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We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

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Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#221

Post by dragons »

ctdonath wrote: post #205
samstave wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK - I am your student I live in the bay area, Married, have 2 kids and work in SF. Show me how to live on $10/day. Consider me your student. Unless your comment of "showing me how to live on $10/day" is really titled "show a homeless 15 year-old with no job, family or financial obligations how to subsist on $10/day" If you really can show me how to live on less than the cost it is for me to get to work ($7.10, BTW)…

Step one, grasshopper: MOVE. If you refuse to leave, then we cannot get on to the next lesson of choosing cheap, even free, real estate. But, like the koan of the full cup...

Where do you suggest moving to? Out of the US or somewhere within it?

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#222

Post by kyllo »

The true sign of progress will be that everyone has a bit more freedom to decide how many hours per week they work. In order for that to happen, the job market needs to become a lot more liquid. That will happen when needed benefits like health insurance and basic income are met by the government, and most people are able to work on a freelance or contract basis, and are able to take time off in between jobs without so much risk, because they are not dependent on a specific employer. I don't think 25 hours will necessarily be the standard, so much as I think that there won't really be a standard that everyone is expected to adhere to anymore. 40 hours is totally arbitrary in a way that smacks of Communism.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#223

Post by ctdonath »

muoncf wrote: post #173
ctdonath wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is what constitutes "maintaining a living", both in your own choices and governmental influence. I can show you how to live well on $10/day, but then you'd complain about not having X Y and Z (starting with two cars and a mortgage in a narrow geographic range). If you can't do without what amounts to luxuries to 75% of the world population, discussing how many hours a week you "should" work is a non-start…

I'm honestly curious about this since, even as a student, I'm living on more than that per day. Could you tell me more?

Start with these to get the idea: http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com http://tinyhouseblog.com/ http://mypatriotsupply.com

Shop at the Dollar Store, Goodwill, Aldi, etc. Look for foreclosed, abandoned, and other dirt cheap real estate; search Zillow.com for sub-$1000 properties (not a typo). Plant a garden. Move. No excuses.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#224

Post by gaius »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #210
ruswick wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My life has exhibited at various points a preponderance of the issues that your grandparents faced. Most people I know still cope with issues mentioned above. I'm not sure why you believe that poverty has vanished even among people on minimum wage: it has absolutely not.

Depends on your definition of poverty. Poverty in the sense of the aforementioned grandparents has - only a fraction of a % of the population of the US lacks indoor plumbing. In the US, people with earned income consume $23k/year. ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ce/standard/2009/income.txt By the standards of the past, poverty more or less has vanished. We just raised the bar for poverty so that we have someon…

We have an organization here in the UK called the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, who lobby on poverty and publish statistics, but they use a relative measure of poverty as basically, being in the bottom third of the population. So, if your next-door neighbours on both sides are watching Blu-ray and you have a lowly DVD player, then they would count you as "living in poverty" for the purposes of the statistics they compile.

When you consider that the very poorest in the UK have free housing, welfare, free education and healthcare, etc, then "poverty" in a global sense is very obviously long since eliminated here.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#225

Post by ctdonath »

dragons wrote: post #221
ctdonath wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step one, grasshopper: MOVE. If you refuse to leave, then we cannot get on to the next lesson of choosing cheap, even free, real estate. But, like the koan of the full cup...

Where do you suggest moving to? Out of the US or somewhere within it?

Stay in the USA. Easy to find affordable real estate no matter your budget.

Too many naysayers don't realize how ridiculous their local cost of living is, and how a simple move can cut that by orders of magnitude.

The key is being willing to move. Once you are, options abound. Get busy on http://zillow.com and search regions and price ranges; to get in the mindset, start by searching whole states for properties under $1000 (not a typo).

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#226

Post by ctdonath »

serge2k wrote: post #175
xtracto wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If not, then fuck you you smug ass - it costs to live. Wow, HN has dropped this low? Here were I live the standard household income is around $600 USD a Month. A family of 4 can (parents and two children) can live with that.

Good for you, my rent is more than that and I don't live in an expensive place.

By definition you do live in an expensive place. If your rent alone can sustain most households on the planet, your rent is expensive.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#227

Post by czbond »

The reality of what will happen in the U.S. is the exact opposite. If anyone watched the recent Davos Economic Summitt - U.S. companies can no longer easily grow using debt instruments, which just leaves productivity and competitiveness.

Translation: Employees will be working more hours for easily the next 5 years.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#228

Post by jrs235 »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #114
jseliger wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the 1950s, there was the great promise of "the leisure society" - a future of such material abundance that most people would hardly need to work. That society became possible, but we systematically rejected it in favour of more consumption. I'm not convinced this is true: there are also intense coordination costs and learning costs. Two programmers working 20 hours a week, for example, are way less productive tha…

Sorry, I must disagree. Two people working 20 hours a week are refreshed, not burned out, have time for educationally side projects, etc. I am in my early 60s and for my whole life I limited my work hours to 32 hours per week, even working for large companies. I had lots of time for educational side projects, exercise, extra time with family and friends, and mediation. My only regret was not perhaps cutting this to l…

I'm reading the Execute book by Josh Long and Drew Wilson and just last night they hit on the point that a few hours of 100% focused work mixed with a few 100% focused leisure hours a few times a day is more productive and satisfying then say 8 to 10 hours of 45% effort of work.

This is how Drew Wilson, creator of Space Box and many other works is able to achieve his high level of output. He manages his energy, listens to his body and mind, and does what is most suitable and productive knowing such things.

3 hours at 100% followed by 3 hours of leisure followed by 3 hours of 100% work would be 6 hours of 100% focused work. 6 solid hours of work is better than 8 hours of 50% focus (4 hours). Not only is the actual effort put in greater, but so is the focus and engagement which leads to even greater results.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#229

Post by eliasmacpherson »

svachalek wrote: post #142
jseliger wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sorry, I must disagree. Two people working 20 hours a week are refreshed, not burned out, have time for educationally side projects, etc. Take a look at Brooks' The Mythical Man Month for data that demonstrates the opposite, at least in programming; I haven't followed the field closely, but education and industrial organization researchers have done similar work in other professions.

1. That was about 40 years ago when the waterfall process was state of the art. Modern, iterative processes are much more flexible. 2. The loss of productivity levels off as the team size increases. Going from 50 to 100 developers is not the same as 1 to 2. All said, I expect some loss of productivity is inevitable due to context switching and communication overhead but it isn't necessarily a major loss.

Pretty sure waterfall was never state of the art, rather an example of what not to do [0]. It's often held up as a straw man argument in promoting 'agile'. Brooks' book emphasises prototyping, and 'build one to throw away, you will anyway' which isn't 'waterfall'.

Brooks' book also clearly demonstrates that applying a dumb formula derived from the number of programmers doesn't predict the output, and using such a formula to estimate a project's timeline doesn't positively affect the project's outcome. It's main argument is that programmers added late to a project will actually cause it to take even longer to complete.

Brooks' book is remarkable - a lot of programming lore and culture originates there or is popularized by it. I'd compare it to casablanca or citizen kane rather than dismiss it out of hand.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_development

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#230

Post by readme »

olliesaunders wrote: post #49
readme wrote: post #22

This guy might be on to something, but I have an even better idea, and it required 0 scientific research to synthesize. We should all do whatever the fuck we want, until we die.

> We should all do whatever the fuck we want, until we die. Yeah but we’re not allowed to. Most employers will demands you show up for 40 hours a week and then frown at you or, at least, never promote you if you don’t stay for a lot more.

We are allowed to. You choose your employer, ergo, you choose your work schedule.
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