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Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

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Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#151

Post by krisdol »

andrewguenther wrote: post #115
obstacle1 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is the case for the specific type of person who ends up working where you work. But it isn't universal. Many of us don't need "adult supervision" in order to be highly productive.

> But it isn't universal. Neither are people being highly productive without "adult supervision." In all seriousness, I find your comment incredibly insulting. I gave an opinion based off of experience, that doesn't mean that I'm some sort of child that needs to be supervised. > the specific type of person who ends up working where you work I typically prefer to keep my comments here civil, but seriously? Fuck you.

> I gave an opinion based off of experience, that doesn't mean that I'm some sort of child that needs to be supervised.

It also doesn't mean you're an expert. Next time you give your opinion, try not being insulting, and help us understand why you have that opinion. You gave one sentence that painted everyone working from home as lazy, and stated it as a fact.

I work from home when I need to be more productive. The office has too many coworkers with ad hoc questions that apparently aren't important enough to ask online.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#152

Post by krisdol »

trentmb wrote: post #81
andrewguenther wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because working from home is usually light on working.

It's usually more honest. I guarantee I'm not working 8 hours straight in the office.

When I work from home (or often, a cafe), I don't waste time commuting and going out to a long lunch. I get more hours of work done and less stress from navigating traffic.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#153

Post by krisdol »

jaredsohn wrote: post #57
gtrubetskoy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which way is "working from home" "taking it easy"?

It can be quieter, you don't have to deal with office distractions, and if you are an introvert it can be less draining.

That sounds ideal for working harder, not taking it easy :).

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#155

Post by rad88 »

Dwolb wrote: post #131
lettergram wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can usually just do the math. Let's assume last year I decreases the loading time of our website by 50%, taking it from 2 seconds to 1 second. This reduces the drop off rate of customers (people who switch websites before it loads) by about 15%. That means a 15% increase in overall sales. Now let's assume it was a $10 million a year business. That means it's now making $11.5 million dollars a year because a softw…

Why does everyone talk like the leverage of the business is the leverage of the developer when discussing compensation? That's not how it works. Compensation is set by the market: what is the next person who can do this same job willing to be paid? If we go out into the market to find all the people that can decrease page loading time by 50% and have them bid against each other, we will probably end up paying the low…

I have rarely ever heard someone argue that. lettergram did not argue that, only that employee wages are exploitative. In a labor market with unemployment and no real safety net it's clear that workers cannot individually leverage a fair wage.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#156

Post by jchendy »

nilkn wrote: post #133
lettergram wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can usually just do the math. Let's assume last year I decreases the loading time of our website by 50%, taking it from 2 seconds to 1 second. This reduces the drop off rate of customers (people who switch websites before it loads) by about 15%. That means a 15% increase in overall sales. Now let's assume it was a $10 million a year business. That means it's now making $11.5 million dollars a year because a softw…

Well, my own experience is that the $1.49 million would more likely be reinvested in the company as a whole: hire more developers, more salespeople, expand the office, etc. That money would also take an entire year to materialize and would require your back of the envelope math to pan out perfectly. Requesting a $1.5 million dollar bonus for making the website faster seems a little ludicrous and potentially hostile t…

> Well, my own experience is that the $1.49 million would more likely be reinvested in the company as a whole: hire more developers, more salespeople, expand the office, etc

A lot of it also goes to essential business expenses: HR, legal, the AWS bill, the new feature that's currently losing money but will pay off in the long term.

And the person who made the $1.5mm code fix didn't do it on their own. They wouldn't have been able to improve the code if somebody else hadn't already written the first version. And neither of them would have been able to get their code into production if somebody hadn't set up the build and release process for the company. And they never would have been in the position to make the $1.5mm fix if their manager hadn't identified the need for an additional engineer on the team and recruited them. And the company wouldn't exist if the founder hadn't had the idea in the first place. And the company would have blown up last year if the lawyers hadn't made sure the company was protected from a frivolous lawsuit. Et cetera, et cetera.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#157

Post by cstejerean »

lettergram wrote: post #127
nilkn wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical of claims that developers are underpaid. Maybe I feel differently about this because I'm not in a major tech hub and am not faced with the prospect of buying a multimillion dollar cottage, but when I compare my life as a software developer to that of more or less anyone else I know, including doctors and lawyers, I struggle to find a single person who seems to have a more comfortable life than me. I'm n…

You can usually just do the math. Let's assume last year I decreases the loading time of our website by 50%, taking it from 2 seconds to 1 second. This reduces the drop off rate of customers (people who switch websites before it loads) by about 15%. That means a 15% increase in overall sales. Now let's assume it was a $10 million a year business. That means it's now making $11.5 million dollars a year because a softw…

$10M in sales with what profit margin? 20%? In that case the $1.5M in extra sales is $300k in profit. Also a developer with $100k in salary costs about $125k when you consider payroll taxes, insurance, 401k matching, etc. If you factor in the cost of office space, equipment and support staff the total cost per employee could easily be $200k. Most developers also don't increase revenue by $1M per year on a regular basis. So when you look at the whole picture you realize that most developers aren't as underpaid as you think. And the ones that can consistently generate $1M+ in profit by themselves definitely do get paid much more than your typical developer.

If you think most executives have no idea what is going on and add zero value then I am guessing you haven't spent much time around executives. The whole reason your typical developer got their job and is able to keep it in the first place is because executives figured out how to run the business well enough to grow and continue to hire developers and then allocate them to projects where they can increase revenue. If you think it's easy I recommend you give it a try sometimes.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#158

Post by vacri »

lettergram wrote: post #127
nilkn wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical of claims that developers are underpaid. Maybe I feel differently about this because I'm not in a major tech hub and am not faced with the prospect of buying a multimillion dollar cottage, but when I compare my life as a software developer to that of more or less anyone else I know, including doctors and lawyers, I struggle to find a single person who seems to have a more comfortable life than me. I'm n…

You can usually just do the math. Let's assume last year I decreases the loading time of our website by 50%, taking it from 2 seconds to 1 second. This reduces the drop off rate of customers (people who switch websites before it loads) by about 15%. That means a 15% increase in overall sales. Now let's assume it was a $10 million a year business. That means it's now making $11.5 million dollars a year because a softw…

By your math, the janitors are worthless. Fire them all, and give that money to the devs! Then, as the garbage piles higher and the weird smells ground into the carpet linger, you can keep yourself warm with your extra money.

Also, why shouldn't the investors get their cut? They were forking over their money to pay you before a line of your code ever hit production; going by your math, developers should be paid on contigency of the code they write getting into production, and penalised if there's a regression.

Re: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

#159

Post by antjanus »

Dwolb wrote: post #131
lettergram wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can usually just do the math. Let's assume last year I decreases the loading time of our website by 50%, taking it from 2 seconds to 1 second. This reduces the drop off rate of customers (people who switch websites before it loads) by about 15%. That means a 15% increase in overall sales. Now let's assume it was a $10 million a year business. That means it's now making $11.5 million dollars a year because a softw…

Why does everyone talk like the leverage of the business is the leverage of the developer when discussing compensation? That's not how it works. Compensation is set by the market: what is the next person who can do this same job willing to be paid? If we go out into the market to find all the people that can decrease page loading time by 50% and have them bid against each other, we will probably end up paying the low…

I see this conversation every fucking week on HN.
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