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We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

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Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#141

Post by derleth »

javert wrote: post #111
michaelochurch wrote: post #42

25 hours is a good number for average people. I'd say 15-20, even. Ambitious or highly dedicated people will always work more than that, and that's a good thing. What they should have is a lot more freedom in how they spend that time-- working two jobs, one job and school, side projects. The problem is this bullshit conformist fiction in which everyone has to pretend to be ambitious (but only internally) and dedicate…

The best that the law/government can do is to break up the collusions (e.g. among VCs) No, the best that the government can do for startups and the economy is just get out of the way.

> No, the best that the government can do for startups and the economy is just get out of the way.

We've tried that and it failed. Does the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire ring any bells?

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#142

Post by svachalek »

jseliger wrote: post #128
mark_l_watson wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I must disagree. Two people working 20 hours a week are refreshed, not burned out, have time for educationally side projects, etc. I am in my early 60s and for my whole life I limited my work hours to 32 hours per week, even working for large companies. I had lots of time for educational side projects, exercise, extra time with family and friends, and mediation. My only regret was not perhaps cutting this to l…

>Sorry, I must disagree. Two people working 20 hours a week are refreshed, not burned out, have time for educationally side projects, etc. Take a look at Brooks' The Mythical Man Month for data that demonstrates the opposite, at least in programming; I haven't followed the field closely, but education and industrial organization researchers have done similar work in other professions.

1. That was about 40 years ago when the waterfall process was state of the art. Modern, iterative processes are much more flexible. 2. The loss of productivity levels off as the team size increases. Going from 50 to 100 developers is not the same as 1 to 2.

All said, I expect some loss of productivity is inevitable due to context switching and communication overhead but it isn't necessarily a major loss.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#143

Post by __--__ »

zurn wrote: post #134
jdietrich wrote: post #92

In the 1950s, there was the great promise of "the leisure society" - a future of such material abundance that most people would hardly need to work. That society became possible, but we systematically rejected it in favour of more consumption. The cost of living hasn't meaningfully increased, we've just continually redefined luxuries as necessities. My grandparents are perfectly typical working-class people. They gre…

> We overwhelmingly choose to work the greatest number of hours we can sustainably tolerate (somewhere between 40 and 60 hours for most people), in order to maximise our spending power. Not so: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=AVE_HRS (the statistic above excludes vacatyion and national holidays, sick leave, paid maternity/paternity leave etc, which are also much more generous these days) Note how the wel…

Considering I just spend the last month putting in 80+ hour weeks along with all of my co-workers, might I humbly suggest you put "n=1" after your post? Then again, I work in video games. Long hours are the industry standard.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#144

Post by svachalek »

zurn wrote: post #134
jdietrich wrote: post #92

In the 1950s, there was the great promise of "the leisure society" - a future of such material abundance that most people would hardly need to work. That society became possible, but we systematically rejected it in favour of more consumption. The cost of living hasn't meaningfully increased, we've just continually redefined luxuries as necessities. My grandparents are perfectly typical working-class people. They gre…

> We overwhelmingly choose to work the greatest number of hours we can sustainably tolerate (somewhere between 40 and 60 hours for most people), in order to maximise our spending power. Not so: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=AVE_HRS (the statistic above excludes vacatyion and national holidays, sick leave, paid maternity/paternity leave etc, which are also much more generous these days) Note how the wel…

Are you in Europe or something? In Silicon Valley, 50 hours is a fairly typical week most places I've worked and in some companies much higher numbers are the norm. (edit: and all forms of leave are decreasing rather than increasing)

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#146

Post by wildgift »

jdotjdot wrote: post #79
Claudus wrote: post #69

I left my job a year ago, and started doing remote work for a small company. Since then, I've worked between 15 to 25 hours a week. As a result: - I'm more rested and stress free - I get a lot more exercise and I eat healthier - I'm much more efficient and motivated in my work - My creativity and exploration into new fields has bloomed I used to put almost all of my effort into my work, with not enough time devoted t…

Absolutely agreed. I just did the opposite--quit remote freelancing to take on a full time job (this one with insane hours unfortunately, 14hour/day average)--and my level of stress and unhealth has skyrocketed. Autonomy and agency matter, and part of that is the ability to choose the amount of and timing of working hours that are best for you.

Technically, that's not a "full time job". It's nearly two full time jobs.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#148

Post by pvdm »

jseliger wrote: post #128
mark_l_watson wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I must disagree. Two people working 20 hours a week are refreshed, not burned out, have time for educationally side projects, etc. I am in my early 60s and for my whole life I limited my work hours to 32 hours per week, even working for large companies. I had lots of time for educational side projects, exercise, extra time with family and friends, and mediation. My only regret was not perhaps cutting this to l…

>Sorry, I must disagree. Two people working 20 hours a week are refreshed, not burned out, have time for educationally side projects, etc. Take a look at Brooks' The Mythical Man Month for data that demonstrates the opposite, at least in programming; I haven't followed the field closely, but education and industrial organization researchers have done similar work in other professions.

Brooks' was at IBM, they adhere to a 37.5 hours per week work schedule. Programmers who can produce 3-4 hours of real work per day are considered productive. Any more and you will start to burn them out.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#149

Post by 31reasons »

jseliger wrote: post #107
jdietrich wrote: post #92

In the 1950s, there was the great promise of "the leisure society" - a future of such material abundance that most people would hardly need to work. That society became possible, but we systematically rejected it in favour of more consumption. The cost of living hasn't meaningfully increased, we've just continually redefined luxuries as necessities. My grandparents are perfectly typical working-class people. They gre…

>In the 1950s, there was the great promise of "the leisure society" - a future of such material abundance that most people would hardly need to work. That society became possible, but we systematically rejected it in favour of more consumption. I'm not convinced this is true: there are also intense coordination costs and learning costs. Two programmers working 20 hours a week, for example, are way less productive tha…

>Two programmers working 20 hours a week, for example, are way less productive than one programmer working 40 hours a week. And the one programmer will learn faster because she's putting in an extra 20 hours a week.

From where did you pull out that data ? It is always possible that one programmer working 20 hours is more productive than two programmers working 40 hours. It depends what they are actually doing.

Re: We should only work 25 hours a week, argues professor

#150

Post by zurn »

svachalek wrote: post #144
zurn wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We overwhelmingly choose to work the greatest number of hours we can sustainably tolerate (somewhere between 40 and 60 hours for most people), in order to maximise our spending power. Not so: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=AVE_HRS (the statistic above excludes vacatyion and national holidays, sick leave, paid maternity/paternity leave etc, which are also much more generous these days) Note how the wel…

Are you in Europe or something? In Silicon Valley, 50 hours is a fairly typical week most places I've worked and in some companies much higher numbers are the norm. (edit: and all forms of leave are decreasing rather than increasing)

Yes I am. I've heard it's like that with tech in Silicon Valley.
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