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Bring back the 40-hour work week

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Re: Bring back the 40-hour work week

#61

Post by tobiasu »

jdietrich wrote: post #36

I keep reading these sort of articles and wondering why the American people seem so opposed to basic employment law. Here in Socialist Yurop, the Working Time Directive means that no employer can compel an employee to work for longer than 48 hours per week. All workers are entitled to a legal minimum of 5.6 weeks of paid holiday. You all seem to agree that you work too long and don't get enough holiday. I've never on…

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

-- John Steinbeck (disputed according to wikiquote)

Re: Bring back the 40-hour work week

#63

Post by einhverfr »

steve-howard wrote: post #56
einhverfr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A larger question would be whether integrative living (i.e. working from home, spending your coffee breaks with your kids) impacts the optimal level of work. I would bet that knowledge workers burn out FASTER from being overworked than manual laborers. Knowledge work, particularly the inductive side, relies on downtime in order to stay productive.

Overtime and burnout were covered in Peopleware back in 1987. Looks like we're doomed to relearn our lessons again and again...

But my experience is that I burn out a lot slower if I am working at home and taking my breaks with my family. So that is a different circumstance not covered in such work.

Re: Bring back the 40-hour work week

#64

Post by bmuon »

stusmith1977 wrote: post #17

...but I'm quite happy with my 35-hour week, thankyou. There's a lot that's wrong with the UK, but being forced to work for free thankfully isn't one of them. I just can't imagine where people get the time for a 50-60 hour week. Once I've been to work, played with my son, fed, bathed, and put him to bed, and cooked, there isn't much time left in the day, surely?

Exactly. Where I live (Argentina) we have a 40 hour week that usually turns at least into 45 hours because most people work from 9 to 18 with an hour for lunch in the middle.

Working part-time after a long time of full time work my eyes opened to the possibility of the 36-hour week. I usually discuss with a lot of people how they feel about their work schedule and what they think about working 6 hours in 6 days instead of 9 in 5, and surprisingly most defend the 40-hour week because they prefer two days of rest. In my experience, they're overrated. The possibility of dedicating time to yourself, your projects, your family, throughout the week is priceless.

Re: Bring back the 40-hour work week

#66

Post by carboncrank »

swampthing wrote: post #2

The 'knowledge worker' section would be a lot more convincing if it provided citations.

Totally agree and I'd go further. I struggled to get past the tendentiousness of the sentence:

"Yes, this flies in the face of everything modern management thinks it knows about work."

Which is obviously just BS on stilts (not to mention an insult to myriad researchers).

Re: Bring back the 40-hour work week

#67

Post by Bullislander05 »

kamaal wrote: post #24
DanBC wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a programmer who works for 13 hours a day. That programmer does three days in a row of 13 hours. That's 39 hours, not including any travel etc. Give / force them some time off before they can start another block of 40 hour work. "Flow" is mentioned so often, but I'd really like to see some good quality research to back it up. For sure people feel like they're in a zone, but how much of the code produced in t…

A bigger problem is making people think that 60 hour weeks is normal, or honourable, and that a 40 hour week is lazy or disloyal or unproductive or harmful to the company. That's not true, and it's possibly leading to early death of some people. It's certainly making some people miserable. I like working a lot, making great stuff. Some people don't. But that's not my problem. Asking me not to work, just because some…

"Choice to choose a worklife style is upto to the individual. Stopping Individual from achieving their goals is in direct contradiction to freedom to pursuit of happiness."

Some might have goals similar to you. Others might aspire to work a 40-a-week job, be there for their spouse and children and not feel burnt out every day. Yes, there are people like you who might enjoy working crazy hours and being super productive. However, the person who is truly most productive in a 40-a-week job should also be able to achieve their goals without this cultural stigma around working a normal amount of time.

Re: Bring back the 40-hour work week

#69

Post by rimantas »

Shivetya wrote: post #38

I believe hours worked is only relevant to the type of work being done. Yet I think it is overall unrealistic to expect a forty hour week. Having been raised on a farm I know that forty hour weeks are a vacation to some, even now self employed people would scoff at forty hours. We have great examples of what happened to many of these prized union jobs that limited work to forty hours on top of rules that prevented pe…

  > Those of us who sit back and claim enlightenment by
  > denouncing such hours are only going to end up being
  > passed by.
There is huge huge huge difference between working smarter and just sitting back.

Re: Bring back the 40-hour work week

#70

Post by SkyMarshal »

lrobb wrote: post #53

In the renowned 1993 study of young violinists, performance researcher Anders Ericsson found that the best ones all practiced the same way: in the morning, in three increments of no more than 90 minutes each, with a break between each one. Ericcson found the same pattern among other musicians, athletes, chess players and writers. For Real Productivity, Less is Truly More: http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2010/05/for-rea…

> Mythical Man Month is nearing on 40 years old, and apparently the current crop of tech leaders haven't bothered to read it.

+100. That and Peopleware.

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