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Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#201

Post by anon9001 »

dageshi wrote: post #180
macspoofing wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't want to spend most of my life working. I feel like a slave, and now my youth is almost gone. That's a first-world problem if I ever saw one. You're going to work most of your life because if you don't somebody else will have to support you. Very few people can provide for their lifestyle without working (it can be done, but it can be very hard and would require a sacrifice of some of the comforts of modern-d…

You missed the AHDH bit, I can't speak for everyone with ADHD but I understand what op is is saying. With ADHD you've got to constantly force yourself to remain focused on whatever task you're meant to be doing while your mind really just wants to wander off. Sometimes you fall into "flow" on whatever you're working on and everything's great until that task is finished then you've got to mentally whip yourself to mov…

That's also exactly my experience. Thankfully (maybe?) society recognizes that I'm too mentally deficient to do it on my own, so they pump me full of amphetamines so that I can be a good boy at and get my work done.

It would be a worse situation for everyone if I wasn't given the drugs, but there's something awfully dystopian about the whole thing.

I can't wait to be done forever.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#202

Post by b0rsuk »

armagon wrote: post #155
jackcosgrove wrote: post #85

We should switch everyone to rolling weekends. It makes no sense that everyone gets the same two days off. It is such a hassle scheduling doctors appointments, receiving repairmen, going to the DMV, etc. on a weekday. The only reason we have the same two days off is for historical religious reasons. And a rolling schedule could still accommodate that for those who care. For everyone else, just put them on a rolling s…

Russia tried this 90 years ago. It was awful. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_calendar#Five-day_weeks : "Eighty per cent of each factory's workforce was at work every day (except holidays) in an attempt to increase production while 20% were resting. But if a husband and wife, and their relatives and friends, were assigned different colors or numbers, they would not have a common rest day for their family an…

I broadly agree, but with one exception: I think it should be allowed to volunteer for alternate weekend days. Working on Sunday and Saturday should be totally fine for someone who is neither Catholic nor Jewish. My country is in the process of eliminating working Sundays, and it kinda forces people to do giant shoping on Saturday, while limiting leisure options on Sunday (no aquapark etc). That kind of opt-in should be fixed in the contract.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#203

Post by logfromblammo »

ryanmercer wrote: post #115
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am overwhelmingly more productive and valuable now as a specialized, highly educated, experienced engineer than I would have been as a subsistence farmer. As a result of my efforts and the efforts of the rest of society, I have a much higher standard of living. However, I can't truly pick when I want to work. There are no jobs in my area that pay 80% of my current rate for the same task done 4 days a week. If a job…

>I am overwhelmingly more productive and valuable now as a specialized, highly educated, experienced engineer than I would have been as a subsistence farmer. I've got some news for you, many manual labor jobs aren't just picking up a shovel and digging a hole or picking up a box and setting it back down. Your first sentence, to me, reads "I'm more valuable than you because I know thing, so I want more resources for l…

That is a perfectly reasonable sentiment. It is the essence of a specialization economy. Skills that bring more value to the market can take away more resources from it. From each according to ability; to each according to the best deal they could negotiate in exchange for their abilities.

One can state a fact without making it into a brag. Saying, "I get paid more than you" is not the same as saying, "I am a better person than you", despite the culture that the rich prefer to cultivate that equates the two. A person that gets paid $15/hour is the same amount of person as someone paid $100k/year. The latter is "more valuable" only in the economic, marketplace sense, and gets roughly 3x the resources for the same amount of labor, which likely does not involve work that requires separating ass from chair.

If you don't pay people more to acquire the difficult skills, they won't bother, except in rare cases.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#204

Post by bcrosby95 »

rpiguy wrote: post #123
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even with COBRA Why are COBRA prices as crazy as they are? I pay $200/mo for medical insurance, yet COBRA quoted me $800/mo+ I believe.

That is what your employer paid for your insurance. You might be able to get a cheaper plan on Obamacare/ACA. Companies pay large portion of your insurance that you never see. COBRA brings it all to light. There is a movement to count medical benefits as income, which would shed light on this (in fact that was part of Obamacare/ACA, but politicians keep putting it off because they know no wants to pay taxes on their…

Yeah, I would be more fine with employer provided healthcare if people had to pay taxes on it.

I work at a small company and around the ACA times they told us they were weighing their options: removing healthcare benefits with a corresponding bump in pay (including tax ramifications), or keeping healthcare. At the time they let us know what they were paying, and it was a shitload - something like $18k/year for my family of 3.

They ended up keeping healthcare. And now I have a family of 5. No clue what they pay, but I'm sure it's a ton.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#205

Post by caiocaiocaio »

_hn_throw_away wrote: post #12

(This is a duplicate of a story posted this past weekend. I want to copy my comment from it for greater visibility.) Fuck everything about 5 day work weeks. I'll gladly switch to any job that offers a 4 day work week. It's one of the best perks. As someone with ADHD, work days are entirely spent getting work done. There isn't any extra slack or allotment for personal tasks. They're 100% owned by the employer. Weekend…

Slightly off topic, but I was just thinking about how when I was young, I was under the impression that most of my work week would be showing up on time, and doing work for roughly 40 hours a week.

In my 10+ years of office experience I never even come close to 20 hours of actual work in a week, even if I was there for 40-60 hours. Usually, half the time or more was dedicated to office politics and making people who need to constantly socialize feel good about themselves with various meetings and team-building exercises and chit-chat. During one particularly bad period of time, work often only happened the little gap between morning meetings and noon because certain people would come back from lunch pissed out of their minds and make it impossible for anyone to do anything. I never had a problem with the actual work, but the non-work I was putting most of my time and effort into was exhausting and lead to long bouts of depressions.

Now that I'm freelancing from home, with no commute and no babysitting egos, not only am I spending most of my work time on work, but the time I do spend is about 10x more productive, due to lack of office (and commute) stress.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#206

Post by HunOL »

Probably because I have no children and I am not weekend-traveler but I really don't get why some people are so excited about 4 days week. My utilization of hours during weekends is horrible. What I find attractive is idea of working less hours during normal week. Having one more hour at the end of the day sounds way better for me. Moreover from productivity perspective I believe it's better too because nobody is working 8 hours with maximum productivity.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#208

Post by ChrisLomont »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #37
ChrisLomont wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why there is no national healthcare - money, someone makes a ton of it by preventing nationalization of healthcare system It could also be that things cost money, and taxpayers don't want to pay for some things. The Democrats have decided that the rich must pay for it. Republicans have decided that it's too costly. By splitting the crowd, we have reached an impasse. We could do what every other country has done, and…

“The Democrats have decided that the rich must pay for it. Republicans have decided that it's too costly” When you look back at the last few decades you will see that republicans have decided that rich people should pay an ever decreasing share. the Democrat proposals i have seen don’t even try to roll back to tax rates during or before the Reagan years.

>tax rates during or before the Reagan years

The tax rates people quote are not usually effective rates; they're marginal rates, and no one really paid them.

The Reagan tax cuts were revenue neutral - they cut the top marginal rates and removed loopholes. During one of them the effective rate on the rich increased slightly.

>When you look back at the last few decades you will see that republicans have decided that rich people should pay an ever decreasing share.

The middle class and poor have seen very big tax cuts. For example, here [1] are effective tax rates from the CBO for years 1979-2005.

The lower quintile went from 8% to 4.3%, effectively halving their tax rate. 2nd quintile 14.3 to 9.9%, 3rd 18.6 to 14.2, third 21.2 to 17.4, highest quintile 27.5 to 25.5.

The top 1% went from 37% to 31.2%.

So, you claim rich do not pay their share? What is their "share"? The lowest 20% pays 4.4%, the top 1% pays 31.2%.

[1] https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments...

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#210

Post by olyjohn »

Harvey-Specter wrote: post #90
hamandcheese wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever worked in retail or service? I have, and I know people who still do, and it’s hard work. Restaurants, for example, will usually send you home with no pay if there is so little to do that you are warming a chair, and I’ve worked minimum wage retail jobs that do the same.

It has nothing to do with whether or not the job is hard. I've worked retail, food service, and landscaping jobs through high school and university. I know those jobs aren't easy. The difference is that those jobs require workers to be present throughout the day in order to get work done. As a software developer I could probably cut my hours per day and produce the same amount of output. As a waiter my productivity (…

There's an easy solution when workers are required to be present... don't make all the employees work at the same time. Need more hours of productivity? Hire more people.

Also, as a waiter, your wages should not be paid by the customers. Tips are bullshit, and the rest of the world knows this. You should be paid a fair hourly wage.

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