Bring Back the 40-hour work week (March 2012) • Hacker News Board

Re: Bring Back the 40-hour work week (March 2012)

#51

Post by bokonist » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 7:31 PM UTC

drewblaisdell wrote: post #9

Perhaps this is a good thread to pose this question. I am a front-end engineer in my early twenties. Right now, 40+ hours a week is doable and I am paid well, but I don't need all of the money I'm earning. I would gladly take a 50% salary cut and work ~20 hours a week. The only problem with this is that I feel like this is a risky thing to bring up with an employer. Has anyone ever had any success getting a good part…

Software is generally a winner-take-all market. Software has zero marginal cost, so the company with the most revenue can invest the most upfront into making a better product, giving it even more revenue. Furthermore, in most cases there is little incentive for customers to ever use the second best product in a segment. So when building software, you not only have to meet the customers needs, you have to meet the customer needs better than any competitor. If you produce a product that is half as good or improve the product half as quickly, you do not lose just half your revenue, you could lose all of it.

The second aspect of software development is that a developer working 40 hours a week is more productive than two developers working 20 hours a week. With the sole developer, there less communication overhead, less management overhead, and the ratio of productive time to time learning the system and understanding the interlocking parts is higher. This is the classic mythical man month problem.

The third aspect of software development is that directly measuring output and effort of an engineer is very difficult. So as a proxy, managers look for signs of passion and engagement. If you are passionate and smart, but are slow to implement some feature, management will believe the feature was simply more difficult than anticipated. If you generally are not passionate about your work, and are slow to implement some feature, management will think you are slacking and fire you. Creating an effective company requires creating a culture of passion and hardwork, and having one person only work part-time can decrease the morale of those putting in 40+ hours. Asking to only work half-time betrays a lack of passion, and could be a bad career move.

So the net result of these factors is that a company must work at maximum efficiency, and maximum efficiency comes when all developers are working 40+ hours a week. It is not in the company's interest to let you work only 20 hours a week, and it could indeed be risky if you bring the idea up with management.

I should also note that the above dynamic is not just the case in software, but in virtually all high paying jobs, from professional athlete to corporate lawyer to corporate executive. Virtually all high paying jobs have some sort of competitive, winner take all dynamic in the market at large (the winners being the ones who get paid well), and within the company, the high paid people are the ones with specialized, hard to replace skills, that have a large ramp up time to learn effectively (learning a large code base, learning a set of legal traditions, learning how to hit a curveball, etc, etc). Thus in order to earn the high pay you must work long hours, and you must work many productive hours on top of a base of ramping-up hours.

Re: Bring Back the 40-hour work week (March 2012)

#52

Post by edj » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 7:32 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #27

edj wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting aside whether 60-80 hours per week is sustainable (and I think it's not for most pople, except perhaps for 20-somethings and people with hypomania), the research this article references says that there isn't a 1-to-1 correlation between hours and output. That's the whole point. "... increasing a team’s hours in the office by 50 percent (from 40 to 60 hours) does not result in 50 percent more output (as Henry…

Yes, but the study seemed fairly focused on single task performance. I don't think I can do a single task for even 40h/wk (maybe 20-30, tops), but running a startup or being dev/devops at a fast growing startup involves a lot of varied tasks. Performance on these doesn't really draw from the same pool.

But again the results this article cites point in the opposite direction:

"... research shows that knowledge workers actually have fewer good hours in a day than manual laborers do — on average, about six hours, as opposed to eight."

Re: Bring Back the 40-hour work week (March 2012)

#53

Post by dorkrawk » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 7:34 PM UTC

drewblaisdell wrote: post #9

Perhaps this is a good thread to pose this question. I am a front-end engineer in my early twenties. Right now, 40+ hours a week is doable and I am paid well, but I don't need all of the money I'm earning. I would gladly take a 50% salary cut and work ~20 hours a week. The only problem with this is that I feel like this is a risky thing to bring up with an employer. Has anyone ever had any success getting a good part…

I did the sub-40 hour thing for a while at an old job. I was starting to go to grad school full time, so I asked my company if I could could move from being on salary to being an hourly employee and work about 20+ hours a week. Because it was better for them to keep me on in a limited capacity rather than spend the money hiring and training someone new they were really cooperative. The extra time flexibility was great, I got to keep my insurance with them, and got out of grad school debt free!

If you can find yourself a good non-standard situation that works well for you (and your future) take it!

Re: Bring Back the 40-hour work week (March 2012)

#54

Post by rowsdower » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 7:34 PM UTC

latortuga wrote: post #35

enraged_camel wrote: post #11

I think we need to stop counting hours worked and start measuring results instead.

There's this almost cult-like obsession with measurement among the hacker crowd where everything must be measured and optimized. Unfortunately, people don't work this way. Telling people that they haven't measured up to some arbitrary standard is a significant demotivator. If you are measuring your workers on some chart, they'll begin either gaming the chart or comparing against each other, neither of which will moti…

This is spot on. It's exactly what happened at HubSpot with their support team.

Re: Bring Back the 40-hour work week (March 2012)

#55

Post by enraged_camel » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 7:34 PM UTC

latortuga wrote: post #35

enraged_camel wrote: post #11

I think we need to stop counting hours worked and start measuring results instead.

There's this almost cult-like obsession with measurement among the hacker crowd where everything must be measured and optimized. Unfortunately, people don't work this way. Telling people that they haven't measured up to some arbitrary standard is a significant demotivator. If you are measuring your workers on some chart, they'll begin either gaming the chart or comparing against each other, neither of which will moti…

>>There's this almost cult-like obsession with measurement among the hacker crowd where everything must be measured and optimized.

Yes. One of the pioneers of business, H. James Harrington, said, "“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”

Re: Bring Back the 40-hour work week (March 2012)

#56

Post by dscrd » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 7:35 PM UTC

ido wrote: post #49

otakucode wrote: post #6

40 hours? No. Average worker productivity has skyrocketed since 1980 with the introduction of computers and automation technology. Salaries have remained flat. A 20 hour work week with the same salary would be far more reasonable (though still very far off the mark of paying employees according to the value that they produce).

(though still very far off the mark of paying employees according to the value that they produce). That's not how capitalism works.

I guess we oughta demonstrate how unions work, then.

Re: Bring Back the 40-hour work week (March 2012)

#57

Post by morsch » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 7:36 PM UTC

crusso wrote: post #40

otakucode wrote: post #6

40 hours? No. Average worker productivity has skyrocketed since 1980 with the introduction of computers and automation technology. Salaries have remained flat. A 20 hour work week with the same salary would be far more reasonable (though still very far off the mark of paying employees according to the value that they produce).

though still very far off the mark of paying employees according to the value that they produce Employees aren't really compensated for increases in output that are achieved through standard business practices, technology, automation, etc. That's because their relative input remains the same. Same input, same salaries. If I'm starting a business mass-producing widgets and I fund the machinery, process development, an…

In that case, you will be forced to drop prices, because your competitor's are probably doing the same (otherwise you'll run out of employees rsn). If prices are falling across the board, people don't need to earn wages as high as before since they can reproduce themselves at the same level with less income.

I'm not sure there's any value to this kind of armchair economics.

Re: Bring Back the 40-hour work week (March 2012)

#58

Post by dscrd » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 7:36 PM UTC

I really don't see how anyone (assuming intellectual, creative jobs) could work more than 10 hours a week, every week -- if we count as 'work' only the time spent to produce something useful.

Re: Bring Back the 40-hour work week (March 2012)

#59

Post by arg01 » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 7:42 PM UTC

crusso wrote: post #40

otakucode wrote: post #6

40 hours? No. Average worker productivity has skyrocketed since 1980 with the introduction of computers and automation technology. Salaries have remained flat. A 20 hour work week with the same salary would be far more reasonable (though still very far off the mark of paying employees according to the value that they produce).

though still very far off the mark of paying employees according to the value that they produce Employees aren't really compensated for increases in output that are achieved through standard business practices, technology, automation, etc. That's because their relative input remains the same. Same input, same salaries. If I'm starting a business mass-producing widgets and I fund the machinery, process development, an…

I'd assume you apply the same policy to the fact that the cost/productivity of machinery, process development, software means that for the same input share holders should be getting the value of a similar business of equivalent market share back in the day as well. If the money is not staying in the business you have a few choices if productivity increases, spread it around, funnel it up, or funnel it down. Since I buy into the idea that extreme wealth inequality negatively impacts society I pick spreading it around.

Re: Bring Back the 40-hour work week (March 2012)

#60

Post by rdl » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 7:45 PM UTC

edj wrote: post #52

rdl wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the study seemed fairly focused on single task performance. I don't think I can do a single task for even 40h/wk (maybe 20-30, tops), but running a startup or being dev/devops at a fast growing startup involves a lot of varied tasks. Performance on these doesn't really draw from the same pool.

But again the results this article cites point in the opposite direction: "... research shows that knowledge workers actually have fewer good hours in a day than manual laborers do — on average, about six hours, as opposed to eight."

"Knowledge worker" in a study cited from Alternet is probably "programmer at a large soul-sucking corporation." Startup founder is fundamentally different.