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Cutting your salary by 40%

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Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#291

Post by randomdata »

danvasquez29 wrote: post #286
randomdata wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a total of 40 hours per week affect the predicability of being there at the same time in a way that 35, 39, or 42 hours maximum per week could not?

my teams do the same thing, it works fine as long as there's some degree of predictability in the schedule. My team does a standard 40 hour work week but only 6 hours per day of required "core hours" used for pairing. The other two hours ar e flexible so the folks can adjust their schedules if they want to get in earlier in the morning and leave earlier. 9-4 you'll be in the office and ready to pair, and lunch for ev…

But the daily schedule is only dependent on the maximum numbers of hours to the extent that the hours have to fit within that weekly window. If we assume a five day work week, and the maximum weekly total is 35 instead of 40, then you may only have 5 core hours (or 6 core hours and one fewer flexible hour per day), but the predicability remains exactly the same. Changing the total hours per week does not mean having to throw out a schedule entirely.

I am afraid I still don't quite see what impact the total maximum hours for a week has to do with predictability of scheduling. What am I missing?

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#292

Post by s73ver_ »

jnordwick wrote: post #187
huebnerob wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're all quite familiar with the idea that working long hours gets you brownie points with your managers. The point that's being made here is that companies should not be so proud of this quid pro quo, because on paper it is quite literally a devaluation of your time. You feeling you need to work excessive hours to progress in your career does not make anything about it right, quite the opposite actually.

Your excessive is my right amount. There are things that need to be done and just hiring nor people doesn't work. Peopleb aren't commodities - some things only I can do at a certain level much because I might have put myself into that place by learning all the prices of the puzzle. I don't like the judgmental attitude against those of us who decide to make different judgement calls in life.

"Your excessive is my right amount. There are things that need to be done and just hiring nor people doesn't work."

That's a complete lie.

"I don't like the judgmental attitude against those of us who decide to make different judgement calls in life."

Because it's not just your judgement call. By you doing that, now the expectation is on everyone else. Especially because you set the bar by working for less pay, dragging everyone else down.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#294

Post by s73ver_ »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #209

Articles like this show why the economic growth of the 21st Century will be in East Asia. This generation's educated Westerners are too comfortable and complacent.

Part of the huge problem is people thinking that wanting to have a life outside of working to make someone else rich is "complacency."

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#295

Post by TimPC »

jcadam wrote: post #148
megaduck wrote: post #50

I enforce a militant "40 hours only" policy for my employees, and it's incredible for productivity. When you work longer hours defect rates increase, code quality drops, and things are on fire all the time. You also lose really good people due to burnout. Sustainable pace is super important for creating and maintaining high performance teams. Crassly, it's just a more profitable way of doing business. I wish more man…

Pfft. A man-hour of labor is a man-hour of labor. Which is why I fully understand why my employer is requiring me (and the others on my team) to make up the 48 hours of labor I lost when I evacuated due to Hurricane Irma (even though the office was of course closed for much of that time). I'm spending the extra hours perusing/posting on HN and looking at job listings :|

Not all hours are created equal. If you're doing simple enough tasks perhaps your output is relatively stable. When I work on hard problems I've had single hours that can outperform a day or two. Getting rid of most/all of those key creative moments by keeping employees in a constant state of fatigue from large hours is bad. Studies show for typical employees after about 6 weeks of 70h work weeks a 70h week is producing less than a 40h week for a fresh non-overworked employee. So pretty quickly hours become half-hours in terms of production.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#296

Post by smnplk »

Pharylon wrote: post #283
adambmedia wrote: post #222

I often think about Arthur Rubenstein, the phenom mid-century pianist, for whom a lot has been written about his mission in early life to "practice as little as possible." There's a lot of hyped up romanticism in these quotes and anyone who plays at his level has spent a lifetime playing piano, period. Regardless, his guidance about spontaneity, creativity, and the relationship to practicing too much, which I equate…

My brother is in a bluegrass band. They've been around for 10 years now, and there's a lot of music they've played so many times I'm sure they could do it in their sleep. There are a few songs that I really do think they used to do better, back when they were just starting out. Specifically, some of the fast, most technically difficult songs that they used to play right up until they were at the edge of what was poss…

Anyone interested in modern take on bluegrass should check Bela Fleck and the Flecktones

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#297

Post by wakamoleguy »

> But a manager that is pushing you to work 70 hours a week isn’t a manager who plans ahead for unexpected work. No, this is a manager who solves problem by telling you to work harder and longer.

This seems like a little bit of a leap to me. Is it obvious that these two aspects of a manager are inherently related? In my experience, I have also seen that solving a problem by throwing longer hours at it is a net-negative in productivity. You may hit a tight deadline or put out a fire, but it tends to be followed by a period of lower productivity from exhaustion. Overall, your team has picked up increased volatility with a lower average output. You'd be better off if you could predict and catch the problem early.

I could imagine a team, though, that is accustomed to putting in 70 hours a week, and a manager that carefully manages the process to make sure that those 70 hours are as predictable as possible. The post would imply that all managers who ignore one aspect of a healthy team or project (sane work hours) would be ignoring all aspects. I don't know if that's a fair leap, but maybe in practice it is true.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#298

Post by jcadam »

s73ver_ wrote: post #251
jcadam wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pfft. A man-hour of labor is a man-hour of labor. Which is why I fully understand why my employer is requiring me (and the others on my team) to make up the 48 hours of labor I lost when I evacuated due to Hurricane Irma (even though the office was of course closed for much of that time). I'm spending the extra hours perusing/posting on HN and looking at job listings :|

I really hope the rest of your team is doing so, too. Companies like that don't deserve good employees.

Oh, yea. Although, this sort of thing is actually fairly common for my industry (defense contracting), so I'm not sure any of us will end up anyplace better.

Re: Cutting your salary by 40%

#300

Post by gbacon »

soVeryTired wrote: post #129
mcv wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm working 32 hours: 4 days a week. That leaves me a day with the kids outside the weekend. Oldest kid is at school most of the day, so I take the youngest to the zoo or something. I heartily recommend it. It's crazy that we're all still working 40 hours a week. Didn't Keynes promise we'd have 15 hour work weeks by now? (He did. He didn't anticipate our bosses taking all the profits from our productivity gains, thou…

>He didn't anticipate our bosses taking all the profits from our productivity gains, though. He also didn't anticipate zero-sum competition for inflexible goods like housing. If I want a nice house in a decent city, I have to out-compete and out-borrow everyone else who might want that house. If everyone around me is making bank and I want the nice house, then I'd better make bank too. Lots of us end up working more…

… or adopt more realistic constraints for what it means to be a decent city.
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