151–160 of 518 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
An insurance company I did some work for had a bell go off for your two coffee breaks and lunchtime. You spent half of your lunchtime waiting for elevators.
Whaaaat? What year, country, and/or location was this? Call center?
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…
We did this at my new company. One 30 minute scheduled standup. That’s the only meeting we have all week. Of course people are free to jump on a video call to work through stuff, but scheduled meetings are generally discouraged, and to date we only have the one. Since everyone is contract, we’re seeing an average of about 26 hours per week. It’s by far the most productive team I’ve ever been on or have built. We ship…
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…
Indeed, there’s a sort of Moneyball aspect here. Companies that can accurately pay out only for productive time instead of assuming all 40 hours of a work week are spent producing will make huge savings in payroll, increasing cost efficiency and making it feasible to hire larger cross functional teams. A software engineer probably only really works about 20 hours a week. That’s a 50% savings right there.
This would be a huge mis-optimization IMO. Good luck attracting "top" workers and retaining them with this model. It's just "butts in seats" taken to an extreme.
I think people might be a little confused about what the government is telegraphing here. Japanese labour regulations are very strict, in particular around hours worked. Basically all employees (yes, including engineers) need to clock in and out, the concept of a "salaried worker" doesn't really exist, although normally engineers are paid for a certain number of hours regardless if they are actually worked. Primarily…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We did this at my new company. One 30 minute scheduled standup. That’s the only meeting we have all week. Of course people are free to jump on a video call to work through stuff, but scheduled meetings are generally discouraged, and to date we only have the one. Since everyone is contract, we’re seeing an average of about 26 hours per week. It’s by far the most productive team I’ve ever been on or have built. We ship…
Why is contract important to this?
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…
We did this at my new company. One 30 minute scheduled standup. That’s the only meeting we have all week. Of course people are free to jump on a video call to work through stuff, but scheduled meetings are generally discouraged, and to date we only have the one. Since everyone is contract, we’re seeing an average of about 26 hours per week. It’s by far the most productive team I’ve ever been on or have built. We ship…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Its not about the number of days per week, it's also about the frequency of the thinking you put into it. If you do a 4 days break between two work days, I'd be very surprised if you remember anything in detail of your previous work period.
This is part of why I prefer the opposite of the 4-day workweek trend. I typically do some work 6 or 7 days a week, but a workday might be only 2 or 3 hours, on some of those days. I don't feel like a workaholic, and am not doing 60-hour weeks or anything. I average maybe 30-35 hours depending on the week, but those hours are spread over more days. Outside of the occasional "in the zone" hacking session or paper dead…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's the sort of thing you only do drunk on kool-aid Did not realise believing in a mission is akin to joining a suicide cult. Work doesn’t have to suck. It doesn’t have to be everyone’s calling. But it is for some of us, and sixty+ hours a week can be time well spent. My time at start-ups has been time around colleagues I love, work I enjoy and a mission I believe in. (I was also decently compensated while there a…
It doesn't have to, but the most likely outcome in a startup is it goes bankrupt, what you did disappears into the dark hole of failed ideas, and no one sees it. It's a suckers game: the default behavior needs to be "when the founders get greedy and kick me out...what will I do then? How will I feel about that time?"
If the work is for financing a life outside it, yes. But if the work is rewarding in itself, then said failure is—while highly disappointing—balanced by the relationships, stories and skills gained therefrom.
This is absolutely a risk tolerance and personality matrix thing. I just want to push back against this recently-popular philosophy which idealises the Western European work ethic and lifestyle. It is one among many local optima.