I find it interesting when employees ask for this without reducing pay. They then think it’s a 20% reduction as it’s 20% less work. But then you factor the overhead including normal overhead like benefits, HR, office space and additional overhead like management (a manager can only many so many people so now we need two managers for a group) and your at around a 40% reduction in pay to support one less day of output.
- The employer pays salaries based on negotiation, not on merit or some scientific measurement. An employee is allowed to do the same.
- Unless the employee is privy to all the details and math pertaining this overhead and is the one who asked for this overhead, then it's appropriate that the employee doesn't care about the overhead at all.
- There is also overhead in the employees side that is not taken into account by the employer. Commuting to that "office space" also spends the employee's time and money, for example.
- A 20% reduction of work time never amounts to a 20% reduction of productivity or work output, unless the work consists solely of sitting in a chair (and that's not counting bathroom breaks).
> - A 20% reduction of work time never amounts to a 20% reduction of productivity or work output, unless the work consists solely of sitting in a chair (and that's not counting bathroom breaks).
I don't understand what you're saying here. If I work 20% less then that's 20% less work that I get done. I don't sit in a chair for work.
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
> 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.
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.
You might not be aware of that effect, since you deny it explicitly when it comes to your own work, but you might view it in a different light if you turn it around:
Would you produce twice as much if you were to work 80 hours? Probably not, right? You'd maybe produce about 1.5 times as much, and the quality of your work would suffer greatly, leading to more work in the future.
The same effect might work in the other direction, up to a certain point.
The 40 hour work week is not god-given, in fact it has been reduced quite a number of times in the past (mostly due to unions, like most working condition improvemens). So I can not understand why so many people act as if it were set in stone.
> 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 still needs to get done so the productive work can get done, though.
> Would you produce twice as much if you were to work 80 hours? Probably not, right? You'd maybe produce about 1.5 times as much, and the quality of your work would suffer greatly, leading to more work in the future.
I doubt many people can sustain their work output over 16 hours for most jobs. But that's not really what we're talking about here.
> The same effect might work in the other direction, up to a certain point.
Sure, if you work faster when you work less hours. Are you saying this is what happens? Are you seeing people get too fatigued after 6 hours of work so that their productivity is diminished? I've not seen that in general with the people I've worked with or the work I do over the years.
> The 40 hour work week is not god-given, in fact it has been reduced quite a number of times in the past (mostly due to unions, like most working condition improvemens). So I can not understand why so many people act as if it were set in stone.
I'm not sure where this came from because I don't think any of those things. I think that the only way for work to get done is to do it. However many hours per week that takes is fine. I don't understand the argument that working less doesn't mean you get less work done in general.
All that said, I realize there might be something different to brain fatigue vs body fatigue when doing brain work (software development) vs physical work (construction). I've largely done physical work and can't relate well to brain work except as a hobby and occasional small bits of work.
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 brain work, for example some kinds of woodworking, you can still see that effect. People can work longer hours and more days to a certain extent, but then the rate of accidents goes up (and I'd expect it to behave in a non-linear fashion). And if that effect is true in that direction, why should it not work for less than 40 hours?
> I doubt many people can sustain their work output over 16 hours for most jobs. But that's not really what we're talking about here.
Apparently, I'm no good at making myself clear. It's probably the language barrier, I'm decent enough at understanding English, but I lack any sort of conciseness, I believe. This was meant to be an extreme example, to make the point more obvious, but let's use a similar, more normal one.
Let's say instead of moving to a 4 day workweek, we move back to a 6 day workweek. Daniel you believe that you get 20% more output than before? Even with physical jobs that don't involve too much brainwork, I believe that this is not the case, as there are diminishing returns when the time for recreation is cut too short.
That depends on the individual of course, younger people need less than older people in general, and things like children, disabilities, a long commute and a host of other factors can change the equation, too.
> I don't understand the argument that working less doesn't mean you get less work done in general.
The argument is basically that for brain work, if you spend 20% more time per week at work, you might only produce less than 5% more output, since your brain will otherwise produce too many errors, which cost time to correct.
That is seen as an inefficient use of an employee's time. Also, his implies that maybe we could get almost the same output from people who work a 4-day-workweek. Now the question is, where is the sweet spot, as it is unlikely to be the status quo (that's what I clumsily tried to imply with the remark about the 40-hour-workweek not being"god-given")?
This can't scale forever, of course, or we'd all be working 1 hour a week and be extremely productive in that hour :D
But maybe the 4-day-workweek is that sweet spot. And since wages haven't kept up with corporate profits for a while, a lot of people - myself included - are eager to find out.
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.
Sure but even without factoring in additional factors like unions and labour laws that is solely a question of negotiating a deal between an employer and an employee.
Getting a significant raise is not unheard of, in particular when switching jobs, and a 4 day work week is basically the same.
Basic negotiation strategy suggest that "labour shortage" is the right time to ask for this.
Some companies have extremely fat margins and regular employees may very well feel that some of that money is better spent on their salaries than dividends, C-suite compensation or stock buybacks.
I became vegan for heath reasons at the same time I started my company (around 5 years ago). I believe it has allowed my body to stay young and my alertness to go up.
Starting out you just think of it as one meal at a time... this meal I won't eat anything with animal protein. Then one week at a time and before you know it you will pass the 90-day mark which is when you stop being hungry all the time and/or craving meat at all.
Another thing to note is I never really think of myself as a "vegan", just someone that is extremely picky and won't eat anything with animal protein :)
Do take b12 supplements, though- I found my eye to be drooping when I became tired because I was deficient. After taking the b12 I was back to normal.
Don't forget vitamin K2, it's important for regulating calcium. The most common sources are dairy and eggs. There are non-animal sources (natto, sauerkraut), but they're not exactly typical foods for most people.
Given what I've heard about the secure enclave on the iPhone in the last year or two, you'd hope Apple could get something as basic as the webcam light right.
I'd imagine it's feasible to have the LED and the webcam on the same circuit, so you can't power one without the other (disclaimer: not an electrical engineer). Honestly I'm not sure why you ever _wouldn't_ do it this way -- having to control the LED from software sounds like unnecessary complexity to me.
Most of the team of my startup SaleMove is in Tartu! This is yet another example of how great Estonia is for tech. If you want to develop for a great startup there reach out on our website!
Its an interesting concept. However, it may never work for one simple reason "risk". When my partners and I started our company the risk that we took was astronomical, leaving our high-paid jobs, masters, phd's to start a company. This risk needs to be rewarded and it is via equity. Building a company that is there only for its employees does not provide the founders with enough reward to warrant the risk.
This does not include the stress it takes to start and run a company, that stress should be equally as rewarded.
I've played around with co-operative business structures for this sort of thing, and if the shares are awarded to each employee as a straight split each year (so year 1 creates 100 shares, which are split 50% to the 2 founders, then year 2 creates 100 shares which are split 33% each to 2 founders and 1 employee, and so on) then the founders tend to end up with an outsize lump of shares, and the early employees do well too.
It ends up rewarding early employees more than the normal company structure, but I think that's a good thing; they normally have to go through a lot of disruption (and a fair amount of risk; the chances of the startup not being able to make payroll occasionally are high) and are a key element to the success of the organisation anyway.
I think you can have both, something that rewards founders for their risk while also providing for your employees.
Remember that it's a bit of catch-22 in the sense that you need your employees in order to make your company into a big success. Rewarding your employees and creating a culture that's awesome incentivizes loyalty, hard work, etc.
Be careful of this founder-before-all mentality... no one wants to work in a fiefdom...
