
Bring Back the 40-hour work week (March 2012) - pnathan
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/
======
grellas
The 40-hour week is forever gone in the startup world, and that is simply one
of the trade-offs in having moved from a world where big enterprises
emphasized long-term relationships with defined pension benefits and health
coverage for life to a new world in which such enterprises have faltered and
sunk only to be displaced by the startups that disrupted them through
technical and other innovations. One can howl at the moon over these
developments but is it really desirable to revert to an older day where a
faithful employee's reward for long-term service was getting a gold watch on
retirement or a $10K bonus for having invented the thing that made the
employer hundreds of millions?

On a technical legal note, U.S. overtime laws have long since
institutionalized the 40-hour week for non-exempt (generally lower skilled)
employees and that remains the overwhelming norm in the economy. In that
sense, there is no need to "bring back" the 40-hour week. It never went away.

If, as the author seems to espouse, the goal is to impose a strict weekly
limit on the higher-skilled employees as well (in the case of Silicon Valley,
tech professionals), it takes laws to do that and laws restrict freedom.
Granted that efficiency studies might cause some employers to adopt strict
hourly limits as a matter of company policy, or that individual lifestyle
choices might cause a given employee to run in horror from the idea of slave-
like work hours, do tech professionals really want to be prohibited from
making such choices for themselves? It is one thing to say that laws are
needed to protect those who cannot protect themselves. It is quite another to
impose the force of law on what really is a lifestyle choice to be made by
those who are equipped and smart enough to make it for themselves. Trying to
"bring back" the 40-hour week from this perspective is, in my view, a very bad
idea that would seriously harm the tech-driven companies that populate the
startup world.

~~~
untog
_an older day where a faithful employee's reward for long-term service was
getting a gold watch on retirement or a $10K bonus for having invented the
thing that made the employer hundreds of millions_

You think startups are any different? Unless you are one of the very first
employees in a startup that is massively successful, you're not going to
benefit financially compared to a job at BigCorp. In fact, the loss of higher
salary, bonuses and benefits mean that startup employees are often working
longer and getting less in return.

It's time to get rid of the culture where you have to stay in the office as
long as the founder does- his incentives are totally different. A 40 hour week
sounds great to me, but it requires a cultural change, not a legal one.

~~~
biscarch
Ignoring the hours argument. If incentives for the founder do not align with
the incentives of other people involved in the company there is a completely
different problem at hand.

~~~
untog
Well, consider it incentive scale. Everyone wants the same thing, but the
founder will benefit but an order of magnitude more than most employees. Just
because he's there late doesn't mean everyone else should feel obliged to.

------
drewblaisdell
Perhaps this is a good thread to pose this question.

I am a front-end engineer in my early twenties. Right now, 40+ hours a week is
doable and I am paid well, but I don't need all of the money I'm earning. I
would _gladly_ take a 50% salary cut and work ~20 hours a week.

The only problem with this is that I feel like this is a risky thing to bring
up with an employer. Has anyone ever had any success getting a good part-time
job or downsizing your position at a company? Every listing for part-time I
see seems to be for someone with a lesser skillset.

~~~
bokonist
Software is generally a winner-take-all market. Software has zero marginal
cost, so the company with the most revenue can invest the most upfront into
making a better product, giving it even more revenue. Furthermore, in most
cases there is little incentive for customers to ever use the second best
product in a segment. So when building software, you not only have to meet the
customers needs, you have to meet the customer needs better than any
competitor. If you produce a product that is half as good or improve the
product half as quickly, you do not lose just half your revenue, you could
lose all of it.

The second aspect of software development is that a developer working 40 hours
a week is more productive than two developers working 20 hours a week. With
the sole developer, there less communication overhead, less management
overhead, and the ratio of productive time to time learning the system and
understanding the interlocking parts is higher. This is the classic mythical
man month problem.

The third aspect of software development is that directly measuring output and
effort of an engineer is very difficult. So as a proxy, managers look for
signs of passion and engagement. If you are passionate and smart, but are slow
to implement some feature, management will believe the feature was simply more
difficult than anticipated. If you generally are not passionate about your
work, and are slow to implement some feature, management will think you are
slacking and fire you. Creating an effective company requires creating a
culture of passion and hardwork, and having one person only work part-time can
decrease the morale of those putting in 40+ hours. Asking to only work half-
time betrays a lack of passion, and could be a bad career move.

So the net result of these factors is that a company must work at maximum
efficiency, and maximum efficiency comes when all developers are working 40+
hours a week. It is not in the company's interest to let you work only 20
hours a week, and it could indeed be risky if you bring the idea up with
management.

I should also note that the above dynamic is not just the case in software,
but in virtually all high paying jobs, from professional athlete to corporate
lawyer to corporate executive. Virtually all high paying jobs have some sort
of competitive, winner take all dynamic in the market at large (the winners
being the ones who get paid well), and within the company, the high paid
people are the ones with specialized, hard to replace skills, that have a
large ramp up time to learn effectively (learning a large code base, learning
a set of legal traditions, learning how to hit a curveball, etc, etc). Thus in
order to earn the high pay you must work long hours, and you must work many
productive hours on top of a base of ramping-up hours.

~~~
nostrademons
One way around this, if you want work/life balance, is to timeslice on much
longer increments, like a couple of years instead of a couple of days. Put in
the long hours at the demanding job for a few years until you have a shippable
product and demonstrable, tangible successes. Then take a year off to travel,
found a startup, work on an open-source project, volunteer, or otherwise
decompress, using the savings you got from the high-paying job before.

For some reason, taking a year off to travel, volunteer, or experience the
world isn't looked at in the same negative career light that wanting to only
work part-time is, particularly if you have demonstrable successes at your
last employer. It shows passion, engagement, and the ability to take
responsibility for your own life, and many employers assume that will transfer
over to your job performance at your next job. You're at a slight disadvantage
in salary negotiations because they don't have to lure you away from your
existing job, but you can make up for this by applying to many jobs (ideally
through connections) at once.

I've heard it's also better on the "life" side of things as well, as you can
throw your whole being into whatever you experience in your free time, and not
just settle for the scraps you can fit around your job.

~~~
famousactress
I've know a couple of people who did this, at even smaller increments that
this... Worked 6-9 months, then took a similar amount of time off (to travel,
pursue acting or some other endeavor, etc). If I had my twenties back, I'd
give this a shot.. though I suspect I'd end up spending the 'off' time
accidentally building a software company. Whoops.

------
otakucode
40 hours?

No. Average worker productivity has skyrocketed since 1980 with the
introduction of computers and automation technology. Salaries have remained
flat. A 20 hour work week with the same salary would be far more reasonable
(though still very far off the mark of paying employees according to the value
that they produce).

~~~
crusso
_though still very far off the mark of paying employees according to the value
that they produce_

Employees aren't really compensated for increases in output that are achieved
through standard business practices, technology, automation, etc.

That's because their relative input remains the same.

Same input, same salaries.

If I'm starting a business mass-producing widgets and I fund the machinery,
process development, and software to produce that -- why should I pay extra
for the employee who really only has to push the big red button to start the
machines going every morning?

Just because a lot of value is produced when he pushes that red button doesn't
mean that he should be highly compensated.

~~~
morsch
In that case, you will be forced to drop prices, because your competitor's are
probably doing the same (otherwise you'll run out of employees rsn). If prices
are falling across the board, people don't _need_ to earn wages as high as
before since they can reproduce themselves at the same level with less income.

I'm not sure there's any value to this kind of armchair economics.

~~~
crusso
As I said, the machines and the software and the automation produce value.
That's a given in this scenario and in lots of businesses currently in
existence.

If we're going to have any value in a forum at all, we need to at least make
an effort to read and understand the arguments of posters before posting straw
men.

------
pnathan
I've been on death march projects before; these projects simply burnt people
out and quality was atrocious. There's a point where you don't care much about
the job, all you want to do is go home and perform
$favorite_mindless_relaxation. It's deleterious to your health, your
relationships, and your mental life.

I get concerned when I see people celebrate things like weekly hackathons
running into the early morning hours, working 60+ hour weeks, etc. Of course
it can be needful, but it's also not a sustainable work pace doable for 30-40
years without massive personal issues for the vast majority of people.

~~~
masklinn
> It's deleterious to your health, your relationships, and your mental life.

And your mental hygiene, there's no way you're going to think about (let alone
implement) that idea of yours when you're mentally exhausted.

------
preinheimer
The article is self-contradictory.

It argues at length that working more than 40 hours a week reduces your
output, then states: "And it hurts the country, too. For every four Americans
working a 50-hour week, every week, there’s one American who should have a
full-time job, but doesn’t. Our rampant unemployment problem would vanish
overnight if we simply worked the way we’re supposed to by law."

The math they're using there 50 hours x 4 employees = 40 hours x 5 employees
is either wrong, or the rest of the article is.

~~~
trjordan
I think the point there is actually about money, not productivity. If you're
paying by the hour, they're both the same to the employer, but you'll get more
from the 5 40hr employees.

There's a bunch of simplifying that's going on there (overhead per person,
etc.), but the basic message is that if companies can only afford so many
people-hours, it's hurting the people they don't hire in addition to their own
employees.

------
jonsen
I once saw a tv documentary about the CEO of a big danish company. She worked
40 hours per week, and to that she commented: "If I couldn't get done what is
expected of me in the allotted time frame, I wouldn't have the competence
required for my position."

~~~
jeffool
I once saw a janitor who always had more work to do. She worked 40 hours a
week and then did the extra that the boss asked her about on any given day.
She could've told him that cleaning desks wasn't in the contract. Or she
could've reported the overtime. But not everyone has those kinds of luxuries
if they want to keep their jobs.

Some jobs always have more shit to shovel, be it actual shit or feature creep.
And some people will always expect you to shovel more next quarter/year.

~~~
stephen_g
I think the point is that people _should_ have the luxury to only work 40
hours, and/or properly report overtime and keep their jobs.

Over here if an employer forced one employee to work more than 38 hours a
single week _, they could be fined up to $6,600. Firing a worker for not
working more than that would be unfair dismissal and attract more fines,
prosecution etc...

_ There are provisions for reasonable overtime, but cleaning desks wouldn't
fall into that unless it was some kind of emergency... And the employee can
work overtime if they want (and are paid for it or get time-in-leiu) but they
can't be _expected_ to.

~~~
joonix
They can get this luxury, if they unionize. But Americans won't tolerate any
such thing, nor will they strive for it. The culture in America is all about
slaving away as much as you can, either out of fear of losing your job or
desire to be promoted up the ranks (with the reward of even more work). They
make very few demands of their employers because they are told by our society
that they should just be happy they have a job.

The best ways to gain leverage over employers that I can think of, short of
unionizing or passing broad regulation: free basic healthcare coverage
provided by the government to all, and a strong economy. An ability to leave
your job without fear that if you get sick you will die/bankrupt will do
wonders. An ability to leave your job because the demand for labor outstrips
supply will make employers compete by offering better perks, compensation,
benefits, work environments, etc (already the case in high tech).

------
jayferd
I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating, since few people seem to
know it. If you are a software engineer or IT professional working in
California, and are paid less than about 81K a year or $35/hr, you are legally
entitled to extra overtime pay. Definitely something to talk to a manager (or
a lawyer) about. See [http://www.california-labor-law-attorney.com/it-
professional...](http://www.california-labor-law-attorney.com/it-
professionals.php) .

~~~
jotux
FTA:

>If you work in the computer industry and do not fall into any of the
exemption categories: administrative, professional, executive or the computer
software exemption, you may be entitled to overtime pay.

Generally non-exempt employees are entitled to overtime and exempt are not. I
believe most software/IT professionals hired full time in CA are exempt
employees.

~~~
jayferd
I'm pretty sure most "Software Engineer" positions are non-exempt, unless paid
above the threshold. I'm not a lawyer, though, so here's the list of
exemptions in the law itself (CA Labor Code s. 515.5(b))

    
    
        (b) The exemption provided in subdivision (a) does not apply to an
            employee if any of the following apply:
        (1) The employee is a trainee or employee in an entry-level
            position who is learning to become proficient in the theoretical and
            practical application of highly specialized information to computer
            systems analysis, programming, and software engineering.
        (2) The employee is in a computer-related occupation but has not
            attained the level of skill and expertise necessary to work
            independently and without close supervision.
        (3) The employee is engaged in the operation of computers or in
            the manufacture, repair, or maintenance of computer hardware and
            related equipment.
        (4) The employee is an engineer, drafter, machinist, or other
            professional whose work is highly dependent upon or facilitated by
            the use of computers and computer software programs and who is
            skilled in computer-aided design software, including CAD/CAM, but who
            is not engaged in computer systems analysis, programming, or any
            other similarly skilled computer-related occupation.
        (5) The employee is a writer engaged in writing material,
            including box labels, product descriptions, documentation,
            promotional material, setup and installation instructions, and other
            similar written information, either for print or for onscreen media
            or who writes or provides content material intended to be read by
            customers, subscribers, or visitors to computer-related media such as
            the World Wide Web or CD-ROMs.
        (6) The employee is engaged in any of the activities set forth in
            subdivision (a) for the purpose of creating imagery for effects used
            in the motion picture, television, or theatrical industry.

------
mrbgty
In Japan, working yourself to death is common enough that they have a word for
it: karoshi

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/07...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/07/12/AR2008071201630.html)

~~~
cdestroyer
Seriously man. God bless the Japanese. Their work hours are horrible.

------
killface
This is why any competent computer worker should never accept a salaried
position. Sure, it's cool to say "I make 100k/yr!", but it's much cooler to
say "I make 65/hr, but I got paid for that 4-hour conference call last night
to troubleshoot production"

~~~
jabbernotty
Obviously, one's mileage may vary. As a developer in the country I live in,
the only positions are salaried positions.

~~~
marvin
In countries with good overtime laws, you get overtime even in salaried
positions. Where I live, there are _very_ strict laws about what constitutes
overtime, and the limit is at 40 hours per week. For any work beyond that, you
must get paid by the hour and get at least a 40% bonus above what you would
normally make. If you do not get this, you can sue your employer and will win.

It is possible to get exceptions to this law, but no exceptions are possible
on an individual basis - they must be negotiated across whole groups of
employees by a labor organization. Such agreements allow certain groups of
workers to 80 and 90-hour weeks, but the conditions and payment are very
strictly negotiated. Another exception is for owners and founders.

Consequently, overtime is only used where strictly necessary. I think this is
an excellent system to protect the rights of laborers.

------
bitops
Wanting to work fewer hours is something I think we all hope for, but it also
depends on what we're after in life. I was reminded of this essay from Paul
Graham: <http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

~~~
Joeri
I disagree with this sentence from that article: "You could probably work
twice as many hours as a corporate employee, and if you focus you can probably
get three times as much done in an hour.". You cannot work double the hours
and be more productive. If you work 80 hours on a continual basis, you will
get less done than if you worked 40 hours. I have seen smart people reduced to
blubbering idiots by the hours they put in through misguided passion.

The true productivity benefit from going into business for yourself is not
that you can put in more effort. The human capacity for productive work is not
that flexible, because we are not machines. The real multiplier is that you
can direct your effort at that which truly matters. Most businesses spend 10%
of their budget on 90% of their value. If you can work smarter you can get
dramatically more done because you are building that which truly matters. That
is where the PG article is right.

But, here's the problem with what I'm saying: people working crazy hours
succeed. Everyone can see that. How can that be explained? In my opinion,
those people succeed despite those hours, not because of them. It is their
laser-like focus on reaching a goal that makes them succeed, but it is also
this focus which makes them put in more hours thinking it brings success home
sooner. It don't think it does, but it's almost impossible to prove it doesn't
because there just aren't many places where highly passionate and focused
people stick religiously to a 40 hour work schedule.

~~~
crusso
_You cannot work double the hours and be more productive_

You can't simply put typical workers on a schedule that's twice as long and
expect more productivity, that's true. Individually, though, you can normally
become extraordinarily more productive if you have the right motivation.

 _people working crazy hours succeed._

Why is this such a mystery? Haven't you ever thrown yourselves into a new
startup or idea and spent every waking hour on it for long periods of time
because you were excited by what you were doing and it didn't feel like you
were working? Haven't you ever gone to sleep thinking about your ideas, and
jumped out of bed right away the next morning like a kid on Christmas and then
worked on those ideas, barely wanting to take time to eat, at last breaking
away from what you're working on late at night because you know you need to
get some sleep? Maybe it's a gene that allows some people to go into that
mode. Maybe it's just a matter of finding the right motivation. Regardless, it
appears that people who don't experience it can't understand it any more than
blind people can really appreciate colors.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Passion leaves a nasty hangover of bugs. I've gotten jazzed on Vietnamese
coffee and hacked my compiler all through the night and into the morning on a
Friday night.

I then had to spend the next several days fixing all the damn bugs I'd put in
because I wasn't thinking straight.

~~~
crusso
Maybe getting into the kind of rhythm I'm talking about isn't for everyone.
Hard to say. All I know is that when I've been able to "turn it on" in my
career, I've had productivity that went on for months. Social life at the time
sucked, but that's the tradeoff I was willing to make at the time.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
I can crunch, but once I start losing sleep it's just damaging.

------
wombleton
I honestly thought it would be arguing to go _up_ to 40 hours.

~~~
prostoalex
That kind of article would feature a *.fr TLD.

------
tsahyt
As someone who has worked 60+ hour weeks as well as 20 hour weeks for longer
periods I've always felt that working longer was doing me well. If I'm working
about 40 hours or more I'm more focused during work and generally more relaxed
when I'm not working. But then again that's just me. Working less than 20
hours a week makes me incredibly lazy by the way.

~~~
3pt14159
I'm the exact same type of person.

Edit:

But this doesn't mean I push what works for me onto the people I work with. It
works for me, so I do it. What also works for me is when I feel like not
working I leave. When you put in lots of hours, you tend to get those types of
freedoms; which I enjoy greatly.

------
rohern
We could do quite a bit better than that.

<http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html>

------
stephen_g
Interestingly enough, in Australia the standard full-time work week was 40
hours, but Fair Work Australia recently changed it so the maximum an employer
can ask a full-time employee to work in a week is 38 hours.

Some people at the company I work at do work quite a bit more, but this is
actually discouraged by the company (it counts as time in-leiu so they can
take that time off later). This seems a massive contrast to the US where
articles like this make it seem like people work far longer hours to make it
look like they're a harder worker. Does that really happen?

~~~
jonathanwallace
Some places it does, some places it doesn't. Much depends upon the local labor
market, industry, etc.

"It depends."

------
enraged_camel
I think we need to stop counting hours worked and start measuring results
instead.

~~~
latortuga
There's this almost cult-like obsession with measurement among the hacker
crowd where everything must be measured and optimized. Unfortunately, people
don't work this way. Telling people that they haven't measured up to some
arbitrary standard is a significant demotivator. If you are measuring your
workers on some chart, they'll begin either gaming the chart or comparing
against each other, neither of which will motivate them to do better work - it
will motivate them to optimize whatever you're measuring. I saw this at my
last job and it was blindingly, painfully obvious how bad of an idea it was
but management kept it up.

Take a support staff for example. What do you measure? How many calls they
make? That incentivizes making lots of short calls. How many notes about
clients calls they made? That incentivizes leaving lots of minimum length
notes. Am I a worse support staff member if I leave longer notes and make
longer calls? How do you accurately measure the "results" of a support staff?
By customer retention? Good luck correlating individual client retention to
specific support staff when customers talk to many different employees during
a sales or support process.

Once you get past people who create objective value for the company,
measurements are difficult to impossible. Measuring against an arbitrary
standard is worse than doing nothing because it demotivates employees who
aren't as high up on your arbitrary standard. Not everyone at a company has a
direct impact on revenue - janitor, accountant, sysadmin, chef, etc.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>There's this almost cult-like obsession with measurement among the hacker
crowd where everything must be measured and optimized.

Yes. One of the pioneers of business, H. James Harrington, said, "
_“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to
improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you
can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t
improve it._ ”

~~~
Silhouette
Unfortunately, that argument is flawed for several reasons.

Firstly, in practice, measurement is not free. It incurs overheads of various
kinds, and there is no guarantee that any benefits ultimately obtained will
outweigh those overheads.

Secondly, the series of negatives doesn't logically imply the initial
positives.

Thirdly, it is not self-evident that all of those negative implications are
actually true, particularly the first.

I suspect many of us have at some point heard the word "This needs to be
managed!", but they always seem to come from middle managers whose own
contributions are of debatable value and who never seem to have a good answer
when the return question is "Why?".

------
dscrd
I really don't see how anyone (assuming intellectual, creative jobs) could
work more than 10 hours a week, every week -- if we count as 'work' only the
time spent to produce something useful.

------
snitko
If you have a marketable skill and there's little competition - I'm pretty
sure you can negotiate whatever hours you want. If you have a competition,
your options are decreased. If it happens so that your skills are not very
marketable you either be prepared to put up with more constraints and worse
conditions or improve your skills. What people who favor unions assume is that
workers are not ever willing to improve and raise their market price, and that
they are hopelessly exploited by the employer.

The intentions of bringing more comfort into people's stressful lives are
understandable, but by just wishing it and possibly legislating it we are not
making anyone richer. The overall effect will be less jobs for low-skilled
workers who do not have enough skills to compete on the job market.

------
EliRivers
I read this title and thought it was a demand to increase the working work.
Work 40 hours per week? Is that some kind of joke? Then I read the comments
and was quietly horrified. I'm guessing a long long working week is a U.S.
thing.

~~~
Tycho
I think they include lunch hours in the 40 hour count, so it's really just a
nine to five monday to friday.

~~~
abracadaniel
Nope, 8-5 M-F is standard.

------
tetomb
I feel that the four day work week is the sweet spot for productivity and I
will institute this when I start hiring. 28-32 hours of work a week is better
than 15-20 hours of work and 20 hours of facebook and lolcats.

------
yummyfajitas
The claim that working past 40 hours is unproductive is pretty weak
empirically.

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/work-hour-
skepticism.h...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/work-hour-
skepticism.html)

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/construction-
peak-60hr...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/construction-
peak-60hrwk.html)

The most current data suggests the optimum is actually 60 hours (in
construction), and there is little info on knowledge work.

~~~
IsaacL
Indeed, I have heard from a few friends who worked in consulting that hourly
productivity held steady up to around 60 hours/week. Over 80/hours per week,
it dropped off rapidly. Between those two figures was an ambiguous zone.

~~~
brc
Ambiguous because it would be different per person, and different per person
over different time periods.

The thought that 40 hours is the local maxima for all persons on the planet in
all jobs is frankly ridiculous. There are organisational benefits for
averaging this when co-ordination is needed (ie assembly line, construction
site) - but this isn't as important when so-called 'knowledge workers' are
able to individually work on projects and come together at set points for the
vital co-ordination.

Productivity discussions should be about flexibility and the ability for
workers to set their own times (both total hours and start/finish times). Not
about some type of 20th century union negotiating point.

------
ck2
Actually, 2013 will bring the 29-hour work week because if you work more than
that, by law your employer has to pay half of your health-insurance which can
be a few thousand dollars on their part.

So expect two shifts of people working 20-29 hours a week. At least
unemployment numbers should go down in theory but this is a heck of a
loophole.

------
bmuon
I never quite believed in the 40-hour week. It kills every possibility of
doing anything else other than work in your life. I prefer the 36 hour week.
Work 6 days a week instead of 5, but get 2 extra hours a day to dedicate to
whatever you want.

------
kleiba
Why on Earth would I want to go back to the 40-hour work week?

[http://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment/conditions-of-
employme...](http://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment/conditions-of-
employment/pages/hours-of-work.aspx)

~~~
joonix
The "reasonable additional hours" factors leave things wide open. You could
easily argue any white collar job can require over 38 hours reasonably with
those factors.

My wife works in an office in Australia where most people work over 60/hrs a
week and she's pressured to work more than 50. If some enthusiastically work
over 50hrs, everyone else basically has to stick around as well or they will
be evaluated poorly and lose out on advancement.

~~~
kleiba
_If some enthusiastically work over 50hrs, everyone else basically has to
stick around as well or they will be evaluated poorly and lose out on
advancement._

Do you mean in that particular company? In general, I think that's a myth.

------
fholm
Again I love my country (Sweden). There are multiple laws in place that forbid
companies to _force_ people to work more then X hours per week/month/year.

There's several different averages across days, weeks and months that control
how much "overtime" you're allowed to work. The max is 200 hours per year
though.

It obviously varies, and not everyone follows these laws, especially in (game)
development, etc. As long as you the employee agrees to working over time
(often uncompensated) none is going to bat an eye. The important thing is that
you have a law that will back you up incase your company is trying to force
you.

------
imroot
I've actually gone back to a 40 hour work week (as a consultant) after working
six months doing 80+ hour work weeks (as a salaried W2, Employee).

I'm happier, and healthier (I've dropped 30 pounds since moving into the
role).

To each their own.

------
rdl
Reducing commute and other wasted time is probably still the low hanging fruit
for most people. If your work is sufficiently varied, I don't see how
60-80h/wk is unsustainable at at least 1.5x the work you'd accomplish in 40h,
if (and only if) the other hassles of life are taken care of for you -- no
cleaning, commute time, etc.

I don't think I could do a single task for 80h/wk productively, but I could
certainly do my primary job for 40-60h/wk productively and then spend 20h/wk
doing meetings with users, conferences, etc.

~~~
otakucode
But should you? Your employer will not reward you for it with anything that
could be considered reasonable when compared to the value you are creating for
them.

What people can do, and what employers are willing to pay for, are two very
different things. Employers, by and large, have adopted a strategy of paying
employees as little as possible, divorcing their compensation from the value
of their work. Capitalism says that employers should receive as little work of
as little value as possible in return.

~~~
liber8
I'm not sure where your definition of Capitalism is coming from, but nothing
about capitalism or free markets requires (or even predicts) that workers will
be paid commensurate to the value they create.

Workers are paid based on supply and demand. If moving a pile of manure from
one side of a parking lot to the other will net me $100,000,000, that doesn't
mean the laborer I hire to move the manure will share in the value created by
moving the manure. This is because the pool of laborers willing and able to do
the job is roughly 4 billion people (or more accurately, tens of thousands of
people in the immediate vicinity). Competition ensures that a laborer will be
willing to move the manure for (roughly $15/hour here in Southern California),
regardless of the ultimate value the work produces for me.

On the other hand, if a Steve Jobsian/Jony Ive figure creates a series of
industry dominating products from whole cloth, he may get to share in a huge
percentage of the value created by those products, simply because there are
only a handful of people on the planet capable of creating those products, and
thus the employer is willing to pay his $100,000,000 salary.

~~~
king_jester
I think both of your examples highlight exactly what the OP was talking about,
that employees are not paid based on the value they produce. In both examples,
some employer stands to make much more value off of someone's labor than what
they will pay that employee. Businesses and capitalists are looking to gain
more profit and value than what is reflected in someone's salary -- this is
the way they accumulate more resources than those workers. This accumulation
of wealth is typically backed by hierarchy and authority structures that
maintain that the employer continues to get more value out of someone's work
than the employee(s) participating in that work.

Like you said, there's nothing about capitalism that says it should do
otherwise, but I think for me that shows how unethical capitalism is in how it
treats the output of others.

~~~
liber8
Ah. Perhaps my point was too subtle then. More bluntly, I was trying to say
that there is no ethical duty to pay employees solely based on the value they
produce. If there were, markets could not function. There is no conspiracy to
"divorce employee's compensation from the value they create" as otakucode
states.

By definition, free trade happens because each side believes they are
receiving _more_ value than they are paying. In my example, the manure owner
who pays his laborer $15 an hour and the board of directors who pays the Steve
Jobsian figure $500,000 an hour both believe that what they get in return is
worth more than the money they pay. This is why they enter into the
transaction.

> _This accumulation of wealth is typically backed by hierarchy and authority
> structures that maintain that the employer continues to get more value out
> of someone's work than the employee(s) participating in that work._ <

And from the other side, the laborer who exchanges his time for $15 per hour
and the Steve Jobsian figure who exchanges his time for $500,000 an hour both
"continue to get more value out of" the money the employer is paying them than
they would otherwise get out of their other options. Again, this is why they
agree to exchange their time for money.

Again, this all boils down to supply and demand (plus value). If there are
millions of laborers that can perform any task, the price to perform that task
will always be low, no matter how much value the task ultimately generates. (I
say plus value because, even if you're the only person in the world that can
do something, if nobody wants that thing done (i.e. no value is created) then
no one will agree to transact.)

~~~
wildgift
smh... that doesn't jibe with reality. Reality is that there are different
people, with varied skills, and the economy demands different people and
skills at different times, in different places. There are barriers of culture,
race, language, gender, national border, laws, family, and so forth.

------
henrik_w
Great article. Discussed previously at HN:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3707101>

------
psycho
Forget about "any-number-hour week" - each one has his own work regime and in
startups especially you work not for counting hours, I guess.

~~~
scott_meade
The point of the article is that you should be counting hours. Even if the
hours themselves are not your goal or measure, there are still physiological
reasons that too many hours are non-optimal. Even and in some respects,
especially for, knowledge workers. Too few hours and not much gets done. Too
many hours and you're wasting money and effort while harming quality.

------
allsystemsgo
This may work among programmers, software developers, etc. But in other more
structured environments [management consulting, public accounting, I-banking,
etc] a 40 hour work week will almost never be the norm. Sure, more resources
could be added to the project, but the budget doesn't support that, so...
you're hosed.

~~~
jeroen
The point is that more resources are not needed. Just going back to 40 hours a
week will increase total productivity.

------
splicer
I enjoy working 80 hours weeks once in while, when I get stoked on creating
something new. What I can't stand is daily 10:30am daily scrums when I've been
up until 4am coding. If you want to kill-off your employees' passion, I
recommend agile methodology.

~~~
jonathanwallace
Sounds like a shitty version of agile. agile is people over processes. I'd
investigate changing the process or changing jobs. Why do you _have_ to be at
the stand up?

~~~
splicer
Because my boss, my boss' boss, and his boss' boss are all micro managers.

I've sacrificed too much just to walk away now. Once my code ships though,
I'll likely set sail as well.

------
koof
As a soon to be first time job hunter (beyond internships): how do I find jobs
that aren't 50 hr+/wk death marches? Should I consider government? I say this
because the internships I've already done I've been encouraged to work
weekends.

~~~
notjoeflynn
Talk to folks that work there currently (LinkedIn helps with this) and ask
questions when you interview about work/life and whether or not overtime is
compensated. As a developer, you have the luxury (that most workers don't
these days) of being highly in demand so you can afford to be particular about
this if it's a concern.

Startups and the game dev industry are probably a bad choice if you're looking
to avoid 40hr+ weeks. Boring SMB software product companies have been bad on
this for me (anecdotal, I know) due to misaligned incentives (mainly sales
selling product that didn't exist yet.) Consulting has been great on this for
me, assuming the folks running the place care about lasting client
relationships & quality more than maximizing billable hours.

------
Trapick
No thanks, I like my 35 hour work week just fine. Maybe you suckers should try
Canada?

------
lucian2k
How about this? "Productivity experts estimate that we’d have probably had the
Mac a year sooner if they’d worked half as many hours per week instead"

Do you guys know if this is somewhere documented ...? It would be interesting
...

------
dreamdu5t
Hours don't linearly scale with accomplishment in software. Measure
accomplishment, set goals, pay based on salary not hours.

------
flavien_bessede
At first, I thought this was a french post complaining about the 35-hour work
week ... looks like nobody will ever agree.

~~~
pjmlp
One more reason for me to enjoy living in Europe.

------
kayoone
As long as you have startup founders glorifying their >100h average work weeks
this is not going to happen.

------
cdestroyer
"Eight hours labour, Eight hours recreation, Eight hours rest." That's me now.

------
mikhailfranco
I guess this headline would have different implication in France.

------
michaelochurch
40 hours of metered work, for a programmer, is a ridiculous and onerous
expectation.

Let me explain, because I'm not averse to people working hard. I work quite
hard as well. By "metered work", I mean the stuff that's requested by bosses
and that you're supposed to dedicate your "working time" toward with a
singular focus. I include availability (pager duty) as metered work, even if
some of that's "down time". Any time you are worrying about bosses or metrics
or pagers or status meetings, you're at work.

Metered work obligations should be closer to 20, with the other 20-30+
invested in the stuff we have to do in order to stay relevant: keeping up with
new technologies, exploratory side projects, self-directed coding, open source
contribution, attending conferences. All of this stuff pays off and is useful
work: it just doesn't pay off in the short term or appease a typical manager.
40+ hour metered-work commitments should be reserved for very rare occasions:
existential threats to the company, not high-strung middle management.

This would make programming more a real _profession_ , which is what it should
be.

