31–40 of 131 posts
For any form of tech product work I'd rather work together with 10 very engaged people rather than 20 half-assers. Don't see why I'd wanna hire a part-time worker unless they're truly special and even then only for a consulting role. Not saying 32h hours is half-assing but I'd be surprised if the avg candidate pool for <=32h was as productive per hour as the others.
> For the salary cost of 4 employees at 40 hours, you get 5 employees at 32 hours.
The real costs of paying 5 people 80% salary is much greater - benefits, many overhead costs, etc. do not get cut by 20%.
> You get the combined experience of 5 people instead of 4.
At most margins, having more human beings is NOT a clear win. Communication overhead, diffusion of responsibility, etc. create major diseconomies of scale in the sort of office work that this post was framed to be about.
It's borderline criminal that after decades of productivity increases due to automation and technology, people are still working 40-hour weeks or more, and their wages have been mostly stagnant[1,2,3]. Most of the benefits of this change is instead being reaped by already highly paid executives. Not only should people in most industries be working less, they should be paid more for it. Cutting my income by 20% for th…
It's borderline criminal that after decades of productivity increases due to automation and technology, people are still working 40-hour weeks or more, and their wages have been mostly stagnant[1,2,3]. Most of the benefits of this change is instead being reaped by already highly paid executives. Not only should people in most industries be working less, they should be paid more for it. Cutting my income by 20% for th…
I am totally fine with 40-hours a week. However, what I am not fine with is people like you speaking for everyone else. You can work less then 40 hours already, volutnarily. But you are not qualified to determine how long other people are supposed to work, or actually knowing how long they would want to work. This "we need to work less" attitude comes from people that dont like they work. That is sad. But it doesn't…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Interestingly, there have been some unintended downstream impact of this progressive law, such as lower women participation in senior level roles This isn't downstream impact. It's more of a choice. The women choose not to strive for senior level roles. They express this choice by choosing the 4 day work week. We shouldn't call it an unintended downstream impact because it's not something that should be corrected. I…
Interesting to see someone on HN of all places equate longer hours with "working harder" or being more qualified for senior roles. Speaking from personal experience with a cohort of Millenial dads: a lot of "women working less to prioritize family" comes down to women being expected to be caregivers and men typically not having experienced the same socialization from a young age and feeling overwhelmed, thus retreati…
It is not an expectation. It's been part of human behavior across all cultures since history. Men are the workers and women are the care givers and home makers. The behavior is seen so consistently across cultures that it's safe to say it's more then social conditioning. It's biological. Humans are flexible enough to behave outside of biological parameters but you are in utter denial if you deny the evidence that spans across ancient history and all cultures across the world.
But this is besides the point. The point is if I run a business, my objective is to succeed. My objective is not to hire some women who wants to do a 4 day work week to support a child. It may be beneficial to the mother to give her advantages but it is not beneficial to me as the person who spent my hard earned cash paying her.
>It's pretty telling when we chastise women for "not pulling their weight" at work when they're also typically expected to do most of the household chores, social labor (e.g. keeping track of birthdays, relationships and preferences throughout the family's social circles) and caregiving but don't call out deadbeat dads like Elon Musk who sire new children left and right while being completely incapable of maintaining a relationship with any of the mothers and abandoning any child that calls him out for his bullshit once they get old enough to form an opinion.
As a person who risked all my resources on a business how the hell does house hold chores apply to me? If the woman demands to have the same pay and rank as the hard working guy who works 5 days a week because she spent a lot of time caring for some kid that has nothing to do with my business, how is that fair to me?
It's asking for a handout. And sure if the government wants to force me to give a hand out to make society a better place than great. I support this. What I don't support is this lie that what was given out is anything but a hand out. It is extra help and it is not something that was earned with fair trade. The person who devotes the most effort and has the best results deserves the most reward.
>If you think that the time he spends on any one of his jobs on average accounts for more than the equivalent of a 4 day work week while also being this heavily distracted and spread thin, you're being ridiculous.
If you're asking me what I think is ridiculous I would say your response to me is ridiculous. Not being snarky here, your hypothetical implies ridiculousness and I respond with another hypothetical about your statement.
What does Elon have to do with anything? If Elon sired 50 children and abandoned them, that's evil and wrong, but that's completely orthogonal to my business. I pay someone for results and Elon delivers. What he does outside of that is a completely different thing.
In general Men spend more time and more effort at work so they tend to deliver better results and thus they get more senior positions. It's obvious if women choose a 4 day work week they're just not as into it as men and thus they get paid less and get less senior positions.
Not all women make the choice to take care of children. A good number of women choose to do what the men do and when you control for that the data shows that the gender pay gap largely disappears. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gende...
I support equal pay and standards for the women who deliver equal results as men. Are you saying you don't support this? You support unequal standards? You support handouts for women when they raise kids? It's a valid thing to support. But don't call it what it isn't. It is a gift and not something women are entitled to.
2/ People in a 40 hours contract usually work more than that. Employers can try to seek out employees that don’t mind working more than paid for.
3/ People who’d look for 80% jobs are (from employers perspective adversely) selected to be people that will monitor their hours worked and not give away their time for free.
It's borderline criminal that after decades of productivity increases due to automation and technology, people are still working 40-hour weeks or more, and their wages have been mostly stagnant[1,2,3]. Most of the benefits of this change is instead being reaped by already highly paid executives. Not only should people in most industries be working less, they should be paid more for it. Cutting my income by 20% for th…
I never deeply understood economics to be honest. But if we people wages start growing, won't it automatically mean that there are more money circling around which means inflation, which means we're back at square one?
Honestly everyone is just happier in Scandinavia. I feel most of the innovation comes from the US though, but this isn't a disadvantage for the Netherlands because technology developed in the US percolates to them as well. They get the benefits without the downsides. Heck I remember reading about how more people own Tesla's their then here.
just an example: you do not pay for education in europe, much less for childcare (in most countries), much less for health care and so on...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am totally fine with 40-hours a week. However, what I am not fine with is people like you speaking for everyone else. You can work less then 40 hours already, volutnarily. But you are not qualified to determine how long other people are supposed to work, or actually knowing how long they would want to work. This "we need to work less" attitude comes from people that dont like they work. That is sad. But it doesn't…
The issue isn't the number of hours, it's the stagnant wages despite increased productivity.