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World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

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Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#341

Post by DiggyJohnson »

wonderwonder wrote: post #173
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is pushing for people to work extended hours? Assuming you’re talking about the tech industry and US market. I find this sentiment to be pretty rare.

If you just factor in an hour commute each way that many people have that's already 10 hours. In most professional jobs its not great to be the guy in the door at 9 and out at 5 on the dot if you want a promotion. So that 8 hours turns to 9 and add in the commute you are at 10 or 11 hours of work.

I'm sorry to be so disagreeable, I understand your point including commute times into "hours of work", but I don't think that's what was being referred to here. (I also think there's a pervasive tendency to overstate commute times - 1 hour is an extremely long commute, a quick Google search shows the US average is ~27 minutes, which is still long, but...):

> In most professional jobs its not great to be the guy in the door at 9 and out at 5 on the dot if you want a promotion.

In my time in tech roles on the East Coast, I haven't encountered this sentiment. Maybe if there was extreme inflexibility in one's schedule, I could see it frustrating some people, but for the most part I've only ever seen (1) people getting promoted for their work and the impression of their work or (2) active ladder climbing, which can be done within the confines of an 8 hour day. The most common reason I see people work above and beyond their hours is a primarily-self-generated sense of compulsion that's mostly disconnected from the expectations of their supervisors or peers.

Maybe I'm lucky.

Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#342

Post by W4nn4B_h4x0r »

A few years ago this would have been interesting, even exciting news, but considering that we are legitimately getting close to having AI do our jobs - a 24x7, hyper-efficient worker - this seems to be concerning news. While better worker rights and shorter working hours are of course things we should strive for, I feel that as automation takes over, most management would prefer to take on a worker that, while initially possibly very limited in scope and error-prone, can learn quickly and soon perform the tasks the human was doing more efficiently, for a much lower cost, and with close to zero breaks. Of course, this scenario may be 5-10 years away, but it's round the corner and therefore scary for human Workers.

Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#343

Post by ticviking »

vidarh wrote: post #212
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We should continue to demand the value that efficiency has brought us go where it rightfully sits, with labor. Labor lost most power with the rise in globalization. It was much easier to strike and affect businesses when they had a limited hiring pool restricted to one country. Now they can just move to another country where labor is less demanding.

While that is true to a limited extent, labour is doing much better in plenty of countries where people have demanded - and gotten - far more than in the US also post-globalisation. Labour has lost power mainly in those countries where people bought into the employers narrative and stopped or scaled back the fighting. Much of it correlates with media ownership support or hostility - e.g. in Norway the second largest…

My question is why didn’t US labor try things like that?

It seems to me that in the early radio era this was possible.

Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#344

Post by int_19h »

renewiltord wrote: post #236
np- wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be pedantic, the US has never been a democracy, it has always been a republic and it was built in to give land equal or more power than individuals. Though I don’t deny that it seems to be either in or approaching a failure mode (though perhaps the observant may notice it never worked as it was advertised even from Day 1, there was never really a success mode).

What exactly is pedantic about that? The US is a constitutional democracy and a republic. Just like India. Unlike the UK that's a constitutional democracy and a monarchy. It's like saying something is "technically not a car, it's electric".

The proper word here would be "archaic" - it's a correct claim per se, but they're using a definition of "democracy" that was the prevailing one at the time the US constitution was written.

Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#345

Post by zdragnar »

vidarh wrote: post #338
zdragnar wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, the daily standup is the reason why your board isn't up to date. People don't bother being strict about it because every single day they can just mention that they need to update it yet and it's okay because that's why we have standup- so only the select people who attend get the real status of things.

On if you treat it as ok for the board not to be up to date on the call.

That just goes back to my original point. If the tickets are up to date on the call, there's no reason to have a daily standup. If someone isn't keeping their tickets up to date, you don't need to hold an entire team hostage in a meeting just to remind them.

Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#346

Post by genman »

bavila wrote: post #118
vouaobrasil wrote: post #13

When was a mathematician, I worked as hard as I could until I was mentally exhausted. I actually calculated how much I worked per week over a period of two years. On actual "hard thinking", like working through logic, I spent about 7 hours. There was another 7 hours writing and clarifying topics, and another 6 hours or so on classes, seminars (sort of like meetings, but productive). That gives a total of 20 hours per…

> My conclusions after observing a ton of people in technical and nontechnical jobs is that beyond working 20-25 hours a week, having people do more is useless... I'm not so sure about this. I was working in a remote "full-stack" (but really 90% front-end role) for 14 months from the start of January 2021 to the end of February 2022. I tracked my hours religiously the entire time I was employed there (not required, b…

> I would also stop tracking my time for any break I took - no exceptions

Depending on how granular your tracking was, that may be the trick. It is possible that you did not count in the time needed to recover and transition time. Let say that a task took 1.5h to complete, but you didn't count in 15 minutes you needed in between to relax and gather thought or perhaps you didn't count in another 15 minutes that you needed between two separate tasks. Can you elaborate this?

Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#347

Post by somsak2 »

lmm wrote: post #214
mysterydip wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only I was paid for all those "on call" hours when I was a sysadmin :)

What kind of fucked up country lets you be on call without getting paid for it?

The kind that leads the world in software development and also happens to have the highest ceiling for take-home pay.

Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#348

Post by vidarh »

ticviking wrote: post #343
vidarh wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that is true to a limited extent, labour is doing much better in plenty of countries where people have demanded - and gotten - far more than in the US also post-globalisation. Labour has lost power mainly in those countries where people bought into the employers narrative and stopped or scaled back the fighting. Much of it correlates with media ownership support or hostility - e.g. in Norway the second largest…

My question is why didn’t US labor try things like that? It seems to me that in the early radio era this was possible.

Good question, and I don't know. There certainly were newspapers etc. aligned with organized labour in the US too, but I don't think anything as organized.

Many other places as well now have relatively weak unions forced to deal with a largely hostile press (UK being one) andd could have benefited from something similar.

Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#349

Post by Apocryphon »

somsak2 wrote: post #347
lmm wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of fucked up country lets you be on call without getting paid for it?

The kind that leads the world in software development and also happens to have the highest ceiling for take-home pay.

Which makes not being paid overtime for being on call even more appalling.

Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#350

Post by Apocryphon »

lettergram wrote: post #194
piva00 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a clear example of one of Paulo Freire's best insights: "When education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor." Go on with your career ladder game, not everyone in humanity praise that as much as you. On the contrary, lots will see you as either naive or moronic. Your 6x10 work schedule is being spent on creating... A chatbot.

> Go on with your career ladder game, not everyone in humanity praise that as much as you. On the contrary, lots will see you as either naive or moronic. We can critique how I choose to spend my time, but what about the alternatives? Play video games with strangers? Drink and dance? Play board games with friends? Go to church / mosque every day? Walk down paths to see pretty streams? Smoke pot and watch cartoons? Str…

> That’s 4-7hrs every morning and a couple hours every evening. I see my kids more than most.

Besides the sibling comment pointing out that your original 6 x 10 framing is a misrepresentation, one could easily suppose that people who are working a normal 40/hrs a week is getting to spend more quality time with their children than those who are working 50/hrs a week, never mind 60/hrs a week. That is simple arithmetic.

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