“So we went back to five days, and now productivity is down to effectively three days, what when wrong?”
Executives, everywhere.
Pilot project
Submitted 3 weeks ago by Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net to [deleted]
https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/db42cf29-c3c9-4982-be9d-ac87a612dc78.jpeg
Comments
deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 3 weeks ago
remotedev@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
“so I started
blastingfiring people”chiliedogg@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Anyone else remember the scene in Schindler’s list where the Nazis make a work camp Jew show how quickly he can make a part (a hinge I think), and then look at his completed parts bin and decide to kill him because he clearly hasn’t been working that speed the entire time?
Funkt4st1c@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The study stops when the executives get what they want.
Which is objectively stupid as fuck, btw
mycodesucks@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The problem is the workplaces don’t want that. if you’re happier and have more energy, it also makes you more uppity and harder to control. You might even find options for other work!
If it means keeping you tired and broken, that’s worth the cost of a little productivity.
GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
But is that really so? i would think that a better work life balance makes the employees inclined to remain at their job instead of hopping elsewhere. Probably even at the expense of a higher salary at another place that would instead demand the grind again.
jonline@feddit.online 3 weeks ago
You’re not accounting for the emotional needs of management. Many of them are cruel. They put value in making their workers squirm.
We should have worker owned things instead of the petty tyranny of capitalism, but here we are.
Mog_fanatic@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Take a look at are little friend remote work. Almost all employees love it. Retention is thru the roof at places that offer it. More than half of workers say they’d even take a pay cut to keep it. Productivity isn’t affected in most cases (ymmv obviously). Buuuuut guess who absolutely can’t stand it? Management. They’ll go to the ends of the earth to make sure you don’t get it. Ask yourself why.
mycodesucks@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
People, generally speaking, have an absolutely infuriating tendency to adapt to good things. They eventually look for more. The best way to prevent this, from an employer’s perspective, is to break their spirit. Learned helplessness is one of the only ways to permanently keep a free person in a bad situation.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
You might even find options for other work!
Not many other places offer a 4-day week for same salary.
This to give up would be a major strong point…And to be honest…I’d actually work an hour more a day (36h week) to have a monday - thursday week just for the same or higher wage.
flandish@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
while we know this post is fake, this is the logic capitalists use. it is the logic they hide, the lede they bury, when they report on how efficient ai will make us.
Zensate@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I can’t tell you whether the post is fake, but I can tell you this exact situation was researched in my country and found to be corrected then never heard from again
LodeMike@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
This is genuinely how MBAs think
luciferofastora@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
MBAs have systematically been drilled to view the world as numbers, rather than social or psychological dynamics. Empathy is an obstacle when your focus is on generating higher numbers.
If you estimate a project in hours of work, a shorter work-week looks like projects will take longer. Imagine you’ve planned 60h and are billing for 60h, but instead of devoting 20h per week and delivering in three weeks, your developer now only spends 16h and you’ll be delivering in four weeks instead! That’s wasting a week they could’ve spent on other projects, slow down turnaround times and essentially cut your revenue per week by 33%.
Worse, you’re also supposed to pay them 20% more per hour, so you have less revenue for more pay. You can see how that’ll cut into profits.
Never mind that the increased productivity messes with your estimate, so the same work might now get done in, say, 48h instead, keeping the same turnaround time, at the same price you were paying before. Even if you consider that, you’d also have to charge the customer more per hour of work, which seems like a tougher sell than just keeping things as they were, which everyone is already used to.
It’s an idiotic and soulless way to think about labour instead of people, and it’s neither sustainable nor really reasonable, but if the only tool you have is a calculator, everything becomes numbers.
HeHoXa@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I used to work at a university whose education department sank hundreds of thousands of dollars into a study to find ideal lecture length to maximize retention.
Memory’s a little fuzzy… it was short. Like a half hour?
Anyway the punchline I definitely do remember is that they got the results of the study then changed absolutely nothing
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
“We funded this study hoping it would conform to our existing world view, Alas it didnt, there for we’re not changing a fucking thing”
TronBronson@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Thats pretty much the status quo of science under wealth inequality. I invent AI studies to confirm my biases too. The current study is can an AI legislate better than mitch mcconnell
practisevoodoo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I can believe it, last two places I’ve worked the primary voice in teaching decisions seems to have been timetabling. Got to maximise your room usage.
1984@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
It’s also that so much work is pointless and doesn’t serve a proper purpose for humanity. Things like ads, a lot of office jobs where people sit in endless meetings, and so on.
Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sure we can think of better. It’s just that the only people with the power to change or implement any of it are financially incentivized not to. So they don’t.
Eq0@literature.cafe 2 weeks ago
I hate how a big chunk of my work has become to write reports nobody should read. Our team produces a report every January, that gets passed to our director, that gets compiled into a yearly lab wide report, that gets combined into a 5-year report, that get sent to the government to ensure continuous funding… so much time wasted by everyone
1984@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
I’m 51 now and I learned from 25 years of working that wasting time is not a problem for large corporations år governments. Even in smaller companies, they value people being forced into office much higher than employees producing work.
So the conclusion for me is that its just a system to keep everyone busy and conform to rules set by the corporation.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Only thing that is human about humans is primitive urges, jealousy, mistakes, and irrationality.
Exatron@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Why would universal income come with AI and transhumanism?
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If the corporate fantasy of replacing all jobs with AI were to actually come to pass, what are all the now jobless people supposed to do? Quietly wait in a back alley to starve to death?
So either universal income happens, or the one percent learn that there’s no level of technology that will overcome a two orders of magnitude disadvantage in numbers.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Because the alternatives are pointless toil or perishing (spoilers: neither of these are off the table)
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Lol yeah it’s the exact same [facetious] logic as expecting increasing the working day from 10 ~> 20 hours to lead to increased productivity.
It’s almost like ample and adequate rest need to be baked into scheduling?
87Six@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Like thinking 2 women can birth 1 child in 4.5 months…
BlueberryWalnut@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Holy crap are you telling me that if I impregnate 17 women at once I can have a kid in an hour? What’s all this hubub about population decline hop to it people!
robomuffin79@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Capitalism in a nutshell. Treat your employees like expendable assets and squeeze every last drop out of them
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
The only silver lining to ending slavery for the owner class was that at least now the cogs were responsible for their own room and board and etc
Tiral@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s Taco Bell logic. You love our chicken nuggets and caramel empanadas? Well they’re discontinued so fuck you.
BigBananaDealer@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
they got rid of the quesarito just so they can bring it back for a week. and there is NOTHING in the quesarito that isnt already on the menu, so you can still get it if you customize a beefy 5 layer
LodeMike@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
What’s the “logic” here?
Malica@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
This is why cruelty is the point, because they prioritize it even above profit.
FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
If you’re not miserable, you’re not working hard enough/s
Snapz@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I guess at this point, with the million plus recently laid off, humanity is just lucky we ate able to leave freely and not progressed into biofuel to fun
data centersslop factories.UnLocoPoco@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Just like before AI employees used to code 1000 lines/day. With AI 1000 lines can be written in a few mins. Imagine what an overworked employee can code using AI in a day. #Efficiency
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
With AI 1000 lines can be written in a few mins.
Every programmer knows that more lines of code = better software. Encapsulation and abstraction are for suckers. CTRL+C, CTRL+V and you too can code like an AI.
boonhet@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
You used to write 1000 lines per day?
zaphod@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Maybe in a week with a lot of copied boilerplate code and after auto-formatting, but even then probably less.
UnLocoPoco@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s just an example 🫠
mkwt@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ve done a thousand “real” lines in a day, but it was like a 10 hour “day,” and it was just coding for the entire period. No emails, no meetings, no peer reviews, no debugging. No design or architecture work–that was all done on a previous day.
And obviously all of that code did get tested and debugged and reviewed, but on a different day. So I can’t really say that those lines were “completed” in one day.
core@leminal.space 2 weeks ago
Productivity isn’t a straight line, which is where most businesses fail in their thinking. Yeah I can do five days of work in four days, with the right incentives. I can also do it in five with no incentives.
polycephalum@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
I can do three days of work in five days with the wrong incentives :)
WanderWisley@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I have worked in the mining industry for over 20 years. Before Covid happened my monthly schedule was set up so that we were given seven days off every month. At the end of 2021 management decided to change it so that we worked 5 days and 4 off with them saying that this was a “safer”and more beneficial to employees, since the schedule change there have been more people quitting and more people getting hurt on the job I myself along with others have voiced our opinion to go back to the original schedule and management looks down upon us as if we said a dirty word.
heartSagan5@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Yeah, I’d go with the option that has the least incidences. Mining is already environment prone so we don’t need to add any more human error than we need.
atx_aquarian@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
7 days off a month, as in, accruing 7 days each month that you can take off later (in a bigger chunk, for example)? Or like, 3 weeks on, ~1.3 weeks off, repeat…?
WanderWisley@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The 7 days off was built into the normal schedule monthly. The schedule was, 4 days on the 3 off, then 3 days on and 2 off, then 3 on 3 off then 4 on then a week off. The schedule was also divided into half a month day shift and half night shift.
sharktoes@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
When I was in the navy my command did this. We were out by 2pm, 4 day work weeks and had the best productivity of the whole navy.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Fuck that, abolish work!
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Semantics, but my interpretation is that work can be uplifting. Like yard work is work. Helping friends move is work. Working on your life drawing is work. Working out is maybe even work.
Jobs on the other hand are what I could do without.
But like I said, it’s just semantics. I agree with you.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
I wanted to spend a good chunk of my life volunteering.
I can hardly take care of chores with how overwhelmed I am. I will try 3 Concerta pills either Monday or Thursday
jonline@feddit.online 2 weeks ago
Working for someone else’s profit, someone who you don’t even like, is not uplifting. That’s capitalism. You spend all day building some API, the owner starts making millions, and you a few thousand in salary.
raven55six@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I kinda see it lol, at work I see people dragging themselves to Friday. And on Friday, they’d do so much work and wrap up things that would otherwise take time. The excitement of “there’s no office tomorrow” and the motivation to clock out on time on a Friday evening is like the adrenalin rush!
Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Just think about WFH, exactly the same logic.
Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Three days in office was a perfect balance for me and my team. Everyone came in Wednesday so anytime we needed in person stuff, it was scheduled for that day. Folks were happy, saving on the commute, desk space and parking was plentiful. Then higher said folks like me were to be in five days a week while everyone else was four. Cue nosedive in productivity.
FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
If people are happy, something is wrong. Misery is a virtue/s
story@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
as a manufacturing worker, this argument doesn’t work for us. every second of our day is already mapped out anyway, we’re struggling to keep the breaks we have
radiofreebc@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’d laugh, but this just seems like it would actually happen.
terminatortwo@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
This happened to me.
I requested four days and laid out a plan on what “success” looked like. We tried it. After six months my boss and I agreed all my metrics had improved, so he put me back in five days because “imagine how productive you’ll be now”, so I quit a couple of months after.
boobookittyfrick@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
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toynbee@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
When I accepted my current job, I did so on the conditions that I’d work 4x10 and fully from home (after training). When I started, they said there had been a misunderstanding about full WFH and that I was allowed to WFH one day a week. (That eventually changed during COVID but no one ever apologized to me for lying to me.)
Seven years later - last year - they told me that it was “unfair” that I’m the only person who had a special schedule (apparently I was the last person to have it, but I certainly was not the only) and took that away, too.
I live in a rural area and will not be able to find a comparable job nearby. I’ve been contemplating what to do.
SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Wanna share the plan? I’m still trying to come up with something for my boss.
RoyaltyInTraining@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I would have prepared my two weeks notice letter in advance and handed it to him right after he said those words.
Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
On my first job the boss was telling a story about one of his previous jobs, where at one point they had to redo a whole week’s worth of work in one night. They tried hard and managed to do it. So I just added: “it’s in those times one see how slow they usually work”
untorquer@quokk.au 3 weeks ago
Or rather we see just how much labor original work is compared to replication.