The solution to (nearly) everything: working less | Hacker News Reader

The solution to (nearly) everything: working less

theguardian.com

84 pointscsantini55 comments

I really wish there were jobs out there that let you do this. My ideal work week is 32 hours, with occasional bursts of more. I've met very few traditional workplaces that were very open to the idea of part time schedules.

For me, focus is all or nothing during work hours. I'd much rather bring fire for fewer hours each day, and then recharge with some of my other pursuits.

Here in the Netherlands is very, very common to have 3 or 4-day working weeks. Those free days are usually taken by parents who want to stay at home and take care of their children, but also by older people. I barely know anyone that takes extra hours either. At 5pm almost everyone has left the office.

Ah yes, I should have specified the US. When I lived in New Zealand, I think my contracts were based around a 36.5 hour week. Even that was noticeably nicer than the 40+ hour expectation here in the states.

In Belgium that is also mostly the case. But at my current company we have a 40 hour weeks (and a lot of unpaid overtime) because for some bizarre reason management is convinced "that is how successful Silicon valley does it". I personally think that American dominance in technology has to do with other things than low pay/max hours, but who am I.

This is the first time in more then a decade that I am working in such a regime and I'm not really convinced that I am now more productive then ever. Au contraire, I have the feeling that I'm working more on autopilot and I'm a lot less creative in solving problems.

In the past when I was dealing with a problem, solutions often came when I was doing something mundane like driving or gardening. I got my best solutions/idea's when I was away from my computer. The moment you could switch off and put your unconscious mind to work, now I frankly don't have the time.

Teaching?

Not sure if it would pay enough where you are; and not sure if you would want to try it (not easy work if you do it properly).

Teaching can be fractionalised quite easily - I do 3/4 of a standard teaching week so I teach fewer classes spread over 4 days. To fit your second paragraph, you would need to be very disciplined about getting the preparation and marking done within your chosen working days.

That last sentence is absolutely key. Most people do not understand that the time commitment involved in teaching is not well approximated by the amount of time spent in front of the class.

I would gladly trade half my income to work half as many hours.

But I find I can only keep my knowledge current and skills sharp by putting in a lot of time.

If I worked half as much, I'd be worth less per hour, and total income would drop far more than 50%.

I made this trade and couldn't be happier.

What do you do with the extra time?

Writing music and stories. Some painting. Learning to speak a couple new languages. Stimulating other parts of my brain/personality as much as possible

That would be great, although I'm not sure the 15 hours per week mentioned makes any sense. I find that the more I switch off from work (the weeks and months where I've taken lots of vacation, or never look at work stuff after hours or on weekends), the harder it is to keep up with it and stay engaged. I honestly feel that if I came to work 5 hours a day, 3 days a week, I'd be less productive per hour.

I don't know, did Keynes ever understood how capitalism works? Capitalism is competition. If your employees work less, your competitor's employees will work full time and overtime, getting their product to market faster and reaping all the rewards. It works with entire countries as competitive agents (see China). "Winner takes it all" operation mode of modern markets amplifies the magnitude of the problem.

Another issue is management overhead. Managing 10 people working full-time is easier (perhaps exponentially) than managing 40 people working 1/4 time. Easier means cheaper, which means that you are better positioned in the competition. This is why every rational company will hire 10 people full-time and leave the other 30 unemployed, instead of hiring all 40 for quarter of the time.

I see no solution to this problem in peacetime (Keynes' own solution famously didn't work). In wartime, of course, there are nearly no unemployed.

The managing problem is easy. Work the same hours!

Say M-F 5 hour days. Or M-W 7 hour days. Lots of options. So so many office jobs don't need to cover all shifts.

The places that really need someone always there, say 24 stores or fast food.. they already are all part timers, and they manage.

I guess the only case to figure out is the fulltime employee + need coverage.. but I bet it can be solved with delegation...

How so? Coordinating the jobs between 40 employees is always way harder than between 10 employees.

Yet these retail stores are comprised of basically all part-time employees outside of management. My guess is that the money they save on benefits is worth it. Plus it doesn't seem like they need more people to manage the part time employees.

Well you are jumping from 10 to 40.

If you had 10 programmers, and gave them 3 day weeks (24 hours). How much less work to you get? Maybe none. Maybe 20%. So you hire 2 more. So you went from managing 10 programmers to 12.

I guess maybe a tiny bit harder? I suspect most managers would take the new workload for 4 day weekends.

My understanding of capitalism is that it is competition with rules (actually most people who talk about capitalism are talking about a market economy). We have rules against theft, trade secrets, patents and a lot of other stuff. As long as everybody follows the same set of rules the best still wins. You could mandate shorter work hours within capitalism.

It doesn't have to be "winner takes it all" necessarily.

It does. This is how e.g. digital economy works, and nothing could be done about that. In traditional economy, there can be e.g. a bakery shop in nearly every corner; people will just choose the closest one in most cases. In digital economy, all locality barriers are erased, if you need search, you go to Google, period. No need to evaluate other options as long as Google works OK. No legislation can change that (and if it could, it would bring much more problems than that).

>This is how e.g. digital economy works,

Even the slightest consideration will reveal that this is false. Uber and Lyft, Dropbox and Box, FBM and iMessage and Google Messenger and Whatsapp.

Ok, two winners split it all (because people dislike monopolies). But that's about it.

You are failing to consider the costs of switching from one service to another - people will put up with quite a lot to avoid inconvenience - as well as network effects: there's no point switching messaging platforms if all your contacts are on the old one.

Anyone who's worked 80+ hours/week can tell you that work is an efficiency function. At hour 75, one's capable of much less (cognitively and physically) and more prone to mistake than at hour 5 (as the article notes). The stakes are high when it's overworked 20-somethings working on an expensive lawsuit or transactional spreadsheets or trying to ship code on a deadline, to say nothing of engineers and others involved with public safety.

The notion of more work = better isn't as straightforward as you make it. The article itself points out Chernobyl and Challenger as the result of pushing people. Even from a purely competitive, capitalistic POV, pushing people to work more has very real risks; risks that make the expected return negative the harder one pushes.

It is entirely possible that capping the number of hours worked – such that workers are rotated and therefore are always fresh/at their most efficient – is more optimal than driving them harder and harder in the name of competition.

We see this with Olympic/professional athletes whose coaches enforce mandatory rest days and optimal sleep. Certainly these athletes, if they just "worked harder" in the name of competition, would be harming themselves after a point despite putting in more hours.

This recovery period, while mostly physical in nature, also extends into the cognitive realm as well. Knowledge workers need recovery too.

Which is why most professions are settled on 40-hour work week, as the ideal way to extract long-term productivity. If other time arrangements will give more productivity, employers will be eager to adopt it. But it is not the case for e.g. 15 hour work week.

Most occupations are settled on a 40-hour work week, sure, but that's because employers have done the math and determined paying overtime is worse than extending output. They don't cap it at 40 hours/week for optimal productivity; it's for the bottom line.

However, I can think of very few professions which involve a 40-hour work week, given that most professionals are salaried. In The U.S., 60 hours/week is more the norm (not to mention being subservient to email at all hours) and in certain competitive careers, taking vacations is eschewed.

This mentality is silly.

This looks strange to me (I am European). If working for 40h week is more productive than 60h week, why company owners even choose the latter?

It's not that less is more; rather it's that more work has diminishing productivity returns. And, after a certain point, the returns dip negative due to fatigue-related risks (this is a unique example, but it's always major news when the maximum hours allowed for medical residents gets reformed/reduced on account of patient mortality related to doctor fatigue).

And that's just when we limit the scope of "returns" to productivity. As the article points out, there are many, many non-productivity benefits associated with a shorter work week.

I don't think many Americans will be on their death bed lamenting "oh, if only I'd spent more late nights/weekends at the office working on spreadsheets."

Because the marginal cost, to the employer, of hours beyond 40 is zero – remember these employees are almost always paid a salary, i.e. a fixed amount regardless of hours worked (beyond 40). Thus, even if an employee's productivity plummets – but is still above zero – it's in the employer's interest to persuade (or prod) them to work more hours.

But of course even that's a gross simplification. There are lots of 'non-linear' considerations, e.g. burnout.

I think you're forgetting to take into account the effect of longer hours on productivity (negative), and the fact that our working hours are a choice which (within a certain range) don't seem to have a strong effect on actual results in the "marketplace".

In the developed world, the 40-hour week is standard both because 60-hour weeks are less-productive, and because as a society we've chosen to prioritize health and happiness over the (mostly imagined) productivity of a longer workweek. But 40 isn't a magical number, it's possible 30 would work just as well or better.

As long as the productivity stays the same or increased, this option is viable. But if not, it isn't. Increased productivity from shorter hours is good, of course, but Keynes thought that even decreased productivity could be fine, as at some point it will be "enough".

Here's the catch: under competitive market economy, there is never "enough". And if you pass on market economy in your country, there are other countries who will outcompete you, both economically and militarily.

I wouldn't necessarily say we prioritize health and happiness though. We still spend the majority of our time awake working.

Capitalism also means labor is a market. At any time there are thousands of companies looking to hire competent tech workers, and if you want to work part time, there is someone who needs employees enough to let you.

I'm also not sure what your alternative is; if we were using most any other semi-viable alternative to free capitalist labor, we'd all be working until the commissar tells us we can stop.

Correct and correct. I am a very pro-free market person; I just tried to explain why working less hours is uncommon, even considering the benefits.

TLDR: The "free market" is showering us with amazing riches, while making us miserable.

You mean, showering a very small subset of us with amazing riches while making the vast majority of us miserable?

I'm not sure, in Europe the Greeks work the longest hours but have very low per-capita GDP, Germans work some of the shortest hours but are near the top for per-capita GDP.

> I don't know, did Keynes ever understood how capitalism works?

I would say yes. That's a pretty wild question to ask. Do you know how capitalism works, because "competition" is not the definition.

Keynes is "widely considered to be one of the most influential economists of the 20th century."

"Following the outbreak of World War II, the leading Western economies adopted Keynes's policy recommendations, and in the two decades following Keynes's death in 1946, almost all capitalist governments had done so."

"When Time magazine included Keynes among its Most Important People of the Century in 1999, it said that 'his radical idea that governments should spend money they don't have may have saved capitalism.'"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes

> Keynes' own solution famously didn't work

Are you talking about the problem of hours in the work week here? What is the problem and failed solution you're referring to?

Stagflation.

You're taking a lot of heat but I can't see where you're wrong; in any competitive environment there will always be at least one player who, legally or otherwise, figures out how to exploit any conceivable advantage, creating a race to the bottom. It's nice to imagine a scenario wherein a company by protecting its employees' quality of life somehow secures a competitive advantage that creates a market success; but I [literally] don't see that happening.

what's full time, 10 h/week, 40? where did this magic number come from and why is it declining in the last decades, while unemployment rises? surely not because we became less able to work.

And exercising more.

I'm fairly certain the optimal work week is ~30-35 hrs, and the optimal exercise time is 6-8 hrs/week.

Imagine how low the health care costs could be if we were somehow mandated by a benevolent dictator to do some activities at work (our preferred sport for example).

One can dream.

This would be acceptable if the benevolent dictator also participated in 6-8 hrs/week of exercise, and it was televised raw on CSPAN.

At the very least it would be a good motivator, and at I bet it'd be very humanizing too. "Oh man, our B.D. only did 7 reps when he was aiming for 10. Look at that sad puppy face! Just exhausted, but he has 20 more minutes to go."

Crazy that, though this is so widely known, nothing has really changed in the last 100 years. Instead, wages stay stagnant, and cost of living rises. Hours needed to survive increase. It's all so illogical, it's crazy.

It's illogical from a rational, maximum-utility-for-all perspective.

However, looking at it from the point of view of a primate status hierarchy competition, it makes perfect sense. The apex individuals derive pleasure from subjugating their lower status colleagues, and thus seek to make their lives as miserable as possible.

From this point of view, all of human history makes sense. We are but primates, and no amount of highbrow pontificating can change that.

Starting today, if the powerful wanted to, they could design a rational system that maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering for the largest number of people possible. But then, there is no incentive in the primate brain to foster such an endeavor. Even philanthropists, instead of uniting and agreeing on a shared vision, compete with each other for status amongst themselves by virtue signalling their own superiority over their peers.

It is nature red in tooth and claw. We are no exception.

>Starting today, if the powerful wanted to, they could design a rational system that maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering for the largest number of people possible.

In the same breath you pointed out why such a system does not work then state such a system is possible, I don't think anyone with power would ever genuinely want to enact such a system, but even if they did those participating in such a system would always look for ways to un-level the playing field and recreate the hierarchy we seek in society as primates.

I remember reading that indigenous people are very equal amongst their tribe.

There's also been a massive increase in the standard of living since the early 1900s. Refrigeration (both for food and buildings), telecommunications, computers (all the entertainment you could ever want at your fingertips!), health care, transportation (cars; trains; air fare, while expensive, is still far less costly and is much than a horse or ship over a very long distance).

We also expect higher standards in many areas. Regulation increased costs but it also keeps our food and medications water free of contaminants. Auto safety standards keep cars from becoming death traps. All of this costs money, but would you argue the regulatory standard of the early 20th century produced a superior quality of life for the average person?

Truth be told, there are only two real expenses in society these days: housing and health care. Maybe we can automate medicine to become as relatively cheap as transportation and information/entertainment has become, but housing will be harder, as per the aforementioned regulations.

For example, my girlfriend and I are moving into a 1br which could easily support a second bedroom in the back study, but because that room doesn't have any Windows, by law it cannot be a bedroom.

Also, the costs of housing and general rents are passed along to the consumer, so it affects everyone.

> but because that room doesn't have any Windows, by law it cannot be a bedroom.

Could it be a bedroom with Linux?

There's some doubt on how important all this, when you see surveys that the amish are happier as billionaiers, and on the other hand, empathy decreased by 20% among college student, just between 2000-2010.

There's nothing illogical about it. You put pure competition at the foundation of the whole society, well then pure competition permeates everything. The more competitive you are, the better you're blending in.

Of course, there's the little nagging fact that the whole system might be orthogonal to stuff such as happiness, or enjoying life.

For some people happiness only comes from competition.

Having said that, competition at work is not great because it leads to worst possible result for workers and best possible result for employers.

It's pretty obvious: don't absolutize anything. Pure competition is not the answer to everything. Pure collaboration isn't either. And neither is pure free market, nor pure dictatorship.

The secret sauce must be a blend of many different ingredients. The main thing is finding the right proportions.

I'm not sure I live on the same planet, or even the same universe as you. On my planet most people have an incredibly strong anti-market bias and lots of people strongly and loudly deride competition. Nor is "pure competition" (whatever that is) at the foundation "of the whole society". Instead, the various societies in my world vary to the degree that they believe that competition, particularly economic competition, is important. But very few of them consist of even a large fraction of people that think competition should 'permeate everything'. Nor are there any societies in which a small number of elites have managed to permeate everything with competitiveness.

There is however a form of competition that does permeate everything. I refer of course to competition for (relative) status. But still, characterizing it as 'permeating everything' is just hyperbole. It is pervasive and sometimes (if not often) pernicious, but in fact, in my universe at least, most of the world has improved remarkably in a short span of recent time and any even-more-recent backsliding is pretty close to insignificant in comparison to the slightly less recent improvements.

Wages are nothing like stagnant over a 100 year timeline, they've grown massively.

Also, when you say "wages stay stagnant and cost of living rises," you make it sound like real wages have gone down. That's not the case. Nominal wages have increased, but nominal cost of living has also increased, so real wages have been stagnant (on a 30 year, not 100 year, timeline).

Working fewer hours per week can actually be really hard. Fewer hours means more workers, but adding more workers means additional communication, planning, and other costs.

This is especially true for "knowledge work" since you can't brain-dump everything you know onto a co-worker. If your job involves a service component as well (e.g. like lawyering), that probably means you have also to be on call in addition to the hours you spend working. And then there are tasks where workers need to put in 40 hour work weeks to get anything done because of how long to get up to speed (e.g. I'd personally have a very hard time getting any meaningful coding, writing, or art done if I was limited to working only two hours a day or one day a week on that project).

I think the solution here is probably not so much a focus on part-time work but on seasonal work or jobs where sabbaticals are a thing.

This is something I'd definitely be interested in trying. Like stated elsewhere here, the Netherlands has a culture similar to this.

I've had 3 internships so far, and the most recent one has had a lot of overtime. Maybe I'll try to start my first full-time job in the Netherlands.

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