Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why aren't there more 80% jobs?

evertpot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 131 posts

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

#91

Post by WD40forRust »

lynx23 wrote: post #24
imiric wrote: post #10

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…

We need to decouple income from hours worked, lest workers with your position force everyone else to work as long as you or else lose purchasing power.

Should probably invert all the multiples on overtime and make it (legally) strictly optional as well: 1.5x -> 66.67% pay, 2x -> 50% pay.

Get out of work sooner, take some days off! Quantum-damn!

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

#92

Post by rkachowski »

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…

And the feature won't ever get completed to any satisfactory standard beyond the bare minimum.

Anything that requires more than three hours of effort or actual understanding of the product domain will remain the purview of smaller, more flexible entities, and the big creaky exploitative ticket machine will have it's lunch eaten by others that are more effective at execution.

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

#93

Post by WJW »

bux93 wrote: post #68
WJW wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explanatory page at https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/arbeidsovereenkomst... (Dutch only AFAICT, sorry) Employers are almost required to approve a request to work less hours than full time. The reasons why it would not be allowed are fairly minimal. The only reasons allowed are: - Nobody else can take over the work (ie very specialized knowledge) - Insurmountable problems with work shift planning (simply havin…

It's a stipulated requirement in most cases but enforcement of rules for employers is massively underfunded, so companies that don't have to deal with a union aren't bothered that much by regulations. Government workers are well organized and don't notice that the rules they thought up (and are responsible for having enforced) actually are ignored by most non-government employers. In fact, government is usually calli…

It is only anecdotal evidence of course but I went for 24 hours a week back in 2019 and my employer (a ~unicorn scale-up in the Amsterdam region) was not fussed about it at all.

I'm a software dev and was one of the two employees with in-depth knowledge about a crucial part of the stack, so I had more leverage than most, but still the response was so much "yeah of course, we have to allow this by law" that I would be surprised if any of my colleagues would have had a different response.

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

#94

Post by prepend »

vasco wrote: post #43
oldpersonintx wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Seems like BLS is projecting programmer jobs to decrease by 11% by 2032 [0]. This isn’t perfect, but seems like a pretty reputable source for employment trends.

Of course it also says median salary is $100k and I haven’t been able to hire a programmer at $100k in 20 years. So I think there’s a lot of variability.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

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

#95

Post by prepend »

crvdgc wrote: post #80

I like how people give many reasons about why 32 hour work weeks is a bad idea, but are somehow settled on the magical 40 hour agreement. Even if all of those are valid, the very same reasons can be applied to an argument for 48 hour work weeks or 60 hours like in many Chinese tech companies.

For me, it’s not that 40 hours is a precise number so much as it’s the norm. So if the country settled on 41 or 39, it’s the same issue.

It’s not the number of hours but variance from the norm that makes it difficult to recruit and retain people.

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

#96

Post by luka-birsa »

As a company that moved to 4-day work week for our development team I can share the following results:

- Output per person per day increased compared to 5-day work week (throughput increased based on surveys, performance metrics and personal experience of leads)

- Happiness increased

- Fifth day remains as a reserve for extreme situations (eg. some unexpected thing occuring that requires additional capacity in the system)

It is true that we're a dirty communist EU country, but so far this works for us.

Btw: the fear of working less hours and doing more is real. Even internally some teams/employees do not want to move to 4-day work week saying it's not for them or that they can't cope with the time limit. And then they move and everything works out better...

So implementing 32-hrs work for 80% of pay feels like a steal even with the overhead. You're probably getting better rested developers that output 100% of 40-hrs workweek.

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

#97

Post by oblio »

jrumbut wrote: post #45
oldpersonintx wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

He has a point, though.

The worldwide supply of programmers has increased 10 - 100 - 1000x since the 1990s. The world has changed.

Quantity has a quality all its own.

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

#98

Post by twobitshifter »

corethree wrote: post #82
twobitshifter wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually do support handouts for women or men raising kids. This social labor goes unpaid but it’s extremely valuable for society. Instead we are following the economic arrow pointing us towards an arrangement where childcare is farmed out to chaotic day cares.

>This social labor goes unpaid but it’s extremely valuable for society It's valuable to you as a person who has kids. You will note the majority of people in the US will not have kids. Why should I pay for your kid? You have to put yourself in the shoes of the person who doesn't have kids. Or the business owner who actually has to hand out the money. I support the payment because I have kids, but at the same time I'm…

I don’t have kids. It’s valuable for the greater good of society not just a child. You have to live with the eventual adults that develop under a system that supports caregivers or one that does not. If we don’t look beyond the first effect we can miss that.

To further the point, the decision whether to have a kid can be influenced by how that affects someone’s own finances. These programs put a finger on the scale to encourage having children, something that financially to the individual doesn’t make sense with modern jobs. Many countries have negative pop growth today and that *will* be a national financial problem

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

#99

Post by goqu »

I've recently finished a handpicked list of 4 day workweek companies (4x8hrs), and off the top of my head, only 2 out of nearly 100 offer the option to choose between a full time 5x8hrs and a 4x8 with a 20% salary reduction. All the other companies listed only offer the 4 day week option + full pay - the 4x8 with the reduction in pay were an exception on the list.

To my knowledge, the groups that lead the 4 day workweek campaigns on the international stage advocate for a 4 day workweek without a loss of pay, this could be one of the reasons why we don't see companies offering 4 day weeks with a pay reduction.

For anyone interested: https://okjob.io/companies/

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

#100

Post by naiwenwt »

prepend wrote: post #94
vasco wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The number of devs is well on its way to exceeding available work Is this something you've read or that you made up?

Seems like BLS is projecting programmer jobs to decrease by 11% by 2032 [0]. This isn’t perfect, but seems like a pretty reputable source for employment trends. Of course it also says median salary is $100k and I haven’t been able to hire a programmer at $100k in 20 years. So I think there’s a lot of variability. [0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

BLS also projects "Software Developer" jobs to increase by 25% by 2032 [0]. Without more detail on how these roles are categorized, hard to say if this is a valuable source of data.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

Post reply on HN