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Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

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Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#41

Post by gregpilling »

I offered 12 weeks vacation to my staff in exchange for lower wages (but paid during 12 weeks off). Nobody was interested, and they wanted to stay with the current two weeks paid. So as an employer, I have never had anyone interested in doing a 16 hour week.

I have had many ex-employees (and an ex-partner) who were paid for 40 hours a week, but only worked 16.

To answer your questions directly. 1. They are not easy to find, nor are they often demanded. 2. I don't think it has to be greenfield.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#42

Post by scarecrowbob »

PeterGriffin wrote: post #36

I'm very happy to see people working 16-25 hour work weeks, and it's probably very good for their personal life. Just one question, don't you feel guilty going like that? I'd feel guilty, as if life gave me this time to get as much work done as I can, and I just don't. I know, I know, weird question. But I'm serious.

No.

There is always some worse condition that I could work under. Most of the crap that I do for money is very useful to other folks, and totally useless to me.

And for what it's worth, it's not like I spend the other hours in the week looking at porn or playing games... I work on getting better at playing music, raise my kids, and enjoy my time with my wife. Why should I feel guilty that I spend more time doing things that are meaningful to me and the people around me instead of pursuing money, which is the alternative?

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#43

Post by mikegillman »

gregpilling wrote: post #41

I offered 12 weeks vacation to my staff in exchange for lower wages (but paid during 12 weeks off). Nobody was interested, and they wanted to stay with the current two weeks paid. So as an employer, I have never had anyone interested in doing a 16 hour week. I have had many ex-employees (and an ex-partner) who were paid for 40 hours a week, but only worked 16. To answer your questions directly. 1. They are not easy t…

Interesting. If the staff thought they would have to work through those 12 weeks of vacation anyway... or that it would be impractical to actually take 3 months vacation (or every Friday off), they probably wouldn't risk taking the salary cut. In our society the money feels more valuable than the time.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#44

Post by CapitalistCartr »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #28
techdebt5112 wrote: post #23

People are probably willing to pay you to do this, but not advertising it so much. Most tech companies (at least in the US) are desperate for work. Less than 40 hours is a week is a tough sell because many people feel the onboarding process eats up a lot of time. Primarily, since it's the norm to work 40+ hours (and believe me, it's not difficult to do this and be actually writing code more than 50% of the time) empl…

Yeah, I buy that marginal productivity drops as you add more hours, but I would be shocked to find that sixteen hours is the point at which diminishing returns make additional work pointless. I guess for me the diminishing returns start kicking in closer to thirty hours of hard focused work, and I am by no means the best worker I know.

You are talking as if the employer's point of view is all that matters. Simply because you can produce a bit more useful work, that is, your marginal utility to the company is positive, doesn't mean you should. Marginal value is fine for a piece of machinery, or for the company to decide if they want you to work more, but it shouldn't be your reason to work more. Having fun, want the money, helping a friend; these are employee reasons.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#45

Post by comment3323 »

0.)the entire system or MATRIX design basis is wrong 1.)standard work hours are for industrial revolution and mass manufacturing of low quality items 2.)over age 58 and it is EASIER (yes, to those who are ignorant) IT IS EASIER to understand complex software. Obviously, that is why all the piano GENIUSES are under age 9! 3.)hours make no difference except for the sprint or "Death March" as per Yourdon or do or die. Sure, my best is less than 42 hours straight, but that's because I can avoid mistakes. 4.)There are old pilots. Bold Pilots. and in the USA there are old, bold and "ignore it, deny it" pilots. But there are no old AND bold pilots.

5.)Simple portfolio theory diversification. I want 2.5 jobs time 16 hour work week. SUDDENLY FIRE ME! Oh well, I have my good garden (self taught using OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE) and my 0.5 job. So, I often tell the boss the truth, even if it is a pain in the 'tookus.' - See Capitol Steps song.

6.)Small companies with diversified part-times including some OLD and WISE like me, who have seen MANY MANY failures.. ahhhh what is a dot-com? something with a dot-bomb? how does mergers destroy value and the corporate souls?

8.)I continue on my peripatetic ways. As long as Windows is around, there will be a need for human jobs... err Unix? errror BSD, Solaris... good by Java now that the founder had some public and not nice comments about the BIG O - ra // cle.

14.)LESSON OF LIFE - how strange. take a full time job and boss must DEMAND extra hours. It is not about productivity, but POWER and CONTROL. (in old days, this is called SLAVERY, yesss massah! go to consultant. go part-time. Suddenly the time is VALUABLE. - too much travel. - real simple - Yahoo CEO must work from the office - simply SHUN these types of companies.

18.)As a BOSS, Founder, Open source comrade, I do not want you spreading your cough and sneezes at my office. I only want to see you at the conference where we try to avoid laughing at the competition as they try to hide their pathetic ways of doing business. 19.)yes i am into hobby of strength training, par-kours, informal soccer and so this is play... not work and no, i do not talk about work when I play, u that ignoree

20.)FIRE ALL HR personnel. I personally assign myself 4 hour work week JOBS (55 weeks a year). I am a math flunkout and so I continually CREATE extra time and get MUCH MORE done. Peter Principle - make work expands like in the GREAT USSR COMMUNE SYSTEM to fill the time that is DICTATED from above. right, COMRADES?

We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us We pretend to 16 hour work week, while sending our mind through remote viewing and THEY pretend to take jail attendance.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#46

Post by comment3323 »

0.)the entire system or MATRIX design basis is wrong 1.)standard work hours are for industrial revolution and mass manufacturing of low quality items 2.)over age 58 and it is EASIER (yes, to those who are ignorant) IT IS EASIER to understand complex software. Obviously, that is why all the piano GENIUSES are under age 9! 3.)hours make no difference except for the sprint or "Death March" as per Yourdon or do or die. Sure, my best is less than 42 hours straight, but that's because I can avoid mistakes. 4.)There are old pilots. Bold Pilots. and in the USA there are old, bold and "ignore it, deny it" pilots. But there are no old AND bold pilots.

5.)Simple portfolio theory diversification. I want 2.5 jobs time 16 hour work week. SUDDENLY FIRE ME! Oh well, I have my good garden (self taught using OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE) and my 0.5 job. So, I often tell the boss the truth, even if it is a pain in the 'tookus.' - See Capitol Steps song.

6.)Small companies with diversified part-times including some OLD and WISE like me, who have seen MANY MANY failures.. ahhhh what is a dot-com? something with a dot-bomb? how does mergers destroy value and the corporate souls?

8.)I continue on my peripatetic ways. As long as Windows is around, there will be a need for human jobs... err Unix? errror BSD, Solaris... good by Java now that the founder had some public and not nice comments about the BIG O - ra // cle.

14.)LESSON OF LIFE - how strange. take a full time job and boss must DEMAND extra hours. It is not about productivity, but POWER and CONTROL. (in old days, this is called SLAVERY, yesss massah! go to consultant. go part-time. Suddenly the time is VALUABLE. - too much travel. - real simple - Yahoo CEO must work from the office - simply SHUN these types of companies.

18.)As a BOSS, Founder, Open source comrade, I do not want you spreading your cough and sneezes at my office. I only want to see you at the conference where we try to avoid laughing at the competition as they try to hide their pathetic ways of doing business. 19.)yes i am into hobby of strength training, par-kours, informal soccer and so this is play... not work and no, i do not talk about work when I play, u that ignoree

20.)FIRE ALL HR personnel. I personally assign myself 4 hour work week JOBS (55 weeks a year). I am a math flunkout and so I continually CREATE extra time and get MUCH MORE done. Peter Principle - make work expands like in the GREAT USSR COMMUNE SYSTEM to fill the time that is DICTATED from above. right, COMRADES?

We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us We pretend to 16 hour work week, while sending our mind through remote viewing and THEY pretend to take jail attendance.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#47

Post by thy_inquisitor »

techdebt5112 wrote: post #23

People are probably willing to pay you to do this, but not advertising it so much. Most tech companies (at least in the US) are desperate for work. Less than 40 hours is a week is a tough sell because many people feel the onboarding process eats up a lot of time. Primarily, since it's the norm to work 40+ hours (and believe me, it's not difficult to do this and be actually writing code more than 50% of the time) empl…

Yes, I tried it several times, both working for other people, as well for my personal projects.

I managed to pull out some full weeks of full-time, full-throttle work, but it is completely unsustainable. This is, social life, other activities, having out of the box solutions and ideas, friends, family are all strayed aside as secondary, weekend concerns. Work was the primary concern. That progressively led to loosing focus with other realities, lack of diversity, and all the things that brings on board.

The main point is, even if had 100% efficiency, would it matter if it was directed towards the wrong thing? A good deal of our work is to judge and be critical of how it will impact others, the world even. And sincerely, I think that it is a major problem on many companies which just fail because everyone is too busy "working", but do not collectively have the opportunity to ponder, to talk to other people, to get different perspectives, and realize as whole that the ship is going full steam ahead for the iceberg.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#48

Post by orbitingpluto »

I think the four hour/day jobs are something you have to navigate yourself towards.

At my current job I've automated almost everything with bash, Perl, PHP, Latex, Prolog, Powershell and way too much VBA. Whenever I had a spare moment I would spend it automating something. I've now reached a point where I only need work 30 minutes to 4 hours/day. But of course, since I'm getting paid for a full day and I would feel guilty reading HN all day, I end up in this positive feedback loop where I continue to automate which gives me more time to automate. My next step is to start using Selenium to automate those tasks for which 'external partners' have not provided an API.

My contract is coming up and I'm going to negotiate for slightly less money in exchange for a four hour work day.

It's not in my employer's natural inclinations to permit this, however they would have to hire several unskilled workers to do my work or another programmer for 8 hrs/day.

The tl;dr is: Make yourself indispensable so that a 4hr/day position is an option.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#49

Post by PeterGriffin »

surreal wrote: post #38
PeterGriffin wrote: post #36

I'm very happy to see people working 16-25 hour work weeks, and it's probably very good for their personal life. Just one question, don't you feel guilty going like that? I'd feel guilty, as if life gave me this time to get as much work done as I can, and I just don't. I know, I know, weird question. But I'm serious.

This is an interesting point, but it assumes that one's 'purpose' in life is to work. That's a pretty sweeping assumption, and one which the guilt is predicated on. Any idea why you feel this way? Would it not be just as valid to say that one's purpose in life might be, for example, enjoyment? Or helping others (not necessarily through a job)? In which case you should feel pretty guilty about going to work for 40 of…

I'm not sure it's bad to feel guilty about this. I'm more interested how people who don't feel guilty see life. I mean surely at some point having aimless fun starts looking a bit like wasted time in someone's life, no?

We live to give our tiny contribution to humanity, and we do it by creating something through work. That also brings joy, and we do it to help each other (deviations notwithstanding). But it's a meaningful joy.

If I'd work 16 hours a week all my life, I'd have some serious regrets on my death bed.

Re: Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

#50

Post by asdfologist »

orbitingpluto wrote: post #48

I think the four hour/day jobs are something you have to navigate yourself towards. At my current job I've automated almost everything with bash, Perl, PHP, Latex, Prolog, Powershell and way too much VBA. Whenever I had a spare moment I would spend it automating something. I've now reached a point where I only need work 30 minutes to 4 hours/day. But of course, since I'm getting paid for a full day and I would feel g…

If you're indispensable, you should ask for a raise, not a pay cut.
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