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What Long Hours Really Mean

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Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#211

Post by gjm11 »

normloman wrote: post #137
com2kid wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By what natural law is this true? By what will of nature or physics are you deriving your statements? Deserves? Why does anyone deserve anything? Nature itself does not act that way. People around the world deserve not to live in fear of their government killing them. Women deserve not to live in fear of being raped. Children should not live in fear of abuse. Yet untold millions starve, are beaten, tortured, abused,…

"How about those of us born into a life of privilege work harder until suffering is alleviated, until pain is removed, until equality is reached." Chances are, you ain't alleviating suffering around the world by putting in overtime at your shitty startup job. So feel free to pack up at 5PM.

I can't speak for com2kid, but I am alleviating suffering around the world by working hard at my (not particularly shitty) startup job. The amount of money I give to charity is an approximately-constant fraction of my income. If I work harder I'm more likely to get paid more (and, unless I work so hard as to be less productive overall, which is certainly possible and a very bad idea, my employer is more likely to be successful and make my options worth something), so the starving billions get more money from me.

I don't think this situation is all that unusual. Charitable giving that's a fixed fraction of income is common practice in many religions (which have a whole lot of members) and among the "effective altruism" community (which is small but I bet it's overrepresented among HN types), and is a natural enough thing to do that I bet lots of other people do it.

(Ideally I wouldn't need to say these things explicitly, but I will anyway: Of course working harder is not always a good idea; as I said above, it's very much possible to work harder and merely make yourself tired and therefore less effective. And of course working harder, whether it makes you more effective or less, is no guarantee of getting paid more; plenty of employers are quite unresponsive to their employees' commitment and productivity. If anything I've said above looks as if it's denying those things then I expressed myself badly and I apologize.)

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#212

Post by gjm11 »

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #197
throwaway092834 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any equity stake is improved by work in the company. Your argument seems to be that the work isn't sufficient, but you're not being clear about where you draw the line. WRT #2, the impact on income when viewing a career over a long period of time is clear. It appears you're being dishonest by refusing to acknowledge this rather obvious fact. You can say "it's not compensation" until you're blue in the face but at the…

I think the line is somewhat blurred, but I object to the notion that I'm not being clear: if the equity stake doesn't give a person the same, or comparable, authority and take of the profit as "major" shareholders, the person is an employee, not an owner. To take one specific case as an example, if a person can be fired by the "real" owner/equity holders, he's not an owner. So the "Product Manager" in your example,…

Surely what matters is the overall, effective, relationship between work done and money received.

Consider the following "toy model", which is of course a deliberate oversimplification. Everyone starts at a salary of $10000/year, in exchange for which they are required to work 40 hours per week. If you choose, you can work 50 hours per week instead (all year), in which case your salary the next year will be 10% higher.

In this model, all the compensation-or-not-whatever-you-want-to-call-it you get for working extra hours is in the future, and does indeed depend on your working in the future. Just as you say.

On the other hand, someone who works 40 hours a week every week for 10 years gets $100k and someone who works 50 hours a week every week for 10 years gets almost $160k.

I don't think the fact that the compensation is in the future and subject to uncertainty makes it any less real. Imagine that it works this way instead: When you work extra hours one week, you get "paid" a token. If you collect enough tokens, you can exchange them for a salary increase. It seems clear to me that these tokens have value (would you rather have 100 of them than 50? Yes? Then they have value), and therefore being given them in exchange for doing extra work is a form of compensation.

Of course in the real world you don't know that your extra hard work will lead to a salary increase, and you don't know you'll still be working at that employer to take advantage of it. So let's say that those tokens are exchangeable, once you have enough, for stock options instead of salary increases. Again, clearly compensation (though you might choose to be skeptical about how valuable it is) and uncertain in very much the same ways.

It is, for sure, true in a sense that for the extra-hard week you just worked you contributed some "unpaid, free labor to your employer". But you probably did it with the understanding that it would, on balance, lead to your employer paying you more in the future (either in recognition of your productivity and commitment to the company, or on account of being more successful through your efforts, or both). The difference between this and real unpaid work is much the same as the difference between lending someone some money (when they might just run away with it and never repay you) and giving it to them.

Now, if you weaken your claim a little and say that extra work is generally very badly paid, I'd be much more likely to agree.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#213

Post by normloman »

gjm11 wrote: post #211
normloman wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"How about those of us born into a life of privilege work harder until suffering is alleviated, until pain is removed, until equality is reached." Chances are, you ain't alleviating suffering around the world by putting in overtime at your shitty startup job. So feel free to pack up at 5PM.

I can't speak for com2kid, but I am alleviating suffering around the world by working hard at my (not particularly shitty) startup job. The amount of money I give to charity is an approximately-constant fraction of my income. If I work harder I'm more likely to get paid more (and, unless I work so hard as to be less productive overall, which is certainly possible and a very bad idea, my employer is more likely to be…

Giving money to charity is good. But if you worked less, you'd have more time to volunteer. I'd say that's more valuable.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#214

Post by vinceguidry »

dasil003 wrote: post #97
joelrunyon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fine with it defined on the individual level - but somehow making a blanket statement about all people regardless of culture of culture on something as subjective as "work-life balance" seems a bit broad.

That's fine for privileged artisan-class freelancers like talented software engineers are today. What about the powerless working class though?

Oh they have power. Union organization improved their lot immensely. Now they've all but given that power away.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#215

Post by tedks »

normloman wrote: post #213
gjm11 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for com2kid, but I am alleviating suffering around the world by working hard at my (not particularly shitty) startup job. The amount of money I give to charity is an approximately-constant fraction of my income. If I work harder I'm more likely to get paid more (and, unless I work so hard as to be less productive overall, which is certainly possible and a very bad idea, my employer is more likely to be…

Giving money to charity is good. But if you worked less, you'd have more time to volunteer. I'd say that's more valuable.

Being a developer is a very valuable skill. Presumably, working for eight hours as a developer can pay for a number of volunteering efforts, so it's strictly more valuable.

If a charitable organization needed some software written, volunteering to write it would certainly be helpful, but this still requires you to be a domain expert in two things, rather than one.

Unless you mean "valuable" in the sense of "makes you feel more fuzzy," in which case you are killing people and I advise you to stop.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#216

Post by gjm11 »

normloman wrote: post #213
gjm11 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for com2kid, but I am alleviating suffering around the world by working hard at my (not particularly shitty) startup job. The amount of money I give to charity is an approximately-constant fraction of my income. If I work harder I'm more likely to get paid more (and, unless I work so hard as to be less productive overall, which is certainly possible and a very bad idea, my employer is more likely to be…

Giving money to charity is good. But if you worked less, you'd have more time to volunteer. I'd say that's more valuable.

I think current best estimates are that the most efficient charitable donations you can make save about one life per $2000 donated. If you're a decently but not extravagantly paid US software developer (I'm not, but the money is in the right ballpark) then maybe your salary is $100k/year; let's say you donate 5% of that before tax, or $5k/year; that's 2.5 lives saved per year. Most things you could do by volunteering full time probably do less good than that.

(Of course "lives saved" is an unsatisfactory metric; something like QALYs would be better. But the lives-saved figure is the one I happen to remember.)

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#217

Post by philwelch »

quinnchr wrote: post #207
nileshtrivedi wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point. If you really are a solipsist, why would jumping off a cliff have more probability of leading to death than not jumping (because the cliff doesn't really exist)?

Ummm... what? All solipsism says is that you can't be sure reality exists outside of your own mind. You can question whether or not you would be dead outside of your own experience, but you'd still be dead in your internal world.

The only reason to believe that jumping off a cliff leads to death is because that's what we observe happening to other people and we assume we are like other people. But the solipsist has no reason to believe this as the other people don't exist outside of his own mind therefore he is not like them.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#218

Post by quinnchr »

philwelch wrote: post #217
quinnchr wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ummm... what? All solipsism says is that you can't be sure reality exists outside of your own mind. You can question whether or not you would be dead outside of your own experience, but you'd still be dead in your internal world.

The only reason to believe that jumping off a cliff leads to death is because that's what we observe happening to other people and we assume we are like other people. But the solipsist has no reason to believe this as the other people don't exist outside of his own mind therefore he is not like them.

"But the solipsist has no reason to believe this as the other people don't exist outside of his own mind therefore he is not like them."

Except the solipsist is also unsure he exists outside of his own mind too, so why would he believe he is the sole exception to everything he's observed in the only reality he can be sure of?

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#219

Post by philwelch »

quinnchr wrote: post #218
philwelch wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason to believe that jumping off a cliff leads to death is because that's what we observe happening to other people and we assume we are like other people. But the solipsist has no reason to believe this as the other people don't exist outside of his own mind therefore he is not like them.

"But the solipsist has no reason to believe this as the other people don't exist outside of his own mind therefore he is not like them." Except the solipsist is also unsure he exists outside of his own mind too, so why would he believe he is the sole exception to everything he's observed in the only reality he can be sure of?

He already believes he's the sole exception to everything he's observed by definition of being a solipsist.

Re: What Long Hours Really Mean

#220

Post by quinnchr »

philwelch wrote: post #219
quinnchr wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But the solipsist has no reason to believe this as the other people don't exist outside of his own mind therefore he is not like them." Except the solipsist is also unsure he exists outside of his own mind too, so why would he believe he is the sole exception to everything he's observed in the only reality he can be sure of?

He already believes he's the sole exception to everything he's observed by definition of being a solipsist.

No? How does him being unsure that reality exists outside his own mind mean he believes he's the sole exception?

I mean if you're unsure there is a reality outside of your own mind, wouldn't that make you more risk adverse? Your death could potentially mean that everyone you've ever known/loved would cease to exist, even if they are a product of your unconscious mind...

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