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The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

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Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#171

Post by inglor_cz »

b112 wrote: post #74
Jare wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> working 80 hours a week outputs productivity somewhere between 1 to 2 times the productivity of 40 hours a week Effort and energy spent will be somewhere between 1 to 2... but as soon as stress and exhaustion set in (which may happen fairly soon) you may find actual productivity tanking well below 1 and even into the negatives, due to all the mistakes and bad decisions you start making.

I think this is like machine maintenance. Take a delivery truck. Regular maintenance detects, and prevents breakdowns during deliveries. EG, oil changes, lubing, brake pad changes, etc. Scheduled repairs are far cheaper, and take less time than unannounced repairs. If the truck breaks down during deliveries, the repairs are still needed, may be more severe. It also require loads of extra work, a replacement truck mus…

This is, by the way, the vicious circle in which the Russian war effort in Ukraine is now.

The more tanks, trucks, fighter jets you lose, the more sorties/tasks the remaining fraction has to pull off. Which means more wear and tear, higher risk of failure.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#172

Post by leaflets2 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #169
koonsolo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty smart and a hard worker. I have a Masters degree in computer science. I can do about 4 to 6 hours of concentrated work per day. I never seen anyone do more or better. I know plenty of people who claim to work a crazy amout of hours. But in the end it always turns out they are deceiving themselves. I don't know Elon, so maybe he is different. But in the end, I'll believe it when I see it.

Around 30 years of age, I was able to pull off productive 10-hour days, but three in a row or so. Definitely not for weeks.

I'm older. 10-12 hours is not a problem to me if I sleep 1 hour at noon, and take short running breaks, just 1.5 km does wonder.

Been doing this for years :-). Software development.

I love my job. It's not for money; it has a purpose. I guess that otherwise I would not recommend this o.O

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#173

Post by leaflets2 »

gugagore wrote: post #97
caffeine wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As Elon, by virtue of his massive wealth now, is depriving an ungodly amount of people of financial resources and opportunities. That doesn’t make any sense at all. His wealth isn’t made up of financial resources and opportunities that other people could have used - his wealth is the price that other people would be willing to pay him to own shares in the companies he created. I think it’s a common misconception ou…

No one believes they are hoarding cans of food. People say they are hoarding wealth, and assuming it's liquid. https://ncarteron.medium.com/the-billionaires-arent-liquid-a... Which it is. They absolutely could, and the only reason they don't is because they like being in the club of biggest-pile-havers.

What would you suggest they do with it?

I'm wondering if "getting rid" of that much money, using it for good things, but without most of it disappearing in corruption, is more than a full time job

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#174

Post by goodpoint »

inglor_cz wrote: post #170
goodpoint wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very well understood that making a product can create surplus value. This is basic economics. Contrarily to simply robbing someone else, which would be 0-sum (if not negative). However if the product is being sold you are still taking someone's money. If you wanted to purely increase wealth for everybody you would be giving away the product for free. Many no-profits do that. (duh) Yet, the tradeoffs are complex…

"You are assuming that such workers would have all been unemployed if Musk did not exist, which is very unlikely." No, they would work, but would they be more productive in those other jobs? Possibly not. I wonder what would happen if current engineers at SpaceX were suddenly "redistributed" to Boeing or Blue Origin. Maybe they would raise the technical aptitude of those companies. Or maybe not, maybe the companies w…

> No, they would work, but would they be more productive in those other jobs? Possibly not.

On possibly yes - it depends. Yet, the company mission and priority is usually "maximize shareholders value".

Not "maximize worker creativity and happiness and empower them as much as possible".

Not "maximize technology, wealth, quality of life for humanity"

The last two might sometimes happen as fortunate side effects. Often not. See all the complaints from Tesla workers around safety and anti-union activities.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#175

Post by goodpoint »

kochikame wrote: post #147
goodpoint wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, wealth is mutually exclusive by definition. Regardless if it's cash, stocks, land or a pile of cans of food - if I have a piece of it you don't have the same piece. So yes "by virtue of his massive wealth now, is depriving an ungodly amount of people of financial resources and opportunities" is exactly how wealth works.

No, most of Bezos’ or Musk’s wealth is tied to the value of their companies. To this extent, they don’t “own” a thing that someone else is deprived of.

Stocks are mutually exclusive by definition.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#176

Post by brandnewaccount »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #123
j7ake wrote: post #44

Diminishing returns on productivity is obvious (eg working 80 hours a week outputs productivity somewhere between 1 to 2 times the productivity of 40 hours a week). However, rewards for work is also highly nonlinear, and usually rank based. For example, Usain Bolt is not twice as fast as the second fastest runner but Bolt is rewarded many multiples more than the second fastest runner. What is rational is to think of…

This is absolutely true, which is why people at the tip of the spear are always well-rewarded, but also incredibly stressed. Not everyone can deal with stress, and even those that "successfully" deal with it, often break down, earlier in life than others (Look for old pro football players, or old pro wrestlers, for instance). Congratulations! You're rich! Which is good, because you'll need good nursing care, in your…

Small nitpick about your argument: equating stress to physical contact sports isn't a very convincing argument. What would be better is looking at the health of CEOs as compared to other relatively wealthy individuals who work much less and are under less stress.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#177

Post by taneq »

eastbound wrote: post #54
dredmorbius wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend working at a photocopy shop could hear a paper jam from one high-speed copier when taking a break across the street. They'd be in the shop, opening the machine covers, before it came to a complete stop. Well-running equipment almost always has a characteristic sound and rhythm. Variations from that become quite apparent.

I hear my computer’s processor when it’s processing. It’s like a modem sound, but high-pitch. All of us used to rely on the HDD distinct sound to know when the games were finished loading ;)

My Dell XPS13 does that and it’s super annoying. It’s some kind of cross talk with the speaker amplifier because when I mute the sound or use headphones it goes away.

When I was a kid our BBC Micro used to do the same, you could “hear it thinking”.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#178

Post by sprucely »

taneq wrote: post #177
eastbound wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear my computer’s processor when it’s processing. It’s like a modem sound, but high-pitch. All of us used to rely on the HDD distinct sound to know when the games were finished loading ;)

My Dell XPS13 does that and it’s super annoying. It’s some kind of cross talk with the speaker amplifier because when I mute the sound or use headphones it goes away. When I was a kid our BBC Micro used to do the same, you could “hear it thinking”.

Yep, my XPS does too. I believe it's called "coil whine" and is caused by surface-mount inductors whose windings aren't fully encased in resin or whatever material they use.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#179

Post by mecha_ghidorah »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #18
endisneigh wrote: post #8

I used to slave away hanging dry wall (lol child labor laws), and then worked as a waiter. Now I work in big tech, and let me tell you the amount of people slacking off during work is incredible. Not that they necessarily should be working themselves to death, but with respect to the article, there's a lot of low hanging fruit. Wall St. is a sort of special type of pathology due to the sheer amount of high frequency,…

In the 90's I went from working at a factory stacking 100 pound boxes on pallets 8 hours a day to writing code for money. At my first corporate programming job, there was a guy in the cube (we still had cubicles at least) next to mine who would spend most of the day doing anything but writing code. He would be on the phone with his wife arguing about some random thing or on the phone yelling at his kids or whatever.…

I mean it is also the case that as a dev I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff, but in a way where I can sort of be doing something else at the same time. Often doing something else at the same time helps because if I'm not I get bored and stop doing it altogether.

So I'm goofing off on HN while background processing the design of a thing. Sure I could be staring at an IDE window when doing it, but instead I just open it to check things when needed.

I'm sure I'm less productive per minute than if it is all I was thinking about but I'm more productive on the scale of a full day if I am only half focusing on certain things. I have ADHD though so I'm probably not typical, but my point is that for intellectual work just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't happening

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#180

Post by robertlagrant »

This article points out some interesting things, but doesn't seem to get the cause of them right. Employees don't deserve employment, just as companies don't deserve loyalty. If a machine comes along and makes your per-task work much easier, you will be expected to accomplish more tasks. If you don't, then your company's competitors will win.

Companies don't exist for their owners, or their employees. They exist for their customers, and if you can finish more tasks for the same effort your customers will have better lives. And that's what propels us forwards: each company (or winning company in each segment) makes our lives better, or simpler, or easier.

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