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Comment by hourago | Hacker News Reader

> This particular article does touch on a goal that isn’t usually explicitly stated: it would make the world “less unequal” if everyone was prevented from working longer hours. Yes, it would, but I am deeply appalled at the thought of trading away individual freedom of action and additional value in the world for that goal.

Individual freedom seems to be in the mouth of all millionaires that can afford that freedom. Most people has to work to live and their freedom of choice ends there. And it is already forbidden in most countries to "work as many hours as you want" because is the only way to avoid a race to the bottom were everybody, except the rich, suffer.

This is a clear example of bias and that the fact that a guy is talented in one thing does not make him be able to understand a different one.

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> it is already forbidden in most countries to "work as many hours as you want" because is the only way to avoid a race to the bottom were everybody, except the rich, suffer.

Remember that Carmack is in the US, where this is not forbidden.

working over 40h is only « forbidden » where i live because paying 1.5x/h is not acceptable from the employer’s pov. it’s annoying from the worker’s pov since you’re necessarily capped at 40h if your employer doesn’t want to pay that rate.

i don’t understand your race to the bottom argument.

> i don’t understand your race to the bottom argument.

Look at work culture in the United States or parts of Asia, where the goal is to extract as much production out of the workers as possible and if it grinds them to dust, that's their own personal failing and you will just swap out the faulty cog for a fresh one.

It gets absurd when you look at Japan's performative long hours. It's not even financially beneficial by that point.

> i don’t understand your race to the bottom argument.

Being able to voluntarily work more than 40h/week also means being able to be voluntold to work more than 40h/week.

People say that, but I don't think our culture would permit it at this point.

Unfortunately, culture follows economic conditions, not the other way around. So without a legal limit, I believe not only that culture would permit it, but also it would find a way to justify it.

(See e.g. US work ethics/protestant work culture.)

There is a workaround against that: Have a legal requirement that overtime should average to zero or less (to allow for part-time employees) over the course of a year across all employees of the workplace.

Lots of jobs require mandatory overtime, whether salaried office jobs which expect folks to finish unreasonable workloads or hourly physical jobs which have artificially limited the number of workers (by regulations or union contracts) but have minimum staffing levels, e.g. police, prisons, assembly line workers, etc.

There isn't one single culture here. Plenty of cultures not just permit it, they expect it.

> forbidden in most countries

It’s impossible to regulate how much software engineers work. No country has bureaucrats making sure you’re not sitting at home on your laptop writing code at 2 in the morning.

I have done that in the past and I agree that there are (extremely) rare situations where this is helpful or might be warranted. In general though, this is not good behavior and I would personally advise against this.

One time a bug bothered me to no end, I kept thinking about it all the time. I then sat down at 10pm and started debugging / tinkering. I finally solved the issue some time that night and got back to work the next day, reporting my success to the team. Great.

While it was a helpful fix for the team it wasn't super important. After I reflected some of this process, I realized that it wasn't my curiosity or passion that was driving me. It was a bad relationship with work. I was still quite new and I wanted to prove myself - this pressure is what drove me.

My endeavor brought next to no personal advantage, rather it was a detriment. I spent my free time, my sleep even, to fix a mediocre bug which I simply could have done the next day. Even if I took two or three days, no bottom line would have been affected. Barely anyone would have bothered, asked or cared. So what's left was some idea of opportunity cost - since the bug was fixed I was now free for other work. But the value of that is also hypothetical!

In the end, I think working for someone else, especially a generic corporation, is way different from personal projects or startup products that you are passionate about and really deeply care that it succeeds. I will reliably perform my duties and try to be efficient at it, but I will NEVER let big corpos take away time from my life again just to improve some managers standing or bonus.

You can definitely find a good balance between fulfilling your position at or above expectations while respecting your personal life and health. I do not hesitate to take sick days, I prioritize my family and friends. Working 4 days per week has been show to drastically reduce sick days and other issues so while it might seem counterintuitive to some, I really believe that it's actually beneficial for everyone.

Note: I typically have a weird productivity surge between sunset and 2am that never gets used for work, obviously. Something about the early darkness triggers my mind...

"Prevented from working longer hours"

Can this really be prevented anywhere? That would be appalling. Reminds me of "Harrison Bergeron" (Vonnegut short story).

Individual freedom isn't free. Most people need to work, but achieving freedom takes a LONG time. It requires a lot of work, strategy, and discipline.

If you are born in America, then it is possible in your lifetime if you don't enslave yourself to vice.

Many of the people who have that freedom are the enslavers, or the tollbooth operators whose fees prevent others from achieving freedom.

I dont disagree that its possible! But i see the need for the people to band together and get some of that freedom through some sort of rule setting

This just isn't true.

If your parents are rich and you get some of that as an adult, you simply won't have to work, have strategy, and won't need as much discipline. You might not need these things at all, at least not on the same level as anyone poor. Or heck, you won't need as much as anyone mildly comfortable. Setbacks won't even affect you the same way, and you won't even have some of them. You won't risk losing your home because you had to miss work to get your car fixed, for example, both because your job allows for you to miss work and get paid and because you aren't driving those sorts of cars.

Not spending $5 gambling on the lottery (a vice!) isn't going to get you financial freedom, nor is avoiding drinking a couple times a month. If you are born in America and born poor, it is very unlikely that you'll be able to do anything but work your life away and barely make it. That sort of mobility - the sort folks site with the 'American dream' - simply isn't a thing. You don't work your way out of poverty: You luck your way out. Having rich parents is one of the biggest factors in whether or not you get this freedom in life.

> achieving freedom takes a LONG time. It requires a lot of work, strategy, and discipline.

Ah, yes. Only work will set you free. What a reasonable statement.

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