Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009) • Hacker News Board

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

#501

Post by exDM69 » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 7:15 AM UTC

ivanhoe wrote: post #465

exDM69 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

Yes, farm work has periods of non stop work in spring and fall for a few weeks. And then some if there is livestock.

But the annual work time was lower for a pre-industrial farmer compared to an American office worker making ads for the web.

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

#502

Post by ailideex » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 9:04 AM UTC

mikelyons wrote: post #488

fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who would punish them? The customers? Future potential employees. If I go on glassdoor and read about this happening I'm either going to A: raise my rates as I need to keep a larger emergency fund to deal with these guys B: decline to work there at all They end up only ever getting entry level kids to work for them. The system sort of works in that regard if you come from a non-traditional background you can work fo…

There have been many threads on HN where the debate is "Do employees have enough power to [punish companies] if they need" but none of them have really every made a coherent case one way or the other, but they seem to lean "no" Disclaim: My personal Anecdote^

If someone steals my car, and I don't have a means to punish them, is it also okay for them to steal my car? I don't really get your reasoning here.

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

#503

Post by lostjohnny » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 11:03 AM UTC

ernst_klim wrote: post #478

lostjohnny wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means that in Europe universal healthcare is almost a solved problem, according to WHO (World Health Organization) 6 out of the first 10 and 16 out of the first 20 highest ranked healthcare systems are in Europe. source: https://www.who.int/healthinfo/paper30.pdf

>20 highest ranked healthcare systems are in Europe. It's not a rank, it's a (bad) efficiency metric, which says that Ukrainian and Kazakhstan HC is "more efficient" than Russian, and that Chilean HC is "more efficient" than that of Denmark. If you assume this metric shows what's better, it's safe to assume that this metric is garbage. To lazy to dive into the methodology, they weight the date using avg schooling yea…

> It's not a rank, it's a (bad) efficiency metric, which says that Ukrainian and Kazakhstan HC is "more efficient" than Russian, and that Chilean HC is "more efficient" than that of Denmark.

They are, according to the World health Organization.

Ukrainian healthcare system is more efficient than Russian because you don't have remote regions that have very little or no chances of being reached in case of emergency.

Chile and Denmark are basically at the same level, it shouldn't be a surprise that many South American countries rank at the same level of some western countries.

If you look at the ranking created by other entities, it's more or less the same, even though they used different metrics.

You will always find mostly European countries in the top 20s.

Italy and France really are among the best in the World when it's about healthcare.

USA really is shitty, even though they have the highest spending per capita.

The methodology is well explained, there's an entire chapter explaining it, they are not 'Comparing different countries using a single "performance"', your rebuttal is rebutted.

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

#504

Post by malux85 » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 11:27 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #179

malux85 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your boss cannot measure that, I would argue, because he's incompetent (assessing progress of subordinate is a primary management function) As a boss myself, if my developers finish early, they are free to go. I can read their code and pull requests, I know who is pulling their weight. When I worked at Google, all of my bosses (including project managers) could read code at a superficial level, and accurately assess…

I may have been too simplistic 1. The work is never finished. As such no matter how productive you are or not there is more to do. So when do you say "Ok go home early?" 2. My view of productive may differ from my boss - and that gets further afield as the hierarchy goes up - so let's say you were working on Google+ (insert corporate white elephant) - no matter how productive you were in the small, it was ultimately…

No, my developers have a list of tasks to do for the day, and if they finish it, I let them go home. It's that simple.

If you keep pushing work onto developers forever then you're rewarding hard work by giving them more work causing incentive mismatches.

This only works if management has the ability to evaluate the work by reading the code. I can spot when something has a bug in it just by reading the code, I can spot when an interface boundary has been designed badly, and I can spot when there's problems. I can evaluate my developers results, and I can evaluate the developers themselves.

So you hire good developers who have the right attitude and don't game the system for their own benefit, fire the under performers, then everyone goes home at 1PM on friday because their work is done and they are proud of what they built.

Lots of developers might find it hard to believe that everyone wouldn't just do something quickly and go home early, but thats because most developers are near burnout and they just need a break. If you give them 2-3 very light months of work, they recover and then start enjoying their work again ... then nobody games the system and puts their best foot forward.

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

#505

Post by fortran77 » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 1:19 PM UTC

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…

All due respect, but you are deeply deluded.

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

#506

Post by bsanr2 » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 1:32 PM UTC

RyanAF7 wrote: post #100

bsanr2 wrote: post #54

In America, at least, we should consider the legacy of slavery and indentured servitude in attitudes towards working hours. Many of the expectations for economic output by American industry have been set by the productivity of people who had little or no right to question the conditions they worked under, overseen by people who cared little for their well-being beyond that productivity. If that's the basis of the Ame…

This is a boatload of pop culture brainwashed hullabaloo spewed by a foreigner. The basis of the American work ethic is in dreaming. Clearly, you've chosen to disregard the centuries of European, African, Oriental and S./Central American slavery, ritual sacrifice, imperialism and almost constant war and subjugation. But, you know - the intentional racism instilled by the English must be the lingering driver of Americ…

I'm an American. Pretending that New World slavery was not of a different, more brutal character than others is a white supremacist talking point and I'm not really here for it. Try something else.

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

#507

Post by prirun » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #494

enraged_camel wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Most of the US has "at-will" employment, which states that employers can terminate employees at will, for any reason, without warning" I think this is a misleading (although frequently stated) comment. Large companies I've worked for have a bureaucratic procedure before they fire anyone, and generally allow people to save face even when they really want you gone. Technically it's "at will", but I think it's primaril…

"primarily the mom & pop businesses that are going to fire on a whim"

Talk to some people in the hospital business who are over 50. I have a friend who worked for a huge hospital, was good at her job, had been doing it for many decades. One day an HR person called her into the office, said she needed to take a test, and said she had to leave that day until she took the test, administered by some 3rd party. A younger worker, doing the same job, also didn't have this credential they invented, but she got to stay. She wasn't making as much money because she hadn't been there as long.

My friend had a couple of weeks to study for this test, which was about the physics of the machine she had been using for 30 years. She failed the 1st time, they wouldn't tell her her score, and wouldn't tell her what she got right or wrong. The test itself was ridiculous: how many of us could explain in detail the physics of how our hard drive works? She was given a small severance and told to sign papers that I'm guessing gave up her rights to sue. And besides, it's well known in my area that suing a hospital is a fool's errand. The local lawyers do so much business with hospitals that they won't even take cases against them.

If you tell someone "your job ends today, but we'll give you a month's pay if you sign these papers", many people have no choice but to sign: they can't afford to have zero income starting today.

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

#508

Post by mikelyons » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 3:45 PM UTC

ailideex wrote: post #502

mikelyons wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been many threads on HN where the debate is "Do employees have enough power to [punish companies] if they need" but none of them have really every made a coherent case one way or the other, but they seem to lean "no" Disclaim: My personal Anecdote^

If someone steals my car, and I don't have a means to punish them, is it also okay for them to steal my car? I don't really get your reasoning here.

Saying it's okay, that's up to you. Do they get away with it? YES!

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

#509

Post by RyanAF7 » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

bsanr2 wrote: post #506

RyanAF7 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a boatload of pop culture brainwashed hullabaloo spewed by a foreigner. The basis of the American work ethic is in dreaming. Clearly, you've chosen to disregard the centuries of European, African, Oriental and S./Central American slavery, ritual sacrifice, imperialism and almost constant war and subjugation. But, you know - the intentional racism instilled by the English must be the lingering driver of Americ…

I'm an American. Pretending that New World slavery was not of a different, more brutal character than others is a white supremacist talking point and I'm not really here for it. Try something else.

LOL

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

#510

Post by mikelyons » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

ailideex wrote: post #498

mikelyons wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nope." is cute and shows you're cocksure about that. However, the reality is that this happens all the time and is never punished by culture as "unprofessional" for a corporation to do. Who would punish them? The customers?

> However, the reality is that this happens all the time Murder also happens all the time and it is not okay. Something happening does not mean it is okay.

Saying it's okay, that's up to you. Do they get away with it? YES!