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Comment by lmilcin | Hacker News Reader

I think there is absolutely no need every adult person needs to work 8 hours a day for 5 days a week. We might just as well work 4 hours a day or 3 days a week. It seems to me, this is just a matter of how the market pressures people to spend as much time as possible at work vs how much work most people can tolerate.

How do I know? There are countries where it is normal that both parents work to provide for their household and there are countries when it is mostly male parent that does the same with same effect. Yet, there is not much difference in their capability to provide, it seems in cases of both types of countries the system settled and regulated itself.

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The commute may influence this. The average American commute is about 30 minutes each way. That's 1 hour round trip.

Commute as a portion of work time....

4 hrs work: 25%

5 hrs work: 20%

6 hrs work: 16.7%

7 hrs work: 14.3%

8 hrs work: 12.5%

Considering you don't get paid for your commute, there is a natural incentive to work more hours.

10h 4 days a week to keep the 40h work week. But it also depends on the type of work. I think desk jobs would benefit more than manual labour form longer days(asuming same total). As the mind and body recovers differently.

>10h 4 days a week to keep the 40h work week

Why keep an arbitrary "40h" standard? Productivity has increased 100x from when it was established, what keeps it is busywork...

I don't understand this presumably American fixation with the 40 hour week. It's almost 10% longer than the default UK week which is already too long. Having worked both and currently on 36.75 there's still a huge amount of slack and wasted time assuming software development or other office jobs.

> I don't understand this presumably American fixation with the 40 hour week.

Not just America. We have elections coming up in Saxony (a state in East Germany), so I watched a 2-hour interview with the current MP from the conservative party (the same party as Angela Merkel). When it came to the topic of UBI and automation, he adamantly refused to consider any policy that would move away from the 40-hour work week. He meant that there were so many challenges ahead of us, we couldn't afford to lose any of our precious working hours. His mantra seems to be "Work harder, not smarter".

> His mantra seems to be "Work harder, not smarter".

Bavarian here. Your MP is a nutjob, as is Söder and the rest of the conservatives. The point is that conservatives (as well as the FDP and the AfD) focus primarily on the needs of the businesses which means keeping to old Prussian traditions no matter what.

> Your MP

#NotMyMP. I just happen to live here.

Remote work may influence this. Commuting to a workplace just to do the things you might as well do from home will be considered old-fashioned, inefficient and/or shameful in a few years, if my crystal ball is not lying.

The problem with that this is is co located teams are a massive multiplier - very few jobs are truly singleton roles.

There are ways to work around that problem remotely.

When working similar to the Basecamp guys it's even the other way around.

Write problems down and give people time to chew on them. Everyone adds his thoughts and refining the idea will lead to better results than a two hours meeting.

Our team comes in the office once a week for some face time. But we have plenty of face time throughout the week on Webex Teams. We've eliminated the friction for remote face time.

If anything, it's an improvement over the in-office because instead of interrupting someone at work, we politely message someone (or the team) about doing a quick call once it's convenient for them.

For 20 hours a week, you can just work 2.5 8h shifts, not necessary 5 4h shifts.

Not only have others suggested the reduction of the week to 4 days, but if you manage to de-align everyone's work week then commuting can become faster. And de-centralising work (not necessarily to the home!) can also improve the commuting situation.

If you cycle to work you can change this equation, because, your commute becomes one of the best parts of your day.

That's optimistic. I have what I think has to be about as close to optimal a bike commute as it's possible to get in the US (nearly all separated bike paths, minimal risk of getting hit be a car). I wouldn't call it particularly enjoyable, much less one of the best parts of my day. It's just a thing I do a couple times a week because I hate going to the gym even more and it saves a bit of gas.

This just reads like incentive to work longer hours for fewer days.

> How do I know? There are countries where it is normal that both parents work to provide for their household and there are countries when it is mostly male parent that does the same with same effect.

I don't understand how this supposedly proves that e.g. male single providers could work only 4 hours a day instead of 8. Care to explain? As an argument against both parents working it would make more sense...

He is implying that in some countries only one spouse works 8 hours a day, and the couple/family have a fairly comfortable life. So presumably in these countries, both spouses could instead work 4 hours a day and they could still have the same comfortable life.

it is because most jobs are payed by the hour and that's how salary is calculated at the end of the month

agree, well said!

Countries where it's normal for both parents to work rely on a serf class, usually of immigrant women, to care for their children at terrible wages so both parents can work. I wonder how long this can be sustainable.

Plenty countries where both parents normally work and there are no servants.

Who is taking care of the children? Who works in the daycares?

They who work in the daycares are not a "serf class", they are paid professionals, and they don't need to have "terrible wages" in a civilized country.

Sure, they don't need to have terrible wages. Do they though? Are daycare workers a healthy mix of educated men and women with a lot of other economic opportunities but choose to be daycare workers because of the pay or emotional rewards?

In Poland, you need to have a specialized degree to work with children in a daycare/kindergarden. The wages mostly suck though.

Where I’m from (slovenia) you need to major in kindergarten education to be a kindergarten teacher. So while the major is a little limited, it’s still a bachelors.

And starting wage is lowest as it can be - minimal wage.

Well, they're merely working with children at their most sensitive and formative years, why give any importance to their work /s

>Are daycare workers a healthy mix of educated men and women with a lot of other economic opportunities but choose to be daycare workers because of the pay or emotional rewards?

That's shifting the goalposts a little. Why would they need to have "a lot of other economic opportunities" anymore than tons of jobs (restaurant staff, retail employees, factory workers, truckers, etc) have?

Here in Norway daycare is an OK respectable job. Not particularly high paying but not the lowest on the scale either. A full time daycare professional can pay their rent, living expenses and travel for vacation off that.

>They who work in the daycares are not a "serf class", they are paid professionals

I wouldn't say 'professionals', in the United States daycare workers can expect to make a little more than minimum wage to start and might get up to 10-11$ an hour for dealing with the maximum number of kids allowed by law all day.

And unless you're talking some elite, gotta get on a waiting list and pay 30 grand a year to send one kid, anyone that passes a background check can get a job in daycare.

I live in Germany, both my kids go to public kindergarten/daycare (there is no distinction between the 2 here, it starts when the child is 1 year old) & the kindergarten teachers are mostly German themselves.

They don't earn great wages but they are not indentured servants either.

Right. So there's a large group of mostly women who accept low wages to store children so more privileged people can go earn higher wages.

Why do you assume the kindergarten teachers earn less than they would have otherwise had in a different job or less than the average parent of the kids in their group? I mean yes, I support better wages for them (jobs in education generally don't pay that great) & I'm sure people working in the financial sector earn much more but I don't think that was the alternative the common teacher had to chose from.

As I said wages are not great but they are not that far from the median. My wife (teacher in a music school) doesn't earn more than a kindergarten teacher, the advantage is mostly in economies of scale (1 teacher per 6-7 pupils vs 1 mother per 1-3 offspring).

> Why do you assume the kindergarten teachers earn less than they would have otherwise had in a different job or less than the average parent of the kids in their group?

Cause when they leave, they get jobs that earn more money.

Who leaves what job? There are plenty of kindergarten teachers who stay at that job their entire careers. If you refer to the parents, in Berlin it costs no money for the parent to send their kids to kindergarten (same as public schools).

And plenty who leaves at least around here. Those I knew personally got more money after. I can also check unemployment rates (low) and compare kindergarten salary to other jobs that hire same qualification (most of administrative work, junior tester etc).

I assume they earn less money they would otherwise, because those who left found better paid jobs without much problems.

In Iceland at least being a leikskoli teacher requires a degree and they are far from child storage. They work and care for the childs development. This is at least a fairly common model in Nordic countries and presume its similar in a lot of Europe.

I've heard horror stories about featureless cinder block rooms as day care in the US though.

In UK (before state mandated ages, ie 4yo) the level of care can be pretty grim, and it's often low skilled young women ([1]) - particular if you're poor yourself.

[1] because for some reason minimum wage is reduced for younger people, like young people don't need housing or food, I don't know ...

One of the many reasons I'm glad I moved here from the UK before having kids.

Funny, I did the same thing. Describing the Icelandic preschool system is the best way I have to blow my UK friend's minds.

"No matter where you live, your child is in the catching area for a nearby preschool and is automatically enrolled there. And it's by no means a child storage facility; the primary focus is on teaching children through play and at least half the staff have a master's degree in preschool teaching. And they're fully fed. Also, it's practically free."

If anything, the wages are so low because people like you consider these thankless hard jobs "child storage".

In my son's daycare about a third of personnel were men.

Same for my son's group.

In Germany almost everybody sends their children to Kindergarten, so the parents on average earn an average wage.

> So there's a large group of mostly women who

enjoy what they do

> so

other people can do other jobs that the aforementioned women benefit from, such us public hospitals, roads, railroads, public transport etc. etc. etc.

FTFY, dear American friend

I became a parent last year and all of my research indicates that 1 is way too young to send a kid away. The optimum age seems to be 3 years. It seems we have come to accept social norms that are not designed around the well-being of the child.

It's a tough question that we have struggled with with both our kids. At the end we've reached the conclusion that we need to balance between the needs of the child and the needs of the parent.

The first 2 months after the birth we were both home, then my wife stayed for another 9 months & finally I took 1 more month of parental leave (so in total it was 1 year before starting to acclimate him to daycare).

After almost a year at home my wife needed (mentally & socially) to return to work & if we could afford to live off of her salary alone I think I would have gladly stayed at home for another 6+ months (instead of just 1).

But I don't think our kids would have been better off overall if my wife stayed for another 2 years but would have done so only out of a feeling of obligation and suffering during that time (it is VERY isolating to be a stay at home parent, even when you have contact to other parents of young children & there is a real lack of intellectual stimulation despite there constantly being work to do).

I don't have all the answers but I think it's a tough question & the balance really depends on the kids and the parents - I believe there is no "1 size fits all" solution.

> there is a real lack of intellectual stimulation despite there constantly being work to do

My wife is taking more of a leading role with our 1 year old (maybe 70/30 between her and me ... also in Germany) and she gets her mental stimulation through voraciously reading about changing dietary requirements of children as they age along with general child developmental research. In fact it is leading us to a discussion about startup opportunities.

Im glad it works for you & it's great you were able to fit the situation to your advantage & interests. But different people have different wants and needs.

The norms are designed around parental leaves available.

They are professional trained, it takes 4 years to get a "puériculteur/puéricultrice" diploma in a university or equivalent. You have also nursery assistant that works under the supervision but even that need formal training + hand-on experience.

It varies a lot from country to country, but to assume that nobody would like to work with small children or that, as a parent, you would let your children under the care of untrained people is strange for me.

The state!

Have you ever heard about public schools?

They are a thing in Europe.

have you ever heard of family?

Kids usually have four grand parents (sometimes less, sometimes more)

In my country (Poland) we "use" grandparents for that.

It's the same in Asia. It's a great way to ensure entrenched cultural norms are passed across generations. This can be positive but I'd wager it's more likely negative especially considering the lives current grandparents led.

In my country (Norway) retired grandparents stay at the mediterranean sea during wintertime.

Bit of a disadvantage for big families (lots of kids-per-grandparent) or this without grandparents around...

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