
Sweden’s proposed six-hour workday - Libertatea
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/06/02/how-great-would-swedens-proposed-six-hour-workday-be-this-great
======
furyg3
I moved from the US (high on the list) to the Netherlands (bottom of the list)
a while ago. Different jobs and sectors vary, but the theme I can confirm is
that the Dutch feel more productive, generally (I work in software
development).

In very broad terms, the Dutch are more likely to plan and stick to those
plans. Personal time and time off are valued, so you need to be efficient in
your working hours. You can't really expect someone to respond to your emails
after working hours. Having to work in the weekends at all is a sign of bad
project management, and should be exceptional. Meetings have agendas which are
sent out ahead of time.

Americans are generally more optimistic, which makes for worse time management
and planning, which leads to overtime and stress. Being seen at work somehow
equals working, and internal guilt for not working efficiently while at work
leads to more weekend work. There's a big focus how much you've 'worked' this
week. Interruption is common for things which could be structured.

To be honest, it's been pretty difficult to adjust, but the payoff is huge.
Actual free time after work, real weekends, and longer vacations are all
possible because people plan... whereas friends back home are often unable to
plan vacations because they/their boss don't know how busy they'll be in 5
months.

~~~
comrade1
I have the same experience in Switzerland. I moved from the u.s. (s.f.,
boston, dc, socal) and despite working less we get a lot more done than in the
u.s.

We have an 8.5 hour workday in Switzerland which we strictly stick to - we get
comp time if you work over. In the u.s. we were pretty regularly working 10
hour days and 12 wasn't unusual, but we were wasting so much time.

A good example is meetings - most people get to the meeting 5 minutes before
the start time. As soon as enough people arrive (usually 5 minutes before the
start time or right at the start time) the meeting starts. If the meeting
doesn't start by 10 minutes after because someone is missing it's cancelled.
There's no smalltalk at the beginning, no socializing, no standing around
stuffing your face...

Our company was bought by an American company and some of the Swiss staff
transferred to the u.s. for awhile. Meetings were one of the most confusing
changes for them - they'd be waiting in the conference room with no one
showing up, then a few stragglers 10 minutes after the start time, and then
every stands around talking about non-work stuff like they were at a high-
school mixer. One colleague asked to have them start the meeting the first few
time but eventually gave up and just started doing it the American way.

~~~
amirmc
And yet people complain about the pointlessness of meetings despite not doing
anything to make them more efficient (cf start _and end_ on time, avoid chit-
chat, stick to the agenda, send actions quickly afterwards etc). It only takes
a small about of self-discipline to get there but everyone has to exercise it.

I'm lucky to have learned from some excellent meeting-chairs but have only
been able to reproduce the efficiency when I formed and ran my own team. Never
pulled it off when joining someone else's.

~~~
dragonwriter
The #1 thing to make meetings more efficient is _not to have them_. Very many
meetings, IME, are held for purposes for which a face-to-face meeting is not
an efficient tool, and for which decentralized, asynchronous mechanisms like
email would serve better.

~~~
anonymousDan
So what would be your rules of thumb for when meetings are worthwhile?

~~~
dragonwriter
The simple two-part question to identify when a meeting is worthwhile and what
the scope of the meeting should be (and what should be in other channels): Is
simultaneous, interactive, many-to-many communication necessary, and why,
specifically, is it necessary? (A followup, to make sure that people are
_ready_ to have the meeting -- another common problem that makes meetings a
waste of time and results in inappropriate things being done in the meeting
venue -- is to ask: "what needs to happen _first_ so that people are ready to
engage in that many-to-many interaction"?)

Lots of meetings, IME, are held by one person to gather information from many
people or to distribute information from one person to many people -- these
kind of one-to-many or many-to-one scenarios are the easiest thing to see
doesn't require a meeting (many-to-one being the more inefficient.) There's
even some cases of many-to-many communication where there isn't any real need
for interactivity. And plenty of cases where a meeting that is held for a
many-to-many interactive purpose spends much of its time doing top-down, one-
to-many communication for much of the meeting because something that ought to
have been distributed to be reviewed by participants to be ready for a
productive meeting was instead distributed for the first time in the meeting,
wasting most of the meeting time.

------
wobbleblob
> "though the United States is an outlier here, working both long and hard"

The article conflates productivity with 'working hard'. Productivity is a
measure of how much value is produced ('money is made') per hour of work.

A bulldozer operator working an 8 hour day to move a few tons of dirt is more
productive than a worker who needs many 12 hour work days to move the same
amount of dirt with a shovel and wheelbarrow. A trader at a bank who moves
millions of shares with a phone call and a few mouse clicks is more productive
than the bulldozer operator. Does this mean the banker works hardest and the
guy with the shovel the least hard?

A high productivity per hour in a country means fewer ditches are dug using
shovels, and more credit default swaps are sold. It doesn't mean people are
working harder. It also doesn't necessarily mean the shovel digging country is
organizing its economy less efficiently. Where the cost of labor is a few
dollar per day, investing in a bulldozer might never pay off. Hiring 100 guys
with shovels and wheelbarrows could be more efficient than hiring one guy with
a bulldozer.

~~~
gjm11
I fear you're also conflating two things: money made and actual value
produced.

Suppose the trader is selling credit default swaps and helping cause a big
financial crash, or the bulldozer operator is destroying acres of forest to
clear the way for a tobacco plantation. What they do may be very valuable to
the people paying them (and hence, if they're lucky, lucrative for them
personally) but have substantially _negative_ net value by any reasonable
measure.

So "amount of hard work" is at _two_ removes from what (I think) really
matters, namely amount of actual value produced.

~~~
tomp
So can the guy with the shovel.

Ultimately, the concept of "actual value" can be defined as one of two things:
money (for things that have value for an individual) and laws (for things that
have value for the society, e.g. externalities). Simply said, the society
values certain things (short-term profit, growth, cars, cheap food, human
lives) more than others (long-term stability, the environment, clean air,
rainforest, empty space). These sentiments change, but they change slowly,
because we live in a democracy (and because people value social/cultural
stability and safety).

As far as the financial crisis is concerned, it's easy to say after the fact.
Was Einstein's research net-negatively-valuable, because it resulted in the
atomic bomb, or was it net-negatively-valuable, because it ended the war?
Whenever there is innovation, there is a risk of the innovation resulting in
something "bad". That doesn't mean that the value of research is negative.
People are simply short-sighted and/or not smart enough to foresee bad
consequences. Btw, I'm sure you're doing the same thing - consuming cheap
electronic devices produced using non-recyclable rare resources by workers
whose raising wages will (1) significantly increase pollution and (2)
significantly increase their quality of life. Is that "good" or "bad"?

~~~
Retric
Economists have long accepted that individuals and society have vary different
short term costs and bennifits for the same activity. Abstractly it's the
basis for having governments in the first place. But that's a long way from
saying laws directly account for all known externality's.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality)

------
skrause
If someone gave me the chance of a 30-hour work week, I would rather work 4
days of 7,5 hours than 5 days of 6 hours. Just the hassle of getting up early,
dressing up for work, commuting etc. isn't really worth it when I'm only going
to work 6 hours anyway. I'd rather take an extra day off.

~~~
iamtew
This is a fairly common thing here in the Netherlands actually, four day work
week. Most of my colleagues I know who does this to have some extra time with
their family/kids.

Usually it's a split in the middle of the week or something, for example my
manager doesn't work tuesday's, it's his "papadag" as he then spends time with
his kids and don't have to send them off to day-care or get a nanny.

Another colleague of mine dropped his contract from 40 hours a week down to 32
hours so he would have an extra day to work on his music career and an
upcoming album.

Obviously these arrangements will affect your salary as you work less.

~~~
karmajunkie
> obviously these arrangements will affect your salary

I don't really find this obvious or self-evident. One of my very biggest
complaints about the economic climate today is that all of the productivity
gains go to the owners, and very little to workers. If I as a worker am
producing more, it follows that I should be working less, or paid more (which
amounts to the same thing.) to do otherwise eliminates jobs that would
otherwise need to be done, and takes advantage of workers.

~~~
hueving
>gains go to the owners, and very little to workers.

If there is such an obvious imbalance, why doesn't everyone just quit and
start their own company?

~~~
esrauch
Because of the obvious barriers to entry to reach a point where you are
exploiting workers? Or because some people probably would prefer not to
exploit others for profit?

Your point would make some sense if all owners of companies bootstrapped them
from startups, when in reality they were likely just someone who was otherwise
wealthy and became owners once it was already a successful company when the
original owners already cashed out (or passed on, depending on the age of the
company).

------
bartkappenburg
I'm Dutch and I work 4 days a week. My productivity in my startup is the same.
This is what researchers say about our average number of hours per week:

For example, Dutch workers are on par with American workers in terms of
productivity per hour. They pay higher taxes and earn less than Americans. But
on average, they work roughly 11 weeks less than their American counterparts
each year, have access to government-funded health care, pay little or nothing
for a college education, and have far more leisure time than the American.
When UNICEF recently ranked 21 industrialized nations by well-being for
children, Netherlands was on top and the United States was near the bottom, in
20th place.

~~~
easytiger
For the day off does the entire company not work or do different people take
different days off. My reasoning is because if you are working supporting a
24x5 or 24x7 platform then you need full time cover.

~~~
mcv
Friday is by far the most popular day to take off. Many offices are nearly
empty on Friday. I'm currently alternating weekly between Fridays and
Wednesdays, with my wife taking the opposite day, because we both agree
Wednesday's free afternoon would be a great time to do things with our son,
but it's also a day with important stuff happening at work. Before that, I had
Mondays off.

Jobs that need full time cover tend to have a schedule for their employees.
And when it's 24x5 or 24x7, you're going to need a schedule anyway, because a
regular 40 hour work week doesn't cover that either.

------
showsover
This stood out to me:

>The Swedish town of Kiruna actually gave up its six-hour working days in 2005
after finding that the increased intensity of work was not a positive. "People
have seen there that the intensity of the job increases significantly, with
negative effects on health as a consequence,"

Could that be because we are used to fit our work in 8 hours and work
accordingly? Doing 100% of your work in 75% of the time does sound more
intense.

It might be interesting to see how the stress changes as people get used to a
6h day.

~~~
ddebernardy
This was the big problem in France when they passed the 35h work week with no
pay loss. Workers were suddenly expected to do the same output in 4h less, and
this increased stress levels quite a bit -- or so I've been told by friends
who live there.

~~~
yodsanklai
It may be true in some fields, but it's not my experience. A lot of workers in
France work more than 35 hours. In particular, most qualified workers (in the
software industry for instance) don't have a fixed schedule and overtime isn't
paid. To compensate for the 4 hours (going from 39h to 35h) they have more
vacation days. It amounts to about 10 days annually depending on the company.
Besides, some people are pressured not to take those day off. Several friends
of mine work long hours (> 10) and don't take more that 4-5 weeks vacation a
year (which is good compared to the US or Asia, but far from the promised 35
hours a week).

------
nobbyclark
As we move from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, it becomes more
about managing our energy as individuals, not how many hours we're putting on
the clock

Tony Schwarz's "Leading at Google" talk on this topic is excellent -
[http://youtu.be/tke6X2eME3c](http://youtu.be/tke6X2eME3c)

------
bowlofpetunias
And once again the Netherlands shows up on the bottom of that list, so I'll
say it once more: we have a high participation of women in the work force, but
most of those only work part-time, often in stereotypically "women's jobs"
(receptionist, secretary, kindergarten).

Makes the stats look much more progressive than reality, even though 32/36
hour work weeks are common.

~~~
mcv
Even so, just the reactions from Dutch people here on HN show that a lot of
them are working 4 days a week. I do it too. My brother does it. Many of my
neighbours do it. A 4 day work week is particularly popular with parents.

~~~
glormph
I'd love to work 4d/week, but how does it affect retirement fund buildup?

~~~
avar
You build it up at 4/5 the rate that you otherwise would have.

~~~
mcv
More precisely: you build it up at a rate relative to your income, which is
probably 4/5 of what it'd otherwise be. But if that 4/5 is enough for you, the
retirement funds will probably be too.

------
mcv
I love seeing Netherland at the bottom of lists like this:
[http://cf.datawrapper.de/mv47r/3/](http://cf.datawrapper.de/mv47r/3/)

I too work 4 days a week, and wouldn't have it any other way. I have had to
reject at least one very interesting job offer for it, though. Even when
employers know full well that a 4 day work week makes sense, some of them
still have trouble accepting it. It makes for weird conversations where they
totally agree with me, and still cannot do it.

------
homakov
Why does government set N hours _at all_? It's must be up to business! E.g.,
if I have a software company, I want my employees to work 20 hours a week.
Isn't it obviously better way for everyone?

~~~
vidarh
When it was left up to business, we had 14 hour+ days. It took many decades of
extensive strikes and demonstrations, during which dozens of workers were
killed, before the 8 hour day became the norm.

The US union that is now the AFL-CIO leadership in pushing for the 8 hour day
led directly to making May 1st the international day for labor demonstrations,
in part in commemoration of the Chicago Haymarket Massacre.

If you want your employers to be able work _less_ , nothing is stopping you
most places. But experience is that not having an upper bound caused employers
to take massive advantage.

~~~
codehotter
You seem to know a lot about this and it's something I've always been
interested in:

When laws were passed to mandate 8 hour work days, what % of companies had 8
hour work days already? 10%? 20%? 80%?

Nowadays we know that total productivity is higher if you have 8 hour work
days, even though you work less total hours, because your productivity per
hour is much higher. Was something like this known at the time? Or was the
push to 8 hour work days only so that people could spend time with their
family? What kinds of arguments were used?

~~~
crazy1van
"Nowadays we know that total productivity is higher if you have 8 hour work
days,"

We _know_? Surely on a planet with 7 billion people, some of them can maintain
their work efficiency for more than 8 hours. What about the Steve Jobs and
John Carmack's of the world? I don't see them being 9-5 people.

~~~
VLM
That seems to have a peculiar and unlikely assumption that they would have
produced less by working fewer hours, while almost all human experiences show
those at the top of their profession rarely if ever got there by merely
punching a timeclock more than the next tier down.

I will never be a world class ballet dancer or world class basketball player
simply by putting in a little more time than the next guy.

~~~
crazy1van
Yes more time won't make you world class, but I bet the world class ballet
dancer and basketball players often put in more than 8 hours a day.

~~~
aestra
Probably but at some point you get diminishing returns. The human body needs
rest to recover.

~~~
crazy1van
Absolutely. But I bet the world class athlete knows where that point is for
themselves far better than a legislator.

------
sportanova
I hope we start seeing more things like this, especially in the US. Does 6
hours a day maximize happiness / productivity? I don't know. Does 8 hours?
It's the custom, but I don't know. I think it's almost impossible that 8 hours
is the best number across every industry => vertical => company. I'd love to
see more experimentation

~~~
dalek_cannes
8 hours for work, 8 for leisure, 8 for sleep and 2 rest days a week seems
reasonable, at least mathematically speaking. If it were up to me, I'd include
commuting time in those 8 work hours as well, making the number no more than 7
hours.

~~~
stdbrouw
You're basing your assessment of reasonableness on the aesthetically pleasing
properties of symmetry? :-)

~~~
dalek_cannes
Not really. Eight hours for sleep covers almost everyone's biological
requirements. It's hard to decide in what proportion to split the remaining
16. So split it 50-50 unless someone can propose something better!

~~~
mbrock
That's a bafflingly unfounded and useless "suggestion!" Enormous amounts of
people have been working 8 hour shifts for decades -- instead of just guessing
that the status quo is probably optimal, why not ask a variety of people if
they think two hours more of family/leisure/commute/exercise/learning time
would be of any benefit?

------
symmetricsaurus
Currently there is not much discussion about a general reduction of the work
day to 6 hours in Sweden.

If anything politicians are pushing for more work (though not longer days).
Lower sick pay, later retirement and conversion of part time jobs to full time
have been implemented or proposed.

(Also, it is not Volvo Cars that is downsizing, it is Volvo Group).

~~~
pathy
MP just decided to go into the election with a 35 hour work day proposal. I
also believe V and F! are in support of a work hour reduction to varying
degrees.

So there is definitely a push to reduce the work day (Though possibly not to 6
hours).

~~~
symmetricsaurus
Forgot about the recent (mp) proposal. Maybe there will be a new debate on the
length of a work day/week in time for the election then.

~~~
mbrock
It's been a long standing point on the MP party program, although perhaps an
often neglected one.

------
gyardley
I wonder how much the length of the work week is related to cultural belief in
upward mobility, either for yourself or for your children.

When I was a kid, my own family - mostly blue-collar, unionized workers -
would've only supported a reduction in the work week if that meant they could
start getting overtime sooner. They didn't have to, because they were
unionized, but they worked as much as they could. They'd happily work holidays
like Christmas because it meant they got triple-time. If you gave them a six-
hour day at the same rate of pay, they'd celebrate - and then go looking for a
part-time job. They did this because they wanted a better life for themselves
and their children - not too many six-year-old working class kids had a TRS-80
in their bedroom, but I did.

If they didn't believe a better life for themselves or their children was
particularly possible, perhaps they would've wanted to work less - but that
cultural trait was such a big part of their lives, they would've been entirely
different people without it. I have a hard time even picturing it.

Because of this, when I read articles like the one linked, they seem _so_
strange - I'm not judging, not at all, but it really highlights how different
cultures are wired _completely_ differently.

~~~
arjie
Father-son income elasticity is higher in the US than in most of Europe. This
means that the income of the son more strongly follows the income of the
father.

The difference you speak of may be due to the fact that making lots of money
more strongly determines whether your son will too.

------
tim333
I wonder how many hours people work naturally if you don't need the money and
quite enjoy what you do. Say you're building some software project because you
want to do it. I wouldn't mind betting most people would work more than 36
hours a week. I daresay you could make an argument that people should not be
forced to work much longer than that just to make ends meet.

------
Tenoke
I wonder if the government workers, who will still work 8 hours a day will
have a loss of productivity due to a conscious attempt to help the move to
six-hour workdays.

------
fetbaffe
The problem is not six or eight hours working day, the problem is funding.
What I understand the red-green ruling alliance has not put away any funding
for this reform, so as usual Göteborg flush their public economy down the
toilet and which of course hurts the smaller cities in the same region where
they share public programs with Göteborg. Same old story with this city.

And is going to be required to hire more employees because of regulations on
how many available workers per shift on typical government job.

Göteborg has of 2013 a debt of 37,5 billion SEK. On top of that it has 13,5
billions SEK in unfunded penions debts.

There is a reason why Göteborg, or Röteborg (Rottenburg) in "folkmun", has one
of the highest taxes in Sweden - poor management.

------
droidist2
I'd rather go to 4 days a week. One less commute.

------
marincounty
San Francsico local 6 proposed a 10hr/4 day work week; Sat- Mon off. The
electricians voted it down. My dad never understood why. As a kid, neither did
I understand why anyone wouldn't want hours like this. By the way, getting to
the job site is 60% of the hassle, the rest is boring construction. I honestly
think all jobs would benefit from just getting rid of Mondays? Two days off is
just not enough time; unless you have no life and live through your job. The
problem is many of us do not even remotely like our job, or our felllow
workers. We hate coming in and seeing the the same people--especially the
one's who haven't realized this is no dress rehearsal. We were born and we die
--it's a simple equation. A great line I heard out of a movie, 'Give me a hair
cut that says I go to a job I hate, only to adorn my spoild wife with consumer
crap, and keep my ungrateful kids adorned in expensive jeans for the next
thirty years; until I get the courage to blow my head off with a shotgun.'
Extreme statement, but rang true with me. Oh yea, to every girlfriend who
claimed to love their job-- Great--get your MBA. Put on the pants suit. Climb
the ladder. It's my turn to stay home and take care of the spawn. Me and the
kids want electronic toys. It's O.K. if your working late, or go to china for
Apple. Just send us the checks! We'll be fine. (In all honestly, I think
people(especially Americans) want what they can't have, and don't know when
they are offered a good deal.)

------
cabalamat
A 6-hour workday would be 30 hours/week. If we're going to reduce the working
week, then instead of spreading that over 5 days, why not work a 4-day week
(7.5 hours/day)? That would reduce commuting congestion by 20%, and make
everyone who doesn't like spending an hour a day in a traffic jam happy.

~~~
claudius
Why would you spend an hour a day in a traffic jam? Is there something wrong
with your public transport system?

~~~
hfsktr
I default to America as that's where I live. I don't think much of our public
transport. Sure where I live they probably don't need more than just the buses
we have but I had never seen a passenger train (just cargo, as far as I know)
until I went abroad. The ease of getting around was amazing and I could
totally see not owning a car there. I'm sure there is just as good public
transport here but it doesn't seem to be the way we are built.

Anywhere that has hour long traffic daily should probably be big enough to
have better public transport so I'll give you that...

~~~
aestra
Where do you live where you've never seen a passenger train? The Northeast has
a busy train route between cities.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Corridor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Corridor)

Some cities (even some small ones) have EXCELLENT public transport but some
places have zero public transport. And with widespread suburban sprawl it gets
worse since you generally need a car to live in suburbia.

~~~
hfsktr
I live in Green Bay, WI. Not huge like Madison/Milwaukee but a decent size
(IMO). Maybe I have just been really unlucky or oblivious. I only just found
out last year that every year, for a long time now, ships come and port here,
like galleons and stuff] for a few days as part of some event. So I could see
me just not spotting one if it did happen.

Not sure why a train would actually come through here though.

------
sethbannon
For what it's worth, here's a list of countries ranked by worker productivity
(measured by GDP per hour worked):
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(PPP\)_per_hour_worked)

------
crazy1van
So what is the optimal work day for productivity? Many folks here believe it's
a (proven?) fact that less than 40 is actually more productive. However,
surely 40 is more productive than 0. So, what is the magic number?

Personally, I don't think this is that simple. Heck, humans just aren't that
simple. I think some people and some professions are more productive above 40
and others are more productive under 40. That's why I'm in favor of a system
that leaves this as a point of negotiation between the employee and employer.
Just like there is no one-size fits all salary for, say, a java developer with
5 years experience (how fast is he? how buggy is his code? can he work
independently? etc), why would expect to find a one size fits all for work day
length?

~~~
kourt
It seems that 40 hours is basically optimal for turn of the 20th century
factory work. I've seen several references[0] that the optimum for knowledge
work is 35 hours, but I'd LOVE a detailed citation.

While you are correct that people vary, many managers seem extremely ignorant
of 200 years of research on this topic and start from grossly wrong initial
conditions (e.g., "40 hours is the bare minimum and should be considered
slacking: a professional works until the job is done and we really expect 50
hours; we prefer passionate people, which starts at around 55 hours"). It
would be far better for almost everyone if the typical standard expectation
were based on a typical standard human, not on outliers (e.g., people who
carry the DEC2 mutation and need only 6 hours sleep).

Look at it another way: the 75% of the workforce who is average would stop
burning themselves out to the point of negative productivity, and supermen
like yourself would be truly recognized for your outstanding contributions,
rather than just "meh, meets expectations".

[0] e.g. [http://www.slideshare.net/flowtown/rules-of-
productivity-275...](http://www.slideshare.net/flowtown/rules-of-
productivity-2756161)

~~~
toomuchtodo
[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/)

"An average worker needs to work a mere 11 hours per week to produce as much
as one working 40 hours per week in 1950. (The data here is from the US, but
productivity increases in Europe and Japan have been of the same magnitude.)
The conclusion is inescapable: if productivity means anything at all, a worker
should be able to earn the same standard of living as a 1950 worker in only 11
hours per week."

~~~
kourt
Thanks; I'm familiar with that. Regardless of how total output compares with
days of yore, this is now: I'd like to see research demonstrating that, over
time, knowledge workers on a 35 hour schedule outproduce those on a 40 hour
schedule.

~~~
toomuchtodo
The French have the highest GDP per capita per hour worked (right up there
with the Dutch), while working close to the fewest hours. Is that not a sign
of productivity?

------
Swizec
I work for six hours a day. It fits very nicely into a 7.5 to 8 hour work day
with enough rest time to get a proper six hours out.

I find that knowingly working only six hours lets me take better breaks
because I don't feel like I'm supposed to be working eight hours.

------
NYCHacker
Seriously want to move to Europe now. As a U.S. citizen and web developer, how
hard is this to do? Can I just get a remote job here and then move? What are
the VISA issues?

My biggest concern is that my salary won't be enough to pay my ~$1k/month
student loan debt.

------
terranstyler
It is not the duty of the lawmaker but of the contracting parties (= employer
and employee) to define the amount of work hours per day.

There are many variables in the process:

\- Demand for money of the employee (poor father of five vs. rich single)

\- Demand for work of the employer (company needs a helping hand vs company
needs to recruit a new team)

\- Scale effect of product (does one additional hour or man lead to one
additional unit produced?, compare laying bricks vs programming)

These variables are unknown to the lawmaker for each specific instance, so any
a-priori determination of the amount of work hours per week cannot be optimal.

~~~
mbrock
There are pretty severe network effects in place, though, as well as obvious
imbalance of power (the wage worker is, almost by definition, relatively poor,
indebted, etc). Working hours have always been a big part of labor politics.
The individual contractual perspective is not the whole story.

~~~
terranstyler
I don't know what network effects you mean.

But I agree with the imbalance of power, at least in the common case. However,
the more specific and difficult your job is, the more the power leans towards
the employee.

Still, I believe any kind of power inequality will manifest itself somewhere
whether you fix working hours or not.

~~~
mbrock
Almost every time I've talked to someone about reducing their working hours,
the most serious reason not to has been something like "but everyone else is
working 8 hours."

It's not like the "invisible hand" simply discovered the optimum life
arrangement for all workers everywhere.

------
mathattack
I found the Netherlands numbers strange, but then worked on a Dutch project.
They were very industrious, and planned things well in advance, including
avoiding work on Fridays or during their sacred vacations. If you can pull off
1400 hours in a year, god bless!

------
Kiro
Why isn't it just standard to be paid by the hour? A fixed hours-per-week
seems backwards.

~~~
bird_in_hand
Some workers are pretty interchangeable. If Sarah can assemble parts at the
same rate as Sven, then the employer shouldn't care who does it, right?
However, for specialized positions or ones that are knowledge-based, this
doesn't work. Sarah is a lawyer who's been working on a case for the past 3
months, so it will take her much less time to complete the next step than
Sven, who has been working on something else. So in that case, the employer
would be pretty unhappy about Sarah wanting to work 30 hours a week, even if
Sven is willing to pick up the extra 10.

Software developers with the same skills working on the same product are
generally closer to the former than the latter, but it depends.

The other thing is that there are many fixed costs associated with hiring an
employee. They need a desk and office space and computer, they need health
insurance/unemployment, you need HR to manage all of this. So it ends up being
much more expensive (and complicated) to have two part time employees than one
fulltime one. If most benefits were decoupled from employment, a lot (but not
all) of these costs go away.

------
erikb
Germany seems to be unrealistically low in the diagram. It is very untypical
for people here to work less than 40 hours per week and lunch hour is not
included in the work time (means you actually stay 45 hours at work in a usual
contract).

~~~
vidarh
The article points out that Germany is pulled down by a lot of people working
part-time jobs.

~~~
erikb
Yeah but these shouldn't be considered in such kind of statistics, right?
Doesn't make sense to compare part-time workers and full-time workers when a
country wants to limit their numbers of full-time hours.

------
lauriswtf
The same chart as in article, just visualized on a map:
[https://datawrapper.de/chart/85fbQ/preview](https://datawrapper.de/chart/85fbQ/preview)

------
baoyu
A possible issue with the experiment—the Hawthorne effect [1].

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect)

------
chrisgd
The list of countries is so strange to look at with so many countries that
have low GDP / capita or recent depressions / austerity forced on them and . .
. The US near the top

------
thewpguy
I work from home, and I find if I eliminate distraction and go zone-in coding,
then six hours are a lot more productive then 8 hours of fooling around.

Organization is key (not hours).

------
atmosx
Greece is second in the list of most working hours per year and still heavily
indebted. The price of political corruption.

------
Shivetya
In other words, government workers. People not truly beholden to anyone. An
entity that cannot lose money can make stupid decisions and generally get by
with them because apathy of the public is an exploitable resource.

So the title is wholly misleading. I guess politicians of a certain style in
Sweden need to lock in the public employee vote?

Call me when innovation starts and not grand standing and vote buying

~~~
dlange
Ignorant comment, trying to apply one's own bias or perspective of government
work in his country to that in a completely different
(social/cultural/economic) entity.. Imagine if your Stanford grads picked
government work to better their local society rather then a profit-driven
startup then you begin to see another viewpoint

------
justnotsure
The innovative US economy will make it all irrelevant anyway by introducing
more and more work from home jobs. Work from home is almost common in the US
and basically non-existent in Europe. I wouldn't trade Swedish 6-hour workday
with my American-based 8-hour while working from my coach at home. Somehow
socialists are always one step behind Mother Nature, i.e. free markets.

~~~
vidarh
The "innovative US economy" had to be forced by socialist unions to cut the
working day to roughly 8 days. It took decades of strikes, demonstrations and
bloodshed to reach that goal.

You know why people demonstrate and celebrate workers right on May 1st?
Because then largely socialist and anarchist US unions decided, led by the
AFL, in 1888 to restart demonstrations for the 8 hour working day with a major
demonstration on May 1st 1890 in part in honour of those who died during the
Haymarket Massacre. In 1889, the AFL approached the socialist Second
International to suggest coordinated demonstrations internationally, and the
Second International agreed.

So when you enjoy your "American-based 8-hour" working day, remember it came
to be thanks to socialist unions.

~~~
justnotsure
I appreciate Unions and I strongly believe that capitalism works well only in
connection with democracy. Sure if people who just didn't try hard enough at
school and end up at bad jobs vote for 6 or even 2-hour day work, let them
have it! I don't care, I'm paid per hour I want to put as many hours as
possible.

~~~
vidarh
The point was that your supposedly amazing free market was not what led to the
8-hour day. It took bloodshed and illegal strikes; demonstrations and decades
of fighting for legislation.

~~~
justnotsure
Please note that in communistic states people worked regularly over 8 hours
long after 8-hours work week was legislated in the USA. My point is that
system evolution via democratic process is much better than bloody revolution
that left-wing quite often has on its mouth.

~~~
vidarh
What does "communistic states" have to do with anything? They were/are
kleptocratic oligarchies that are so stratified that they have even worse
class systems than capitalist states.

> My point is that system evolution via democratic process is much better than
> bloody revolution that left-wing quite often has on its mouth.

It was not evolution via democratic process that gave us the 8 hour day. It
was not bloody revolution either, but plenty of blood has been shed during the
fight for decent working conditions. People _were_ outright killed. People
_were_ arrested. People _were_ intimidated; blacklisted.

The current system is only as good as it is because our forefathers were brave
enough to stand up and fight even when they had to break the law, and even
when they in many cases risked their life to fight the conditions of the time.

And they _had_ to: Plenty of people died because of the disproportionate
powers of employees to dictate conditions. Such as the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory fire, where 146 people died when the factory burned because the
employees kept the doors locked during working hours to prevent unauthorized
breaks(!):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fir...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire)

~~~
justnotsure
My grandad worked 14 hours+ shifts in 1950s and 1960s in communistic Poland in
a steel mill. _Anybody_ who would refuse would end up in jail or even worse -
gulag - for treason.

As bad as capitalism is it will never, ever be as bad as communism can be.

~~~
aestra
Capitalism if done wrong _can be_ just as shitty.

~~~
justnotsure
Obvious lie. What in the history of the human kind was worse than Cambodia,
Cultural Revolution in China or North Korea today? Nazi Germany? Still had
'socialists' in their party name...

