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Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

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Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#71

Post by thiago_fm »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #69
thiago_fm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever said that in Germany people make enough are nuts. Let's suppose you have 2 kids. If you get a rental contract in Berlin Today, in 2023. The ideal space according to the government and known research is 30m2 per person, you'd need an apartment with 120m2. 120m2 apartments are like 2500 euros per month, more than half of your salary post-taxes. Tenants typically ask for rents to be 30% of your income, you'd hav…

>Whoever said that in Germany people make enough are nuts. You make enough if you're some senior manager at Siemens, Bosch, Porsche, BMW, DHL, DB, Lufthansa, Infineon, big-pharma, etc. one of these companies who are Germany's FAANGs. If you're a low to mid-level IC, no.

Nah, only real execs(director+) make good salary at those companies, rest are comparable to SWE ICs in scaleups.

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#72

Post by llampx »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #32
rcbdev wrote: post #27

I feel like the discourse on worker rights / work-life balance and demographic issues are more decoupled than they should be. Low birth-rates are provably related to the ability of parents to spend time with their children. This combined with other initiatives might help Europe recover from the serious imminent demographic collapse.

The couples I know who don't have kids don't want kids to get in the way of their travel.

Most of the expenses around kids revolve around the space they need. Bigger apartment, bigger car, more food are the bare necessities. Then come the expenses for additional flight tickets for vacations, bigger or more hotel rooms, needing to go on vacation during high season or not at all, extra-curricular activities, and so on. One kid can easily double your expenses from a couple's level.

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#73

Post by FirmwareBurner »

thiago_fm wrote: post #71
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Whoever said that in Germany people make enough are nuts. You make enough if you're some senior manager at Siemens, Bosch, Porsche, BMW, DHL, DB, Lufthansa, Infineon, big-pharma, etc. one of these companies who are Germany's FAANGs. If you're a low to mid-level IC, no.

Nah, only real execs(director+) make good salary at those companies, rest are comparable to SWE ICs in scaleups.

That's still very good money for German wages, also keep in mind that senior managers at those big wealthy German companies don't do shit all day while having a iron clad job security. Just send emails, drink coffee, have chats with other managers, then drive home, while ICs at scale-ups have a lot more work, stress and responsibility on their shoulders of keeping the ship afloat and the services running.

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#74

Post by whstl »

rascul wrote: post #66
whstl wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Heavily. Even in cases such as manual work it doesn’t have a directly proportional correlation, since people get tired.

Yes people get tired but I don't see that significantly affecting the amount of work done in general, for 8-9 hour work days. Do you?

Yes, definitely. It also heavily affects the quality.

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#75

Post by truckerbill »

rascul wrote: post #39
truckerbill wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assumptions only work when things are linear. Reality is generally non-linear as it is one huge tangled mess of feedback loops

I only have my own work history to go off of. Edit: An example. If it takes me 5 days to hang siding on a house, and I don't work one of those days, that's 20% less I didn't work and about 20% less of the work that got done.

Lets say you have enough spare time and energy to make a jig, a trolley, an improved tool of some kind that helps you hang siding. For the time you spend making it you are behind on your general average siding panels per day. Once you finish your tool you will surpass your average. This is one of many many non-linear holes in your theory.

You may say 'but you can't guarantee I will make a jig, a trolley or an improved tool', at which point I give up trying to argue with someone on the internet and feel slightly deflated that the point was missed

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#76

Post by mytailorisrich »

mcv wrote: post #6

The 4-day work week is long overdue. Keynes promised us a 15-hour work week thanks to productivity gains, but those productivity gains have mostly been eaten up by excessive corporate profit-taking. Lots of people are overworked and underpaid. I've been working a 4-day week for well over a decade (also because I've got kids, but I did this well before I had kids), and I strongly recommend it for everybody.

4-day work week with same salary means that 20% productivity increase is required just to compensate, which is quite big.

At the moment we need growth fuelled by productivity gains at constant hours, or even increased hours, not a reduction of working hours, which goes in the opposite direction and, again feels like Europe is giving up.

Keynes did not "predicted" that based on continued increased productivity, not because of any rights to it.

Unfortunately productivity gains have largely stalled for years: growth is very weak while population keeps increasing.

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#77

Post by 4gotunameagain »

thiago_fm wrote: post #58
llampx wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berlin, Munich and other big cities, where most of the tech jobs are, have had massive inflation over the last few years. There is a huge gap in terms of rents and mortgages between those who bought or signed a rental contract prior to 2021 and now. Meanwhile the strong CHF has led to Swiss inflation being somewhat lower. Kurzgesagt: German CoL is catching up but salaries remain behind.

Whoever said that in Germany people make enough are nuts. Let's suppose you have 2 kids. If you get a rental contract in Berlin Today, in 2023. The ideal space according to the government and known research is 30m2 per person, you'd need an apartment with 120m2. 120m2 apartments are like 2500 euros per month, more than half of your salary post-taxes. Tenants typically ask for rents to be 30% of your income, you'd hav…

> 120m2 apartments are like 2500 euros per month

That's only true if you want to live within the most popular areas of Berlin, within the ring and in fancy kiezs. There are many areas around that you can easily aford a 120m2 apartment, do not spread misinformation please.

Sure, not everybody can raise a family in mitte or prenzlauer berg with a single salary. But that kinda makes sense, no ?

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#78

Post by FirmwareBurner »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #77
thiago_fm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever said that in Germany people make enough are nuts. Let's suppose you have 2 kids. If you get a rental contract in Berlin Today, in 2023. The ideal space according to the government and known research is 30m2 per person, you'd need an apartment with 120m2. 120m2 apartments are like 2500 euros per month, more than half of your salary post-taxes. Tenants typically ask for rents to be 30% of your income, you'd hav…

> 120m2 apartments are like 2500 euros per month That's only true if you want to live within the most popular areas of Berlin, within the ring and in fancy kiezs. There are many areas around that you can easily aford a 120m2 apartment, do not spread misinformation please. Sure, not everybody can raise a family in mitte or prenzlauer berg with a single salary. But that kinda makes sense, no ?

>within the ring

So within the city of Berlin lol

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#79

Post by rascul »

truckerbill wrote: post #75
rascul wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only have my own work history to go off of. Edit: An example. If it takes me 5 days to hang siding on a house, and I don't work one of those days, that's 20% less I didn't work and about 20% less of the work that got done.

Lets say you have enough spare time and energy to make a jig, a trolley, an improved tool of some kind that helps you hang siding. For the time you spend making it you are behind on your general average siding panels per day. Once you finish your tool you will surpass your average. This is one of many many non-linear holes in your theory. You may say 'but you can't guarantee I will make a jig, a trolley or an improve…

> Lets say you have enough spare time and energy to make a jig, a trolley, an improved tool of some kind that helps you hang siding. For the time you spend making it you are behind on your general average siding panels per day. Once you finish your tool you will surpass your average. This is one of many many non-linear holes in your theory.

I like this. Thank you for providing me some more understanding.

Re: Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

#80

Post by rascul »

fnordian_slip wrote: post #70
rascul wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Iirc, there are several of studies that imply that if you have the same developer working 40 vs 32 hours, the difference in output is often negligible, since not all hours worked are the same in terms of effectiveness. I guess it depends on the work. In my example, hanging siding on a house, the non-productive work is quite minimal. I guess that can vary depending on the work one is doing. The non-productive work s…

You're quite right that there's quite a difference when it comes to physical work, especially not too physically demanding work without a large "brain work" component (or done by young, reasonably fit people). Since we are on hacker news, a forum seemingly overrun by silicon valley devs, I didn't expect your comment to focus on that kind of work. But when we look at physically demanding work with a decent amount of b…

Thank you for entertaining my arguments. I like that we have a lot of different people with different backgrounds, experiences, and opinions on HN which we can share with each other. I'm not much interested in continuing the discussion anymore but I do feel as if you have opened my mind a bit.
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