweden reveals results from pilot of 30-hour work week

#210

Post by riskneural »

lintiness wrote: post #21
riskneural wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving at 5pm is the norm in Germany only in very particular circumstances. Most people I know are stuck until 18:30 or so.

stuck? i'm amazed at how negatively most europeans view "work".

Or how positively we view life.
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