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Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

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Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#201

Post by dragonwriter »

VLM wrote: post #181
dragonwriter wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most meetings are primate dominance rituals. That means they're unproductive. On the other hand, if you force a venue change, you're just going to get hyper aggressive git commit messages or something equally stupid to show "who's boss". The only solution I'm aware of is to select employees for hire based on likelihood of not being "into" primate dominance rituals, at least not at work. This is pretty hard to figure…

> Most meetings are primate dominance rituals.

I don't think that's necessarily even a subconscious purpose, but most human group face-to-face interactions end up involving some elements of such rituals, and in the case of meetings they are particularly dominant when the "rich interaction" that is enabled by face-to-face communication isn't used specifically for something else.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#202

Post by Sharlin »

Loughla wrote: post #141
homakov wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd quit. I'm a specialist and will easily find another job.

You seem not to understand the depth of that statement. It's not that one company would have excess hours; all of them would. So, you would be free to find a new position. . . at another company with a 60 hour work week. Look at the history of the labor movement. Those in power tended to abuse those that weren't; long hours, unsafe conditions, etc. Now, unless you work in a coal mine or foundry, we can count out unsa…

And it's not just about abuse of power - 60-hour-workweek companites would simply rather quickly outcompete those that had 40 hour weeks, except in rare cases.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#203

Post by runeks »

karmajunkie wrote: post #182
iamtew wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fairly common thing here in the Netherlands actually, four day work week. Most of my colleagues I know who does this to have some extra time with their family/kids. Usually it's a split in the middle of the week or something, for example my manager doesn't work tuesday's, it's his "papadag" as he then spends time with his kids and don't have to send them off to day-care or get a nanny. Another colleague of…

> obviously these arrangements will affect your salary I don't really find this obvious or self-evident. One of my very biggest complaints about the economic climate today is that all of the productivity gains go to the owners, and very little to workers. If I as a worker am producing more, it follows that I should be working less, or paid more (which amounts to the same thing.) to do otherwise eliminates jobs that w…

> One of my very biggest complaints about the economic climate today is that all of the productivity gains go to the owners, and very little to workers.

The solution to this is to become an owner. Now, creating and operating a company is probably harder than working for it, for it it weren't, why wouldn't people just become owners if it pays better?

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#204

Post by mongol »

bjourne wrote: post #167
showsover wrote: post #2

This stood out to me: >The Swedish town of Kiruna actually gave up its six-hour working days in 2005 after finding that the increased intensity of work was not a positive. "People have seen there that the intensity of the job increases significantly, with negative effects on health as a consequence," Could that be because we are used to fit our work in 8 hours and work accordingly? Doing 100% of your work in 75% of t…

That's because they did it wrong. The idea is that you should only work for 6 hours/day, with the same pay you had before, at the same pace. The 25% lost productivity would be compensated for by hiring from Swedens 10-15% pool of unemployed and underemployed people.

I don't get it. Who pays the wages of the newly hired to compensate for lost productivity?

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#205

Post by hueving »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #185
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…

Is planning and taking vacation really a problem for most people? In nearly 20 years, I've never had to delay a vacation, much less cancel one. Perhaps it's not a function of the company, but rather the worker, valuing work more than rest? The ability to forget work and recharge is critical for creative workers, something companies should be more aware of.

In this strawman of the US, it is. ;-)

I do see this in some of the startups in the bay area though.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#206

Post by cabalamat »

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 normally spend 30-50 minutes travelling to work and about the same time going home. That's about 60-100 minutes per day.

> Is there something wrong with your public transport system?

There's actually a bus stop almost outside my front door, and Edinburgh has a reasonable bus service. However if I was to take the bus to the train station, then take the train and be picked up the other end it would take me about 90 min, which is longer.

An hour a day is only 30 min journey time and I suspect many people in the UK spend longer than that travelling to work. I certainly have in the past.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#207

Post by toomuchtodo »

mkempe wrote: post #103
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.

The purpose is not to diminish time wasted by commuting. In many European cities and regions one does not commute for hours every day. For instance, my brother lives in a 2000 year-old city and walks to work -- it takes him 2 minutes. When I lived in London it took me 15-20 minutes to get to work, with the tube. In a Swiss city before that, 15 minutes driving. And for my job before that, 4 minutes biking.

I commute ~1 hour each way 30 miles from a Chicago suburb to the loop. I envy my European counterparts.

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#208

Post by hueving »

karmajunkie wrote: post #182
iamtew wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fairly common thing here in the Netherlands actually, four day work week. Most of my colleagues I know who does this to have some extra time with their family/kids. Usually it's a split in the middle of the week or something, for example my manager doesn't work tuesday's, it's his "papadag" as he then spends time with his kids and don't have to send them off to day-care or get a nanny. Another colleague of…

> obviously these arrangements will affect your salary I don't really find this obvious or self-evident. One of my very biggest complaints about the economic climate today is that all of the productivity gains go to the owners, and very little to workers. If I as a worker am producing more, it follows that I should be working less, or paid more (which amounts to the same thing.) to do otherwise eliminates jobs that w…

>gains go to the owners, and very little to workers.

If there is such an obvious imbalance, why doesn't everyone just quit and start their own company?

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#209

Post by jonathanleane »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #193
collyw wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the rest of the world end up with such crap politics? What are you doing right in Scandinavia?

Because unlike Scandinavia, they aren't dying civilizations with net negative fertility.

Actually all of the Scandinavian countries have fertility rates of < 2 births per woman...

Re: Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday

#210

Post by toomuchtodo »

kourt wrote: post #179
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 co…

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/

"An average worker needs to work a mere 11 hours per week to produce as much as one working 40 hours per week in 1950. (The data here is from the US, but productivity increases in Europe and Japan have been of the same magnitude.) The conclusion is inescapable: if productivity means anything at all, a worker should be able to earn the same standard of living as a 1950 worker in only 11 hours per week."

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