Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Surprising Reason We Have a 40-Hour Work Week

thenextweb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 45 posts

Re: The Surprising Reason We Have a 40-Hour Work Week

#11

Post by kropotkin »

yomritoyj wrote: post #2

It is strange that the author attributes the eight-hour workday to Henry Ford's business strategy. It had been a demand raised by workers themselves from much earlier: “Eight hours labour, Eight hours recreation, Eight hours rest.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day

Exactly. This article needs some better research. The real history of the eight-hour work day is intertwined with the history of worker's movements beginning in the mid 1800's. Ford was nothing more than an opportunistic Capitalist (hint: they all are). If you're interested in this subject, I suggest learning about the NLU, the Knights of Labor, August Spies, Haymarket, etc.

Re: The Surprising Reason We Have a 40-Hour Work Week

#12

Post by csmuk »

jcklnruns wrote: post #8
csmuk wrote: post #3

What you do is important, not the hours I agree, but do you know what changed my life for the better with respect to work and home without changing the hours? I stopped watching television.

Also, 8 hours of "work" vs. 8 hours of productivity is quite different. I use pomodoro timers to track my level of productivity and when they add up to 8 hours, my brain is totally done. I'd have to squeeze in a long run to shake myself out of it.

Yep. To be honest, since excluding television I worked out I'm maximally productive for about 25-30 hours a week. I've managed to get my working hours down to that from the standard 8 hour day by minimising politics and keeping collaboration tight as anything. Those hours may be over a 40-100 hour period though.

Obsessive tracking of the time is as unhealthy I found. I keep a work log but I never read it. It's mainly for other peoples' benefit.

Re: The Surprising Reason We Have a 40-Hour Work Week

#15

Post by vidarh »

pmiller2 wrote: post #7
csmuk wrote: post #3

What you do is important, not the hours I agree, but do you know what changed my life for the better with respect to work and home without changing the hours? I stopped watching television.

I do a less extreme version of this. I don't own a TV, but I still watch a few selected shows on my computer. Doing it that way means I can watch when I want, and also has the benefit of fewer commercials. In total, I probably watch about 4 hours of mindless TV a week, when many people watch that much in a day.

It took my son a long time to accept why you can't always fast forward through ads, and why everything isn't available on-demand. He often prefers Youtube, but gets really annoyed when he can't immediately skip the ads.

I used to think live TV would survive because people like to just turn stuff on, but watching my son and other kids I realise that kids growing up with on-demand services, Youtube and DVR's don't seem to grow into that mindset: My son does not want to just turn on some channel, he instead asks for ridiculously specific things and expect it to exist. And as it turns out, most of the time he'll find something "close enough" on YouTube - even if it's some crappy homemade recording of some kid playing with his toys - if it's not something he can find on TV.

Live TV is about to become something unfashionable that old people watch, other than for a few major events.

Re: The Surprising Reason We Have a 40-Hour Work Week

#16

Post by girvo »

unionizenow wrote: post #5

The article makes it sound as though the eight hour work day was a gift from the bosses to the workers; or an attempt to make them better consumers. The truth is that thousands of workers died in a world wide struggle for humane working conditions during the 19th century. In Chicago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair In 1921 bombs were dropped on striking coal miners in West Virginia: https://en.wikipedi…

Less than 100 years ago, this stuff happened. Far out. I truly can't comprehend the strikebreakers getting away with... Well, cold blooded murder. Massacres. It's horrible.

Re: The Surprising Reason We Have a 40-Hour Work Week

#17

Post by A1kmm »

Putting in time is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for progress. In a modern tech business, there is an endless supply of things that could be improved, and available human resource is the limiting factor.

I find that having a roughly fixed number of hours of work is useful in the long run to balance burnout from working too many hours against not working to your full potential.

My productivity per hour goes down as I work more hours, but unless I am really tired each additional unit of time still provides a (diminishing) positive return.

Thinking that you have been really productive and can slack off for the rest of the day is a dangerous trap to fall into if you want to work at your full potential - it is better to use the positive mood you get from making progress and use it to motivate you to make even more progress.

Re: The Surprising Reason We Have a 40-Hour Work Week

#18

Post by seanccox »

girvo wrote: post #16
unionizenow wrote: post #5

The article makes it sound as though the eight hour work day was a gift from the bosses to the workers; or an attempt to make them better consumers. The truth is that thousands of workers died in a world wide struggle for humane working conditions during the 19th century. In Chicago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair In 1921 bombs were dropped on striking coal miners in West Virginia: https://en.wikipedi…

Less than 100 years ago, this stuff happened. Far out. I truly can't comprehend the strikebreakers getting away with... Well, cold blooded murder. Massacres. It's horrible.

It is only called 'class warfare' when the working class fights back.

Re: The Surprising Reason We Have a 40-Hour Work Week

#19

Post by dingaling »

A1kmm wrote: post #17

Putting in time is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for progress. In a modern tech business, there is an endless supply of things that could be improved, and available human resource is the limiting factor. I find that having a roughly fixed number of hours of work is useful in the long run to balance burnout from working too many hours against not working to your full potential. My productivity per hour go…

I suppose that depends whether one is driven to be productive at 'work', or productive ex-work.

If I've achieved my work goals for a day / other accounting period, there is no further reward for me pushing-on to achieve more. I'd rather use that remaining energy for my own personal goals.

So I don't see it as a trap, quite the opposite; use that positive mood to go and fix the leaky faucet, or whatever.

Re: The Surprising Reason We Have a 40-Hour Work Week

#20

Post by brazzy »

girvo wrote: post #16
unionizenow wrote: post #5

The article makes it sound as though the eight hour work day was a gift from the bosses to the workers; or an attempt to make them better consumers. The truth is that thousands of workers died in a world wide struggle for humane working conditions during the 19th century. In Chicago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair In 1921 bombs were dropped on striking coal miners in West Virginia: https://en.wikipedi…

Less than 100 years ago, this stuff happened. Far out. I truly can't comprehend the strikebreakers getting away with... Well, cold blooded murder. Massacres. It's horrible.

Very simple: the striking workers were considered criminals - rabble that no upstanding citizen would want to get associated with. Today, they'd be called terrorists.

Now think about how today, the American military gets away with bombing weddings...

Post reply on HN