Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day • Hacker News Board

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#51

Post by phaemon » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 10:57 PM UTC

mseebach wrote: post #43

danbruc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call the fallacy a fallacy - it seems way to simplistic to me. There is obviously a fluctuation in work demand, for example all the seasonal work, but this fluctuation is not arbitrarily large. Take it to the extreme, 20 instead of 40 working hours per week - how would this not require twice as many employees, maybe even a few more because of reduced efficiency, to yield the same output? In essence this is nothing…

It's hard to put this very politely, but you're making a fool out of yourself now. Lump of Labour fallacy isn't crazy voodoo economics, it's incredibly well established. Read the Wikipedia article, then look through some of the references. Your concerns are amply addressed.

No he isn't. I suspect he's starting to correctly identify that Economics has about as much scientific validity as Astrology: they both have the trappings of science, but frankly, they're both full of unverifiable and unfalsifiable nonsense.

I suspect the only reason most people accept it is that they learned it at school so it must be true.

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#52

Post by smsm42 » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 10:59 PM UTC

jqm wrote: post #31

I don't think many people work more than six hours a day. Most work probably considerably less, the fact that they are at work for 8 hours notwithstanding. If they could remove some of these inefficiencies and return the time to employees it would be great.

They wouldn't work for net 6 hours either. It's not like the exchange is 8 hours including coffee breaks, Facebook checking and staring at the ceiling to 6 hours pure net uninterrupted work. It's 8 hours with distractions to 6 hours with distractions.

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#53

Post by rdl » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 10:59 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #50

rdl wrote: post #32

I don't think 6h/day of work is particularly unreasonable, if you can avoid losing blocks of time to useless activities (unneeded meetings, or waiting for people). If you're remote, and only clock-in when actually working, spending 3-4h/day working productively can easily outdo someone spending 10h/day in an office. I've worked in places where my ultimate client billable rate was obscene, and tracked to the 6min or 1…

How shorter work day would eliminate any useless activities? Useless activities happen not because work day is too long but because work processes not organized perfectly. Shorter workday would not make processes any better, so the same percentage of time would be wasted.

When the day is artificially constrained, you have a good excuse to get rid of non-critical activities. It's like YC -- "meeting with investors for coffee" (or other good but non-key activities) is always viewed as "a good thing to do", but over the 3 months of YC you have license to tell them to wait.

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#54

Post by spaboleo » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 11:14 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #50

rdl wrote: post #32

I don't think 6h/day of work is particularly unreasonable, if you can avoid losing blocks of time to useless activities (unneeded meetings, or waiting for people). If you're remote, and only clock-in when actually working, spending 3-4h/day working productively can easily outdo someone spending 10h/day in an office. I've worked in places where my ultimate client billable rate was obscene, and tracked to the 6min or 1…

How shorter work day would eliminate any useless activities? Useless activities happen not because work day is too long but because work processes not organized perfectly. Shorter workday would not make processes any better, so the same percentage of time would be wasted.

I agree and this kind of work day contraint is by far not suitable for everyone. If you'd tell average Joe, working in retail in some DIY market filling the shelves (just an example for a rather simple job, no implications, judgement or anything) that he from now on would have to work just 6h instead of 8h a day for the same paycheck...would this make him do the work more deliberately? I highly doubt it.

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#55

Post by smsm42 » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 11:16 PM UTC

callesgg wrote: post #45

How do they messure general work productivity?

This is a great question since depending on the measure the same thing can give opposite results. Also depending on how the product is linked with hours worked. If it's direct link and paid by the hour, it's one thing, if it's indirect link and paid on achieving output goal is another thing, if the result is binary - done or not, regardless of how many hours is spent, it's also different.

Given the description, it looks like the position is elderly care. Which is hard to measure directly, but the indirect measures (e.g. customer satisfaction, mistake counts, etc.) may actually improve from shorter shifts, but the costs would probably rise or services will be reduced since you'd need to either hire people to cover the hours or not serve people in those two hours. Since there are probably also fixed non-hourly costs to hiring this would be an additional expense.

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#56

Post by smsm42 » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 11:20 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #53

smsm42 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How shorter work day would eliminate any useless activities? Useless activities happen not because work day is too long but because work processes not organized perfectly. Shorter workday would not make processes any better, so the same percentage of time would be wasted.

When the day is artificially constrained, you have a good excuse to get rid of non-critical activities. It's like YC -- "meeting with investors for coffee" (or other good but non-key activities) is always viewed as "a good thing to do", but over the 3 months of YC you have license to tell them to wait.

This only works for short periods of "burst" activities, if it is routine then the waste is distributed more or less equally so you get the same percentage of waste unless you work for very short periods. I.e. if somebody goes to smoke for 10 mins every 2 hours (just an example), then he would be out for 1/12 of time regardless of how many hours he works, as long as its substantially more than 2. If he really-really needs to finish something in 3 hours, he may forgo the smoke break once or twice, but if we take a period of a year, it will revert to regular schedule soon.

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#57

Post by rdl » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 11:25 PM UTC

spaboleo wrote: post #54

smsm42 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How shorter work day would eliminate any useless activities? Useless activities happen not because work day is too long but because work processes not organized perfectly. Shorter workday would not make processes any better, so the same percentage of time would be wasted.

I agree and this kind of work day contraint is by far not suitable for everyone. If you'd tell average Joe, working in retail in some DIY market filling the shelves (just an example for a rather simple job, no implications, judgement or anything) that he from now on would have to work just 6h instead of 8h a day for the same paycheck...would this make him do the work more deliberately? I highly doubt it.

Paying for piecework (or sales commission) does work in that kind of environment, though.

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#58

Post by dreamfactory2 » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 11:26 PM UTC

steveridout wrote: post #2

Six-hour days may be more productive, but this won't prove it one way or the other because: - The people working six hour days have been told that this may improve productivity so the excitement of being part of the experiment may indeed encourage them to be more effective in the short term - They have a strong incentive to work harder because if the experiment concludes that six hour days are more effective, they wi…

Does it matter if it works?

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#59

Post by pyrrhotech » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 11:31 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #19

belorn wrote: post #7

> It's unclear how, or if, a lunch break will factor into the scheme. It's a common misconception that eight-hour work day means 9-17 everywhere. In Sweden, the common work day is from 8-17, meaning 8 hours paid time and 1 hour non-paid lunch hour. To my understanding, it's more or less required by law. So if you look on how many hours we will be "at work", we will go from working one hour more than Americans to one…

The "typical" 9 to 5 workday typically only applies to blue collar workers who get two paid 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute paid lunch, with each break coming after 1.75 hours of work. Most office workers go 9 to 6 or 8 to 5.

I do 9:30 to 6:00 75% of the time and 9:30 to 5:00 25% of the time, with either a 30 min lunch break or 1 hour lunch + gym break. I never work the weekends. I don't make the most money on HN, but you can't beat that work-life balance, and I won't burn out for a long time.

Re: Sweden: The New Laboratory for a Six-Hour Work Day

#60

Post by w1ntermute » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 11:37 PM UTC

Dewie wrote: post #49

mseebach wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with it, but all the parties involved just need to be conscious of the tradeoff involved: shifting focus from the production of wealth to the consumption of it. As long as the production is higher than the consumption, it's all good and sustainable. But remember that especially in the scandinavian welfare states, your consumption isn't just your salary, it's a wide range of often rather expensiv…

> But remember that especially in the scandinavian welfare states, your consumption isn't just your salary, it's a wide range of often rather expensive public services. It seems that outsiders (I am guessing you are, by the way you frame it) are eager to remind us that we have large public sectors, or whatever you want to call it. It feels a bit rude to me; as if you know better than us how our societies/governments…

> It seems that outsiders (I am guessing you are, by the way you frame it) are eager to remind us that we have large public sectors, or whatever you want to call it. It feels a bit rude to me; as if you know better than us how our societies/governments are structured.

It can be easy to take for granted your current situation, and become oblivious to it. So it often takes an outsider to remind the insiders of their situation. It is no different from how the lack of universal health insurance in the US may not be apparent to the ~85% of Americans who do have health insurance.