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

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291–300 of 312 posts

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

#291
post #24

Why not both? 4 days, 6 hours each. Hey employers reading this. Having a hard time finding software engineers? Offer me this and I will come running. I’ll be banging on your door with my resume. Think about it.

Yeah “trouble finding talent” and yet it is the tired old 2010s Google perks being offered. Cheap/free food, couches and pingpong. Offer low tech debt and good hours and get a queue form!

Low tech debt would be ideal but even allocating sprint time to addressing tech debt would be a huge step ahead of many organizations, who just accumulate it until the house comes crashing down.

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

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We see the same issues in education with kids learning in different ways, and those who learn better in X way might learn less because they're being taught in Y way. It comes down to the overhead in time and complexity (usually money as well) being too high to justify accommodating everyone. We just sorta jam everyone into the same thing and figure we'll get enough out of them. As the culture shifts more toward worke…

Different learning styles are actually disputed [0], but I agree that 1. it's easier for employer to fit everyone in one box. 2. If people had more individual approaches, they would work better [0] https://www.educationnext.org/stubborn-myth-learning-styles-...

I have at least one counter example.

Graduate level Math/Physics.

There are people who cannot understand unless they see the algebra.

There also people that will not understand until they see the geometrical interpretation of the problem.

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

#294
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over here commute is part of work by law, so I assume it would count as 9 for most people?

Which country is this? I would love to have commute as part of work in my country. Fom the point of law employees materialize at work in the morning and than teleports to home in the evening (the creator of work code here must have been fan of star trek). I believe this kind of change in workers law would motivate employers to implement more sane WFH policies.

So basically the people who choose to live far away get subsidized? They work fewer hours for the same pay.

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

#295

There's no free lunch

Well, in my industrial suburb an entire food service industry arose to provide overtime meals to workers at the many 24/7 facilities where they were sometimes needed to work more hours than originally planned, entitling them to a top-dollar complimentary feast.

Some popular restaurants, and others were kitchens not open to the public but the key was the rapid delivery of one-off orders not long after the employee accepted the overtime.

But this was decades before DoorDash or Uber Eats, there weren't even any cellphones, you had to look at the paper menu and order over a land line, it was so primitive it took 20 seconds.

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

#296
post #294
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which country is this? I would love to have commute as part of work in my country. Fom the point of law employees materialize at work in the morning and than teleports to home in the evening (the creator of work code here must have been fan of star trek). I believe this kind of change in workers law would motivate employers to implement more sane WFH policies.

So basically the people who choose to live far away get subsidized? They work fewer hours for the same pay.

>>So basically the people who choose to live far away get subsidized?

Sure, You can put it this way - if workers living close have problem with that they can move or select another employer (if they prefer commuting to actually working)

>> They work fewer hours for the same pay.

I would argue that You are using definition of work time that is beneficial for employers. For me every minute of commute to work is due to employers order (You have to be where I tell You). And thus is not owned by the employee.

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

#298
post #296
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically the people who choose to live far away get subsidized? They work fewer hours for the same pay.

>>So basically the people who choose to live far away get subsidized? Sure, You can put it this way - if workers living close have problem with that they can move or select another employer (if they prefer commuting to actually working) >> They work fewer hours for the same pay. I would argue that You are using definition of work time that is beneficial for employers. For me every minute of commute to work is due to…

This is entirely a non-workable solution. It’s basically a race to the bottom.

If I live 500 km away can I just take a train ride in, stay 30 min then get back on the train ride home and collect a full paycheck?

If so, please let me know how to apply.

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

#299
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over here commute is part of work by law, so I assume it would count as 9 for most people?

Which country is this? I would love to have commute as part of work in my country. Fom the point of law employees materialize at work in the morning and than teleports to home in the evening (the creator of work code here must have been fan of star trek). I believe this kind of change in workers law would motivate employers to implement more sane WFH policies.

> Which country is this? I would love to have commute as part of work in my country.

Usually countries with laws about commuting being part of the daily wage are more about people who work across different locations rather than their fixed daily commute (i.e. you have a single fixed 'location' where you work, and then if you travel to another location then you are paid for that travel, for instance a salesperson that travels 4 hours each way to give a 2-hour presentation cannot be argued to have only worked 2 hours from a minimum-wage perspective, however if they are travelling to their usual office, even if that is 2 hours away, this would not need to be paid).

Paid daily commutes aren't a part of any countries laws I am aware of, as otherwise you would need to pay people differently depending on where they were living and rasies lots of practical considerations (What if I hire someone who is working next to the office and they move 2 hours away? Am I forced to pay them 50% extra or let them only work a 4 hour day? Presumably I can't fire/make them redundant just for moving home, as I'm assuming this is in a country with good workers-rights anwyay!), but I may be wrong and there may be a country which does do this!

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

#300
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…

probably because you're making 5x what a web developer made 30 years ago.
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