Hacker News Reader

Comment by techdebt5112 | Hacker News Reader

People are probably willing to pay you to do this, but not advertising it so much. Most tech companies (at least in the US) are desperate for work. Less than 40 hours is a week is a tough sell because many people feel the onboarding process eats up a lot of time. Primarily, since it's the norm to work 40+ hours (and believe me, it's not difficult to do this and be actually writing code more than 50% of the time) employers expect it.

> I sincerely think it is quite unrealistic to ask a knowledge worker consistently deliver at full throttle for 40 hours every week (never mind the enslaving 60+ hours on many companies)

I really disagree with this. Have you tried before?

View on HN

Yes, I tried it several times, both working for other people, as well for my personal projects.

I managed to pull out some full weeks of full-time, full-throttle work, but it is completely unsustainable. This is, social life, other activities, having out of the box solutions and ideas, friends, family are all strayed aside as secondary, weekend concerns. Work was the primary concern. That progressively led to loosing focus with other realities, lack of diversity, and all the things that brings on board.

The main point is, even if had 100% efficiency, would it matter if it was directed towards the wrong thing? A good deal of our work is to judge and be critical of how it will impact others, the world even. And sincerely, I think that it is a major problem on many companies which just fail because everyone is too busy "working", but do not collectively have the opportunity to ponder, to talk to other people, to get different perspectives, and realize as whole that the ship is going full steam ahead for the iceberg.

Sounds like adult life.

This is the kind of simplistic response that prevents our society from progressing. "It's just the way it is" terminates any rational discussion or critical analysis of why we do things the way we do. There's no actual reason for everyone to be either unemployed or working themselves to the point of exhaustion against their will; it's "just" a structural and cultural problem.

As soon as people start openly discussing the possibility of a different way of doing things, there will be subcultures that spring up around the idea. If it ends up working, the subculture can eventually spread to the mainstream. It's a very worthwhile discussion to have.

I was suggesting that this is a fine way for things to be.

This is a terrible way for things to be. Life is a finite resource. I'd rather spend my time doing things for myself, even if it means I'm not rich.

...and believe me, it's not difficult...

This is why I feel the productivity argument is really very weak. There are many people who seem to be quite productive even working 40-50 hours per week.

I think a much, much better argument is that working 40 hours a week is a waste of my life. I value my time quite highly because I have numerous and varied interests. So even if my productivity (and therefore, at least theoretically, my income) was maximized at 40 hours per week, I still wouldn't want to work that much.

No employer is going to index my salary to the marginal value of my time, they use the marginal value of my output (just as they should). So in a world where my choices are to work full-time or to work part-time at a greatly reduced hourly rate, it is impossible for me to optimize the amount that I work relative to the marginal value of my time. I, and I suspect many others, always end up at a sub-optimal equilibrium.

I agree SO much with all this. "Working 40 hours a week is a waste of my life" is also how I feel, but a lot of people will inevitably call you lazy. And yes, it's very infuriating that part-time jobs don't pay enough to live (at least in my country), while full-time ones leave you with money you don't have anything to spend it, but little time.

Yeah, I buy that marginal productivity drops as you add more hours, but I would be shocked to find that sixteen hours is the point at which diminishing returns make additional work pointless. I guess for me the diminishing returns start kicking in closer to thirty hours of hard focused work, and I am by no means the best worker I know.

You are talking as if the employer's point of view is all that matters. Simply because you can produce a bit more useful work, that is, your marginal utility to the company is positive, doesn't mean you should. Marginal value is fine for a piece of machinery, or for the company to decide if they want you to work more, but it shouldn't be your reason to work more. Having fun, want the money, helping a friend; these are employee reasons.

But the original question was about whether these jobs exist. Given that there are significant coordination and communication costs as the number of people on a team increases, it's in the employer's best interest to get more (productive) hours from a smaller number of people. If someone working a 16-hr work week incurs more communication overhead than useful product, employers won't hire someone who only wants that arrangement.

> I really disagree with this. Have you tried before?

The problem is everybody has widely different ideas of full throttle productivity. Lets take salary as a decent proxy for productivity:

At every company I have worked the "norm" is 15-20 productive hours a week. Standard salary is ~$110-$140k/year for a senior dev working these hours.

So as a rule of thumb if you can work a consistent 40 productive hours a week you should be able to earn at least $220k+/year (and in reality closer to $300k/year).

I do know developers earning more than $250k/year. It is possible if you are top .1% or if you organize your entire life around work. However, it is not easy, and nor should it be expected as the "norm".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com