Bring back the 40-hour work week
salon.com
salon.com
Here in Socialist Yurop, the Working Time Directive means that no employer can compel an employee to work for longer than 48 hours per week. All workers are entitled to a legal minimum of 5.6 weeks of paid holiday.
You all seem to agree that you work too long and don't get enough holiday. I've never once heard anyone say that they're happy with two weeks vacation and unpaid overtime. I'm not asking rhetorically, I genuinely want to know why the most basic sort of collective bargaining is absent from the political culture of the US.
This is incorrect. In the Netherlands, at least, 20 days is the legal minimum, though most people get 25.
A significant proportion of people get 25 days + 8 public holidays
1. http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/03/spains-budge...
Ireland is a great example of bare minimum employee law to meet EU standards, and light touch regulation that needs to be bailed out by 35½ hr-a-week France.
And they themselves find it depressing which they accepted in the interviews.
[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/12/euro...
[2] http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,763618,00....
Just so you know the underlying theme at France and Greece. Intellectual people in France know that their number of work days are not sustainable but as of now if government tries to make a change, they will not survive the election because people have taken these holidays as their right. So they cannot make the change even if they want to.
Greece has the similar socialism problem of big government, high government salaries and unrestrained spending no doubt they have high unemployment.
We are headed in that direction under current administration where government is growing without bounds and we have unemployment rate of almost 9%.
Heh, at my current job I won't be eligible for paid holiday until eighteen months after my date of initial employment, at which point I will receive five days of paid holiday for one year, and then ten days of paid holiday for the next four years. That's a pretty stark difference, I'd say.
Is Europe hiring software developers?
And yeah, in all tech hubs I know of, everybody's looking to hire, the market is, maybe not red-hot like Silicon Valley, but pretty hot anyway.
Yes. Like the USA, there is a shortage of developers.
At my previous job I got 4 weeks vacation (it would have gone up to 5 weeks after 4 years) plus (I forget how much) paid sick leave plus 6 paid holidays.
At the one before that I got 4 weeks vacation plus unlimited (within reason) paid sick leave plus 10 paid holidays.
In other words, you don't need to move to Europe. You just need to find a better job.
-- John Steinbeck (disputed according to wikiquote)
Because, for quite a few cultural and structural reasons - e.g. our strong culture of individualism, pluralistic civil society, and common-law as opposed to civil-law tradition - Americans are relatively skeptical of allowing a priori regulatory intervention into the immediate circumstances of their lives.
People here generally believe that they ought to be free to make their own arrangements without outside intervention, that law should only be used as a failsafe mechanism, and that legislation/regulation are only necessary where the existing constraints within civil society and case-by-case judicial process have not successfully averted a significant problem.
There are plenty of exceptions to this, of course, but what you call "basic employment law" is quite often regarded as an unjustified intrusion into people's private affairs.
> You all seem to agree that you work too long and don't get enough holiday.
Sounds like a case of "the van is always at the corner". Some people may complain; but most people do have more than adequate vacation time, and, apparently, there are more people who choose not even to use all of their vacation time (36%) than there are who complain of overwork (33%) [1]. Despite what the consultant quoted in that article says, it does appear that it's usually a voluntary choice.
[1] http://blogs.reuters.com/reuters-money/2011/08/04/overworked...
The rest of the article says that 50-hour-a-week employees are no more productive than 40-hour-a-week employees, and don't get paid any more. Where do the extra jobs come from?
We use man-hours as the measure for the number of jobs, so, if 4 people working 50 (hours a week) start working 40 that leaves 40 hours to be filled by another person (1 more job). Productivity actually increases even if the man-hours are the same.
There's a lot that's wrong with the UK, but being forced to work for free thankfully isn't one of them.
I just can't imagine where people get the time for a 50-60 hour week. Once I've been to work, played with my son, fed, bathed, and put him to bed, and cooked, there isn't much time left in the day, surely?
Working part-time after a long time of full time work my eyes opened to the possibility of the 36-hour week. I usually discuss with a lot of people how they feel about their work schedule and what they think about working 6 hours in 6 days instead of 9 in 5, and surprisingly most defend the 40-hour week because they prefer two days of rest. In my experience, they're overrated. The possibility of dedicating time to yourself, your projects, your family, throughout the week is priceless.
It has also given me some time to work on projects on my free time that ultimately can be of benefit to the company, sort of unpayed 20% innovation time. But since I am grateful for the company being so flexible and understanding, I don't mind.
For Real Productivity, Less is Truly More: http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2010/05/for-real-productivity-...
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I don't expect 'managers' to understand this... Mythical Man Month is nearing on 40 years old, and apparently the current crop of tech leaders haven't bothered to read it.
+100. That and Peopleware.
Typing is not the same as programing. I learned to type real fast long back. But I'm still learning the art of programming.
The first is that, notoriously, if one programmer working 50% more time won't advance the project 50% faster, that is even more true if you try to increase by 50% the number of programmers. Software development is incredibly non-linear (and as a project manager I always have to struggle with my manager about this - it is incredible how much linear thinking is ingrained in so many people's minds).
The second problem is that, also notoriously, software developers vary incredibly in individual productivity, much more than hourly wages do.
So, where engineering (not just software) work prevails on other kinds of work, a few geeks working very long hours can really be more productive than more people working less hours. But this does NOT work in most other environments, and even in software development:
- there is a lot of repetitive work to do that real geeks aren't going to do
- there aren't enough geeks to do all the software development that our societies require
In the end, one size doesn't fit all, and solving this situation with regulation would be very difficult (even if some better regulation could help, especially if it could make unpaid overtime much more difficult/risky for employers). The best chance would be to have one or more very convincing examples, like Ford was almost a century ago. Any candidates?
Give / force them some time off before they can start another block of 40 hour work.
"Flow" is mentioned so often, but I'd really like to see some good quality research to back it up. For sure people feel like they're in a zone, but how much of the code produced in that time is great quality, and how much is error-strewn garbage?
The need for standard weeks is still pretty strong, but that's not insurmountable problem. Really, when people talk of weeks they mean "continuous chunk of work with no 48 hour break".
A bigger problem is making people think that 60 hour weeks is normal, or honourable, and that a 40 hour week is lazy or disloyal or unproductive or harmful to the company. That's not true, and it's possibly leading to early death of some people. It's certainly making some people miserable.
I like working a lot, making great stuff. Some people don't. But that's not my problem.
Asking me not to work, just because some body else doesn't want to, is injustice.
I have faced this situation in the past. I used to get a lot of work done in my last company(I was productive and used to push crazy hours) and by that definition I was learning, making and getting a lot of recognition.
Soon a bunch of girls went and complained to the manager its becoming a one sided game. And the suggestion they gave to solve their problem was to stop me from putting those extra works. Now here is my problems, for whatever reason if you can't/don't want to do something big in life. I doesn't mean everyone should do the same to make you feel good.
This is more or less like socialism. You force the rich to become poor just because the poor don't want to be rich.
EDIT: C'mon guys why would you downvote this? Choice to choose a worklife style is upto to the individual. Stopping Individual from achieving their goals is in direct contradiction to freedom to pursuit of happiness.
HN is becoming like reddit, things get up/downvoted on mood not on merit.
> Soon a bunch of girls went
Which appears to be fantastically sexist. (Although that's another huge thread.)
However, when I read sloppily written comments with poor grammar and syntax, I always wonder if the author also writes code in a similar manner. I kind of take it as an insult when author's don't do their best to make their work easily understood by others.
Sometime I make mistakes, but I correct them often when some one points out.
I don't think its a big issue, I don't see this as a problem while coding, interaction or even while writing documentation.
Sometimes I make a mistake because of my mother tongue influence over English.
One of my long term goals is contribute to a open source community.
Some might have goals similar to you. Others might aspire to work a 40-a-week job, be there for their spouse and children and not feel burnt out every day. Yes, there are people like you who might enjoy working crazy hours and being super productive. However, the person who is truly most productive in a 40-a-week job should also be able to achieve their goals without this cultural stigma around working a normal amount of time.
Also the person who works for 8 hrs + x hrs is getting what he is supposed to get.
If you are saying despite working for ( 8 + x ) hrs he must not get anything extra or he and the guy who works for 8 hrs must both get the same, defeats the very laws of karma.
Besides, The 8 hrs guy has a problem only if gets into comparisons with the ( 8 + x ) hours guy.
The expectation that one must get paid the same but do little work compared to somebody else generally makes a classic case when the individual blames others for merely being lucky for the comparative success.
The 8 + x hours worker is getting less than they're supposed to. Often they're doing x hours for free.
There can be several problems with that. Sometimes the company gets a lot of value from the x hours, and sells lots of product for lots of money, but doesn't give any money to the worker.
Or sometimes the worker is doing poor quality work, but getting personal value from the x hours (perhaps seen by managers as being more productive) and the other workers have to fix the errors, but are not seen as productive.
> The expectation that one must get paid the same but do little work compared to somebody else
Quite often overtime is unpaid, or is paid at low rates.
This. My experience in the software industry has generally been positive (aside from stints at start-ups)--I've been judged on the quality of my work, and my ability to produce given reasonable time lines. When I dabbled at an interactive agency, though, all of that was thrown out the window--the print folks, especially, where just expected to work 10-12 hours a day, and it would be a matter of pride to pull an all-nighter to meet a silly deadline. At one point, the agency's owner had a mural put in a common area--it was a comic about a superhero who could manage to do anything with a ridiculous time crunch. That's when I decided that industry was not for me.
In practice, though, there is often a lot of unpaid overtime, at least in the software industry, and the situation isn't different from what the article says about the US (only, with lower salaries).
There are a lot of detailed regulations, but among other things, _all_ work over 40 hours a week is overtime and needs to be compensated at least 40% higher than regular work. And working more than 200 hours of overtime a year is actually illegal.
In practice, however, most employees and employers in the software industry just ignore these rules and save up these extra hours on a "flex time account" where they can take it out as paid vacation later, or with some luck, be paid in cash.
If you actually took a case like this to court and demanded the 40% bonus on all overtime, you would probably win. But there seems to be a gentleman's agreement between industry participants that this would be a bad idea. I have no idea why this is the case - I just assume that it is because a lot of IT workers have doormat tendencies and have a hard time claiming their rights.
The flip side is that the project did succeed, this success brought a lot more money than originally expected to my firm, and I didn't get a fair bonus. Now I only work (serious) overtime if they agree to pay me beforehand, and I'm working on my startup(s) on the side.
Regardless though, something feels very wrong about working very hard on something that can provide a huge monetary gain for your superiors, with the very real risk that you might not get anything in return. I operate (and have always operated, due to the horror stories I've heard) the same way you seem to do now: Do nothing but what's expected of you for the company, and only do more than what you're paid for if you've got leverage to actually be compensated for the real effort that you put in.
Computer people are, by and large, way too weak in exerting their rights. Whenever I hear a story of a nerd getting screwed over in a negotiation or liquidity event, I think of a small, weak kid getting his lunch money taken by a bully and not having any power to do anything about it. We're grownups and we have a lot of tools at our disposal to push back against injustices like these. It's like Nassim Nicholas Taleb said - sometimes you just need to sue someone. It's a matter of respect.
With my current manager it took me some time to understand that his promises were written on water. Add to that a daughter, a mortgage and the crisis, and he probably felt it safe enough to screw me. I hope to prove him wrong soon enough ;)
1. What I need to do is clear and known.
2. I've been doing the is same everytime or something of similar pattern.
3. No meetings and distractions in between.
For every person who wants to go back home, there is always a peer who is putting in extra hours innovating, building and learning. By the well known rate of success coming at an near exponential rate to people to work hard and are productive, the rate becomes exponential if they add crazy work hours to it.
Building stuff requires a goal. Then implementation, experimentation, test a feed back loop and then back to implementation. And then this cycle goes on in iteration.
This requires tuits(Uninterrupted large workable free chunks of time) to allow a degree of focus and flow seep into the person. And most of tuits are generally available only early in the morning or in the night. This by default means you already agree to work crazy hours.
So in summary, I can't do a 40 hour work week because
1. I will loose out to my peers in the long term race.
2. Meetings.
3. My work requires genuine supply of atleast two big tuits a day to remain competitive and have a good growth both money and career wise.For every peer putting in stupid hours innovating, building and learning there are > 1 peers putting in stupid hours fixing errors of other overworked colleagues or just grinding through the stuff they could have done in 40 hours if they didn't have an asshole boss / broken business culture.
http://www.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons
1. Meetings
2. Someone upstream not doing their job.
He and you do your day job in 8 hrs. But he puts in an additional 5-6 hours a day and is likely to put for the coming years.
Now suddenly you will find yourself in a corner as he will grow(in comparison) inevitably. And there will be little you can do.
Putting in crazy hours isn't mandatory, but neither is winning and succeeding.
Besides you can train your biological cycle to do wonders.
So as long as you are happy with whatever you do, you are the happiest man in the universe.
And I have no problems with this.
I have problems with people who stop other people from working hard, just because they don't want to.
Edit: If it's the money you're after I think you should try to work smarter not harder :-) i.e. if you're only way to get more money is to work more hours maybe you should find another job or change career.
I completely fail to see the inevitability. People don't fall into a coma the minute they leave the office. If he's grinding away 5-6 hours extra hours alone in the office every day, while you're spending those 5-6 hours meeting new people, hanging out with friends and colleagues, learning new things and playing around with fun hobbies and projects, why should he grow more than you.
It's just as likely that two-three years down the road he'll be completely burnt out with a stagnant skill-set while you have a great network, varied skill-set, plenty of energy and are ready and able to use those to move onto bigger and better things.
You work forty hours a week to be average. No one I know who is well off works only forty hours a week. Now they don't do the same tasks all those hours but they are doing something. The key is making sure the hours you put in are beneficial not just "doing work".
The rest of the world certainly isn't going to work just forty hours a week. They upcoming economies are going to put in whatever it takes to get where they want to be. Those of us who sit back and claim enlightenment by denouncing such hours are only going to end up being passed by.
tl;dr Working hours longer than 40 leads to counter productivity in the short and long term. 40 hour workers are more productive in all situations except those where workers have an abnormal singular focus (apparently symptoms of aspergers).
> Those of us who sit back and claim enlightenment by
> denouncing such hours are only going to end up being
> passed by.
Now they cut hours at my job and I work only 30, and I'd like to work 40 again. I find I often don't really do anything with those 10 extra free hours and I get less money.
This just does not apply to developers it is same at wall street. Those who want to be at the top of their game are not there for money only they take satisfaction in their achievements and achieving goals.
http://www.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons
I would bet that knowledge workers burn out FASTER from being overworked than manual laborers. Knowledge work, particularly the inductive side, relies on downtime in order to stay productive.
"Yes, this flies in the face of everything modern management thinks it knows about work."
Which is obviously just BS on stilts (not to mention an insult to myriad researchers).
The reason that management in most companies doesn't recognize this is that, although the average worker could achieve as much in his or her best 4 hours, managers are afraid that if they did officially relaxed "metered" demands, people would use their best hours on side projects or career-focused efforts and throw the scraps to their metered work (and, in many environments, they're right). The reason for the 8 to 11 hour metered workday is to maximize the likelihood that these 3-4 peak hours per day occur somewhere in that window.
It's true that I'd rather go home after 30 hours instead after 50 hours, but it's also true that I would be bored to death just sitting at work and doing nothing those extra 20 hours.