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

Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 272 posts

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#171

Post by hfsktr »

claudius wrote: post #118
cabalamat wrote: post #81

A 6-hour workday would be 30 hours/week. If we're going to reduce the working week, then instead of spreading that over 5 days, why not work a 4-day week (7.5 hours/day)? That would reduce commuting congestion by 20%, and make everyone who doesn't like spending an hour a day in a traffic jam happy.

Why would you spend an hour a day in a traffic jam? Is there something wrong with your public transport system?

I default to America as that's where I live. I don't think much of our public transport. Sure where I live they probably don't need more than just the buses we have but I had never seen a passenger train (just cargo, as far as I know) until I went abroad. The ease of getting around was amazing and I could totally see not owning a car there. I'm sure there is just as good public transport here but it doesn't seem to be the way we are built.

Anywhere that has hour long traffic daily should probably be big enough to have better public transport so I'll give you that...

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#172

Post by dragonwriter »

amirmc wrote: post #149
comrade1 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same experience in Switzerland. I moved from the u.s. (s.f., boston, dc, socal) and despite working less we get a lot more done than in the u.s. We have an 8.5 hour workday in Switzerland which we strictly stick to - we get comp time if you work over. In the u.s. we were pretty regularly working 10 hour days and 12 wasn't unusual, but we were wasting so much time. A good example is meetings - most people g…

And yet people complain about the pointlessness of meetings despite not doing anything to make them more efficient (cf start and end on time, avoid chit-chat, stick to the agenda, send actions quickly afterwards etc). It only takes a small about of self-discipline to get there but everyone has to exercise it. I'm lucky to have learned from some excellent meeting-chairs but have only been able to reproduce the efficie…

The #1 thing to make meetings more efficient is not to have them. Very many meetings, IME, are held for purposes for which a face-to-face meeting is not an efficient tool, and for which decentralized, asynchronous mechanisms like email would serve better.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#173

Post by guard-of-terra »

dalek_cannes wrote: post #9
sportanova wrote: post #5

I hope we start seeing more things like this, especially in the US. Does 6 hours a day maximize happiness / productivity? I don't know. Does 8 hours? It's the custom, but I don't know. I think it's almost impossible that 8 hours is the best number across every industry => vertical => company. I'd love to see more experimentation

8 hours for work, 8 for leisure, 8 for sleep and 2 rest days a week seems reasonable, at least mathematically speaking. If it were up to me, I'd include commuting time in those 8 work hours as well, making the number no more than 7 hours.

"8 hours for work, 8 for leisure, 8 for sleep" Where's commute?

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#174

Post by alkonaut »

justnotsure wrote: post #85
Numberwang wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it simply is not possible for us swedes to work from home like that because of our smaller houses? I certainly wouldn't know where to put the chemistry lab or the industrial robots. I barely have room for the mine-shaft.

I thought you must have bigger houses? no? I mean how can you claim to have better standard of living and live happier life in a small house without any space?

The average house sizes are more culturally rooted than dependent on standard of living. For example, by measuring size of apartments/houses and cars/capita you'd find Manhattan to be the poorest (lowest standard of living) part of the US which is of course nonsense. We don't have urban sprawl in order to accommodate cheap/large houses, but it's by choice, mostly.

Standard of living and various happiness indices include so much more than could be fitted into the term purchasing power (which is higher in the US than in most of the world).

My standard of living is very dependent on 5-6 weeks paid holiday, 6-12 months paid paternity leave and so on. In my income bracket I could afford those things just by saving, that is, I pay more for them through taxes than I receive back, but I'm still strongly for them. Among other things because only through normalizing long paternal leaves did it become acceptable to employers to interrupt your career 6-12 months 1-3 times in a career, without being classed as "not motivated" or passed over for promotions etc.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#175

Post by rayiner »

homakov wrote: post #39

Why does government set N hours at all ? It's must be up to business! E.g., if I have a software company, I want my employees to work 20 hours a week. Isn't it obviously better way for everyone?

If you've got a winner-take-all system, and a small minority is willing to work much longer than everyone else, you end up with a situation where most people work a lot longer than they would prefer to, because the penalty for working 20% less isn't 20% less income, it's a dramatic drop in income. It's just a specific instance of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_bottom.

Work hour limits are a reasonable solution in a democratic society where the majority doesn't want to be beholden to the work habits of the minority. Although, such a society should expect that some of those long-working folks will emigrate to countries like the U.S. where they can get outsized rewards for working longer than other people.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#176

Post by paulhauggis »

comrade1 wrote: post #72
furyg3 wrote: post #56

I moved from the US (high on the list) to the Netherlands (bottom of the list) a while ago. Different jobs and sectors vary, but the theme I can confirm is that the Dutch feel more productive, generally (I work in software development). In very broad terms, the Dutch are more likely to plan and stick to those plans. Personal time and time off are valued, so you need to be efficient in your working hours. You can't re…

I have the same experience in Switzerland. I moved from the u.s. (s.f., boston, dc, socal) and despite working less we get a lot more done than in the u.s. We have an 8.5 hour workday in Switzerland which we strictly stick to - we get comp time if you work over. In the u.s. we were pretty regularly working 10 hour days and 12 wasn't unusual, but we were wasting so much time. A good example is meetings - most people g…

This reminds me of my last remote job. Every day, we would have. Standup meeting. These are supposed to be 15 minutes, but typically would last well over an hour. On top of this, we would have: planning (4 hour meeting), review (3 hour), retrospective (3 or 4 hours), and the boss decided we weren't having enough meetings..so he added a soical meeting every Friday for an hour. We were all remote and this was a way for us to so somehow become closer as a team.

at one point, I was paid for more time in meetings than work. The only way this didn't happen was when we were putting out fires because mysteriously, we weren't making project goals and upper management was putting pressure on my boss.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#177

Post by NYCHacker »

Seriously want to move to Europe now. As a U.S. citizen and web developer, how hard is this to do? Can I just get a remote job here and then move? What are the VISA issues?

My biggest concern is that my salary won't be enough to pay my ~$1k/month student loan debt.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#178

Post by clarry »

lotsofcows wrote: post #99
dalek_cannes wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 hours for work, 8 for leisure, 8 for sleep and 2 rest days a week seems reasonable, at least mathematically speaking. If it were up to me, I'd include commuting time in those 8 work hours as well, making the number no more than 7 hours.

Sounds pretty arbitrary. It seems to me that a huge number of jobs are all about providing entertainment for people who are too knackered from work to take part in an intellectually and/or physically satisfying hobby. If we could distribute the real jobs evenly how many hours would we _need_ to work to maintain our lifestyle?

> It seems to me that a huge number of jobs are all about providing entertainment for people who are too knackered from work to take part in an intellectually and/or physically satisfying hobby.

This is something I've been trying to say for years now. Thanks for putting it in words so succinctly.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#179

Post by kourt »

crazy1van wrote: post #140

So what is the optimal work day for productivity? Many folks here believe it's a (proven?) fact that less than 40 is actually more productive. However, surely 40 is more productive than 0. So, what is the magic number? Personally, I don't think this is that simple. Heck, humans just aren't that simple. I think some people and some professions are more productive above 40 and others are more productive under 40. That'…

It seems that 40 hours is basically optimal for turn of the 20th century factory work. I've seen several references[0] that the optimum for knowledge work is 35 hours, but I'd LOVE a detailed citation.

While you are correct that people vary, many managers seem extremely ignorant of 200 years of research on this topic and start from grossly wrong initial conditions (e.g., "40 hours is the bare minimum and should be considered slacking: a professional works until the job is done and we really expect 50 hours; we prefer passionate people, which starts at around 55 hours"). It would be far better for almost everyone if the typical standard expectation were based on a typical standard human, not on outliers (e.g., people who carry the DEC2 mutation and need only 6 hours sleep).

Look at it another way: the 75% of the workforce who is average would stop burning themselves out to the point of negative productivity, and supermen like yourself would be truly recognized for your outstanding contributions, rather than just "meh, meets expectations".

[0] e.g. http://www.slideshare.net/flowtown/rules-of-productivity-275...

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#180

Post by anonymousDan »

dragonwriter wrote: post #172
amirmc wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet people complain about the pointlessness of meetings despite not doing anything to make them more efficient (cf start and end on time, avoid chit-chat, stick to the agenda, send actions quickly afterwards etc). It only takes a small about of self-discipline to get there but everyone has to exercise it. I'm lucky to have learned from some excellent meeting-chairs but have only been able to reproduce the efficie…

The #1 thing to make meetings more efficient is not to have them . Very many meetings, IME, are held for purposes for which a face-to-face meeting is not an efficient tool, and for which decentralized, asynchronous mechanisms like email would serve better.

So what would be your rules of thumb for when meetings are worthwhile?
Post reply on HN