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Can we have the day off?

mlsu.io

271–280 of 823 posts

Re: Can we have the day off?

#271

I've worked 3x12, 4x10, and 5x8, without AI. I think I was most productive on the 3x12 schedule. On the days I worked, I was able to lock in and get a lot done, and had a significant amount of time outside of the normal working hours, which were free from meetings and distractions. During those 3 days all I really did was work and sleep. On the 4 days off I was able to rest and recover and actually have a life. It al…

I think that’s more about what you do than how you do it. And sometimes when to do it.

You could try a data engineer’s life which is full of meetings, ad-hoc tasks and other BS —- everything that screams that this is not a real engineer job.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More household work was done in this era, before grocery stores sold prepared food, before washing machines. And more people lived in less square footage, with grandparents living in the home, less privacy and autonomy. I don't know if we've made the right trade, but it's not the case that a single worker's income was paying for the kind of lifestyle a family of four now has.

How is this relevant? The houses built in the 60s aren't affordable either. Look at median income and median home prices. You're telling on yourself. Average families aren't buying prepared food and they have a washing machine from the 90s they bought on craigslist. There's a 90% chance if you are on this site, you are not average. You are a part of the haves and you need to consider that you are living a very differ…

> The houses built in the 60s aren't affordable either.

Far, far more people and the same amount of land.

> Average families aren't buying prepared food and they have a washing machine from the 90s they bought on craigslist.

Well, that's just not true. The average person is absolutely terrible with their money. Not only are they buying prepared food, they're paying someone to drive it to their house.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but you are missing the point: our time can now make the company way more money. Can’t we demand a piece of this?

> Can’t we demand a piece of this? You can demand whatever you want. You could demand a million dollar salary if you wanted. The challenge is that there are a lot of very qualified devs who would do it for less. Labor is a market. Supply and demand determines your wages. There are always hand-wavey arguments about unionization fixing this, but when other developers are hungry for those jobs and willing to go around t…

I was in the musician's union for 12 years before I got into tech. There were some silly rules, like someone couldn't be both a musician and and orchestrator on the same show, because it's "doing 2 jobs". It's like saying you can't be full stack. You couldn't fire people who were bad at their jobs and stopped putting in any effort. There was a profit sharing agreement that the union rejected, because it would come at the expense of higher base salaries, and then they wondered why there were only big producers that first developed the show out of town.

Some rules I actually liked. Rehearsals started and ended _exactly_ on time to avoid overtime (showing up late was the only reason you could be fired, which was a useful compromise). But generally, the union was the yin to the producers yang, and an adversarial position as worker advocate was where they wanted to be, they didn't want more ownership.

If someone gave me the chance to join something more like a worker-owned coop, where the workers on the business and vote on how it works, I would actually be down. There's a grocery store down my street like this and it's a great place. I don't know how this would actually work in tech. If there's no startup capital, no one will have a salary or benefits for years until there's a profit (if at all). And capital comes in exchange for ownership of the future upside.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#274
post #231

I've worked 3x12, 4x10, and 5x8, without AI. I think I was most productive on the 3x12 schedule. On the days I worked, I was able to lock in and get a lot done, and had a significant amount of time outside of the normal working hours, which were free from meetings and distractions. During those 3 days all I really did was work and sleep. On the 4 days off I was able to rest and recover and actually have a life. It al…

in tech, we (frequently are expected to) work 5x12!

996 FTW!

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

Re: Can we have the day off?

#275
post #145
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? You just need to ban companies from doing 5 days work.

Amusingly, there is literally not even a 7 day work week ban for companies in the US. You can require employees work every day. Employers are just required to pay employees overtime under various conditions beyond 40 hours / five days a week, which is why you don't see it. And what's more, software engineers are exempt from these rules because of their pay grades. If you're a SWE making a salary the odds are your emp…

it's not powered by norms. In the US, if you want to employ someone more than 40 hours you have to give them extra overtime pay. It's called the Fair Labor Standards Act and it was passed in 1938

Re: Can we have the day off?

#276

1 And afterward Moses and Aaron came, and said unto Pharaoh: 'Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel: Let My people go, that they may hold a feast unto Me in the wilderness.'2 And Pharaoh said: 'Who is the LORD, that I should hearken unto His voice to let Israel go? I know not the LORD, and moreover I will not let Israel go.' 3 And they said: 'The God of the Hebrews hath met with us. Let us go, we pray thee, three da…

The plagues come later, I suppose.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#277
post #33

This article is kind of playful, but I think there’s a serious point here that’s not discussed enough. We’re being asked to usher in huge productivity gains by introducing AI to our workflows, but we’re not asking how does it help us? Not a lot of us stand to directly gain from our employers becoming more productive. I know everybody is afraid of getting fired and replaced with AI or whatever right now. But we should…

I think it’s pretty naive to ask your employer for a day off. As experienced by companies, the market is more competitive than ever. Whoever slows down will get eaten by some hungry upstart that is willing to work 996 to eat the incumbent’s lunch. It’s a Prisoner’s Dilemma. The only way to get this outcome is to coordinate at a level higher than individual market participants. In other words, get your government to i…

> I think it’s pretty naive to ask your employer for a day off.

Someone said the same before 1938, probably [1]

I think it's possible that AI will bring as much of a shift to our lives as the industrial revolution did, so it might be necessary to make some adjustments, just like we did back then.

[1] https://www.history.com/articles/five-day-work-week-labor-mo...

Re: Can we have the day off?

#278
post #33

This article is kind of playful, but I think there’s a serious point here that’s not discussed enough. We’re being asked to usher in huge productivity gains by introducing AI to our workflows, but we’re not asking how does it help us? Not a lot of us stand to directly gain from our employers becoming more productive. I know everybody is afraid of getting fired and replaced with AI or whatever right now. But we should…

Benefits from productivity gains only go to shareholders gp, it’s the foundational principle that underpins the whole world economy :-D

Re: Can we have the day off?

#279
Back when I was a young lad I wanted engineering to be a real discipline - formal qualifications, codes, held to account, and limitations on who could call themself an Engineer(TM).

But the money was so good we (The royal we) didn't think we needed it, that would just get in the way. Did you see how much FB employees were getting paid in 2015! Insanity! Now, even the skutters have a better union than us.

A plumber, or an electrician has a better union, and hence rights and protection than us.

But if you're building a brand new field you can still build a guild.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#280
post #33

This article is kind of playful, but I think there’s a serious point here that’s not discussed enough. We’re being asked to usher in huge productivity gains by introducing AI to our workflows, but we’re not asking how does it help us? Not a lot of us stand to directly gain from our employers becoming more productive. I know everybody is afraid of getting fired and replaced with AI or whatever right now. But we should…

I will be automating the things that annoy me so I can spend time on the things I like.
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