Strange how many orgs discover that working less hours or remote increases productivity for most people. It’s almost as if unstressed “workers” produce better quality work. There was an experiment whereby cows were shown to give more milk if not stressed. Certainly the same applies to humans. When will companies learn that milking their “workforce” of their energy doesnt yield the expected results but quite the opposite.
We're still working like (eg.) coal miners, inherited from the first industrial revolution.
More people, more hours: more coal extracted.
Interestingly, farmers in the middle ages are a much more balanced model (catastrophes aside): the land they had was mostly manageable by a small group of people, and there's only only so much you can optimize, given the patch of land that you have. So you do what you have to do and when you're done, well, you're done.
If this approach works startups will leverage it to gain an upper hand. We've seen this with remote work. Startups identified this gap and used it to outcompete other larger companies.
Personally I believe in remote and that it will get even better as tech to facilitate it improves.
I don't believe in working 4 days for engineering specifically. The field changes rapidly, there is a large learning curve and it takes a lot of hours to really master it. There is also some fixed overhead in communicating with other departments which stays the same even if you work less hours. So you remove more than 20% of your productive hours with this approach. You also reduce the time you spend learning. This further hampers your productivity. I think it will be a niche thing only done by some startups that care about this, have no other way to attract talent and aren't very ambitious.
That being said, for some people it will work well. It's pretty common for some roles in the netherlands for instance.
I spend personal time learning, and would welcome more time to do so without having to waste more time "learning" things like "why didn't the OP put a foreign key on this column, was it intentional or ignorance?"
At my company they aren't hiring "people" anymore but "resources". Even when looking for somebody internally to help out with a project, managers try to "find a resource", not "finding somebody".
Fun for who? You? The people around you getting off on it? The HR employee who didn’t elect the name of the organization and who is just trying to get through a day like you are, and apparently has to put up with meme confrontations in the workplace?
There is not much that is more cringe than overhearing someone do this within earshot; it’s almost as bad as a joke everyone has heard and can predict while someone loudly stumbles through it a few cubes over. As described, you’re not funny, you’re just an asshole.
What form does this confrontation take, exactly? That might help clarify.
Every position has a storytelling. That of HR is about building a double standard: on the one hand, a discourse that emphasizes on the employees' best interests, while on the other hand, take actions that are on the employer's sole interest.
Is it expected? Yes of course, I stopped being naive on the topic long ago.
Where this is pervasive is that even some HR people tend to buy it. Also the tech industry should consider happy to at least have some reassuring (yet false) speech.
Sure, in the tech industry, people may be considered a bit better, but I've seen and met people in blue collar industries where people were not worth so much more than the paper clips holding their contracts together.
And since HR, as a support function of a company, does not differ much from one indistry to another, the culture of HR, really, fundamentally, is to treat people as you'd do with your trucks or machines or chairs or paperclips, and that is, treat them as resources. Hence the very apt name of the function: human resources.
And this is the kind of perspective I have on HR and the kind of points I could (but not always do) raise if we touch on the societal aspects of our jobs.
Note that as a manager myself, I have my fair share of cognitive dissonance to bear as well, and critics are always welcome :)
> Strange how many orgs discover that working less hours or remote increases productivity for most people.
I've worked remote and managed remote teams for many years.
Working remote definitely doesn't not make "most people" more productive. Some people are more productive remote, but the average person gets less done even if they work more hours when remote. It takes a lot of training, mentoring, and performance management to get them back to in-office baseline.
Business hierarchies are wired to advance those who sacrifice more and more of their life for the business. Those people then perpetuate the status quo by promoting those who are like them in that regard.
