It is well-known, in the labour economics literature, that companies see productivity bumps when they change from pay per hour to pay per piece (aka, pay for output). Employees also enjoy more leisure time. So a mystery is why it isn't done more, especially when the quality of output is readily observable - there are lots of arguments over this, including an argument that the apparently widely-observed change is really an experiment bias.
I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of middle-managerial types I've met who, confronted with increased productivity by switching to pay-per-output would not immediately think to switch back to pay-per-hour in order to get more productivity for less money. Almost every middle manager seems to have some sort of logic filter whereby ridiculous bullshit metrics and untenable employee requirements seem like good ideas. I think it's an artifact of being simultaneously insulated from either the workers your decision impact and from obvious responsibility for the overall company performance. At the top you have executives who may well have no idea what the rank and file do or how they might do it better, but are heavily invested in the company prospering. At the bottom you have people who have personal relationships with the rank and file and may well have risen out of it to a leadership position, so understand what needs to happen on a daily basis and what will or won't work. But in the middle you've got people who don't know, don't care to know, and are more concerned with distancing themselves from their subordinates' failures while taking credit for their successes than actually causing those successes.
A business with a relatively flat org structure might move to a 4-day week or flex scheduling or pay-per-output or whatever, but I'd bet Several American Dollars it's going to be pretty rare in any organization with a lot of vertical distance between the top and bottom.
I wouldn't like a 4x10 schedule because A) after about 8 hours of work, my productivity tanks anyway, and I would pretty much not get to see my kids 4 days a week. Right now I get off between 4-4:30, get home around five, make dinner, and get to play with them for maybe an hour once you figure in homework and baths and whatever.
It would also presumably up daycare costs. If the kids are going to school on a 5 day schedule, then you're saving maybe 3 hours of daycare one day and adding about 8 hours across the other 4 days.
I can see how it makes sense for folks without children, though.
ElJeffe on
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Yeah I worked a 4X10 scheduled and you get used to it really quickly.
It helped that I was able to come to work one hour early and then leave and hour later, so I didn't feel like my entire evening was killed.
4x10 was nice, I'm on a 5-4-9 now (9 hours Mon-Thurs, 8 hours one Friday, the other Friday off...80 hours over two weeks). It's pretty great.
Honestly, with the money I make I could easily afford the eight-hour hit and just take both Friday's off. A 34-hour week at my pay rate would easily pay all my bills. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, this would be frowned upon in my office (as with most). Though technically per our contract, I'm pretty sure I could take leave without pay if I so chose.
With the talk of furloughs coming down (federal employee), I've wound up thinking much the same. One day extra off a week for twenty-two weeks? Nice. Sucks for people who budget their entire salaries (or who don't make enough not to), but for me? I can swing it, it's like a 12% decrease over the year. Basically equal to taking my on-Friday's off all year.
I just really, really would like to see our society move away from the 40-hour-week. If increased production isn't going to lead to higher pay, it'd be nice if it at least led to increased leisure time (which could also help with unemployment...hire more workers to work equal hours total).
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
I'm not sure how I'd feel about a 4x10. Well, I probably wouldn't notice a difference, to be honest. I'm out the door at 6:50 AM to catch my bus, which arrives at 7:25. I get to work at 7:30, officially work starts at 8, I work till 5 with an hour lunch, catch the bus at 5:25, and get home at 5:50. This leads to an 11 hour workday, for all intents and purposes for me. Quite frequently, I've stayed till 6 or 7 at times too.
So.. yeah. I'd love the quiet time, but I don't know if I'd enjoy it.
ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
This thread is making me sad. I only work, like, thirty two+ish hours a week, but it's spread over six days. I would murder people to even get it down to five days.
I pretty much feel like I never, ever have time off. I have work every weekday, until Saturday when I have morning work, an afternoon to be all tired from getting up early, and then Sunday where I get ready for six days of work. It is not so much fun.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
It is well-known, in the labour economics literature, that companies see productivity bumps when they change from pay per hour to pay per piece (aka, pay for output). Employees also enjoy more leisure time. So a mystery is why it isn't done more, especially when the quality of output is readily observable - there are lots of arguments over this, including an argument that the apparently widely-observed change is really an experiment bias.
The obvious omission from this thinking, I reckon, is public services, as they don't really have productivity metrics.
Which counts for a good portion of all Western labor, IIRC.
It is well-known, in the labour economics literature, that companies see productivity bumps when they change from pay per hour to pay per piece (aka, pay for output). Employees also enjoy more leisure time. So a mystery is why it isn't done more, especially when the quality of output is readily observable - there are lots of arguments over this, including an argument that the apparently widely-observed change is really an experiment bias.
For one, measuring output in a lot of industries is a very difficult problem.
Food/Retail/General Service: Customers served? This creates a clear problem in that some shifts will have more customers, and in some fields there are substantial differences between customers.
Academics/Theorists/Economists: Theories suggested? Students taught?
Programmers/Writers: Lines? This would be counterproductive as brevity and efficiency would have negative incentives.
Doctors/Hospitals: Procedures/exams performed? Oh wait, that's largely what we do now and it has helped create massive healthcare inflation.
I would suggest that if anything we focus too much on outcomes and not enough on good process as a society in general. Lacking quality metrics to really measure how much an employee is doing in an objective way in most industries/occupations, its superior to either create responsibilities that an employee is intended to meet during a standard work week (salaried employees) or set a standard of work performance and have the employee follow these rules for a set amount of time (hourly).
It is well-known, in the labour economics literature, that companies see productivity bumps when they change from pay per hour to pay per piece (aka, pay for output). Employees also enjoy more leisure time. So a mystery is why it isn't done more, especially when the quality of output is readily observable - there are lots of arguments over this, including an argument that the apparently widely-observed change is really an experiment bias.
For one, measuring output in a lot of industries is a very difficult problem.
Food/Retail/General Service: Customers served? This creates a clear problem in that some shifts will have more customers, and in some fields there are substantial differences between customers.
Academics/Theorists/Economists: Theories suggested? Students taught?
Programmers/Writers: Lines? This would be counterproductive as brevity and efficiency would have negative incentives.
Doctors/Hospitals: Procedures/exams performed? Oh wait, that's largely what we do now and it has helped create massive healthcare inflation.
I would suggest that if anything we focus too much on outcomes and not enough on good process as a society in general. Lacking quality metrics to really measure how much an employee is doing in an objective way in most industries/occupations, its superior to either create responsibilities that an employee is intended to meet during a standard work week (salaried employees) or set a standard of work performance and have the employee follow these rules for a set amount of time (hourly).
I was reading an excerpt from The Org about the Baltimore Police Department, when they decided to define "arrests" as the metric by which to measure police performance.
Which, if "arrests" is what you ask for, "arrests" is what you'll get. Not "arrests that lead to convictions," or "arrests of dangerous people," or even necessarily "arrests of people breaking a law." But you'll put plenty of wear and tear on some handcuffs, and jails will be full. I think one district, IIRC, had more arrests than it had residents. Just arresting everybody. Riding a bike without the proper lighting, as required by law? Not a crime, but I can stop you, ask for proper ID, and now I can arrest you if you don't have it on you. You won't get charged with anything, just booked and released shortly, but it's an arrest, it goes to the metric.
So yes, you have to be very, very careful what you use as a metric. The classic example is phone support...generally the metric is either calls completed or tickets closed, which means I have the incentive to either get you off the phone as fast as possible or close your ticket ASAP, regardless of if I've actually helped you.
On the subject of 4 day weeks, I find that as great as having monday or friday off is, getting a Wednesday off is the sweetest thing, since it prevents the stress of working multiple days in a row from piling up.
If I could get that on a regular basis I'd happily work for reduced pay.
It would really be weird in a lot of manufacturing, I'm not entirely sure how you hire to suit it. If you have a CNC machine that costs you $800k, you want to keep that thing running as much of the time as possible. I know a place around me recently started a shift that was like 6pm-6am Fri/Sat/Sun, they pay you 4 extra hours, and your off the rest of the week; just to keep production moving over the weekends.
I know a lot of places run 5x10, with 2 shifts, and just eat the 4hrs of dead time in the early morning.
I would love for this to be a thing if only to marginally reduce the opportunities for casual exploitation that most people who work any set shift experiences.
I have never, ever, worked an office job whereupon finishing what was expected of me sooner than expected that I wasn't given more responsibilities that should not have been mine. And, sooner than later, those extra responsibilities simply become yours, without any impact on your pay or title. Because, well, you're there, are you not going to do what your boss tells you to?
Is this salary work, or are you bitching that in your hourly pay job, they expected you to work the hours they were paying you for?
I wouldn't like a 4x10 schedule because A) after about 8 hours of work, my productivity tanks anyway, and I would pretty much not get to see my kids 4 days a week. Right now I get off between 4-4:30, get home around five, make dinner, and get to play with them for maybe an hour once you figure in homework and baths and whatever.
It would also presumably up daycare costs. If the kids are going to school on a 5 day schedule, then you're saving maybe 3 hours of daycare one day and adding about 8 hours across the other 4 days.
I can see how it makes sense for folks without children, though.
You see them all day for 3 days though. The bigger issue is child care and such while you are at work. But that's an issue now too.
Generally, having lived with shift-workers my whole life and knowing a shitload of them, they all love the schedule. (they don't tend to love the night shifts, but that's irrelevant to this discussion) You get so so much more free time. Including commuting time going down, which is all just wasted time. Days where you didn't just come home from work feel so much more productive.
The biggest issues you run in to are interactions with the 5-day-week world, where it's a pain in the ass to do weekly activities or the like. Which doesn't really apply if everyone is doing 4 days per week I suppose.
Programmers/Writers: Lines? This would be counterproductive as brevity and efficiency would have negative incentives.
Incidentally, this is how Charles Dickens was paid. It kind of shows.
Great story about apple and steve woz(I think it was woz), their departments were measured in metrics by lines of code. Woz hated a solution someone came up with, and had a brainstorm, wrote a function that replaced 32 thousand lines of code or so with under a few hundred, so they were in the negative for the year when that week finished and metrics were checked. managers flipped their shit. I would say its a wive's tale except I remember reading it straight from his mouth. It was either woz or a friend within the company.
I did 4-10's for a while, but it turned really unproductive and I had to switch back sadly. I am on salary now so the boss within reason doesnt care if Im late or leaving early as long as the works done and that is awesome.
I would love for this to be a thing if only to marginally reduce the opportunities for casual exploitation that most people who work any set shift experiences.
I have never, ever, worked an office job whereupon finishing what was expected of me sooner than expected that I wasn't given more responsibilities that should not have been mine. And, sooner than later, those extra responsibilities simply become yours, without any impact on your pay or title. Because, well, you're there, are you not going to do what your boss tells you to?
Is this salary work, or are you bitching that in your hourly pay job, they expected you to work the hours they were paying you for?
When somebody says "office job" I nearly always assume salary work. Or at the very least "hourly" work, where you are expected to work precisely forty hours a week (but can be paid overtime).
It would really be weird in a lot of manufacturing, I'm not entirely sure how you hire to suit it. If you have a CNC machine that costs you $800k, you want to keep that thing running as much of the time as possible. I know a place around me recently started a shift that was like 6pm-6am Fri/Sat/Sun, they pay you 4 extra hours, and your off the rest of the week; just to keep production moving over the weekends.
I know a lot of places run 5x10, with 2 shifts, and just eat the 4hrs of dead time in the early morning.
If you divorce employment from huge fixed-cost benefits (like medical insurance) you can just hire more people, with each working less (but substantial) hours.
mcdermott on
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ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
I would love for this to be a thing if only to marginally reduce the opportunities for casual exploitation that most people who work any set shift experiences.
I have never, ever, worked an office job whereupon finishing what was expected of me sooner than expected that I wasn't given more responsibilities that should not have been mine. And, sooner than later, those extra responsibilities simply become yours, without any impact on your pay or title. Because, well, you're there, are you not going to do what your boss tells you to?
Is this salary work, or are you bitching that in your hourly pay job, they expected you to work the hours they were paying you for?
When somebody says "office job" I nearly always assume salary work. Or at the very least "hourly" work, where you are expected to work precisely forty hours a week (but can be paid overtime).
Either way, it's shitty to be hired to do one thing and end up doing about twelve and taking over other tasks that keep creeping on. Regardless of how you're being paid, if you're hired to handle phones and organize files, and then you end up having to make a bunch of outbound calls, and then more of a different type, and then fix broken printers, and then manage the office supplies, it's a shitty thing.
I'd be interested in really digging into how going to a 10 hour day influences productivity, because my experience working 9-10 hour days was that it went in the tank sometime around hour seven (although I was working 5x10 rather than 4x10 at the time.) I'm sure it depends on the character of the work too, but still.
Personally I think I'd prefer to stay on 5x8s with better sick/vacation allowances than most american workers seem to get, if the discussion is just about improving worker QoL.
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
It would really be weird in a lot of manufacturing, I'm not entirely sure how you hire to suit it. If you have a CNC machine that costs you $800k, you want to keep that thing running as much of the time as possible. I know a place around me recently started a shift that was like 6pm-6am Fri/Sat/Sun, they pay you 4 extra hours, and your off the rest of the week; just to keep production moving over the weekends.
I know a lot of places run 5x10, with 2 shifts, and just eat the 4hrs of dead time in the early morning.
If you divorce employment from huge fixed-cost benefits (like medical insurance) you can just hire more people, with each working less (but substantial) hours.
Well yeah, in fact lots of places do that. Except they divorce them via having 6 part times covering the 168 hours that make up 24/7. Look no ones over 30 hours, no need to pay for insurance.
It would really be weird in a lot of manufacturing, I'm not entirely sure how you hire to suit it. If you have a CNC machine that costs you $800k, you want to keep that thing running as much of the time as possible. I know a place around me recently started a shift that was like 6pm-6am Fri/Sat/Sun, they pay you 4 extra hours, and your off the rest of the week; just to keep production moving over the weekends.
I know a lot of places run 5x10, with 2 shifts, and just eat the 4hrs of dead time in the early morning.
If you divorce employment from huge fixed-cost benefits (like medical insurance) you can just hire more people, with each working less (but substantial) hours.
Well yeah, in fact lots of places do that. Except they divorce them via having 6 part times covering the 168 hours that make up 24/7. Look no ones over 30 hours, no need to pay for insurance.
Right, but if we can as a nation divorce that entirely from most or all employment, then it no longer matters.
Which means then employers have to compete on actual hourly wage, rather than on being able to give you just enough hours that you don't die of a tooth infection because you have no insurance.
It makes the pay per hours worked scale a lot more linear, instead of having a huge jump at 32, 36, or whatever defines "full time" versus "part time." And now the employer no longer has the incentive after that jump in compensation to force all full-time employees up to 40 hours (since that scale works both ways...to an employer it's "hours received for compensation given").
I'd love to work a 32-hour or 36-hour week at my current rate of pay. And I think dual-income households might benefit from being able to have both earners at 30-32 hours, rather than trying to have one at 40 (too little pay), one at 40 and one at 20 (shitty benefits, including sick leave, for the latter), or both at 40 (child care eats up gains).
That is pretty much what parts of Europe have done too mcdermott. Given the opportunity, they traded away work hours (ie - more pay) for more vacation.
I would love for this to be a thing if only to marginally reduce the opportunities for casual exploitation that most people who work any set shift experiences.
I have never, ever, worked an office job whereupon finishing what was expected of me sooner than expected that I wasn't given more responsibilities that should not have been mine. And, sooner than later, those extra responsibilities simply become yours, without any impact on your pay or title. Because, well, you're there, are you not going to do what your boss tells you to?
Is this salary work, or are you bitching that in your hourly pay job, they expected you to work the hours they were paying you for?
When somebody says "office job" I nearly always assume salary work. Or at the very least "hourly" work, where you are expected to work precisely forty hours a week (but can be paid overtime).
Either way, it's shitty to be hired to do one thing and end up doing about twelve and taking over other tasks that keep creeping on. Regardless of how you're being paid, if you're hired to handle phones and organize files, and then you end up having to make a bunch of outbound calls, and then more of a different type, and then fix broken printers, and then manage the office supplies, it's a shitty thing.
Until one day you give notice and then stand back and watch the panic
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ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
I would love for this to be a thing if only to marginally reduce the opportunities for casual exploitation that most people who work any set shift experiences.
I have never, ever, worked an office job whereupon finishing what was expected of me sooner than expected that I wasn't given more responsibilities that should not have been mine. And, sooner than later, those extra responsibilities simply become yours, without any impact on your pay or title. Because, well, you're there, are you not going to do what your boss tells you to?
Is this salary work, or are you bitching that in your hourly pay job, they expected you to work the hours they were paying you for?
When somebody says "office job" I nearly always assume salary work. Or at the very least "hourly" work, where you are expected to work precisely forty hours a week (but can be paid overtime).
Either way, it's shitty to be hired to do one thing and end up doing about twelve and taking over other tasks that keep creeping on. Regardless of how you're being paid, if you're hired to handle phones and organize files, and then you end up having to make a bunch of outbound calls, and then more of a different type, and then fix broken printers, and then manage the office supplies, it's a shitty thing.
Until one day you give notice and then stand back and watch the panic
I'm probably leaving soon. The job is totally doable so there won't be too much panic, except there is stuff that basically only I can do.
The second a computer breaks down or the files emailed to us have their name style changed, people are going to miss me. Good luck happening upon another receptionist who knows Python!
I would love for this to be a thing if only to marginally reduce the opportunities for casual exploitation that most people who work any set shift experiences.
I have never, ever, worked an office job whereupon finishing what was expected of me sooner than expected that I wasn't given more responsibilities that should not have been mine. And, sooner than later, those extra responsibilities simply become yours, without any impact on your pay or title. Because, well, you're there, are you not going to do what your boss tells you to?
Is this salary work, or are you bitching that in your hourly pay job, they expected you to work the hours they were paying you for?
When somebody says "office job" I nearly always assume salary work. Or at the very least "hourly" work, where you are expected to work precisely forty hours a week (but can be paid overtime).
Either way, it's shitty to be hired to do one thing and end up doing about twelve and taking over other tasks that keep creeping on. Regardless of how you're being paid, if you're hired to handle phones and organize files, and then you end up having to make a bunch of outbound calls, and then more of a different type, and then fix broken printers, and then manage the office supplies, it's a shitty thing.
Until one day you give notice and then stand back and watch the panic
I'm probably leaving soon. The job is totally doable so there won't be too much panic, except there is stuff that basically only I can do.
The second a computer breaks down or the files emailed to us have their name style changed, people are going to miss me. Good luck happening upon another receptionist who knows Python!
Yeah, it always kinda sucks when you realize a service/skill you offer to an employer like that has no actual value to them. I mean, they'll take it if it's free, but they won't pay you one dime extra for it. And yeah, that's when it becomes time to move on, and see if somebody else will.
My working 4x10 reduced our daycare costs by a lot. Our daycare is 7:30 - 5:00, so
My parents were happy to help babysit, but we felt like more than two days a week was too much to ask. We were able to do Tuesday / Thursday daycare, which was 8-5 for a flat rate...when I changed jobs, we had to do Monday / Wednesday / Friday daycare, and pay a hell of a lot more.
I would love for this to be a thing if only to marginally reduce the opportunities for casual exploitation that most people who work any set shift experiences.
I have never, ever, worked an office job whereupon finishing what was expected of me sooner than expected that I wasn't given more responsibilities that should not have been mine. And, sooner than later, those extra responsibilities simply become yours, without any impact on your pay or title. Because, well, you're there, are you not going to do what your boss tells you to?
Is this salary work, or are you bitching that in your hourly pay job, they expected you to work the hours they were paying you for?
When somebody says "office job" I nearly always assume salary work. Or at the very least "hourly" work, where you are expected to work precisely forty hours a week (but can be paid overtime).
Either way, it's shitty to be hired to do one thing and end up doing about twelve and taking over other tasks that keep creeping on. Regardless of how you're being paid, if you're hired to handle phones and organize files, and then you end up having to make a bunch of outbound calls, and then more of a different type, and then fix broken printers, and then manage the office supplies, it's a shitty thing.
Until one day you give notice and then stand back and watch the panic
It's a very enjoyable feeling.
Sadly, the people who suffer are the other poor fucks like yourself who are told to figure it out and deal with it on top of what they are already dealing with...MAYBE your immediate supervisor.
As long as the mid level managers have someone to scream at, they don't give a fuck how bad everything is under them.
I just find "working for X hours" stupid. We have a lot of technology that allows us to be more productive than ever. You should be paid to generate (your salary * x) money for whoever you work with and there's that. Otherwise people are generating more and more money for the company each days in exchange for a smaller and smaller piece of the cake. If your production can't be measured in money (i.e scientists) then I'm sure there is another measurable objective that you can pick.
If thanks to technology and your talent you can earn your salary in 3 days, than yay for you. If you are a lazy bastard you will have to work longer hours.
Of course there's the problem of the company saying "nu-huh, you only produced (x-3) because we say so", but that's what we are supposed to have laws for.
I think the majority of jobs don't lend themselves to this kind of production metric, rather than it being the exception. I mean, I work in software development. Judging programmer output is notoriously difficult, which is to say nothing of QA, design, management, legal, usability, PR, sales, and whatever else the people in this building do. I don't think we have a single job here that could be effectively assigned a weekly quota.
I think the real problem is less that we have 5 day work weeks and more that we (particularly in the US) have this fetishization of work. You're not a good worker, no matter how well you do your job, unless you work a lot. The fact that you can finish your work to a high standard in 40 hours doesn't mean much if everyone else on the team works 45, 'cause then management wants to know why you aren't working those 5 hours like everyone else. People don't take vacations--when their job actually gives them a reasonable allotment of vacation days in the first place--and work overtime as a matter of course rather than the exception.
My employer is fairly forward-thinking on most things (schedules are pretty flexible, time off is pretty good and not hard to take, there are a lot of employee perks, etc) but I've still heard managers a couple of levels up from me talking about how they feel like people should be at work at least 50 hours a week. And yeah, some weeks it takes 50 hours or more to get the job done, but the expectation that you should just be at the office an extra couple of hours a day and/or on weekends really rubs me the wrong way. Employers in general have this expectation that employees should put their job first and life second. If you don't love being at work, you'd damned well better pretend to. They're better about that here than at other jobs I've had, but it's still there. As is the expectation that personal affairs not take precedence over The Job. At my last job people would be looking down their nose at you if you had the bad grace to take an hour off in the morning to go to the doctor because you were sick or injured (and God forbid you take the Whole Day).
Another software developer here. Work hours are one reason why I get really excited about the possibility of working independently.
A few weeks ago, I had almost 2 entire weeks off from work, and spent every day working on a side project. I found that I was most effective for about the first 4 hours in the morning, and after that I could feel my energy and effectiveness and focus just starting to fall off. Not completely off, where I couldn't get anything done -- but there was a marked decrease.
If, someday, I do achieve independence, I'd like to experiment with a schedule where I work 6 days a week for 4 hours a day. I wonder if I could have the same level of productivity as a 5 day/8 hour workweek, or a 4 day/10 hour workweek, given the aforementioned observation.
If, someday, I do achieve independence, I'd like to experiment with a schedule where I work 6 days a week for 4 hours a day. I wonder if I could have the same level of productivity as a 5 day/8 hour workweek, or a 4 day/10 hour workweek, given the aforementioned observation.
I definitely feel like there's an assumption in the way we schedule work that all work-hours are equal, and it's almost certainly false.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
The number of hours a week I bill a day is easily quantified, but the number of hours a day I work is harder to pin down. There are plenty of days where I work from home and all down time becomes actual leisure time, and that is truly fantastic, and not really any different from days in the office in terms of productivity. Going this route also means I may work 7 days a week, and may come home and relax for a while with my wife then work some more, so it has its pros and cons.
As an academic, my worry is that a 4 day work week would translate into a 4 day school week. That would likely have terribad consequences in terms of the education children received.
I would, perhaps, be in favor of 4 day work weeks if we took schools off the agrarian calendar and went to year-round schooling, 4 days a week. Maybe.
My general question is how a 4 day work week would impact school schedules.
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ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
If, someday, I do achieve independence, I'd like to experiment with a schedule where I work 6 days a week for 4 hours a day. I wonder if I could have the same level of productivity as a 5 day/8 hour workweek, or a 4 day/10 hour workweek, given the aforementioned observation.
I definitely feel like there's an assumption in the way we schedule work that all work-hours are equal, and it's almost certainly false.
It is very false. You get diminishing returns that turn negative after repeated long days. As in one hour of work now adds two later. I can look for the papers later if anyone wants. I'm on a phone now though.
Yep, plenty of research on how more than 40 hours of work produces diminishing returns. Even Henry Ford figured it out way back in the day. Of course a lot of it is premised on jobs where you actually WORK all 8 hours (factory). People who work long hours at office jobs week after week likely spend a surprising amount of time doing fuck-all.
And yes, if we transitioned to an economy in the US where you got many of the benefits you now need to work to have (health insurance, retirement, etc) you would see lots of people choose to work less. Hell, you see it now with people who do not have to work (e.g. have another income source like primary breadwinner) but have valuable specialized skills/education - they can dictate more relaxed/flexible schedules at an interesting job because they are willing to get paid less.
If I had the flexibility, I'd probably pick 4x10s, but I understand why some people would prefer regular 5x8s or something else.
For me, if I'm working on a focus task the difference between doing it for 4 hours in a row or 5 is pretty minimal in terms of productivity (assuming I broke up the shift with lunch at the halfway point in either case).
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ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
Yep, plenty of research on how more than 40 hours of work produces diminishing returns. Even Henry Ford figured it out way back in the day. Of course a lot of it is premised on jobs where you actually WORK all 8 hours (factory). People who work long hours at office jobs week after week likely spend a surprising amount of time doing fuck-all.
Yeah, it's old research. The amount you hit diminishing returns at is pretty low though, it's way less than eight hours.
And it gets complicated at stuff like offices. I'm at an office right now - obviously nothing pressing is going on. So how bad are the diminishing returns? I basically front-load my workday so by the end I'm doing nothing except responding to outside things. The only problems with keeping me here too long are increased mistakes. But the level of activity is so low that there's not really a chance of returns changing greatly.
Well, except for the cumulative fatigue I get from six day weeks which is kind of making me resentful. But that's probably a different issue.
Transitioning to an office job was crazy, because yeah you don't actually "work" 40 hours each week. It's not like a video store, where if "you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean."
I'm there to be available for certain skilled support during the workday, and I have a slate of responsibilities and ongoing tasks. But to be honest? I could spend 32 hours a week and get just as much done.
Which is to say that yeah, ten to twenty percent of my time is spent doing fuck all. But I'm salaried, more or less, and that's just kinda how it goes.
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ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
Transitioning to an office job was crazy, because yeah you don't actually "work" 40 hours each week. It's not like a video store, where if "you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean."
I'm there to be available for certain skilled support during the workday, and I have a slate of responsibilities and ongoing tasks. But to be honest? I could spend 32 hours a week and get just as much done.
Which is to say that yeah, ten to twenty percent of my time is spent doing fuck all. But I'm salaried, more or less, and that's just kinda how it goes.
Yeah I've sort of got this going. I have been bored and making up work for myself to not appear too slacky. Just as a social thing, because they do need me there for phone calls. So I mean I have purpose, but it's not like I do six hours of work if I'm here for six hours. I usually do two hours of work, then three off/eight on for a few hours, then like fifteen off/two on at the end of the day.
I wouldn't like a 4x10 schedule because A) after about 8 hours of work, my productivity tanks anyway, and I would pretty much not get to see my kids 4 days a week. Right now I get off between 4-4:30, get home around five, make dinner, and get to play with them for maybe an hour once you figure in homework and baths and whatever.
It would also presumably up daycare costs. If the kids are going to school on a 5 day schedule, then you're saving maybe 3 hours of daycare one day and adding about 8 hours across the other 4 days.
I can see how it makes sense for folks without children, though.
You see them all day for 3 days though. The bigger issue is child care and such while you are at work. But that's an issue now too.
Well, no. Because they're in school five days a week. Unless we're also suggesting that kids attend school for longer periods on 4 days a week, which is crazy, because little kids can't be expected to focus 8-9 hours per day. So I wind up seeing them all day for two days, half a day on Friday, and pretty much not at all.
Though really, even if they did only attend school 4 days a week, having pretty much zero time with them for four days in a row would be lousy.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I would love for this to be a thing if only to marginally reduce the opportunities for casual exploitation that most people who work any set shift experiences.
I have never, ever, worked an office job whereupon finishing what was expected of me sooner than expected that I wasn't given more responsibilities that should not have been mine. And, sooner than later, those extra responsibilities simply become yours, without any impact on your pay or title. Because, well, you're there, are you not going to do what your boss tells you to?
Is this salary work, or are you bitching that in your hourly pay job, they expected you to work the hours they were paying you for?
When somebody says "office job" I nearly always assume salary work. Or at the very least "hourly" work, where you are expected to work precisely forty hours a week (but can be paid overtime).
Either way, it's shitty to be hired to do one thing and end up doing about twelve and taking over other tasks that keep creeping on. Regardless of how you're being paid, if you're hired to handle phones and organize files, and then you end up having to make a bunch of outbound calls, and then more of a different type, and then fix broken printers, and then manage the office supplies, it's a shitty thing.
I guess I'm not seeing the huge imposition, assuming you're not being asked to take on responsibilities way above your pay level. If you're hired as an admin assistant for $35k and they have you doing programming work that most people get $60k for, yeah, that's lame. But if you're hired to answer the phones and keep the cabinets organized, and later on they find that that only occupies 30 hours a week so they have you run print jobs and keep an eye on the fax machine? Boo hoo. They're paying you for 40 hours a week, and it's not unreasonable to expect you to actually work 40 hours a week.
Now, if you're being kept busy 40 hours a week and they keep asking you to do more stuff that requires you to either work OT or compromise your quality of work on your other tasks, that's different. But it doesn't sound like that's what you're griping about.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
If you divorce employment from huge fixed-cost benefits (like medical insurance) you can just hire more people, with each working less (but substantial) hours.
Well, there are always fixed costs associated with headcount. You can reduce them, but they're not totally escapable.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Every NHS trust I've worked at uses Long Days; 3 12.5 hour shifts for 3 weeks, then a 4 day week on the 4th week. So we still only do 37.5 hours per week.
It never works out though, permanent staff are constantly overworking on promise of days off. :I
On the plus side, if you work a hellish 3 days (or 4 ) in a row, you get a nice long break after.
A lot of American hospitals use this structure, too.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I guess I'm not seeing the huge imposition, assuming you're not being asked to take on responsibilities way above your pay level. If you're hired as an admin assistant for $35k and they have you doing programming work that most people get $60k for, yeah, that's lame. But if you're hired to answer the phones and keep the cabinets organized, and later on they find that that only occupies 30 hours a week so they have you run print jobs and keep an eye on the fax machine? Boo hoo. They're paying you for 40 hours a week, and it's not unreasonable to expect you to actually work 40 hours a week.
That effectively punishes the worker for having a particularly efficient first few months on the job. If the increased duties aren't swiftly followed by a pay raise, I would be pretty irritated, and I would learn not to work any harder. And I would probably start looking for a new job.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
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I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of middle-managerial types I've met who, confronted with increased productivity by switching to pay-per-output would not immediately think to switch back to pay-per-hour in order to get more productivity for less money. Almost every middle manager seems to have some sort of logic filter whereby ridiculous bullshit metrics and untenable employee requirements seem like good ideas. I think it's an artifact of being simultaneously insulated from either the workers your decision impact and from obvious responsibility for the overall company performance. At the top you have executives who may well have no idea what the rank and file do or how they might do it better, but are heavily invested in the company prospering. At the bottom you have people who have personal relationships with the rank and file and may well have risen out of it to a leadership position, so understand what needs to happen on a daily basis and what will or won't work. But in the middle you've got people who don't know, don't care to know, and are more concerned with distancing themselves from their subordinates' failures while taking credit for their successes than actually causing those successes.
A business with a relatively flat org structure might move to a 4-day week or flex scheduling or pay-per-output or whatever, but I'd bet Several American Dollars it's going to be pretty rare in any organization with a lot of vertical distance between the top and bottom.
It would also presumably up daycare costs. If the kids are going to school on a 5 day schedule, then you're saving maybe 3 hours of daycare one day and adding about 8 hours across the other 4 days.
I can see how it makes sense for folks without children, though.
4x10 was nice, I'm on a 5-4-9 now (9 hours Mon-Thurs, 8 hours one Friday, the other Friday off...80 hours over two weeks). It's pretty great.
Honestly, with the money I make I could easily afford the eight-hour hit and just take both Friday's off. A 34-hour week at my pay rate would easily pay all my bills. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, this would be frowned upon in my office (as with most). Though technically per our contract, I'm pretty sure I could take leave without pay if I so chose.
With the talk of furloughs coming down (federal employee), I've wound up thinking much the same. One day extra off a week for twenty-two weeks? Nice. Sucks for people who budget their entire salaries (or who don't make enough not to), but for me? I can swing it, it's like a 12% decrease over the year. Basically equal to taking my on-Friday's off all year.
I just really, really would like to see our society move away from the 40-hour-week. If increased production isn't going to lead to higher pay, it'd be nice if it at least led to increased leisure time (which could also help with unemployment...hire more workers to work equal hours total).
So.. yeah. I'd love the quiet time, but I don't know if I'd enjoy it.
I pretty much feel like I never, ever have time off. I have work every weekday, until Saturday when I have morning work, an afternoon to be all tired from getting up early, and then Sunday where I get ready for six days of work. It is not so much fun.
The obvious omission from this thinking, I reckon, is public services, as they don't really have productivity metrics.
Which counts for a good portion of all Western labor, IIRC.
For one, measuring output in a lot of industries is a very difficult problem.
Food/Retail/General Service: Customers served? This creates a clear problem in that some shifts will have more customers, and in some fields there are substantial differences between customers.
Academics/Theorists/Economists: Theories suggested? Students taught?
Programmers/Writers: Lines? This would be counterproductive as brevity and efficiency would have negative incentives.
Doctors/Hospitals: Procedures/exams performed? Oh wait, that's largely what we do now and it has helped create massive healthcare inflation.
I would suggest that if anything we focus too much on outcomes and not enough on good process as a society in general. Lacking quality metrics to really measure how much an employee is doing in an objective way in most industries/occupations, its superior to either create responsibilities that an employee is intended to meet during a standard work week (salaried employees) or set a standard of work performance and have the employee follow these rules for a set amount of time (hourly).
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Incidentally, this is how Charles Dickens was paid. It kind of shows.
I was reading an excerpt from The Org about the Baltimore Police Department, when they decided to define "arrests" as the metric by which to measure police performance.
Which, if "arrests" is what you ask for, "arrests" is what you'll get. Not "arrests that lead to convictions," or "arrests of dangerous people," or even necessarily "arrests of people breaking a law." But you'll put plenty of wear and tear on some handcuffs, and jails will be full. I think one district, IIRC, had more arrests than it had residents. Just arresting everybody. Riding a bike without the proper lighting, as required by law? Not a crime, but I can stop you, ask for proper ID, and now I can arrest you if you don't have it on you. You won't get charged with anything, just booked and released shortly, but it's an arrest, it goes to the metric.
So yes, you have to be very, very careful what you use as a metric. The classic example is phone support...generally the metric is either calls completed or tickets closed, which means I have the incentive to either get you off the phone as fast as possible or close your ticket ASAP, regardless of if I've actually helped you.
If I could get that on a regular basis I'd happily work for reduced pay.
I know a lot of places run 5x10, with 2 shifts, and just eat the 4hrs of dead time in the early morning.
Is this salary work, or are you bitching that in your hourly pay job, they expected you to work the hours they were paying you for?
You see them all day for 3 days though. The bigger issue is child care and such while you are at work. But that's an issue now too.
Generally, having lived with shift-workers my whole life and knowing a shitload of them, they all love the schedule. (they don't tend to love the night shifts, but that's irrelevant to this discussion) You get so so much more free time. Including commuting time going down, which is all just wasted time. Days where you didn't just come home from work feel so much more productive.
The biggest issues you run in to are interactions with the 5-day-week world, where it's a pain in the ass to do weekly activities or the like. Which doesn't really apply if everyone is doing 4 days per week I suppose.
Great story about apple and steve woz(I think it was woz), their departments were measured in metrics by lines of code. Woz hated a solution someone came up with, and had a brainstorm, wrote a function that replaced 32 thousand lines of code or so with under a few hundred, so they were in the negative for the year when that week finished and metrics were checked. managers flipped their shit. I would say its a wive's tale except I remember reading it straight from his mouth. It was either woz or a friend within the company.
I did 4-10's for a while, but it turned really unproductive and I had to switch back sadly. I am on salary now so the boss within reason doesnt care if Im late or leaving early as long as the works done and that is awesome.
When somebody says "office job" I nearly always assume salary work. Or at the very least "hourly" work, where you are expected to work precisely forty hours a week (but can be paid overtime).
If you divorce employment from huge fixed-cost benefits (like medical insurance) you can just hire more people, with each working less (but substantial) hours.
Either way, it's shitty to be hired to do one thing and end up doing about twelve and taking over other tasks that keep creeping on. Regardless of how you're being paid, if you're hired to handle phones and organize files, and then you end up having to make a bunch of outbound calls, and then more of a different type, and then fix broken printers, and then manage the office supplies, it's a shitty thing.
Personally I think I'd prefer to stay on 5x8s with better sick/vacation allowances than most american workers seem to get, if the discussion is just about improving worker QoL.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Well yeah, in fact lots of places do that. Except they divorce them via having 6 part times covering the 168 hours that make up 24/7. Look no ones over 30 hours, no need to pay for insurance.
Right, but if we can as a nation divorce that entirely from most or all employment, then it no longer matters.
Which means then employers have to compete on actual hourly wage, rather than on being able to give you just enough hours that you don't die of a tooth infection because you have no insurance.
It makes the pay per hours worked scale a lot more linear, instead of having a huge jump at 32, 36, or whatever defines "full time" versus "part time." And now the employer no longer has the incentive after that jump in compensation to force all full-time employees up to 40 hours (since that scale works both ways...to an employer it's "hours received for compensation given").
I'd love to work a 32-hour or 36-hour week at my current rate of pay. And I think dual-income households might benefit from being able to have both earners at 30-32 hours, rather than trying to have one at 40 (too little pay), one at 40 and one at 20 (shitty benefits, including sick leave, for the latter), or both at 40 (child care eats up gains).
Hell, the first thing I'd probably do if you cut an hour off each of my workdays is spend that hour doing something active. Or...so I tell myself.
Until one day you give notice and then stand back and watch the panic
I'm probably leaving soon. The job is totally doable so there won't be too much panic, except there is stuff that basically only I can do.
The second a computer breaks down or the files emailed to us have their name style changed, people are going to miss me. Good luck happening upon another receptionist who knows Python!
Yeah, it always kinda sucks when you realize a service/skill you offer to an employer like that has no actual value to them. I mean, they'll take it if it's free, but they won't pay you one dime extra for it. And yeah, that's when it becomes time to move on, and see if somebody else will.
My parents were happy to help babysit, but we felt like more than two days a week was too much to ask. We were able to do Tuesday / Thursday daycare, which was 8-5 for a flat rate...when I changed jobs, we had to do Monday / Wednesday / Friday daycare, and pay a hell of a lot more.
It's a very enjoyable feeling.
Sadly, the people who suffer are the other poor fucks like yourself who are told to figure it out and deal with it on top of what they are already dealing with...MAYBE your immediate supervisor.
As long as the mid level managers have someone to scream at, they don't give a fuck how bad everything is under them.
Another software developer here. Work hours are one reason why I get really excited about the possibility of working independently.
A few weeks ago, I had almost 2 entire weeks off from work, and spent every day working on a side project. I found that I was most effective for about the first 4 hours in the morning, and after that I could feel my energy and effectiveness and focus just starting to fall off. Not completely off, where I couldn't get anything done -- but there was a marked decrease.
If, someday, I do achieve independence, I'd like to experiment with a schedule where I work 6 days a week for 4 hours a day. I wonder if I could have the same level of productivity as a 5 day/8 hour workweek, or a 4 day/10 hour workweek, given the aforementioned observation.
I definitely feel like there's an assumption in the way we schedule work that all work-hours are equal, and it's almost certainly false.
I would, perhaps, be in favor of 4 day work weeks if we took schools off the agrarian calendar and went to year-round schooling, 4 days a week. Maybe.
My general question is how a 4 day work week would impact school schedules.
It is very false. You get diminishing returns that turn negative after repeated long days. As in one hour of work now adds two later. I can look for the papers later if anyone wants. I'm on a phone now though.
And yes, if we transitioned to an economy in the US where you got many of the benefits you now need to work to have (health insurance, retirement, etc) you would see lots of people choose to work less. Hell, you see it now with people who do not have to work (e.g. have another income source like primary breadwinner) but have valuable specialized skills/education - they can dictate more relaxed/flexible schedules at an interesting job because they are willing to get paid less.
For me, if I'm working on a focus task the difference between doing it for 4 hours in a row or 5 is pretty minimal in terms of productivity (assuming I broke up the shift with lunch at the halfway point in either case).
Yeah, it's old research. The amount you hit diminishing returns at is pretty low though, it's way less than eight hours.
And it gets complicated at stuff like offices. I'm at an office right now - obviously nothing pressing is going on. So how bad are the diminishing returns? I basically front-load my workday so by the end I'm doing nothing except responding to outside things. The only problems with keeping me here too long are increased mistakes. But the level of activity is so low that there's not really a chance of returns changing greatly.
Well, except for the cumulative fatigue I get from six day weeks which is kind of making me resentful. But that's probably a different issue.
I'm there to be available for certain skilled support during the workday, and I have a slate of responsibilities and ongoing tasks. But to be honest? I could spend 32 hours a week and get just as much done.
Which is to say that yeah, ten to twenty percent of my time is spent doing fuck all. But I'm salaried, more or less, and that's just kinda how it goes.
Yeah I've sort of got this going. I have been bored and making up work for myself to not appear too slacky. Just as a social thing, because they do need me there for phone calls. So I mean I have purpose, but it's not like I do six hours of work if I'm here for six hours. I usually do two hours of work, then three off/eight on for a few hours, then like fifteen off/two on at the end of the day.
Well, no. Because they're in school five days a week. Unless we're also suggesting that kids attend school for longer periods on 4 days a week, which is crazy, because little kids can't be expected to focus 8-9 hours per day. So I wind up seeing them all day for two days, half a day on Friday, and pretty much not at all.
Though really, even if they did only attend school 4 days a week, having pretty much zero time with them for four days in a row would be lousy.
I guess I'm not seeing the huge imposition, assuming you're not being asked to take on responsibilities way above your pay level. If you're hired as an admin assistant for $35k and they have you doing programming work that most people get $60k for, yeah, that's lame. But if you're hired to answer the phones and keep the cabinets organized, and later on they find that that only occupies 30 hours a week so they have you run print jobs and keep an eye on the fax machine? Boo hoo. They're paying you for 40 hours a week, and it's not unreasonable to expect you to actually work 40 hours a week.
Now, if you're being kept busy 40 hours a week and they keep asking you to do more stuff that requires you to either work OT or compromise your quality of work on your other tasks, that's different. But it doesn't sound like that's what you're griping about.
Well, there are always fixed costs associated with headcount. You can reduce them, but they're not totally escapable.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
A lot of American hospitals use this structure, too.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
That effectively punishes the worker for having a particularly efficient first few months on the job. If the increased duties aren't swiftly followed by a pay raise, I would be pretty irritated, and I would learn not to work any harder. And I would probably start looking for a new job.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.