In Praise of the 5-Hour Workday and Other ‘Radical’ Ideas

Re:In Praise of the 5-Hour Workday and Other ‘Radical’ Ideas by lalos on Wednesday November 06, 2019 @03:06PM (#21466597)

What will stop people from working two jobs? I feel like this is the 'uberization' of work, salary will go down and people will have to work 2-3 jobs on multiple days. For example 3 days doing one job, another 3 days another job and 1 day weekend or mornings at one job and afternoons at another totaling 10 hours per day worked.

This has to be tightly regulated if not it will regress and only profit making will be optimized.

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Re:In Praise of the 5-Hour Workday and Other ‘Radical’ Ideas by Forge36 on Wednesday November 06, 2019 @08:51PM (#21469675)

Perhaps nothing, the major way health insurance is required today is by number of hours (30 per week). To avoid this cost companies reduce hours.

Overtime hours apply only to hourly and non-exempt employees today and only for hours over 40. Thus a change to the work week might start with a cap on salaried employees hours and required overtime for hours over 40. With fewer exceptions would a 4 day work week might result from working 4 10's first. If overtime is set at 32 hours as well this would push down hours per day. I can't foresee a cap on hours per day so this could be instituted by companies requiring 4 days in office.

If the U.S. with a mine to universal healthcare I'm worried the wage decline would happen naturally anyway. However that may lead to more flexibility in hours with companies opting to allow more control over number of hours as extra costs more scale more slowly

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Re:In Praise of the 5-Hour Workday and Other ‘Radical’ Ideas by sloopy543 on Wednesday November 06, 2019 @03:16PM (#21466697)

Umm... nothing and that's the point. It's free market capitalism. People should be free to do whatever they want with their time.

So long as the value they provide is greater than their cost, the deal is good for both parties

Ideally people would only work 30 hours but get paid for the full week.

Hourly billing is bullshit anyway. The natural cadence of work doesn't map to always being able to extract value from every single hour. Sometimes the value is in being more or less available for that week.

It's astonishing how many developers can't grasp that concept and insist on being super strict about hourly work

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Re:In Praise of the 5-Hour Workday and Other ‘Radical’ Ideas by lalos on Wednesday November 06, 2019 @03:46PM (#21467037)

History says otherwise, unless you mean people should be free to abuse of others lack of judgement when their survival is on the line. That's why they started to cap working hours and protecting children from being part of the workforce. Also, you don't have to go that far into history. Some uber drivers I've talked to want to get out of that business but can't because they were bamboozled into signing a car loan they can't pay without working for Uber and they mention that when they signed it they had an expectation of earnings that has been steadily going down.

No comment on your assumption that I'm a developer unless you meant it as a standalone fact.

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