Bring back the 40-hour work week

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/

by callmeed • 14 years ago

77 86 14 years ago

swampthing2• 14 years ago

The 'knowledge worker' section would be a lot more convincing if it provided citations.

magicalist• 14 years ago

there are several links in there citing sources, the second of which is to a paper from the author's relative(? spouse?), which it explicitly notes "contains a wealth of links to studies conducted by businesses, universities, industry associations and the military that supported early-20th-century leaders as they embraced the short week":

http://www.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons

swampthing2• 14 years ago

Sorry, I meant to write about the 'knowledge worker' section in particular. I've edited to reflect that. The only cite in that section is supposedly to a US military study but actually goes to a findarticles.com page that doesn't directly support the statement being cited and that makes no reference to said study.

einhverfr2• 14 years ago

A larger question would be whether integrative living (i.e. working from home, spending your coffee breaks with your kids) impacts the optimal level of work.

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.

DanBC6• 14 years ago

I'm guessing that having a shitty boss affects manual workers about as much as knowledge workers. Production drops; errors increase; sick leave increases; levels of stress are spread to colleagues; etc.

steve-howard• 14 years ago

Overtime and burnout were covered in Peopleware back in 1987. Looks like we're doomed to relearn our lessons again and again...

carboncrank• 14 years ago

Totally agree and I'd go further. I struggled to get past the tendentiousness of the sentence:

"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).

tricolon• 14 years ago

This is the original article: http://www.alternet.org/visions/154518/why_we_have_to_go_bac...

Jebus• 14 years ago

If the boss asks me to work 50 hours, I work 30. True story

markokocic• 14 years ago

But you still sit at work 50 hours, or you go home after 30 hours?

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.

danmaz745• 14 years ago

[Irony]Isn't that what Hacker News is for??[/Irony]

zeroonetwothree• 14 years ago

I find I get about as much done "working" 60 hours as 30.

ChristianMarks• 14 years ago

One of my thesis committee members told me after I finished that I did not like working for bosses unless they were very very smart. This article reminds me that working as a consultant beats working as an employee. It also reminds me why I generally detest bosses. The thought of being stuck with a brain that could think approvingly about "keeping butts in chairs" in those smug unlettered terms fills me with pity and horror.

nasmorn• 14 years ago

I really like days where I put in those 5 to 6 perfect hours and then instead of the meetings and email I just go hone.

gedekran• 14 years ago

What are you honing?

jimfl• 14 years ago

Typing skills.

robinduckett• 14 years ago

Sorry, when did they ever go away?

scrrr• 14 years ago

I think overtime is often the consequence of managers that don't know when or how to say "no" to client's demands.

Zakharov• 14 years ago

And it hurts the country, too. For every four Americans working a 50-hour week, every week, there’s one American who should have a full-time job, but doesn’t. Our rampant unemployment problem would vanish overnight if we simply worked the way we’re supposed to by law.

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?

batista• 14 years ago

So, it's not one in four, it's one it ten. How about that?

maushu2• 14 years ago

You are confusing productivity as a measure for the number of jobs.

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.

stusmith1977• 14 years ago

...but I'm quite happy with my 35-hour week, thankyou.

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?

bmuon• 14 years ago

Exactly. Where I live (Argentina) we have a 40 hour week that usually turns at least into 45 hours because most people work from 9 to 18 with an hour for lunch in the middle.

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.

kamaal10• 14 years ago

Fact is, I'm productive with a 8 hour a day schedule if and only if:

    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.

But the fact is, none of this is true in our area of work. To some extent even if something similar exists it wont work for many reasons.

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.

DanBC6• 14 years ago

> there is always a peer who is putting in extra hours innovating, building and learning

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.

kamaal10• 14 years ago

I don't know why you consider working hard as a broken culture.

bmj3• 14 years ago

There are two things that kill my 8-hour-day productivity:

  1.  Meetings
  2.  Someone upstream not doing their job.

#2 is far worse than #1 (and directly related to the parent's #1). There is truly nothing worse than a project manager who allows requirements to be delivered late, but doesn't push out the deadline for the entire project.

kamaal10• 14 years ago

Lets say #2 is not a problem for the minute and you meet somebody like you.

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.

danmaz745• 14 years ago

I agree with the general thesis of the article, but at least in the software industry there are two big problems with this reasoning.

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?

DanBC6• 14 years ago

You have a programmer who works for 13 hours a day. That programmer does three days in a row of 13 hours. That's 39 hours, not including any travel etc.

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.

kamaal10• 14 years ago

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.

bmj3• 14 years ago

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.

danmaz745• 14 years ago

I completely agree that promoting the concept that "only" working 40 hours is lazy is completely wrong. But forcing everybody to always only work 40 hours a week would be wrong too. In Italy, theoretically, overtime hours have to be paid more than normal hours, which I think would be fair and good - this alone would make managers really think about the productivity of those extra hours.

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).

mathattack• 14 years ago

Any contention on this topic should be solvable in the market. Companies and managers that believe in the 40 hour week fight it out with companies and managers who don't. (This decision is made by managers - though employees have to agree) Different people have different amounts to give at different stages in their life. Let the market decide which approach is more enlightened, and let people decide how much they want to work.

jacobr• 14 years ago

My standard work week is 37.5 hours, but Thursdays and Fridays I work half days, and from home, to spend extra time with my son, so it's currently 30 hours a week. I asked my team leader if she thought it was going ok, and her response was "it's not much more time away than a couple of unnecessary meetings".

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.

michaelochurch• 14 years ago

In technology, I actually think it makes sense for metered work demands (i.e things a person is told to do by management or clients, as opposed to learning new technologies, going to conferences, contributing to open-source) to top out around 25 hours per week. Even that's pushing it. The other 15-30 should be more open, long-term focused, and self-directed (because this component of the workweek is more autonomous, people can sustainably total 50+ hours without ruining their health, if these autonomy conditions at met).

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.

namenotrequired• 14 years ago

Personally, I used to work 40 hours a week, and felt that was enough and I shouldn't have taken on more. Then again I do a lot of volunteer work as well besides that, but it's something I love, and something I can do from home whenever I want and have the time. And as I live with my parents, I don't have a family to look after or anything, so it feels like that comes in the place of looking after my house and family etc.

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.

jdietrich• 14 years ago

I keep reading these sort of articles and wondering why the American people seem so opposed to basic employment law.

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.

ordinary• 14 years ago

All workers are entitled to a legal minimum of 5.6 weeks of paid holiday.

This is incorrect. In the Netherlands, at least, 20 days is the legal minimum, though most people get 25.

desas• 14 years ago

In the UK the minimum is 20 days.

A significant proportion of people get 25 days + 8 public holidays

jbarham• 14 years ago

Given that e.g. the unemployment rate in Spain is 23% [1] and Greece is bankrupt, it seems a little quixotic to be highlighting European entitlements for workers, when the more pressing problem is obviously the huge numbers of people who are not working and cannot find work and to whom those entitlements are a bad joke. Indeed, some people might even posit a link between entitlements and the current economic mess in Europe...

1. http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/03/spains-budge...

rimantas2• 14 years ago

How about Germany, Norway, Sweden? I don't know about Spain, but 40 hours week was least of Greece's problem.

rmc2• 14 years ago

The countries in Europe (Germany, France) that are bailing out other countries (e.g. Ireland, Portugal), are the ones with long holidays bailing out the countries with short holidays.

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.

kibwen• 14 years ago

"All workers are entitled to a legal minimum of 5.6 weeks of paid holiday."

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?

ovi256• 14 years ago

In Socialist Yurop as well, in most countries, there are different rules on when and how much paid holiday you get in your first year, meaning you cannot get hired and take a month paid holiday, it has to accrue. So you would get a week after a few months, for example, then more, and so on. It looks fair to me.

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.

rythie• 14 years ago

There are tons of developers jobs in U.K., companies always seem to be on the look out.

rmc2• 14 years ago

Is Europe hiring software developers?

Yes. Like the USA, there is a shortage of developers.

dripton• 14 years ago

I'm a programmer in the US, and I get 4 weeks paid vacation plus 2 weeks paid sick leave plus 10 paid holidays.

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.

tobiasu• 14 years ago

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

-- John Steinbeck (disputed according to wikiquote)

Gormo• 14 years ago

> I keep reading these sort of articles and wondering why the American people seem so opposed to basic employment law.

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...

Shivetya• 14 years ago

I believe hours worked is only relevant to the type of work being done. Yet I think it is overall unrealistic to expect a forty hour week. Having been raised on a farm I know that forty hour weeks are a vacation to some, even now self employed people would scoff at forty hours. We have great examples of what happened to many of these prized union jobs that limited work to forty hours on top of rules that prevented people from doing "other people's work". Not many of them are good, hence they moved into government jobs where there it is much harder to bankrupt the employer for lack of production.

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.

jwingy• 14 years ago

These concerns are addressed in the article.

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).

rimantas2• 14 years ago

  > Those of us who sit back and claim enlightenment by
  > denouncing such hours are only going to end up being
  > passed by.

There is huge huge huge difference between working smarter and just sitting back.

lrobb2• 14 years ago

In the renowned 1993 study of young violinists, performance researcher Anders Ericsson found that the best ones all practiced the same way: in the morning, in three increments of no more than 90 minutes each, with a break between each one. Ericcson found the same pattern among other musicians, athletes, chess players and writers.

For Real Productivity, Less is Truly More: http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2010/05/for-real-productivity-...

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.

SkyMarshal• 14 years ago

> 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.

kamaal10• 14 years ago

This is true provided you have to master the instrument. Not when you compose music. They are two different things.

Typing is not the same as programing. I learned to type real fast long back. But I'm still learning the art of programming.

lrobb2• 14 years ago

You obviously didn't bother to read the article or it's references.

functionoid4• 14 years ago

If it bothers someone to work extra they should not be doing that work. Because it means you are doing something you do not love. I do not mean to say you have to slave for 80 hours week but let's be honest when you want to create something you have to dig down and put efforts more than others that could mean working smart and putting more effort than others.

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.

Bring back the 40-hour work week

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