Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by Retric » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 3:25 PM UTC

cstejerean wrote: post #157

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…

$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 bas…

The vast majority of executives I have worked closely with don't add significant value. They are paid well in large part because there are not enough of them to matter. The CEO of micdonalds getting a 200% raise is cheaper than a 1% raise to their minimum wage workers.

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

#252

Post by abalashov » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 3:52 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #183

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…

Plenty of people work much harder than dentists, lawyers etc and get paid an order of magnitude less. Supply and demand sets prices, not worthiness or fairness. Personally, I feel like I sold my teenage years as a price for my edge in tech. I'm not always sure it was worth it.

> Personally, I feel like I sold my teenage years as a price for my edge in tech.

Yes, this. That's how I got here, too. And have the same ruminations from time to time.

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

#253

Post by thesimpsons1022 » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 3:58 PM UTC

draw_down wrote: post #50

ebbv wrote: post #21

I hate to be cynical (really, I do) but this seems like a clear attempt to soften Amazon's current public image as being a horrible place to work. It seems like all surface/headlines and no real substance. The headline makes you assume "Oh employees are going down to 30 hours a week but still being fully paid." because in order for this to be really noteworthy at all, it would have to be, right? But that's not what t…

I'll agree on the reason why they're doing this, but I've actually always wanted this deal, or something like it. Less hours for less pay, which as a software professional would still be pretty good money. The challenge is having that be accepted by the organization, which most American companies won't because we're all supposed to love what we do or whatever. If you're supposed to still accomplish the same amount of…

never heard of a bag that has a weight limit instead of a volume limit.

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

#254

Post by anthony_barker » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 4:13 PM UTC

ta_donk_gt wrote: post #136

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…

As an opposing anecdote, I've spent a significant percentage of my software development years in the medical arena. The overwhelming majority of doctors that I have worked with do not work as hard, anywhere near as many hours, or under as much stress and the overwhelming majority of software developers I have worked with. The stressful period for most doctors is getting into medical school, getting through medical sc…

Doctors working well into their 60s or 70s? Yes

Coders? Never.

Interview for medical job: Normal

Coders?: Often humiliating

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

#255

Post by lordnacho » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 4:21 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #183

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…

Plenty of people work much harder than dentists, lawyers etc and get paid an order of magnitude less. Supply and demand sets prices, not worthiness or fairness. Personally, I feel like I sold my teenage years as a price for my edge in tech. I'm not always sure it was worth it.

Sold them? What do you regret? As far as I can tell, spending my teen years learning stuff was the right move.

Short of becoming a professional sportsman, which was never on the table for me, I don't see anything that I could have now if I had acted differently.

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

#256

Post by brianwawok » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 4:29 PM UTC

biztos wrote: post #238

spangry wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very on point about the AMA functioning as a union. I'm not a software developer (and don't even live in the US) so apologies if this question is ridiculous: could software developers form a union, er I mean the 'American Software Developers Association'? There are strong network effects in many digital markets. In these cases, given enough time, it leads to a monopolist employer in that market. Even in cases where t…

The tricky part would be having some kind of license without which it would be illegal to perform certain engineering tasks.

Auto union workers don't have a license needed. But yes not nearly as successful as the lawyer or doctor unions.

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

#257

Post by nevir » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 4:31 PM UTC

jchendy wrote: post #88

vibrato wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are piloting it on internal HR software which I think says a lot. To me this seems like a purely PR driven move after the lambasting their culture has taken lately.

> They are piloting it on internal HR software which I think says a lot. There's a tendency for people to think that HR software and other internal tools are less important than public products, but if the company is allocating employees properly, that doesn't really make sense. The engineers working on this HR software all passed the same technical interviews that everybody else did. Amazon could have easily allocat…

Amazon's bar is hugely variable based on the org you interview with.

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

#258

Post by pacaro » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 4:32 PM UTC

anthony_barker wrote: post #254

ta_donk_gt wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an opposing anecdote, I've spent a significant percentage of my software development years in the medical arena. The overwhelming majority of doctors that I have worked with do not work as hard, anywhere near as many hours, or under as much stress and the overwhelming majority of software developers I have worked with. The stressful period for most doctors is getting into medical school, getting through medical sc…

Doctors working well into their 60s or 70s? Yes Coders? Never. Interview for medical job: Normal Coders?: Often humiliating

I don't think we'll know the answer to the age question for a little while. The number of coders has been growing over time, so the potential pool of seriously older coders (60+ for sake of argument) is already small to start with.

Anecdotally, three very different examples:

my mother (71) stopped coding in 1969

Guido van Rossum (60) is still coding

Darryl Havens (61) is Distinguished Engineer at Amazon - not per se a coding role, but definitely an engineering role

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

#259

Post by DominikR » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 4:33 PM UTC

swiley wrote: post #215

DominikR wrote: post #130

Could it be that this has to do with Obamacare? I read that it is cheaper to have part time employees in the US right now, but I might be wrong on that.

That's true but I don't think it's cheap enough at these pay levels for that to matter a whole lot.

Well if it was Google or Facebook I certainly wouldn't entertain this thought but with Amazon? They are known to do things that some (not me) regard as pretty shady to shave off costs wherever they can.

I wouldn't object to that as Amazon didn't create the rules, they are just operating within the system in the most efficient way they can.

What I find concerning is that the rules are changed in the West to incentivise part time work (which doesn't pay living wages in other sectors than IT) over full time work, effectively leaving more and more workers dependant on welfare.

It's what we see here in the EU too since the crash in 2008. Many jobs were lost and the recovery was mostly in part time jobs where the government has to support these workers with additional payments in order for them to survive.

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

#260

Post by abalashov » Sat, Aug 27, 2016, 4:34 PM UTC

gfody wrote: post #37

Something about this bothers me. Time-keeping is already not straightforward for an engineer. Because the work is done in our heads and doesn't necessarily stop just because the workday is over. You don't have to be sitting at a keyboard for your head to be grinding on a problem. More often some problem takes hold of you, occupying some mental bandwidth even while you're away, at home trying to enjoy time with your f…

In addition to that, I'm frankly not sure that a 10 hour/week (2 hour/day) savings is going to be worth a 25% pay cut to most people.

I'm not saying two hours per day (or an extra weekday or whatever) is entirely trivial, just that one has to be very fastidious and organised to take advantage of it. Even so, the economics of human task-switching and overhead, particularly in high cognitive load professions like software, are such that the marginal utility of two extra hours is going to be low. Life is not a spreadsheet, where one gets home at 3 PM and $ENJOYMENT or $NECESSARY_ERRANDS immediately commence. I'd probably just catch a breather for a few hours, if lucky, or catch up on the traffic from other life stressors gnawing at me.

Is that worth making 25% less? I don't know about that. I suspect most people would just negotiate a "75%" salary that still makes them reasonably happy.