81% of Young People Say a 4-Day Workweek Would Boost Productivity, Survey Finds (cnbc.com) 206
A new national survey (PDF) from CNBC/Generation Lab of 1,033 people aged 18 to 34 found that an overwhelming 81% of respondents believe a four-day workweek would boost their company's productivity, while 19% said productivity would decline. CNBC reports: Those results from the "Youth & Money in the USA" survey come amid discussions around the potential benefits of switching from the standard five-day U.S. workweek to a four-day cadence without a pay cut. Some companies have begun testing the arrangement, and say it has mitigated employee burnout and strengthened business performance. Exos, a U.S. coaching company that trains top athletes and leads corporate wellness programs, recently reported results from the first six months of an ongoing four-day workweek experiment. The company said the shortened workweek increased efficiency along with revenue and retention.
Although respondents to the CNBC/Generation Lab survey largely agreed on workweek length, they were less unified when asked about work setting. A 60% majority said they do their best work in the office, while the other 40% said they do so at home. Further reading: 32-Hour Workweek for America Proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders
Although respondents to the CNBC/Generation Lab survey largely agreed on workweek length, they were less unified when asked about work setting. A 60% majority said they do their best work in the office, while the other 40% said they do so at home. Further reading: 32-Hour Workweek for America Proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders
Shocked I tell you... (Score:5, Funny)
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...that people want to work less for the same amount of money!
They are shocked when the employer says that they'd get the same estimated hourly rate and feel the employer should be lucky to have them. Especially when it is taking time from more experienced staff to coach them. --rolls eyes--
Re: Shocked I tell you... (Score:2)
100% of the pay, 80% of the hours, and 100% of the productivity level.
I guess drivers will have to travel faster to go the same number of miles in 80% of the time.
Gotta start somewhere (Score:2)
I'd expect a 32 hour work week, then in a few years a 30 hour work week, and then in a few more years a 24 hour work week, ....
And eventually we all get to Not Raising Hog levels of productivity: https://www.math.ttu.edu/~pear... [ttu.edu]
NOT RAISING HOGS
Dear Sir:
My friend, Ed Peterson, over at Wells, Iowa, received a check for $1,000.00 from the government for not raising hogs. So, I want to go into the "not raising hogs" business next year.
What I want to know is, in your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not t
Re:Gotta start somewhere (Score:5, Interesting)
And why shouldn't I expect it?
The weekly work hours were lowered from 48 to 40 hours in 1975 in my country. Ever since, we increased productivity per man-hour by 200% to 2000% percent in some fields.
Now a 20% reduction in time worked will break the camel's back?
Oh how did we ever work back in 1975 when we worked more and produced less? How did our economy even function at this level of abysmal productivity? How did our companies not go bankrupt left and right when we produced half to a magnitude less?
Teleportation technology... (Score:2)
They could use that 1 extra day per week to work on teleportation technology.
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The best part about this is they expect Amazon drivers, Uber drivers, Uber Eats drivers, bartenders, whatever to fully work.
Are you saying you could not get all the important part of your job done in 32 hours? If you would work 32 hours you would likely be able to get 95% of the value for your employer. Maybe over 100% in long term with reduced stress rates.
I don't understand your examples.
Uber Drivers and Uber Eats drivers are getting paid per contract. It's about work that gets done. If they can get the same thing done in 32 hours they can already do that.
Bartenders tend to already work less than 40 hours per week and make a l
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This is the disconnect between people with normal jobs vs people with "laptop jobs". Laptop jobs generally aren't very productive from work, they're productive from scaling of the work. I.e. IT engineer can serve a million people with the same code that he makes that would serve one person.
Normal jobs on the other hand derive productivity from work itself, not scaling. General practitioner MD for example can only be so quick about seeing each patient before quality of work deteriorates, and the amount of pe
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;Are you saying you could not get all the important part of your job done in 32 hours? If you would work 32 hours you would likely be able to get 95% of the value for your employer. Maybe over 100% in long term with reduced stress rates.
The answer is no, because unlike a laptop job, on normal job every patient that general practitioner sees is important. He can't just skip you because you're not as important as the previous patient. Factory worker can't skip his last shift because the previous shift was important. Etc.
Bingo! We always get into the hours worked vs productivity discussions here. And the people who believe that productivity goes up with less hours worked, are performing a monovariant analysis at best - somehow thinking that what they do is translating to everyone.
As you point out, it is not. There is another whole working world out there that fits into the 24 hour day. And if an attempt to force fit everyone into their belief occurs, it will make a mess.
And having semi-professionals dictate the hours th
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That hypothesis was tested in early industrial age with 12-14 hour work weeks 7 days a week with break for Church was a norm.
Factory work was far, FAR harder than pretty much all work today, and still production lines worked just fine. Meaning people were not net negative even with those sorts of workdays.
Notably we currently have a massive amount of factories across Asia with those 12-14 hour workdays six to seven days a week. You're almost certainly using products that came from those factories. So that's not a net negative either.
Production lines did not work "just fine". You're leaving out a lot of externalities. When a worker got his arm cut off in a machine, they'd toss him and the arm on the street and replace them with another poor sap who would do whatever it takes not to starve to death. Corporations and corporate boot-lickers would love to return to the days of child labor and locking employees inside the factory. They also seem to worship the idea of eternal infinite growth.
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I think what office workers want is a little more of all of that and a little less of spending away their life uselessly pretending to work at the office.
Office workers. Yup, that's the group. Problem is, there is a whole lot more to the world than office workers.
But first, who on earth would be surprised that young people would really like the idea of working as few hours as possible? And that these young people would be the ultimate authority on the intricacies of production and productivity?
The problem that arises is multifold. There are jobs that require 24/7 labor or response. A full time job at 40 hours a week can fit into that. 3 shifts of 8 ho
Re:Shocked I tell you... (Score:5, Insightful)
...that people want to work less for the same amount of money!
Do you want me to work or achieve something? What are you paying me for? Attendance or results? If I can do something in 4 days or 5 days what's it to you?
#contractorlife
Re:Shocked I tell you... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the Netherlands working 32 hour weeks is completely normal and you of course take a paycut. Many people will do this the moment that they get a child. If people are willing to take paycuts to work remotely - and research shows they are willing - of course they are going to be willing to take a paycut to work one day a week less.
If you could choose to take the 20% paycut and have it not affect your carreer potential (like promotions and such), I think a lot of people would do that in a heartbeat.
With productivity, people are often forgetting long term impact. For me, it is really mind-blowing how much less stress a 4 day work week gives. For many people (especially with children or family that needs care), if they spend 40 hours a week working, then some hours commuting, then spend a lot of the rest of their time doing needed caretaking and doing household duties.
If you can have a full extra day I would say in many cases it not only increases your 'free' time by more than half, it is for many family people the only 'real' free time they get. With children at school and no ongoing work you can have some off time.
The cumulative positive effect of decades of less stress and more time to do what you want is massive.
The kicker of course is that many people (especially office workers) don't need 40 hours to do their work. If you would program at high intensityv for 40 hours per week straight I think half of the people would burn out after a couple of months. So with 32 hours you will likely be able to get the same work done just fine. Hell for most you could probably just cut down some useless meetings and get to 32 without any effort
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32 hours a week with no reduction in pay is good for companies, if retaining employees has any value to them. Same with offering proper pay increases and promotions.
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32 hours a week with no reduction in pay is good for companies, if retaining employees has any value to them. Same with offering proper pay increases and promotions.
Ah - the problem is supply and demand. If as postulated in here, that people really want to work a 32 hour workweek, and go for it, there will be an oversupply of workers.
How is this? Despite the concept that everyone is an office worker whose job can fit into that 32 hour workweek, some jobs cannot. So people in those jobs will be working more than the 32 hour per week people.
So in the rush to work as few hours as possible, has more people trying to get those jerbs, they'll be offered less.
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With children at school and no ongoing work you can have some off time.
You seem eager to argue for a 4-day workweek for yourself, but not for the teachers and daycare workers. Just sayin'.
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Daycare workers can work 4 days a week. No one here is saying we all need to pick the same 4 days. As for "working" teachers, the vast majority of a teacher's job has nothing to do with attending school. A typical teacher's job is not 9-5. It's 8-9, 11-2, 3-5 with a lunch break here and a bit of marking some other days. As it is kids at my wife's school are there 5 days a week, but she isn't there on Wednesday because her math classes aren't rostered on that day.
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Not the same thing. There's enough evidence to show that if you restrict the work week you become more efficient and achieve more in your working hours. The premise here is working a 32 hour week *without* taking a pay cut.
Also the prevalence of the 32hour work week in the Netherlands is also a subject of some interesting tax / support conditions. That "20%" pay cut, often isn't actually 20% for the people who opt for the reduced hours. We had the same thing in Australia when the government started playing
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The 20% payout not only affects your day-to-day purchasing power, but it also affects how much you are able to put away fore retirement.
The best time to start saving and investing for retirement is EARLY in your career.
Compound interest, etc....are huge when it comes to having plenty of money to retire on.
You subtract 20% of that....an
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Inexperienced people giving advice ... (Score:3)
So "young" people aka new to the working world have sage advice as to how they could be more productive. This works in select circumstances only.
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Most work is make-work anyway, so I don't see where they are wrong.
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Age doesn't matter. If someone feels privileged they tend to be happier. Of course, that effect wears off quickly when everyone is equally privileged.
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You can keep that privilege, I don't give a fuck about that. But could I get two more hours to spend with my family instead?
Re:Inexperienced people giving advice ... (Score:4, Informative)
When researchers asked what the four-day structure had changed, 82% of surveyed companies reported positive impacts on staff well-being. 50% saw positive effects on reducing staff turnover and 32% said the policy had noticeably improved their recruitment, the study reports.
https://abcnews.go.com/Busines... [go.com]
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Re:Inexperienced people giving advice ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Leadership personality types need RTO validation (Score:3)
Having worked with executives on a daily basis for several years, many need the daily sense that they have 'influence', 'sway', 'direction setting', and 'course planning' over their subordinates.
It's a personality thing for the huge egos.
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I'm not here to cater to the sensibilities of fragile leadership. I'm getting paid to get shit done.
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Pretty much this right here.
Fridays are the worst. Everyone's basically watching the clock tick down to 1pm which is also the time when I can safely break SLAs and start running the security tests I should only do after work hours, because nobody but me is around who would even notice that some systems go down.
You don't think anyone gets anything sensible done on a 9 to 1 Friday, do you?
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The sad reality is most people need the structure of a work week.
That's fine, then give these people the structure of a work week and leave us who are capable of self organization out of that bullshit.
From a job, I need mostly money. I don't need an occupation, I'm quite capable of keeping myself occupied and busy.
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This is in what way different from consultants giving advice who never really worked a day in their life?
Funny (Score:2)
Yeah it's called productivity (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a phrase for it. Face eating leopards. I never thought the leopards would eat my face SOB's woman who voted for the leopards eating faces party....
But by the time you're a 55 and living out of a car that doesn't run anymore it's too late. It's the kind of thing you have to see coming but after decades of being told that fighting tooth and nail for every little scrap of everything is the way things should be it's too hard to let that go. So the number of senior citizens sleeping rough as it were keeps growing...
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Then the Boomer is decided to pull the ladder up behind them.
Fucking moron. It has nothing to do with what "generation" a person is part of. It does not define them. It is going to be funny when your grandchildren are blaming you and you can only say, "I tried my best", but everything is even more fucked up than previously. Where were you when fossil fuels were fucking up the weather causing all of the hurricanes that your grandchildren will be subjected to? It won't matter that you did your best because the bad things still happened and YOU are still being blamed fo
Re:Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they do as much work in a 32 hour week as a 40 hour week. Everyone likes this except for managers whose job is to keep chairs from floating away.
Re:Funny (Score:4, Insightful)
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So they are slacking 20% of the time now. But if they don't have to show up for work 1 day a week they won't slack off anymore? Not sure I'd take that bet.
The quote from Office Space says it all. It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation?
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So they are slacking 20% of the time now.
Don't confuse slacking with not being productive. Have you ever tried having a meeting with someone on a Friday? You achieve fuck all because their brains are fried at the end of the week. They are still putting effort in, just not achieving any meaningful results.
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Fridays meetings are a godsend! You will NEVER see agreements being closed this quickly, especially if you make it obvious you have all the time in the world while they want to leave early for the weekend.
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The last time we had a work hour reduction in my country was in 1975. From 48 to 40 hours. Ever since, productivity has increased twofold to twentyfold, depending on industry.
And now people want to lower their work hours by 1/5. Not even their productivity, but yeah, let's say we lower productivity by 1/5.
Care to tell us how those companies even survived back in 1975? Cutting down hours AND having only about 20% productivity on average to start with? How did they even manage? How could they possibly stay in
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Not so new at all. It's been the consultant's mantra for decades now.
"10% more with 10 percent less"? Never heard of it? Consultants have been selling that bullshit for ages. You can always increase your productivity by 10% and cut your workforce by the same 10%. Every year. No really, that's what they're selling.
And suddenly, after decades of following that creed religiously, it's a "ridiculous notion"? Perish the thought! You think the consultant who has been selling you this sage advice for so long could
AI will make your jobs obsolete anyway (Score:2)
So what is the point of discussing a 3,4 or 5 day workweek?
Stop dreaming.
Yeah (Score:2)
>"1,033 people aged 18 to 34 found that an overwhelming 81% of respondents believe a four-day workweek would boost their company's productivity,"
81% of the young people we hired in the last year didn't bother to show to orientation, or quit during orientation, or quit (usually with no notice) within the 3 month probationary period, and/or called out repeatedly. These are the people that know that working less would help companys' productivity. Right.
Errrrrr, get off my lawn.
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They're just looking at the trendlines.
Follow me here -- 81% of these people were a net drain on your company.
And peak productivity here would be if you never even hired them.
So working backwards, and assuming there is a correlation here, if you are most productive when you reduce their hours 100% ... you should see at least some productivity gain if you reduce their hours 20%.
So they're right -- but you've got to look at the big picture, don't accept the small boost a 4 day week would give you, go for the
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So let's analyze this. Is the problem with 81% of young people or your company?
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>"So let's analyze this. Is the problem with 81% of young people or your company?"
The latter. (And the 81% is an exaggeration, but it is still a surprisingly large percentage). Our company hasn't changed anything that could account for it.
This has only been a phenomenon in the last few years. And I have feedback from other companies with the same experiences, both in same and different fields/markets. Something has shifted greatly into the "lack of work-ethic" zone.
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Yeah, people don't have to beg for a job anymore, they can actually tell you to stick it and go to another company, just as desperate to hire as yours is.
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If you call it "orientation", you should not be surprised if the people "orient" themselves and realize what a hellhole your company is.
Call it "onboarding".
WFH is better than 4 day workweek (Score:2)
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Ok, fine, let's compromise.
WFH and doing it for 4 days a week seems to be a sensible compromise.
I worked 4days/week and loved it (Score:5, Interesting)
Before I retired, I worked for about a year for 4 days per week at 80% of my normal salary. Honestly, I don't think I'd have been any more productive if I'd have worked the extra day. I would have just daydreamed and wasted time more, because the dirty secret of white-collar jobs is that a lot of time is wasted.
That said, this was when I was at the end of my career in a very senior role, and I had decades of experience that made me very productive. Still, I don't see why a 5-day workweek should be some sort of Holy Grail. In pre-agricultural times, humans worked about 15-20 hours per week [inc.com] to sustain themselves and that worked out just fine. I think our society could easily cope with a 4-day workweek without the sky falling.
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Still, I don't see why a 5-day workweek should be some sort of Holy Grail. I
Yeah there's nothing magic about a 5-day workweek. It wasn't that long ago that a 6-day workweek was the norm, and society decided to change that.
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Re: I worked 4days/week and loved it (Score:2)
This is actually untrue. People lived much more brutish and squalid lives with the advent of agriculture. Agriculture and technology eventually improved our lives, but in the beginning it was pretty disastrous [pnas.org] to our health and quality of life.
100% of young people (Score:2)
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Yes, when robots and AI are better than humans at everything. Since they don't want a salary just direct he funds to my account.
Just because younuns lucked into (Score:2)
People fantasize about working less while getting the same money. Young people. Old people. In-between people. News at 11.
0 day work week (Score:2)
Sit back and let AI do your job.
I want to go to work fewer total times. (Score:3)
That's my shift preferences. If I gotta go to work, the day is blown. Write it off. I'd rather write off 2 days a week than 5 or as little as they will let me. I've actually worked every one of those shifts at some point.
Of course they'd say that (Score:2)
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Of course they don't. They already can't afford a house, why do you think they'd fall for that bullshit joke called retirement? They'll never see anything like it.
You're lucky if you do, if you aren't already at least 50.
81% of young people don't understand math (Score:4, Insightful)
I suppose they think they'll be so energized by working one less day, that they'll work so much harder.
Fine, until it becomes normal, and then they'll slack off as much as they ever did.
Why stop at 4? (Score:4, Funny)
If 4 is better than 5, surely 3 is even better!
Time off to do what? (Score:3, Funny)
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True. But on my days off, at least I do projects I actually want to do instead of testing the 10th web-app this year alone.
You have to pay me to bore me, I'll do the interesting stuff for free.
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That begs the question ... (Score:2)
If working 80% of hours leads to the same productivity, how low can that percentage go and still result in the same productivity? How about a 3-day week and 60% of hours? Maybe for really skilled and motivated workers, 40% or even 20% of hours won't degrade productivity.
Maybe some really good workers can put in 10% of the hours of an "average" worker with the same output, but many can likely achieve the same with somewhere between 10% to 100% hours.
The big thing is whether a boss or a company is willing to
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Also, people who work more than 50 hours a week tend to die younger. Overwork literally takes years off our lives, not just our day-to-day well-being. Do you really want to have a shorter, shittier life?
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Back when I was in development, I did have a developer I paid full time who was here for about 25-30 hours. During a "good" week.
I refused to "force" him to come in 40 because the last thing I wanted was that a person who can write flawless multi-threaded code from scratch would be pissed over being rewarded for writing flawless multi-threaded code with having to work more. His productivity was already about a factor 1.5 or 2 above anyone else, so why should I piss off the most productive person on the team
There's an easy way to find out (Score:2)
1. Start a company.
2. Establish a 4-day work week policy.
3. Profit!
If it's such a good idea, we'll rapidly find out and all the evil, greedy CEOs will rush to implement it.
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Between 2 and 3 is a very crucial step that is easily missed but very, very important:
Get a HR department with a clue and keep them out of the hiring process.
Because if you offer something like this, you can (and must) pick your talent. You will get access to the best who come with a built-in productivity rate of a factor 2+, and you will have to identify them during the hiring process.
Basically what you have to do is what Ford did back in the day. He paid his workers REALLY well. In turn, everyone wanted t
It's outrageous! (Score:2)
(Poe's law requires me to point out th
4 days isn't necessaily 32 hours (Score:2)
I know some are arguing for trimming back to a 32 hour work week as "full time," but that's not necessarily what most people are talking about when it comes to 4-day work weeks.
The job I'm in has flexible scheduling, and many of us work four 10 hour days. Life during the week is different. Starting work two hours earlier than most people means no traffic in the morning commute, so your days start pleasantly. It also means going to be two hours earlier than everyone else, so no staying up for the news or w
You know what else would boost my productivity? (Score:2)
A pony!
Free beer in the office?
No? What about hookers and blackjack?
(Well, you asked ... you didn't ask my manager, you asked me.)
It's been tried, don't be fooled (Score:2)
It's not like nobody has ever tried 4-day work weeks. When business was slow around 2002 the company I worked for pulled back to 4 day work-weeks to cut costs without laying anyone off. If we were actually more productive, why would the company go back to 5-day weeks?
A friend of mine worked at a local company a few years ago, and the boss there got it into his head that a 32-hour week would be more productive, so he switched everyone to a 4-day week without cutting pay. Sounded amazing. I asked him two
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>> If we were actually more productive, why would the company go back to 5-day weeks?
While I suspect you are right about productivity, there are plenty of examples of "cant think outside the box" in upper managements everywhere.
My Company is Trialing it this Summer (Score:2)
We're giving it a go for July and August this year. Originally we were going to move from 5 x 7.5 = 37.5 to 4 x 8 = 32, but it was turned out to be a huge headache on the payroll and benefits side to adjust the day length like that, so we're going to 4 x 7.5 = 30, with no cut to pay.
We'll be monitoring our billings pretty closely to make sure it's sustainable, but if all goes well we hope to make it a permanent summer perk. We see it as a way to increase total compensation without drastic impacts to our pay
Missing the point (Score:2)
Re: WFH 4 day work week (Score:2)
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In many jobs that benefit from collaboration and differing perspectives, WFH is no where near as productive when actually working.
WFH can also make it difficult for younger/less experienced workers in some fields to receive mentoring and to get their actual contributions recognized by their peers/manager. Neither is good for career advancement.
Some jobs, such as call center jobs working from scripts, WFH probably is equally, and perhaps more, productive for self-motivated hard working workers (although WFH
Re:Psyops (Score:4, Insightful)
Economics isn't everything. The goal of a society should be to maximize happiness and well-being, not goods, buying power, supply or demand.
Clearly, we need some goods, buying power and economic activity to be happy, but I don't think that anyone has proven that 5 days per week is the sweet spot rather than 4. (I think we do have proof that more than 5 is worse, though.)
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I'm retired, so I have no skin in this game, other than feeling saddened by how my generation has shafted today's generation.
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Expecting the next generation to work up to the previous generations' standards is not shafting anyone.
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All these young fools believe a 4 day work week is now the way to go. What will that result in? Gradual decline in year to year output to the tune of around 20%
I'm pretty sure that same argument was made when workers said no to working 7 days a week. Society didn't collapse and here we are.
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Fine by me.
An economy that doesn't serve its participants can as well go to hell.
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You're such a whiny bitch. Young people can't vote? The evil boomers are eating babies? Democracy is going to end? Jesus fucking Christ, you are boring and repetitive. Are you some v0.9beta of chat gpt or something?
Boomers eating babies I could deal with (Score:2)
This forum is full of old farts though, and the last thing boomers want is to be reminded of the mess they made. Boomers demand unearned respect at all times.
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rsilvergun justifies cannibalizing infants, news at 11! Now I've seen everything.
Meanwhile there's a gangleader in Haiti that would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Chap goes by the name Barbecue.
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Indeed, if it requires any effort at all to register to vote or cast a ballot, that will get rid of a lot of young people bothering to vote as it would require looking up from their phones and missing out on the most recently posted TikTok video of an "influencer".
But that's probably a good thing - someone that can't be bothered to go to a tiny effort to vote almost certainly also hasn't bothered to form opinions based on serious thought
Re: Old people are in charge (Score:2)
I'm not sure that many people that do go through an effort to vote have opinions based on serious thought.
If you can look around you and see much evidence of serious thought at all, I want to come live in your part of the US.
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Texas for example has a wide variety of voter suppression laws that make it difficult for young people to vote
They did this in the UK: it was completely transparent so old person ID (such as over 65 bus passes) are valid voter ID but young person's ones (under 25) are not. Fortunately in the UK it backfired because it turns out a lot of old people are not very on the ball when it comes to getting voter ID.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-... [bbc.co.uk]
Also because they are utterly shit at their jobs, the Tories never bot
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Oh I'll also add that at least in his favour Starmer has ruthlessly cracked down on the antisemitism which has infested certain parts of the Labour party.
Given his lack of opinions on anything I have no idea if he's done it because it's the right thing to do or because it's electoral poison and a route to reducing the competition from the further left wing of the party. But either way, it needed doing.
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Worked since 1975. Back then my country reduced the working hours a week from 48 to 40 hours, while productivity per working hour went up twofold to twenty times.
Productivity has always gone up ever since the industrial revolution. It's time we get something out of that.