
Why the 8 Hour Workday Doesn’t Make Sense - lifestyleigni
http://theskooloflife.com/wordpress/8-hour-work-day/
======
grellas
There is no magic to working 8 hours every day or any other number for that
matter.

Before the industrial revolution, most people were farmers. They got up at
sunrise and typically worked long, hard days in the fields - workdays that
were not circumscribed by any arbitrary time limit but rather defined by
whatever it took to deal with the exigencies of each day.

The 8-hour day, as some sort of idealized goal, came about as a direct result
of the industrial revolution. With people moving to cities and taking up
factory work, reformers began to characterize such work situations as
exploitative, particularly of children but also of adults in terms of length
of hours worked in physically demanding situations. The answer for reformers
lay in having governments prescribe maximum normative work periods, with
anything in excess of the prescribed maximum being deemed extraordinary and
warranting extraordinary compensation. Hence, in America, we eventually got
the 8-hour day and the 40-hour week. (See, e.g.,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day> for an overview).

I don't think "corporate America" has any particular stake in the 8-hour day.
If anything, employers would undoubtedly _want_ to have the power to shape the
work schedules of employees in more flexible ways, especially by being able to
freely demand longer work hours at normal compensation as a condition of
continued employment. Of course, this would require repeal of the wage-and-
hour laws that today proscribe any such thing. My point, though, is that it is
those laws and not any scheme by employers that keeps the 8-hour structure in
place as the normative work environment.

Bottom line: given pure freedom of contract, people could work any schedules
they want and, in fact do so (that is what it means to be in business for
yourself); however, given the problems arising from pure freedom of contract,
the law imposes rigid limits deemed beneficial from a societal perspective on
what may be expected of employees. That, I believe (and, I don't think, any
other major factor), is what requires most people to work 8-hour schedules as
their normative workday, at least in the U.S.

On a final note: the typical startup environment is really a throwback to the
freedom of farming days because, in the earliest stages, there basically are
no formal employees but rather just founders working round-the-clock like
madmen for what might often be described as "below dirt wages," and, in later
stages, there are large numbers of "exempt" engineers who are not subject to
the overtime rules and hence who are also working insane hours - thus, not too
many 8-hour days in your prototypical startup. I don't think most of the
participants regard this as exploitation, probably because most of it is self-
driven, i.e., most such people want to drive themselves hard in order to
succeed.

~~~
nostromo
Great comment. One thing I'd point out however -- you make farming sound like
the hardest job one could have. Perhaps it is durring the summer. However,
many northern famers used to 'hibernate' all winter. Here's a great
description of the phenomenon:

> In 1900, The British Medical Journal reported that peasants of the Pskov
> region in northwestern Russia “adopt the economical expedient” of spending
> one-half of the year in sleep: “At the first fall of snow the whole family
> gathers round the stove, lies down, ceases to wrestle with the problems of
> human existence, and quietly goes to sleep. Once a day every one wakes up to
> eat a piece of hard bread. ... The members of the family take it in turn to
> watch and keep the fire alight. After six months of this reposeful existence
> the family wakes up, shakes itself” and “goes out to see if the grass is
> growing.” <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/opinion/25robb.html>

~~~
travisjeffery
That may have happened and have been possible in _1900_ , but I grew up in a
farming family and there is no way any farming people who wish to be
profitable and have a good business do this today.

Today it's more like you have a job for year round income like hardwood
flooring or whatever and then in the Summer you have 2 jobs: whatever job you
have year round and then your additional farming work.

~~~
maxawaytoolong
I guess it depends on what you are farming. Where I grew up the farmers grew
commodity crops like wheat and soybeans and did mostly take the winter off.
Sometimes they'd have a 2nd job as a pee-wee hockey coach or something like
that.

------
amalcon
I happen to agree with the premise, but really, this is not a well-stated
case.

 _But thousands, if not millions of people commute to work every single day._

Come on. Thousands, if not millions? They say that the number of people in
Manhattan alone increases by a million during the day. More importantly,
though, this has _absolutely nothing to do with the 8 hour workday_.

You still need to travel from wherever you live to wherever you do your work;
the only way to solve this is to move those places closer together (maybe even
to the same place).

 _In fact, I’m willing to bet that most people aren’t doing anything for 40%
of the working week._

Assuming that this is true, there are a variety of alternate hypotheses. For
example, this problem is pretty much exclusive to knowledge workers. Perhaps
knowledge workers need "breaks" just as physical laborers do, but because the
culture discourages it, they invent their own "breaks".

 _Today, human creativity is at an all time high because less and less people
are working in offices._

This is self-contradictory: either human creativity is at an all-time high, or
it's reduced by working in offices. After all, there was a time when nobody
worked in offices. I'd wager that the proportion of humans who work in offices
is actually _increasing_ , even if you only look at Western cultures. Of
course, I'd hardly say that human creativity is at an all-time high either
(even for Western cultures alone, that was during the Renaissance).

~~~
sudont
_move those places closer together (maybe even to the same place)._

I found that picking a work contract, then housing close by works very well.
No commute, and when my car breaks down (often) I can just walk to work. It
helps to work for places that are either design-centric (and in livable city
neighborhoods) or corporate campuses (which are generally in residential
areas.)

~~~
eftpotrm
That assumes a flexibility which isn't the case for many outside the young and
single though. As soon as you introduce extra people and responsibilities into
the equation you can't just up sticks and move because your job has changed.

~~~
sudont
Don’t harsh on my inability to sustain a relationship, man.

------
ulf
"Unhappiness: It seems that the typical 9to5er is living for the weekends.
Radio stations say things like “it’s hump day, you’re almost there.” Almost
where? Why are we constantly trying to get a destination other than where
we’re at?"

This is an interesting point that I realized myself not long ago. A lot of
people want to get from weekend to weekend, from vacation to vacation. It is a
great escape. Their everyday lives somehow seem not very worth living to them.
What I find amazing is how many people admittedly live that way, instead of
changing something about their everyday life (especially work). Regarding the
percentage of our awake time that we work over the course of our lives, it
cannot be very healthy to say: Come saturday everything will be alright.

~~~
bethling
This is so very true. I'm back working at a place that my life is just like
that - I look forward to the weekend throughout the workweek so much that now
when Sunday comes around I can't enjoy it fully because I know that I'm back
to the office on the next day. It's really not a good way to live.

It hasn't always been like that - when I did try my start up I worked far
more, but enjoyed it far more. I've been blaming my discontent on me maybe not
liking technology as much as I used to, but I'm coming around to the re-
realization that maybe I'm just not doing something with it that is
fulfilling.

~~~
nandemo
What works for me is having hobbies and activities that I'm enthusiastic
about. So instead of looking forward to the weekend I'm only looking forward
to end of the workday so that I can practice piano or exercise or go to an
improv workshop. In my experience, passive things like watching TV/movies or
listening to music don't count.

Of course a better solution would be, as you say, to do something more
fulfilling during the day.

------
iantimothy
Inefficiency - "You should blame the system that forced you to work within the
structure of the 8 hour work day."

When you are expected to work 8 hours a day, the problem is not that you fill
your time with useless shit and then become unproductive.

The problem is that you feel like you need to demonstrate or show to the world
that you're doing work for the whole 8 hours, or more specifically, you need
to show that you're not slacking off for too long.

So, let's take programmers as an example. I've had colleagues who alt-tab A
LOT. Basically, 15 minutes in the IDE, tab out, 5 minutes of chatting. 15
minutes back to the IDE, 5 minutes back to browsing. For a 8 hour day, that's
75% of the time working. Good right? NO.

Context switching is expensive. A large part of the 15 minutes of work in the
IDE is resetting the frame of mind to work.

Now why do people context switch. Simple. Micro-management from project
managers, team leaders, bosses ...

If I, as a team leader, look over at your screen and see you surfing the net
for 1 full hour, I'll get pissed. But if you alt-tab a lot, there is a good
chance when I'm spying over your shoulder, you're on the IDE. Good worker!

I hate it. Which is why when I had my own team, I told my guys, you want to
surf, sure, spend as long as you want. But when you code, focus on the coding
for a full X amount of time. So, I tell them, you want a break, surf for 30
minutes. But make sure you get full one and a half hours of coding done first.
Plan what you need to do, tell the team what you aim to achieve, and do it.

I also find that when people don't need to pretend to work, and can rest in
peace chatting, surfing, they tend to be less stress.

Another example, sleeping in the office is a big no-no. So what do people do?
They run off to the stairs to sleep. Or to the toilet. Ridiculous. If my guy
has been pulling all nighters, I think it is perfectly fine for him to rest
his head on the desk for a while.

~~~
rue
Pomodoro and variants thereof prescribe exactly a context switch in some
intervals, quite successfully. 25-30 minutes of work followed by 5-30 minutes
of not working. I personally tend toward a 30/10 split with a longer break
halfway through the day and it works very well.

I probably should not be telling you how to do your job, but I will
nevertheless suggest that you concentrate more on daily or weekly progress
than monitoring things minute to minute.

------
space-monkey
Henry Ford found that his factory workers were more productive _per week_ at
40 hours than 48 hours. It's not a big surprise that what worked in his
factory isn't ideal for every job almost a century later.

~~~
979s
It was also so they had time to consume.
<http://www.worklessparty.org/timework/ford.htm>

~~~
space-monkey
Additionally, his turnover went to almost zero since a 40 hour workweek was
close to a vacation for a lot of people at the time.

------
prosa
Would you be willing to work 50% fewer hours, for 50% less pay?

Most employers are willing to soak up the waste, in order to have access to
their staff throughout the work day. And most employees are eager to get the
extra pay, even if they aren't spending the extra hours productively.

As an entrepreneur, I would love a 20 hour a week job that paid $40K a year --
it would provide financial stability and free time, allowing me to bootstrap
businesses indefinitely. Most people aren't looking for that type of position,
however. They're looking to maximize take-home pay.

~~~
rokhayakebe
I am currently enjoying this. Work between 25-30 hours, and my salary was
reduced by 25%. I am thinking about reducing it more and working less hours.

It is quite tricky though. You want to work 4 hours a day for someone, not 6,
because by the time you are done with 6 you usually need a transition period
and before you know it you are feeling tired.

~~~
shakedown
I agree. I started contracting recently. At first I imagined getting 7-8 hours
of billable work in every day. The reality is I've been able to do 4 - 5 hours
of billable work every day before feeling burnt out and a bit crazy.

------
sp4rki
The system is broken by this need to have everyone available at one specific
time frame. The best experiences I've had working for tech companies is when
the culture is basically "We don't care if you come in or not, or when you
work, just get stuff done." Of course there's a few exceptions, for example if
a in-person meeting is required, everyone is expected to attend (unless you're
in a different area/country, in which case just use video chat to 'be there').

When I'm on a roll I don't want to stop working, as a matter of fact, I once
got to the office at 6am (I avoided traffic commuting at this time) on a
Monday and left at 2pm Thursday. Although I didn't sleep at all, which was not
a healthy thing to do, not only did I finish a three week task in 80 hours,
but I ended up automating a bunch of processes, and fixing a bunch of bugs. I
easily did a months work (probably more) in that time frame. Not only was I
awarded a bonus, but I was expected not to work for a 15 days, of course I was
till being payed as if I were still working. In contrast, I've had days where
the only productive time I've had are two or three hours, and that's OK to, as
long as you're reaching your goals.

------
icegreentea
How does commuting fit in this? The problem of commuting is related to the
fact that majority of commuting is synchronized to within 2 ~2-3 hour periods.
As long as we have this happening, the 'naive' argument is that commuting
actually argues for longer work days with less days of work. 4x10 or
something, so the travel:work ratio is better.

Even a more flexible work schedule (for everyone) is not necessarily the
solution. The fact that most people will be working during the day will mean
that there will always been surges ~8-10 and ~4-6. It might lessen it's
effect, but it'll still be there, and after the initial adjustment period,
will seem every bit as unproductive and annoying.

Commuting isn't going to get better unless a very large percentage switches to
work at home, or lives within walking/biking distance of their workplace, or
everyone accepts some great overlord who coordinates everyone's travel and
work time to minimize peak traffic (I'm sure the relevant algorithms already
exist).

~~~
yason
The problem of commuting is that it exists. Instead of a reliably short walk
to work, with a detour to the coffee shop included, commuters have to drive an
hour in heavy traffic. Each alone.

Why is that then? Because offices and homes are built so far away from each
other, and if you wished you couldn't easily build mixed use
office+apartment+commercial blocks under many of the typical zoning laws.

~~~
mkramlich
There is a hypothesis out there that says that this phenomena, at least here
in the US, may have been the result of an intentional conspiracy by parties
that had a strong financial incentive to require millions of people to commute
in vehicles over very long distances each day. Who would benefit? Oil
companies and car manufacturers, primarily, though also suburban home builders
and real estate speculators, road contractors, etc. Who helped promote the
conversion, in this scenario? The preceding, in partnership with the
government and mass media. There were legitimate "non-conspiratorial" reasons
why someone might want to live in a suburb rather than a downtown urban area
(such as White Flight or new married couples wanting to raise their kids in an
area far away from the perceived dangers of city life, such as bums, gangs,
"perversion", etc.) But at the same time, there were certain industries and
companies that stood to gain very well financially if the whole suburb-
highways-long-commute-and-back system took off.

------
hasenj
In most Arab countries, the typical work cycle is 6 hours per day, 6 days a
week. Recently it shrank to 5 days a week; I'm not sure if the hours-per-day
increased.

Typically it was from 8 to 2.

The same goes for school. High school (IIRC) was from 7 to 1, or something
like that.

~~~
redstripe
The typical workday for who? The privileged Arab natives or the hordes of
abused migrants that do the real work? <http://www.hrw.org/en/node/87736>

~~~
hasenj
Ah, I wasn't thinking of the Gulf, I was talking about the Middle East and
North Africa.

For what it's worth, Arab "foreigners" in the Gulf aren't treated any better.

------
rythie
Employees want to earn the same amount every month and everything in their
life is based on that, rent/mortgage, bills, loans etc. Employers end up
meeting this need by making employees work a set amount of hours a month.
People typically can't deal with less or more money a month in sensible way.
Sometimes there isn't much for employees to do, but that's a risk the employer
either takes or should fix. Some employers have a flexitime system to ease
this a little.

The 9-5 is a result of those factors and there are alternatives, start a
product business or do freelance work.

------
TorKlingberg
Sorry if this is a little off topic, but I have always wondered when Americans
talk about working 9-5 for 8 hour days. Does that mean you get paid for lunch
time? Or do you not eat lunch?

Swedish also work 8 hours days (or slightly less), but lunch hour is not
included. Programmers, even at big companies, generally get to choose which 8
hours. 7-4, 8-5, 9-6, 10-7, either is fine.

~~~
umjames
I don't know of any American companies that pay employees to eat lunch. 9-5, I
think is just an American colloquialism at this point. If you get an hour for
lunch, then it's really 9-6.

------
Pyrodogg
Looking at the 8-hour day from the inside, employee, perspective is one thing.
But it's not the only one.

There is another reason for the 8 hour workday, maintaining real-time
business-to-business interactions with a single shift workforce.

An expectation has been built up that businesses will be open from 9-5. This
allows businesses to handle person to person interactions on an expected
schedule. As a rule, if you need to contact someone for business you call them
during this time.

Some companies can do with the delayed response form of email but phone and
face-to-face conversations still hold weight in non software centric
companies.

Some companies might establish their own culture, between a limited number of
parties they interact with. However, if businesses at large started shifting
their hours all over the place it would make things very confusing for a new
player to establish business with them.

~~~
chc
This just makes 9–5 a necessity for some subset of workers who need to be
contacted immediately at random by external parties on a regular basis.

~~~
Pyrodogg
True, but this still places some constraints on the rest of the company. Said
random contacts will eventually need to pass some info on internally and get
answers to report back to external organizations.

------
zavulon
So what's the alternative? I don't think the author is offering any ...

~~~
loca
A British think tank thinks the working week should be cut to 21 hours:

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8513783.stm>

~~~
mkramlich
For white collar workers, that may have no impact on actual productivity per
week. For blue collar workers, it's more likely to. Speaking in general terms.

------
dinedal
This is good brouhaha down with the man confirmation bias feeding writing,
but...

-The commute has nothing to do with the work day. If you work less or more, you still have to commute to get there to do the work.

-The author presents no alternative, except hints at the digital nomadic work style. If you're going to try to dismantle a structure that, as written in the article, has kept big business in America running for so long, please provide a reasonable sounding alternative so if we agree with you we can do something about it.

~~~
cryptoz
The idea around commuting is this: With the _9-5_ workday, nearly everyone
commutes at the same time which causes epic traffic jams. If we staggered the
workdays so that some worked 8-4, 9-5, or 10-6, 11-7, etc then the traffic
problems of most cities would _disappear_.

Yes, that's still an 8-hour workday. But it's not the same as the current
8-hour workday model we use right now.

~~~
byoung2
I've worked 7-4 the last 3 years and it helps a little in the mornings but the
afternoons are about the same (Los Angeles traffic). It's still worth it to
have the office to myself for 2 hours in the morning.

------
InclinedPlane
Within the past few generations, physical labor jobs have diminished while
knowledge worker jobs have risen. Along with that, more and more knowledge
worker jobs have become creative.

The traditional norms of working hours, work environment, management
techniques, etc. established from past eras where physical labor dominated
work are no longer relevant (and in some cases actively harmful) when it comes
to knowledge work and especially artistic and creative work. Worse yet, many
people do not appreciate or acknowledge the creative nature of many of these
new jobs (software development being an excellent example).

As a result most working environments for a lot of modern creative work are
wholly dysfunctional. Is it any wonder then why job churn is so incredibly
high in the tech sector? If you're working in a dysfunctional environment then
you are much more likely to switch jobs for a little extra pay or merely for a
change.

Unfortunately, a lot of labor law is also very heavily biased toward physical
labor as the model for all work. It'll take a very long time for these biases,
bad traditions, and legal hindrances to be replaced by systems that actually
work.

------
lukeqsee
> What’s amazing is that if we started to rethink the 8 hour workday in terms
> of a person’s creative capacity, instead of the number of hours they work,
> we may possibly tap into the best work that every individual has inside of
> them.

So he means we are now going to judge people by their output. Objectively.
Like pay them for work produced, not time spent "working."

That's a great idea in theory.

What about the lazy, handicapped, and less-than-full-potential people? (I'm
not at all clumping them as all equally bad.) They won't be able to produce as
much, at least initially, and consequently receive less pay. Just wait until
the ACLU hears about it.

We have a 9 to 5 structure because anybody can show up for 8 hours a day. If
we don't change our value structure, our workday will never change.

~~~
Psyonic
Measuring output isn't quite as simple as you suggest. Which janitor was more
productive, the one who cleaned more rooms, or the one who did a more thorough
job? Or the one who had to clean up the vomit?

------
jonnathanson
An interesting, but crucial aside: who still works a classic, 8 hour workday?
It seems like an anachronism this day and age, at least in my experience.
While companies technically demand 40 hours per week and no more, most
corporate cultures unofficially pressure employees into 10 or even 12 hour
days. 8 to 7 has been pretty typical of many of the firms for which I've
worked. Sometimes those hours are extended on either end; sometimes they're
condensed. But they're always more than 8 hours.

------
hoprocker
The 8-hour workday is in large part due to the efforts of the labor movement
at the turn of the last century. Prior to that, 10- or 12-hour days weren't
uncommon or legally restricted. Subsequent to the initial reduction to 8 hours
in workday hours, it was thought that the trend would continue. Robert Levine
touches on the 8-hour workday in his book _A Geography of Time_, where he
briefly describes W.K. Kellogg's initiative in the 1930's to reduce the
workday to 6 hours at his Michigan factory. He felt that hard work would
replace long hours. According to Levine, "For nearly two decades, by nearly
every yardstick, Kellogg's brainchild worked brilliantly"[1]. It only met its
doom after WWII, when, as a result of a policy linking higher productivity to
increased wages, workers began demanding eight hours again to increase their
overall income.

1\. Robert Levine, _A Geography of Time_, p141.

------
safij
8 hour work day is an INDUSTRIALIZED style of working, doesn't apply anymore
in many areas, like conditions necessary for making software.

------
dspeyer
Does anyone know the context this was written from? No sense compared to a 10
hour work day? 6 hour? Roughly 8 hours a day broken up as convenient? However
long it takes to get a well-measured hunk of work done?

The article doesn't really mean anything without this.

------
jk8
According to this page
<http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/whaples.work.hours.us> In the 1800
americans worked seventy hours or more per week

------
DanI-S
I barely remember what it is like to only work 8 hours a day...

------
kapitalx
This article is merely stating the problem and not suggesting any alternatives
or solutions.

------
aneth
From years of consulting I'm always surprised when I feel like I've worked a
full day over 8 hours, but am only billing an honest 5-6. Distractions, life
responsibilities, break time, etc. all mean 8 hours is not 8 hours. I do think
most employers know this and it's acceptable - after all salaried employees
are not paid by the hour and being there can be as important for overall
productivity as it is for the same person to be individually productive.

Personally I'd be in favor of a 4 day 10 hour work week. I think it could be
similarly productive, cuts down on commute time, and yields a better quality
of life.

~~~
sedachv
I think the rational solution is to move to a 6-hour workday. You can argue
that then people will still spend 2 hours not working, but I think that's not
most people's experience.

8 hours doesn't make sense for knowledge workers.

Even if you're in a position like manufacturing or retail, the continued year
over year productivity growth since the 8 hour workday became norm should mean
that you can enjoy a higher standard of living while working 25% less time. Of
course this is not true as workers' compensation has nothing to do with the
surplus value extracted from their labor (a fact which works against you if
you actually have to be accountable for your work; OTOH if you spend most of
the work day goofing off on the Internet or being an incompetent manager, it
really works in your favor).

------
micah63
Clearly, he does not have any kids...

~~~
hasenj
You mean clearly his judgement is not clouded by the immediate need to feed
his family without objecting to the masters.

~~~
micah63
No, I love my kids and they don't cloud my judgement. I mean kids work well
with routines and what is wrong with going to work at the same time every day
and coming home at the same time?

~~~
hasenj
It's not your family that clouds your judgement, and I'm not saying "you" as
in _you_ , I mean the generic you.

One's judgement is clouded by his own sense of responsibility, it's common for
SJ types[1][2] to value stability over enhancing the human condition. "if it
works don't fix it".

Even more so when one feels he has an immediate, real, concrete, practical,
measurable responsibility to provide for his family.

This could cloud one's judgement because:

The immediate need of his family seems real, while the need of society for
better working conditions seems "out there", not really as important or as
concrete as the need to provide for his family.

This is what I mean by the OP's judgement not being clouded. He can think
clearly about the large-picture issues.

[1]: [http://www.mypersonality.info/personality-types/sj-
temperame...](http://www.mypersonality.info/personality-types/sj-temperament/)

[2]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_temperament>

