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

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

#111

Post by marcosdumay »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #47
philmcp wrote: post #19

Over 200 companies have now made the switch to a 32hr work week: https://4dayweek.io/companies The benefits for the employee are pretty obvious, but there are also many benefits for the company: - Staff are more productive (for previous pilots: output almost always hits 100%) - Job listings get (way) more applications - Staff are happier - Staff are healthier i.e. off sick less - It's better for the environment - Sta…

This is one of those situations where it's a clear documented (via study and real world experiment) benefit to both workers and employers, so you wonder why it's taking so long to spread. One problem is I genuinely believe it has to be mandated. Every company has people who will take any action purely to make themselves look attractive for the next promotion cycle. And if even just one person is actually putting in 5…

> This is one of those situations where it's a clear documented (via study and real world experiment) benefit to both workers and employers, so you wonder why it's taking so long to spread.

Since open floorplans became universal a while ago, and are only getting partially replaced by work from home because the rent is cheaper, what I wonder is if that is the rule, instead of the exception.

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

#112

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

If you keep people stressed, they become useless. Stressed people get no intrinsic satisfaction from working, or almost anything really.

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

#113

Post by jghn »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #109
jghn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 furiousl…

Sometimes. And in past jobs that's how I justified myself, sure I'm not hands on keyboard all the time but I'm "on" 95+% of my awake time.

This company's policy is the clock is only running if you're 100% engaged. I try to stick with that. As time has gone on I've gotten better about mentally turning the switch more all the way on/all the way off. There's some grey area on both sides that I figure comes out in the wash. And if I have a serendipitous moment, it's not hard to turn the clock back on and have at it.

It'd also look more different if the billing increment was wider. In a very past life I billed at 15 minute intervals. So if I was "on" for 12 minutes but stepped away to clear my head, the full 15 was billed.

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

#114

Post by suralind »

elvis10ten wrote: post #107
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…

Very realistic, I one had a different idea of how we would build a retool-like tool for a company I worked at. I spent 4 days to reimplement our app from scratch, I didn't include even 10% of what we had, but the framework was much more powerful.

I typically code for like 3-4 hours a day, maybe 6-7 when I'm super into what I'm doing. BUT, I very frequently think about my work when I'm not working.

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

#115

Post by newbYhrly »

somenameforme wrote: post #106
newbYhrly wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

You stopped short of detailing the well documented part of 50 people chipping in 25k.

That alone is a testament to how the country has changed. How many McDonalds burger flippers have that social network now?

His childhood and his family greatly benefited from pre-Reagan social programs.

How sad if the mega-mega-billionaires were mega-mega-millionaires. The rich of their childhood got through high taxes ok.

If such taxation is immoral, let’s discuss then the advantages immoral taxation in the past provided them and accept them as less uniquely gifted and successful on their own then.

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

#116

Post by bumby »

sam0x17 wrote: post #45
Tyrek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because burn-out is the main driving factor behind the productivity changes, not the hypotheticals you are talking about. In engineering, people are burned out by friday, and even outside of engineering, people tend to phone it in by that point in the week because they are just done. They are operating at less than 50% mental or physical capacity. If you instead just give them that time to recharge, they'll get that…

My anecdotal experience doesn't support this. I worked in an org that shifted to a 9/80 schedule with a three day weekend every other week. Prior to this, Fridays always seemed to be the days where people coasted...they would come in kinda late, have a coffee break, then have a breakfast break, then an extended bathroom break, maybe get an hour of stuff done before an extended lunch. And of course, Friday afternoon meetings were frowned upon. After the change, this same behavior shifted to Thursdays, which used to be normally productive day.

Maybe they were burned out from the extra hour of the previous days, but considering the Thursdays of the remaining 5 day weeks didn't display this behavior, I doubt it. Now there was the complication that once management saw a dip in productivity, there was a near mutiny at the mere suggestion of going back to a normal workweek.

The implication is no matter how long/short the work week is, people will adjust to make the end a slack day.

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

#117

Post by bumby »

dustedcodes wrote: post #28
Tyrek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Reduce the hours in the day. Most people structure their days based on what they want to accomplish (goal driven), rather than how to spread out work evenly across a fixed number of hours (time driven). So if someone knows that they are expected to deliver task A + B in one day then they will do it. If they have a 4 hour work day they'll do it in 4 hours and then happily clock off. If they have to do it in an 8 hour…

How does this align with the near-ubiquitous feelings that people generally feel overwhelmed? I.e., they have more goals then they have time

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

#118

Post by bumby »

ericmcer wrote: post #101
Tyrek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...

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

#119

Post by bobthepanda »

bobthepanda wrote: post #92
toyg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably because IT busywork replaces manual busywork. Before: you take a stack of papers, and go through each one with a red pen. Now: you log on a system, wait, click on something, wait, click on something else, wait... the stupid tests are auto-graded, but chances are there is still something you have to grade student-by-student, and that's now slower to do. Plus, obviously, the usual annoyances (got to upd…

Also, the UX is usually awful. I remember having to use educational software in college for a discussion board and it was terrible and sucky. I could only imagine what the teacher end of it looked like. —- For a comedic look at how this affects teaching, the new comedy show Abbott Elentary has an episode on this. It’s like Parks and Rec but at an inner city Philadelphia public school.

Ugh, should say Elementary.

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

#120

Post by kingofheroes »

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 tried this several times, specifically banning meetings on Friday, and it never sticks. Some manager or executive always winds up ignoring the rule and setting a meeting anyway, which throws the whole thing out.
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