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…
meanwhile, China is doing 996 - 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week.
Obviously people hated it. But it is happening and no wonder China tech is catching up fast / winning in some areas already.
How about benefits such as health insurance, vacation days, sick days?
I miss vacation so much. I just fly home from the US. And … I still have to work instead of just spending time with my parents that I haven’t seen in years. I earn more than 200k. ( not west coast ) it’s a decent salary right? Why can’t I have vacation, too? I asked and putted and asked again… All that will accomplish one thing: one day in the next 2 years I will wake up, look at my bank account. And quit. To have ac…
Yeah if a boss said I couldn't have 4 weeks off per year I'd probably tell them they're functionally incompetant.
Its always interesting to see how other people live.
They are smart, the employees are likely to be more productive if they are healthy. Many companies squeeze up employees like tubes of toothpaste then discard them and hire a younger gen. It is sometimes not intentional, just create a stresful environment and dont allow enough time to employees to catch their breath so to speak
I felt pretty wrecked when I, mostly because of lack of affordable housing, moved to a team in a location near my home town, and found out every single employee aged <35 had ended up on sick leave. Didn't have any choise but I wish I could have just gotten out of there as fast as I ended up in it.
Why? It'd be helpful to get some idea what workplace factors led to such a negative outcome.
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…
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…
> If you give people the opportunity to work on things they like working on, and don’t make work about anything other than work, you get amazing results.
That line started off well, but ended off terrible. I really don't want to be working in a place where I'm treated like a replaceable machine. You do you, man.
Of course I would be willing to reduce my yearly salary for 2 or 3 weeks of extra time. Should not be that hard. It’s worth more than the proportional time I would take off. It’s very valuable to me. Like 5k / week would be a good price tag. I have no debt and more stuff than I need. Now let’s me enjoy life while I still can ( and keep working on that job that I actually enjoy ) I’m not sure to understand about the n…
By ‘net positive’ I mean willing to take a cut larger than is directly proportional to the reduction in hours worked. The reality is that reducing each person’s annual work will increase costs for the company overall, as it needs to pay additional overhead and benefits, which are related to employee count, rather than hours worked. I think that everyone is a bit wary of setting difficult precedents in employment situ…
Except that it increases employees morale and motivation and thus productivity, and reduces chances of burnout. There are benefits for the company too.
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…
Australia calling: 37.5hr week please. It be law.
I bet you're envious of the typical US 2 weeks vacation allowance.
It is normal, but if you think about it, it doesn't really take an hour to eat lunch - and sometimes it would be preferable to eat in 5 minutes and leave at 4:05 instead of taking an hour to sit around the office. Every reasonable employer would permit this but I have learned from reading HN comments that not every employer is reasonable.
Break times also tend to be regulated in most countries I believe. I.e. here in Japan 60 minutes break time is required if you work for more than I think about 6ish hours.
When I used to work in Japan I hated that rule. One day I feeling not so great, so I took the morning off. But we had an important release, so I still went to the office in the afternoon. The release ran into few issues, so I had to stay past the regular finish time of 6pm. I started to feel no so great again, so I wanted to finish the release and head home as soon as possible. But at 7pm, my boss came running towards me and forced me to take one hour break. I tried to explained to them (unsuccessfully) I only have about 5-10mins to finish the release. So I spent another one hour with watering eyes, massive headache, and chills, just to finish 5mins of work.
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…
> If you give people the opportunity to work on things they like working on, and don’t make work about anything other than work, you get amazing results. That line started off well, but ended off terrible. I really don't want to be working in a place where I'm treated like a replaceable machine. You do you, man.
> I really don't want to be working in a place where I'm treated like a replaceable machine.
This seems like a leap. Where did I insinuate that anyone is a cog in a machine? Just because I said work should be about work? Why does it have to be about anything else? If you need your job to provide a social aspect to your life that’s completely fine. It’s just not a part of the business I’m building. It’s why I think having options is great. Everyone works differently.