Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 312 posts

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

#261

Post by TimPC »

dsr_ wrote: post #141

Can we agree that different people have different optimal working styles? Some people get everything done first thing in the morning and are useless in the afternoons. Some people can't get started until noon whatever their local time is. Some people can commit to 10 or 12 hour days, and if so, it's not fair to ask them to work 5 days a week at that rate. Some people work best in private offices, some at separated wo…

Ultimately though we need to pick an arrangement. It's going to be very difficult to have part of society on reduced five day work weeks and part of society on four day work weeks. It creates unusual demand patterns on schools and daycare which you need to decide whether to run on a four or five day pattern. It's hard for the schools or daycares if the teachers/ECEs opt for four day work weeks but a substantial portion of their market requires five day services.

The push for a four day work week is inclusive and allows most people to shift to a four day work week. The push to people working in accordance with their optimal work patterns unfairly targets the service sector and restricts how their choice in how they work based on demands for their services.

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

#262

Post by dragonwriter »

ErrantX wrote: post #258
dragonwriter wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You will still want an Uber after 5pm, No, I don't. I want a way to get where I want to go after 5pm, sure, but reduced working hours means, necessarily, that for a greater portion of the population than is currently the case, that will not be an individual, human-driven conveyance per party seeking transportation, and that's fine. > 4 Day work weeks, shorter hours - all great ideas but all ideas that either negati…

> Your argument that they do is based on the assumption that they are not applied to that group I'd qualify it more as; I don't believe these ideas are easy to implement for that group vs. non-service roles. Now, I am based in the UK so things may vary around the world but I disagree with your assertion about the wage & hours laws. For example; here we have a maximum working week of 48 hours. This was supposed to hel…

> However, service workers have wage pressure to sign waivers to let them work more than the 48 hours

US wage and hour laws are not generally individually waivable, as the entire point of wage and hour laws is to address power imbalance between workers and their employers. When talking about the length of the legal workweek in the US, the discussion is of laws as to when overtime compensation for non-exempt employees is required, the added cost creates pressure on employers to limit excess working hours of non-exempt employees.

If UK wage and hour laws are waivable the way you suggest, that suggests a fundamental problem with the structure of the law which renders any discussion of fine tuning their coverage irrelevant.

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

#263

Post by muffinman26 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #236
bckr wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing to look into is whether you have snoring / sleep apnea. Most people who do, it seems, are not aware of it. 2 easy, objective tests: 1) Ask your sleeping partner, if you have one, if you snore. 2) Record yourself sleeping. I used an app called SnoreLab which does audio analysis to give you a numerical rating and pulls clips of likely snoring moments so you don't have to scrub through the entire night's r…

I often snore when I sleep on my back. So I always sleep on my belly and don't snore. This developed before I even finished high school. I have never been (and am not) even slightly overweight.

Sleep apnea often develops during puberty when the voice box changes, which lines up with the high-school timeframe. Being overweight can certainly make it worse, but apparently an above-average number of firefighters have sleep apnea, and they're not exactly an overweight group.

Not saying you have sleep apnea or that sleeping on your side/belly isn't enough to deal with it, simply some information.

(It's certainly possible that the reason an above-average number of fire-fighters have sleep apnea is that 1) they're more likely to have people hear them snoring, and 2) the people screened out of the military for sleep apnea often respond by becoming firefighters.)

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

#264

Post by Cerium »

TimPC wrote: post #261
dsr_ wrote: post #141

Can we agree that different people have different optimal working styles? Some people get everything done first thing in the morning and are useless in the afternoons. Some people can't get started until noon whatever their local time is. Some people can commit to 10 or 12 hour days, and if so, it's not fair to ask them to work 5 days a week at that rate. Some people work best in private offices, some at separated wo…

Ultimately though we need to pick an arrangement. It's going to be very difficult to have part of society on reduced five day work weeks and part of society on four day work weeks. It creates unusual demand patterns on schools and daycare which you need to decide whether to run on a four or five day pattern. It's hard for the schools or daycares if the teachers/ECEs opt for four day work weeks but a substantial porti…

A substantial portion of the service sector runs with a seven day schedule, we don't push schools to offer seven day service in response? Perhaps having more mixed working arrangements will improve societal flexibility and better serve all people.

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

#265

Post by ErrantX »

dragonwriter wrote: post #262
ErrantX wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your argument that they do is based on the assumption that they are not applied to that group I'd qualify it more as; I don't believe these ideas are easy to implement for that group vs. non-service roles. Now, I am based in the UK so things may vary around the world but I disagree with your assertion about the wage & hours laws. For example; here we have a maximum working week of 48 hours. This was supposed to hel…

> However, service workers have wage pressure to sign waivers to let them work more than the 48 hours US wage and hour laws are not generally individually waivable, as the entire point of wage and hour laws is to address power imbalance between workers and their employers. When talking about the length of the legal workweek in the US, the discussion is of laws as to when overtime compensation for non-exempt employees…

Interesting point; but I think the US laws have similar effect in different ways.

For example; the overtime laws just create incentive to work more than 40 hours a week. On average US workers work much more than other OECD countries.

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

#266

Post by srfwx »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #255
dsr_ wrote: post #141

Can we agree that different people have different optimal working styles? Some people get everything done first thing in the morning and are useless in the afternoons. Some people can't get started until noon whatever their local time is. Some people can commit to 10 or 12 hour days, and if so, it's not fair to ask them to work 5 days a week at that rate. Some people work best in private offices, some at separated wo…

I produce as much as my teammates working about 1-2 hours 5-days per week. It would be a massive social problem for most employers to let me get paid what I make and have everyone see me only working 1-2 hours per day. That's why I had to switch to consulting. My case is extreme, but that's why you won't see employers letting people have visibly different work arrangements.

Have you ever considered that your teammates may be working 1-2 hours each day too ?

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

#267

Post by dragonwriter »

TimPC wrote: post #261
dsr_ wrote: post #141

Can we agree that different people have different optimal working styles? Some people get everything done first thing in the morning and are useless in the afternoons. Some people can't get started until noon whatever their local time is. Some people can commit to 10 or 12 hour days, and if so, it's not fair to ask them to work 5 days a week at that rate. Some people work best in private offices, some at separated wo…

Ultimately though we need to pick an arrangement. It's going to be very difficult to have part of society on reduced five day work weeks and part of society on four day work weeks. It creates unusual demand patterns on schools and daycare which you need to decide whether to run on a four or five day pattern. It's hard for the schools or daycares if the teachers/ECEs opt for four day work weeks but a substantial porti…

> It creates unusual demand patterns on schools and daycare which you need to decide whether to run on a four or five day pattern.

Schools can run a 5-day pattern even if some of their employees are on a 4-day pattern (as long as they are not the same four-day pattern). In fact, it's not unknown for various workplaces to run a 5-day every week pattern with employees on a mix of 9-8-80 two-week and 4-10-40 1-week cycles with different cycle days off.

Faculty (especially in pre-K through primary grades; scheduling can be more creative without disruption at the secondary level) probably need to be on every open day, generally, but other than that,..

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

#268

Post by missedthecue »

hgs3 wrote: post #125

Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t think a four day work week is radical enough. A web developer today is easily 5x more productive than a web developer 30 years ago: we have off the shelf databases, frameworks, and a huge ecosystem of open source libraries. If I can produce the same output as a web developer 30 years ago, but at 1/5th the time, then why am I not working 1 day a week for the same pay? What’s the point of m…

I don't understand why you deserve a huge raise in pay because someone else developed an off-the-shelf database. Investments into capital and tech go to the investor, not to you. That would be a complete mis-alignment of incentives. Why would anyone invent, develop, pay for, or work on improvements if all the benefits went to you? Should accountants have gotten massive raises across the board when Microsoft Excel was invented and they didn't have to use paper any longer?

You're not more productive than a web developer in 1995, your tools are.

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

#269

Post by TimPC »

Cerium wrote: post #264
TimPC wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately though we need to pick an arrangement. It's going to be very difficult to have part of society on reduced five day work weeks and part of society on four day work weeks. It creates unusual demand patterns on schools and daycare which you need to decide whether to run on a four or five day pattern. It's hard for the schools or daycares if the teachers/ECEs opt for four day work weeks but a substantial porti…

A substantial portion of the service sector runs with a seven day schedule, we don't push schools to offer seven day service in response? Perhaps having more mixed working arrangements will improve societal flexibility and better serve all people.

I think it's a legitimate problem though that schools and daycares operate predominantly on a five day schedule now that works for a large number of workers. If we go to a model where we have something resembling a 50/50 split between longer 4-day work weeks and shorter 5-day work weeks we end up with a huge problem in how to schedule services so that they work for the majority of people.

There will be overwhelming pressure on schools to have days that match the shorter length of day in the five-day workweek so that parents who opt for five days can spend time with their kids. There will be overwhelming pressure to have four slightly longer school days so that parents who opt for the four-day work week can spend time with the kids on the three days off. It's very difficult for schools to opt for both solutions as it would require doubling the number of class types being offered which makes it harder for smaller schools to have sufficient students in every class to be financially viable. Even if we solve financial viability schools would need the ability to tell teachers which schedule they had to take rather than letting the teachers freely choose.

I can't stress how much this choice of working approach would be bad for the school system.

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

#270

Post by stevenking86 »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #173

Here's an idea: "roller coaster week" Monday: 4 hours Tuesday: 6 hours Wednesday: 10 hours Thursday: 6 hours Friday: 4 hours total: 30 hours How it works: - Monday: The second half of your day is work. Your morning is open to sleep in, get chores done, run errands, eat brunch with friends. Second half of the day should be meetings to plan the work for the week, and catch up from the previous week. - Tuesday: Very few…

I love it.
Post reply on HN