
We should kill the 40-hour work week - jjoachim3
https://crew.co/blog/why-you-shouldnt-work-set-hours/
======
minimuffins
We should absolutely kill the 40 hour week and replace it with a 30 hour week.

> the 40-hour work week doesn’t work anymore

Doesn’t work for who? What does “works” mean anyway? Maximizes efficiency for
our employers? Why is that the question? What works for _you_? Why not ask
what works to maximize your happiness and flourishing? What works for me is
fewer working hours in the week (doesn’t matter what time of day it was that I
logged them) and more time to do whatever I want, whether that's coding,
walking a dog, reading or doing absolutely nothing. We went from 80 hour to 40
hour weeks 100 years ago, why is 40 to 30 such a stretch today?

> During the Industrial Revolution, factories needed to be running around the
> clock so employees during this era frequently worked between 10-16 hour
> days. In the 1920s however, Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company,
> decided to try something different: His workers would only work 8 hours a
> day, 5 days a week.

That is completely ahistorical! The 8 hour day was carved out from the 16 hour
day and paid for in blood by a militant labor movement over several decades,
not granted magnanimously by Henry Ford. You don’t have to consult obscure
labor history to find that out: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-
hour_day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day)

~~~
zobzu
in france there were the 35h weeks by law. result... everyone mocked the
country and employers gave everyone a manager title which has no 35h
restriction.

good luck

~~~
drzaiusapelord
That experiment started in February 2000, a time where telework and work from
home and other policies were much less common. Automation in the past 17 years
have invalidated a lot of 'work' people do as well.

The idea that 40-50 is some magic number is the more ridicouls claim imo. If
anything, progress, technology, and automation should naturally drive down
hours needed per week. No one at my job does nearly the same amount of work we
did 10-15 years ago. Our Fridays are all 'work from home' which is code for
'maybe check your email or finish up something.'

Our work world is only changing. Rolling with the changes makes sense to me
and 35 hour or 4 day work-weeks seem like the a rational change. We should be
benefiting from automation, not punished by it by pretending to be busy or
working at much slower paces in fear of layoffs.

Also French experiemnt only lasted until 2004, when reforms were put in to
raise the maximum amount of work allowable per month. I think its disingenuous
to say that it 'failed.' It had a short 4 year run almost two decades ago. The
world of 2017 is very different from the world of 2000-2004.

~~~
minimuffins
> We should be benefiting from automation, not punished by it

That's such a great point. It's a signal that something is wrong if automating
tedious work away creates more misery instead of less.

~~~
bmmayer1
Getting paid to do a job = 'misery' now, apparently. Maybe we should all go
back to working in the fields from sunrise to sunset and avoid all this
'tedious work' for regular pay, benefits, vacation time, lunch breaks and
closing bells.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Children working in factories losing fingers every month got paid too. I think
the idea that we've now, in 2017, reached perfection in employment is
ridiculous.

I also think "go do farmwork if your job sucks" is dismissive and below the
standards of HN discussions. There's always something worse, that doesn't mean
we shouldn't ever complain.

~~~
laughfactory
I agree. I have a job I love (after numerous jobs which sucked), but I'd still
vote for less working hours/days so I could actually, you know, LIVE: spend
time with family and friends, enjoy nature, have hobbies, etc. The way I see
it half the week should be for work, and half for life. So we should all work
Monday through Wednesday, and half a day on Thursday.

------
codingdave
While I love my flexible, remote schedule... and I loved alternative schedules
when I was in my 20s and had no children. The standard 40 hour week offers a
stable schedule to the large population that does have children, and needs to
both work a full time job to collect a paycheck while also knowing they can be
home almost every hour their child is out of school.

I'm not arguing against flexible scheduling -- I live that life, and I will
proclaim its benefits as much as anyone. But to really engage in a meaningful
discussion about it, we need to realize that different people have different
needs. And for much of the working population, the primary need is about
providing for their family, not self-fulfillment in their own work.

~~~
the-dude
I was raised on a single income and so was the majority of my peers in urrr,
the 80s!

This baffles me the most.

~~~
ashark
See the Two Income Trap (TL;DR: there is limited housing in good school
districts and there are limited places at good universities, so when it became
_possible_ to compete for these with two incomes, it gradually became the case
that you _had_ to have two incomes to compete for them, as prices were driven
up) and the recent post on here about the bizarre cost disease affecting the
West, and especially the US, making basically everything but imported cheap
plastic/electronic crap cost more in real terms than it did the year before,
every year, for the last few decades, including construction, infrastructure,
health, and schooling.

There may also be something to do with globalization turning out to be not so
much "rising tide lifts all boats" as "rising tide lifts _the average
elevation of all boats_ "; the latter is very different for someone working
for a living in an already-affluent, globalizing state than the former.

~~~
mattmanser
I agree with the general gist of this, but I think you're down playing how
much stuff people can buy now.

Furthermore, if everyone's getting paid more, isn't it natural that person
intensive activities like construction, infrastructure, health, and schooling
will cost more?

But stuff, stuff is ridiculously cheap at the moment.

Perhaps you yanks didn't see it so much as you were already rich in the
80s/90s, but compared to my childhood in the UK, all the children I know get
mountains of presents. Literally so many they get bored opening them.

I can get cheap salad any time of year. Cheap fruit, milk, bread, etc. I can
buy mounds of rice, pasta, etc. for literally pence.

TVs in every room, not just one per household. People have espresso coffee
makers in their kitchens! Everyone has at least one computer, if not one per
child, and another in their pocket. Everyone's got at least one console or
some such device. Everyone can afford Sky or Virgin or whatever cable channel.

~~~
Arizhel
You're massively overvaluing toys and other consumer goods, and you're
massively undervaluing real estate.

Having nice TVs doesn't make your quality of life that much better now than
back in the 80s.

Living in a terrible neighborhood with crime because you can't afford to live
in a decent neighborhood on a single income makes your quality of life much
worse than back in the 80s when a single income could afford a nice house.

~~~
occamrazor
By almost every metric, crime has gone down in the last 30 years.

~~~
Arizhel
On average, sure. In specific places, no. These days, if you can't afford more
than a crappy apartment, you're going to be living in a place with drug
dealers and occasional murders. And with the high rents, having a single
income (and worse, having to support a family on that) means that the crappy
apartments now cost what, 30+ years ago, a decent but modest home in a decent
neighborhood cost.

So maybe living in downtown areas isn't nearly as dangerous as it was back in
the 70s-80s (when NYC's Times Square was full of prostitutes and muggings were
common), but affording a place that doesn't have you surrounded by drug
dealers and ex-cons is more out-of-reach and costly (and those once-seedy
downtown areas are now completely unaffordable if you don't make $150k+).

------
pcmonk
> Give yourself one day with no work

If killing the 40-hour work week means I'm now working six days a week instead
of five, then long live the 40-hour work week.

Some people (myself included) need two days per week off work, except in
special circumstances. We also need to be able to clock out of work and not
feel bad about doing so just because we still have work. The worst thing about
university to me was the feeling of always having more work to do. I
understand avoiding the "I'm just working until the clock hand turns a little
further" state, but often the cumulative effects of the proposed alternative
are worse.

~~~
helthanatos
What about a 40 hour week working just 4 days?

~~~
MiddleEndian
What about not working so much? You can get a programming job that pays you
$200k/year for 40 hours, plenty of which you spend blocked anyway, but for
whatever reason no one will pay you $100k/year for 20 hours.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Productivity is nonlinear in hours worked.

First 20 hours: read a bunch of math papers about some obscure part of
stochastic programming.

Second 20 hours: figure out how to apply it to problems useful for the
company.

The first 20 hours are worth $0, not $100k. If I spend an additional 10
hours/week improving my skills, that effect is multiplicative rather than
additive.

Claudia Goldin has a great paper on this effect, focused on using this
phenomenon to explain gender gaps in pay. (Specifically, the fields with the
lowest gender gaps are the most linear fields, e.g. Pharmacists.)

[http://www.aeaweb.org/aea/2014conference/program/retrieve.ph...](http://www.aeaweb.org/aea/2014conference/program/retrieve.php?pdfid=1103)

~~~
gjm11
Suppose two of your weeks go like this:

Week 1: First 20 hours: read a bunch of math papers about some arcane aspect
of stochastic programming. Second 20 hours: figure out how to apply it to
problems useful to the company.

Week 2: First 20 hours: read a bunch of math papers about some arcane aspect
of partial differential equations. Second 20 hours: figure out how to apply it
to problems useful to the company.

If you are only working 40 hours rather than 80 in those two weeks and you
choose to do the first half of each week then, sure, your net value to the
company will be $0. So don't do that. Pick one of those two 40-hour chunks and
do it in two weeks instead of one.

And, boom, your value to the company has scaled linearly.

Now, no doubt your work on stochastic programming and PDEs has prepared you
for some _other_ future work of still greater value. So there's nonlinearity
on longer timescales. But we can get an estimate of just how much nonlinearity
there is there by looking at how your salary increases over time. Maybe you're
worth 20% more each year than the year before. (That would be bigger pay rises
than most people get after the first few years of working.) In that case, the
first half of a given year is worth about 47.7% of what the whole year would
be worth instead of 50%.

So, if your work's value is nonlinear enough to justify giving you a 20% pay
increase every year, then it's nonlinear enough to justify paying you about 5%
less pro rata. (Plus, of course, giving you only about half as much pay
increase per year.)

That assumes that the growth in your value to your employer comes _only_ from
this nonlinearity in your work. If some of it is because of other things that
you're learning in other ways, then the reductions should be less.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Sure, but that assumes I can break everything down as granularly as a
pharmacist breaks down their work. But in reality I can't. First of all, if I
do it like you describe, the company's velocity is halved. Timeliness matters.

Second, by working more slowly and parallelizing across many more low
productivity people, you lose the ability to make connections and reuse
relevant expertise.

For instance, consider two lawyers each of whom are running half of a major
case. When the opposing attorney presents claim A, the two lawyers may not
realize that evidence X (in lawyer A's half) and evidence Y( in lawyer B's
half) put together refute A.

Like it or not, there is value to having a single person who can keep the
whole thing in his head.

~~~
gjm11
> if I do it like you describe, the company's velocity is halved.

Well, sure, half as much work means getting half as much done. That's why the
pay is also half as much.

I don't disagree with any of the things you say here; there are some ways in
which working part-time is less efficient than working full-time. I just think
you overstated the case before.

------
dilemma
Large corporations need hordes of people doing boring work in a reliable and
predictable, easily manageable manner. Society needs what large corporations
produce. People need the wages these corporations pay. The 40hr work week is
going nowhere.

~~~
kawera
There are a lot of pointless jobs too. Related: [http://evonomics.com/why-
capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-d...](http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-
creates-pointless-jobs-david-graeber/)

~~~
treehau5
Do pointless jobs pay pointless money?

------
mtw
Good article but in essence, it only works for freelancers, especially the 20
something kind who programs or designs and interacts with his customer through
skype.

Modern society has conventions that makes it work well. Like the expectation
that the delivery guy will work from 9-to-5, instead of trying to deliver at
2am or in a Sunday morning, because that's optimal for his circadian rhytm.
Same for the bank or the library or Starbucks open during the day. This
convention lets us help plan our day. Without these you will have to plan for
contingencies. These can be acute when you have a chronic disease, disabled or
have babies/children. You just wish that everyone works 9 to 5 just so you can
go through the day.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> Good article but in essence, it only works for freelancers, especially the
> 20 something kind who programs or designs and interacts with his customer
> through skype.

That's exactly my thoughts. I provide analysis & design work for government -
even the fact that I'm an early riser is an issue, as leaving the office that
1-2 hours before the government mandated 4:30 end time causes them to be
partially without the instant support and feedback they expect.

------
lsy
In its history of the 40-hour week, the article omits the substantial
contribution of organized labor to fighting for shorter hours:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-
hour_day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day)

Keeping this history in mind might allow us to determine other reasons and
means for improving on the workweek than pure business interest.

~~~
ue_
In my opinion, no consideration should be given to 'business interest' over
the interests of the workers. The idea that the workers ought to just settle
for compromises is rubbish.

~~~
pc86
Well life is about compromise, so there's that. A 100% pro-worker, anti-
employer solution would not work, just like a 100% pro-employer, anti-worker
rights solution wouldn't either.

------
beat
Crediting the 40 hour week to Henry Ford's business acumen is a common
mistake.

The call for eight hour workdays was over a century old by the time Henry Ford
implemented it. It was a major point of discussion for Karl Marx. Forty years
before Henry Ford's supposedly brilliant insight, in the Bay View Labor Riot
of 1886, the Wisconsin state militia opened fire on labor activists protesting
for an eight hour workday, killing seven.

None of this is new. This is a battle labor has been fighting for two
centuries now.

------
JDiculous
You guys are all totally missing the point.

The whole concept of an X hour work week is stupid for most of us on HN in
knowledge intensive industries.

It makes sense if the work you're doing is a direct function of time - think
receptionists, cashiers, phone customer service, assembly line workers.

If the work is knowledge intensive, then your output is generally not a mere
function of hours worked. In software engineering, productivity can vary
enormously when you're "in-the-zone" vs. feeling tired and sluggish. I'm not
talking about a mere 15% difference in peak productivity vs. least productive,
I'm talking multiples (short example I wrote [http://www.jbernier.com/how-to-
work-efficiently-and-stop-was...](http://www.jbernier.com/how-to-work-
efficiently-and-stop-wasting-your-time)).

Judging an employee by "hours of ass in chair in office staring at computer
screen" in a knowledge intensive field is an extremely inaccurate and lazy
metric, used by non-technical managers who can't think of better ways to gauge
the output of their employees.

~~~
watwut
Judging an employee by "hours of ass in chair in office staring at computer
screen is the most common startup metric. I dislike it as much as you, but
that won't change anything on it.

~~~
JDiculous
Just because it's common doesn't mean it's going to remain. The status quo is
already changing with the rise of companies offering flexible hours and remote
work.

------
deedubaya
Everyone here seems to be thinking in hours, like they actually equate to
produced product. I don't think that's really the case. It's more like working
8 hours a day so you can find that productive 2 hours in the middle somewhere
where things get done.

As a manager, I don't care at all if my employees work 40 hours or 4 hours. I
care about what they get done regardless of the time it takes or when they do
it (to some degree). This requires _active_ management in their day-to-day
with the domain knowledge to call bullshit when things aren't getting done.

This management style doesn't scale to large teams, but I find it very
effective.

~~~
laughfactory
You sound like an excellent manager to work for. And you're right, it requires
that people be adults and actively work together, make agreements, manage
expectations and all that.

------
TurboHaskal
Having a bit of experience and knowing what "result oriented with flexible
schedule" actually stands for, I think I'll keep my 40 hour week. Thanks.

------
minikites
As long as the USA is still a nation that takes pride in the sort of values
shown in this infuriating Cadillac advertisement
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WKgSCPqY4M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WKgSCPqY4M)),
working long (unproductive) hours isn't going away any time soon.

~~~
danielschonfeld
this!

------
jacquesm
Besides all the scheduling trouble that would cause, what will you replace it
with?

The 40 hour work week is an achievement, and if it is to be killed I would
propose replacing it with the 32 hour workweek or a 24 hour one. Definitely
not with a lack of structure.

I've worked for some companies long ago that did not adhere to the 40 hour
workweek. Let's just say I would have been much happier if they had and that's
not because they decided to go for 32 hours or 40 hours whenever I wanted to
work them if you thought that was the case.

------
codr4life
We should kill work, period. This is not the way it always was, and it's not
the way it always will be. This is a brief moment in evolution, a learning
experience. If some didn't insist on having plenty more than others, there
would be enough for everyone without anyone working for anyone; and once you
have everything provided, helping out is the natural thing to do.

~~~
koonsolo
Sounds a bit like communism, but without anyone having any job. So yes, this
should probably work out just fine.

~~~
codr4life
Where is your trust in basic human values? The behavior you see around you is
an effect of pressure from a completely artificial and destructive
environment, regardless of what it's called. Using communism as some kind of
crucifix for killing every suggestion of change is not working any more;
change is coming, like it or not.

~~~
koonsolo
I think my environment is pretty good, optimistic and nice. People don't kill
other people around here. We have a social support system.

When times get though, and this environment is gone, bad stuff happens.

Culture is only a small thin layer, that is gone the moment real problems
arise. Just take a look at history, and you event don't have to go too far
back. Look what's happening in the middle east right now.

------
thatfrenchguy
"On days where I put in less than 8 or 10 hours of work, I feel a bit guilty"

You need workaholism consulting. Repeat after me: more hours do not mean
higher throughput.

------
Longhanks
No, we shouldn't. Most people are totally fine with it, me included. Why
change something that works? There are always people not satisfied with the
current system, but for the majority of our society, the 40 hours a week model
is fine. And if it isn't, there are plenty of other options - maybe you have
to look harder for them, but it's definitly possible to work on different
schedules, too.

~~~
maxerickson
We absolutely should get rid of the idea that a "full time" job has benefits
and stuff. Compensation should stay about the same, it just shouldn't come in
the form of benefits.

~~~
aero142
Just to be clear. The reason this happens is because insurers like groups that
don't have terrible self selection biases towards sick people. Buying
insurance as an individual means the insurance company is worried you are a
soon to be expense.

~~~
cr1895
>Buying insurance as an individual means the insurance company is worried you
are a soon to be expense.

Really worth noting that this is a non-issue in many (most?) countries with
healthcare systems that function differently from that in the US.

------
GoToRO
My proposal: 3 days work week. 3 days works the father, 3 days the mother, one
day free for the whole family. Import taxes for all goods that come from
countries that don't implement this.

As for the article, yes, it's true. But you need to have a "results based
environment". This further needs that your manager can do your work. This
means it will not work in most companies.

~~~
snug
Why should parents get special privilege? Because I don't have kids, I should
work a full week?

~~~
GoToRO
There is life outside work, for sure. The problem is that we are not used to
it because after work, even if there is some time left in the day, you have no
energy left. Of course there will be a lot of details to be sorted, like what
you said; I don't claim to have it all figured out.

------
MichaelBurge
> So the 8-hour work day, 5-day workweek wasn’t chosen as the way to work for
> scientific reasons; instead, it was partly driven by the goal of increasing
> consumption.

Money doesn't really work like that, unless you A. Saddle employees with debt
or B. Boost short-term revenue so the company looks more attractive to
investors.

Or is the idea that Ford would set an example so that the entire industry
would start doing this, which benefits him more?

Keep in mind Ford also hired investigators to check up on his employees'
morality:

> To qualify for his doubled salary, the worker had to be thrifty and
> continent. He had to keep his home neat and his children healthy, and, if he
> were below the age of twenty-two, to be married.

You could argue that Ford wanted model Protestants as employees because they
increased productivity, but it's a more elaborate argument that just picking a
quote or two. He may have done it for religious reasons.

------
joosters
We've had the concept of 'flexi-time' for decades, where people can start and
finish work at different times, so they can work at the time of day that best
suits them.

------
maxerickson
The easy way to implement this is to place enormous taxes on benefits.

Companies aren't going to cut hours much when it drives up the effective cost
of benefit packages.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
or better yet, just have include benefits in total income when calculating
taxes.

~~~
nol13
or better yet, fix the system where affordable health care is tied to
corporate employment

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
Well a primary reason why health care has been tied to corporate employment in
the US is _because_ benefits are not taxed. Tax benefits at the marginal tax
rate, and you'll discover that health care won't be quite as tied to
employment.

------
pcmonk
Site's down for me. Cache:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RzYQ6Q...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RzYQ6Q-_W00J:https://crew.co/blog/why-
you-shouldnt-work-set-hours/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

------
partycoder
I am more against open office plans than 40 hours weeks.

I also think people should be allowed to take naps rather than coffee breaks.

------
peterwwillis
Man I hate pretentious privileged startup people who try to apply their
incredibly rare circumstances to the entire society.

Most people I know would kill to work only 40 hours. Only one had so much free
time that he quit to freelance, and he was an IT worker. Now he's constantly
busy.

~~~
MarkCole
Really? In my experience the people who work in startups are the ones
overworked and working 60-80 hours a week.

Where as those of us at profitable established companies can check in, do our
8 hours of work and then go home and usually not think about work.

------
Chinjut
There is a frequent pattern which concerns me of primarily justifying the
desire for reduced work hours in terms of the alleged increase in productivity
this will bring about (by allowing recharging, preventing burnout, etc.).

I worry that this already concedes too much. This allows for just as much
stressful dominance of work over the rest of life, and shame over any
deviation from this script, as maximizes productivity.

Even if my shorter-work-hours productivity doesn't match my longer-work-hours
productivity, I'd still prefer shorter-work-hours, with no guilt over having
those preferences. My goal in life is not to optimize everything I do for
maximum benefit of my employer; I have my own priorities and trade-offs to
worry about.

------
geodel
40 hr /week is anyway going to die due to massive lack of jobs.
Governments/businesses will get forced to either layoff people or reduce
hours. Till now layoffs seems cleaner solution to tackle less work/more
productivity scenario. In first world tech sector where where 6 figure dollar
salaries are common, less work even with lesser pay may be manageable
scenario. For the poorer and heavily populated 3rd world productivity gains
will increasingly cause massive rupture in social stability.

Just today I read in India increasing automation is causing either major
layoffs or no new jobs in sectors as diverse as mining, banking, IT,
manufacturing etc.

------
throwaway420
* The article makes some great observations about energy levels. I think you can definitely run a company more productively if employees had more leeway about picking their own hours as long as the job gets done. Anecdotally, I'd get far more work done if I set aside just around 9-midnight every night for coding from home rather than waking up early and slogging to an office.

* The article presents some opinions without really justifying them. According to who exactly does the 40-hour work week not work anymore? It works great for some folks, it works badly for others. Personally, I'd rather see more people working less, and I think more jobs should be more flexible about things like remote working and letting people pick their hours when possible.

* This article also erroneously gets some history wrong. People like to cite some of Ford's management innovations as some magnanimous gesture on his part to give employees enough cash to buy more products. The reality is that he was initially having a problem keeping employees because assembly-line work is so monotonous and doesn't leave much room for human contact and many employees would quit or inconsistently show up to work after a while. He was trying to make working conditions as good as possible to reduce employee turnover/absenteeism, greatly reducing his recruiting/training expenses in the long run and making things run smoother on a daily basis. It was in his self-interest to do this because once you got a great Ford job you wouldn't quit or just not show up to go to a baseball game or whatever people did back in those days. I believe some people erroneously got this part of history wrong because there's a narrative out there that the free market is some kind of predatory exploitative thing that needs to be completely controlled or it will work to destroy people. To me, that's incorrect because employers also need to compete for employees' labor. Going forward, innovative and smart companies will increasingly offer things like remote working, picking your own hours, limited work week, etc to compete for the most talented employees. Some companies might want butts in seats at 9AM and will compete by offering cash. That's fine too, let people have a choice.

------
PublicFace
Kill the "work week" concept too while we're at it. Are we seriously going to
continue the fallacy that humans only work on specific religiously appointed
days?

Just start moving to results only work environments.

~~~
jacquesm
The only effect that will have is that you'll be working 7 days per week. That
religious influence is - for once - actually a positive one. Quite a few bits
of our social contracts have their root in ancient history and religion played
a larger part back then then it does today (for most people, anyway).

That does not make them bad per-se, they should be looked at independent of
their roots.

Just like 'thou shalt not kill' isn't a bad idea just because it happens to be
in the bible.

------
carapace
Bucky Fuller determined that, by some time in the 1970's, we could provide a
high standard of living for everyone on Earth while only working a few hours a
week. IIRC, he postulated that most people would have to work for about two
years and then they could retire. All we have to do is apply the technology we
already have in a sensible manner to meet our needs.

In other words, all our problems now are psychological, not physical.

~~~
koonsolo
He probably didn't consider that there are always scarce resources where the
one who has the most money gets it.

Simply said, the one who can buy the biggest diamond also gets the prettiest
girl, and that's what life is all about, no? ;).

~~~
carapace
(Okay, but, uh, we can manufacture diamond now, you know that right? ;-)

------
johnb777
Sweden tested a 30 hour work-week and found it to be too costly. For some
professions it just isn't realistic (e.g. supply chain/logistics industry).

For the professions where it is more realistic, maybe give them the option of
finishing up the week at 30 hours but don't set a hard cut-off. I've found
that the more work-hour freedom people are given, the better quality work ends
up getting done.

------
kilroy123
I was lucky enough to work for a "technical" non-profit for a few years. We
worked 7 hours a day instead of a full 8. It was absolutely amazing. It was
the perfect amount of time I felt. I noticed I slacked off less to get
everything done in a day.

Honestly, if we worked that extra hour each day, it would of have been spent
surfing the internet. Spending more time making coffee, chatting, lunch etc.

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koolba
The best part of a 9-5/40-hour work week are the hours where everybody else is
gone. That's when you get the real work done.

~~~
rdiddly
Ha! So true. The workday starts around 3pm.

~~~
koolba
Mine ends M-F between 8:30am and 5:30pm. All the rest of the week is
considered a work day.

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aecorredor
There's a book called "The Power of When" which I hear talks about how every
person is different, and how depending on what type you are your day should be
structured differently. Could be an interesting read when deciding if the 40
hour work week is appropriate or not.

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st3v3r
This is just awful. Only one night a week where you don't work? "Try removing
work completely for a day". I do it for two days: the weekend.

This article is basically arguing that you should spend all your time working,
without being bold enough to come out and say it.

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simplehuman
Why do I feel all alone in loving the 40 hour week :) realistically this is 35
hours a week after the commute. And I like my 2 days off where I can ignore
work issues completely.

And personally for me working in an office is more attractive than flexible
remote work.

~~~
Nadya
Because the amount of productive work hours most people get per week is
realistically closer to 20-30. The rest of the time they are being paid for
their presence. If the day's work is done at 11am, I hope you enjoy twiddling
your thumbs until 5pm hoping _something_ comes up for you to do. There's only
so much of tomorrow's work that you can finish ahead of schedule (esp. if most
of it is waiting on clients to get back to you at a later date).

Every individual in my department could work a 20 hour week and just as much
work would be done. I know this because of the 1 hour smoke breaks that happen
every-other-hour. They're already working 4 hour days, why not just make it
official? I'm sure the employees would love having an additional 4 hours of
personal time each day.

------
rolodato
If you're working alone or completely asynchronously sure, that makes sense.
But how do you account for collaborative work that needs to be done in a
group?

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Apocryphon
Met a former Solyndra employee. He said they used to have 12-hour days, but
the tradeoff is that they had four days weekends. Sounds amazing for the
employee.

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petergatsby
Informative piece on circadian rhythm -- not sure how it justifies getting rid
of the 40-hour work week.

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PatentTroll
What should we do about the 70 hour work week? Somewhat sarcastic, but mostly
serious.

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Entangled
I, as an independent coder, enjoy my 90 hour work week.

And I am in my 50s.

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dlwj
This article is mostly about scheduling, but a bigger issues is actually
amount of actual work. (Ignoring cases where amount of perceived work is
important like in Japan)

A “reasonable” amount of work basically always comes down to what someone is
willing to sacrifice. A cushy work week is basically always subsidized by
other people. It’s often very indirect, like a factory in China. When this
information is forcefully shoved in a person’s face, their moral compass gives
them no other choice but to protest against the Foxconns of the world.

Unions formally define what is reasonable, but there is also a cultural form
of unionization. In the U.S. H1B’s implicitly acknowledge this possibility.
They look to join teams that have this cultural unionization. If half of the
non-H1B’s go home at 5, management cannot force overtime from everyone else
without it being egregious. This disappears when the team is mostly H1B’s or
even if the manager him/herself went through this process. (Startups, rather
than look for H1B’s, look for “culture fit”)

Cultural homogenization allows a shared definition of reasonable-ness without
needing formal structures. With a non-homongenous culture, the “lazier”
cultures lose out to the more “hardworking” cultures. The “lazier” cultures
would like a rule that says “You must eat out at least one a week, and enjoy a
movie, and NOT let your money compound for your children.” Otherwise, the
culture that is more willing to work hard effectively undermines the desire to
live comfortably of other cultures. In the Bay Area, western culture simply
cannot compete with Chinese culture when it comes to housing bids. It’s 1
couple vs an entire family of savers.

There should obviously be a law to prevent Olympic athletes from taking a
super-drug that will allow them to win a gold medal and then drop dead
afterwards. But should there be one to prevent parents from overworking for
their children?

IMO, when the amount of wealth in the world reaches the point where everyone
can live comfortably if it were evenly divided, a casual lifestyle will
naturally emerge. Prior to that though, there will always be people more
willing to work hard. In order for a cushy lifestyle to be sustained, there
must be an explicit border or wall (physical or otherwise) that divides people
into homogenous cultures. People in each group must be willing to work around
the same.

In the U.S. sweatshop and factory conditions are protested against, but in
those same countries, they are prestigious jobs that can lift a family out of
an agrarian lifestyle into technical or knowledge work. The willingness to
fight over pennies subsidizes the casual picking of dollars. With China moving
towards picking up dollars, there is no longer a large enough penniy-picking
population to sustain it. (Which is why China internally subdivides into a 1st
world portion and a 3rd world subsidizing population).

With globalization comes cultural mixing. A large portion of Trump voters
realize this threat to their lifestyle (and many have probably already been
affected and have trouble making ends meet) and think that re-establizing
cultural zones will fix the issue (with a literal wall…) but it won’t.
Solutions to questions about how to work and live comfortably without solving
the global wealth distribution problem basically are all forms of indirect
subsidization, making it zero sum. (Aside, religion can actually be used as a
force to sub-divide a population into a culture that desires less, allow them
to subsidize a smaller population that want to live more comfortably)

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jozzz
No one's genetically a 'night owl'. Stop drinking caffeine.

~~~
bryanlarsen
If you didn't use an absolute and instead said something like 'The large
majority of people who think they're night owls just drink too much caffeine,'
you'd probably be right and not downvoted so much.

For me, I switched from being a night owl to a morning person when I kicked my
caffeine habit of 1-2 cups per day.

~~~
always_good
I switched when I stopped drinking caffeine after 1pm and, even more
importantly, started working out daily in the morning.

Took a week to get used to waking up early, but now it's nice to collapse in
bed around 11pm dead tired instead of just wishing I was tired.

------
taken__--
Oh man, people work 12 hours a day (like me) and you complain about a 40-hour
week??

