When Korea imposed a limit on working hours, did it make people happier?(digest.bps.org.uk) |
When Korea imposed a limit on working hours, did it make people happier?(digest.bps.org.uk) |
The article author suggests that the Korean laws may not have gone far enough.
That's a really scary line of logic though. "We did a thing, and there was no effect. We propose that to obtain the desired effect we should do even more of the thing that had no effect."
That's undisprovable.
It's possible that doing the thing that produced no results even harder could have some positive effect, but the world is probably even more full of things that produced no results but if pushed harder will have negative effects. Part of being a real scientist is acknowledging that this can only be interpreted as evidence against the idea that forcing shorter work hours will make people happier, no matter how cognitively or emotionally challenging it is. That's being a scientist.
(To forstall the two obvious replies: Consider the difference between the words "evidence" and "proof". And once again, let me underline the scientific dangers in "We tested for X->Y and found no evidence for it, but we're still going to assert that X->Y." This logic doesn't just apply to "work hour reduction", it applies to all null results, of all kinds.)
Is it scary? I mean, if I go from getting no exercise to spending 30 seconds a day exercising, but see no change in my weight, should I therefore conclude that exercising is pointless? Or should I try exercising more and also maybe be more careful with my eating habits?
I think the scary thing is when people try to take complicated subjects and distill them down to shallow talking points.
Problem solving isn't such a simple operation. One must be careful with logic.
Real science, huh? A mild change in X did nothing, so you should assume a major change in X will do nothing?
Ever looked at a reaction graph?
Here in Switzerland (3rd in happiness) it is not unusual that people are employed only 3-4 days / week and still make enough money to live well. I don't know of any other country where this is commonplace.
(Full disclosure: If you're from the EU and looking for a tech-job over here, I'd be happy to help out).
If you wont to make people happy, just introduce double pay for overtimes and really enforce it!
That said... Let's list several big ifs...
If... The last few marginal hours are more productive than hiring someone new.
And If... The economy is a zero-sum game. (For my company to make money, yours has to lose it)
And If... We can coordinate everyone in the world.
And If... We can enforce it.
Then doing something like putting a formal limit on hours makes sense. This is much more in line with a communist/socialist world-view.
When enforcement doesn't work rules are guidelines.
"While satisfaction with working hours increased, reductions had no impact on job and life satisfaction."
It seems people did actually like the reduced number of hours, they didn't say that they liked their job more, or found more satisfaction in their life. I feel like for most people a job is something you do to fund the things you really want to do.
I would love to see what worker satisfaction would be if their income was fixed, but they could choose whichever job they wanted. (aka. you'll always get paid the same amount of money regardless of what job you do).
Too many companies (even startups) are conservatives and traditionalists in the sense of thinking that work needs to be done within certain hours and at a certain place, even when those are not drivers of the results.
I'm hired to deliver certain results, not to work a number of hours. If it takes me 10 hours or 40 hours to deliver those results, that's up to me, as long as the deadlines are hit and the deliverables are high-quality. And there's no reason to be in an office, unless the office is instrumental to achieving those results.
The focus on how many hours people should work is a fetish that reinforces a still-dominant 20th century office culture.
Two generations ago, it was really at the rock bottom nation on the globe in terms of any ranking you can think of (poverty/violence/dictatorship/low-education/etc). Pick any poor nation in Asia/Africa and it was probably doing better than S Korea.
Remember these: History of Korean War, there's no much natural resource to sell off, with 3 powerful nations (who all have either invaded Korea in the past and view it as a potential target) nearby, with N Korea 30 miles from Seoul, AND (get this) no escape route over land in case of a military conflict (S Korea is pretty much an island now and you canNOT walk/drive to flee S Korea),
they better really really get their house in order to survive.
Younger S Korean sociologists/commentators lament about how the intense competition is driving people to commit suicides (yes tragic) but they forget many, many more people died/suffered from poverty/basic-medical-care not that long ago.
With all these in context, no wonder they work.
Btw, it's really really said for older S Korean that are passing these days. They really suffered hard lives and just when their older kids/grandkids are enjoying abundant lives, but they can't really enjoy as much due to age.
"Why might this be? Rudolf points out previous evidence that in the short term, capping hours often just means employees have to get the same work done in a shorter time, which is likely to be stress-inducing."
Many Korean businesses, big and small, routinely make employees work overtime without payment. Maybe we should ask the question after we do have an enforced limit.
There's not just uncompensated overtime, but you're also expected to join up when it comes to company retreats. So, not only do you give away 10+ hours every day to the company, but then you'll also be incorporated over the weekend, due to some company outing.
I also doubt that any imposed limit would actually be enforced or tolerated by the employer. The unpaid hours go directly into the prices, so some businesses wouldn't be able to compete anymore if they suddenly had to pay for that overtime.
The passion my friends put into their work is admirable and nothing short of impressive, but I can't help but notice that there's not much time left for family, or anything else besides work for that matter.
My day off is awesome, and accounts for a lot of my happiness. And the happiness of my kids, I'm sure!
US may be the leading in economy, but we (Northern and Western Europe) are way ahead of you guys when it comes to a healthy work-life balance...
If one sorts "World Happiness Report" according to "change in happiness 2005-2007", the top countries are mostly from the second- or third-world with the exception of South Korea.
P.S. I'd love to live in Switzerland, being in the somewhat-neutral land where you're not that threatened by Russia or other things that might make your days miserable :|
Things are way cheaper than I thought, considering the salaries. As a Python entry-level developer who has to be pampered I make around 5000 Euro net-salary at a no-name SMB. I could make 10%-15% more at a bank doing Java.
The bottom-line is that I can save 4000,- Euro each month, because I spend only 1000 Euro on accommodation and food. In only one year, I will be able to buy a two-room apartment in a German town (where I like to hangout on weekends), without taking a mortgage...
How important is it to speak German?
Btw. Google-Maps was largely developed by Zooglers (Google's Zurich office). They call it also "the real mountain-view".
You might never use it, but the beauty is it's there if you want it.
(I recently did ~18 months of paperwork to get my Polish citizenship and passport. I've never been to Europe, and really don't know if I ever will. But 10 years from now if I want to move there, I can)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman were among the first to investigate the hedonic treadmill in their 1978 study, “Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?”. Lottery winners and paraplegics were compared to a control group and as predicted, comparison (with past experiences and current communities) and habituation (to new circumstances) affected levels of happiness such that after the initial impact of the extremely positive or negative events, happiness levels typically went back to the average levels.
If things like winning the lottery or losing a limb tend to have short-term effects on happiness, then it's not surprising that a ~10% change in working hours has little effect. Especially if—as another poster mentioned—you just end up taking the work home.
It was noted that the Arab Spring was largely not the result of political discontent but the fact food prices were becoming very high [0]. It might be the case that unless the basic livelihood of people is consistently threatened - such as not being able to eat - that they will always put up with the political status quo.
As we're seeing now with the non-existent political reaction to mass surveillance.
Of course its also quite possible for participants to forget prior survey responses resulting in participants assigning same cardinal score to their happiness when surveyed in two different time periods, yet being able to unequivocally agree that their happiness (or indeed satisfaction with work) is a fair bit higher in period B than period A.
>If it takes me 10 hours or 40 hours to deliver those results, that's up to me, as long as the deadlines are hit and the deliverables are high-quality.
If you are able to consistently deliver the required results in only 10 hours of "work", it's clear that any organization will slowly ramp up the required results more and more until you are working 40 hours a week.
How would you agree on results that are "enough for the company" that won't grow endlessly when they see you're only working 10 hours a week?
They're paying me for the results. Not for the hours.
Thinking that they'll "ramp up the required results more and more until you are working 40 hours a week" means that you're still thinking that you're paying for hours.
Still, it's the responsibility of all employees to improve the process that they work in, just as part of the company's continuous improvement. Which means that more/better results will be delivered over time anyways.
How do you agree on results that are "enough for the company" when you hire a consultant (assuming they're an intelligent consultant and don't charge by the hour).
So even in a quite results-oriented workplace, with almost total freedom over my hours, I still often choose to go into the office for about six hours a day.
Take 2 people: one a talented auto mechanic, one is me (not mechanically talented). Give us both the task of changing all 4 tires on a car.
I take 8 hours. The mechanic takes 1. (Made up numbers, but you get the idea).
8 hours reflect my effort, sure. But you want the tires changed. If the mechanic finishes in 1 hour, great. That's what you're paying for — changed tires. Not hours.
Now, might be that the priors for A were very large, and A is still the most likely hypothesis. But the evidence just received reduced those priors
-----------------
(I know that the case in point does not fit the rather strict requirements of the first paragraph. But I think the affirmation "the hypothesis that reducing the workload improves the life of the worker, while still very likely, is now a bit less likely" is true in this case.)
(The phrase in " " sounds odd to me. If I knew numbers, it would be much better to say P(A) was 95% and now is 90%)
Wrong direction. We are not entitled to take a result that a minor change had no effect on the target variable and treat that as evidence that a major change must do the thing we expect it to do. We must accept this as evidence that in fact the major version of our change will, at the very least, do something other than what we expected; our theory made predictions and our theory predicted wrong. This is not a thing to be glossed over lightly! Forcing further reductions in hours may very well have some other net-negative benefit, for instance.
You are all, frankly, making exactly the mistake I'm talking about, and doubling down on it.
Basically, everybody here is not thinking with their science hats. They are thinking with their social engineering/political hats, where a government action to forcibly reduce working hours simply must have positive benefits, essentially axiomatically, and if we're not seeing them yet we must simply not be trying hard enough yet, a classic social engineering mindset. But that's not a scientific mindset. There's no guarantee this intervention must have positive results. There's no guarantee the axiom is actually true.
Also, exercising will actually do very little for your weight because calories have became too cheap and readily available to burn them off. You can eat more by accident than you will use in a fairly vigorous workout.
However I understand that other people may feel pressure to do the same even thought they value family life more. Some employers probably don't do a great job in encouraging the family life and set out goals that require extra hours to complete (over 40 hr work week), which is what such a regulation may aim to alleviate. In practice I think it will cause more harm by dabbling in company culture.
It sucks if your employer owns whatever you do offsite, though. Specially if they do not pay overtime.
You see... do not attribute to sloth that which can be explained by envy.
I'll have dreams about it tonight ;)
For example, hourly pay is quite reasonable in jobs that just need a competent body to fill a shift—i.e., where the only “result” you want is “the shift gets filled”. When I was working in a kitchen, I put in the same four-hour shift every time I went into work—prep, serve, clean. If I worked n shifts a week, I got kn dollars that week, fair and square.
It is often connected to food or another word necessity's. That was the case during the "arab spring" and was also the case in 1917 Russia, the main slogan for the Russian revolution being "bread and peace". The Russian people had nothing left to lose and the ruling class had nothing left to give(to sustain their power) thus fulfilling the two conditions.
All you need then is a catalyst. Which in the case of the "arab spring" was when Mohamed Bouazizi set him self on fire.
When it concerns America and mass-surveillance I would see that as a possible catalyst that lacked a revolutionary situation.
As I said, you start by creating a culture where rules are enforced, then work from there.
Sunday is free because it is 'overtime'. Workers are paid fixed pay per month. Suing for Sunday would not bring any extra money to worker.
Find out where your relatives are from (which countries), then start investigating the citizenship requirements for those countries. Your embassy for that country will likely even have a "citizenship application" section on their website that lays out exactly what you need and how to go about applying.
In my case, Poland is a country that says you have the right to be a citizen if one of your parents is a citizen. Irrelevant that I've never been there, don't speak the language, etc. etc.
My grandfather was born there and was a citizen before he passed away, so I pressured my Dad endlessly until he got his Polish citizenship (I did half the paperwork for him because he was being lazy....).. then once he had his citizenship I could go ahead and apply for mine.
Obviously every country is going to be different, so it depends on where your relatives are from, and what the citizenship requirements for that country actually are.
Also note if you're in the US, I think the US doesn't allow you to have citizenship from another country (don't quote me on that, I'm not a US citizen - well actually, it looks really strange[1]. I have no idea.)
[1] http://travel.state.gov/content/travel/english/legal-conside...
I do know for certain (my wife is Swedish and American) that you are allowed at least dual citizenship as long as you don't present yourself at the border with your passport issued by another country. There are several technicalities which "rescind" your American citizenship, but they mostly are not enforced unless you make a big deal out of it (e.g. turning in your passport to an overseas American embassy and declaring that you are no longer a citizen), but presenting at the border your passport issued by another country has lately been interpreted to mean that you are declaring yourself citizen of that nation. IANAL but many of these kinds of things are not black-and-white and depend largely upon the border agent which you are dealing with.
Again thanks for your reply!
"If Hewlett and Packard tried running an electronics company out of their garage in Switzerland, the old lady next door would report them to the municipal authorities."
http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html
(I guess, PG visited Switzerland, while he was an exchange student in Italy.)
"The problem in more traditional places like Europe [...] is the attitude they reflect: that an employee is a kind of servant, whom the employer has a duty to protect. It used to be that way in America too. In 1970 you were still supposed to get a job with a big company, for whom ideally you'd work your whole career. In return the company would take care of you: they'd try not to fire you, cover your medical expenses, and support you in old age.
Gradually employment has been shedding such paternalistic overtones and becoming simply an economic exchange. But the importance of the new model is not just that it makes it easier for startups to grow. More important, I think, is that it it makes it easier for people to start startups."
A major manager of T-Mobile in Germany was in the news when he pointed out what PG is talking about. "Generation Y" in Germany prefers to work for BMW until they retire instead of starting something on their own. According to this manager, Germany is stagnating. We're neither cheaper than China nor more innovative than the US, because young people don't and don't have to take risks. (http://huffingtonpost.de/2014/08/11/thomas-sattelberger-gene...)
I guess that for a Scandinavian or a Swiss guy, working 60 hours a week, and not being able to see their kids grow up, would be a personal failure. No matter how many sport cars he owns.
I have a baseball bat. I can make you bleed innovation.
And when you can't take it literally, you're missing something significant in the claim.
There are 1000 tickets in your JIRA queue. They then ask you, what can you do in the 2 week (or 1 week) sprint?
What do you say? Is it the 10 hour or 40 hour timeframe? That happens all the time in development, and people do a few things. They underestimate a lot or they write code that is 90%, where when bad things happen, it's ugly to clean up.
So the results are what you say you can do in your week of work. And of course, they will put the pressure of "but that's easy." Yada yada.
As a results oriented place, some companies pack in what you think is 80 in your 40 hour work week (a lot of companies will try to do this). So what happens then? You switch jobs?
As for improving the process, most engineers don't know exactly how. They speculate and guess, hoping to hit it right. It's really up to the people driving it to affect the company culture. Doing it as an individual within an organization is quite difficult.
That's what I've experienced at certain companies anyways, generally with management with less experience, tbh.
Some of the answers to your questions are: well, what do you do now, and how can that be made better? ROWE isn't magic. It's just a recognition that pretending that you're paying for hours spent in an office is nonsense, and that we should talk about the work itself rather than the things that don't have to do with the work.
The old equation (fetishistically held to, even in the face of its absurdity) of TIME + PRESENCE = RESULTS typically takes the focus of the conversation, and we end up in conversations about who can work remotely, and how many hours people should put in, etc. Instead of talking about the stuff we're actually paid to deliver.
As for not knowing how to improve processes, I don't mean that we should just say to them "hey, go improve things." It's a crucial management responsibility to make sure that people know how to do this sort of thing, to teach them how, and to provide ongoing coaching in doing it.
True. But since "results" aren't exactly quantifiable, how can they get steady value for their money?
Is result A equal to result B or result Q? If results M, N, and O are all equal, how many M/N/O results does it take to earn one week's worth of paycheck?
What if they decide that they're paying too much for M/N/O results, and want at least 11 of those per week instead of the current 4?
What if you wait an entire week for the dumb assholes in the other department to deliver the specifications? Do you not get paid that week?
You're paid by the hour not because hours are the best way to measure accomplishments, but because it's easy to measure hours and difficult to measure anything else.
All your questions are the same questions you have in an TIME + PRESENCE = RESULTS job. What if they decide they want 11 instead of the current 4. What if you wait an entire week for the other department? These are all still problems. Are you excusing yourself from dealing with them because you say "hey, 40 hours in and I'm done, bye!"?
It's not difficult to measure results of work that you hire people to do. It's hard to decide to start doing that though.
A great example is refactoring. Say you hired a dev and he delivered a product that worked but is written terribly (already a question there, how do you gauge that in terms of 'results'?). Now you hire a second dev to clean it up and make it maintainable. How do you evaluate when he has delivered the 'results'?
edit: I think the closest thing to a true results based workplace would be an early stage startup. Everyone is invested in the product and striving towards creating it, not just putting in hours. In those cases people usually end up working WAY more than 40 hours a week.
Easy. Lines of code.
The first developer did an awesome jobs, many lines of code were written. The second one is a lousy hack, he earned about $50 (not $50k).
This is ridiculous of course, but it does show how even bad measurements are preferred over non-measurement.
I'd be surprised if the two of you can't go and live there together and after a while I expect you'd be eligible to apply...