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

Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 156 posts

Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days

#101

Post by ericmcer »

Tyrek wrote: post #18
MEMORYC_RRUPTED wrote: post #7

This won't be valid for everyone, but I'm getting more and more convinced that most (a lot of?) people don't "work" work 40 hours anyway. I'm not even mentally capable of doing 40 intense hours of focussed work. Not saying I don't have other tasks besides coding/thinking in that time, but honestly not for the full slot of time. It just feels to me like some sort of secret we all share and pretend like it's fine, but…

If we "actually work" 32 hours out of 40 (80%), what is the likelihood that if we shift to a 32 hour max week, that the average person will only "actually work" ~26 hours (80% of 32) in this hypothetical future? What if at least part of the 20% is spent doing social activities, water cooler conversations, etc. that enable the remaining 80% to flow more efficiently?

I mean someone could gather this info, the average working hours in China are ~10 more than the US and some European countries average lower.

Given humans are highly adaptable I imagine we will adjust to the new normal and keep finding time to mess around at work.

Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days

#102

Post by gilbert_vanova »

MEMORYC_RRUPTED wrote: post #7

This won't be valid for everyone, but I'm getting more and more convinced that most (a lot of?) people don't "work" work 40 hours anyway. I'm not even mentally capable of doing 40 intense hours of focussed work. Not saying I don't have other tasks besides coding/thinking in that time, but honestly not for the full slot of time. It just feels to me like some sort of secret we all share and pretend like it's fine, but…

The more your work is in creative output, the more likely you are to be working 100% of the time you're on the clock. Cognition is complex and most of it happens under the covers. Once you wake up, you load up your brains with concerns and don't stop thinking about it just because you aren't in meetings or actively coding. Your conscious thoughts are only one layer in a dense system.

Arguably, you can't turn it off when you clock out either. It's why I argue for a retainer model on intellectual workers.

Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days

#103

Post by kwindla »

thebigspacefuck wrote: post #30

For me the real productivity benefit would be the 5th day when nobody is “working” but I log in and have an entire full day to focus without interruption.

We try to nudge towards making this possible by having a "soft rule" discouraging scheduling any standing or cross-team meetings on Fridays.

Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days

#104

Post by vsareto »

ITB wrote: post #39

A lot of people have a goal to minimize work and maximize income, and for those people, no matter what flexibility they are given, they will continue to minimize productive work. It’s sad in my opinion, and it leads to hedonic pursuits instead of the intrinsic satisfaction that comes from doing good work. But for too many people work is about man vs “the man”, instead of our individual quest to do something interesti…

It's hard for a stoic mindset to pave over the fact that you're only working a job because you have to. You'd see less of that if we have a society that gives a decent standard of living without having to work (ever), but even then, there will always be people looking to game any system for the thrill of it. That's the intrinsic satisfaction they get.

Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days

#105

Post by bumby »

cecilpl2 wrote: post #91
soperj wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 40-60 hours at school. This part doesn't make sense to me, can you please explain (I'm genuinely asking). My children are in elementary school, and the day is from 8:45-2:30. I can understand being there at 8am(i definitely have seen teachers showing up later than this though), and when I've driven by the school at 3pm nearly all the cars are gone from the teachers lot (if not all). I can understand that there's a…

My dad and ex-wife were both teachers. My dad was up at 6 and at school for 7am. Worked 7am-3pm (8 hours). He did marking for an hour or two most evenings, and a solid chunk on the weekends. Probably 50 hour weeks. And that's after 20 years of teaching the same classes, so he had all the materials. My ex-wife was brand new to teaching so had to develop curriculum on top of this. She worked 7am-5pm every day plus week…

Is there a consensus among teachers if year-around schooling will help or exacerbate this problem?

Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days

#106

Post by somenameforme »

newbYhrly wrote: post #56
ITB wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picasso offered a drawing in a napkin for $1M dollars, even though it took him 1 min to draw it. You know the gist. Bezos might do 20 hours a week of “work” because he scaffolded a giant organization around his brain, so he only needs to provide certain input. Besides, much of the non-work time, such as public speaking and so forth, is actually work. Also the ultimate test is whether after confessing to your real con…

He had 50 people invest tens of thousands each to build that scaffold. He’s not a genius just well networked. Idle idolatry of normal human beings with no effort to verify their real outputs creates an unfalsifiable truth Bezos is a lynchpin to reality. Ooo oo I heard it through the grapevine, Bezos is not what you might call “divine”… The rich did not invent science, engineering, and economic activity. Human behavio…

Bezos parents were teenagers of no significant means. After they divorced, his mother married an "uneducated" (in the sense he had not attended college) Cuban immigrant, Miguel Bezos, again of no significant means. After Miguel graduated from the elite University of New Mexico, they moved to Houston so he could work for Exxon. During high school Jeff took on an elite internship working the morning shift at McDonalds.

It's not entirely rags to rich because gramps indeed did well for himself and had a nice big ranch out in the middle of Nowhere, Texas. But it's pretty close to it, and overall a pretty cool story.

Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days

#107

Post by elvis10ten »

MEMORYC_RRUPTED wrote: post #7

This won't be valid for everyone, but I'm getting more and more convinced that most (a lot of?) people don't "work" work 40 hours anyway. I'm not even mentally capable of doing 40 intense hours of focussed work. Not saying I don't have other tasks besides coding/thinking in that time, but honestly not for the full slot of time. It just feels to me like some sort of secret we all share and pretend like it's fine, but…

I disagree based on personal (anecdotal) data.

When I get into a “flow” on a project I can work 12+ hour days. My productivity dwindles as the day gets old for sure, but I don’t think it ever gets to zero or close. I dream/think about the project and the first thing on my mind in the morning is the next step on the project.

Last time I was in flow, I single handedly built the next generation of a tool in 2 months. It’s currently taking the other team about 6 months to do the same but for another platform. The complexity is roughly the same and I think the engineers are as smart, if not smarter than me. I think the difference was that I did 12-16 hours for 2 month (including weekends).

This is not sustainable of course. I developed my back and wrist pain at the end of the 2 months. This is something I consciously stop myself from doing ever again because health is all you got at the end of the day.

Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days

#108

Post by cdkmoose »

mike503 wrote: post #40

Compensation should be based on output. If hours translates to more output (like an assembly line worker or something) - great. Simply pay hourly and require minimum amount of hours (like 40) with options for "go-getters" to work more if they want. Plenty of jobs (like a lot of tech) should be based on "if you're producing what we need from you (or more if you want) we're happy" regardless of the hours.

How would you measure output? How do you measure "what we need from you"? As a software engineer a fair percent of my time was spent in collaboration that sometimes manifested itself in someone else's "output". Not advocating that hours are the best measure, but there does need to be an accounting of my time being available for others and not focused on my "output"

Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days

#109

Post by jermaustin1 »

jghn wrote: post #41
MEMORYC_RRUPTED wrote: post #7

This won't be valid for everyone, but I'm getting more and more convinced that most (a lot of?) people don't "work" work 40 hours anyway. I'm not even mentally capable of doing 40 intense hours of focussed work. Not saying I don't have other tasks besides coding/thinking in that time, but honestly not for the full slot of time. It just feels to me like some sort of secret we all share and pretend like it's fine, but…

My most recent job is billable and time is tracked in tight increments. Because I now pay much more attention to when I am and am not 100% engaged, it's been eye opening how much 40 hours really is. I've found that I'm about 2/3 efficient. So if I designate 6 hours for "work", I'm really working (and thus billing) for about 4 hours.

I would bet those 2 hours you aren't billing for are still actual work. You are available, you are probably thinking about the company/the job/the work. That is all WORK, and should be billed.

I used to do a lot of walks (before I moved from Upstate NY to Houston) where I would escape the code and think about the product. That was all billed time, and understood by my clients. Just because my fingers are not furiously typing, doesn't mean I'm not actively engaged in my work.

Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days

#110

Post by bcassedy »

bumby wrote: post #105
cecilpl2 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad and ex-wife were both teachers. My dad was up at 6 and at school for 7am. Worked 7am-3pm (8 hours). He did marking for an hour or two most evenings, and a solid chunk on the weekends. Probably 50 hour weeks. And that's after 20 years of teaching the same classes, so he had all the materials. My ex-wife was brand new to teaching so had to develop curriculum on top of this. She worked 7am-5pm every day plus week…

Is there a consensus among teachers if year-around schooling will help or exacerbate this problem?

I haven't talked to any teachers about this specifically, but based on my impression of the school system and public philosophy around schools and teaching that I've gleaned from my wife and many friends who are teachers, I think it might help in the short term but be worse in the long term. The one thing that seems nearly constant is that expectations of teachers are always increasing. So I think eventually we'd end up back in a similar place except teachers would have to keep the pace year round rather than getting a couple months off in the summer.
Post reply on HN