Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by welshwelsh » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 2:49 PM UTC

thenerdhead wrote: post #17

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…

You're probably not wrong. The data supports it. > In October, the average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was 34.5 hours for the fifth month in a row. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm

That doesn't mean they actually work for 34.5 hours, that's just how long they get paid for.

A UK company did a study which showed the average office worker, who is in the office 40 hours a week, is only productive for less than 3 hours a day.

https://www.vouchercloud.com/resources/office-worker-product...

I would guess the average workweek, only counting the time people are actually productive, is 10-15 hours a week. The rest of the time people waste procrastinating, posting on social media etc.

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

#142

Post by rolenthedeep » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 2:49 PM UTC

I work at a startup that has mostly unstructured time requirements. The attitude is "as long as you get your work done, work the hours you want in the office or at home"

When I get tired and unable to focus, I go home and rest. That might be 2:00 or 7:00. If I go home early, chances are that I'll end up doing more work in the evening.

I work as much as I want and am able to, which turns out to be an order of magnitude more work than when I was trapped in 10-12 hour shifts 6 days a week.

I find that I'm very rarely "killing time" at work. I'll pop open mastodon for a few minutes now and then, but I've never had to waste multiple hours waiting for my shift to end. If I'm done working, I just leave. If I have a doctor's appointment, I just throw a note in the group chat.

At this point, I don't think I could ever go back to a traditional workplace. You'd have to be some kind of idiot to pay people per hour to waste time on their phone just to tick off the requirement of being in a chair for 8 hours in a row. This is just clearly the wrong model for many industries.

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

#143

Post by sam0x17 » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 2:53 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #138

sam0x17 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine the flipside though. Imagine you work every day of the week. Surely this would have lower productivity than having one day or two days of weekend unless we are to believe weekends don't have a rejuvinating effect. If you have a problem where a segment of your workforce is slacking off on the last day (whatever that may be), that is its own problem that will exist unless you have no days off (which would obvio…

> Surely this would have lower productivity than having one day or two days of weekend unless we are to believe weekends don't have a rejuvinating effect. This seems to land in the area of untested hypothesis. Sure, we can speculate on all kinds of mechanisms. I could speculate that by going to 3 day weekends would lead to a bigger "rejuvination effect" and more productivity. But the data gathered from my org showed…

> I also think "productivity" is the wrong way to frame the problem. Some things, like work-life balance, are a net good and worth a hit on productivity. The economy should serve society and not the other way around.

I mostly agree with what you're saying, especially about going across industries, but I do believe it is quite easy to lower productivity, regardless of the industry, by dramatically imbalancing work-life balance. Put another way, having good work-life balance is a net good, partially _because_ people with good work-life balance are more productive than people who are burned out.

Your medical doctor isn't going to be very good at diagnosing patients when he's in his 140th working hour of the week, if he were to attempt such a thing (with ~3 hours of sleep per night and no time off other than that)

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

#144

Post by banannaise » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 3:17 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #116

sam0x17 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Given that 32 hours is still far too long for someone to be doing active mental work in a week, what you're likely seeing is not the same number of slack hours, but the remaining slack hours being shifted around

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

#145

Post by banannaise » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 3:34 PM UTC

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…

I've also done this before. After I was done, I couldn't focus properly for several weeks. Turns out I was largely just pushing back rest that I desperately needed, and I had to pay that back in the end.

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

#146

Post by banannaise » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 3:41 PM UTC

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…

The farther people are from the front lines, the more they seem to prefer the stick to the carrot. Government officials, upper management, etc. are typically far more worried about enforcement than encouragement.

Shorter workweeks are an encouragement tool. Longer ones are an enforcement tool.

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

#147

Post by banannaise » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

yrgulation wrote: post #81

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.

I am always fascinated by people who want to earn less, pay more in tax, have less rights, etc. Curious, why would want to be paid by the hour instead of getting the same pay for less hours as this experiment would want to do? Technically thats a pay raise and better for your quality of life.

It's the cult of the entrepreneur, with a splash of anarcho-capitalism. Worker exploitation is impossible because employment is a mutual agreement, and individuals should be empowered to agree to work in arbitrarily bad conditions for arbitrarily long hours, because that preserves the meritocracy for those who work the hardest for the longest.

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

#148

Post by SergeAx » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

As an SWE I know that my brain works on problems 24/7, and not only 9 to 5 Mon-Fri. Lots of times when I stuck with some debugging or corner case or architecture problem - I just put it away and next morning the answer is just there in my head, ready to be typed down.

As an engineering manager I can regulary see the same in my reports. Moreover, best ones are doing it on the vacation: coming back they just start typing and don't stop for 2-3 days. Normally typing/thinking cycle is at most 50/50, usually 40/60.

There's one exclusion. All said things are not working if an engineer is working for two employers. When COVID mandatory WFH started, I initially thought that some of my direct or indirect reports just can't adapt to it, but it always turned out to be a second job or a personal project.

I am 100% sure that 4 day workweek will lead to a lot of people in IT taking second jobs/side gigs, and it will severely impact their performance.

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

#149

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

banannaise wrote: post #144

bumby wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Given that 32 hours is still far too long for someone to be doing active mental work in a week, what you're likely seeing is not the same number of slack hours, but the remaining slack hours being shifted around

[deleted]

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

#150

Post by bumby » Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 4:55 PM UTC

sam0x17 wrote: post #143

bumby wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely this would have lower productivity than having one day or two days of weekend unless we are to believe weekends don't have a rejuvinating effect. This seems to land in the area of untested hypothesis. Sure, we can speculate on all kinds of mechanisms. I could speculate that by going to 3 day weekends would lead to a bigger "rejuvination effect" and more productivity. But the data gathered from my org showed…

> I also think "productivity" is the wrong way to frame the problem. Some things, like work-life balance, are a net good and worth a hit on productivity. The economy should serve society and not the other way around. I mostly agree with what you're saying, especially about going across industries, but I do believe it is quite easy to lower productivity, regardless of the industry, by dramatically imbalancing work-lif…

>having good work-life balance is a net good, partially _because_ people with good work-life balance are more productive

This is actually what I'm pushing against. I don't like productivity being a primary principle. I'm saying it's worthwhile irrespective of the impact on productivity. (the use of 'net good' was a bad choice on my part because it implies a balancing act).

It's quite common for healthcare workers (particularly surgeons) to work extremely long hours, but that's being re-thought in some areas (esp. in regards to residents). To your point, though, I think a lot of the rethinking is driven by trying to reduce medical errors. It's more related to quality than productivity, but I don't think they can be easily parsed.