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Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days
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Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days
#32I already work (remotely) much less than my contract says. I simply can't stay engaged to cognitively demanding tasks for a full day. The rest of the time I just feel kinda bad for slacking, which increases my stress levels for no good reason. If I got the permission to actually work less, I wouldn't feel so bad about it, which would probably lead to less stress and higher productivity.
I work in finance and I can attest that 90% of the work people do in my office could simply be left undone and no harm would come to the world or even the company. The industry just has a culture of "being very productive" which leads to people doing something all of the time, even when they don't have a clue what should be done.
Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days
#33Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do companies pay for people to work "only" five days each week? Or "only" 40 hours? Why not seven days, and 84 hours each week? Surely there are people willing to work those hours for even less than companies are paying now, eliminating the deadweight loss. Once you have the answer to that question, the answer to your question seems very straightforward.
The answer is that both parties have agreed that 40 hours of work a week is worth that much money. And if there are people already willing to work 84 hours for less money then they would be employed already for less at 40 hours.
> 40 hours of work a week
The concept of hours per week is shaped by it's origin in production manufacturing.
Most people who are in a position to discuss 4 day weeks are in the Service Sector or otherwise 'creative roles'.
This is analogue to the argument of why do we not pay developers by lines of code. Both time and LOCs are not necessarily linear with productivity and delivery of function.
Arguing for pay to be linked to time is in my view an artefact of the production & manufacturing origins of modern work.
So to come back to your point. Previously both parties agreed that 40 hour week was worth this much money. Now both parties agree that this link with time is a bad metric and that pay is provided for the realization of certain function or deliverable.
Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days
#35This won't be valid for everyone, but I'm getting more and more convinced that most (a lot of?) people don't "work" work 40 hours anyway. I'm not even mentally capable of doing 40 intense hours of focussed work. Not saying I don't have other tasks besides coding/thinking in that time, but honestly not for the full slot of time. It just feels to me like some sort of secret we all share and pretend like it's fine, but…
Musk posted screens of his Elden Ring progress a couple weeks after launch. Given other players had to sink 60-80 hours in to get to the same point Musk was broadcasting, he was working 48 hours a day at his companies and on Elden Ring. Bezos has given interviews about his habits. He works maybe 10-20 hours a week. Billing 40 hours every week to run scripts that generate a Github repo structure in minutes has been pr…
Picasso offered a drawing in a napkin for $1M dollars, even though it took him 1 min to draw it. You know the gist. Bezos might do 20 hours a week of “work” because he scaffolded a giant organization around his brain, so he only needs to provide certain input. Besides, much of the non-work time, such as public speaking and so forth, is actually work.
Also the ultimate test is whether after confessing to your real contribution, people are ok. I don’t think any amazon employee was annoyed after hearing this so called interview, whereas is your company knew what you were charging them for, they would fire you.
Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days
#36This won't be valid for everyone, but I'm getting more and more convinced that most (a lot of?) people don't "work" work 40 hours anyway. I'm not even mentally capable of doing 40 intense hours of focussed work. Not saying I don't have other tasks besides coding/thinking in that time, but honestly not for the full slot of time. It just feels to me like some sort of secret we all share and pretend like it's fine, but…
You're probably not wrong. The data supports it. > In October, the average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was 34.5 hours for the fifth month in a row. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm
And this is the time they at least pretend to be working. The amount of hours they actually do something productive is going to be much less.
Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days
#37Quoted post unavailable.
NPR is not funded in a significant way by the government. Only about 4% of their annual funding is from government sources. [1]
[1] https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/national-public-ra...
Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days
#38Quoted post unavailable.
What news source would you take seriously?
Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days
#39A lot of people have a goal to minimize work and maximize income, and for those people, no matter what flexibility they are given, they will continue to minimize productive work. It’s sad in my opinion, and it leads to hedonic pursuits instead of the intrinsic satisfaction that comes from doing good work. But for too many people work is about man vs “the man”, instead of our individual quest to do something interesting.
Re: Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days
#40Compensation should be based on output. If hours translates to more output (like an assembly line worker or something) - great. Simply pay hourly and require minimum amount of hours (like 40) with options for "go-getters" to work more if they want.
Plenty of jobs (like a lot of tech) should be based on "if you're producing what we need from you (or more if you want) we're happy" regardless of the hours.