21–30 of 518 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only an owner would feel that way. Without significant equity, what's the point? The worker gets nothing except less life and more stress. The owner sucks up all the benefit.
Perhaps society would be better off if more of us were owners?
It's an open secret at least in the tech world that absolutely no one is putting in a productive 40 hours of work a week. This was true well before the pandemic and is more pronounced than ever now. Everyone needs to be "present" for 8 hours a day 5 days a week, but spends their time in pointless meetings, preparing documents and powerpoints that no one will read, faux social/teambuilding events, hour long lunches, g…
I think it makes sense to have people available for regular hours, just so that if I ask someone a question I can expect a response today-ish. But, I agree that a lot of meetings should be emails, teambuilding events are usually poorly done, and procrastination is hard to avoid when you've got access to the internet. Minor nitpick: Is an hour long lunch really that bad?
Big mistake. It was the 5-6 day week that built modern Japan. A lot of people are talking about cutting back on days everywhere. But now, more than ever, is when we need to be working harder to get back to where we were before. (Of course, my attitude to these things is shaped by being a business owner -- not an employee. So take with that point of view)
I think more companies should (and probably will consider) 4-day maybe even 3-day workweeks as technology makes us more productive. Especially in industries that require deep thinking, the output doesn't necessarily scale with # of hours a worker puts in, not every hour is the same. I think 10 hours of highly productive work is much better than 40 hours of busy work. Anecdotally, I managed to accumulate almost 300 ho…
Many companies would agree if you offered them to work 3 days a week for 60% of your salary. I've done it.
> Especially in industries that require deep thinking, the output doesn't necessarily scale with # of hours a worker puts in, not every hour is the same. I think 10 hours of highly productive work is much better than 40 hours of busy work.
I absolutely agree with this, but I'm skeptical of a model that allows someone to come to work for only 10 hours and have those hours be the productive time. Especially for deep thinking work. My experience is that to push forward in work that requires creativity and deep thought, one needs to be immersed in it, while at the same time not pressured to come up with something on the spot. The immersion (often) requires a full time commitment to the work, even if some of that time is actually spent chatting with colleagues or wasting time on HN or whatever. Providing the needed freedom from pressure, but still enough pressure to get results, is a question of management, either personal or from good manager.
It's an open secret at least in the tech world that absolutely no one is putting in a productive 40 hours of work a week. This was true well before the pandemic and is more pronounced than ever now. Everyone needs to be "present" for 8 hours a day 5 days a week, but spends their time in pointless meetings, preparing documents and powerpoints that no one will read, faux social/teambuilding events, hour long lunches, g…
Big mistake. It was the 5-6 day week that built modern Japan. A lot of people are talking about cutting back on days everywhere. But now, more than ever, is when we need to be working harder to get back to where we were before. (Of course, my attitude to these things is shaped by being a business owner -- not an employee. So take with that point of view)
Where we were before was broken, and the pandemic helped reveal that. Poor work/life balance, income inequality, industries built on JIT processes which fail spectacularly when the unexpected happens (see lumber, shipping containers, semiconductors, etc), an unfortunate wake-up call that even with entire industries shut down and almost no flights and cars on the road we only reduced emissions by 13% so we're going to need to make incredible sacrifices and green-tech investments if we even want to hope at our promised 50% reduction by 2030.
We shouldn't hope to get to where we were before. We should try to be better, and perhaps learn to live with less, because on a global scale we're not going to have a choice before too long whether we do it consciously or have it forced on us.
It's an open secret at least in the tech world that absolutely no one is putting in a productive 40 hours of work a week. This was true well before the pandemic and is more pronounced than ever now. Everyone needs to be "present" for 8 hours a day 5 days a week, but spends their time in pointless meetings, preparing documents and powerpoints that no one will read, faux social/teambuilding events, hour long lunches, g…
It's an open secret at least in the tech world that absolutely no one is putting in a productive 40 hours of work a week. This was true well before the pandemic and is more pronounced than ever now. Everyone needs to be "present" for 8 hours a day 5 days a week, but spends their time in pointless meetings, preparing documents and powerpoints that no one will read, faux social/teambuilding events, hour long lunches, g…
I think it makes sense to have people available for regular hours, just so that if I ask someone a question I can expect a response today-ish. But, I agree that a lot of meetings should be emails, teambuilding events are usually poorly done, and procrastination is hard to avoid when you've got access to the internet. Minor nitpick: Is an hour long lunch really that bad?
Big mistake. It was the 5-6 day week that built modern Japan. A lot of people are talking about cutting back on days everywhere. But now, more than ever, is when we need to be working harder to get back to where we were before. (Of course, my attitude to these things is shaped by being a business owner -- not an employee. So take with that point of view)
Technology increases leverage allowing exponential outputs given the right inputs.
Overworking employees ceases to be a viable strategy for high tech industries.
Big mistake. It was the 5-6 day week that built modern Japan. A lot of people are talking about cutting back on days everywhere. But now, more than ever, is when we need to be working harder to get back to where we were before. (Of course, my attitude to these things is shaped by being a business owner -- not an employee. So take with that point of view)
the question is whether working more really leads to working harder and more output. From what I see most people just go through the motion after a certain amount of work per week. They look busy and feel busy but I am not sure the output is there. I personally I am most productive if I work around 32 hours per week with some spurts of much more work in between.