And Henry Ford.

Didn't actually die for the 40-hour work week, but he did institute one at Ford, possibly because he thought it would increase productivity vs. a 48-hour week and drive demand for cars since workers would drive places on the weekends.

in tech, we don't really have 40hr/wk. It's more like 80hr/wk. And work on weekends. If you have a position that requires 40hrs/wk or less and no work on weekends whatsoever, consider yourself lucky. I hear stories about colleagues being overworked on continuous basis.

What the hell kind of sweatshop are you working in? Never seen anything remotely like this.

Speak for yourself. The vast majority of engineers I know (in the US and Europe) don't do more than 40 hours a week and without weekends, and oftentimes many work even fewer hours, perhaps even 20 hours a week. There are also so many jobs that if you're truly doing more than 40, that's because you want to or at least haven't bothered to start looking to switch jobs.

> If you have a position that requires 40hrs/wk or less and no work on weekends whatsoever, consider yourself lucky.

That's backwards. If you have a position that requires over 40hrs/wk, or any weekend work without overtime pay, consider yourself exploited (and if you're doing it without it being required, consider yourself a scab). Join a union, quit that job, or both.

If you have sufficient equity upside, it’s not unreasonable to put in “extra” time to grow the company.

Agreed if you have real equity ownership (at which point you're not really a worker). Some stock options isn't the same thing.

It's definitely not unreasonable, but nor is /not/ growing the business in order to control one's own working hours.

And in general, if growth is dependent on this, then there is no plan and you should value the equity accordingly.

Somehow, I've managed to work 40/hr week or less at all of my jobs.

Recently, due to a disability, I've been limited to a max of 40 hr/wk with a restricted schedule (M-F 0800-1800). Unfortunately, I can't do on-call and no matter how severe an incident is in the middle of the night, I'm not available.

No one has an issue with this. In a funny way, it's good I'm on the team because we're always testing the "Kayodé bus factor". Thus far, it's been more than 1.

> And work on weekends

I read that Tim Cook has a weekly Sunday evening meeting with his staff; this seems reasonable, since that time might otherwise be wasted on family, friends, or home responsibilities - rather than taking care of critically important Apple business that can't wait until Monday morning.

Sunday evening in California is Monday morning in Asia - if you wait until Monday morning in CA to start things off you burn a whole day.

Now, I doubt Tim is happy with people leaving early on Friday afternoon either - but given Apple’s business and the importance of the Asian supply chain, a Sunday evening meeting is justified.

Also anyone reporting directly to Tim Cook is being paid tens of millions per year for their trouble…

And meanwhile I hear stories of people clocking in 40 hour weeks on a continuous basis. The reality is that both exist.

In countries where labor laws are strong working more than 40 hours a week in a salaried role is not common. And when there is overtime, it’s often taken in lieu and expected that you get those hours back out of your regular day.

If you have a position that requires more than 40 hours a week regularly, do the math on your hourly rate, and look at hour its affecting your health. If you’re under 25 you’ll probably get away with it, if not the second order impacts on your life are not insignificant, and can make you less productive.

You should really try to find a new job. Crazy hours outside of some startups and super high paying jobs in a few sectors are not the norm in tech. Most people I know in the industry in NYC work 35-40 and do just fine.

That is most definitely not the case in Australia. I'm a dev, I never work weekends. I do sometimes work later in the day meaning some weeks are probably a bit more than 40 hours, but I also take long lunch breaks or leave early so some weeks are also probably slightly less. This is the case for all the devs I know as well, and more than a small amount of regular OT is seen as cause to quit and get work elsewhere.

There is an exception for dev managers, who seem to work longer hours generally but definitely nothing approaching 80 hours

i don’t understand this meme. is it some job-security/gate-keeping attempt, based on scaring new people away from the industry?

I assume this is referring to the US?

I don’t know anyone who does much over 40 hours in the UK, let alone anything close to 80 hours. A few might pick up urgent tasks on the weekend, but only when needed and not regularly.

I think also depends where in the US. In Seattle, a lot of tech workers are with Amazon. When I worked with Amazon, over two years, there were perhaps two weeks total where I worked less than 50 hours. In that job, and in several that followed, the office was for collaboration, meetings, maybe an hour of actual work, and then at home was where the second workday began in a quiet setting & you put in 3-5 hours additional coding (plus whatever on-call threw at you).

I've worked for US companies on their EU offices for nearly 10 years, and there's definitely much less of it here, but I've definitely ran into some US employees who have been less than impressed at how unavailable I am outside hours in that time

The 40-hour workweek is the result of massive productivity gains; the labor movement is just a sideshow to the longue duree of progress.

The 8 hour day [0] did not happen because employers were nice, it was a hard, often bloody, fight in countries all over the world. Spain put it into law in the 16th century, most of the world didn’t get it until the early 20th century.

Increases in productivity probably help, but you could say the same thing about the last 30 years — a time when globally wage growth has been flat for most.

Time again, history shows labor rights are demanded not given, except for the few industries where people are most valuable asset of a company.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day

If the length of our work week followed productivity, the workweek would be at 13 hours today. Your claim is completely and utterly baseless.

You can easily work 13 hours a week if you are willing to enjoy early 20th century living standards! The gains from productivity are distributed between extra leisure time and extra material benefits.

Ah yes, the 20th century standard of owning a home with land and providing for a family of 8, easily affordable on 13 hrs per week.

In the middle of nowhere with no car or household appliances or health care where half of your food comes out of your garden, of course you can afford that.

You could also afford to live in a fire trap tenement house with your family of 8 in two bedrooms, although said houses are now illegal so you probably can't physically do that anymore.

When has providing for a family of eight been the norm in america? I assume you're thinking something like two kids plus all four grandparents living under one roof? That's never been the norm.

Most of the 1600s and 1700s for New England. Quebec for longer, possibly the end of unit 1800s. That’s average number of children per woman, not an extended family. 1800s Ireland, which was probably poorer than the US has been since 1600 had similar fertility.

I still wouldn't say that is the norm, since the infant mortality rate was ~40%. And, if you're popping out a baby every 2 years, by the time you're on your 8th baby, your first-borns, should they have lived, would be nearly able-bodied adults with the ability to also work a bit to help support the household or going out and getting married.

And landlords. Productivity improvements get baked into the price of land.

Productivity gains do not lead to increased worker benefit, they lead to increased owner benefit. Organized labor leads to increased worker benefit.

Nah, depends on the ability to coordinate. Communist governments can suppress wages even with enormous productivity gains, like post 1949 Shanghai. Capitalists mostly can’t though. Even with non state puppet unions completely illegal as in the PRC or Vietnam competition for workers leads to rises in wages. Maintaining a cartel without being able to enforce contracts to that effect is hard with fewer than 10 conspirators. Once you have more than 100 people bidding for workers’ labour it’s impossible.

Unions aren’t necessary for increasing wages. We can tell from countries that they’re illegal.

Unions are necessary, as we see when we look at the US. As productivity has increased workers are receiving a smaller and smaller piece of the resulting wealth. Not coincidentally labor is less organized now than it has been in almost a century. If you have power you get resources, simple as that. Individual workers usually have almost no power - they may get a little bit of power temporarily when their skill is heavily in demand but that isn't enough to counteract the inherent power imbalance capital possesses.

This is demonstrably untrue - looking at the tech industry for example. Salaries are enormous with no unions.

You shouldn’t state opinions as fact.

This greatly depends on which part of the 'tech' industry you're in. Yes, if you're at the top, salaries are enormous, but uh, vast majority of people in 'tech' are not receiving enormous salaries.

I think you've misinterpreted GP. Tech salaries started high, and that is mostly a scarcity problem. The market will correct that in due time without labor organizing because the profits go to the owners, not the workers. The owners are the ones who decide what happens with the profit (reinvestment, their employees' wages, their own wages, etc.).

Yes, with a powerful union you can restrict entry so there are fewer workers. The workers who are allowed in get a better deal. The people who are kept out by the union suffer and the consumers suffer through lower production and higher prices.

No need for that. The golden c64 generation will start with early retirements in a few years. Younger generations have less interest in IT (on average) and will yield fewer and fewer tech workers.

What I describe is the mechanism by which unions increase wages for their members. It would be good if you could explain what you were trying to say and its relevance.

Less workers means scarcity and implies better wages and conditions.

Yes. You get less workers by restricting entry. That reduces output but increases union workers bargaining power, making society generally poorer but the members of the union richer.

It's not necessary to restrict the number of workers - only to refuse to work if the owners allocate too little of the resulting profits back to the workers. This is in fact the whole point of a union.

You comment is greyed out, even if it's correct. At least your holding up a flag for the remnant.