
Why Not a Three-Day Week? - mrcdima
http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/three-day-week
======
psychometry
Why not? Because capitalism. New technology will continue to automate away
more and more jobs, from manufacturing to the service industry. This _could
be_ one of the greatest achievements in human history, leading to that so-
called "leisure society" futurists talked about, but that would require a
massive overhaul of most countries' economic systems.

All those gains in productivity mostly enrich the owner class while the rest
of us have to fight even harder for the jobs that haven't (yet) been
eliminated by technology.

In the U.S., it's hard to imagine getting a single conservative lawmaker to
sit down at a table and have a frank discussion about wealth redistribution or
a minimum income or public ownership schemes, possible solutions to this
problem. That makes me worry that the inevitable transition away from our
obsession with the free-market and pursuit of capital will be painful rather
than celebratory. And that things will have to get worse before enough of us
can consider implementing solutions that make things better.

~~~
tptacek
I perceive this as one of a species of comments that is well-intentioned and
valuable in isolation, but that when introduced to the thread has the effect
of making it harder to discuss the article on its own terms.

It's easy to see the subtext of the article that indicts unrestrained economic
competition. So it's hard to ding a comment for surfacing that subtext and
engaging with it.

But at the same time, having been on HN for a long time, it's also easy to see
how the result thread will simply litigate capitalism, and how unlikely it is
that anyone will learn anything from the ensuing debate.

~~~
dang
I agree. Comments like this are stronger when they stay with the _specific_
content of the article. They're weaker when treating it merely as a platform
for some generic position ("obsession with the free market").

It isn't that the rhetoric is false, it's that it's impossible for it to be
substantive here. Grand claims need grand substance, which there isn't room
for in a mere comment post. People compensate for this with ersatz things like
getting louder or angrier.

Tangents don't have to be bad. Ira Glass-style "I had an uncle who wore that
kind of hat" tangents can be great. But _generic_ tangents go somewhere
uninteresting. The gravitational pull of the large, familiar topics has to be
resisted because once the discussion gets stuck on one of those planets it is
never getting off.

~~~
calibraxis
I don't care to post this, but meta begets meta...

Your (and tptacek's) meta comments seem unhelpful and clearly favor HN's
status quo.

I've successfully demanded a shorter workweek from capitalist bosses, and
helped coworkers fight theirs. And that comment you both meta-criticize is
pretty sensible, in my view. If you're going to hack a system, it's worth
getting familiar with the subversive lit.

(Though their last paragraph may indicate a lack of familiarity with that
subversive lit. Because politicians will naturally fight/coopt revolutionary
changes to the system they administrate. Post-capitalism is a revolutionary
change, and a capitalist state would attempt to respond violently. But
whatever.)

~~~
tptacek
The story about how you helped workers organize shorter work weeks would be
interesting.

The framing of advocacy for post-capitalist society isn't, because of the
nature of the site.

The only people who will pay attention to the latter conversation either (a)
are doing so because they are intractably opposed to your idea and enjoy
pushing back on it or (b) are already on your side.

That doesn't mean there's no group (c) of receptive, persuadable people, just
that the venue you've chosen doesn't reach them effectively.

------
Xcelerate
I find the whole economic system to be quite bizarre. Nobody's salary seems to
correlate with much except their skill at getting a high salary. For instance,
my sister (elementary education) makes even less than I do as a grad student.
The difference is that she wakes up at 5:00 AM and works all day teaching and
taking care of little kids until 7:00 PM, whereas I wake up whenever I feel
like it, head to a coffee shop and work on research (which is basically a
computer game for me), and mix in bike rides and whatever else as I please.
The difference in salary will be even more extreme once I get my PhD.

It really doesn't seem fair, and when I think about the vast majority of the
world population in other countries, it seems even less fair. I used to have a
more conservative stance that if you want to get more, you just have to work
harder, but now I've reversed my stance completely: I think it's mostly luck
-- where you were born, who you know, what your social skills are, and if you
just happen to be in the right place at the right time.

Many jobs seem like they exist solely for the sake of creating more jobs. We
have managers of managers of managers. A lot of people don't put a lot of
effort into their work (they spend their day browsing the internet), and the
ones that do put in an honest effort don't seem to be rewarded for it. The
hardest-working employees are rarely promoted into administrative positions.
And the best way to increase one's salary is to job hop instead of remaining
loyal to one company
([http://www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/06/22/employees...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/06/22/employees-
that-stay-in-companies-longer-than-2-years-get-paid-50-less/)).

I feel like many people have this ingrained notion that you're just "supposed
to work" for so many hours a week, and no one is seriously pursuing the goal
of creating leisure time (or at least work that's personally enjoyable). We
have more than enough technological capability to provide basic survival needs
to everyone on the planet, yet we're nowhere close to achieving that goal.

Again, I don't know why it's this way. But it is, and it just seems wrong to
me.

~~~
exstudent
I think there are two separate issues in your comment...

You make more than your sister doing "less" work because knowledge and high
level skills are a value multiplier. You may come up with a world changing
idea that generates billions of dollars. No kindergarden teacher could achieve
that. Pay matches accordingly.

Your second point is that there seems to be a lot of people with useless jobs
and I couldn't agree more. We're RAPIDLY approaching the point where most
people are employed to do basically nothing of value. How many people's jobs
could be replaced by the mythical "script" written in a day by a good dev?

I'm glad to see us get to this point. People should learn and practice useful
skills. So as not to cause a violent revolution, I think we do need some form
of basic income though. That would also enable creatives to experiment and
produce without economic pressure which I think is great. I also don't care if
99% of people mooch off this model as most people are just wasting time at
work as it is anyway.

~~~
Sharlin
It's a horribly short-sighted viewpoint to not take into account the effect
teachers (are supposed to) have on whole new generations of people! Teachers
_raise_ people who may get billion-dollar ideas in the future, and should be
paid accordingly.

~~~
TeMPOraL
They should, but they aren't and this is the reality.

Capitalism sucks at valuing things that don't give immediate profit. Education
is such a thing - it has extreme ROI... 20 years down the line. Which is too
long a time and it gets valued less than small changes that will bring in a
little bit of money next month.

~~~
MichaelBurge
How is capitalism the thing valuing teacher's salaries? If referring to the US
and public education, aren't they a branch of the government?

And even ignoring that(for example, at private schools), the 'consumer' here
is really the parent. The child isn't in a position to choose schools, so it's
really about selling to the parent. I imagine it has to be hard to get a sense
of any 20-year projected ROI if you can only indirectly measure teaching
quality by what your child says and standardized test scores.

~~~
mkr-hn
> _How is capitalism the thing valuing teacher 's salaries? If referring to
> the US and public education, aren't they a branch of the government?_

The tax base that funds the schools depends on the whims of capitalism.

------
grimtrigger
I would love some kind of job board for "lifestyle jobs". Thats jobs with 2 or
3 day work weeks and a 9-5 schedule. I might go as low as $60k (+ benefits) if
it was offered.

The closest thing to achieve that now is freelancing.

~~~
mr_luc
Yeah -- and it's way easier to pack out 4 or 6 solid months of work than it is
to find work that trickles in regularly at anything like "2 days a week," at
least for me.

------
chillingeffect
w/r/t The Protestant Work Ethic:

The book only gets a one-sentence mention in the article, but much, much more
could be said. Particularly, it presents overworking as a form of paranoia.

Working was framed as a duty to God and since we didn't know if God existed,
we were to work hard, _just in case_. Now that we've (largely) shifted our
beliefs from a Christian god to more diffused spirituality, we can stop
justifying overwork in this way.

~~~
learc83
> Now that we've (largely) shifted our beliefs from a Christian god to more
> diffused spirituality

Where did you get that from? A quick google search says about 3/4 of Americans
identify as Christian, and about 62% are members of a church congregation.

~~~
MisterBastahrd
I'd guess about half of that identify as Christian because it's socially
unacceptable to be agnostic. Church communities have more uses than simple
religious worship. Ask any salesman.

~~~
jqm
On this topic how many days a week do pastors work?

~~~
learc83
My dad was a music director and assistant pastor. He worked about 5 days a
week, and also had another job on the side. Choir practice, church functions
and services, preparing sermons, visiting sick church members, counseling
members, and doing charity work add up to a good bit of time.

------
edroche
This is the biggest thing I miss from my consulting days. I would never work a
5-day week. It would either be a 3-day or 4-day week, leaving lots of time for
travel, family and hobbies.

Sadly, I could never see our clients accepting any business day where we are
not available during regular business hours.

~~~
patio11
Clients are _surprisingly_ willing to deal with that. It may be less of a hard
constraint than you think it is, particularly if you train your clients to
expect that type of working relationship.

I had an interesting call with a doctor client recently. "I didn't notice a
number on your website." "That's correct." "So how am I supposed to get in
touch with you?" "I recommend email." "But you only respond to email a day
later." "That's correct." "Shouldn't you make yourself more available to your
customers?" "With respect, doctor, I'm exactly as available as I wish to be."

You would think she'd be mad after a conversation including that, but she
actually left happy, because I was able to fix her problem.

~~~
kyllo
Kind of ironic that a doctor would say that to you. Just try getting a
doctor's direct line or cell. It's almost impossible, they have receptionists
because they'd be overwhelmed with patients calling them with stupid questions
all day if they didn't.

Of course, you could also just hire a remote assistant to field phone calls
for you if you wanted.

~~~
patio11
Working on it, but since I don't have one yet and was not returning voicemail
reliably I hid the number.

------
happycube
I've always thought a four-day week makes a lot more sense than five... 4:3
on/off is a much nicer ratio than 5:2.

~~~
iagooar
It's exactly what I'm thinking about lately. A lot of colleagues of mine work
4 days a week, from Mon - Thu, and have 3 days off. It is a HUGE difference
compared to the 5:2 ratio.

It's not that I don't enjoy my job, but it sound so much sane to me. I hope
next year I'll have saved a little bit of money I currently need so I'll be
able to do a 4 day working week.

~~~
czep
If you ever have the opportunity to work 4 days a week, choose Tuesday to
Friday, rather than Monday to Thursday. The reason is that everyone else will
be in a good mood on Friday so it will be much less stressful working Fridays
rather than Mondays. For the same reason, don't burn your floating holiday on
a Friday.

------
rch
Haven't tried it myself, but I like the idea of working a 9/80 with every
other Friday off. One interesting effect is that those who are in the office
on Friday end up feeling more productive or relaxed since there are fewer
people around. I also wonder if every other Monday off might be better in some
cases.

~~~
nostrademons
My sister did 9/80s. They were pretty nice when she first moved to the area,
but the problem is that you have to take them off on a Friday and it's use-it-
or-lose-it. Now that she's married, it's pretty rare that her husband gets
time off when she does, and so the extra Friday was basically just a "sit at
home in front of the TV day and veg", while the 9 hour days meant that it was
an hour less time to spend with her husband in the evenings. I think she's
switched back to a regular schedule now.

I have some former coworkers that effectively did 9/80s as well, since they
maxed out their vacation and started taking every other Friday off so they
wouldn't lose it. It usually worked better, ironically, for people without
many hobbies, since they were okay with just sitting at home and vegging for
Friday.

4-day weekends could be great if all of society moved to them, but they're
tricky when it's just some employers because the people you love aren't around
to hang out with. I actually tend to prefer taking Wednesday off; a veg-day to
break the week in half seems much more relaxing than a 3-day weekend where you
can't do anything fun for one of the days.

------
padobson
Economists of yore were wise to see that productivity would increase
dramatically, but they were wrong in believing that surplus productivity would
translate into leisure time.

I look at Google and Ycombinator as the model for the future economy, if
economic systems are left unchecked by the threat of physical force.

How many people are working at Google everyday on a product that will never
produce one red cent? Hundreds? Thousands? How many funded YCombinator
startups will never provide a return on investment? 60%? 80%?

These days, the smart money is taking all their surplus productivity and
putting it into long-shots to create even more surplus productivity. This
explains why industries like software development, that have such an enormous
productivity surplus, are paying such high wages right now. One could even
argue that the shortage of skilled individuals in such an environment will
lead to an increase in demand for those who can train such people - leading to
something like a more organic education system.

~~~
jazzyk
"paying such high wages"

High wages? Not compared to doctors or lawyers or mid-level business folks. My
friend is a marketing manager (a glorified secretary/copy writer with an MBA,
by her own admission) and she makes more or less as much as a senior
developer.

Enough already with the "high wages" myth. It is the exact cause for the
shortage of software engineers in the US - most young people in the US don't
want to pursue it because the reward is not commensurate with the effort and
risk.

------
theophrastus
George Jetson: "These three day work weeks are killing me." (wikipedia:
"George's job primarily requires him to repeatedly push a single button")

That is, isn't this a product of a far more optimistic (cartoon) past view of
the future? and/or "where's my flying car?"

------
Keyframe
Why not half a salary?

~~~
WalterSear
Because two 20 hour employee are worth considerably less than one 40 hour
employee for all but the most menial jobs.

~~~
21echoes
[citation needed]

~~~
WalterSear
Have you worked anything other than menial jobs?

~~~
21echoes
yes. and the science is very exhaustively on my side: time and time again,
it's been shown that workers (especially knowledge workers like programmers,
designers, etc.) are more productive when working less hours.

* [http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/\---ed_protect/\---pro...](http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_protect/---protrav/---travail/documents/publication/wcms_187307.pdf)

* www.eurofound.europa.eu/pubdocs/2002/07/en/1/ef0207en.pdf

* [http://sciencenordic.com/we-should-only-work-25-hours-week-a...](http://sciencenordic.com/we-should-only-work-25-hours-week-argues-professor)

* [http://news.illinois.edu/WebsandThumbs/Lleras,Alejandro/Ller...](http://news.illinois.edu/WebsandThumbs/Lleras,Alejandro/Lleras_sdarticle-17.pdf)

* the list goes on...

------
PaulWillis
Yes, let's work 3 days a week in the West. China will continue to work 6 or 7
days. Fast forward 10 years and the reserve currency will be the yuan.

~~~
fab13n
> China will continue to work 6 or 7 days [...] and the reserve currency will
> be the yuan.

You suppose that wealth production is proportional to the number of hours
worked. This used to be an oversimplification, and now becomes simply false.
Countries lead by people who keep counting on this falsehood will fail.

~~~
PaulWillis
Western workers are very productive per hour work but we still have to work
some hours.

~~~
fab13n
To paraphrase Bill Gates, measuring wealth production by hours of work is like
measuring aircraft building progress by weight.

The "production per hour" metric gets more and more meaningless and deceitful
for more and more jobs, mostly for the most productive ones. Obsessively
measuring $/hours misleads us into thinking that spending more hours will get
us more $, which is false for most jobs which actually creates significant
amounts of wealth.

I've automated away dozens to hundreds of menial jobs (hard to count): what
sense is there in comparing my one-shot engineering hours to those of the
technicians I've definitely made redundant? Each of my hours will have saved
thousands of technician hours over the years: does that make me and my time
worth thousands of time more than them?

> we still have to work some hours

Some of us have to work some hours, but there are more and more poeple whose
hours simply can't be converted into wealth. And that's good news, not a
tragedy, because we don't _need_ those working hours. What we need is a way to
distribute wealth complementary to, and less obsolete than, salary.

