https://onezero.medium.com/the-rebel...e-b5b21b6a92c0

As a programmer, this one I completely agree with. There is a point in the day at which people become negatively productive. Although to be completely honest, when I was younger is it was a lot later than it is now. So yeah, constantly churning younger employees makes sense. But then again you lose a lot of experience an wisdom this way.

Anyway - I encourage everyone to read the medium article, it's really good.

It's funny because most of us look at Europe with their 6 weeks of vacation and 2.5 hour lunches, and think either a) damn that would be nice or b) they're done - no way to compete when your workers expect that kind of pampering.

But then you look at China with their 6-day weeks and 12-hour workdays, which means if you believe b) about Europe - then by corollary you have think China is going to kick our asses.

Personally I think employees are more productive than ever, and as anyone who read the old politics forum would know - I'm much more in favor of cutting back work hours than I am for straight UBI - for a lot of reasons.

Obviously in China it's simply a matter of 1.2 billion people looking for work, so you can treat them like ****. But Japan and S. Korea don't have that labor abundance and have similar rules. So it would seem there's a cultural component as well.

So my only question is - do most here think Europe is lazy and East Asia is crazy, and somehow the US is at the right balance with 40 hours/week and ~3weeks of vacation? Or do you agree with me that everyone should be working less in this age of increased productivity?

I think Europe is awesome and Americans work too hard

Interesting comparison, I wasn't aware of the Chinese work week.

I knew East Asia worked 6 days a week. But I didn't realize it was also 12 hour days in some places.

My boss told me in China it was 6 days a week but everyone went home and took a completely sanctioned 2.5 hour nap every day. Crazy.

Personally that would drive me nuts as I'd have to get up for work twice every workday. Ugh.

And of course if you have a 90 minute commute like some in that story - this doesn't work.

"Working endlessly on a punishing schedule can make people less effective than if they worked fewer hours in a calmer manner. Tired employees can do sloppy work and introduce bugs that cause downtime and even more effort to fix. Some of the greatest minds in history — those who have produced defining works for humanity — have vouched for shorter workdays to be at their creative peak. While it’s true that Darwin, Poincaré, and Thomas Mann are geniuses with superior intellectual abilities, they confined their creative output to daily blocks of three to four hours and filled the rest of their day with other activities."

-This is grunching, but for every "genius" that transformed the world with short workweeks you could probably find 2 who grinded insane hours. Looking at such a tiny group of outliers probably isn't that useful anyways when talking about society at large, but I would characterize this as a dishonest paragraph with an agenda.

Anyways, anecdotes aside I am guessing for most, but not all jobs (programmers may be an exception) productivity increases with longer work hours, until you hit some sort of threshold that is way above 40 hours/week.

That is not to say you couldn't still argue the costs of such a lifestyle on your society outweigh the benefits.

-One anecdotal example that may or may not be relevant to anything, is that hospitalists work insane hours, and I am sure this causes decrease in productivity and mistakes at some threshold; however, the data seems to indicate transferring care from one doctor to another is actually a greater cause of loss of productivity and mistakes, so it has been generally agreed long hours is the lesser of two evils.

FWIW my reason for not wanting to work more is not really that I think there would be no increase to my overall productivity if I did. It's that I have other goals besides productivity. And probably also that even in purely economic terms I think there are diminishing returns to me personally from increased productivity.

http://www.asianefficiency.com/minds...ing-more-done/

https://www.economist.com/free-excha...uld-get-a-life

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/26/work...roductive.html

There is lots of research on the subject. I could possibly see a case for "Chinese workers can work at peak effectiveness/efficiency for 40-45 hours due to lower external desires" or something like that. The data generally shows that your average person is peak effective/efficient for 30-35 hours a week.

This is the crux of the issue for me. Do the ends justify the means? I think if we look at the three examples presented, with China, Japan, and South Korea, on a surface level; No. Japan and South Korea aren't successful enough to justify what they put their citizens through. Its a bit old, but "Satisfaction with Life Index" from 2006 has China, Japan, and S Korea at 80, 90, & 102 respectively. A case study might show that there is an economy of scale to putting your population through the ringer and that is why China is able to flourish under these conditions.

The Nordic countries are generally considered the happiest populations on earth and they have some of the most progressive work schedules in the world.

I don’t know about “should” but it would nice if people had the option. The problem is way back when, some people thought we shouldn’t:



Funny thing happens when an entity has the sanction and power to ensure full employment—sometimes you get exactly that:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_12594.htm
What is the purpose of the Federal Reserve System?

• Conducting the nation's monetary policy by influencing money and credit conditions in the economy in pursuit of full employment and stable prices.

Maybe we should have been a little more clear on what we meant by full employment.

Honestly it seems like a pretty good balance between Europe and China. 40 hours seems like a reasonable work week. I have always held down 2 jobs, one 35 hours per week and another for 12 hours/week. I occasionally work OT also in addition to my scheduled hours, but not very often. The extra money comes in handy but I've often felt like I'd have so much free time, if I only worked the one FT job. Plus I do think 2 days a week off is healthy (I work 6 days).

Actually I'd like to see America switch to a 4- day week with 9hr days. The extra day off would likely improve worker productivity and happiness.

As for vacation I think the Euros have it right. 2-3 weeks isn't enough downtime for an entire year. Although if we switched to a 4-day week then the 3 day weekends might reduce the need for vacation weeks.

I'm an attorney. I own my own law firm and I have experience working in different venues within the law. I did some time in the courts, some in small firms, pseudobiglaw, and other types.

I can say that overworking/burnout is a huge issue. In 2019, I can accomplish 5x more per day than an attorney could in 1979, yet I still work more hours than the 79' attorney. It has positives and negatives, but I think it is 100% technology driven.

I imagine overwork/burnout has been a big issue in high education/executive level fields since time in memorium, but it has become so much worse with technology. Clients expect to have access to you 24/7/365 and with smartphones and email, they pretty much can. If you don't give them this access, they will just find someone else who will.

When I first started, I worked probably 60-70 hrs/week. I didn't take a day off for the first 18 months or so and by that, I mean, I think I legit worked every day including weekends. Hell, I was drafting briefs on the morning of my wedding and left my own bachelor party early for work. I was fried and eventually hit a wall where I was "working", but it was **** work product. I would review my work the next day and spend more time correcting my mistakes than time I spent drafting originally.

Some of that burnout is attributed to starting your own business, some is working in a field with high expectations that demands perfection, and some is the American work culture of work above all else.

Anecdotally, of course, but I've found that working a 9-4 allows me to be far more creative and infinitely more productive than 9-9 every day. I feel like I get just as much, if not more, done on shorter hours because I'm fresh.

I think, at least for the USA, the work culture was started by baby boomers in the 50's and 60's working blue-collar jobs. They showed up to their factory, pulled their lever for 8 hours, and went home. Those jobs just didn't require the intellect that many jobs require today in the information age and thus, they didn't have the burnout lots of jobs do today.

Post is sort of rambling but I think there is lots of room for improvement in USA#1 in this field. I don't know what the plan is or isn't, but I don't think going towards a Chinese model is the right way either. Reality is probably in the next 50 years it won't matter, as just about everyone's job will be automated away to a certain extent.

Work smarter not harder IMO.

Every immigrant I have ever talked to thinks Americans work too much.

Personally I’d say we tiptoe the line that separates too much from just right. I think we could probably take small step back from that and still maintain our competitiveness. I suspect China is not getting quality productive work out of all those hours and Europe is straight up gonna be ****ed soon.

That said, I’m very thankful for all the entrepreneurs who bust their ass to bring me awesome goods and services. They definitely work too much, but if they didn’t I wouldn’t have as good of a quality of life.

The issue is that people who make a decent living in the US work too much, and the labor force participation rate is too low. We both don't work enough and work too hard simultaneously. Just depends on how you slice up the data.

I whole-heartly agree with this. But, and I think same is true for deuces, I work in a job were I need braincells. If I spend a day just thinking about a solution, I might safe weeks of work in the future. Ive also found that if I leave work relatively fresh, I keep thinking about my job more, when Im not at work. Which in turn makes the next days more productive as Ive planned them better.

It would be hard for an assembly line worker to argue the same.

Generally I think work ethic should be "self-responsible".
If you are a slacker, I wont give you much money and none of the more fullfilling jobs.
If you're working hard and improve yourself constantly, Ill pay you tons of money and you can potentially fill any position in my company.

https://meaww.com/jack-ma-alibaba-99...t-work-culture

At a societal level you can't abstract away things like family life cycle and the like though. Someone who just had a kid simply won't be able to put in the extra hours for a couple of years, in work or out of work, to advance themselves without either putting extra work on their spouse or ignoring their family.

You can't expect companies to solve that problem because they don't get paid for having workers who don't put in those extra hours because of families so they'll try to push off workers who don't put in those extra hours in whatever way they can.

Do folks really look at the PRC and think, "yes, we should do it the way they do"?

Europe in no way has a uniform culture of 2.5 hour lunches.

Not sure how serious that statement was.

Something I read about Spain one time.

Uh... yeah, it's wrong now, and I am not sure it has been right in recent decades if ever. They are a little more relaxed about exactly when to take their lunch breaks but they still put in their 40 (go home later basically to make up missed time) at least in traditional white collar industries.

In traditional high powered white collar jobs like banking, lawyering, and software engineering, their hours aren't much better than those of American counterparts.

Whole 996 thing is dumb. 72 predictable set in stone hours with some breaks in between, and a lot of it being almost pure "face time", is not that bad. A lot of people would trade unpredicatble 60 hours (but being on call all the time) for 72 set in stone hours. It's just missing the point about what makes some jobs soul crushingly stressful for people.

I too am a computer programmer. Overall I love my job, and I get treated very well. I get lots of vacation time, and my boss constantly tells me that if I have to work off hours to just come in late / leave early the next day or whatever, and he means it.

However, the specific job I have also means I’m responsible for fixing bugs that come up; sometimes (rarely) this means working some very long days. By the end of such days, I’m completely useless. I can’t even imagine how burned out I would be and how resentful I would be towards my job if I had to work those kinds of days every day. And I like my job! I’m still pretty new to the field, and will spend free time improving my skills, and I genuinely find that to be fun. Even when I’m doing that, though, there’s a time when I just can’t focus anymore and it’s time for something else.

Additionally, I have to be on call for a week at a time, once every three weeks. On average, this probably creates about one extra hour of work per week for me; nonetheless, every time I hand the on call phone off to the next guy, I can’t believe how much less stressed I feel... and that’s just the POTENTIAL of work.

I was referring to individual quality.

Ive learned that, when private life is good, I perform better at work. When work life is good, I perform better at private life. Same works in the other way around.

UK employees usually get standard 28 days holiday per annum. Many French industry workers take the of whole of August as hols (vacation) annually. Much of traditional Spain still take the siesta which may be the 2.5hrs lunch you read about.

US working day is too long and 3 week vacation too short; you can always elect to work a longer day but harder to request additional vacation. Any vacation days not taken can be paid as salary.