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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

#151

Post by welshwelsh »

cdkmoose wrote: post #108
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"

You need to negotiate and agree upon output metrics as a team.

Story points can easily be translated to dollars. If an engineer and a product manager can agree that a story is worth 3 points, they can agree that it's worth, say, $1,500. Whether the work ends up taking 30 minutes or 30 days, neither party can complain because they both agreed on a price.

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

#152

Post by bumby »

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

Does this change if it’s not SWE work? The example in my anecdote is from R&D work that involves a lot of wrenching on hardware.

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

#153

Post by throwaway675309 »

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…

Why does it inherently lead to hedonistic pursuits, that's a bit of an oversimplification.

Minimizing work and maximizing income (aka minmaxing) is what you should do as the employee in the equation, just as the employer will try their best to set up a contract where and they maximize your work while minimizing your income, to do otherwise is just blind naïveté.

And for some of us less hours spent on the job means more hours we can spend on the cultivation of hobbies, physical health and overall improving ourselves. Working as a software engineer is but a small facet of who I am.

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

#154

Post by meisanother »

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…

I feel like this should be the norm.

Also, when we consider capacity to focus instead of just time spent at work, I think normal rate is 2 focus bouts of 1.5h each per day. You can get to 3 if you train, but not much more. (I got this from Hubberman's lab podcast, not sure what's the underlying research)

So if you decrease work time to 5h, you give 2x bouts of focus + 1h break between bouts and have 1h left for marginal stuff/meeting.

Maybe going up to 6h would allow for the extended stuff (email, meeting, discussion, lunch) But I feel like 8h just create a world where you need to waste time in the end, just because of physiological concerns.

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

#155

Post by nottorp »

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.

Except in tech you get metrics like lines of code instead then ;)

Although it would be nice to be paid by line of code. Except in python or any other language where line ends are significant.

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

#156

Post by urthor »

gilbert_vanova wrote: post #102
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 w…

Spot on.

Do you have any books you'd received recommend that have any additional tricks?

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