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Is 40 hours a week too much?

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Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#221
post #210

In my stupidity, I've never understood when the 40h, or any X hour per week for that matter, became a requirement per law, instead of an upper limit for health safety. For example, some different type of roads have different upper speed LIMIT. They also have a minimum required speed. Nobody is forced to drive at the upper limit constantly. Today is not a good day, I'm having hard time putting my thoughts into words.…

[deleted]

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm saying is comparing wages is meaningless. If you compare what a month of work gets you in USA, it's astounding compared to what it go you 150 years ago. Imagine buying a beat up car, internet connected computer, cell phone, refrigerator, etc. That's where the productivity growth went: Into better stuff, not into bigger piles of shells.

I don’t disagree that the quality of many goods is much higher, but when you start looking at what the lowest quartile can actually afford to consume the results are pretty starkly worse than they have been in our relatively recent past. A huge chunk of lower income is dedicated to housing, to an extent that many cannot actually afford housing at all. The gains of our productivity have been distributed in a most uneq…

I think everyone from 1850 would trade their favorite toe to live in the lowest quartile in the western world.

When I lived below poverty line I still had internet, a computer, an apt, access to high quality food and medicine (by 1850 standards), plenty of friends, and a television. I just had to live with 3 other people.

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. Let me introduce you to 5DWWBO6HPD (acronym is subject to change). 5 days, 6 hours. If I dont have any meetings past my 6th hour of being in work-mode (including lunch time), I'm not going to produce anything that won't anger me future-self. The 5DWWBO6HPD also helps you to be actually productive after the 6th hour when the need arises every once in a while and you have to be on "Elon is breathing down my n…

Maybe 5D6HWW?

Seems needless to say 5D when that's the status quo -- just 6HWD - Six Hour Work Days

6HWD vs 4DWW - FIGHT ;)

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#224
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The lion never says "It took me 15 minutes to hunt the antelope, if I keep at it, I might hunt 4 more down -- wait I could actually take tomorrow off!" -- The lion isnt stupid, he didn't go to business school. Au contraire, lion is much smarter than the MBA, he knows that even if he hunted down 5 antelopes today, he still can't take tomorrow off: He has to build a fridge on his day off. On the day following his day…

That's civilization, and it is the thing that allowed humans to survive better than lions, despite being physically weaker and less hardy.

Agree completely. My point was that I feel like it doesn't actually take so much effort to maintain that we have to feel strung out all the time. I imagine we could continue to survive and thrive quite effectively with far less effort directed in the right way.

We seem to continue to hustle to survive but the notion of survival is ingrown and only really has meaning within the context of humanity. The broader notion of survival, against the elements, seems like a solved problem.

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#225
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does that even matter? Or do you just assume everyone is a Javascript programmer? If I say "need" people will tell me it's my fault and to change jobs. If I say "want" people will tell me it's my fault and to change jobs.

I don’t assume anyone is a javascript programmer by choice really but anyway. Of course it matters; if you want to be in the office, why count your travel hours? Your choice. If you need to be in the office, that’s another case.

You are missing the point: it is endemic to the culture. It has nothing to do with personal choice. It's like blaming a sexual assault victim for what they wear: that's not the issue, it is toxic masculinity that is the problem, e.g., the culture, not the individual incident.

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#226
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the "I'm sitting down and writing things that are going to be productive" is likely in the 10-20h/week range, there is still a lot of * Meetings * Mentoring * Answering random questions * Continuing education (Hey, Spring 6.0 was just released, what's in that?) * Support (and being available for support) Those can easily fill in a lot of the 'void'. I can point to 5h/week that are standing 'meetings' where it i…

Most of these conversations seem to come down to weird definitions of "productive time". Most of us managers would consider meetings, mentoring, work-related Slack conversations to be productive time. Yet I read a lot of the comments here where people don't consider anything to be productive time unless they're actively writing code, which ignores the realities of working in a team environment. A better metric might…

I work for a company where meetings are extremely rare. We only do formal meetings when everything else fails. It is one of the most efficient/productive companies I have ever worked for.

The least efficient/productive company I have ever worked for had formal meetings all the time. What takes a week where I work now would take 6 months there.

So no I don’t agree that meetings are automatically productive/useful in general. I am pretty sure you can measure how productive a software company is by the following formula:

Time spent working on projects divided by Time spent in meetings.

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#227
post #35

4DWW - Four Day Work Week is the future. So many benefits for workers and the company! It's a win-win for many types of companies. Even if it's not a win for all companies, society would benefit greatly by mandating 4 days of 8 hours with no loss of pay as the standard. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/11/15/1136039542/the...

Disagree. Let me introduce you to 5DWWBO6HPD (acronym is subject to change). 5 days, 6 hours. If I dont have any meetings past my 6th hour of being in work-mode (including lunch time), I'm not going to produce anything that won't anger me future-self. The 5DWWBO6HPD also helps you to be actually productive after the 6th hour when the need arises every once in a while and you have to be on "Elon is breathing down my n…

> 5 days, 6 hours

Many remote salary workers regularly work 6 hour days. Getting more recognition for this seems like a good first step in getting acceptance for 4 days, 8 hours.

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#228
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's civilization, and it is the thing that allowed humans to survive better than lions, despite being physically weaker and less hardy.

Agree completely. My point was that I feel like it doesn't actually take so much effort to maintain that we have to feel strung out all the time. I imagine we could continue to survive and thrive quite effectively with far less effort directed in the right way. We seem to continue to hustle to survive but the notion of survival is ingrown and only really has meaning within the context of humanity. The broader notion…

> The broader notion of survival, against the elements, seems like a solved

not really. It's easy to survive against the elements, but that's because those who perform the tasks of helping you survive against the elements (and food and necessities) are expecting you to contribute higher-order goods/services back.

> thrive quite effectively with far less effort directed in the right way.

so who's doing the directing? if it's a central authority, we know how that went.

The only real option left is market directed. Which is what we have today. There cannot be, at the current technological level, an easy life. Until the day humanity move to post-scarcity, this will remain the case.

Re: Is 40 hours a week too much?

#230
post #155

Reading the comments it seems like we need a recession. The job market of the last few years is not normal, people's expectations are way too high.

Can you explain more what you mean? I'm unsure where you're making your point from.

Like what is happening at twitter. For a startup working until 1am was pretty normal. Lots of 100 hours weeks. Working a 40 hour week to me seems like slacking. This whole attitude of 4 day weeks, or just a few hours a day seems completely crazy, I dont think it will last.
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