
Finland's Prime Minister Suggests a Four-Day Workweek and Six-Hour Days - ctingom
https://www.inc.com/john-brandon/finlands-prime-minister-suggests-a-four-day-work-week-six-hour-days-sign-me-up.html
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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21938696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21938696)

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dementik
This is partly untrue.

PM Marin has proposed this idea as "utopia" in August 2019. When she presented
this vision, she was not yet PM.

Additionally, she proposed 6 hour work-day OR 4 work-day week, not AND.

It is kind of weird that here in Finland this was "nice idea, but probably
problematic to implement" when this was on the news in August. And now it pops
out in not-so-respected news media like this.

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avz
When I was a nerdy teenager I imagined that by a date like 2020 humankind
would have cured cancer, built a base on the Moon or Mars, eradicated
infectious diseases and taken control over climate and weather. It turns out
that in the real world progress is a lot slower than in the imagination of a
sci-fi-imbued teenager. It turns out that solving problems takes work. A lot
of it.

If people work less, especially if engineers, scientists, doctors etc work
less, then technological progress will be taking place slower than it is
currently. The disappointment of my teenage self with 2030 will then be even
greater than that with 2020.

I'm genuinely puzzled by the general anti-work sentiment I perceive on HN
(maybe my perception is simply incorrect). I'd expect that most folks here
work as engineers or in a similar field that rewards with interesting and
meaningful problems and that a substantial fraction had once been sci-fi-
imbued teenagers like myself and possibly feel the same disappointment with
the pace of technological progress.

I'm very worried that the anti-work movement is (inadvertently?) pushing on
the breaks of technological progress :-(

~~~
grawprog
Well up until recently I spent 9-10 hours a day programming machines that
turned mountains into countertops and fireplace and such for rich people.
Every day I kind of made the world worse to make some rich people happy. I
mean there was one day we took a slab of 10 million year old fossils cut from
the bottom of the ocean and made it into a counter. This arguably does not
improve the world.

4 day weeks or 6 hour days would have been pretty awesome, I could have likely
been more productive in life things.

My new job is also nothing world changing, though probably marginally more
beneficial to more people and less environmentally damaging, but the lack of
6, nine hour day weeks makes it more appealing in many ways.

Though, I'm kind of torn, because I find the actual work less fulfilling and
enjoyable, but having time is nice.

~~~
internet_user
do you think its possible to find a job so full-filling it does not feel like
a job?

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bborud
A six hour day is plenty if you actually work and if you have a bit of
discipline. Most people don't. They spend much of their day just goofing off -
wasting their own time and often the time of their coworkers.

I bet most of you reading this do not spend 8-10-12 or whatever number of
hours you claim to be at work actually working productively. You goof off
often as much as half the time. Possibly more if you work for someone else.

_Work_ when you are at work.

If you are not actually working or if you are tired and unfocused: go home. If
you are disciplined about this you will outperform those who spend more hours
at work _easily_.

~~~
aguyfromnb
> _They spend much of their day just goofing off - wasting their own time and
> often the time of their coworkers._

This is why a world where everyone is an independent contractor feels...right.

I don't know how you could implement it properly, but from a high level it
works: work when you want to, take holidays when you want to, move around.
There's no such thing as "businesses will take advantage of workers though!"
because _everyone is a business_. Screw enough people and no one will work
with you.

Of course, for this to work you'd need a universal safety net or UBI...

~~~
bborud
I've been an independent contractor a few periods of my life and if you bill
by the hour, that changes the dynamics a bit. You become focused on hours and
not what you produce. Doing stuff for fixed price is risky too since it
requires you to nail estimates pretty well to avoid ending up with a low
effective hourly rate (or screwing your customer).

My solution was to charge by the day. You pay me a fixed price for every day I
work on your project. Some days I may work 4 hours, other days I may work 15
hours. But it provides me with more flexibility and, at least in my
experience, it is easier to end up with a fair price (as long as you don't try
to take advantage of the customer).

I actually stumbled across this solution. My initial motivation was to reduce
the amount of pointless accounting work. But I eventually discovered that this
had other benefits.

I have a team of programmers working for me (full time, fixed salary) and they
all manage their own time and their own projects. If they need to take a week
off because they feel tired, they just need to let me know. And I trust them
to act responsibly. As long as we deliver what we have promised, I don't care
if people take more time off than their contractually stipulated paid
vacation. The only time I may step in is if they do not take time off.
(Actually, in Norway, you can get in trouble if your people don't take at
least some minimum amount of time off.)

And I think the results speak for themselves. I'd be hard pressed to find a
team that is more productive in my company. We easily outpace other teams by a
factor of 2-3 in terms of productivity within a company of about 25-30k
employees.

There are, of course, multiple reasons for the high productivity - not only
the fact that I don't interfere with how individuals manage their time. I
think one important reason is that I often hire people who are older than the
average developer. My people are probably 40 years or above on average. One of
my most productive people is in his mid 50s. I think the reason the holder
people on my team are faster is because they're more experienced, and in
particular, they have more experience in attacking problems that they have
never been exposed to before. (And that's what 90% of the work we do consists
of).

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scarmig
I wonder what a plausible model for productivity by hours work is, and whether
it varies by occupation.

Especially for piecemeal labor, after getting to the point where you maintain
your baseline level of skill (say, 10 hours/week?), it seems like each
marginal hour will have less productivity than the previous. It probably never
drops to negative, unless we're talking 80 hour weeks.

It's less clear to me that the same is true of so-called knowledge workers.
Or, at least, the baseline is much higher. My bet would be that an engineer
who only works 10 hours/week is going to be less productive, on an hourly
basis, than one who works 20 hours/week. I'm not sure what the inflection
point would be, though.

I think a better model would be having a year or two of relatively long
workweeks (40 hours a week) to be followed by a year or two of vacation and
education, instead of 20 hours/week consistently.

Another approach would be decreasing the retirement age. I'm less a fan of
this, as too many people end up depressed and lost after they leave the
workforce. Plus, it's a raw deal for people who die before they retire.

~~~
Chinjut
How is a lowered retirement age a raw deal for people who die before they
retire?

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agf
Not the poster nor am I endorsing this, just explaining it. Everyone who works
full time would benefit from a shorter work week. Only people who live to
retire benefit from a lower retirement age. So if you're considering the two
policies as alternatives, then one is definitely a raw deal for people who die
early. Given relatively few people die after starting to work full time but
before retirement age, I don't think that's the issue with this proposal.

~~~
Chinjut
Ah, ok, I understand this. Yes, as an alternative to other policies to make
people's lives of mandatory toil better, I see the raw deal for some of doing
nothing other than lowering retirement age. (Of course, I'm a "Why not both?"
guy.)

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IGotThroughIt
I'm possibly going to go against the grain here but I'll speak my truth...6
hours honestly feels like too little time and isn't necessarily something to
celebrate.

If I only worked for 6 hours and 4 days I'd lose my mind. I've tried it and I
didn't like it one bit. May be that's just me but I enjoy my work so much I
wish there were 25 hours.

~~~
choward
You seriously enjoy your work so much that you don't have anything you would
rather be doing? Not even a side project? You must be working on the coolest
thing ever.

~~~
IGotThroughIt
I work for myself as a mobile and wed dev so I have my clients who pay my
bills and several apps I'm working on in parallel.

~~~
Chinjut
The number of hours you volunteer to put into working for yourself is,
frankly, completely irrelevant to the issue of hours demanded by a boss from
their employees, who surely have things in their life they'd rather be doing
with their time. Using the former as a way to argue that the latter should be
kept high is an uncharitable mentality.

~~~
IGotThroughIt
If you've run a business you'd know that the hours demanded by a boss are far
less than those required to be successful as an enterprise owner. I've been in
both worlds and it isn't easier because you own the business.

It's all work at the end of the day and it is not easy. It's hard but we get
to choose the direction our life takes while weighing the costs, benefits and
risks involved.

~~~
Jedd
> It's hard but we get to choose ...

This is the crux of a state mandated shorter work week.

In Australia, the default is between 35 and 40 hours, 5 days a week.

Some people work more hours, some fewer. A proposal to change the standard
wouldn't affect _that_ arrangement.

People who enjoy working longer hours, say for a pursuit they enjoy or
endorse, or like you to build up their own wealth at a much faster rate,
likely wouldn't be affected by such a policy change.

I do hope you're not suggesting that your personal preferences should inform
proposed policy changes like this?

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kerpele
I wasn’t alive when the work week was shortened to 5 days from 6 but it is my
understanding that the conversation this sort of a proposal Sparks is the
exact same as that proposal back then did. It’s kind of amusing.

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Entalpi
” Perhaps following the lead of other Scandinavian countries, where a six-hour
workday is common.” Not in Sweden. 40h per week here means fulltime.

~~~
GordonS
I've worked primarily with Norwegians for most of my working like, but have
also worked in projects in Sweden, Denmark and Finland - I've never come
across this mythical 6-hour workday?

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SuddsMcDuff
I don't think it should be assumed that less time at work is necessarily
preferable. What will people do with all their additional spare time? Sure,
they might spend their days learning art, history, philosophy. They might take
up writing poetry, painting or learning the piano. Or, they might vegetate in
front of the TV, take up drinking as a hobby, argue with strangers online and
slowly decay into existential nihilism.

The devil will make work for idle hands.

~~~
Chinjut
That's their choice. That's their life to do with as they wish.

One can just as well "vegetate" as an employee to a boss; indeed, we know that
the nature of the current work setup is such that many come home drained from
work all day, sit in front of the TV, take up drinking as a hobby, argue with
strangers online (see me, now), decay into nihilism, etc, all the same.

The purpose of life isn't to work; the purpose of life is the other things,
the fun and play.

~~~
SuddsMcDuff
It's true there are innumerable variables at play here. The nature of the work
is a huge factor as well. It's probably futile to try and come up with a
general rule of thumb. It could be that people _already_ have too much spare
time on their hands which is not being filled with meaningful endeavour. It's
also undoubtedly the case that many peoples working hours are not filled with
meaningful endeavour either.

Thank you for telling me the purpose of life in a very matter-of-fact way. I
think you would find a lot of people who would find your assertion extremely
debatable. To be frank, I pity anyone who thinks the purpose of their life is
to have fun.

------
polytronic
John Maynard Keynes published an interesting paper in 1930. "Economic
possibilities for our grand children"

~~~
IGotThroughIt
He also said that in the long run we are all dead so I'm not sure I'd trust
him to have the best interests of our 'grandchildren' at heart.

~~~
ljm
Well he’s not wrong. We’re all dead at the end.

What is your impression of mortality?

~~~
IGotThroughIt
Do you honestly believe that he meant it in a literal sense? You as well as I
know that he meant it would be better to emphasize on short term plans as
opposed to long term plans. It is simply a question of time preference and I'm
simply saying that he would therefore not be best placed to make plans for our
grandchildren. He'd be inclined optimize for the present as opposed to the
future especially when we're resource constrained as we often are.

~~~
Chinjut
Do you honestly believe Keynes' point with this pithy aphorism was that short-
term plans are always superior to long-term plans? The fuller quote is "But
this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are
all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in
tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past,
the ocean is flat again.". He was pushing back on the use of a theory of long-
term economic equilibrium in predicting day-to-day conditions, not expressing
a preference to screw one's grandchildren over for present gains.

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meerita
Why not leave people work as much as they want if they agree with their
employees?

~~~
kerpele
Most people don’t have any leverage for these kinds of negotiations and would
fairly likely get shafted if there were no laws to protect them

~~~
meerita
Do you mean they cannot ponder how much money they need to?

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generalpass
Just looking over her Wikipedia article it's not clear to me she's ever been
involved in managing a business.

~~~
IGotThroughIt
This is exactly my point. I honestly don't know how anything would ever get
done with this kind of attitude. I'm not saying that we should overwork our
labor force but what we have now seems fairly optimal.

~~~
bborud
Do you manage people?

