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It's time to implement a 4-day workweek
In May, Andrew Yang, the entrepreneur and former Democratic presidential candidate, floated the idea of implementing a four-day workweek to better accommodate working Americans in a time of uncertainty, saying a shorter workweek could have mental-health benefits for employees.
There's not one overarching definition of a four-day workweek. "There are different models for the shortened week, some of which envision the same output condensed into fewer hours while others simply imagine longer hours spread over fewer days," a Washington Post report said.
Some involve a three-day weekend, while others mean a day off midweek.
[...] "It would help get us off of this hamster wheel that we're on right now, where we're all sort of racing against the clock in service of this giant capital-efficiency machine," Yang said. "And the race is driving us all crazy."
In a Harris poll conducted in late May, 82% of employed US respondents said they would prefer to have a shorter workweek, even if it meant longer workdays.
The idea of a shorter workweek has become so popular in Finland that Prime Minister Sanna Marin has called for employers to allow employees to work only six hours a day, four days a week. In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern proposed the policy as part of a coronavirus economic recovery effort.
Andrew Barnes, the CEO of Perpetual Guardian, introduced a four-day workweek at his company in New Zealand in 2018.
Barnes, a cofounder of the nonprofit platform 4 Day Week Global and the author of "The 4 Day Week," said he found that "stress levels drop, creativity goes up, team cohesion goes up" under such a policy.[...] Microsoft experimented with a four-day workweek last year at a subsidiary in Japan as part of its "Work-Life Choice Challenge." The subsidiary closed every Friday in August and said it saw productivity jump by 40% compared with the previous year.
I'm somehow attracted to the idea, be it only for the reason the weekends are the most productive time for me, with no meeting interruptions (large grin)
(Score: 4, Touché) by Opportunist on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:07PM (29 children)
What we'll get is the same amount of workload with just 4 days of it being paid. How many unpaid and never to be paid overtime hours do you have clocked already?
(Score: 3, Funny) by nostyle on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:42PM (3 children)
...and what do you do when the demand for telephone sanitizers suddenly skyrockets?
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:17PM
By the time they rocket into the sky, it'll already be too late.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:19PM (1 child)
I call the red guy downstairs and ask him whether I can sell him a few electric blankets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @03:13AM
He don't speak English.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bussdriver on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:55PM (22 children)
People had arguments against 5 day weeks in the past; one can research how that went over and apply most of it to current times.
Technology is making productivity rise so it's possible and we need to increase the number of jobs and stop blaming those who are left out... plus the idea we can invent endless pointless jobs forever should be dying as we reach the physical limitations of earth... climate change being just 1 result.
F**k management and productivity! We don't need arguments about better performance to sell the idea; unless your masters are corporations... It's better for humans to work less days and if it is LAW then corps will just do what they always do within the new system... it won't break everything just like going to 5 days did not break everything. Increased productivity can be shifted towards humans until eventually people just chat with the robot AI a few hours per week and play office politics after pressing the START button... like George Jetson.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:24PM (13 children)
That sounds okay, but without increases in productivity, how are we going to get more wages?
Here, just look at a graph of productivity versus wages over the last 40 years and you'll see... oh dear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:54PM (4 children)
Money is a human creation. We've already had decades of increased production with stagnant or relatively decreasing wages, so your question is moot.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:07PM (1 child)
I always hate when I'm too subtle.
That's the joke.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @08:28PM
I shoulda realized, hadn't had my caffeine yet.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @10:25PM (1 child)
It's simple supply and demand. As long as women keep popping out new workers, wages are going to fall. The period after the Black Death was a very good time for the remaining workers,
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday August 13 2020, @04:55AM
Yes and no. That was when wage laws were first introduced in the form of a maximum wage rather then minimum wage. It also led to a series of peasant revolts of which pretty well every one of which failed, usually in a way that was not pleasant for the peasants.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bmimatt on Wednesday August 12 2020, @09:22PM
Here's one of said graphs: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ [epi.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:46AM (6 children)
Wages and benefits. If you're looking at wages alone, you miss that wages and benefits track productivity pretty well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @01:23AM (5 children)
The study that everyone cites for this, including the sibling post by bmimatt, already factored that in.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 14 2020, @03:07AM (4 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @07:54AM (3 children)
It does factor that in, otherwise they'd get a negative growth just as your own source points out and even makes a pretty Chart 3 of it. Instead, your source attempts to change deflators in order to claim a different rate of change and tries some other tricks to artificially boost the numbers. Even the pro-business BLS, Minn. Fed. and other conservative groups disagree with some of Heritage's tactics as also comparing apples and oranges and being a bit too obvious.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 14 2020, @02:30PM (2 children)
Over the span of time studied: 1973 to 2012, productivity was claimed to have gone up 100% and wages and benefits went up 77% - these are adjusted for inflation via an "implicit price deflator". So what negative growth?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @04:08AM (1 child)
You didn't even read your source or the exact citation I gave within it. Bravo.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 16 2020, @11:36PM
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:38PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday August 12 2020, @09:56PM (1 child)
Your cluelessness about Ayn Rand is total, starting with the word "force".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 12 2020, @10:20PM
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday August 12 2020, @09:59PM (4 children)
Thank you for admitting so quickly that you know nothing of the history of technology.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 12 2020, @10:23PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @06:36AM (1 child)
Have you guys been living under a rock for the past two decades? We are already hitting and exceeding the physical limitations of Earth. Sure there's probably a bunch of metals and oil still in the ground to be dug up. No problems there. But our current energy usage and resulting output of greenhouse gases is causing serious damage to the climate system on a very short timescale. We can try to mitigate that by shifting to renewables or nuclear en-masse, but that takes a lot of time and cost that a lot of people seem to be unwilling to pay.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:09PM
Well, that's the problem right there. We are in some ways and not even close in others. But we've already adapted over centuries to the limitations such as they were.
And? We can change our behavior when that becomes a real problem rather than merely "serious damage".
At present. You have to show a reason to switch first.
(Score: 2) by bussdriver on Sunday September 06 2020, @09:56PM
If you need a religion, I suggest you look outside of technology to meet those needs.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:03PM (1 child)
A very few when I was very young and unexperienced... in the last 30 years, none.
If your employer is demanding unpaid overtime and you are supplying it to them, you are employeeing wrong.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @08:24PM
Turn them in for wage theft. Many states and countries will require them to pay the employees more money to make up for the the TVM and some will even give the whistleblower a percentage of any fines as an extra incentive.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by srobert on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:08PM (33 children)
Several years ago my company decided to implement our 40 hour work week as (4) 10 hour days per week. With an hour off for lunch on our own time, that translates for me into 7AM to 6PM for 4 days. It's a long day, but if I must work 40 hours, then it's a better way of doing it. Longer weekend, fewer commutes, etc. It's worth it.
Of course that brings up the issue that we're now 20 years into the 21st century. Why the hell are we still working 40 hours a week? And a lot of people are doing more than that. Moreover, for the typical family, both parents are selling 40 hours or more to their employers (if they're fortunate enough to have jobs). That's 80 hours per family. When I was a kid in the 60's, we were promised that new technology would result in dad having a shorter work week, and mom having an easier time taking care of the home. The future ain't what it used to be and has proven to be a big disappointment. Where'd we go wrong? IMHO we busted the unions and outsourced our manufacturing abroad. Those were stupid things to do.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by PaperNoodle on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:26PM (21 children)
I did enjoy 4 10's but like you the say it's a long day. I prefer 9 hour days and every other Friday is a day off. 9 hours wasn't such a long day and having a 3day weekend every other weekend was nice.
B3
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:41PM (20 children)
May I point out that hourly wages makes a person lazy?
As a younger man, I worked 60, 70, and even more hours per week. Generally, I set a goal, reached that goal, then knocked off for the day.
Now that I work by the hour, an 8 hour work day seems like a long day. It's made me lazy, I tell you! I don't set goals, instead, I am waiting for the stupid clock to roll around to 7:00 AM so that I can go home.
Worse, I'm often more tired after 8 hours than I ever was after 10 or 12 hours!! Alright, age has something to do with that, but it isn't all age.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:50PM
This is how I work, there are never enough hours in the day or days in the week. Government can set whatever policy they like, self-employed people will still be doing the maximum number of hours they can.
(Score: 2) by srobert on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:04PM (13 children)
You say that like it's a bad thing. There aren't enough jobs to go around. I think we could benefit by encouraging people to be a little lazier.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:52PM (1 child)
My company went to 40hr/4day workweeks for a while. It was great getting 3 days off in a row, work ethics were better, it was hourly but you also a small cut (1-2%) of your productivity. Everyone was happy until California said anything over 8 hr/day is overtime pay. The company went back to 40hr/5day weeks and shit fell apart.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:53AM
A big part of the problem here is one-size-fits-all. California is particularly notorious for this practice.
And you see a lot of it in posts in this discussion such as "you can't be productive for 10 hours" without any regard for what your job is or how long the commute.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:55PM
So let's embrace policies that will grow the number of jobs. Limiting job duration is a way to artificially reduce supply of jobs. Which would work if demand for jobs were perfectly inelastic - but that isn't true, labor markets are enormously elastic. There's substitute goods like foreign labor and automation. There's potential marginal demand for labor which can manifest if costs of labor are low enough.
In other words, reducing the number of hours we can work simultaneously reduces supply of labor and decreases the value of that labor. It's a dumb idea that moves the whole economy of labor in a bad direction.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday August 12 2020, @11:25PM (9 children)
We certainly would benefit, except people won't actually be lazier.
What they will do is work at something they enjoy, like gardening or fishing or walking the dog or knitting.
Spending your entire life working to make money so that you can live your life is not for everyone.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:55AM (8 children)
Or rotting on the couch watching TV. Or joining a street gang to make ends meet.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:58AM (7 children)
If that is what they want to do, I don't see why it's any of your business.
If they're not put in the position where they have to make that choice then they won't make that choice. But of course if fewer hours of work means not earning enough to get by, then I suppose they will have to make that choice, won't they?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:01PM (6 children)
It becomes my business when someone wants to do something that will mess up my life to enable and protect such a lifestyle.
"IF". "IF". Lot of ifs with no justification for them.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 13 2020, @10:18PM (5 children)
Really? Weird.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 14 2020, @01:00AM (4 children)
And what's supposed to be the benefit? Some vague assertion that people will, like, do stuff? Well, I think I can already figure that out from what they do now.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Friday August 14 2020, @01:17AM (3 children)
And you've accused me of making assumptions? wow, OK.
People discuss the possibility of people working shorter weeks and your mind goes straight away to "your rights" and the possibility of violence.
That says quite a lot about you.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 14 2020, @02:54AM (2 children)
You can already do that. There's no need to "implement" any sort of shorter work week. Just work less or squeeze what you work into less days.
It's painfully clear that this is really advocacy to force everyone to implement labor policy rather than just some call for people to voluntarily work fewer days per week.
That I can read between the well delineated lines.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Friday August 14 2020, @03:15AM (1 child)
But I'm making assumptions. Ok then.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 14 2020, @03:46AM
Or maybe we like to talk about the multiple definitions of a four-day work week as presented by the Washington Post? The people who feel less guilt when they work four days a week instead of five?
Why redefine full time work rather than just work part time?
(Score: 1) by PaperNoodle on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:23PM
Could be different levels of engagement for work? I had similar levels of work productivity based on my excitement toward a project.
The only issue I had working 60-70 hours a week was that if I needed to run some errands during the day the employer I had would say something akin to "you need to be at work during regular business hours" regardless how many hours a week/day I put in. In one case, they would take it out of vacation time. I left both of those employers.
It's one reason I appreciate having a set number of hours to work and having a set time off.
B3
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:06PM (2 children)
If you're leaving at 7AM, that's why you're tired. Working midnights is a horrible strain on the body.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:30PM (1 child)
If you're a vampire, it's an even greater strain to work daylight hours.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:50PM
Sunblock - also causes vitamin d deficiency when overused in some non-vampires who like the pasty white death pallor as a fashion statement. Anyone remember the SPF 5000 purple gunk from Robocop?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:47PM
Right! Part age, part early onset dementia! Hang in their, Runaway! Working graveyard means no one can see you napping!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:23PM (10 children)
First of all, and don't tell this your boss, but you working 4x10 hours is not in his interest because you can't be productive for 10 hours. Not even with a one hour break in between.
As for why we're still working 40 hours despite being at least twice as productive [ourworldindata.org] as we used to be 50 years ago: Because corporations prefer to pocket the increased productivity instead of paying twice the workers. Duh.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by srobert on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:36PM
I'll moderate that as insightful and add also because we're stupid enough to let them get away with it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:40PM (8 children)
If nothing else, twice the workers means twice the liability - odds of an HR oriented lawsuit. Every person you hire is a potential existential risk to your company, more people = more risk.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday August 13 2020, @08:08AM (7 children)
How? The average person can only fuck up so much in any given amount of time. How is that chance higher at 2x20 hours than at 1x40?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 13 2020, @11:23AM (5 children)
Give Bill Clinton two hot interns instead of one... see the problem?
It's more of a bad apple thing, most hot interns won't be taking down the company, but... sooner or later you'll tie into one that can twist it around into a real problem - whether it's a slip and fall artist, a delivery driver who "follows all company policy and training" and still ends up killing people while on duty, Richard Pryor in Superman III... the major concern in interviews is "cultural fit" and that is a big overlap with "won't come in here and trash the place from the inside out." Hire twice as many bodies, now twice as many people have access to the inside, and if it's one in a million new hires that will take you down from the inside - hiring twice as many people does double your odds - maybe a bit more since people who work until they're exhausted don't have as much time and energy to plot and scheme...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:18PM (4 children)
If you assume that people are working against you, do not hire them. I'm sorry, but when did it actually become normal to assume that people working for you are trying to screw you over?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:15PM
Most of them aren't, in an organization of 100,000+ employees you can safely bet more than one of them are.
Even in smaller organizations, each new hire is a risk - low risk, but each new hire is a risk, and that risk is just about impossible to completely evaluate/eliminate during a reasonable interview process.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 14 2020, @01:33AM (2 children)
When people started working for other people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @03:46AM (1 child)
Ah ha, some insights into the conservative brain. Go easy on that amygdala little guy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 14 2020, @03:53AM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:13PM
Not all risk is per hour. You also have the problem that the average person is going to find a second 20 hour a week job.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:11PM (9 children)
If people are not kept busy, they could Do Something, and some maybe even start to Think!
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:50PM (7 children)
I started to Think, once. And then the Anti-Male Establishment put me out-to-pasture. Now, they're trying to turn me into a criminal, which ain't happening. Fortunately, I'm old & sick, & looking forward to movin' on up. If you're a male residing in the USofA, be careful what you think, or you'll be unpersoned by the Thought Police.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday August 12 2020, @11:29PM (6 children)
What you think is your business. The way you choose to treat other people might, however, get you into trouble.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:05AM (5 children)
Or, you know, merely vocalising an opinion.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:42AM (4 children)
Nobody is going to protect you from the consequences of all that free speech now, are they?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:57AM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:59AM
True.
Of course if you choose to be an arsehole, people might not want to be around you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @08:16AM (1 child)
Hey, I'm all down with not firing people for their freedom of speech. The world will become so much better once employees are free to expose their bosses bullshit with the security of knowing they can sue the pricks for everything they have.
Fucking SUPER SWEET! This could be the greatest ideological coup, conservatives finally figure out why freedom and democracy are important.
Well, except for the fascists like Runaway, they want to nuke their enemies and remain winning forever.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:14PM
I'll note that libertarians, who are often lumped with conservatives, already have this figured out.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:54PM
Or riot in the streets and loot. (Happening now.)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:29PM (15 children)
In the agricultural and industrial sectors, where the primary work activity is manual labor that produces goods and services, there's a direct relationship between the hours of labor worked and how much stuff you get out of each worker. In the commercial and scientific sectors, that relationship doesn't exist and never has.
Why were white-collar employees kept cooped up in offices for at least 40 hours a week prior to Covid? Because the bosses were hanging onto a completely incorrect model of how work actually gets done. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if having everyone working from home and completely slacking off 10-20 hours per week they're supposed to be working has had approximately zero effects on company productivity.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:09PM (8 children)
Better for them to be slacking off at home, getting something else productive done during those 10-20 hours instead of just hiding in an office, or worse distracting other people from getting their work done in an office "social" setting.
The danger is losing the thread altogether, white collar workers can't usually do productive work 40+ hours per week, but they do still need to stay engaged enough to do whatever it is they do for the organization, and being completely disengaged will eventually start to reduce their value to the organization.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:24PM (5 children)
What if "whatever it is they do for the organization" is "nothing useful"? My experience is that lots of organization would not be harmed and might actually be improved if someone with a title like "Long-Range Strategic Planning Coordinator" was basically unreachable for weeks at a time. In the book "The Peter Principle", Peter told a possibly untrue but fantastic story about how a company was able to improve their productivity dramatically by building a Head Office far away from any of their R&D and production facilities and sales team, and promoting all the useless people to the Head Office to keep them busy with meetings and memos and office politics while those who were doing the work were now able to do that work without being bothered so much.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:47PM (4 children)
In practice, not too many people have these kinds of titles. Most "value" built in corporations has some correlation with relationships, familiarity, knowing the same jargon, how each other thinks and works, and while this can be theoretically trained from documents in practice it comes from practice interacting with the people. This is true in spades for sales - widgets don't sell themselves, sales (above the WalMart level) works by making personal contacts and influencing people to buy product. Even at the K-Mart / WalMart level, sales happens by getting product in people's faces, making them walk stuff they don't need on the way to stuff they do need.
We've got a remote guy who I speak with about once a month on average, that's enough for us to stay on the same wavelength and skip a lot of noise when we do engage to exchange info. Right now I'm between calls with a corporate drone I never met before, and it's going to take me at least 90 minutes to get what should have been 30 minutes of valuable interaction out of him, mostly because of the "newness" of both of our concepts we're trying to communicate.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 12 2020, @08:05PM (3 children)
My experience, on the other hand, is that once the organization is large enough and successful enough that there's no real risk of the whole thing going under, management starts seeing winning internal conflicts as an easier path to raises and perks than doing whatever the organization as a whole is supposed to do. And part of an executive fighting those internal conflicts is accumulating teams of people loyal to them personally whose real job, regardless of their official reporting chain and job title, is to back their patron in those internal battles, e.g. coming up with documents that nobody will actually read in full that invariably conclude that their patron should get a higher budget and more staff, or piping up in meetings to support their patron's plan. And those are precisely the people you want to keep away from those who are busy keeping the organization running.
All this is largely to disguise the fact that once you get a couple steps above the ranks of the people that directly produce or sell things, basically everybody is in over their heads and doesn't have the slightest clue what they're doing.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 12 2020, @09:00PM (2 children)
In spades... In academia I was convinced that those who could not do, taught. My first job out of academia was a small shop - 30 employees max, usually more like 10, for 12 years - what people did or didn't do around there mattered, although the man who hired me was a bit worse than dead weight: playing the games of active undermining, etc. that you describe - by year 6 I had his title, by year 8 he was gone.
Next job was with a ~1000 person company, and the V.P. level there seemed first and foremost (and very transparently) concerned with "looking busy" like they earned their $800K/yr compensations - after busy, they tried to feign competence, but most of them were hopeless at that and just fell back on appearing to be so incredibly busy, their time in such high demand, that of course they don't have time to discuss anything of substance "more than 3mm deep" as I recently heard a manager refer to it.
Some of them do have a little clue, the most clueful I have met are the ones who acknowledge their absolute lack of control or depth of understanding and simply try to guide the big picture as effectively as possible. Steve Jobs pulled off a pretty good speech once wherein he acknowledged ignorance of many details within Apple.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday August 12 2020, @11:50PM (1 child)
I work for a company that employs something like 75,000 people worldwide (I think).
Every now and again we get a visit from some Vice-President or other top level VIP, and I have noticed a few things they have in common:
They all have some title which does not seem to describe an actual job.
They are all good-looking. All of them. Especially the women. I don't think that is a coincidence.
None of them last more than 6 months or so in whatever their job is.
I don't have a problem with it though. If the fabulously profitable company wants to give money to people who are dead wood, then good luck to them. The dead wood are just going to spend some of that money anyway and then a useful person can make use of it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 13 2020, @12:15AM
My company grew from 40K to 100K employees via acquisition a few months before I also joined via acquisition.
Our CEO when I started was reasonably level headed, didn't do anything to upset the apple cart, tried to push for good things while protecting the all important growth numbers. A new VP was hired about a year after me, he came an toured our little 1.5K employee backwater and delivered a speech he had prepared for the other 25K people under his purview - it had nothing to do with us, except that we are a distinct division under the same corporate umbrella as the one he was talking about.
Said VP is our CEO now, and he seems to have learned a bit - while he oversaw a successful turnaround of those other 25K employees out of their troubles, he openly admitted that he had little or no clue how things worked in our industry while doing so - he was learning the ropes on the job. But he gives a good speech, and people can sort of relate to him - like Bill Clinton or George Bush, they're brighter than they appear to be when on camera "talking to the masses."
Now, I worked for another CEO who thought he could give a good speech, but really was just a bipolar psychopath who was born into LOTS of money, and the company effectively borrowed that money from him for a bit and put up with him as CEO until we had paid him back with interest and he got bored. He actively made things worse than they could have been, but without his (or, rather his daddy's) money, or somebody else's money, that place would have been stuck growing VERY slowly for a VERY long time.
It's a different skillset, and some of the "skills" you have to be born into rather than learn, skills like: powerful contacts, access to large sums of money, etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @10:20PM (1 child)
You can't, it upsets the number of billable hours in the project. Why would you want to invoice the customer for less worked hours?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 12 2020, @11:26PM
But the company achieves exactly the same goal by having the employee in question work 20 hours and charge for 35 hours, right?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @08:19PM
I was going to post something along these lines.
Especially that this would effect different jobs very differently. Some of them, part of what you're paying for is simply having a warm body handy just in case. A lot of service jobs default to this when things aren't busy, but you still need every hour covered. And given the huge overhead of hiring one additional person, no business that needs a lot of hours-fillers will ever go for this proposal, and no amount of productivity increase will do anything about that bar full automation. Manual labor is in a similar situation for the reasons you gave.
Lots of rote salaried office jobs could handle the reduced work week without issue, and probably without changing staffing. Only hit will be to some of the middle management's egos.
Salaried creative work is never going to touch this. There are superstar coders, and of course plenty of superstars in the entertainment industry, but those are hardly the only ones with some people who are huge outliers on whatever the relevant scale is. Those people will continue to do what they do, and most of them give no shits about hours as it stands now. They'll work what they need to, and that goes in both directions. I've known great coders that have pretty much checked out of the promotion train who'll do their work in a short burst and then bugger off (even pre-COVID) and won't get in trouble for it, and ones that work pretty much every waking hour (although that latter was at a startup).
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday August 12 2020, @10:07PM (1 child)
Because farmers still use wooden plows dragged by oxen, and millions of blacksmiths spend their days hand forging iron structural parts. Tractors and harvesters and pesticides and chemical fertilizers, blast furnaces and laser cutters are mere figments of the imagination.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 12 2020, @11:23PM
If a farmer drives their modern tractor for 20 hours, they get approximately half as much done as if they had driven that same tractor 40 hours (provided, of course, that there's enough land being cultivated to have 40 hours worth of tractor-driving to do). Ditto for modern industrial equipment: If you have a guy running the robots for 20 hours, he's getting approximately half as much done as a guy running the robots for 40 hours.
That formula stops being true when you're talking about things like marketing artwork, because your artists will get burnt out.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @06:23AM (2 children)
Managers are like babies: If they can't see it, it doesn't exist; they demand all your attention; they whine when you don't do what they want; and they expect you to clean up all the shit they create.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:25PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @03:50AM
I'm replying to one of them! Though to be fair you're probably closer to CEO sociopath level.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:35PM (1 child)
Professionals are expected to work extra, uncompensated hours, especially during crunch times. Saying the work is 4 days means nothing. Compensate professionals by an hourly rate; that would drop hours immediately.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @09:08PM
Hahaha whaaat? Someone actually modded that flamebait? Hope that was a misclick.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday August 12 2020, @05:37PM (10 children)
And a 6 hour work day. You can run more shifts and hire more people, until the machines replace them anyway. But this is what we should do. Slowly reduce the human workload as the machines take over, and then kill us all...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:06PM (8 children)
Germany pulled the "standard" work week down from 40 hours to 37 back in the 1980s... it was a weak start, but I hope the trend continues and spreads.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:26PM (4 children)
Oh please, you know anyone who really works 37 hours? How many people do you know that don't work some McJob that don't have an "all in" contract?
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:01PM
Every single mechanic who does aircraft maintenance for Lufthansa - for a start. I may spend more time with the office geeks, but there are more boots on the ground drawing hourly pay.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 12 2020, @07:28PM
European countries generally have a lot stricter enforcement of labor laws, which includes real limits on mandatory overtime and extra pay for overtime. So in a lot of firms over there, 37 hours per week actually means something pretty close to 37 hours per week. They generally think the US and Japanese system of "we hire you for 40 hours, but you actually are supposed to work 100 hours" is nuts, especially since it doesn't seem to make the firms in question any more efficient.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:48AM
I know lots of such people. But then again I'm in a civilised part of the world.
(Score: 2) by Webweasel on Thursday August 13 2020, @08:49AM
I work 35 hours a week. UK.
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 12 2020, @10:24PM (2 children)
Everywhere I worked in Australia, I had a 37.5h work week, 30 minutes break each day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 12 2020, @11:16PM
That may have been the German standard too...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:39PM
I've never had a job where a 30 minute lunch isn't part of the package along with at least two ten minute breaks per day, with one self-employed job as an exception and there I was the one who set my own lunch and break schedule. So if lunch/break are taken off almost every job I've ever had is a 35.8 hour week. Sometimes I'll give a little more than that, sometimes I'm asked to do some overtime but it's not excessive.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:08PM
Better yet, have one of the machines slap on a silicon face mask, get some money rolling off a finance startup and network their way up the military-industrial ladder into having congress pay for a mars migration program where they can run off to and the humans can't follow.
Just need to come up with a humorous name for our masked robotic networker...
compiling...