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Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

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

#151

Post by lukefreiler »

gexla wrote: post #132
gedrap wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. 9-5 (or 9-6) engineering jobs are a bit crazy - no one is able to work productively for 8 hours, that's a fact. Many managers understand that and are cool with people just not doing work while at work... However, I would still prefer to go home than sitting and waiting for 5 or 6pm so I could do something more meaningful, because e.g. side-projects is a gray area while at work and that's fair. Even so,…

This is difficult to quantify, but I'm guessing if we could graph productivity, it would look a lot like a sleep graph. In maybe the first 3 - 4 hours of sleep, you are deep in. That's the most productive sleep. Though you might go through a few cycles in that time, the cycles are deep. Then the cycles get less and less deep until the final hours in which you are barely sleeping. Some freaks of nature may be able to…

This is a very personal/subjective issue. I have no problem at all being productive for 8-12 hours a day. Probably in part because I love what I do.

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

#152

Post by gordaco »

glesica wrote: post #68
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…

...and believe me, it's not difficult... This is why I feel the productivity argument is really very weak. There are many people who seem to be quite productive even working 40-50 hours per week. I think a much, much better argument is that working 40 hours a week is a waste of my life. I value my time quite highly because I have numerous and varied interests. So even if my productivity (and therefore, at least theor…

I agree SO much with all this. "Working 40 hours a week is a waste of my life" is also how I feel, but a lot of people will inevitably call you lazy. And yes, it's very infuriating that part-time jobs don't pay enough to live (at least in my country), while full-time ones leave you with money you don't have anything to spend it, but little time.

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

#153

Post by fleitz »

stevesimmons wrote: post #144
gedrap wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. 9-5 (or 9-6) engineering jobs are a bit crazy - no one is able to work productively for 8 hours, that's a fact. Many managers understand that and are cool with people just not doing work while at work... However, I would still prefer to go home than sitting and waiting for 5 or 6pm so I could do something more meaningful, because e.g. side-projects is a gray area while at work and that's fair. Even so,…

> no one is able to work productively for 8 hours, that's a fact How do you know this? Are you sure you aren't extrapolating your own energy levels and assuming everyone else feels as you do? I know plenty of people with phenomenal drive, focus and energy who are extremely productive for much longer work days. My own situation is a counterexample. I am at my desk at 6:30am most days, can easily work 14+ hour days vir…

Actually reduced cognitive ability (lack of sleep) makes the simplest of tasks more entertaining, it's a large part of the reason they give amphetamine analogues to those who are not challenged by school, and why you'll find that those that are passionate about the the long hours of sorting through trash to commit identity fraud also high on meth.

Another great example of how people don't realize how cognitively impaired they are is hypoxia, just look at how passionate the guy becomes trying to put square shapes in square holes, so passionate he believes he no longer needs an oxygen mask to survive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpLi67NdD4w

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

#154

Post by hopeless »

I worked 20-25hrs / weeks for about 2 years as a consultant but then, probably against my better judgement, joined a company in March doing the standard 37+hrs. I'm unhappy, unfocused and RescueTime tells me that my efficiency has dropped about 20%.

After only a few months, I'm going back to consulting with a 20-25hr week. If you haven't tried it, you probably don't realise the universally positive effects it will have.

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

#155

Post by seivan »

Cederfjard wrote: post #58
seivan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I down voted you for the VC being closer to knowledge work than writing software. Sorry but that is just plain wrong - on both ends. Hen is right that expecting 40 hours out of a software engineer is ridiculous.

I'm not sure that "hen" has spread quite so much yet that you can expect to use it in English conversation. Nu undrar ju folk varför du kallar OP för en höna. ;) If anyone is curious what I'm on about, "hen" is a gender-neutral pronoun in Swedish that has had a resurgence in the last few years. It's partly politically motivated and a little controversial, since we generally only use gender-specific ones. Sorry for th…

I don't care. Will still use it and educate. I am aware that it might mean höna for some, but I am expecting curiosity to get the better of 'em and hope they look into it.

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

#156

Post by pbhjpbhj »

stevesimmons wrote: post #144
gedrap wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. 9-5 (or 9-6) engineering jobs are a bit crazy - no one is able to work productively for 8 hours, that's a fact. Many managers understand that and are cool with people just not doing work while at work... However, I would still prefer to go home than sitting and waiting for 5 or 6pm so I could do something more meaningful, because e.g. side-projects is a gray area while at work and that's fair. Even so,…

> no one is able to work productively for 8 hours, that's a fact How do you know this? Are you sure you aren't extrapolating your own energy levels and assuming everyone else feels as you do? I know plenty of people with phenomenal drive, focus and energy who are extremely productive for much longer work days. My own situation is a counterexample. I am at my desk at 6:30am most days, can easily work 14+ hour days vir…

Could you tell us what field you work in, some details about the specifics of your job, your age, and maybe why you want to dedicate all your waking hours to working rather than something else?

Do you understand that what you're describing is anomalous behaviour and ability. In Europe we have legislation to protect people against being forced to work for more than 12 hours at a time because this has been seen to be detrimental to health. I see no reason why your reported lack of external coercion makes it healthier.

With 3 hours of sport (what sport would that be?) you're describing a day of 17+ hours. 2 hours for meals seems pretty reasonable. Commuting, eg to the location where you do your sport would be extremely unlikely to be less than 30 mins. That leaves you < (!) 4½hrs for sleep, toilet, washing, keeping house, family/friends (except sport and eating with them), entertainment ... you don't tell us how many days a week but "keep that up indefinitely" sounds like you don't bother with weekends?

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

#158

Post by nitrogen »

leoh wrote: post #116
nitrogen wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any office job ever. As much as 50% of the time in an 8 hour day can be spent chatting with coworkers or inadvertently zoning out.

Or meetings. Poorly run meetings. Probably because people are tired.

Meetings can be incredibly useful (at least until we invent telepathy), but only if they're run well and held sparingly. Otherwise they turn into an easy way to look busy.

As you suggest, efficient meetings aren't really possible when people are overworked. Even one-on-one conversations can fall apart when sleep deprived. I've had work-related conversations at the end of an overly long 8h day where neither one of us could form coherent sentences about the code we were discussing. In an ideal world, we would have left work two hours prior.

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

#159

Post by nitrogen »

twelvechairs wrote: post #125
nitrogen wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any office job ever. As much as 50% of the time in an 8 hour day can be spent chatting with coworkers or inadvertently zoning out.

This is a completely different argument. This is "most people aren't efficient, therefore because I am I should be able to work less" where OP's was "creative people can't (and don't) work above 4 hours" (yet can somehow do so on their own side project). I'll agree with you in general on this one (though perhaps then you should be happy with s 'standard job' salary), but disagree with OP.

This is a completely different argument. This is "most people aren't efficient, therefore because I am I should be able to work less" where OP's was "creative people can't (and don't) work above 4 hours" (yet can somehow do so on their own side project).

Not quite; it's more like "most people aren't effective for more than four single-task focused hours per day, myself included, so everybody should be able to 'work' fewer hours."

Working on a side project might use a different part of the brain or a different sort of willpower reserve, so it's entirely possible that someone will fall asleep after four hours of actual work, but could then go home and spend another two hours on something completely different.

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

#160

Post by twelvechairs »

nitrogen wrote: post #159
twelvechairs wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a completely different argument. This is "most people aren't efficient, therefore because I am I should be able to work less" where OP's was "creative people can't (and don't) work above 4 hours" (yet can somehow do so on their own side project). I'll agree with you in general on this one (though perhaps then you should be happy with s 'standard job' salary), but disagree with OP.

This is a completely different argument. This is "most people aren't efficient, therefore because I am I should be able to work less" where OP's was "creative people can't (and don't) work above 4 hours" (yet can somehow do so on their own side project). Not quite; it's more like "most people aren't effective for more than four single-task focused hours per day, myself included, so everybody should be able to 'work'…

I agree that not every hour is super productive, but not that 4 hours is 'normal' as said above. Nor that you could be 100% productive in a 4 hour job timeslot. There's also productivity losses if you have 2 people working on a project half the time rather than 1. I agree people should probably work less and have more time for their own projects but there is nothing normal about this in other professions apart from the odd artist who may well hover around the poverty line.
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