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Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

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Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#461

Post by wukerplank »

simplecomplex wrote: post #405
wukerplank wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> feel any shame quitting for a better job Yes and how do they find a better job without education? You are very fortunate that you were able leave that behind you. But do you realize there are millions of people in this world who have no means of pulling themselves out of the dirt?

Never before has education been so cheap or widely available. The whole world’s information is available to anyone with an Internet connection.

Let me be sarcastic: Yes, it is very easy to have sufficiently fast internet (or even a computer) in a non-industrialized country. Even in the US it is perfectly viable to work 2-3 low wage jobs to keep your family fed and healthy and then bring up the energy to do a hacking boot camp. Also, because the basic education is so great in under developed regions regions, it is a breeze to grasp higher concepts of math. And analphabetism does not exist.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#462

Post by 1000units »

vfc1 wrote: post #114

The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. This explains the system of values that revolve around it, such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. The servant was not expected to leave it…

It has everything to do with power. You don't even need to consult the history.

Large organizations very rarely need any particular drone. The drones always need money to survive, their health insurance, stability for their family, a clean professional reputation. So the big guys takes advantage of the little guys.

Early in my career, I worked a lot and was compensated poorly for the value I brought to the business. Then I built systems that made me very difficult to get rid of without losing all the money I was bringing in. Now I make double and work 30 hours a week when I'm busy.

For any reasonably large corporation, your employer is not your friend. They deserve professional courtesy, but never loyalty or personal respect. Always look out for yourself, what you bring to the table, and what you're getting out of it. Forget anything else. If you want something personal, go home to your wife and kids at a reasonable hour. They love you.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#463

Post by ken »

Draiken wrote: post #271
ivanhoe wrote: post #219

It's comparing apples and oranges to compare medieval peasants life and modern office work. Even today in rural areas people work around the clock in and around the house to keep everything afloat and barely survive. Sitting on your butt for 10h a day and doing intellectual work seems hard only until you try to do some farming for a while - and modern farming is nothing compared to how hard it was back then, when you…

I'd argue it's actually easier to cope when what you need is repetitive hard physical labor. You don't go to sleep thinking about that big problem you still haven't solved. You actually get the satisfaction of doing the physical activity. You know with certainty that you've done your job (you can actually see it) and you know when to stop because your body will tell you to. Finally, you might be exhausted physically…

There's some bits of truth to this, but you're also missing some big issues.

> You don't go to sleep thinking about that big problem you still haven't solved.

Possibly, but maybe not. Just because you're working in the physical realm doesn't mean you're not working at all in the mental realm.

Additionally, it's easy to worry about injury. Sprain an ankle? Sitting at a computer, it's merely an inconvenience. In labor, you're not working (and not earning money to pay the rent) until you've recovered.

Also: most people I know in labor are living paycheck to paycheck. Financial stress is real. To combine these: many people I know don't have health insurance. It's really expensive when you have to buy it yourself. More stress.

> you know when to stop because your body will tell you to

Definitely sounds like someone who has never worked in labor. You work until the job is done. If 'your body tells you to stop' before the job is done, you've got a problem.

> Finally, you might be exhausted physically at the end of the day, but your mind is definitely not exhausted, which allows you to actually do something with it afterwards.

Flip it around: does this claim still work? Are office workers so physically fresh from sitting around all day carb-loading that they all leave at 5:00 and hit the gym or the track? Some do, most don't.

When I get home from a long day of physical work, even if I didn't have any mental issues to deal with that day, I don't exactly look forward to cracking open a technical manual.

> Another thing I'd say is that with farming (and other manual labor activities) there is very little that is not known beforehand.

Not true at all, for any of the work I've done. Just last week I had a day scheduled for 10 hours that ran 6 hours over, and that wasn't even the worst I've experienced. Why would unanticipated roadblocks appear for mental problems but not physical ones? That makes no sense to me.

Just look around at physical projects and you'll see they're just as bad as digital ones. The SR-99 tunnel was 3.5 years late after they started digging.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#464

Post by yellowstuff »

enraged_camel wrote: post #383
greyhair wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Termination without notice or payment is definitely considered bad form, short of the company closing due to bankruptcy. I have never worked anywhere that did not provide notice or some severance. Even at a startup that cut 50% prior to going down in flames, they paid those half that were released two weeks pay and two weeks insurance coverage. (even though they were asked to leave immediately) Large corporations ten…

Are you US-based? Because severence packages are absolutely an exception, rather than the norm. Most of the US has "at-will" employment, which states that employers can terminate employees at will, for any reason, without warning. And companies take advantage of this all the time. The other thing is that you seem to be speaking as a developer. Everyone knows that our industry treats employees better than average. You…

A quick search suggests that "many" firms pay severance, but I couldn't find hard numbers. In my experience it's not that unusual for people to give no notice or less than 2 weeks notice when they leave blue collar jobs like restaurant work.

https://businesstown.com/articles/should-you-pay-severance-w...

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#465

Post by ivanhoe »

exDM69 wrote: post #303
ivanhoe wrote: post #219

It's comparing apples and oranges to compare medieval peasants life and modern office work. Even today in rural areas people work around the clock in and around the house to keep everything afloat and barely survive. Sitting on your butt for 10h a day and doing intellectual work seems hard only until you try to do some farming for a while - and modern farming is nothing compared to how hard it was back then, when you…

In modern farming, the hard part is not sitting in the tractor working on the fields. The struggle comes from running a business, taking care of financials and keeping the tractors running and cash flow positive in a very competitive, globalized environment which pays very badly. I have done farm hand work the modern way with tractors and the old timey way with horses. If it paid as well and was as stable as computer…

I was talking more about the amount of work, than how hard it is (and it's hard, especially in summer). On the farm you start very early in the morning and there's always something that needs to be taken care of, practically until you go to bed. Now, it probably depends also on the size of the farm, number of people, type of crops and how good the land is, what animals do you keep, machines, etc. My experience is that there was very little free time of just doing nothing. Pace is slower, so you have a lot of small time-outs in between the chores, but very rarely you're like: "OK, we did everything for today, I'm off to binge watch Netflix for the rest of the day" (except in winters when days are shorter, then you get some tv time). That was my experience, at least.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#466

Post by ken »

Draiken wrote: post #320
nudpiedo wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having said all that, I've never had the opportunity to work with physical labor so my views are likely biased. Very strong opinion to end up saying everything could be just false because it is a mere gut feeling. Everyone has worries and problems, if it is not the weather which is about to damage the harvest it will be the expensive providers or the fruits imported from cheaper countries or the workers who try to…

> Everyone has worries and problems, if it is not the weather which is about to damage the harvest it will be the expensive providers or the fruits imported from cheaper countries or the workers who try to do as less as possible with the maintenance of their tools. And after work everyone stressed because they are afraid that this year benefits might end up not covering expenses and not knowing what to do if the pric…

> Those worries you mention exist on both worlds equally. What if my startup fails?

This cannot be serious. I've worked at startups, and the answer is: there are 50 other companies within 10 blocks who are falling over themselves to hire programmers, especially one with the gumption to try a startup. I've never heard of anyone who worked at a tech startup who then had trouble finding other employment after it failed.

If your biggest "worry" at work is that you might not become a millionaire and may have to fall back on a $150K/yr job, I really don't know how to respond, because that is nothing at all like the worries faced by people working in labor.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#467

Post by crimsonalucard »

rubber_duck wrote: post #188
vfc1 wrote: post #114

The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. This explains the system of values that revolve around it, such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. The servant was not expected to leave it…

> such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis but this here is the most obvious example. When there is enough choice people change jobs all the time - the demand in my l…

>Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis but this here is the most obvious example.

What kind of garbage comment is this statement? Argue the points of disagreement but saying something offensive like this serves no purpose and is just plain wrong, rude and disgusting.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#468

Post by chewz »

manfredo wrote: post #386
chewz wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Capitalism may have a higher demand in terms of hours worked in explicit employment, but I doubt many today would genuinely trade life in a capitalist country for life in a pre-industrial society. You are projecting the circumstances of Northern Europe. But this is a tough place to get by. So is Northern China etc. On the other end of the spectrum on some islands in Indonesia people need no more then 7 days of work…

Poverty in Indonesia has been decreasing with less than 10% falling below the international poverty line (which is the minimum amount needed to get food and shelter)[1]. Using them as a poster child of impoverishment seems to draw more on stereotype rather than fact. And again, the baseline needs to be compared against pre-industrial circumstances: do you really think that the average Indonesian wants to turn back th…

You missed my point. I have lived in Indonesia and traveled there a lot. The example is from book by Elisabeth Pisani [1].

My whole point is that you can still find places where living in preindustrial capitalism is fairly easy due to abundance of Nature. There were many more places like this ages ago maybe not like this particular example but without much hardship. Mediterraneans comes to mind. Thats it.

http://indonesiaetc.com/

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#469

Post by ivanhoe »

dorusr wrote: post #293
nudpiedo wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having said all that, I've never had the opportunity to work with physical labor so my views are likely biased. Very strong opinion to end up saying everything could be just false because it is a mere gut feeling. Everyone has worries and problems, if it is not the weather which is about to damage the harvest it will be the expensive providers or the fruits imported from cheaper countries or the workers who try to…

You're confounding affluence with the difference between physical/mental labour. I've done both hard physical labour and hard mental labour, and what OP says is totally spot on. Hard physical work, even when excruciatingly tough, is most often more bearable than hard mental work. There's nothing like beig 'done' after a hard day of work. After a hard day of mental work you just feel miserable until you fall asleep. I…

well, yes, unless after hard day of work, you have more work waiting or, you go to bed worrying if weather will kill your crops, or will you be able to sell them, etc. Farming in particular is much more like running a startup, then it is like office work, where the risk of running business is someone else's problem, and you get your salary at the end of the month no matter what.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#470

Post by sillyquiet »

dbingham wrote: post #353
sillyquiet wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

`easiest` ?

Yes. Ever done manual labor? Or something that requires both intense manual labor and intellectual problem solving, like carpentry or many of the building trades? Or think about all the various fields that require intense intellectual output, with nothing like the rewards and security of software engineering. We've got it good. Though, really, the ideal would be for all workers to be treated more like we are, and les…

Yes - I have. I worked construction; worked on a loading dock; drove a delivery truck for bulk freight. Not having to do manual labor doesn't make a job 'easy' though. And certainly not the 'easiest'
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