[vkou]

A dozen years from now, I'll be reading on HN(Health insurers' New - or a message board for professionals of some other parasitic tumour which still has a few years of decent living in our economy) a comment about how the consolidation, commodification, and semi-automation of programming is here to stay, and that not just software engineers - but all of us, in fact - need to be very careful to learn the new skills it takes to compete in an increasingly automated world.

Why one of those new skills is never 'march your politicians out, and make them mandate a 25-hour work week, to guarantee that anyone capable of working is able to find moderately dignified and remunerative work', is a question that will continue to haunt me.

[sokoloff]

If a job is guaranteed by the government under all circumstances, I think you’ll find the worst of the worst in many cases for co-“workers”.

Many people would prefer to work 50+ hours/week for 15-20 years rather than 25 hours/week for 40-50 years.

[germinalphrase]

How many people working 50 hours a week are being compensated such that they can retire in 15-20 years? I’d guess vanishingly few.

[sokoloff]

Very few for sure. Even if it were only 1 person, I would still object to a government mandate to bar that.

[vkou]

1. Mandate 1.5x overtime pay for any hour worked over 25, and companies will very quickly be incentivised to hire more people, instead of overworking the ones they have.

2. You'd rather take all the social ills of 30-40% of the population being out of work, or doing shitty gig economy jobs?

[sokoloff]

I’d happily pay a good SWE 40 hours for 35 hours of work. Less coordination and a smaller comms network is a win. Good SWEs would happily take that deal as they’d be making 4x the median instead of 2.5x the median and could live better and save more.

I don’t believe in restricting freedom of employees to work. If that means the hardest working and most skilled live meaningfully better than the median or 10th percentile, then yes I’m totally ok with that.