Hacker News Reader

Comment by nbrempel | Hacker News Reader

I’m a really big fan of this movement towards shorter workweeks.

Personally, I enjoy working hard - usually more than 40 hours per week. But we should distinguish between working for others and working for oneself. Working for oneself can be education, passion work, or anything that energizes you. Working for others is also necessary for most people but reducing the weekly commitment gives people more freedom in their lives and makes them happier and more productive.

For some, the extra time away from work gives them the freedom to spend more time with their family or children, or spend more time on their hobbies. But ultimately it makes these people better contributing members of society.

One belief I certainly don’t agree with is the idea that working less for others makes you a lazy person or a less contributing member of society. People need free time to care for themselves and others, vote and participate in democracy, and do their laundry. We will be better off with less time committed to working for others.

And of course I cant help but plug 30 Hour Jobs here since it’s very much relevant: https://30hourjobs.com

View on HN

Curious - if you are a knowledge worker and getting through your tasks in say 4 days, does your boss/company really care how you are spending remaining 1 day?

I often use company time to learn about new things that are related to my work, but not necessarily immediate tasks. For example - While working on a Java app, I will spend some time learning AWS or Kotlin. Not one person in the companies I have worked for ever told me off for doing that, most in fact encouraged it. My personal diary/notes suggests I spend between 25-30 hours/week doing actual tasks or attending meetings and remaining I spend socializing at work to build relationships which will help get things done for me or learning. This of course is average over a year, some weeks are more work heavy (even stretching to more than 40 hours) and some less so.

I have come to prefer it instead of shorter work week, which means same amount of work needs to be done in less number of sleep/break cycles, reducing the quality I produce. When I worked for myself, I used to work only 3-4 days a week and observed that in theory it sounds good, but my personal experience was, I was spending far less time subconsciously and output was not inline with my usual quality.

Some companies care, if you have one day free that means they can add tasks to your list.

Sorry, I was not completely clear in my comment. What I meant is having a 5 day work week, but having some gaps of time to focus on learning. I usually spend an hour after lunch to learn something, as that is anyways my least productive time. I also try to find 30-60 mins throughout the day as well.

>... getting through your tasks in say 4 days...

In my experience, there is no such thing as "getting through your tasks", as you are expected to pick up more tasks from a never ending bucket of tasks [1]. Of course this varies from place to place, but is in general true. Your peers and managers are more likely to notice you leaving early, or "not working" on the Friday, than they are to notice you working your butt off on the previous 4 days, to be honest.

[1] Edit: this is because of the nature of knowledge work, and the difficulty in estimating duration of work, difficulty, and quality. If you finish early, the powers that be are more likely to attribute it to bad powers of augury as opposed to extra hard work. This might sound overly negative, but I have seen this consistently throughout a few decades of experience (yet, I still work hard... go figure).

Interesting. Where I work, we have a well defined scope for a sprint. That will get divided into tasks and then are assigned to team members. So I usually know what is my pipeline for next 2 weeks and it is fairly finite. Unless of course I am working on a more exploratory project where scope is not well defined. Of course people falling sick, or getting stuck in their task and needing help, and few other attributes can change that to some extent, but not a lot. So in summary, even though there is an endless supply for tasks that can be done, for the sprint, it is fairly finite.

Also I dont spend less time at work, I just use post lunch hour, and 30-60 mins throughout the day to do learning.

Where I work it's generally assumed that when you run out of stuff from the sprint you start working on the backlog or looking at stuff on the list of things we know we'll have to deal with in the future.

Why are they happy for you to stop working before the working week is over?

Same, I've never worked anywhere (other companies, or my own after the first couple of years) where you could really be "done". There was always more to do if you finished the critical path tasks.

One of the most important changes for me, going from normal employment to self-employed, was no longer being paid by the hour. I don't know what it is about it but when I'm on the clock, all I can think about is the clock. I love being rewarded financially for being more efficient than expected and finishing early, and I love having the liberty to take a bit longer (and accept that it's not going to earn me more money) to get the job done right to my own satisfaction.

I work remote for a company that is very intentional in not asking for any specific hours or amount of time worked—business value delivered is the only thing we care about. Yet, I still find myself feeling the need to warm a chair (in my home office!) for 40ish hours per week. Part of it is still external pressure (my wife would have a hard time understanding if I was working less than "full-time"), but I also have to fight this internal conflict of defining "work" as "butt in seat" vs. "delivering business value". This despite the fact that I've worked salaried positions for the majority of my career.

This is exactly what I do as well both in my current and previous jobs. I've never advertised exactly how much time I spend on courses but did ask (and get) permission to spend some of my time on personal development. Sometimes I would take Coursera/EdX courses and sometimes just read through books and do some exercises, generally around analytics/computer architecture/numerical methods. I've generally always been able to apply some of the things I learned somewhere in my job, leading to happy colleagues because I injected new solutions and insights.

I feel like as long as you prioritize your work well and you make sure to finish enough high-value tasks employers tend to not care too much about whether you actually fill up 40 hours with these tasks. Being able to use any left over time for myself also incentivizes me to stay productive so I'm pretty happy with this system.

But on the other hand, you could be spending that extra time reading and learning about things for your own interest or socializing with your friends for your personal benefit and social health.

Ultimately there is a trade-off between spending time at work and for yourself/friends/family. What the OP and other recent posts are increasingly showing is that the amount of time we really need to spend at work (perhaps especially if you are a knowledge worker) is not as much as our normal hours dictate.

Culture is a strong force.

Then you should have time to optimize your environment. Making documentation better. Or cleaning out technical Dept, making things more performant or more reliable.

If you got time to lean, you got time to clean!

Morale and productivity would increase if I was expected to spend 30 hours a week producing and 10+ hours improving my ability to produce through either self care or continuing learning.

Agreed

Don't ask permission, just do it anyways. That's what I've done and it's only led to increased pay and broader opportunity to demand flexible work hours.

Agree, do it until someone has a problem with it, and then find another way to do it, like finding a new job (if you have the luxury).

I appreciate the sentiment and agree on an individual level but it’s not reproducible across the entire workforce. There is a certain degree of privilege required to even feel comfortable adopting this policy. As software engineers some of us have that privilege but few other workers do.

Software engineers aren't special.

Please stop treating them as some enlightened class. They're not.

Software engineers face the same idiocy as everyone else. Every other industry has smart, creative, individuals willing to buck the system and try new things for an edge.

If you truly believe people can't express a simple argument for trialing this sort of thing without losing their jobs maybe they should be looking for a new job because their current one sounds like a train wreck waiting to happen.

The idea that you can simply find a new job is itself a privileged point of view.

Software engineers are special in the sense that they’re expensive to replace. It costs time and effort, both of which are much more scarce than money. Businesses are also usually expanding, so there’s no shortage of openings. This gives us more freedom by definition.

However, some sectors of software engineering are much more strict. You wouldn’t take a “Just do it” attitude in aviation, for example. It’s easy to say “move to some other sector,” but eventually most devs try to build a career in one area.

What do you think is being suggested here? All I read out of it is to dedicate some portion of your time at work towards self improvement. Why wouldn't you recommend that to someone in aviation?

Because that person’s work is probably scheduled and tracked to a higher degree than most software engineers, and if they’re seen to be slacking off they probably don’t get the excuse of “waiting for the test suite to finish”.

There's down time in virtually every job. If your employer discourages you from using down time to get better at your job, then get a new job. I did it even back in college working at a chain pizza store. I learned some management tasks, how to proof dough properly, etc. I'm sure there's some jobs out there where it's not an option, but I feel like you guys are really stretching it to find ways to say people are incapable of self improvement at work.

It's not a privileged point of view. You can find a new job. You might not like it. It might not be possible for everyone. But the idea that there are only jobs in tech is asinine.

All qualified and experienced people are expensive to replace.

That's not unique to software.

I work in a bar. If I was to take 20% of my time to learn new things and sharpen my skills (without being told explicitly by management), I would be fired very quickly.

It is a privilege not shared by the large majority of jobs.

You're right that it wouldn't be as easy for different kinds of jobs and working in a bar is a good example. Even there though, I think you could be clever about it - you can find opportunities that blend in with your work (e.g. coffee foam art, small talk in a language you're learning). These probably wouldn't increase your value as much but with some creativity I'm pretty sure in most jobs there is some kind of opportunity for learning.

> I'm pretty sure in most jobs there is some kind of opportunity for learning.

This is absolutely not the case.

There is a vast swathe of jobs that are labour under very strict conditions imposed on you by middle management, for example anything in a harbour or construction context. That's not the sort of rule that you can just opt to take some time for self improvement under. I would wager the percentage of jobs with such conditions is probably higher than without.

Mate you are mental. This simplified thought drives me nuts.

Software Engineering has a massive IQ-based barrier to entry. Not only that, your advantages are in large part, from a purely technical perspective, are reflected in your ability to consume algorithms, techniques, and hold more variables in your head at a faster rate than others.

It's an incredibly unique union of art and engineering, we are in demand as every industry needs it, and there is a genetic bottleneck.

We suffer from massive privilege because even semi-technical people have no idea what the fuck we are doing, so oversight is limited at best.

As someone who came from being a huge overachiever in a different industry, we are insanely privileged.

This might be one of the most obnoxiously deluded things I've read all year.

Can you refute their points more directly?

First, there is no IQ barrier. I have several friends who, based on psychologist-administered IQ tests, are very, very close to average, who do well in the industry, usually better than me. They worked hard to get where they wanted to go. Sure, you probably can't do this work if you have an IQ under 85, but the same can be said for most any knowledge or even office job. It's not like we're unique in that regard.

Second, a "genetic bottleneck"? That absolutely reeks of genetic elitism. It implies, rather heavily, that they are genetically superior to those who cannot (or just don't) do this work.

The idea that we are special because no one understands us - finance, biotech, pharmaceuticals... No one really gets those, either.

Thank you

"Genetic bottleneck"? Really?

Certain people do tend to have an easier time with skills that make it easier to be a developer, but there is a VAST untapped potential of people that think of our work as "coding" and assume they're unable to learn. We really need an influx of people with systems thinking and other "high-level" abilities—development skills are required, but not the deep technical abilities our field has traditionally prized.

I've worked with plenty of "genius" types who can write advanced algorithms with lightning speed, but aren't able to see their work in a larger context—nor able to explain to others what they're doing. And I've worked with "normal" people (usually with an oversized dose of Imposter Syndrome) who are so much more effective because they understand the why as well as the how, while also being better communicators.

And let's cut out the IQ bullshit until there's a proven link between IQ and ability to deliver business value.

https://www.businessinsider.com/why-your-iq-strongly-influen...

>A growing body of research suggests general cognitive ability may be the best predictor of job performance.

I don't think there's any doubt between IQ and delivering business value. Some argue EQ is more valuable, but that doesn't mean IQ isn't important.

I'm not a member of BI Prime (nor do I have any intention of becoming one), so I can't see what they use to justify that bullet point.

Even given studies that show a link, there's a big difference between requiring a minimum IQ of 85 to join the US Armed Forces (as mentioned in the Wikipedia article on Intelligence Quotient) compared to asserting a minimum IQ of 120 (or whatever) to be a software developer, as amosquito seems to be doing in their comment ("...massive IQ-based barrier to entry..."). Of course there has to be some floor of intelligence to perform the job—but I'd argue it's a lot lower than many in our field believe.

This isn't an argument for or against anything, just some real data.

https://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/Occupations.aspx

Interesting. Assuming the data is accurate (a big assumption, given the controversy and inaccuracy inherent to these discussions), "computer occs" has a range of ~90-130—well over half of the population. Of course, "computer occs" is quite a broad category...

I used to do that with success but lately my company has tightened up deadlines more and more so it’s hard to get everything done even within 40 weeks. Problem is that more things actually get done but this comes at the expense of burning out people because they don’t get to breathe anymore. I strongly believe that development is not just continuous production but more of a creative process where you need room for inspiration to do things that don’t directly benefit immediate business needs.

Problem is that more things actually get done but this comes at the expense of burning out people because they don’t get to breathe anymore

If you sprint continuously you will collapse from exhaustion. The clues in the name! But I doubt the Agile crowd thought it through when choosing the name.

Well if your work contract allows "not asking for permissions", why not.

Google had the "20% personal projects" thing company-wide for a while. I wonder if they have some statistics that maybe proxy productivity and how they look.

Gmail. That alone is a pretty consequential product of the ethos.

Actually Paul Buchheit said it wasn't 20% project [0]

> Gmail is often given as a shining example of the fruits of Google’s 20 percent time, its legendary policy of allowing engineers to divvy off part of their work hours for personal projects. Paul Buchheit, Gmail’s creator, disabused me of this notion. From the very beginning, “it was an official charge,” he says. “I was supposed to build an email thing.”

[0] https://time.com/43263/gmail-10th-anniversary/

I wish I knew how common it was to have a full-time job but only work for a fraction of that time.

My last software job was supposedly 40 hours/week. I'd usually come in for two hours and leave. They wouldn't be an intense two hours either. Once in a while I'd stay all day. Based on what I hear from my friends from university, this experience is not the median but it's not uncommon either.

Many managers really don't know how to manage. Morale goes down the shitter, and unless you have children it's unlikely you'll care about getting caught.

You are describing it as an unpleasant place to work, but what's the background to this?

If you are keeping up with your commitments, and the company is not crashing, is morale the main problem?

My point is that the "5-hour workday" might be more common than many of us think.

My employer is about to start a 10hr workday 4 days a week. Essentially all errands, chores, and kid time will get shuffled to the weekend i suspect.

Have you taught your kids about the benefits of fasting? xD

I am a proponent of fasting actually. I am curious about the effects on tiny people in growth spurts.

Basically you use carbohydrates, fat, and protein to make energy and when you don't eat those things you don't have energy. Really interesting stuff.

This feels like a flippant, uninformed comment. When you don’t eat those for a 2-3 day window your body ramps up energy production through stored fat. So I’d say you still have energy.

I've tried both eating a little often and a lot very little and from the experiences of me and everyone I have ever spoken to in the flesh about this, it really is as simple as "more energy when you eat more".

Fasting won't give you mountains of physical pep. Sure, there is that golden time after you have done it for a while where you get great mental clarity and you feel good but you will not be voluntarily running laps or pushing your absolute peak weight in the gym.

That barrier is something you'll always feel, even if you're not pushing the limits. The fact of the matter is that barrier is closer when you are fasting.

Stored fat in a teenager going through a growth spurt??

Their bodies (and brains) are doing a lot more developing than just growth spurting, which is why such a teenager can eat huge portions[0] per day and not put on any fat at all. Because their bodies use it all up, because of all the transformations and puberty things going on.

I would suggest, in that stage, just giving the body everything it craves, and worry about the benefits of fasting later.

[0] obviously doesn't hold in parts of the world where these are considered "normal" portions.

I'm not responding to this because it seems like you really don't realize how vapid your comment is. If you want to learn more, please open a book, don't read internet forum research.

I can't imagine you'd want to calorie starve the human body when it needs the calories the most. I guess if you could get all the calories you need while you're un-fasted and can store it all as fat for when you do need it, maybe that would work, but we know that caloric deficits in childhood lead to reduced growth. I really can't see a good argument for children fasting.

It's a management problem. We have that "problem" where I work - the sprints and tickets are set up such that I can afford to work ~2-3 hours a day. I spend the rest learning new tech for my next job.

I'm not even a hard worker but having so little to do gets old and boring quickly.

These stories seem so weird to me! Everywhere I’ve worked, there has been 3-5X more development work needed to do than engineers to do it, so we had to always be prioritizing and only doing what absolutely was necessary to ship. Is there not even a bug backlog where you work? I’ve never seen a workplace like this honestly!

Unless you’re taking a 2 week task and estimating 2 years or something, and then just goofing off in the slack time, which I’d consider... somewhat less than ethical?

> Everywhere I’ve worked, there has been 3-5X more development work needed to do than engineers to do it

If the deadlines are reasonable I wouldn't care. If they aren't, it's time to start reviewing glassdoor before finding a job.

I've worked in both types of places and reasonable places in between.

In some roles you have to fight for work because different departments are fighting for org budgets. Some places are afraid to make code changes so you go to meetings while some people signoff others raise random issues with the project. Scheduling the project takes months. Then months of finding the perfect slot to release.

I also been in places that bill every 15 minutes. All client billing time was added up and should equal 8 hours. But there were never enough hours to go around. And clients would nickel and dime over hours.

With employers I'm not sure ethical matters as long as a need is met. But be ethical to yourself. Always work hard learn and grow because the industry changes.

I concur, I've never worked anywhere that didn't have a continuous stream of work available to work on. I think it contributes to the burnout a bit, at least until you find a way to look at it differently. Because it feels like there is never a "finished" state to the job. You could in theory always do more.

That's like, the vast majority of jobs. And what that means is that there's no point in working hard to rush through ultimately useless work or work that adds less value.

Just focus on doing what's important in a timely basis and happily deprioritize the useless stuff.

___

What industry do you work in?

I guess most people just dilute the effective 2-3 hours of work in 8 hours, to seem busy without getting overworked...

E.g. I would be happier if I could work fully focussed for 3-4 hours and then go home, instead of working at a slow pace for 8 hours so I don't get tired after 4.

If I could honest 4 works, hard, and then go home, without worrying about emails coming in or server alerts or whatever, I think I'd be very happy and very productive for that time. I can't say the same now - even when I'm off I'm still at least partially thinking about being on.

> 3-5X more development work needed

This is also by and large a mindset you foster. There are plenty of companies where you have engineers on both ends of the spectrum (both having a lot of leisure time and little).

"...Morale goes down the shitter, and unless you have children it's unlikely you'll care about getting caught. ..."

Instead of bitching about morale it is best to see it as an opportunity. Use time to better yourself, find new job, start your own business etc. etc.

As for how well it plays for the business owners, it is their problem, not yours.

The topic of the thread was the 5 hour workday. I proposed that the 5 hour workday already exists in the form of shitty managers.

> Personally, I enjoy working hard - usually more than 40 hours per week

I would call that working long, not hard. If hours determines how hard (i.e. effective) you are when working, then it certainly doesn't apply to some people I know who spend 40% of their 40 hours a week browsing Facebook.

I wouldn't consider those 16 hours on Facebook working as much as being at work.

>I would call that working long, not hard

I agree with this. When I first started my current job, overtime hours were utterly ridiculous, over the years I've managed to cut it down to mostly 8 hour days while increasing productivity fairly exponentially. A lot of time was wasted manually doing work pointless i automated as much as possible.I feel I work a lot harder now and get more done in less hours than I did before working 10-11 hour days.

> Personally, I enjoy working hard - usually more than 40 hours per week.

The very first thing that needs to go is this glorification of working hours. Nobody should care how long you work. Time doesn't have any inherent value in a knowledge industry.

I'm not sure if shorter work weeks will ever appear or work but ever since I have had kids I feel guilty working 40+ hours a week. I see my kids when getting ready in the morning and driving them to creche and then the reverse in the evening. About two hours contact time per day but not quality time. Weekends are spent on jobs and chores and some quality time but not enough. A five hour day would allow for so much more contact.

I work ~40 hours per week over 4 days. The difference that having a 3 day weekend makes to work life balance is significant. I don't work Monday's, I work slightly longer each day for the other 4 days.

I never have that Sunday night/Monday morning feeling about work coming round too soon. I miss some meetings that are scheduled for a Monday but guess what, the world keeps turning.

Exactly! I have so many side projects I like to tinker with while I'm at home. I use them as a way to learn a new skill. Eventually those skills will come home to my employer, either with new ideas, frameworks, experience, etc. But for that to happen I need the time to self-explore and follow my own ideas.

You might know running that job board - do 30 hour jobs pay as good an hourly rate as regular 40 hour jobs?

I think that depends on the company. There are companies that offer flexible hours and shorter weeks without a reduction in pay. I think it is more common to find companies that support shorter workweeks with a relative adjustment in pay.

Oh damn 30hrjobs looks great!

I also like to work hard but I gotta say running a side business while also working full time is getting harder the older I get. There’s really only so much you can squeeze out of a day.

Out of curiosity what’s your side business?

Contributing to society shouldn't even be the desired metric. With freedom it often comes as a byproduct.

If you don't care about contributing to society, then:

"shouldn't" -- according to who?

"desired" -- by who?

"freedom" -- with regards to what exactly?

I guess ... enjoy your old age when you're unable to work but not part of any society you contributed to, I hope people will care enough to spare some "freedom byproduct" for you.

I probably will. Additionally it allows me to see value in life just for the sake of it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com