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Comment by ren_engineer | Hacker News Reader

the last sentence of the article hints at the real reason it was written in the first place:

>But as staff cut back their hours, it costs medical organizations money

it's just companies screeching that they are making less money because salaried employees are doing less unpaid work. I think the pandemic had a large effect on people in terms of

1. Having to face potential mortality much earlier than expected and thus putting lower priority on long term career stuff

2. Gave lots of people a glimpse of how much they miss out on due to commuting and being in office when in reality they can do most of their work from home and get benefits like more time with family, more time for hobbies, etc.

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Companies have had numerous ways of tweaking engagement for office workers which are no longer effective. These tweaks ranged from mildly positive too awful. I suspect that people who were at firms using these tweaks are starting to simply find their own balance based on what they can/want to deliver relative to peers.

- Have team events/other activities which encourage the team to stay late at the office for social reasons.

- Off-sites where everyone is in the same place for 3-5 days.

- Stop by peoples desks and check on what they are working on.

- Walk around and see who has an editor open, ping people who don't for progress reports.

- Check if employees are actually putting in 8+ hours per day. Assign more work to those who seem to be leaving early.

In the remote world you really can't tell how many hours people are putting in. Some engineers do 12 hour days.. some do 4 hours. Some do 12 hours but get nothing done.

It is tried, my friends who do insurance sales have software on their laptops that monitors mouse and keyboard activity. Which leads people to buying usb sticks that send out fake mouse movements :)

They’re called “mouse jigglers.” I imagine sales have skyrocketed since the start of the pandemic.

It’s not their potential mortality. It is their mortality. Very real, and always imminent.

Once it stops becoming a “potential” thing, and it’s accepted as reality, then you start making real choices.

The outcome is telling but not surprising. It’s among the oldest human wisdom.

Doesn't everyone wonder if they're the first immortal to be born?

I have found no evidence against it to date

Ahh, "immortality" strictly defined.

Mayhaps you have found evidence that you are not the earliest-born person to have eternal youth?

Yes, all the way until age 40. Then, reality.

That sounds like it is biased towards people who haven't lost their parents by age 40. For people (like me) who have lost a parent before hitting the age of 40 it becomes more real sooner.

I assume clarge1120 meant that people feel immortal until 40 because their body generally does not stop them from doing things until one’s 40s.

Hmm it seemed unclear. I guess I am totally unlucky as im 35 and my body is already acting that way.

Why no, the first immortal was born months before me.

Scientifically speaking, the human death rate is a surprisingly low 93%. This is the obvious calculation: the number of people who died divided by the number who were born.

Is being certain of one's im/mortality similar to the Halting Problem?

>> it's just companies screeching that they are making less money because salaried employees are doing less unpaid work.

That depends on how many of these jobs are positional and therefore cannot be easily supplemented. In my kneck of the woods we are having an issue with judges. There are only so many jobs for judges. But in recent years more than half of them switched to reduced hours. That lost time cannot be just replaced with a part-timer. This is probably true for many senior doctors too. Not every profession has a substitute pool of qualified people to step in every time a senior person decides to not work Fridays.

> But more than half of them have switched to reduced hours.

Why are they switching to reduced hours? This sounds like the value/output equation is out of line. Why not pay more, or hire more judges to reduce the workload?

A judgeship is often a specific job. They are paid good money and, like tenured professors, cannot have their salary easily reduced. It's like being the mayor of a town. If a mayor wants to reduce their worked hours, you cannot just hire another one to make up the difference. Their income is protected. There can be only one.

The obvious answer to this is not to allow the reduced hours - either do the full job, or do something else. Not exactly progressive, but then there aren't many jobs with these special conditions, so that's fine.

>> not to allow the reduced hours

Lol. Try telling a pregnant judge that she cannot reduce her in-the-office hours. Or a judge suffering long covid. Or an older judge with medical issues. The dynamic is very different when dealing with very senior and qualified people, especially ones unafraid of courtrooms. And any elected judges are basically untouchable.

This sounds like a specific cultural peculiarity - there should be no reason why judges aren't replaceable with temporary cover from further afield, or "understudies". I appreciate that might not be realistic in the US where judges are quasi-political figures, but that is a problem with your legal system, not a jobs problem.

> If a mayor wants to reduce their worked hours, you cannot just hire another one to make up the difference.

You can vote them out; judges can be imoeached for nonperformance. You can increase the number of positions for judges (mayors are obviously different) to account for trends in capacity, to the extent that the reduced hours are appropriate and nonabusive. Etc.

… or the Mayor could hire a more capable city manager.

Is this artificial scarcity created by licensing associations?

For doctors, yes. For lawyers (the primary source of judges), not really.

There is a scarcity of judges created by (lack of) funding for courts. Which effectively erodes people's sixth amendment rights too.

>doing less unpaid work

Even with official work hours only, it's cheaper to hire, train, and manage one person for 40 hours a week than two people.

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