31–40 of 57 posts
I feel like this would only work for the 9-5 crew. Realistically, if you’re a salaried employee working from home at a fortune 1000 or startup in the US, you’re basically always kind of working; nights and weekends, when there’s important stuff happening or you don’t have plans.
Soon after implementation, I feel that companies would like to reduce pay as well. Maybe not by 20%, but it's an easy way to increase profitability.
In general, I'd be willing to split the difference. Not because I think I'll be less valuable to the company, but because my time is valuable and I'd be content with less. I've tried to negotiate this in the past and they always look at me like I've got 3 heads, or make some blandishment about how that wouldn't be fair for everybody (despite my job being unique). Later, I learned that full time employment is 35 hours…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wages might be sticky, but surely it wouldn't be difficult for employers to simply slow down the increase in wages, both by decreasing the compensation and/or number of new entry-level roles, and by decreasing and/or delaying promotions. This seems to me that in many industries/markets this could be done by employers without any sort of identifiable cartelization.
I think we can safely ignore entry-level roles here - for a while in the early 00s everyone with an MBA thought that entry level engineers were just like other engineers but at 20% of the cost - what savings! Then the industry realized that both junior employees and off-shoring come with real costs that need to be analyzed in advance - they can be the right answer, but you need to tread very carefully. So I'd take a…
You mean, as long as we're personally beyond entry-level? My own career and compensation isn't my only concern.
I've been working a 4-day work week for over a decade now. I took the pay cut myself. I pretty much agree with the article. Especially in knowledge-intense office jobs, people can't really be fully productive across the day or week. People have different energy cycles throughout the day, and we're biologically just not designed to focus this stretch of time. So a number of hours is "busy time", sitting out the hours.…
> We work longer, not shorter. We work as a couple, not as a single breadwinner. We have less job security than ever. The combined stress of a life long quest and grind for economic relevance is the greatest source of human suffering remaining. I feel like a part of the issue is a belief that competition is necessary for an economy to function. Some people say to themselves, "I need to work longer because I need to b…
[0] https://insidethevatican.com/magazine/culture/the-longest-ec...
A couple of random and semi-related thoughts: I'm not really good for more than 6 hours of any sort of challenging mental work in a day, anyway. I also don't think that "hours" are a particularly good thing to track for software engineers -- we have ticket tracking and project management software that track effort already. The bit about being rewarded with a Friday off reminded me of how I'd try to get my homework do…
When I worked in gaming the reward for getting your work done early was... attending the same mandatory overtime as everyone else because one department going home early would "hurt team morale". Granted - the same company seemed pretty oblivious to how much underbudgeting projects "hurt team morale" but that side of the equation was never changed. I thankfully changed industries but I still live with some of the con…
I work as a programmer in a dying industry. Over the last several years we've cut hours instead of having layoffs. We are now down to a 3 day work week. Everyone left knows they should have left years ago but we are all curious to see how long the company can keep going. Everybody knows how 5 day work weeks are. You get back to work Monday and it may take a little while to pick up where you left off Friday but surely…
Not suggesting you’d want to do that, I’m just wondering how you think it would play out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is in the real world it’s close to impossible to tell the difference between getting work done early and the task being easier than expected. Same the other way around. If you are constantly putting out more and better quality work than the average, the reward is you ask for more pay or you switch to a higher paying job.
> The problem is in the real world it’s close to impossible to tell the difference between getting work done early and the task being easier than expected. Same the other way around. I don't see why that's a problem, provided there's not a lot of constant sandbagging when giving estimates.
Hours based work isn’t perfect but it means you can put in the average amount of effort and have consistent work hours without stressing over every task and if the estimate is perfectly accurate.
I've been working a 4-day work week for over a decade now. I took the pay cut myself. I pretty much agree with the article. Especially in knowledge-intense office jobs, people can't really be fully productive across the day or week. People have different energy cycles throughout the day, and we're biologically just not designed to focus this stretch of time. So a number of hours is "busy time", sitting out the hours.…
> We work longer, not shorter. We work as a couple, not as a single breadwinner. We have less job security than ever. The combined stress of a life long quest and grind for economic relevance is the greatest source of human suffering remaining. I feel like a part of the issue is a belief that competition is necessary for an economy to function. Some people say to themselves, "I need to work longer because I need to b…
If there was an unlimited supply of desired resources, then people would not compete. But a limited supply of the desired resource will necessarily lead people to compete.
Unfortunately, it might be human nature that that desired resource is power, whether it be on a micro or macro scale.
I've been working a 4-day work week for over a decade now. I took the pay cut myself. I pretty much agree with the article. Especially in knowledge-intense office jobs, people can't really be fully productive across the day or week. People have different energy cycles throughout the day, and we're biologically just not designed to focus this stretch of time. So a number of hours is "busy time", sitting out the hours.…
I'm asking genuinely : is it become acceptable for peers to expect a ability to request and get meetings with peers with such a expectation - even without any justification, as I have understood the above - that it's not usual and even difficult to refuse?
A couple of random and semi-related thoughts: I'm not really good for more than 6 hours of any sort of challenging mental work in a day, anyway. I also don't think that "hours" are a particularly good thing to track for software engineers -- we have ticket tracking and project management software that track effort already. The bit about being rewarded with a Friday off reminded me of how I'd try to get my homework do…
> In the real world, the reward for getting your work done early tends to be more work. That's because in a well managed business there's always more work than workers. Schools on the other hand aren't designed to fully load students (perhaps they should be to keep advanced students from getting bored).