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Billionaire suggests 3-day workweeks

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Genx87 said:
Are we working or just putting in time? We seem so fixated on time when we should be fixated on getting things accomplished. One of the benefits of my current position. They are really flexible on taking off early or arriving late provided I get my work done.
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i am putting in time till i have enough money to retire

maybe if i get a new job it wont be that way
 
MagnusTheBrewer said:
Some of us like working at our jobs.
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That's the thing. I work a minimum 50-hour week, typically upwards of 70 hours, but I love my job. And I get to nef sometimes, so it isn't 100% go-go-go all the time - sometimes there's downtime where I have to fix a hot job on the bench and it's just a lot of waiting between installs, so it's not always completely physically draining.

I don't really foresee myself retiring (ADD & all, haha). I'd be bored out of my noggin' 😀 But I wouldn't mind having more free days to go & do family stuff or personal projects or whatever. I have no intention of sitting around in a retirement home if I can help it, I'd rather turn into one of those 80-year-old bodybuilders or something.

Ideally, I would like a 10-hour, 4-day workweek. You get your 40 hours in, and an extra couple hours isn't going to kill you since you're already there. Then you get a 3-day weekend every weekend!
 
My workplace just changed a couple decade long policy where you could work 9 days and take the 10th off -- you made up the hours over the 9. But management decided that we didn't have sufficient coverage...

For some reason, something that worked for 20+ years suddenly wasn't good enough. No way can middle-management do something like manage employees to ensure sufficient coverage. It especially wasn't good enough in the day and age that we have computers/internet/email and 24/7 connectivity. No, we have to be in the office more.

And they also made it so that you had to come to work during "proper" business hours. No coming in too early or late, even if it doesn't affect business flow. Now, you just have to join the rush hour crush in one of the most congested cities in the world.
 
I read his plan and it is one of the dumbest plans I've ever read. Sure, it would be cool to be able to do that when you're fairly young, but can you seriously see 70 year-old people working 11 hour days? Who wants to work until they're 75, barring a cure for aging and mortality?
 
id gladly go to 4 days @ 10 hours and have a 3 day weekend. still get the magical 40 hours a week and more time off.

I know some places that work 9 hours a day and get to leave at noon on every Friday which is also a nice deal
 
MagnusTheBrewer said:
Some of us like working at our jobs.
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I'm glad for you, seriously. I have 12 hours day and am threatened if I take time to eat. I hit the floor due to hypoglycemia and no one from above ever called to check if I was alright. I expect (seriously) to die on the job. It's not my favorite place.
 
Hayabusa Rider said:
I'm glad for you, seriously. I have 12 hours day and am threatened if I take time to eat. I hit the floor due to hypoglycemia and no one from above ever called to check if I was alright. I expect (seriously) to die on the job. It's not my favorite place.
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What the heck man, you need to get out of that place! I've worked at a couple businesses like that and I can tell you that NOT everyplace is like that! I've been with my current primary employer for around 5 years now and absolutely love it...I had crappy job after crappy job before I started to discover that some places were horrible & some places were pretty decent.
 
I remember being in a team meeting and the topic of "condensed" schedules came up.

Team member: "So are we really considering a 4x10 work week policy"

Manager: "We talked about it in the managers meeting. Most of you already work 10 hour days for me as it is, so if we went to 4 x 10 weeks I'd be losing 20% of my teams productivity. Rest of the managers agreed. We voted it down".

:/
 
vi edit said:
Manager: "We talked about it in the managers meeting. Most of you already work 10 hour days for me as it is, so if we went to 4 x 10 weeks I'd be losing 20% of my teams productivity. Rest of the managers agreed. We voted it down".

:/
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That's when you stop working the 10 hour days. I was a sucker and did that too and it finally hit me that I set the expectation of 10 hour days and it was my own fault. So I stopped doing it and felt much better.
 
IndyColtsFan said:
That's when you stop working the 10 hour days. I was a sucker and did that too and it finally hit me that I set the expectation of 10 hour days and it was my own fault. So I stopped doing it and felt much better.
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Yup. Not sure why anyone would willingly subject themselves to slavery. Loyalty to the company? They would lay you off in a heartbeat if they thought it would save them a nickel.
 
Genx87 said:
Are we working or just putting in time? We seem so fixated on time when we should be fixated on getting things accomplished. One of the benefits of my current position. They are really flexible on taking off early or arriving late provided I get my work done.
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Selling your time is a relic of manual labor in the pre-industrial age, an issue that has been exacerbated by the computer age. Though manual labor has bot been phased out of the economy, the volume required is nowhere near the levels required before automation, first mechanical and now electrical.

So Volume Manual Labor is a mostly outmoded concept, that will continue to decline with further advances.

The caveat here is that once you shift to a model that is based purely on productivity, business owners will just raise the productivity standards until you are working 40, 50, or 60 hours peer week anyway.

So the best way, oddly, to deal with the issue, is to keep it measured in time, but limit it, in much the way the Billionaire guy suggested. However, I think there should be a tad more flexibility than what he suggests (eg 4x8.5, alternating work days under his plan, etc).
 
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Since I write software, I'll work until I die I guess. It is not like the work I do can't be done when I very old and less able to move around. So long as I still have my mental faculties I am not worried about "retiring" at all.
 
I get paid hourly right now and skip lunch sometimes to grab that little bit of overtime but I don't willingly work past 5:30, and when I'm salary (September) that won't be changing. Then again there is an expectation of being contactable 24/7.
 
I start to zone out most days after about 8.5-9 hours. I feel like @ 11 hours per day, even just 3 days a week would lower my productivity, or maybe not really raise it. I'd rather do 4x9hrs than 3x11 hours, even if I'm working an extra 3 hours. I don't do enough to really warrant an extra 2 days off a week.
 
Hayabusa Rider said:
I'm glad for you, seriously. I have 12 hours day and am threatened if I take time to eat. I hit the floor due to hypoglycemia and no one from above ever called to check if I was alright. I expect (seriously) to die on the job. It's not my favorite place.
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forcing 12 hours with no breaks is a pretty huge OSHA violation if true
 
Kaido said:
The catch? You have to work 11-hour days until you're 75
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the other catch.. at 33 hours you would be considered as a part-time employee.. which generally means no overtime pay, no benefits or any other "perks" that a full-time worker is afforded either by custom or law.
 
Sitting at a desk all day could be extended to a ten or twelve hour day, but jobs that require that you be on your feet or moving around would not be productive. Employees would start finding ways to relax and be away from their work areas. The biggest downside is the commuting time and winter daylight. I lose my motivation when I get home and feel too tired to do anything but go to bed so I can get ready to do it again tomorrow.
 
Eno Safirey said:
Sitting at a desk all day could be extended to a ten or twelve hour day, but jobs that require that you be on your feet or moving around would not be productive. Employees would start finding ways to relax and be away from their work areas. The biggest downside is the commuting time and winter daylight. I lose my motivation when I get home and feel too tired to do anything but go to bed so I can get ready to do it again tomorrow.
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That's everyday -- summer or winter -- for me. Is this really it?
 
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