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Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

takano.house.gov

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Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#141

Post by rasengan »

Cederfjard wrote: post #49
rasengan wrote: post #20

I work 80 hours per week. I do what I love so it doesn’t feel like work. By doing this I am 40 hours ahead every week than most everyone else and the output and results definitely show.

Do you mind expanding on what you’re doing day-to-day? How many of those hours are actually productive? Are you on any drugs to help you keep your energy up and/or sleep? How many hours do you sleep, on average? Do you have any social life, or anything else going on outside of work?

> Do you mind expanding on what you’re doing day-to-day?

Wake up, work out, get to work, eat, get to work, eat, get to work, spend time w/ family, sleep.

> How many of those hours are actually productive?

All working hours. I don't waste a single minute.

> Are you on any drugs to help you keep your energy up and/or sleep?

No.

> How many hours do you sleep, on average?

6

> Do you have any social life, or anything else going on outside of work?

My work is my life and social is there.

Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#142

Post by hackeraccount »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #65
supportlocal4h wrote: post #19

Decades ago the U.S. tied healthcare to employment. It had some big positives at the time. I think it has proven to have more negatives as time has unfolded. Here is one of them. If you reduce hours per worker by, say, 10% you just pay each worker 10% less and hire 10% more workers, right? It's not so simple. If you try to cut the health insurance premium of each worker by 10% the policy becomes unattractive. If you…

It's interesting that my ACA (Obamacare) premiums are lower than the premiums were at my last employer for similar coverage (using COBRA numbers for comparison). This might be because my last employer was bad at negotiating but I think it's mostly because they had an aging Rustbelt workforce and lots of people in roles that were unhealthy long term (linesmen and call centers). Because rates are set based on the pool'…

Premiums are part of the cost of insurance not the entire cost. Sometimes there are co-pays that can be large. I know that the ACA comes in bronze/silver/gold varieties and I seem to remember reading somewhere that the premiums were the same and what was covered was the same among all the "metal" categories but the deductable/co-pay amounts were different. If you had bronze you had a bigger deductable or co-pay then silver or gold.

Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#143

Post by Cederfjard »

rasengan wrote: post #141
Cederfjard wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mind expanding on what you’re doing day-to-day? How many of those hours are actually productive? Are you on any drugs to help you keep your energy up and/or sleep? How many hours do you sleep, on average? Do you have any social life, or anything else going on outside of work?

> Do you mind expanding on what you’re doing day-to-day? Wake up, work out, get to work, eat, get to work, eat, get to work, spend time w/ family, sleep. > How many of those hours are actually productive? All working hours. I don't waste a single minute. > Are you on any drugs to help you keep your energy up and/or sleep? No. > How many hours do you sleep, on average? 6 > Do you have any social life, or anything else…

So you average ~11.5 hours every single day, not a single minute is unproductive, and you’re not on any amphetamines or the like (not that they would necessarily make that possible)?

I’m sorry but you have to forgive me for doubting this. I have never met or heard of anyone with that kind of stamina.

Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#144

Post by SanFranManDan »

hackeraccount wrote: post #142
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that my ACA (Obamacare) premiums are lower than the premiums were at my last employer for similar coverage (using COBRA numbers for comparison). This might be because my last employer was bad at negotiating but I think it's mostly because they had an aging Rustbelt workforce and lots of people in roles that were unhealthy long term (linesmen and call centers). Because rates are set based on the pool'…

Premiums are part of the cost of insurance not the entire cost. Sometimes there are co-pays that can be large. I know that the ACA comes in bronze/silver/gold varieties and I seem to remember reading somewhere that the premiums were the same and what was covered was the same among all the "metal" categories but the deductable/co-pay amounts were different. If you had bronze you had a bigger deductable or co-pay then…

From personal experience I had the same carrier (blue cross) with the same deductible and same copay (the “gold” level PPO) but I currently pay $800 to buy it independently for my wife and I while at my old job the premiums were $1200 a month.

Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#145

Post by paxys »

sokoloff wrote: post #48
supportlocal4h wrote: post #19

Decades ago the U.S. tied healthcare to employment. It had some big positives at the time. I think it has proven to have more negatives as time has unfolded. Here is one of them. If you reduce hours per worker by, say, 10% you just pay each worker 10% less and hire 10% more workers, right? It's not so simple. If you try to cut the health insurance premium of each worker by 10% the policy becomes unattractive. If you…

It’s slightly worse than that. If you have 90 units of work to be done you might hire 9 workers at 10 units each. If the standard work goes down by 10%, you now need 10 workers at 9 units each. Your workers have increased by 11.1% (given by 1-1/(1-0.1)) A reduction from 40 to 32 would reduce hours per worker by 20% but increase workers and total health care costs by 25%.

"Unit of work" is not really a thing for anything other than repetitive physical labor. There's a reason why putting 2x the resources on a problem won't get it solved twice as fast.

Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#146

Post by dragonwriter »

paxys wrote: post #145
sokoloff wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s slightly worse than that. If you have 90 units of work to be done you might hire 9 workers at 10 units each. If the standard work goes down by 10%, you now need 10 workers at 9 units each. Your workers have increased by 11.1% (given by 1-1/(1-0.1)) A reduction from 40 to 32 would reduce hours per worker by 20% but increase workers and total health care costs by 25%.

"Unit of work" is not really a thing for anything other than repetitive physical labor. There's a reason why putting 2x the resources on a problem won't get it solved twice as fast.

> "Unit of work" is not really a thing for anything other than repetitive physical labor.

Declining marginal productivity by hours worked per unit time definitely applies to repetitive physical labor past, too.

Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#148

Post by derefr »

mason55 wrote: post #139
derefr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like there’s no sensible reason that employers/contractors should be allowed to establish contracts where “knowledge work” is being compensated for time worked (i.e. to set an hourly wage, and an expected number of working hours.) No matter who thinks they benefits by such a contract, it seems to almost always turn out for the worse for both parties. It seems like instead, almost all “knowledge work” is real…

The problem is that this model loses most of the benefits of the Firm (economies of scale of labor). Let's say you have some money and want to make something happen. You find a developer and an infrastructure person. Now you have to negotiate a price with each of them for some defined output (and unless you're technical you probably need to first negotiate with the dev to get her to produce an infrastructure plan, th…

I wasn't exactly suggesting that everyone work as contractors with a pre-negotiated contract.

I was more motioning toward the idea of "sprints" as being a similar thing to "milestones" — i.e. that the product of one or two weeks of labor at expected levels of productivity are "the contractual output", and that beyond that, the process by which an employee produces "the contractual output" is a black box which the Firm should not tamper with. Each "sprint" is not exactly a negotiation, because the person defining the sprints should be someone on the knowledge-worker's "side", protecting them from Firm over-exploitation with the goal of ensuring their long-term productivity.

As it happens, this is the original idea behind Extreme Programming — with an engineering manager presenting an API to the Firm where the Firm can push Tasks to be worked on, and then the Tasks will get broken up + rearranged + scheduled into Sprints, and from there allocated onto a set of knowledge-workers; and where the Firm can't know or control anything more about that "thread pool" of knowledge-workers, other than 1. knowing who is part of it, and 2. examining its aggregate output at the end of the sprint.

Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#149

Post by rasengan »

Cederfjard wrote: post #143
rasengan wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you mind expanding on what you’re doing day-to-day? Wake up, work out, get to work, eat, get to work, eat, get to work, spend time w/ family, sleep. > How many of those hours are actually productive? All working hours. I don't waste a single minute. > Are you on any drugs to help you keep your energy up and/or sleep? No. > How many hours do you sleep, on average? 6 > Do you have any social life, or anything else…

So you average ~11.5 hours every single day, not a single minute is unproductive, and you’re not on any amphetamines or the like (not that they would necessarily make that possible)? I’m sorry but you have to forgive me for doubting this. I have never met or heard of anyone with that kind of stamina.

You've met me now. I don't have to work of course, 9 digits in the bank etc. etc., but I'm doing things based on mission and passion.

For example, what I did last month was https://remotes.irc.com/ all while continuing to run all the other companies of which I'm involved.

If you like what you do, it isn't work and you'll do whatever it takes to get things done, to the level of desperation.

I'm the real deal brother.

Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#150

Post by sudosysgen »

throwaway6734 wrote: post #135
sudosysgen wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not really. Unless you die young very rapidly in a way that won't incur major medical costs, you're going to get your money's worth eventually, with the added benefit of stability.

That's assuming I'd work at the same company forever. Different places of work have different insurance plans

If you're in the US, perhaps. The solution to the problem you're describing is single payer healthcare.
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