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

Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 267 posts

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

#161

Post by plaguuuuuu »

zackmorris wrote: post #55

I have been working 25 hour weeks for a little over a year now, but agonizing over finding a good number for years before that. I've found that for difficult problems to crack, I may only work 1 or 2 hours per day. But for easier stuff like initial setup, a little refactoring, translating wireframes to layouts, etc, I can easily manage 6 or 7 hours per day. 8+ is too much, and working 3 or more days in a row at that…

> It’s crude but until I have an indexed, version controlled browser with everything I’ve ever viewed

interesting

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

#162

Post by mattm »

asdfologist wrote: post #35

I sometimes wonder if, for mind-intensive, non-repetitive jobs such as programming (the good ones, anyway), lowering the number of work hours per week may actually increase overall output. It's well known that people tend to become more efficient the less time they're given to complete a task. So if people were to work fewer hours and use the rest of the time to get more sleep, relax with their family, etc. - hence k…

During the war, Kellogg's moved to a 30-hour work week. An overwhelming majority of employees preferred it. Despite the reduced hours, Kellogg's found that overall productivity actually went up.

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

#163

Post by reustle »

VLM wrote: post #65
neilsharma wrote: post #53

I'd really love something like this, but haven't heard of any companies that hire for less than 40. Some companies (like Google) occasionally hire part-time, but they get proportionally lower salary and none of the benefits. I'm a big believer that the 40 hours you'd spend at work has a lot of unproductive time and drains too much energy to do meaningful activities or work afterwards. Here's a great piece on why 21 h…

The linked to piece has a lot of "post carbon era" talk, but we currently live in the pre-"post carbon era" and all this 4/5 or whatever would seem to burn a lot of extra gasoline and irreplaceable commute time. I'd rather work 10/2 and not spend so much time sitting in a car burning expensive non-renewable gasoline. Invert the work week and the week end!

The primary point of this thread is that it is hard to be very productive for 6 or 7 hours a day, let alone 10. Also I gather most people here are talking about working remotely.

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

#164

Post by gbog »

gexla wrote: post #78

Four hours per day of work where you are in high focus is about normal. You will see that professionals across many creative fields only work 4 hours per day. There are a lot of posts here from developers talking about how they are more productive than their peers working less hours. Really, they probably have the same capacity for hours, but the less productive developers are carrying a lot of baggage in attempting…

"all you can do without burning out."

If I may, this sounds to me like if you assumed that everyone should be working just one step below burn out limit. And this seems to be shared by so many people. I wonder what is the rationale behind it? Is it a way to maximise income? or to make sure the 1billionth chance to be a new Bill Gates or Steve Jobs is not lost?

For me, as a French, it seems obvious that we should be very far from the burn out limit most of the time, we should be close to the balance between happiness and boredom, while keeping a sufficient income.

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

#165

Post by guru1206 »

capisce wrote: post #123
zackmorris wrote: post #55

I have been working 25 hour weeks for a little over a year now, but agonizing over finding a good number for years before that. I've found that for difficult problems to crack, I may only work 1 or 2 hours per day. But for easier stuff like initial setup, a little refactoring, translating wireframes to layouts, etc, I can easily manage 6 or 7 hours per day. 8+ is too much, and working 3 or more days in a row at that…

Hehe, the web of interests sounds very familiar. I'm using pocket (getpocket.com) to cut down on the number of tabs though, maybe it would be useful for you as well.

Same here :)

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

#166

Post by dkokelley »

gregpilling wrote: post #137
mikegillman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

its a small manufacturing business. They would not have had to work the 12 weeks.. They simply weren't interested. I was surprised, since it is a rule I wanted for myself. So I made the rule anyway. My engineer wants to take a month off, but she is doing it as a unpaid leave. She had already saved her living expenses for the time she would be off, so it didn't matter to her.

A: Was it an even trade of days off for pay?

B: What is your unpaid time off policy? Could your employees take 4 weeks off and receive their regular 2 weeks vacation pay? (Specifically, can they do this upon request. I understand that your engineer is doing this, but I don't know if that's available to everyone as a rule.)

If I was given the option of making 100% pay with a relaxed unpaid time off policy, or making 80% pay with a 20% PTO policy, I would choose the former option. That way I can decide exactly how much vacation/unpaid time as I want.

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

#167

Post by Thiz »

25 hours a week is for me the perfect schedule, dedicating four hours a day to full coding and one hour to fuck off with management about brainstorming, requirements, proposals, design, and boring meetings.

Once they're happy, I say goodbye for the day and immerse myself in my editor. Not a single fly tries to cross between me and my monitor while coding.

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

#168

Post by spacemanmatt »

taf2 wrote: post #73
VLM wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I've been trying to convince my current boss that a 3-day week would be a more efficient and compressed use of my time" I do four tens per week on flextime to avoid commute traffic and one major "cultural impedance mismatch" is discussing this face to face with people who are at their workplace (note that I don't describe that as working, merely being at a certain location), perhaps five twelves or even six fourteen…

Sorry but this all sounds lazy to me. If there are any real customers using the software they are going be rather unforgiving of your desired work ethic. Perhaps in a large org with a staggering of staff this could work... But would be challenging to keep the continuity throughout the work week. Certainly an interesting idea for the larger orgs.

Perhaps his real customers are internal, and his continued employment proves they are satisfied.

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

#169

Post by localhost3000 »

gedrap wrote: post #92
gexla wrote: post #78

Four hours per day of work where you are in high focus is about normal. You will see that professionals across many creative fields only work 4 hours per day. There are a lot of posts here from developers talking about how they are more productive than their peers working less hours. Really, they probably have the same capacity for hours, but the less productive developers are carrying a lot of baggage in attempting…

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"

tell that to a medical resident...or just about any in-hospital physician, for that matter. many, many people work long shifts and are entirely productive.

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

#170

Post by dennisgorelik »

gbog wrote: post #164
gexla wrote: post #78

Four hours per day of work where you are in high focus is about normal. You will see that professionals across many creative fields only work 4 hours per day. There are a lot of posts here from developers talking about how they are more productive than their peers working less hours. Really, they probably have the same capacity for hours, but the less productive developers are carrying a lot of baggage in attempting…

"all you can do without burning out." If I may, this sounds to me like if you assumed that everyone should be working just one step below burn out limit. And this seems to be shared by so many people. I wonder what is the rationale behind it? Is it a way to maximise income? or to make sure the 1billionth chance to be a new Bill Gates or Steve Jobs is not lost? For me, as a French, it seems obvious that we should be v…

If you don't push yourself, then you don't grow fast enough.

Burnout is also bad, so the ideal is to stay exactly one step below burnout.

Post reply on HN