This is a testament to how those heading these organisations are oblivious to the amount of work it actually takes to complete one's job. That you can compress your 40 hour workweek into a 20 hour one without your management noticing brings into question the management class itself IMO.
Good point. Either they don't know or they don't care. Personally, as a manager I always found it impossible to know how much people were working, which is why I just gauged them by what they got done and whether it was good or not. (It's easy to tell the slackers from the motivated. But not easy to tell the motivated from the motivated and efficient!)
"But unless there is a conflict of interest between the two companies, why shouldn’t workers pursue two jobs if they are performing well in both of them?"
1. Because you're taking someone else's job away and damage the labor market that is a terrible game anyway
2. Because you should claim that productivity as a surplus of free time to spend on actual living, like pursuing hobbies, art or time with friends and family instead of another job
"As we accomplish more of our work in less time, and with the aid of AI and automation, a 20-hour workweek might very well become standard."
That idea has been pebbled for over 100 years and still we haven't seen much of it. Why? Because any productivity gain among workers is channeled right back into the system and mostly only benefits the entrepreneurial class. They will never want us to work less. They will never have "enough" because they are driven by greed. Just like people who work 2-9 jobs at the same time to make 6-7 figure incomes.
1. The goal isn't a certain number of people sitting at desks, it's everyone benefiting from what's getting done. If we can automate the entire workforce away while ensuring everyone benefits from it, why shouldn't we? (Also, the US has virtually no unemployment right now so nearly everyone is employed who wants to be).
2. This is the subject of my article. If we can work 20 hours a week, we will have more time to spend however we want. Including for leisure.
3. "That idea has been pebbled for over 100 years and still we haven't seen much of it." Actually, we've seen quite a bit of it. We spend 49% less of our lives working than we did 100 years ago. https://blog.rootsofprogress.org/the-four-hour-workday-prediction
Capitalism sees shorter hours as a threat for a number of reasons. For one it could get out of hand quickly if free time is used to autonomize and reduce the workload even further.
Productivity growth has to result in shorter hours sooner or later, and this is why this system is doomed – unless maybe basic needs expand fast enough (and even that is likely to provide material means of struggle).
I think this was the intent when salaries were established, and I'm glad to see this working for some people, but too often I see people in salaried positions being pushed to work more hours because they're overtime-exempt. You have to have exquisite boundaries to avoid this kind of scope creep without being labeled a "problem" for wanting a work-life balance.
This isn't currently relevant to me because I, like many public library workers, get an hourly wage and qualify for overtime should I work more than 35 hours in a week (lunch break not included). I would love to see more staff working fewer hours — this would result in less burnout and churn in the frontline staff, for one thing — but the other thing you'd need to make that work is to decouple healthcare from employment, since part-time employees are often not eligible for benefits.
That's definitely a downside to the salary for that reason. In my poll 27% still reported working more than 40 hour weeks.
The hourly model has downsides too. I used to work freelance, and I would often charge hourly for my writing. But then I learned I was invoicing 2 hours for the same amount of writing another colleague was invoicing 10 hours for. I was getting underpaid because I was more efficient!
I have a hard time understanding the idea of getting “all of your work done in 2 hours”. There is an endless amount of work. I’m not trying to grindset post here, I have just genuinely never worked a job where it was possible to “complete my work.”
Agree that might be extreme, but the title example is a 20-hour workweek. Might not be possible for all jobs, but there are probably a lot of people stretching their workday into eight hours when it could realistically be four.
This is so interesting. I wonder if they designed the system this way. Like, let people automate their jobs so that they can basically earn a passive income, and then the company gets to inherit that automation when that person retires. It's kind of like a one time sacrifice to get an Infinity of automation.
I love this hypothesis, but I can't say I've ever worked for a corporation this thoughtful or with that long of a planning horizon. Pretty sure it's totally an accident! I assure you 90%+ of corporate management is a mostly-blind shitshow, it's an absolute miracle of bottom up organisation that anything works.
We're a lot closer to UBI anarchy-lite than is obvious at first glance...
Very thought-provoking. Maybe a solution is to offer a salary based on the totality of accomplishments an employer expects from his or her employee each pay period, then as long as that gets done, the number of hours the employer works shouldn't matter, or be tracked.
I think that’s kind of how it works now. Yes, salary jobs are “based off” a 40-hour work week. But really salary jobs are for a set of responsibilities not a set of hours, which is why the flexibility exists!
Another question is how do the different generations view this? A Baby Boomer or Gen Xer may feel like employee work time should be tracked, while the younger gens are OK with just assignment-based salaries. I'm a Gen Xer who definitely subscribes to the assignment-based salary concept (and love it), but I work remotely with a full-time national media job while also running two Substacks. Working remotely definltely makes this feasible, while working in an office would prevent that. Thanks for your response Elle!
I wonder if it's generational at all? Every generation probably has its efficient "I can knock this all out quickly" and its slacker "let me stretch the day into eight hours" types. It probably also has its "workaholic 80-hours a week" types. And yet, salary jobs seem to be able to account for every kind of worker!
This might be true within the bubble of profitable (tech/finance/fortune 500) companies, where there is a money fountain and it doesnt matter if the marginal employee does not contribute to their fullest potential.
Work in a startup (or in a devloping country) and you will find a lot more pressure for each employee to contribute, as the money fountain still has to be built.
Workers in developing countries often waste huge amounts of time. Go to any office in non-tech India and tell me the people there are 100% for eight hours.
I've been the sucker on the opposite end of this trade as described in the article: doing three people's jobs (the other two left and weren't replaced) with no increase in salary.
I have been that sucker too. I used to take on other people’s work just because I’m ambitious and was happy to help, until I realized my coworkers were working way less than I was! (And being paid more!)
Yes, I have a couple of formative experiences with absolute vampires as bosses (who also didn't understand how to run good companies, as they all went under - ends up pissing off all your best people for short term gain isn't an amazing strategy).
A bit part of my move towards anarchism was the realisation, that Tolkien had already, that 'not one man in a thousand' is fit for leadership. The skill just exists in too little quantity to rely on.
Also, you may be best places to coin this,I need terms for gradations of anarchism. I am to anarchism what what social democrats are to communism, but I want to be able to gesture in that direction.
Hmmmmm, I love that anarchism framework. I've actually been thinking that we need a new anarchism for the modern world. Might be worth doing a pamphlet project on! Just added to the list....
For sure. Every company starts with a small group of hungry individuals, but as they grow larger they become a a funding mechanism for less hungry individuals.
I’m sure we’ll always have a small dedicated few and a less motivated many.
The “standard work week” should absolutely go down as productivity through technology has improved output! It hasn’t, but it should if we put human wellbeing over profits.
Well that's what I'm saying—it already has. Many are already working fewer hours at their salary jobs. It might seem like hours haven't gone down "officially", but "unofficially" they already are!
Meanwhile in Mexico politicians and businessmen are reluctant to approve a “novel” reform that would reduce the workweek from 48 to 40 hours. Go figure
This is a testament to how those heading these organisations are oblivious to the amount of work it actually takes to complete one's job. That you can compress your 40 hour workweek into a 20 hour one without your management noticing brings into question the management class itself IMO.
Good point. Either they don't know or they don't care. Personally, as a manager I always found it impossible to know how much people were working, which is why I just gauged them by what they got done and whether it was good or not. (It's easy to tell the slackers from the motivated. But not easy to tell the motivated from the motivated and efficient!)
"But unless there is a conflict of interest between the two companies, why shouldn’t workers pursue two jobs if they are performing well in both of them?"
1. Because you're taking someone else's job away and damage the labor market that is a terrible game anyway
2. Because you should claim that productivity as a surplus of free time to spend on actual living, like pursuing hobbies, art or time with friends and family instead of another job
"As we accomplish more of our work in less time, and with the aid of AI and automation, a 20-hour workweek might very well become standard."
That idea has been pebbled for over 100 years and still we haven't seen much of it. Why? Because any productivity gain among workers is channeled right back into the system and mostly only benefits the entrepreneurial class. They will never want us to work less. They will never have "enough" because they are driven by greed. Just like people who work 2-9 jobs at the same time to make 6-7 figure incomes.
Sorry, this is a bit of a naive article.
1. The goal isn't a certain number of people sitting at desks, it's everyone benefiting from what's getting done. If we can automate the entire workforce away while ensuring everyone benefits from it, why shouldn't we? (Also, the US has virtually no unemployment right now so nearly everyone is employed who wants to be).
2. This is the subject of my article. If we can work 20 hours a week, we will have more time to spend however we want. Including for leisure.
3. "That idea has been pebbled for over 100 years and still we haven't seen much of it." Actually, we've seen quite a bit of it. We spend 49% less of our lives working than we did 100 years ago. https://blog.rootsofprogress.org/the-four-hour-workday-prediction
Capitalism sees shorter hours as a threat for a number of reasons. For one it could get out of hand quickly if free time is used to autonomize and reduce the workload even further.
Productivity growth has to result in shorter hours sooner or later, and this is why this system is doomed – unless maybe basic needs expand fast enough (and even that is likely to provide material means of struggle).
I think this was the intent when salaries were established, and I'm glad to see this working for some people, but too often I see people in salaried positions being pushed to work more hours because they're overtime-exempt. You have to have exquisite boundaries to avoid this kind of scope creep without being labeled a "problem" for wanting a work-life balance.
This isn't currently relevant to me because I, like many public library workers, get an hourly wage and qualify for overtime should I work more than 35 hours in a week (lunch break not included). I would love to see more staff working fewer hours — this would result in less burnout and churn in the frontline staff, for one thing — but the other thing you'd need to make that work is to decouple healthcare from employment, since part-time employees are often not eligible for benefits.
That's definitely a downside to the salary for that reason. In my poll 27% still reported working more than 40 hour weeks.
The hourly model has downsides too. I used to work freelance, and I would often charge hourly for my writing. But then I learned I was invoicing 2 hours for the same amount of writing another colleague was invoicing 10 hours for. I was getting underpaid because I was more efficient!
Nice work! In my opinion the only reason why we keep working more and more is to keep up with investors and C-Suite greedy needs.
And now we’re seeing a blockage between the top of the food chain wanting more, and the bottom trying to do something more "meaningful".
But it’s also a matter of culture. I grew up in Europe and now I’m today in Brazil. I see how people pour into work just for the sake of doing it.
I know it, they know it, but we don’t talk about it.
Anyway nice work again
I have a hard time understanding the idea of getting “all of your work done in 2 hours”. There is an endless amount of work. I’m not trying to grindset post here, I have just genuinely never worked a job where it was possible to “complete my work.”
Agree that might be extreme, but the title example is a 20-hour workweek. Might not be possible for all jobs, but there are probably a lot of people stretching their workday into eight hours when it could realistically be four.
This is so interesting. I wonder if they designed the system this way. Like, let people automate their jobs so that they can basically earn a passive income, and then the company gets to inherit that automation when that person retires. It's kind of like a one time sacrifice to get an Infinity of automation.
I love this hypothesis, but I can't say I've ever worked for a corporation this thoughtful or with that long of a planning horizon. Pretty sure it's totally an accident! I assure you 90%+ of corporate management is a mostly-blind shitshow, it's an absolute miracle of bottom up organisation that anything works.
We're a lot closer to UBI anarchy-lite than is obvious at first glance...
I love "UBI anarchy-lite" —yes, I think we're edging there!
Very thought-provoking. Maybe a solution is to offer a salary based on the totality of accomplishments an employer expects from his or her employee each pay period, then as long as that gets done, the number of hours the employer works shouldn't matter, or be tracked.
I think that’s kind of how it works now. Yes, salary jobs are “based off” a 40-hour work week. But really salary jobs are for a set of responsibilities not a set of hours, which is why the flexibility exists!
Another question is how do the different generations view this? A Baby Boomer or Gen Xer may feel like employee work time should be tracked, while the younger gens are OK with just assignment-based salaries. I'm a Gen Xer who definitely subscribes to the assignment-based salary concept (and love it), but I work remotely with a full-time national media job while also running two Substacks. Working remotely definltely makes this feasible, while working in an office would prevent that. Thanks for your response Elle!
I wonder if it's generational at all? Every generation probably has its efficient "I can knock this all out quickly" and its slacker "let me stretch the day into eight hours" types. It probably also has its "workaholic 80-hours a week" types. And yet, salary jobs seem to be able to account for every kind of worker!
So getting rid of hourly wages is the answer, it seems!
Or reducing the workweek to 32 hours for hourly workers (to start!)
This.... was VERY encouraging for me.
Thank you Elle
So glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for taking the time to comment Edward!
This might be true within the bubble of profitable (tech/finance/fortune 500) companies, where there is a money fountain and it doesnt matter if the marginal employee does not contribute to their fullest potential.
Work in a startup (or in a devloping country) and you will find a lot more pressure for each employee to contribute, as the money fountain still has to be built.
Workers in developing countries often waste huge amounts of time. Go to any office in non-tech India and tell me the people there are 100% for eight hours.
I've been the sucker on the opposite end of this trade as described in the article: doing three people's jobs (the other two left and weren't replaced) with no increase in salary.
I have been that sucker too. I used to take on other people’s work just because I’m ambitious and was happy to help, until I realized my coworkers were working way less than I was! (And being paid more!)
Yes, I have a couple of formative experiences with absolute vampires as bosses (who also didn't understand how to run good companies, as they all went under - ends up pissing off all your best people for short term gain isn't an amazing strategy).
A bit part of my move towards anarchism was the realisation, that Tolkien had already, that 'not one man in a thousand' is fit for leadership. The skill just exists in too little quantity to rely on.
Also, you may be best places to coin this,I need terms for gradations of anarchism. I am to anarchism what what social democrats are to communism, but I want to be able to gesture in that direction.
Hmmmmm, I love that anarchism framework. I've actually been thinking that we need a new anarchism for the modern world. Might be worth doing a pamphlet project on! Just added to the list....
For sure. Every company starts with a small group of hungry individuals, but as they grow larger they become a a funding mechanism for less hungry individuals.
I’m sure we’ll always have a small dedicated few and a less motivated many.
The “standard work week” should absolutely go down as productivity through technology has improved output! It hasn’t, but it should if we put human wellbeing over profits.
That’s good to hear. I’ve not seen it but feel it’s long overdue:)
Well that's what I'm saying—it already has. Many are already working fewer hours at their salary jobs. It might seem like hours haven't gone down "officially", but "unofficially" they already are!
Meanwhile in Mexico politicians and businessmen are reluctant to approve a “novel” reform that would reduce the workweek from 48 to 40 hours. Go figure
Is work there typically hourly or salary?
Truly