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Why aren't there more 80% jobs?

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Re: Why aren't there more 80% jobs?

#41

Post by chrisco255 »

verinus wrote: post #38
corethree wrote: post #8

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.

which also has to do with distribution of wealth, where the US are especially bad at. 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...

Europeans also don't pay for their own national defense, what a bargain.

Re: Why aren't there more 80% jobs?

#42

Post by Pyrobyte »

corethree wrote: post #35
hnbad wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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 retreating into work to both avoid care work and be able to justify it by being "the provider". It is not an expectation. It's been part o…

I completely agree, so often people claim about this pay gap between men and women, we see that there are complaints about football pay and stuff but really women models get paid more then men models, quite frankly that just makes sense, there are differences between us and simply some jobs are just better done by men and others by women, this is isn't inequal it's just the way it is. Ignore my name by the way

Re: Why aren't there more 80% jobs?

#43

Post by vasco »

oldpersonintx wrote: post #26
rkachowski wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would require well defined tickets + work items with scope that is realistic, and an entire system behind the creation of these items which entails product + process understanding (not to mention designing tickets in a way which is minimally exploitable). If this could happen we would advance the state of project management into the sci-fi era.

The number of devs is well on its way to exceeding available work, so none of what you stipulate is necessary Employers can simply say : "this ticket is three hours of work and that is all that we will pay", and your choice will be take it or leave it We are well on our way to most tech jobs becoming "McJobs", this is one more step...HN really has its collective head buried in the sand in this regard imho I already s…

> The number of devs is well on its way to exceeding available work

Is this something you've read or that you made up?

Re: Why aren't there more 80% jobs?

#44

Post by nonethewiser »

I can see why companies don’t want this. I don’t blame them.

It would be great to scale down work as needed. Instead of just completely retiring at some point. Especially given how high tech salaries are, it would be awesome to just start working half time at 40 or whatever.

However, I personally find it very hard to limit my work hours that much. I feel like I would still end up working close to full time but just not get paid for it.

Re: Why aren't there more 80% jobs?

#45

Post by jrumbut »

oldpersonintx wrote: post #26
rkachowski wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would require well defined tickets + work items with scope that is realistic, and an entire system behind the creation of these items which entails product + process understanding (not to mention designing tickets in a way which is minimally exploitable). If this could happen we would advance the state of project management into the sci-fi era.

The number of devs is well on its way to exceeding available work, so none of what you stipulate is necessary Employers can simply say : "this ticket is three hours of work and that is all that we will pay", and your choice will be take it or leave it We are well on our way to most tech jobs becoming "McJobs", this is one more step...HN really has its collective head buried in the sand in this regard imho I already s…

This is a scary scenario and certainly possible, but on the other hand you can find people saying this was about to happen in the 90s and it really didn't. Some jobs can be done the way you describe, some can't and it's hard to know which kind you have without wasting money. If your business is profitable and relies on software, you are much better off having a programmer on staff.

It keeps turning out that there is more to programming than meets the eye, that we are very important to the success of the business, and that we need to be closely connected to the business to be able to deliver great solutions.

It's important to think about these dark possibilities and resist them, but it's also important to realize these scenarios have a history of failing to materialize.

Re: Why aren't there more 80% jobs?

#46

Post by quickthrower2 »

chrisco255 wrote: post #41
verinus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which also has to do with distribution of wealth, where the US are especially bad at. 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...

Europeans also don't pay for their own national defense, what a bargain.

Elaborate

Re: Why aren't there more 80% jobs?

#48

Post by Freak_NL »

caturopath wrote: post #32

Many good points, but I think there are some major errors. > 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…

The communication overhead seems more than balanced by the extra redundancy you have when people do become unavailable (which they inevitably do) and people not burning out in quite as high a rate.

But hey, I'm a Dutchman working 80%, so I'm sure I'm biased.

Re: Why aren't there more 80% jobs?

#49

Post by nonethewiser »

hunglee2 wrote: post #2

I believe the Netherlands stipulates the requirement to offer every job as either part or full time, and a substantial number of job applicants go for the part time option, especially women. Interestingly, there have been some unintended downstream impact of this progressive law, such as lower women participation in senior level roles.

> Interestingly, there have been some unintended downstream impact of this progressive law, such as lower women participation in senior level roles.

The word “unintended,” while probably accurate, is bothersome. The intention should be to maximize individual choice. Are we supposed to force women into senior positions to please our sensibilities?

Re: Why aren't there more 80% jobs?

#50

Post by buro9 »

1. there is a base load of meetings, admin, interviewing, chore, etc that is not reduced when total hours are reduced, and so what gets reduced is the high value work. you can't hire people to do this stuff as they can't make decisions for you, or interview for you, etc... this base load is part of your job

2. there is a base load of cost from each employee in the form of legal, pension/tax accounting, payroll, HR team, desk, office, equipment. whilst you could argue 4 people doing 40h weeks is equiv to 5 people doing 32h weeks you're also increasing the base cost by 20% across the company

3. hiring people is hard, now we've just made it that we have to hire 20% more people for the same effort, increasing the admin base load further too. (although the counter argument to this is that you're better positioned against low performers who have less impact, but then, maybe you end up carrying low performers longer as now they're less visible)

4. on-call... you probably can't reasonably construct an on-call schedule that works for all by mixing 40h and 32h people on the same team... so now you're starting to have the decision forced on the 40h people too, who now only earn 80% of what they earned and their circumstances may mean they do not want to.

5. RSUs / stock, you probably can't reduce the what someone already has, can't take it to 80% of what was in the contract, you probably only get to do this to new people joining (but see #4, you'd have to do the whole team at once and hire based on this, and probably can't mix it with the 40h people)

6. if you have offices, this forces you into a hybrid working situation as you can't seat everyone... you cannot even bring everyone in on any given day... unless you massively increase your office cost, or go fully remote (I'm in favour of full remote and it's what we do at where I work, but I know the World apparently does not agree)

there's lots of reasons, but the biggest may simply be: change is hard, better to start with this... but starting with this is also hard as the chances of you succeeding with few heads and less effort (time) is against you.

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