Companies ran an experiment: Pay workers their full salary to work fewer days

Post by bell-cot » Wed, Nov 16, 2022, 5:17 PM UTC

TrueGeek wrote: post #13

cassianoleal wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also stress free for 4 days > stress free for 5 days.

Yeah, if you have 32 hours of fire fighting every week then you either love fighting fires or you need to find something that you do love.

Post by sokoloff » Wed, Nov 16, 2022, 5:27 PM UTC

devmor wrote: post #50

mc32 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree we don't put in a full 40 hours. Unless someone is working a 1950's style assembly line (meatpacking plant for example) few will put in those 40 hours even in manual labor ---you're chatting, playing around, etc. for some time. White collar work, is of course, way worse. There is a lot of slack time in between tasks and meetings and so on. So during those 40 hours, let's say a person delivers 100 work units.…

> So during those 40 hours, let's say a person delivers 100 work units. If we were to say, from now on you only have to work 32 hours, some people will still deliver 100 work units, but many will deliver an approximation to 80 work units. Many people will automatically adjust. People have a "pace of work" that is like breathing. Perhaps in manual labor, but I don't think this applies to white collar work. The limitin…

Post by toyg » Wed, Nov 16, 2022, 5:28 PM UTC

willcipriano wrote: post #66

soperj wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 40-60 hours at school. This part doesn't make sense to me, can you please explain (I'm genuinely asking). My children are in elementary school, and the day is from 8:45-2:30. I can understand being there at 8am(i definitely have seen teachers showing up later than this though), and when I've driven by the school at 3pm nearly all the cars are gone from the teachers lot (if not all). I can understand that there's a…

Another fascinating thing about teacher claims of working hours is how technology apparently hasn't moved the needle at all. Lots of schools have moved to more and more online assignments that can be in large part automatically graded yet the time spend grading remains constant, or so they claim.

Post by fourseventy » Wed, Nov 16, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

Tyrek wrote: post #18

MEMORYC_RRUPTED wrote: post #7

This 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…

If we "actually work" 32 hours out of 40 (80%), what is the likelihood that if we shift to a 32 hour max week, that the average person will only "actually work" ~26 hours (80% of 32) in this hypothetical future? What if at least part of the 20% is spent doing social activities, water cooler conversations, etc. that enable the remaining 80% to flow more efficiently?

Post by diffeomorphism » Wed, Nov 16, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

fourseventy wrote: post #75

MEMORYC_RRUPTED wrote: post #7

This 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…

Cruft will build back up in the 32 hours though. In 10 years people will be saying "does anyone else feel like they don't work the full 32? We should cut it down to 24!" There is always going to be some percentage of working time that isn't fully productive.