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Comment by sudden_dystopia | Hacker News Reader

They aren’t just going to give you a free day off. There would be a commensurate decrease in your pay. I don’t find the 5 days/week to be “irrational”, “irrational” to whom? It’s completely rational from an employers perspective that they have a job to fulfill and it requires employees to complete the job. If they have people working 4 days /week, they need coverage for the other days. It’s not rational for the customers either, who want everything now. I think you need to get out of the Silicon Valley bubble and see what most people do for work. Insurance claims and other service type things don’t just happen 4 days/week, meaning they would have to hire more workers to accommodate. What will end up happening, is they will just make everyone part time. Be careful what you wish for.

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They aren’t just going to give you a free day off. There would be a commensurate decrease in your pay.

This is the realist view, and it shows the power imbalance between employee and employer. It's easy for those with the power in this relationship to say "if you want to reduce work, expect reduced pay". However, worker productivity has risen for decades and compensation/hours worked haven't budged anywhere close to match. Employers will always say "meet me in the middle" while taking a step backwards.

Employers in the US can get away with it because workers are replaceable. The government has their back. Most of the (paltry) welfare benefits from the government have work requirements, so you have to take jobs with bad pay (and you'll be fired if you complain). Individual workers have no power in this relationship. Even recent fed policy is put in place to promote unemployment because workers were gaining just a little ground.

The OP notes they’re referring explicitly to jobs with a 5 day work week, so your comments re: service industry, etc. are valid, they’re already excluded.

Irrational might not be the right word; arbitrary is pretty accurate, though. If productivity and output change minimally, why should expectations or pay? Let’s be honest, the typical 5-day office job work week the OP is referencing has a LOT of downtime.

> has a LOT of downtime

the way I look at it, I'm being paid for being available during those work hours, not necessarily doing work during all those work hours.

Ok, but not every job is like this. A lot of my communication is done asynchronously already. I'm paid 95% for productivity and 5% for availability.

Say you're hyper productive and can accomplish your job in only one hour per week, do you think you should still be entitled to your full salary?

Yes. That's how it's worked for the ~7 years I worked for myself. I'm currently working a full time remote job in addition to managing my own company, and there it's more like 75/25 productivity/availability. Unless I'm on call, then its flipped.

If I was working retail, I suppose it'd be more like 5/95 productivity/availability.

That's great. I commented elsehwere that I think it's all good as long as the arrangement between the employer and employee is honest.

Is your full time remote employer aware that you're not really "full time"?

What makes me not full time? Particularly if I'm producing the same amount as everyone else? The teams I work with span 9 timezones collectively, and that's when they're not traveling.

> What makes me not full time?

Because "full time" measures time, not productivity:

From Google:

occupying or using the whole of the usual working day or week

From Merriam-Webster:

the amount of time considered the normal or standard amount for working during a given period

From Oxford:

for all the hours of a week during which people normally work or study, rather than just for a part of it

The only way this is a problem is if you think you're getting paid by your output and your employer thinks they're paying you for your (full) time. The easy way to test if this is to check with your employer to make sure they know you actually work 10 to 30 hrs per week and the rest of the time you're on call. If they know and they're good with it, then great there's no problem. If you're not comfortable telling them then that's a problem. In that case you would effectively be a "mouse jiggler".

My employer collects "screen time" based metrics and working hours aren't part of my employment agreement. This is beside the point.

Let's look at it another way. Why do you think someone who spends a majority of their assigned working hours eating, shitting, and flirting with the receptionist should earn the same compensation as someone who spends 100% of their working hours doing things that are the in their job description? When I was naive, I tolerated being the latter in a job with many of the former. This was a contributing factor in deciding to work for myself.

Now, if you want me to produce more than my coworkers that's fine, but I'll have to be compensated more.

> Why do you think someone who spends a majority of their assigned working hours eating, shitting, and flirting with the receptionist should earn the same compensation as someone who spends 100% of their working hours doing things that are the in their job description?

I don't, but it doesn't matter what I think. All that matters is the agreement you have with your employer. If they trust you enough to let you judge when your weekly productivity target is reached before you pack up and go to the beach, then yeah you're golden.

All I'm saying is that I believe a lot of employers actually expect 40 hours of work, so if you finish your "job" in 10 hours then they expect you to let them know so you can do something else productive for them in the remaining 30. And if you don't do that, they would consider that to be dishonest and grounds for discipline. Not saying this is your deal, just that it's a common thing.

But I'm confused. Your employer collects "screen time" metrics, so they must care how much time you actually spend working. On the weeks that you only work 10 hours, how to you avoid getting flagged?

> But I'm confused. Your employer collects "screen time" metrics, so they must care how much time you actually spend working.

This conclusion doesn't follow. I don't know what they do with them, for which employees, and under what circumstances.

How could you conclude anything else? Is there another reason to collect "screen time" metrics other than to keep track of how much time employees spend at their screen working?

Well I can conclude they're interested in tracking some employees and not others. Or that they use the data to negotiate rates with the vision care company they partner with. Or that they look for trends that change over time, or groups of people.

(BTW I'm as eager to find out if HN has a reply depth limit as you are)

I guess anything is possible, but sometimes it's just the most obvious thing: they don't fully trust their employees and want to make sure they're not getting ripped off.

You could always ask them. That is unless you're not confident they know you work part time ;P

How many hours per week have I indicated I work at this job?

I thought you said 10-30 hours but maybe I misunderstood what you meant. You definitely said you're not required to work 40.

Am I giving a multiple of my salary returned as value to my employer in that case? If so then yes, the employer is exploiting my work (knowledge, skills, productivity, etc.) and earning a good profit on it, I should be entitled to keep my share of this agreement, no matter how many hours I worked, I've produced the expected value out of those hours.

Employers pay for productivity and the value generated by employees, not hours in a seat.

That mindset is exactly the mindset of an oppressed labour force, as workers we aren't being paid so employers can get their share of hours of my life, we are being paid to generate value, it shouldn't really matter if that value is created in 1h or 40h per week, for the employer the result is the same.

While I agree with you in principle that a 40h week is arbitrary and ridiculous...

> Employers pay for productivity and the value generated by employees, not hours in a seat.

I'm not sure many employers see it that way. If they do, that's great. But I would guess that most think they should be getting 40 hrs worth of "work" out of their employees.

What I imagine happens too frequently is that the employee hides the fact that they're actually working < 40 hrs a week, so the relationship with their employer is dishonest. That's why products like "mouse jigglers" exist, so employees can fool their employer.

The entire employer-employee relationship is predicated on power imbalances specific to our economic and legal system, so how tragic is mouse jiggling, really?

"tragic" is a bit dramatic. It's just dishonest and a sign of dysfunction.

I'm sorry but I'm not going to shed a tear for people that defraud their employer because they think they're more valuable than everyone else.

Also just think of what a luxury it is to have the opportunity to fake it. People that do "real" work don't have that opportunity. Imagine a drive thru worker posing a dummy in the window.

Slacking off can have moral implications in that it can make your coworkers' lives harder, or can be a problem for the public if it's a socially useful activity like healthcare.

If those conditions aren't met however, I don't really see why the worker should let the employer extract additional value out of them for no benefit, especially if they do fulfill the terms of the contract set to them.

Maybe it's a cultural difference but this seems like a Protestant-style fetishization of work and hierarchy for its own sake. The appeal to civility and honesty in the abstract is busted because the structural relationship is highly uncivil to begin with.

There are less lucky workers out there, so other groups of workers should relinquish their cards? Seems like a non-sequitur. You could turn it around and ask why the employer isn't grateful that they can extract as much value as they currently can. In some EU countries, they're not even allowed to monitor workers or send them work correspondence after hours!

> I don't really see why the worker should let the employer extract additional value out of them for no benefit, especially if they do fulfill the terms of the contract set to them.

I agree with this. My contention is that workers are not fullfulling the terms of their contract. I'm not defending the contracts themselves, or saying it makes sense for an employer to require butts in seats for 40 hrs, but I also can't sympathize with people that violate the agreement they entered into.

You're defending "mouse jiggling". That is a deception. Why would they feel the need to fake work if their contract allows them to not work?

I see what you mean. It's definitely true that the ideal solution would be to introduce this at the contract stage.

The difficulty of doing that is in a sense what prompted me to respond earlier. For most workers in industries where it is physically possible, it is very difficult to negotiate 80% employment or time flexibility or working from home. Even some skilled workers on HN seem to have trouble with it as they testify to in this very thread, and anglophone coders are the cream of the crop when it comes to negotiating power, so we can only imagine what it's like elsewhere.

The typical modern worker (with some exceptions) has to essentially request the privilege of trading the majority of their useful lifespan towards increasing the wealth of another person or face the prospect of the complete dissolution of their life. By contrast, most employers (though of course not all) who face mouse-jiggling type problems merely have to contend with the loss of some self-actualization and additional wealth as the worse case scenario.

If Oliver Twist sneaks in an extra bite of bread from the coal mill's supply during a 12 hour workday, he is being deceptive to his employer when fulfilling a contract willingly entered into. Of course, comparing an office worker to a Victorian child laborer is ridiculous on the face of it, but only in a quantitative sense. In a qualitative sense, the power balance and the context of the deception means that we can't consider it in a vacuum or in comparison to an ideal world. In other words, if the environment were civil, the worker would be easily able to enter into the mutually beneficial contracts you alluded to, and the need for mouse jiggling would disappear on its own except for all but the most boundary-pushing workers.

In Victorian times, the social norms justified child labor and asked workers to be thankful for their lot. Today, the conditions of workers has improved tremendously, but the norms are still designed (or rather, naturally emerged) towards extracting additional value in favor of the employer. The last 50 years have seen the bulk of productivity gains given to the owners rather than the workers, and wage theft is a huge concern all over the OECD. Hence the OP's Ask HN thread and the feeling of social dissonance regarding the work week.

Yeah I agree it's complicated and context is important.

Even though I do resent spending the majority of my useful lifespan "working", I don't feel like I'm being exploited. Rather, I mostly consider myself lucky and privileged to be able to work from the comfort of my home doing an activity that I mostly enjoy for a decent salary. Sure my company overlords make money from the deal, much more than I make, but they're not villians - they're just people that did better than I did and good for me that their quest for money gave me an opportunity to enrich myself.

The power imbalance and exploitation you refer to applies to people who aren't so lucky and have to do real labor. I don't that's who we're mainly talking about in this thread. Instead, it's the people that are already lucky and privileged that rationalize deception because they think they deserve even more.

I can't really respond to this without restating the arguments already made earlier, but ask yourself this: isn't it an odd coincidence that this appraisal of the situation on your end is absolutely ideal for the employer?

- It leaves little possibility of advocating for better conditions, even if these might be straightforward to obtain

- Makes it more likely to expend additional energy for the employer due to a moral abstraction as opposed to a material or social/societal need

- Assigns high moral worth to the employer by virtue of their ownership and higher class. The employee can't merely sign a contract, but must also practice additional gratefulness in favor of the employer

- Could potentially lead to monitoring and reporting other workers based on the abstraction of dishonesty, at no material or social gain to either worker involved or any clearly identifiable societal improvement

The employer makes far more money, their relationship to work is completely different, they own at least a significant part of the company, belong to a higher social class, and yet both your worldviews regarding work coincide neatly, and do so specifically in favor of only one person in the equation.

We could transpose this to a hypothetical Victorian worker. They could say that they are privileged to work 12 hour days because they could also work as a literal slave. That they should show extra diligence for the employer because that God-given hierarchy is natural and wholesome. From our vantage point, this mindset sounds absurd and the result of internalized oppression, but a hypothetical worker of the future could very well look at us now rejecting the 4 day workweek the same way we look at our predecessors justifying child labor and black lung.

> both your worldviews regarding work coincide neatly, and do so specifically in favor of only one person in the equation

I disagree with this. I believe I have a mutual agreement that benefits myself and my employer. If I felt like I could complete my job in 30 hours a week instead of 40, I could have a conversation with my employer and negotiation for a shorter work week. If that didn't work, I could find a part time or flex job.

> a hypothetical worker of the future could very well look at us now rejecting the 4 day workweek the same way we look at our predecessors justifying child labor and black lung

I agree that people will look back and think it absurd that we stuck to a 40 hour work week for so long. Progress should be making our lives easier and demanding less of us but that's not what's happing for most.

The way we make this better, in my opinion, is by being honest about it. If someone fakes it with a mouse jiggler to make it seem like they're working 40 hours when they're not, they're actually helping keep the 40 hour work week alive.

But still, we're talking about people lucky enough to have a fakable job, not people doing real work. None of this applies to the person working the drive thru that can barely make rent on a 40 hour work week and would be underwater if reduced to 30.

No one from September 2019 would believe you if you told them about the work from home policies in place right now for millions of people who were expected to be seated at their desk at 9:00 (or 8:30) until 5:00 three years ago.

The world isn't static, tradeoffs can change.

> No one from September 2019 would believe you if you told them about the work from home policies in place right now for millions of people who were expected to be seated at their desk at 9:00 (or 8:30) until 5:00 three years ago

There were lots of us who couldn't believe that so many employees had to be at a desk from 9 - 5 in industries where it made very little sense.

yes but it took millions of people discussing and organizing with their coworkers and pushing back on their employers in various ways to earn it as solidly as it's been. it doesn't just change with the wind or only because employers change their minds about environmental factors

I think part of OP's point is that there would be tradeoffs. Reducing work hours by 1/5th will reduce work output by some large fraction of that. Companies would have to compensate for that by hiring more employees or reducing their products or services, either of which will tend to increase prices. Price increases or wage cuts would cause people who are in constrained financial situations to have to look for a 2nd job, thereby negating the effect of the policy. Sure things can change, but there are underlying realities which constrain how they can change.

> they will just make everyone part time.

The implicit threat here is withdrawal of benefits - specifically health care insurance

So the USA doesn’t have universal healthcare so that it can be used to blackmail employees?

Correct

Closer to the opposite - lack of universal healthcare in the USA is a huge downside for most employers here. And I suspect that any decent study would find that just not offering real healthcare (to employees) is 2+ orders of magnitude more common than "or else you won't get healthcare" blackmail.

Healthcare is a benefit and the lack of universal healthcare has resulted in a competitive market where customers are free to choose the level of care for their need and budget. Universal healthcare is the worst of all worlds, comparatively.

I’m sure all the people who have gone bankrupt from medical bills appreciate that sentiment.

My brother in laws sister was recently diagnosed with cancer. Before she was diagnosed, she quit her job with benefits to stay home and take care of her father with advanced Parkinson’s. Her cancer is treatable, but she doesn’t have and can’t get insurance and doesn’t qualify for government help. Her choice is death or go into such incredible debt that she will never have hope to pay it off. She is 29. She has chosen death.

How are customers having a heart attack free to choose the level of care for their need and budget? Or poor cancer patients? Yes, Medicare might help but that brings up another layer of bureaucracy and constraints to be managed by the patient.

A society is much better when it's healthy, leaving health to be taken care by the law of the jungle isn't really building a healthy society.

Huh what? You don't get health insurance when you work part time in the US?

There are a few companies that buck the trend, but typically, no. You have to be full time (frequently defined as 32 hours a week or more) to qualify for company-subsidized health insurance.

many companies keep their workers under full time to save the cost. in effect this is a handout from the govt to businesses and landlords to enable growth with low wages

Correct. This is how our country works because we are a nation of fools who worship the most wealthy among us.

A/B Weeks would be interesting but also kinda detaching one half of workers from the other half.

Why did you analyse the situation from everyone's perspective except the worker's?

Many customer-facing occupations provide for extended opening hours, Saturdays and even Sundays. Personally I'd be thrilled if half the organizations I deal with went beyond Mon-Fri 9-5, and to do so they'll need some extra staff.

Even those that are only open 9-5 M-F are not that hard to keep operational with a 4 day work week. As soon as you have five people, every person gets a different day off during the week. Plenty of people will be happy to have days other than Monday and Friday as well; that breaks up the work week so you have it easier to recover, AND it lets you use that day for errands while everything is open.

rotations.

yes you get it, the point of labor negotiating for fewer days is that employers don't want to do it because it could be more expensive for them in various ways. what you are really complaining about isn't workers not wanting to keep businesses open longer, it's that employer cost-cutting measures include narrower service hours, and why would workers take it upon themselves to donate their time to solving that if their organized negotiating power is such that it would be charity to the owners

One thing I didn't realize until recently is that working 4 days instead of 5 does not slash your salary by a fifth given that your tax bracket will also be lower.

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