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

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

#231

Post by throwaway1979 »

marvin wrote: post #131
throwaway1979 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thx for the pointer. I have to look into them. The issue I have is that history prior to 2000 is not valid going forward. You can say that I'm a disciple of Nasib Taleb's Fooled by Randomness.

Why isn't any history prior to 2000 still valid? We've had 10+ year secular bear markets before. I'm not arguing by authority here, but by Taleb's own arguments, it's just as likely that the pre-2000 history is still valid - there is just no way of knowing yet.

My personal thesis is that financial market history prior to 2K isn't valid. The world prior to widespread adoption of the the Internet was a different place. The Y2K cut off is a useful demarkation point ... that's when the tech euphoria went away :) I think this has something to do with the speed of information flow in a post-PC, connected world. That's the short of it anyways.

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

#232

Post by opendomain »

bokonist wrote: post #51
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 cus…

This is a very well thought out and reasoned response. Thank you.

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

#233

Post by icefox »

throwaway1979 wrote: post #77
Sukotto wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can bank the excess cash and "retire" as soon as 4% of your savings equals your annual expenses. (Work hard to maximize your salary and minimize your expenses) Between now and achieving that 4%, focus on excelling at the things you find the most interesting and building relationships in your industry so that once you cross the freedom line you can take on the occasional consulting gig to keep things interestin…

If I knew where to get a risk free, consistent 4% return these days ...

On the opposite side you wouldn't say that your job is risk free either.

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

#234

Post by gasull »

kamaal wrote: post #207
wildgift wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an exception to the 40 hour week called comp time. You get paid for excess hours by being given paid time off. The 40 hour week is already legislated. If you work over 40 you are supposed to get overtime. Overtime needs to be requested, though - that's an important point. If you're going over 40 you're supposed to tell your boss to get permission, and the boss is supposed to say, "nah, go home." I know it doe…

>>I know it doesn't work that way. Its because as programmers we never work 40 hours productively. Quite a but of our time goes in procrastinating, reading stuff on sites like HN, Facebooking etc. There fore there is almost an untold understanding that 40 hours is not to be taken literally.

Please speak for yourself. I don't procrastinate. Most days I don't even check my personal email at work. Maybe I should, because despite not procrastinating I'm still pretty much forced to be 50 or 60 hours a week in the office.

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

#235

Post by crusso »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #224
crusso wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot work double the hours and be more productive You can't simply put typical workers on a schedule that's twice as long and expect more productivity, that's true. Individually, though, you can normally become extraordinarily more productive if you have the right motivation. people working crazy hours succeed. Why is this such a mystery? Haven't you ever thrown yourselves into a new startup or idea and spent e…

Passion leaves a nasty hangover of bugs. I've gotten jazzed on Vietnamese coffee and hacked my compiler all through the night and into the morning on a Friday night. I then had to spend the next several days fixing all the damn bugs I'd put in because I wasn't thinking straight.

Maybe getting into the kind of rhythm I'm talking about isn't for everyone. Hard to say. All I know is that when I've been able to "turn it on" in my career, I've had productivity that went on for months. Social life at the time sucked, but that's the tradeoff I was willing to make at the time.

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

#236

Post by kleiba »

joonix wrote: post #200
kleiba wrote: post #188

Why on Earth would I want to go back to the 40-hour work week? http://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment/conditions-of-employme...

The "reasonable additional hours" factors leave things wide open. You could easily argue any white collar job can require over 38 hours reasonably with those factors. My wife works in an office in Australia where most people work over 60/hrs a week and she's pressured to work more than 50. If some enthusiastically work over 50hrs, everyone else basically has to stick around as well or they will be evaluated poorly an…

If some enthusiastically work over 50hrs, everyone else basically has to stick around as well or they will be evaluated poorly and lose out on advancement.

Do you mean in that particular company? In general, I think that's a myth.

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

#237

Post by Ilmarinen »

crusso wrote: post #225
_delirium wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I mainly think it produces worse societies that are worse to live in, without correspondingly incentivizing innovation appreciably. I've lived in both the US and Scandinavia, and the US feels barely teetering on the edge of "advanced first-world country" in comparison: poor infrastructure, bureaucratic healthcare that causes angst when switching jobs, large numbers of homeless people, huge prison systems, swa…

US and Scandinavia Notice that I mentioned cultural diversity. There is a reason that Scandanavia can manage with a more socialistic government. The gene/meme pool is far less diverse and evolutionarily created reinforcement of good communal practices are already present. A thousand years ago and beyond, if you didn't grok cooperation and thoughtful planning, you starved and died come winter. Scandanavia is like a pe…

> Here, we deal with many self-interested gene/meme contributors who are more self-interested than community-interested.

And you Sir are a prime example. In fact, you do everything you can to spread such memes in the society. The irony of that sentence amuses me.

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

#240

Post by eli_gottlieb »

crusso wrote: post #235
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passion leaves a nasty hangover of bugs. I've gotten jazzed on Vietnamese coffee and hacked my compiler all through the night and into the morning on a Friday night. I then had to spend the next several days fixing all the damn bugs I'd put in because I wasn't thinking straight.

Maybe getting into the kind of rhythm I'm talking about isn't for everyone. Hard to say. All I know is that when I've been able to "turn it on" in my career, I've had productivity that went on for months. Social life at the time sucked, but that's the tradeoff I was willing to make at the time.

I can crunch, but once I start losing sleep it's just damaging.
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