Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by asdkfjasl 2497 days ago
I mostly agree, although it's worth noting that there are probably some fixed overheads of being employed that eat up some of the otherwise expected benefits. Let's consider a scenario where there are 4h average fixed overhead for working at a company. Now let's run the 0.6 time vs. 1.0 time scenarios.

1.0 time. 40h - 4h overhead = 36h. Pay = 1. Work-to-pay ratio is 36h:1p.

0.6 time. 24h - 4h overhead = 20h. Pay = 0.6. Work to pay ratio is 33h:1p. You'd have to suppose that the 0.6 time worker is at least 1.1x as productive per hour just to break even. If you provide benefits that don't scale with fractional work you need even more of a productivity edge to justify it.

The corollary of this is that you'd really better make sure you have little fixed overhead time for your workers if they are working fractional time.
2 comments
pingyong 2496 days ago
>You'd have to suppose that the 0.6 time worker is at least 1.1x as productive per hour just to break even.

IMO that is easily achievable. Probably an underestimation. People who work for 6 hours, 4 days a week are going to be vastly more concentrated and rested. Physical labor might be different, but jobs that require mainly mental effort/creativity will benefit a lot from being rested.

Wasn't there a company that tried 30 hour work weeks for everyone and production stayed almost equal?

link
jerrre 2495 days ago
Who says they will rest in the downtime?
link
tonyarkles 2497 days ago
> The corollary of this is that you'd really better make sure you have little fixed overhead time for your workers if they are working fractional time.

That was one of the big things that me working part-time on a team helped with: they significantly cut down on the mandatory meeting overhead; early on a significant fraction of my time (40%?) was spent in meetings. We cut that down and everyone on the team benefited.

link
londons_explore 2496 days ago
Not enough people are brave enough to just walk out of non-useful meetings.

By demanding an agenda upfront, attendees can decide if it's really useful to attend, and sending out notes afterwards means people who didn't attend can catch up. As a bonus, send the agenda beforehand with collaborative editing, and lots of things end up getting resolved before the meeting even happens.

link