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Comment by TrackerFF | Hacker News Reader

The 5-day workweek was implemented what, 100 years ago?

Are we to believe that a 100 year old bizops practice is the optimal solution?

I honestly think that the main reason it's (nearly) impossible to implement something new, is because the old practice and mentality is so ingrained and etched in management, they'll feel cheated if the need to pay the same for less days (even though hours may be the same).

They'd rather have people around for as long as possible, doing 70%, than having them less but delivering 90%. The same type of management that values facetime and butts in seats over nearly anything else.

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The whole arrangement is about control, preventing workers from having the time or energy to build competing enterprises, develop skills beyond a certain level, or organize against their employers. It’s the same reason why most big corps oppose a national healthcare system in the US: it keeps people locked in to their current positions and has the knock-on effect of putting downward pressure on wages and turnover expenses.

> The whole arrangement is about control, preventing workers from having the time or energy to build competing enterprises, develop skills beyond a certain level, or organize against their employers

[Citation needed]

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

Quote the relevant passage instead of gesturing vaguely at all of labor history. The idea that working hours are set to sap workers of competitive energy is just a weird conspiracy theory. But I guess HN will believe what it wants to believe.

Do you really believe you can summarize 100 years of labor law in a single quote that somehow will convince you...

Read any European socialist work from the 30s to the 70s and you'll have plenty of quotes to work with. Raoul Vaneigem, Guy Debord, &c.

https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Raoul...

So somewhere in 280 pages is something that might support the OP's claim? Give me a break. Cite specifics or stop pushing nonsense.

I wish there were a site like HN focused on technology and tech industry developments but without the Bay Area intellectual blind spots and biases.

I wish there were still people interested in learning instead of waiting to be fed one liners. Anyway, I'm the first to criticize SV so I'm not even sure what you're talking about. That book is quite short by the way, you can finish it in an evening, I don't think you can make it shorter without losing a lot of meaningful info. Seeing your other comment you seem to be stuck in a "HN vs me" kind of logic, knowing that I don't see how a single quote could change your mind.

I don’t think anybody is going to read a book just because you threw out a link. If you want to get your point across, you should condense what you thought was interesting about the book and make a case for why somebody would read it.

It's a societal critic, you can't condensate that, it's already as short as you can make it and the summary is a rebuttal to op's point... HN truly is becoming reddit by the day. Should I post memes explaining the last 200 years of labor history ? No wonder the world is going down the drain and people like Trump and Bolsonaro get elected if smart people don't even bother reading a 300 pages book about on one of the biggest issues of the last century.

Since you haven't disagreed with anything that's been said, but only criticised how they were presented (in multiple ways)... couldn't you just do the work yourself to frame this argument in a way that satisfies you?

Instead of giving you a citation, how about some logic - when your competitors keep pushing you out of the market, what is the natural course of business? Would it be to:

A) decrease work hours for employees

or B) make them work more for less, effectively preventing them from doing what OP said

It's not always that there is intention to suppress workers, it's just a natural consequence of traditional business.

You comment getting downvoted is all the evidence I need that HN went down the tubes over the past couples of years. Do you know of any good alternatives? Apparently dev.to is pretty good...

The statement in itself is of course overly broad, but I think you can do better, what part of the argument do you want a citation on?

EDIT: I just interpret it as a way to express the opinion that employers usually care about their buisness more than their workers.

I find it fascinating that if you were to make an equivalent statement about the political realm, you'd be immediately branded a conspiracy theorist on HN. But when it comes down to labor management relations I guess HN is happy to upvote conspiracy theories.

It's not a conspiracy theory, just common sense. Start talking loudly at your job about starting a side business, being frugal and retiring early or even that the market for your skillset is great at the offers are flooding - and note how the management reacts. Hint: they don't want the workers to know there are viable alternatives to working at $JOB, because it makes their (mgmt) life harder.

At my FAANG company where I work, my side business is not discouraged at all. As long as I don’t complete with them, they don’t care one bit.

The trouble with common sense is that is it so wicked subjective. So when we debate stuff, we at least try to have a pretense of objectivity.

> just common sense

Clearly not, as many people disagree with you.

> they don't want the workers to know there are viable alternatives to working at $JOB, because it makes their (mgmt) life harder.

Every decent tech professional is fully aware that they have the option of leaving. Management don't want you encouraging people to leave, sure.

> Start talking loudly at your job about starting a side business, being frugal and retiring early

Where I work, we have a Slack channel dedicated to this kind of talk, and most managers are in it. It’s been just fine.

IMO it's fine while it's just ideas. In my experience it changes when you actually leave etc.

Bad managers think this way. Granted, there are a lot of bad managers. Making someone want to be a better person helps you, even if you lose them. You will lose good people anyway.

It's absolutely a conspiracy theory.

The 5 day work week has a historical basis and it has nothing to do with 'keeping you from a side job', nor do most managers concern themselves with these kinds of issues whatsoever - other than leaking company IP or working for a competitor etc. - but those are knowledge worker issues that having nothing to do with most jobs.

The conspiracy theory doesn't even make sense considering the vast majority of jobs are things like: 'truck driver' 'school teacher' 'nurse' 'construction worker' 'accountant' 'retail banker' etc..

Unrelated groups of people acting in self interest without being upfront about it isn't a conspiracy. It's human nature.

If you worked 4 days a week, you would spend that time organizing against your employer? What the hell for? If you don’t like the employer, go somewhere else.

Or organize with your coworkers to bring the operation more in line with how you all would like to see it operate. Management needs labor just as much as labor needs a paycheck. It's a two-way street.

Could the downvoters please explain why organizing with your coworkers is not an option, or not an appropriate option, instead of just downvoting?

Going somewhere else requires time to arrange it. Time is something you don't have working 5 days a week.

You still got 2 days a week off. Now you'll say those are days when other businesses are closed so you can't plan and interview but if everyone was working 4 days a week all businesses would be closed for 3 days. So you'd be back to square one.

Not everyone is willing or able to Leetcode in the office restrooms to "brush up"

> It’s the same reason why most big corps oppose a national healthcare system in the US: it keeps people locked in to their current positions

Ok, then why isn't EU a Mecca of enterprise and innovation? Seems like EU is largely technologically stagnant compared to the US despite tons of safety nets at every level.

Technology is not the only economic domain and entrepreneurship is higher in some parts of Europe than the US:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/10/think-w...

There are many reasons, IMO.

1. The US has almost 330 million people; Europe has 740 million - but we're spread over so many different countries / policies / cultures etc. Hell, eastern Europe was locked out up until 30 years ago, and didn't stat to see industrial prosperity until 20 years ago.

2. USA had a massive advantage after WW2, while Europe was still in shambles. The rebuilding of Europe wasn't really completed until the 50s and 60s, at a time when the US experienced its golden age of industrial development.

3. More rich people and more investors compared to Europe, from earlier on, coupled with excellent schools that could produce and feed talent into the industry.

Sure, we here in Europe have had excellent schools, but nowhere near the financial backings. In many countries, financial backing of tech and companies have been a gov / state affair, which in turn can be extremely limited compared to private investors.

etc.

Google, Facebook etc. are ad serving companies. That's how they make their money. Let's compare that with other companies (a lot of them European) that are busy saving the world with renewable energy technologies etc. No comparison.

1.2 Europe's 740 million people speak in at least 24 languages. This makes it much more difficult to scale internationally. That's why there's so many doppelgänger companies in different EU countries — it's more likely that somebody will create a regional clone of your successful business than you'll be able to scale.

Yeah, it's just amazing how people completely forget that whole "bombed literally to bits in WWII" thing. Most Americans have no clue how long rationing lasted in the UK after WWII, and yet you guys managed to implement the NHS. Meanwhile, at the same time, the fabulously prospering USA has never managed to do anything to take care of this basic need of citizens, yet keeps calling itself "superior".

The United States was once a 3rd world country that lost 10% of its population in the American Civil War. Within 5 decades of that, it produced 50% of the worlds manufacturing output.

Needless to say, Europe was it its peak at the time, and has only declined since.

Excuses are easy to come by - root causes are more useful to examine.

The US was the second country to industrialize (Britain was first; France third) and that industrialization had been going very strong for many decades before the start of the American Civil War. Also life expectancy, infant mortality, adult height and similar measures were better in the American colonies than in the most advance Western European countries a century (and probably a century and a half) before the start of the Civil War. So I don't agree that it was a 3rd-world country at the start of the Civil War.

(I have no opinion on grandparent; I am reacting only to your choice of the term "3rd-world country".)

There is a much simpler explanation.

1. It’s an order of magnitude easier to fire people in the US Vs the EU. That means American employers are more willing to take chances on people, ideas and growth. EU small business are family run for a reason.

2. It’s an order of magnitude easier to shut down a business in the US Vs the EU. So, again, an entrepreneur can take more chances in the US.

The EU favors big businesses that are hand-in-glove with the government. The US does so to a much smaller extent - smaller players and individuals have a fighting chance. Most US mega businesses today were tiny not too long ago (e.g. almost all of tech).

Nordic countries have some of the strongest safety nets, but more innovation and tech companies than many other countries. I’m not sure there is a strong correlation at all to be honest.

There are many barriers to fire people in the EU. Not just laws but also reputational risk to the managers doing the firing.

In fact, the EU is over regulated as a rule and discourages risk taking. For example GDPR compliance cost.

Also, the US is richer, so all startups want to conquer it as it's primary market. This is a positive feedback loop because talented people want to move to the US to make it big.

That's not true, there are little barriers for firing people in Europe.

In Austria/Germany the average tech gig is hire and fire. If some managers sees that your velocity in Jira is lower than the rest of the team for too long you'll be given your notice period and let go easy peasy, no sweat for the company.

To quote on of my ex German boss after he fired a colleague of mine "software engineers are dime a dozen, recruiters flood me with their resumes every day, I can have someone from Poland in his place next week".

This was a F500 company.

It is not as if all of the EU has a national healthcare system

The healthcare system in Germany is that the monthly insurance fee is like 15% of the wage of an employee and the employer has to pay half of the fee. If you switch from being employed directly to freelancing, you have no employer, and you have to pay at least twice as much for health care insurance. Twice as much, if you are lucky, since freelancer do not get a wage, the calculation is changed from 15% of the wage, to 15% of all income. In the worst case if you are a fire guy and have a lot of investments you can go from paying 50€/month for insurance to paying 700€/month with the same income, just because you work without an employer. (with public insurance, private insurances do their own fee calculations)

Basically, as soon as you do something non-traditional, you lose the safety nets

What technology has the US actually pioneered in the last 20 years that doesn’t involve tracking people in new and terrifying ways just to serve them ads? I wouldn’t exactly call the US a Mecca of enterprise and innovation when most people don’t even have $400 saved for an emergency and the only thing “innovation” does is enrich a small handful of people at the expense of the masses. I’d rather be more like Europe.

What makes you think that EU isn't a Mecca of enterprise and innovation? It certainly is. Just not in the areas (Google etc.) that software developers care about.

Largely this has to do with the financial market. In the US capital is extremely cheap, the root cause of that can be traced back to the petrodollar system.

US cherry-picking on- and intelligence inference in EU economic actors is way higher than the very meager reverse. If a EU company becomes successful or strategically interesting, it will typically be bought out by the US to be assimilated or disrupted.

In software US befitted immensely from a more homogeneous home market at a time where internationalization was very far from trivial and higher costs of software development favored a more coarse business granularity (in the EU a 'large' company starts at 251 employees).

All these taken together means the EU software market is disproportionately skewed towards bespoke B2B software development and embedded systems linked to more traditional industries such as automotive.

I could argue that the EU is a Mecca of enterprise and innovation compared to the US (no software patents or their associated trolls), and I could point out differences in capital models and so on.

Instead I'd just like to know: why do you think enterprise and innovation is more valuable than you or a member of your family needing an operation not bankrupting you?

There are more important things than work. In the UK we value the NHS so much it featured in the Olympics opening ceremony - a segment the NBC refused to air - because it literally keeps us alive better than anything else.

Does this mean it takes us longer to save up for our dream home because we're being taxed more heavily? Sure. But we don't care, because we realise that balance is more valuable.

I'm genuinely curious: is this attitude seen as eccentric or naive outside of these shores?

I think that it is largely the cultural brainwashing in the USA.

The narrative that the EU is devoid of enterprise and innovation relative to the US is a prevelant one, and I'm curious what it's based upon.

If by "a Mecca of enterprise and innovation", you mean "has lots of unicorns", I think this is a poor proxy for that metric—in fact, the opposite may be true as large players can often work against smaller innovators entering markets.

Citation needed, in re corporate opposition to national healthcare

https://www.uschamber.com/letter/us-chamber-letter-the-house...

That seems to be more driven by a fear of out of control costs - also, the US chamber tends to represent smaller and a medium sized businesses.

Also it may be driven by fears of losing member support, as happened when they supported the clinton health care reform in the 90's

Exactly. After 3 days people in pubs and town halls would have reached the inescapable conclusion that they should revolt against rentiers.

The only way to keep some employees is to give them time to work on their own side projects. Google used to do this. Formula 1 does this with key players.

(Google used to do 20% time... They still do, but they used to, too.)

There have been reports that the 20% time is being slowly taken away and more heavily policed, and that it's more 100% + 20% time nowadays.

This is mostly untrue (IME) - a 20% project is strongly encouraged, and is used during the performance review. Taking time off of the main projects is expected.

Is it really a side project if it’s used in your performance review?

At Google Cloud the 20% time is just a recruiting tactic. Once you join you'll find out that it should be on top of your existing 100% FTE.

Mitch Hedberg!!!

My other favorite joke of his: "Rice is great when you're hungry and want to eat like 2000 of something"

"The whole arrangement is about control, preventing workers from having the time or energy to build competing enterprises, develop skills beyond a certain level,"

No, it really is not this at all.

The 5 day work week is a result of a reduction from the 6 day work week which and it's mostly derived as a standoff between organised labour and the capital class. It's the big entente.

First people wanted 72 hour work weeks, then 60 hours, then 50, then 40, now they want just 32 hours? Outrageous /s

Seriously though, while we can run for 12 hours a day it turned out to be detrimental to do repetitive factory work for that long. That's how we eventually settled on a 40 hour week. But for mentally demanding work this doesn't seem to work, we just can't concentrate that long. People distracting each other when one of them reaches their limit, or people doing various unproductive things (including browsing various websites) seems more harmful to productivity than just leaving earlier. Having more time for creative hobbies and creative exploration also seems obviously useful for knowledge workers

A little aside, but nobody can run 12 hours a day for more than a short period of time. Running involves a lot of pounding on the joints, and muscles fatigue. In fact, the best endurance runners in the world (i.e., people who train optimally for maximal results) mostly run for only about 15 hours per /week/, often less.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete)

> In 1983, the 61-year-old potato farmer won the inaugural Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon, a distance of 875 kilometres (544 mi). The race was run between what were then Australia's two largest Westfield shopping centres: Westfield Parramatta, in Sydney, and Westfield Doncaster, in Melbourne.[4] Young showed up to compete in overalls and work boots, without his dentures (later claiming they rattled when he ran).[5] He ran at a slow, loping pace, and trailed the pack by a large margin at the end of the first day. While the other competitors stopped to sleep for six hours, however, Young kept running. He ran continuously for five days, taking the lead during the first night and eventually winning by ten hours. Before running the race, he had told the press that he had previously run for two to three days straight rounding up sheep in gumboots.

> Are we to believe that a 100 year old bizops practice is the optimal solution?

Over the past 100 years a tiny minority were doing any kind of knowledge work. Do you want to stick with an optimization for manual labor at your tech company?

9-5/5 is less bad for this kind of work than the Chinese 9-9/6... but it's still bad.

> 9-5/5 is less bad for this kind of work than the Chinese 9-9/6... but it's still bad.

It's the same in the Middle East, often worse (12+ hours for 6 days, maybe a few less on Fridays).

I’m curious why they working so much? Is it because there isn’t much of a talent pool for the jobs?

Also curious, what if they weren’t paid salary but paid hourly in this study? Would they be okay with more time off and less money?

Digital stuff is weird because the traditional paradigm of work is: someone goes in coal mine and mines C clumps of coal then gets paid for that because the coal had some tangible value.

Technology is hard to conceptualise because a lot of it is not tangible or perhaps even wasteful.

Anecdotally, It is all culture. I have friends in Asia who try to work for international firms instead of the local ones because they get European style PTO and scheduling. The idea that you should have "you" time is not a cross cultural phenomenon, nor is it universally held even in the west. We pay it lip service and then expect people to put in 60 hours weeks during crunch or if they are gunning for a promotion.

I would argue from a management prospective the programmer hours are very much like coal mines, time goes in and features come out. The big difference is that you can sell the software more than once.

> I’m curious why they working so much? Is it because there isn’t much of a talent pool for the jobs?

Many social/cultural issues. A background of poverty adds to it. "Idling" at home or not hustling all the time is seen as undesirable or lazy, or even sinful. Spending time with the family is not valued that much, it's a waste of time! It's the wife's job to raise kids at home, and the husband's job to make money for them. If they're living together (as in if the husband's not in another city/country for work) they might go out 1-2 times a week to a shopping mall or KFC/McDonalds or a drive/stroll.

Kids and relatives usually go into the same job as each other (inheriting shops or manual labor). White collar/desk job workers also hustle as much as they can, usually working for over 8 hours every day, maybe taking a break on Fridays. Saturdays off are rare, and only in big companies with foreign (Western) employees who will of course not put up with this shit. Only government jobs and banks and big corporations might give a 2 day weekend.

Until I got to your last sentence I thought you were talking about the US.

Does some of that work time allow people to innovate and grow as an individual (thus possibly adding greater, future benefits to the company)?

I’ve seen instances of western companies run by by-the-books business folks with no concept of the value a “learning culture” and how it can add to future growth.

Then again, not all people will use their time wisely and they simple stand around and chat all day.

For most people in Middle Eastern/Southeast-Asian cultures, "grow as an individual" = knowing the right contacts to get promoted.

You either own the business, are chummy with the owners or their chums, or you generally remain where you were when you joined.

The concepts of personal growth and rewards based on merit are usually limited to Western-style organizations for employees with Western-style education etc.

Many middle/lower class people have been working every day for literally decades for less than US$1000 a month without ever seeing a raise.

It's true in America too, though. I'm sure it's not uncommon to see a competent worker get passed over for promotion multiple times while the boss's chums form a conga line through the position.

But people in America have many protections. While in the UAE for example if you publicly complain about a company, boss or government you could get jailed/deported. People often don't even get paid for months and they have no real recourse.

Whether or not Americans have protections isn't the topic. It's whether we differ significantly in whether competency know-how or network and camaraderie decide your job prospects.

Also you can be fired for publicly complaining about an employer in at-will states, at the very least.

Sure, but if you give them a four day work week, next thing you know they'll be asking for three days! /s

Then they would work for two employers, again getting a 6-days-a-week schedule.

I don't see that the age of the practice means we have to arbitrarily change it.

On the other hand, I have two concerns:

- on the weeks where I took Friday off for travelling, I did not complete as much work as on a normal week. The output was smaller, and I had to squeeze more things into the four days which was just excruciating.

- I read about a poll in my home country where 74% of people said they will never work again if they had enough money, and only 16% said they will never quit their job even if they're rich. So perhaps ideas like 4 day work week and UBI works for those 16%, but not for the majority?

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