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Why aren't there more 80% jobs?

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

#101

Post by kuchenbecker »

corethree wrote: post #88
HelloNurse wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Further improvement would involve a more balanced workplace culture than promoting only "dedicated" workaholics (and expecting those workaholics to be men).

No it makes sense to promote dedicated workaholics to the highest echelons. They have maximal impact to business. If those workaholics are women then those women very much need to be promoted as well. The data actually shows this is already happening. It shows that when you control for the choices women make about child care... the gender pay gap is largely negligible. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-…

> Female Statistics Professor

Claudia Goldin, the economic "Nobel" Laurette this year. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_Goldin

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

#102

Post by kuchenbecker »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #18
oldpersonintx wrote: post #7

The endgame for something like this is purely-dynamic percentages....i.e hourly pay. IMHO this is where many rank-and-file dev jobs are headed...you will be paid by the hour to close tickets, and when there are no tickets, there is no work, and no pay. Employers will sell this as a "benefit" like "unlimited PTO"...but it's really not Be careful about pursuing that four day work week...

The difference between working 32 hours a week and 40 is far, far less than the difference between working a fixed number of hours and a variable number that your employer dictates. What's more, the article supports even the 32 hour/week being an option .

Every employee has a certain amount of overhead per employee whether that is 1:1s, hr, benefits, forms, etc and your cost to employer is beyond salary which they are incentivized to minimize.

This is overly simple:

Let's make the incorrect assumption all hours are equal.

- 40 hours making $4000, at $100/hr, with $1000 overhead, for a total cost of $5000, or 125/hr.

- 32 hours making $3200, at 100/hr, with $1000 overhead is a total cost of $4200, 131/hr

So let's ballpark and say you need 10% increase in productivity to make the cost of an equally efficient worker working 80% time. I'm not sure I've worked at a company that can estimate individual performance with that margin.

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

#103

Post by kuchenbecker »

yanis_t wrote: post #33
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 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?

Yes, but also consider that you are not paid for value created but rather your skills are a market. Business makes money arbitraging your time and skill for profit; basically buy your labor for less than your productivity.

So productivity gains will only be experienced by the workers where demand for their labor is high.

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

#104

Post by AnimalMuppet »

goqu wrote: post #99

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 workw…

Where I work, we had a guy who retired. We re-hired him, but at 30 hours/week. (I'm pretty sure it's with a salary reduction, but I don't know.) We don't advertise ourselves as a 4 day workweek place, but we might be open to it for any individual employee at their request.

So I wonder how many companies would actually let you if you asked. I suspect it's more than publicly say they are 4 day workweek companies.

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

#105

Post by leereeves »

naiwenwt wrote: post #100
prepend wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/...

The latter seems to be the primary category, with 1,795,300 jobs vs 147,400 computer programmers.

And combining the -11% of 147K and +25% of 1.8M, BLS is projecting a net increase of over 400K jobs in the two categories.

But that includes QA and testers.

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

#106

Post by bwestergard »

yanis_t wrote: post #33
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 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?

This is a complicated discussion, but for any given "technology" (i.e. set of available methods for producing every good/service in a society) and set of preferences among agents (e.g. households, firms) it is generally the case that there are many possible profit rates and wage schedules that allow for equilibrium.

For a very formal an influential discussion of this, see Sraffa's "Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities".

Historically, an idea closely related to the one you are articulating has been known as the "iron law of wages".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_wages

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

#107

Post by corethree »

defrost wrote: post #89
corethree wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called the breadwinner model. It's followed by many diverse cultures. There are a few exceptions that certain groups with certain interests have over promoted but the generality is the breadwinner model. China: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10834-014-9417-0 Afghanistan: https://ivypanda.com/essays/gender-role-in-afghanistan/#:~:t... . Western culture: (also describes the recent societal change) http…

The consistent pattern is really really shitty links. Modern Chinese wives in the US has F-All to do with traditional farming or Hunter Gatherers. Home school essays submitted that outline the writers own particular bias are not exactly peak Histographic study. An essay on Mayan division of labor does not undercut the reality that there's a ton of work to do and it gets split up (see my closing point), it actually re…

Modern Chinese wives in the US have 100 percent "fuck all" to do with the topic at hand which is traditional gender roles. Would you like me to dig deeper and find gender roles in modern china and ancient china? Same pattern bro.

Bro that's just one mistaken link is an essay and the essay is right. For godsakes it's Afghanistan. Muslims. One of the very cultures who pushes gender roles to the extreme and you just decided to attack that point lol.

Would you like a more official source out of the millions that point to the same pattern? Here: https://culturalatlas.sbs.com.au/afghan-culture/afghan-cultu...

I can find tons more because this pattern is real. Just a simple search yields so many results across so many cultures. Rather then attack the weakest link in an obvious agenda based strategy you should address the overall point at hand in good faith discussion. It's like I present to you 10 links and you dismiss the whole thing because one was an "essay" give me a break.

I never said women don't work as hard as men don't put words in my mouth. But the roles of what men and women do generally have clear delineation.

>It's not to your credit that you attempt to bludgeon yor way through with a mass of links in the hope that no one will look closely.

It's not because I didn't do this. All I did was do a quick search to prove your obviously wrong point wrong with sources.

It's not to your credit to provoke such an accusatory and targeted attack.

You say I hope you wouldn't look to closely... well you looked closely and took 2 minor and miniscule details and constructed a full fledged baseless counter attack. Yeah, sure. What you're doing is called a witch hunt, doesn't look like your trying to start a discussion... Seems your in it for optics don't accuse me of that.

If I was in it for the optics, this point wouldn't even be brought up. Threads like this attract negative karma for me because it's not a mainstream opinion.

Bro, I want you to look closely. Press your eyes on every letter. You present facts which you pulled out of your ass, I present sources. Address the sources wholistically.

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

#108

Post by oldpersonintx »

rkachowski wrote: post #92
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…

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.

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

so basically, just like today

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

#109

Post by Communitivity »

Freak_NL wrote: post #48
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.

I'm all for an 80% week. In my career I've known six people who suffered burnout, one of whom committed suicide. Too many corporations push our IT and devs too hard, then replace them when they get used up. I don't see the U.S. companies going for an 80% week though.

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

#110

Post by corethree »

twobitshifter wrote: post #98
corethree wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 t…

More people means more pollution and greater resource consumption. Not everything is beneficial. Human society is well on it's way to the worst case scenario of global warming and accelerating population growth only exacerbates this issue.

Why make me pay for that?

Negative population growth has benefits. Japan doesn't have a housing crisis like the US.

Like I said two sides to every story. I'd rather have flat population growth not positive growth and helping me pay for child care in a cause I don't believe in is not fair.

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