Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

groups.csail.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 523 posts

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#301

Post by bjourne »

rubber_duck wrote: post #261
zulgan wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is cultural as well, I(anecdotally) absolutely feel shame when I am about to leave a company, or even negotiate.

I don't think it's purely cultural because chances are you have co-workers who don't have these issues at all just as I know people who are limiting themselves because of feelings like this - I would say this is more individual. To flip it around - do you feel other people who leave the company did something shameful ? Do you see judging from others (especially outside of co-workers where it's incentive based) ? I th…

No worker would ever get hired if he or she were open with that they would leave the company the very instance a better offer came around. Companies, on the other hand, have no trouble hiring even when they admit that they'd fire you the very instance someone who can do the job for less pay comes around.

Loyalty in the work place is a one-way street. It goes from the worker to the company but not the other way around.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#302

Post by JTbane »

vfc1 wrote: post #114

The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. This explains the system of values that revolve around it, such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. The servant was not expected to leave it…

We'd have to work weekends as well, if it were not for religion. Kind of funny, kind of sad.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#303

Post by exDM69 »

ivanhoe wrote: post #219

It's comparing apples and oranges to compare medieval peasants life and modern office work. Even today in rural areas people work around the clock in and around the house to keep everything afloat and barely survive. Sitting on your butt for 10h a day and doing intellectual work seems hard only until you try to do some farming for a while - and modern farming is nothing compared to how hard it was back then, when you…

In modern farming, the hard part is not sitting in the tractor working on the fields. The struggle comes from running a business, taking care of financials and keeping the tractors running and cash flow positive in a very competitive, globalized environment which pays very badly.

I have done farm hand work the modern way with tractors and the old timey way with horses. If it paid as well and was as stable as computer work in the office, I'd trade my job for either.

Farm work with tractors is sweaty, dirty, solitary job but it's not particularly physically taxing. You don't need much strength most of the time, but there are times when you need to lift heavy things etc. But at the end of the day you see the field is plowed and you get to work with big machines (fun!).

Farm work with horses is sweatier and dirtier but it's a community effort with typically a minimum of two people and one horse. In the olden days it would have been a whole family group working together to put food on the table. This kind of work is very tough physically but is very rewarding and relaxing mentally.

And sitting on my ass all day in the office is also quite physically demanding in the sense that I must hit the gym regularly after work or my health will suffer.

You mention textile work, for example. Spinning yarn was an activity almost everyone took a part in. People back then carried a spool of yarn and a bunch of fibers in their pockets and spun it in their idle time, e.g. while sitting together with their family at night. It's not too dissimilar to playing with a yo-yo, or doing knitting or other activities people enjoy even today.

Pre-industrial life was not as tough as modern people think. There were many positive sides to a simpler lifestyle back then. These days we're well fed and have good health care but we work ourselves to death for no obvious reason.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#304

Post by aflag »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #197
rubber_duck wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis but this here is the most obvious example. When there is enough choice people change jobs all the time - the demand in my l…

What proportion of the total jobs market [in your country || in your supply chains] are you looking at though. The parent might be a generalisation but you're objecting based on the thinnest sliver of contrary occupations. Seems like the parent could well be on the money for all menial roles?

I've never heard about anyone being ashamed of leaving a company in any market. Even ones that have small demand. In fact, I've heard countless people saying that they never quit interviewing entirely.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#305

Post by lotsofpulp »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #286
ernst_klim wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Universal healthcare solved that in Europe. As a person which lives in Russia and Germany, I'm really interested in what you mean by solved? Universal healthcare in Russia is a total mess. Universal healthcare (edit: in Germany) have a lot of problems too, of which the most significant is underpayment, low salaries, and such a lack of personnel, that CDU people did really suggest to use conscription to draw the fre…

I am Russian, and Russia is a total mess, full stop. To address positive rights - societies don't just "run out" of money. As has been repeated a million times, a country with a sovereign currency is not run like a household budget. And the "right to clean water" is rather useful in making sure we don't have outbreaks of the plague and other fun stuff

Money is a proxy for power. That power comes from the ability to trust the government issuing the money and the people the government represents (i.e. the country). You can claim the right to clean water all you want, but unless you fund infrastructure development, and have access to aquifers or fresh water lakes, it doesn't matter how much money a government issues. Similarly, if a country isn't producing enough children to support the elderly, it doesn't quite matter if they've been promised nursing homes.

See Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#306

Post by aflag »

bjourne wrote: post #301
rubber_duck wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's purely cultural because chances are you have co-workers who don't have these issues at all just as I know people who are limiting themselves because of feelings like this - I would say this is more individual. To flip it around - do you feel other people who leave the company did something shameful ? Do you see judging from others (especially outside of co-workers where it's incentive based) ? I th…

No worker would ever get hired if he or she were open with that they would leave the company the very instance a better offer came around. Companies, on the other hand, have no trouble hiring even when they admit that they'd fire you the very instance someone who can do the job for less pay comes around. Loyalty in the work place is a one-way street. It goes from the worker to the company but not the other way around…

That depends on demand/supply. Tech companies in cities with high demand for engineers have no problem hiring people who will leave as soon as something better shows up.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#307

Post by johannes1234321 »

lostjohnny wrote: post #214
vfc1 wrote: post #114

The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. This explains the system of values that revolve around it, such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. The servant was not expected to leave it…

> The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. Citation needed It really come from workers rights to have a life outside the workplace AND a salary even when they could not work (what we call safety). In medieval servitude there was no life outside the workplace, nor safety. Pre-induistrial workers worked less, on the average, because the…

> Pre-induistrial workers worked less, on the average, because they were surviving

> They were working when they needed money and not working (AKA doing some other job for the house or the family, like farming or breeding cows and pigs) when they had enough to go on for maybe a week or so.

Especially they worked depending on the season. During planting or harvest they were on the fields from dawn till dusk. In winter they took care of the animals and stayed by the fire place inside.

Manufacturing work had similar cycles.

Only industrialisation brought working cycles independent from season and daylight.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#308

Post by noobermin »

rubber_duck wrote: post #188
vfc1 wrote: post #114

The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. This explains the system of values that revolve around it, such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. The servant was not expected to leave it…

> such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis but this here is the most obvious example. When there is enough choice people change jobs all the time - the demand in my l…

While I have bones to pick out of OP, your post assumes your experience is the norm and not far away from the median.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#309

Post by wolfgke »

vfc1 wrote: post #114

The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. This explains the system of values that revolve around it, such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. The servant was not expected to leave it…

> This explains the system of values that revolve around it, such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time.

This looks very USA-centric to me. In Germany, the mentality is rather that both directions are to be ashamed of.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#310

Post by noobermin »

JackFr wrote: post #247
zulgan wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is cultural as well, I(anecdotally) absolutely feel shame when I am about to leave a company, or even negotiate.

Back in the day, Merrill Lynch had a rep for hiring really green people on the cheap, doing a very good job training them up, and then not paying them according to their new value in the market. When you would leave, managers would often lay the guilt trip about "What you owe us..." (to which the proper response is the line from Goodfellas -"F * you. Pay me.") There was a sitewide IT town hall in NY when I was there…

Why is the response to stop training them rather than train them and then pay them their worth?
Post reply on HN