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Can we have the day off?

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Re: Can we have the day off?

#541

Post by tstrimple »

komali2 wrote: post #351
cm11 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is the reality. It is part of it, but people get paid different salaries, why? Some are more productive than others. Aside from leadership's (and society's) biased ability to determine value, these people theoretically get more because they contribute more.

In my experience, productivity effects on salary is a rounding error. There are only two significant contributing factors for salary: 1. Your home address and 2. Your visa status Productivity might get you a 5k raise more over your colleague on a 160k salary. Meanwhile the same engineer in Taiwan is more productive than you and getting paid 40k while working for the same company on the same product, and putting in mo…

Or the engineer could be working for a certain company in South Korea and get a bonus multiple times their annual salary because of their union contracts tied to profitability.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#542

Post by Traubenfuchs »

nlawalker wrote: post #181
Cakez0r wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is that most people are paid for their time, not for their output. I think most contracts for salaried employees are along the lines of "work n hours a week". If you want to get paid for output, you can't be a salaried employee.

Salaried employees aren't paid for their time, they're paid for a combination of their output and their availability . Availability used to be strongly coupled with time but technology has introduced some flexibility there.

Correction: Their PERCEIVED output, not their output. Output can usually not be objectively measured in IT.

Storypoints? Overestimate wildly. Stories done? Split stories like atoms! Impact of work done? Present your button color change stories as company saving divine intervention!

Re: Can we have the day off?

#543

Post by whatshisface »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #203
whatshisface wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working out why the workweek is 5 days, non-negotiably, even if you'd be willing to be paid less in proportion, comes down to realizing that it's being maximized subject to the constraint that everybody would flip out if it was 6, and then working out why it's being maximized. What it's telling you is that a company would rather have 4 people working 5 days a week than 5 people working 4 days a week. The reason for t…

> What it's telling you is that a company would rather have 4 people working 5 days a week than 5 people working 4 days a week. The reason for that is, productivity drops a lot when it's spread out over multiple people. Why make that assumption? The company has a lot of per-employee fixed costs, which means that it's much more expensive to have 5 employees than 4 employees under the assumption that total productivity…

Not every role is suitable for contracting. An individual can become a part-time developer by freelancing, but if you do that you get very specific kinds of jobs, ones with high compartmentalization.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#545

Post by aiisahik »

Imagine only 10% of the white collar labor force were allowed to use AI. In that case, those 10% would be given 2 or 3 days off a week. Easy.

Now imagine if only 10% of companies were allowed to use AI. Those companies would easily be willing to give 2-3 days off per week to their workers. Makes sense since those companies would easily outcompete the others and so they would have enough economic surplus to provide lavish benefits to their workers.

However, because 100% of companies and 100% of workers have access to AI, the competitive pressure on the deployment of capital means that no days off can be given.

New perks are only given to you if you, your company or your country has some sustainable systemic advantage over other employees, companies or countries.

In the absence of those sustainable systemic advantage, any perk given would put you, your company or your country at a competitive disadvantage against some other employee, company or country who are willing to work without such perk.

The only way to sustain such a perk in those situations is with anti-competitive practices: Labor Unions, protectionism, corruption, etc.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#547

Post by jojobas »

> Childcare for 3 small children is six thousand dollars a month here in California.

Maybe we could afford for women to not leave their kids with strangers for most of their waking hours? Crazy talk I know.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#548

Post by Aurornis »

Buttons840 wrote: post #357
cattown wrote: 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…

One possibility is once AI becomes profitable and wildly successful, and we all lose our jobs, we vote to nationalize the AI companies, and send some good vibes (but no money) to the VCs who paid for it, and remember that the AI was only built by breaking copyright law at an industrial scale and so it's fair to nationalize it.

Good thing all of the AI companies in the world operate only inside one country. I'm sure all of the other technology companies, AI ventures, and investors will continue putting their headquarters in a country that did this and gave the investors $0.

Nothing bad would happen, of course.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#549

Post by thaumasiotes »

whatshisface wrote: post #543
thaumasiotes wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What it's telling you is that a company would rather have 4 people working 5 days a week than 5 people working 4 days a week. The reason for that is, productivity drops a lot when it's spread out over multiple people. Why make that assumption? The company has a lot of per-employee fixed costs, which means that it's much more expensive to have 5 employees than 4 employees under the assumption that total productivity…

Not every role is suitable for contracting. An individual can become a part-time developer by freelancing, but if you do that you get very specific kinds of jobs, ones with high compartmentalization.

Contracting is a legal status. It has nothing to do with the role.

Within software development, most contractors aren't freelancing.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#550

Post by FullMetalBitch »

yladiz wrote: post #495
manmal wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some European countries, you can actually go on welfare and never work again. It takes some tricks because the state doesn’t like it; and maybe you‘ll want to do some undeclared side jobs for 15h a week and you’ll be comfortable. I don’t know how such people can live with themselves. But apparently, if you’re immune to the second factor, it is possible, nowadays, to work 15h or less, without any wealth, and lead a…

Which European countries?

Spain for example: https://imv.seg-social.es/
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