alt Hacker NewsCan we have the day off?
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I was always partial to the “make Wednesday a second weekend” plan. No more hump day and 2 “Fridays”. Of course that is also 2 “Mondays”
How about you meet me half way and work 996 instead?
The solution to this is political. Under hyper-efficient capitalism, if there is truly such a 10x productivity improvement, a large number of people will be laid off in response and the rest will be squeezed. This is already happening.
The logical response should be to elect left-leaning politicians that recognize this; or educate your existing left-leaning politicians; or stand for office yourself with this as your platform.
If there are huge fines on any AI-related layoffs, substantially higher taxes on the top 1%, and an extra wealth tax then maybe we can fund some kind of UBI or stopgap support for the masses that will lose their jobs.
I was very happy working extra (I won't call them long) hours when I first learned about computing. A bit later on when I started working for financial entities I felt a bit different - the work was interesting, but I just wasn't prepared to sacrifice my time. And if we can have the day off, I think that can only be to the good.
I get where the writer is coming from, but it misses one very important point.
>> If AI is going to 10x our productivity across the board, that means that I should be able to produce the same amount of output by midday on Monday that, in the before times, would have taken all week.
You are thinking of productivity as "code written". And certainly that part of your job will get more productive.
But that is just something you do when you're not in meetings. (or when you're in a meeting, but the camera is off, and you're not really listening). Your real job is to attend meetings. And unfortunately AI can't help with that (yet).
(I'm not even being sarcastic. Most programmers don't realize that they have been hired to have meetings.)
What it can do is free you up from the pesky code-writing part of your job, freeing you up to attend even more meetings. And this does indeed make management happy because (seriously now) their job is having meetings, and you being "unavailable" (because you know, you want to program) was hindering them in the first place.
So no, you can't have Friday off, but now that you mention it, let's set aside that time for "team building" exercises...
I agree with the premise of time away being easier. I don’t think the models/harnesses are there yet. There’s still a good amount of human input required to generate quality work.
So yes, take the day off but the models still need you to steer them when you’re back
This is the most brilliant thing I've read all year. That note at the bottom... Amazing.
Best the powers that be can do is increase outsourcing since a 15$ an hour engineer + ai is most of the way to a 70$ an hour engineer + ai.
If I was smarter I’d have 200k in my 401k now. Assuming I live cheap in Vietnam and a good yield I’d just live off 10k usd per year
Historically, when a new technology enables workers to be more productive the baseline expectation goes up. We don't get time back.
I'm fairly certain a lot of people do this. They don't literally take a day off, but just work fewer hours or less hard. And this makes sense, there is a strong incentive to not give away all the productivity gains to your employer.
Read up on the Ten Hour Movement or the Bread & Roses strike.
You are never going to get relief by asking politely.
Elon cares.
Relevant: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
the concern would be that this new ability will actually increase competition and give us less than we had before
this is not something that can just be blamed on the "CEOs/execs/shareholders" of the world. it is evolutionary competition - unless we can ALL join forces to draw the line somewhere, someone will choose to defect from the agreement to "just work less", because doing so will make them succeed at the expense of others. even if everyone from one country agrees, the other competing country that defects and works 996 with agents will "win" and conquer the lazy country.
I wish I knew what to do to fix it, doesn't seem sustainable but I don't know how to make all of humanity cooperate without doing something even worse
The best way to take advantage right now is to consult. Take some time off and just do a little on the side. Then again the job market could collapse, so maybe keep your job?
No. Because profit, and it's not yours one.
I think expecting worker rights to go up or working time to go down without laws/general strikes and more unions is naive. We have had massive productivity gains in every field since the 20th century, and in half of fields throughout the 19th century, and do we work any less or get paid better? No. In fact the entire goal of the last labor movement we had was to reduce working hours back to what peoples parents and grandparents worked. The 40 hour work week was merely a return to historical norms so the people didn't rise up and start hanging capitalists and politicians.
Tractors didn't making farming more lucrative, it just meant less farmers. Automated loom technology didn't make textile workers wealthier, it made capitalists richer, and then still ultimately shipped the work to poorer countries. Powered drills and tools didn't make miners or construction workers wealthier or work less. Forklifts didn't make dock workers wealthier or work less. Women entering the workforce and nearly doubling the available labor didn't make us work any less.
I don't see AI doing anything to help the working class in any way, just funneling more money into capitalists hands while the productivity demands increase.
Even in programming, where AI is being shown to be the most useful, did any of you have your work demands decrease or wages go up? No, at best they just fired junior engineers and told them to go pound sand.
https://4dayweek.io, a Show HN: project
This will never happen, the power dynamic between workers and employers is so skewed in favor of employers and it is only getting worse.
Don't like your job? Fine leave, there are tens of millions of H1B's who will do your job for less money and they won't complain because they can't easily leave.
When FAANG were over hiring, nobody was being given 4 day weeks, instead AIUI, people were just given meaningless work to waste their time with.
Employers have two modes, waste peoples time, or sack them
What's preventing you from advertising your services as a contractor for 4 days a week?
People with more time on their hands start looking around their communities wondering what happened, start questioning politics, start reading statistics instead of headlines and so forth. Oh no, we can't have that
Political disengagement is often "too damn tired"
I am kind of late to comment, but let me try anyway.
Can we have a day off? Yes and no, or yes, but at your expense.
The problem is system design. If a company earned money for its contributors/workers, then each gain would be shared across the company, from the board to its employees. But a company earns money for its shareholders, and you, as an employee, are in the expense column.
Therefore, a day off is either a mandatory legal right meant to help you rest so you can be more productive, or it is just additional unproductive time that does not create more value or maximize profit.
Therefore, this is where the argument for a 4-day working week collapses. To get a 4-day working week would mean yes, but with less "expense", or a lower salary.
For the same reason, taxing the rich would not help "the people" much, as it goes to the wrong pocket.
Is there are fix, yes.
It’s all roses. AI is what exactly what the world needed. How can we not be grateful.
Whenever a new way is found to improve efficiency, choices have to be made about how to distribute the new surplus.
Choices are made by people who have power and imposed upon people who don't.
The people with power under current systems don't care about the people who do the work. They care about getting rich. So if there's an efficiency gain to be had, all of that new efficiency is going to be put towards increasing output or reallocating work. None of it - under current power structures - will ever go towards allowing workers to work less, because workers aren't the ones deciding where it will go.
Different countries are going to distribute the benefits of automation in different ways. Northern European states will pursue shortened work weeks and lavish social services. China will reinvest the productivity gains into its industrial capacity. The United States will have five trillionaires.
Its wild to me that the concept of working 80% (1 day off a week) or even 60% (2 days off a week) isn't even a concept in the US, while in europe such part time situations make up a huge share of the work force.
In short, people have been having the day off for decades now. It's called part-time work.
Maybe a lot of this comes down to people are having fun building stuff in a way they weren't before? But i imagine this will all die down.
The whole thing is obviously tongue-in-cheek, but sarcasm is a potent mode of communication.
The joke, of course, being that every increase in productivity has ALWAYS gone straight to ownership.
Economists have been predicting a boom in human leisure time since the dawn of economics. It has NEVER happened...
Channeling my inner-masteroftheworld, No.
We need to get creative in ways that help. I am personally for: - sabbaticals - flat out taking 2 years off every 5 to go back to school full time - the mid weekend (don't give me Friday. Give me Wednesday!) - Massive increases to new baby time off programs - early retirement -but- with the encouragement to start fresh in a new field after a transition break. - Of course, just more time off. But -require- it. If you don't take your yearly vacation time you miss out on the 'vacation bonus check'.
You want to create jobs? Find ways to get people legitimately out of the workforce. By that I mean out of the workforce but still spending money and improving their skills for when they come back in.
> Childcare for 3 small children is six thousand dollars a month here in California.
Maybe we could afford for women to not leave their kids with strangers for most of their waking hours? Crazy talk I know.
Meanwhile, a trend in the last year:
AI Startup Founders Tout a Winning Formula–No Booze, No Sleep, No Fun
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45221423
996
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45149049
New trend: extreme hours at AI startups
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45156674
SV AI Startups Are Embracing China's Controversial '996' Work Schedule
Salaried people think they get paid for their output. No silly, you get paid for your time. Just like an hourly worker.
Instead they are going to say “oh you’re 10Xing?” sweet we can get rid of 9 people and you can keep working all week long qq
Unfortunately that's not how it works. Productivity gains have already increased tenfold in the past, yet still all work full time.
It used to be that 80+% of the population worked in agriculture. In developed countries that number is now around 1-2%. Some of the freed labour was funneled into improving living standards, some of it was funneled into new jobs created by the increasingly complex society (the "intermediate economy").
With AI, the same is true: labour is freed by the productivity gains (which I doubt are 10x sustainably but whatever), more labour is needed for power generation, mineral extraction, maintaining this new extra layer of complexity in the intermediate economy, etc. In the end we might see, say, a net 3% increase in global productivity per year over the next 10 years, which will be funneled into increasing living standards and increasing economic inequalities, but not in reducing working hours.
If you accept living below average standards, you could easily work a single day of the week for the rest of your life. But why would an employer hire 5 people working one day a week, instead of one working 5 days a week? They won't, hence we don't see a reduction in working hours.
The alternative is to work full time but retire earlier, much earlier, than you would otherwise, which in the end is the equivalent of having worked one day a week for your whole life.
I highly recommend reading Lean Logic by David Fleming, it explores several of these concepts in a very interesting way.
And not be off completely...
That’s an idea that’s been around since 1883.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Be_Lazy
But that has never stuck enough for masses to fight for it. It’s a shame.
Personally, the way I cracked it is by freelancing for an american company and living in France. I can totally take the day off.
Labor saving tech doesn't lead to more free time, and certainly not in a way that's proportional to the gains of automation. Instead, companies will expect still more productivity. Why give you more time off if they can keep workdays fixed and add still more productivity? Certainly, the competition will do it.
Appetite grows with eating.
Sorry, not possible. The goal of AI is to build additional value for shareholders, not to improve anyone's else's lives.
Everyone laments how everyone will get "a lot" of days off in the end, but regulation is still a dirty word in here.
Be happy if you can be 10x more productive and charge 1/10 per unit of productivity.
There's no guarantee society needs 10x the productivity.
Yesterday I built a bespoke time keeping and billing tool in my browser for my boutique consulting gig. I got exactly what I needed and I paid about $1.
I think this piece of software could power my business for 2-3 years... If my business is very successful maybe I'll invest $2 to develop a GUI.
No SaaS needed. Software demand was actually surpressed by AI.
I don't need 10x more software. I need simple software at 1/100th the cost, on demand. And AI promises to give it to me. The most beautiful part is there's multiple market entrants competing for my bid.
Imagine OpenAI invented ICE engines and the world was dotted with lakes of crude oil, all we needed was refineries. That's the world we're in.
Now that should make you think.
My best experience of a good working-hours week comes from a school i studied at when a boy. The hours were 11:30AM to 4:30PM; i.e. 5 hours with only a 20/30min break in-between. We slept well, had a good brunch and went to school fresh and energetic. Played outside after school (i.e. exercise), came home at nightfall, did some study (i.e. work), had some entertainment and dinner before hitting the bed.
In today's parlance, this was excellent "work-life balance". If you can, talk to your boss and see whether you can adopt such a work schedule (with slight shifting of the time window as needed).
You can have any days off you wish when you run the company. If you’re an employee then you work the days you were contracted to work. Employees definitionally don’t get to choose their hours.
On a tangent if you’re paying $6000 a month for your three children for childcare you are better off getting a Nanny for significantly lesser than that
Here’s your occasional reminder that US software engineers should unionize.
Workers need to have more leverage for them to be able to independently assert their working hours. People with such luxury become contractors or proprietors. The rest need collective bargaining.
Scott Alexander's 2014 essay, Meditations on Moloch, explains why we ended up in this rat king of human misery rather than a utopia. I recommend it:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
basically, we can blame greedy corporate overlords, and that's cathartic, and somewhat correct, but we can (and have) ended up in a hell of our own making even with every individual wanting to do better. the boss that wants to let workers have the day off can't afford to, because the competition makes workers do 8x5. the competition lays off workers to pay for more tokens, because their competitors are. it's a bad game equilibrium.
labor laws are the reason we have the five day work week. we needed overtime to dissuade employers from defecting from the policy. we need coordination to keep AI from turning out like children working the bobbins in old-timey textile factories.
4 day work weeks have a lot of potential benefits
Instead of asking for the day off, some startups should just implement the practice and popularize it