<story><title>We should kill the 40-hour work week</title><url>https://crew.co/blog/why-you-shouldnt-work-set-hours/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>MiddleEndian</author><text>What about not working so much? You can get a programming job that pays you $200k&amp;#x2F;year for 40 hours, plenty of which you spend blocked anyway, but for whatever reason no one will pay you $100k&amp;#x2F;year for 20 hours.</text></item><item><author>helthanatos</author><text>What about a 40 hour week working just 4 days?</text></item><item><author>pcmonk</author><text>&amp;gt; Give yourself one day with no work&lt;p&gt;If killing the 40-hour work week means I&amp;#x27;m now working six days a week instead of five, then long live the 40-hour work week.&lt;p&gt;Some people (myself included) need two days per week off work, except in special circumstances.  We also need to be able to clock out of work and not feel bad about doing so just because we still have work.  The worst thing about university to me was the feeling of always having more work to do.  I understand avoiding the &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m just working until the clock hand turns a little further&amp;quot; state, but often the cumulative effects of the proposed alternative are worse.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yummyfajitas</author><text>Productivity is nonlinear in hours worked.&lt;p&gt;First 20 hours: read a bunch of math papers about some obscure part of stochastic programming.&lt;p&gt;Second 20 hours: figure out how to apply it to problems useful for the company.&lt;p&gt;The first 20 hours are worth $0, not $100k. If I spend an additional 10 hours&amp;#x2F;week improving my skills, that effect is multiplicative rather than additive.&lt;p&gt;Claudia Goldin has a great paper on this effect, focused on using this phenomenon to explain gender gaps in pay. (Specifically, the fields with the lowest gender gaps are the most linear fields, e.g. Pharmacists.)&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aeaweb.org&amp;#x2F;aea&amp;#x2F;2014conference&amp;#x2F;program&amp;#x2F;retrieve.php?pdfid=1103&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aeaweb.org&amp;#x2F;aea&amp;#x2F;2014conference&amp;#x2F;program&amp;#x2F;retrieve.ph...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>We should kill the 40-hour work week</title><url>https://crew.co/blog/why-you-shouldnt-work-set-hours/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>MiddleEndian</author><text>What about not working so much? You can get a programming job that pays you $200k&amp;#x2F;year for 40 hours, plenty of which you spend blocked anyway, but for whatever reason no one will pay you $100k&amp;#x2F;year for 20 hours.</text></item><item><author>helthanatos</author><text>What about a 40 hour week working just 4 days?</text></item><item><author>pcmonk</author><text>&amp;gt; Give yourself one day with no work&lt;p&gt;If killing the 40-hour work week means I&amp;#x27;m now working six days a week instead of five, then long live the 40-hour work week.&lt;p&gt;Some people (myself included) need two days per week off work, except in special circumstances.  We also need to be able to clock out of work and not feel bad about doing so just because we still have work.  The worst thing about university to me was the feeling of always having more work to do.  I understand avoiding the &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m just working until the clock hand turns a little further&amp;quot; state, but often the cumulative effects of the proposed alternative are worse.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>falcolas</author><text>Part time work, in my experience, is never paid out on a linear scale. The exception is when you&amp;#x27;re working for yourself as a consultant. However, with consulting, for every billable hour, there&amp;#x27;s typically another unbillable hour of work which still needs to be done.</text></comment>