Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek • Hacker News Board

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#91

Post by electriclove » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 1:40 PM UTC

slashdev wrote: post #48

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #7

Young people don't want to work hard because there's little incentive. No matter how hard you work, unless you're in the top 5%, you're far priced out of most places most people want to live. You can afford everything comfortably beside housing & health care (which you don't need much of when you're young) on a relatively low wage in the US. So you've pretty much given up on housing. What's the point in working hard?

It's not for everybody, but if you can find a way to not play the rigged game, you can get ahead. I moved from a high cost of living city in North America to Latin America. I bought a two floor penthouse overlooking the ocean for less than the price of a two bedroom apartment back where I came from. My mortgage is -$2000 / month. That's right, negative $2000 because I save the full mortgage payment plus an extra $200…

Where at? Are you Hispanic or white?

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#92

Post by dutchCourage » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 1:40 PM UTC

trident5000 wrote: post #19

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #7

Young people don't want to work hard because there's little incentive. No matter how hard you work, unless you're in the top 5%, you're far priced out of most places most people want to live. You can afford everything comfortably beside housing & health care (which you don't need much of when you're young) on a relatively low wage in the US. So you've pretty much given up on housing. What's the point in working hard?

I keep hearing this but home ownership percentage is comparable to past generations when you actually look at the data. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N Also gen z has surpassed millennials and genx in home ownership (with comparable timing). ""In 2022, 30% of 25-year-olds owned a home. At the same age 28% of millennials, and 27% of Gen Xers owned homes, according to real estate brokerage, Redfin."" htt…

> Im more inclined to believe the lazy mentality is from lifestyle and cultural stemming. Its cool to not care or try. And according to instagram if you're not a millionaire by age 25 then you're a loser. So why even try?

I'm assuming this is why you're being downvoted. It sounds like you're calling the new generation lazy, though I see now that it wasn't necessarily your intent.

Personally I fully understand those who don't want to spend most of their time and energy at work. Most jobs aren't fulfilling. Some even downright encourage a dysfunctional system.

I was impressed by tech companies in the late 2000s only to realize that they're not trying to "make the world a better place" and that they're just trying to make more money for their shareholders like every company before them.

So why would anyone sacrifice their family time, friends and hobbies just to work on another app that puts scooters on cities' sidewalks and build more hardware that'll end up in a landfill?

It has nothing to do with being cool or being a millionaire. It's just a generation that had their basic needs taken care of and are now getting their priorities straight.

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#93

Post by redserk » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 1:40 PM UTC

trident5000 wrote: post #71

doctorwho42 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is wanting to live less than an hour commute to work "the most niche place on earth"? Most people I know are renting because they can't afford anything within an hour commute and we have grown up hearing and seeing the pains of the commuter life. So why saddle ourselves with both a 30 year mortgage for a overpriced home that will also drain us of 10+hrs/week

Sounds like a lifestyle choice. Stop packing into cities like a can of sardines and it wont be an issue. Being inflexible to literal physics and reality is a personal issue.

This is less a physics problem and more of a zoning/planning issue.

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#94

Post by datavirtue » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 1:40 PM UTC

SamuelAdams wrote: post #25

If they (or you, or anyone) want a 4 day work week, then why not pick a profession that allows it? Most healthcare related fields work in 12 hour shifts, so working 3-4 days a week is the normal standard. Not every professional job is an office job 9-5.

Oil fields. Seven days on, seven days off. Per-diem alone is enough to buy all your food and a nice RV.

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#95

Post by ItsMonkk » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 1:40 PM UTC

trident5000 wrote: post #19

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #7

Young people don't want to work hard because there's little incentive. No matter how hard you work, unless you're in the top 5%, you're far priced out of most places most people want to live. You can afford everything comfortably beside housing & health care (which you don't need much of when you're young) on a relatively low wage in the US. So you've pretty much given up on housing. What's the point in working hard?

I keep hearing this but home ownership percentage is comparable to past generations when you actually look at the data. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N Also gen z has surpassed millennials and genx in home ownership (with comparable timing). ""In 2022, 30% of 25-year-olds owned a home. At the same age 28% of millennials, and 27% of Gen Xers owned homes, according to real estate brokerage, Redfin."" htt…

The homeownership rate is the percentage of HOMES that are lived in by their owners, not the count of PEOPLE that own their own homes. Given a shortage of homes, the homeownership rate will not show you that there is a crisis.

For example, if you homeless you do not count. If you live with your parents even though you would prefer to rent if you could afford it, that is a home-owned household. If the owner lives in their home and they rent out a room, that's a home. If you used to rent with 4 people and now live with 8, that's a single rental. If you own and live in multiple homes, you count multiple times.

Without more analysis, you can not use this rate to come to any conclusions.

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#96

Post by slashdev » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 1:40 PM UTC

tspike wrote: post #89

slashdev wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not for everybody, but if you can find a way to not play the rigged game, you can get ahead. I moved from a high cost of living city in North America to Latin America. I bought a two floor penthouse overlooking the ocean for less than the price of a two bedroom apartment back where I came from. My mortgage is -$2000 / month. That's right, negative $2000 because I save the full mortgage payment plus an extra $200…

Sure, and now you’re inflicting the same problems on the local population who don’t have the option of geographic arbitrage.

That's a glass half full way to look at it. I'm creating jobs here and helping the local economy. I think it's a win-win.

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#97

Post by JeremyNT » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 1:42 PM UTC

yardie wrote: post #12

Moving back to the US after living abroad I was used to month long holidays. I applied to a few companies and tried to negotiate 5 weeks PTO. They wouldn't budge. Then 4 weeks. Still no. I offered to drop my salary in exchange for vacation. Still no. I asked HR why everything else was negotiable except PTO and they told me I would have more time off then people who've been there for 7+ years. This was my first clue t…

> Moving back to the US after living abroad I was used to month long holidays. I applied to a few companies and tried to negotiate 5 weeks PTO. They wouldn't budge. Then 4 weeks. Still no. I offered to drop my salary in exchange for vacation. Still no. I asked HR why everything else was negotiable except PTO and they told me I would have more time off then people who've been there for 7+ years.

One of the reasons I work in the education sector is the generous (compared to startups / most tech companies, anyway) PTO.

We get all of the big holidays off (I think 12) and we have 2-4 weeks of vacation (depending on length of employment) and we have two weeks of paid medical leave (which accumulates, so after the first couple of years you have massive amounts banked) and paid maternity/paternity.

Mine isn't the only employer like this, there are plenty of others, it's not hard to find one. The key to look for is "work life balance." Government jobs, non-profits, education, these sorts of areas - they know they can't compete with tech company salaries but can make up for it in other ways. PTO is only a part of that.

It's not quite the 4 day a week dream job, but there are options available if you look. And as a bonus, you might find yourself more aligned with the mission of the organization than you would at a for-profit tech company.

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#98

Post by ethanbond » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 1:42 PM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #84

jonahrd wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Urbanisation is a trend across the entire globe for many more reasons than just wanting to live in a few attractive areas. And it's absolutely necessary for us to urbanize instead of the wasteful way we use our land, in order to avoid the impending climate, biodiversity, and energy crises. Anyway --- with this square footage argument. End of the day, I'm still priced out of a house, whether it'd be a big one or a sma…

https://infogram.com/1pqdpn20vkmlelcq6qx7jzwz9pf00g9xnq5 https://www.supermoney.com/inflation-adjusted-home-prices/ as for your link - easy, what's understood by "house" in Luxembourg is usually a "Soviet style apartment block". You need to be a billionaire to own a typical US-sized single family house there, these are passed down the generations from the people who were rich 100+ years ago (but granted, they are usu…

Did you by chance look at the charts in this?

For example, the western part of the country's $/sqft going from $140 to $220 from 2012 to 2022 -- including inflation adjustment?

Sorry but, "housing prices have only gone up by 20% in the last 10 years in areas that are hemorrhaging job opportunities and education!" is not a good counterargument.

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#99

Post by watwut » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 1:42 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #24

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #7

Young people don't want to work hard because there's little incentive. No matter how hard you work, unless you're in the top 5%, you're far priced out of most places most people want to live. You can afford everything comfortably beside housing & health care (which you don't need much of when you're young) on a relatively low wage in the US. So you've pretty much given up on housing. What's the point in working hard?

So you're not going to be able to live where most people want to live . That's far different from having no house. "Giving up on housing" is not the right answer. "Start small and work your way up", like most of us did. See, when you hit 20, you're looking at your parents, and you're seeing them when they're 45 or 50. You're not seeing them when they were 20. You expect that you're going to be able to live like they…

Except that economy when starting is not the same across generations. In addition, cohort of people who graduated into depression will never recover as a whole either.

And that is the thing - they simply do not see path to better conditions in the long term either.

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#100

Post by jonahrd » Fri, Nov 03, 2023, 1:43 PM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #84

jonahrd wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Urbanisation is a trend across the entire globe for many more reasons than just wanting to live in a few attractive areas. And it's absolutely necessary for us to urbanize instead of the wasteful way we use our land, in order to avoid the impending climate, biodiversity, and energy crises. Anyway --- with this square footage argument. End of the day, I'm still priced out of a house, whether it'd be a big one or a sma…

https://infogram.com/1pqdpn20vkmlelcq6qx7jzwz9pf00g9xnq5 https://www.supermoney.com/inflation-adjusted-home-prices/ as for your link - easy, what's understood by "house" in Luxembourg is usually a "Soviet style apartment block". You need to be a billionaire to own a typical US-sized single family house there, these are passed down the generations from the people who were rich 100+ years ago (but granted, they are usu…

I see. This article compares GDP vs housing prices, which isn't a surprise that US fares very well because the US is stellar at GDP growth.

But GDP is _absolutely irrelevant_ to the average citizen's purchasing power / income.