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Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

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Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

#61

Post by silon42 »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #17
s5300 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some rich people in the US who endorse 996. Calacanis being one. Imagine trying to be a bigger piece of shit. Japan isn’t even 996 & they’re going to have to start forcing people to have kids at gunpoint or kinda implode as a nation. Near purely because of their abysmal work culture. I recall when Cards Against Humanity paid for their overseas factory workers a day off by paying for a full factory day with…

Quoted post unavailable.

That's an alternative way to implode as a nation.

Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

#62

Post by lostcohort »

froh wrote: post #52
orangepurple wrote: post #7

Meanwhile in China... Excerpts below taken from the website https://996.icu/#/en_US What is "996"? 996 working, ICU waiting. A "996" work schedule refers to an unofficial work schedule (9a.m. ~ 9p.m., 6 days a week) that has been gaining in popularity. Serving a company that encourages the "996" work schedule usually means working for at least 60 hours a week. In early September 2016, it was said that 58.com (58同城, a…

That does exist in _some_ companies but it's not "the norm".

Exactly, but people just love to parrot it. It'd be like taking banking hours as the norm here.

> Bob Diamond on brutal working hours for junior bankers: ‘I’d do it again in a nanosecond’ [1]

[1] https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/bob-diamond-on-brutal-work...

Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

#64

Post by DeathArrow »

At my last workplace I had to work number of working days in that month * 8. So Op could have worked Monday to Saturday 6 hours and 4 hours on Sunday if he was a colleague of mine.

I'm all in for either shorter working days or fewer working days, provided that stuff is still done. I think I can do what I do in 4 hours at most. At least 4 hours are lost.

Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

#65

Post by erazor42 »

lvl102 wrote: post #46
orangepurple wrote: post #7

Meanwhile in China... Excerpts below taken from the website https://996.icu/#/en_US What is "996"? 996 working, ICU waiting. A "996" work schedule refers to an unofficial work schedule (9a.m. ~ 9p.m., 6 days a week) that has been gaining in popularity. Serving a company that encourages the "996" work schedule usually means working for at least 60 hours a week. In early September 2016, it was said that 58.com (58同城, a…

Let’s be honest, if you ever worked in East Asian countries with these work ethic culture, you’d know they just sit around the office doing absolutely nothing. It’s bullshit.

100% agree, I personally would probably have the same weekly productivity in 965 vs 996. Brain resting is pretty important.

Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

#67

Post by refurb »

rmetzler wrote: post #56
Closi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you willing to get paid 24/37 = 64% of a fulltime positions salary? If so, I think plenty of smaller employers would be happy to do this.

Your calculation assumes that all working hours create equal value. I can say for me that on most jobs I had, I got like 80% done in the first 4 hours and 20% in the other half of the day. I regularly stop working when I can’t concentrate anymore and do some hours on weekend mornings instead.

At my old job we used to get Friday’s off if we worked 9 hrs the first 4 days.

People just worked 8 hours and didn’t come in Friday’s.

Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

#68

Post by jokethrowaway »

ErrantX wrote: post #55

So I am seeing more and more of ideas like this; but I feel the need to challenge them a bit. Not the ideal; work less, have more fulfilling lives - I am all in. But all of these initiatives are focused on the wealthier office workers and sometimes factory/shift workers who are non-customer facing. But it totally ignores the service industry which is a huge part of our society (and arguably even more so if we end up…

No matter how much currency you give the poor in society, there won't be an incentive to reward people which provide zero value.

Prices will just go up.

How much free time you have could very well be a function of how valuable / hard to automate your work is.

Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

#70

Post by IMTDb »

erazor42 wrote: post #65
lvl102 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s be honest, if you ever worked in East Asian countries with these work ethic culture, you’d know they just sit around the office doing absolutely nothing. It’s bullshit.

100% agree, I personally would probably have the same weekly productivity in 965 vs 996. Brain resting is pretty important.

I think a significant point in the 996 is also to ensure people are available, not only productive. Most probably are extremely productive few hours per day (let's assume 4) and few days per week (let's also assume 4). We could all be performing almost all our weekly tasks in about 16 - extremely targeted and focused - hours. SO it might be easy to think we should only be working 16 hours per week and that would be enough.

Yet, if people were only working 16 hour per week, the company would stop to a crawl. Because during my extremely productive, I might need a few non productive hours from you. Maybe it's answering a quick question, maybe is giving me a pointer to something, on inviting me to a document, enough that I can keep progressing without being blocked and getting those golden 16 hours interrupted and wasted.

The point is that, even tho these are not productive hours for you, they are creating a massive value for the company because you can be supporting other people productive hours. And maybe those are happening on a Saturday from 6 to 9 PM. In fact it might even be OK for the company to tire you a bit, to get that availability, even if that means you won't have 16 hours of quality work anymore.

This is not in defense on the 996, but it is to balance the whole point that people should only be working when they really are productive/focused/.... Availability, even non productive does matter as well.

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