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.
to use an example of a fictional manufacturing company, i'd like to commission a piece of software that can do almost anything- from processing an order from any business, that can come in digital format, scanned, printed, or spoken over the phone, to generating an purchase orders and sales orders to our suppliers and distributors who may have an online interface or who may still use fax or phone and may communicate in english or not english.
that is quite a difficult piece of software to build so most companies don't actually build that at all. instead they rely on hordes of people who are configurable in any imaginable way to solve problems that appear in unimaginable forms.
The are a bit like the socialism in capitalism. Most of the jobs are redundant and could be done more efficiently by a bunch of small corps instead of one big.
When I first started I was getting paid a pretty paltry amount, but there were only 20 or so employees and each of us basically did whatever was required to succeed.
Now we're up to almost 100 employees and I still work here, making over double my starting salary, but I do so much less work. I've carved out my little niche in the project pipeline and outside of that I read HN or Reddit. I feel a little guilty but I'm still getting the work done that's asked of me and receiving praise and raises from management, so...
That's what machines are for. We need to embrace automation.
> Society needs what large corporations produce
Nope. Large corporations spend loads of money and manpower to make people think they need what they produce.
> People need the wages these corporations pay.
Not if they resist the manipulation to buy all the useless stuff. Not if automation makes everything cheaper.
> The 40hr work week is going nowhere.
Oh, but it is going. The sooner we realize this, the easier the transition will be.
I'd much rather work 40 hours or even more, working 6-2 or similar, than work 30 hours a week and have to deal with rush hour traffic.
But it can make a big difference. I don't think I can stay productive for 8 hours straight on the average day. So the last 1-2 hours are a miserable grind, effectively wasted time. Add to that, I don't live to work, I work to live. I'd be very happy if I had quite a bit of energy left when I get home so I can live my life too.
I think the real problem is the just lack of flexibility. If 40 works for you, why shouldn't you be allowed to work 40. At the same time, that doesn't mean everybody should be working 40. Same for any other number of hours. Same for any the time...
Combine those two and you have a scenario where 40 is the minimum, doing less is seen very negatively, and there's no real way to prove you're producing more or at a higher quality working 30 hours than the guy next to you working 55.
I'd be happy to work 30 hours even if that meant I got less done than the other guy working 55 hours. For this, I'd happily trade some salary.
We should move to a 4 day week.