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Comment by maerF0x0 | Hacker News Reader

> In Seattle, for example, I think the sun would rise before 5 am as late as early August. On the other hand, if Seattle stayed on DST (+7) year-round then the sun would rise after 8AM from early November to late February, and as late as 9AM in December.

Your comment points out the real absurdity which is why are so stuck on the machinations of numbers on a clock, and ~24 granular timezones rather than just having humans be human and 1) get the sleep they need and 2) be productive when it makes sense to, regardless of the digits.

I doubt pre-industrial people thought to hard about if they chopped wood at exactly 9am, or if it might have been 8:37 or even 11am.

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Preindustrial people haven’t been a part of global economy nearly to the same degree we are. They haven’t had to coordinate so much with other people in their daily tasks.

Think about a factory working in shifts: it cannot work effectively if every worker comes whenever it suits him, works for 8 hours and leaves. You need coordination to achieve efficiency.

Same is true for most other places of employment. Government offices and retail establishments have opening hours. Schools have schedules. Sure, in some jobs, there is a lot of flexibility, but not all of them can provide that, so as a society, we will be stuck with schedules and tyranny of the clock for the foreseeable future.

Government and retail opening hours are already very grating. People do what they can online which is more convenient.

> Government offices and retail establishments have opening hours.

Online fixes like 99% of this.

> Schools have schedules and yet khan academy does not

> Think about a factory working in shifts

yes, but there's no reason these shifts have to be fixed in time across the year, people are so hung up on 9-5, or 8-5 or some other hour bound fixed pattern.

Why not come in at 8am on June 21, and 1 minute later per day until Dec 21, then 1 minute earlier per day till june 21?

See the point here? The majority of cases can be entirely eliminated / designed out of existence. Many can become flexible to the reality of the sunrise/set and circadian rhythms . A few will have to still provide 24 hour coverage for emergency or utility backup type things.

> Online fixes like 99% of this.

No, online fixes some of it, not 99%. I can’t fix my car online.

> Why not come in at 8am on June 21, and 1 minute later per day until Dec 21, then 1 minute earlier per day till june 21?

The absurdity of this proposition is illustrative of the challenges the reality pushes upon you. No, having to figure out whether your shift starts at 8:36 AM or 8:42 AM today is not an improvement over status quo.

>No, online fixes some of it, not 99%. I can’t fix my car online.

But you can schedule the fix, pay for the fix, feedback the fix etc all online. Now that much of the world is working remote, we drive a lot less, and mechanics are needed less. See how this keeps feeding back into itself when we accept a new way of approaching life that isn't "butts in seats" and "in before the boss, leave after the boss" management?

> But you can schedule the fix, pay for the fix, feedback the fix etc all online.

I can’t, however, fix my car online, which is the entire point.

> Now that much of the world is working remote, we drive a lot less

No, we drive only a little less. Miles driven fell only 13% in 2020 vs 2019, and people drive more in 2021 than they had in 2020.

> See how this keeps feeding back into itself when we accept a new way of approaching life that isn't "butts in seats" and "in before the boss, leave after the boss" management?

Yeah, soon we will be able to do everything online, and will not have to see and talk to another human being, ever.

> and will not have to see and talk to another human being, ever.

Except by choice, which imo is a good thing! I hope it will help people start to become cognizant, proactive, and invested in true community more than community by proximity and happenstance. Saying hi to the same cashier is nice and all, but there is a lot of depth of truer community that has been left by a gap of the church leaving the mainstream. (not suggesting it return as the replacement, just identifying a gap the change left).

Then we can begin to build community with people we choose to more than just because we live in the same zipcode or go to the same tax bracket targeted shops .

> Saying hi to the same cashier is nice and all, but there is a lot of depth of truer community that has been left by a gap of the church leaving the mainstream.

Indeed, but in fact, the increase in screen time (previously TV, now also internet/smartphones), has been a major contributor to the decline of community and civic society. Making more things doable online is likely to only make things worse, not better in this aspect.

I guess you're largely commenting on short term (ie < 50 yrs) actualized trends vs I'm looking at conceptual and longer term things like freeing people from certain mundanity (eg dishwashers and clothes washing machines) opens up unprecedented utility (like women entering the workforce when they previously handled domestic work).

yes, if we collectively just replace social interaction with asocial videogames or squid game, then yes we'll ultimately suffer. But if time saved by either 1) doing things online or 2) having your role eliminated entirely then we'll have additional and aggregated time for things like clubs around hobbies ... (aggregated part means 60x 1 minute saved could potentially be used to have a social interaction with a friend)

> But if time saved by either 1) doing things online or 2) having your role eliminated entirely then we'll have additional and aggregated time for things like clubs around hobbies ... (aggregated part means 60x 1 minute saved could potentially be used to have a social interaction with a friend)

Could, sure, but will it? Experience of last 50 years shows that it will more likely be spent on solo watching Netflix, while sipping wine and cuddling with a cat, or playing yet another video game.

The fact is, our ancestors had more meaningful social interaction with their friends and neighbors, despite all the modern efficiency improvements not being available to them. In my opinion, modern individual entertainment is so optimized that more old school activities cannot really compete in the immediate term, despite being much more fulfilling and socially beneficial in the long term. Optimizing out chores won’t solve this.

But, we strayed very far from the original topic.

Are you seriously suggesting that society could operate on system where people just work at any time of the day whenever they felt like it?

Not parent, but yes? And why not, work any time is a natural evolution after work anywhere. I'm sure virtual reality and AI can fill in for the human illusion of synchronous communication one day.

Good grief. It really is time for some of you people to step away from the computer, get out of the tech bubble for a while and have a look at what most people in society are doing for a living.

We really need to get over that tiresome and foolish self-flagellation complex of the "tech bubble" and the notion that our work isn't "real work".

If an office worker walked into a construction site and declared they were doing everything wrong from the lack of paperwork documenting completion of every shovel of dirt they would be called a clueless, arrogant ass. Why would it be any different if the subject was a construction worker in an office building declaring it unproductive for a lack of tonnage of paper relocated?

You are misunderstanding my point here. I'm not saying that IT work isn't real work.

We're discussing flexible working times for all of society, and what I'm reading is people who somehow assume that most of society is in a job with privileges like being able to work from home or on "async" schedules etc. Few jobs are like this.

So, apart from teachers and live television, what jobs can't operate on a flexible schedule? As others have said, many jobs that require attendance are already performed in shifts. Yes, a waiter cannot choose to work when the customers are not at their table, but that doesn't mean they have to be there at every time the restaurant is open. Same thing for bartending/stocking/cashiers/front office jobs, many of these are already part-time jobs so flexibility is readily implied.

Come to think of it, many of my high-school teachers worked part-time too. They didn't get to dictate their own hours, but they didn't work 7-15 every day either, some days they came in at 11 and other days they left at 12.

yes, for a good proportion of people this would work, and work could probably design around many of those who "cannot" via buffers, and for the remaining very small proportion where full coverage matter (like ER staff) -- well that's their profession so i guess not.

I think it's an interesting idea but it's a much larger problem than you're saying - your perspective is from the narrow position of knowledge work that pushes information around, and it doesn't really matter when the information gets pushed around. But out in the real world, where things need to physically come together for economic activity to occur, synchronization is a huge deal. If you want a store to be open from 9AM, someone has to be there at 9AM. People will rely on that store being open at the stated time. It's not just ER staff - almost any other profession you care to name will not function properly if people just turn up whenever. Bartender, hairdresser, trash collector, construction worker, police officer, firefighter...

Honestly, this reads like the narrow perspective. It sounds like western culture. And an urban one specifically.

There are cultures where you just close up shop when you've had enough income for the day. Not to mention rural communities all around the world that are more flexible about timekeeping in general.

I think you underestimate the areas where full (or significant) staff is needed. What about manufacturing jobs, farming, transportation and logistics (especially transportation of ppl not goods), services (including public services).

I'd say all the services which require face to face interaction will become way more costly if such buffers will be needed to cover off hours. For example: there is a notion of skeleton crew and the service might not be operational without that crew so the choice is actually to spread the cost of off hours low load to the high load hours or close the business for low load hours.

The economy is already distributed via intermediation mechanisms (trade, money), whereas in the stone age people had to meet all together to barter in a bazaar. You underestimate how much work structure is simply inertia, beginning with the eight-hour day.

If there is a will, a structure for all work can surely be created where even more intermediation happens and productive artifacts are exchanged rather than physical presence. This applies much more broadly than so-called "knowledge work", it just happened first for knowledge work because it's most obvious and low-cost there.

Outside of procedural manufacturing and public safety, very few industries are incompatible with the concept of flextime. The only thing preventing it from happening is archaic business management practices that were never based on actual research or metrics.

What's the gravity like on your planet? /s

Very few jobs in society are compatible with flexible time where people can work when it suits them. Any job which requires some kind of real time coordination with others will conflict, which is most jobs. That is not even counting parents with school age children.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that society was created only a few centuries ago, and that widespread deployment of clocks were a prerequisite for escape from base "eat your neighbors and older relatives to survive the winter" savagery.

Most tasks with real person in time coordination also have fixed locations, and optimal environmental work times. Roofers work early in the morning so they don't need to literally risk their necks to darkness while also avoiding scorching heat.

Lighting was also expensive and very inadequate compared to sunlight. This lead to convergence. Notice all of the old proverbs and parables speak in terms of light and not time on clocks?

In addition to the manual craftmanship, before standardized parts creation was done to fit by one person - something where you would prefer to do all of the relevant tasks with one person when possible. And manufactured goods were expensive precisely because most spent time on raw material related tasks.

Actual coordinated work has music associated with the proper rhythm. Sea shanties, and rowing drums for instance.

Quite the opposite, with flexible time workers are available at a wider time span and can do more coordination per day.

You claim "very few" jobs are compatible with flextime, yet nearly half of companies in the US already provide flextime options for most of their employees -- and this includes positions at every level. Your assertions are not representative of reality.

Is there really a white collar job that does not allow at least something like 7-15 schedule? Or one that couldn't be easily found. That is giving exactly the extra hour in evenings that people want.

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