It is possible and commonplace in jobs where you physically work. Construction, any of the trades, factory work, food service... if you work 40 hours you have actually worked very close to 40 hours. There isn't any real opportunity to slack off or stand around in those jobs.

Office jobs, yeah. Many of those are bullshit jobs.

Having worked construction jobs, a lot of it is waiting. Waiting for someone else to finish their job, waiting for materials to arrive, etc. While it could sometimes be non-stop (once what you were waiting for is done, now someone is waiting on you), even then you'd pace yourself. No one goes all out for 16 hours.

That sounds surprisingly like my job with the exception that sometimes I do actually go all out for 16 hours.

I am mainly speaking to jobs that require a lot of critical thought. Your brain like the rest of your body can get fatigued, but unlike most of the other muscles in your body it is not easy to increase its conditioning.

IE mental exhaustion, there is a limit to how much intensive mental work everyone can put in in a given period of time. This is mainly to what i am speaking of.

And yes of course there are BS jobs, I never said there wasn't. There always will be, its just a matter of nothing is perfect.

Many of the physical jobs also require a lot of critical thought. There is a reason why accident rates go up significanly the more hours people are forced to work.

The difference is not that office jobs require more critical thought, but that physical jobs tend to produce actual value, and tend to produce value that is more easily measured.

It is ultimately very satisfying to see your complete roof, new shingles neatly laid across 5000 square feet. Or your plowed field ready for the planter, 80 acres of potential fertility. Even a half-acre neatly mowed. I don't know if it beats a library debugged and turning over 50,000 calls per second, but at least you can look at the other ones, see the whole expanse of what you accomplished laid out under the sun.

Yep, that was definitely the great satisfaction of construction work- seeing what you'd done at the end of the day. It's worth a lot more than many might expect.

Whenever I walk through a Home Depot, I think "Man, the people that use this stuff are really MAKING things." Inevitably, my next thought is, "And a place like Home Depot could never operate without software making it work behind the scenes."

Whenever I walk through a Home Depot, I think "This building is full of houses."

Home Depot existed long before software.

It'll exist long after software, too.

Remember that we live in a bubble.

There isn't going to be an "after software" with any sort of meaningful human civilization still around.

Yeah I suspect "after human civilization" will happen sooner than "after software".

How curious! I've always thought it will be the other way around.

Your assertion assumes either Doomsday scenario (where humans wipe themselves from the face of Earth, and automated machines keep going for a few more decades until disrepair catches up) or some sort of Singularity that makes humanity itself obsolet (a.k.a. Nerd!Rapture).

On the other hand, History teaches that every civilization has their decline and fall. I suspect that software in its current incarnation (electromagnetic encoding of behaviors on a semiconductor based machine) is so tied to our current civilization that it will not survive more than 1 or 2 centuries at the most. But it is easy to imagine future civilizations thousands of years from now that have sophisticated forms of information processing which people alive today would not recognize as "software", even if the principles behind those are the same.

I thought I was taking an optimistic view? Software is a tool like fire or the wheel. Barring a "Doomsday" (which I don't envision), our descendants won't give it up, even if they use vats of bacteria or lattices of anti-quarks or something even less recognizable as "hardware". One can imagine them giving up humanity and civilization. Eventually, both of those will seem pointless to anyone who isn't an antiquarian weirdo.

This is the sort of arrogance that creates and bursts bubbles.

I hope you can learn to live sustainably and in harmony with nature and your own soul before it's too late.

you seem to be conflating observation with arrogance. what, pray tell, makes you believe software will vanish? will there be a civilization post-agriculture or literacy? software is bigger than both.

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,

The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains: round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

I can't help but feel that the operational continuity of Home Depot after the techpocalypse isn't really what you're talking about anymore.

Purely for the sake of pedantry, Home Depot is actually under 40 years old, so it didn't even exist before software, yet alone after.

Not a lot of businesses had more than a mechanical calculator in 1975

I don't have a car but I haven't existed long before cars. Home Depot may have existed without using software, but a company created more recently than unix wasn't around "long before software"

I don't see software going away anytime soon.

It's like expecting writing and/or books to go away three thousand years ago.

This is why started to build web projects on the side. I have one these white collar jobs and I don't get to create things. I work closely with construction workers and get to see how satisfying it is for them to build something real.

Now I come home form 8 hours of work and spend 4 hours building things. Pretty bizarre.

> I don't know if it beats a library debugged and turning over 50,000 calls per second, but at least you can look at the other ones, see the whole expanse of what you accomplished laid out under the sun

To me, being able to physically view work is orders of magnitude better to my mood than abstract accomplishments.

I know what you're getting at, but I'd be reasonably confident in speculating that there is just as much slacking off on construction projects as any other employment. Some of it maybe genuinely waiting for something to happen (crane to move something, cement truck to arrive etc). I'm not sure whether you'd count that as slacking off but it's certainly not working.

It probably varies. In my experience working construction this was absolutely not true. There was definitely some down time here and there but the majority of days we worked close to flat out from 7-4:30 (2 15min breaks + 30min lunch). Ditto for summer I spent working on an assembly line where there was even less downtime (although it was not nearly as physically demanding).

Frankly, working a manual labour job would be an eye opening experience to a lot of white collar workers.

Definitely, and probably better for their health, too. Government workers should IMO also have worked a physically demanding job at the same (low) pay rates, to go a bit off-topic here. People shouldn't be allowed to decide for others if they haven't stood in their shoes IMO.

I've done blue collar work (construction was one) without much slacking at all, stops just to light a cigarrette o drink a beer, but it was mostly a continuous stream of little tasks. It made sense to not rush but neither stop, so it 'flows': you're never to tired and keep "the engine" warm.

How are you allowed to drink beer on a construction site?

It was a minor work: building a wall, over two or three days, in an individual's house. It was considered basic hospitality to offer some beverage to workers (sherry or beer) on top of the negotiated pay.

As the king you should know local customs, shouldn't you? ;-)

I wouldn't recommend including this kind of perk in the official builders guild code. But honestly, at that rate of physical activity with sudoration and deep breath, alcohol had little noticeable effect and for a very short time.

Also I was doing pawn work (not sure how to translate to English) that's very simple and not dangerous.

Edit: I did work for months delivering beer to bars and little shops with a truck. That was also very continuous work: you were either downloading beer cases or barrels from the truck, very physical work or driving or filling the invoices... to complete the route on time, you could stop very little. Of course nothing that could be called slacking and no alcohol. But mostly everybody got wasted Friday afternoons after work.

It seems that the answer should be, at least in the shot term, for good managers to recognize the 40 hours "available" concept and provide more flexible schedules. No one gains from having an office full of workers surfing Facebook on friday afternoon. Let people be someplace else if it their queue is empty.

From the outside, it seems like startups do this better than most.

> From the outside, it seems like startups do this better than most.

As someone on the outside, hearing horror stories about mandatory 14 hour days and regularly working nights and weekends for startups I'd think they were doing it much worse. It's one of the things that has steered me away from working for a recent startup because I refuse to work more than 8 hours a week.

I had an interview at a startup where I asked the interviewer to take me through my average day at the company. He basically said I'd arrive at 8:30 and leave at 6:30 or 7, sometimes later. I told him that to maintain a healthy work/life balance I would be leaving at 5pm every day and asked him his opinion on that. He said it would be technically acceptable since they can't force you to work more than 8 hours, but would be heavily looked down upon. I didn't take the job.

I was surprised to find so much discussion around the concept of the 15-20 hour actual productive week here, because Hacker News is such a startup friendly environment.

I've often seriously questioned if I'm cut out for startups because of the relatively low number (much less than 40) of productive hours I put in when things are not pressing at regular jobs.

Perhaps "better than most" isn't the right way to say it. My less than clear point was that there is less idle time at a startup than in traditional offices and when you don't have anything to do you do not need to be in the office.

I could also just be making a bad assumption.

Except what seems to actually be happening in some cases is "40 hours onsite" and "available 24/7 via email"

Yeah but physical work is kind of invigorating in its own way. It can be said we evolved for that.

On the other hand stuff like computer programming can be very exhausting if we don't add at least a bit of physical activity to the mix.

And employers in white collar industries perceive such added physical activity as slacking off.

I've worked agricultural jobs. We worked 8 hours a day, with a 15 minute "smoko" break after 2 hours, 1/2 hour lunch break after 4 hours, and another 15 minute break after 6. (This is in Australia, and was these were the award conditions)

Except when we were on breaks we were continually working.

Fair enough, but can you do that until you're 80? And what happens when you have a serious knee problem or a pregnancy?

I suspect it's exceptional that someone can do physical labor for 40 hours a week for 45 weeks a year for 60 years.

The common response is, "Well, yeah, but you should retire at some point." And that's a fair response, but farm workers are severely under-charging if they expect to work for 30 years (to make up a number) and then be retired for 25+ years.

>but farm workers are severely under-charging

Farm workers are not charging. If they had the market power to set a price, they wouldn't be doing farm work.

People worked in factories for 14+ hours of continuous work.

My mother in law broke after 30 years of this. She now costs thousands each month in disability, housing, medical and mobility costs.

At what life expectancy? And, again, what happened if they were injured?

I'm not saying it was good, only that it happened.

The ability to survive for 25 years of retirement is a relatively new phenomenon. The economy likely hasn't had a chance to catch up.

We only really live about 6 and a half years longer than we would prior to the industrial revolution on average. This relatively modest number is obscured somewhat by overall life expectancy averages which are buoyed by drastically reduced infant mortality.

In any case, the political/economic response has been to move up the age of retirement, which isn't helpful to the long term knee health of the hypothetical farmer worker here.

  We only really live about 6 and a half years longer than we 
  would prior to the industrial revolution on average. This 
  relatively modest number is obscured somewhat by overall  
  life expectancy averages which are buoyed by drastically  
  reduced infant mortality.

I haven't heard this before - where are you getting your data?

Life expectancy numbers should be quoted at 'life expectancy at 10 years old' if you want to filter out child mortality in the past.

Certain economic actors don't want it to catch up.

Yup. The right-wing Australian government have just moved the retirement age from 65 to 70. What a joke.

It's a lot easier to stay focused on physical jobs, if only because they keep your blood flowing.

In contrast, office employees chug a lot of stimulants every day (coffee) and still manage to spend the afternoon fighting off drowsiness.

I disagree somewhat. Repetitious physical work can make you lose focus quite easily and that is when most accidents occur. On the contrary, office employees that drink lots of coffee and being drowsy doesn't have to do with work necessarily, but with the their bodies being immune to the caffeine.

Even agricultural jobs you can't consistently (as in year round) do that. Seasonal variations, set-up times and travelling all factor into this.

Exactly - I've come to peace with it that I'm being paid to be available for my 37 hours a week. As others have touched on, "knowledge economy" jobs aren't all-out work, so whilst my brain is foggy (especially after lunch) and I'm not accomplishing much, it's easy to think, for me, I'd be better screwing off outta here and doing something else.

However, for a lot of it I'm asked for help or input where my brain's called into action for a few minutes a time every now and again by other staff. We know this isn't productive for us, but if it provides value to the organisation as a whole (usually by solving something relatively minor, which is best expressed IRL than through the screen), then that's what they need of me.

For sure, that's certainly one of the things that he misses. The midnight pizza deliveryman has a 'bullshit' job where he does nearly nothing because the 1 hour of real work over an 8 hour period is worth it to his boss. Most professional/service work has a large component of this type of availability.

But yet we still try to maximize for 40. If we automate the pointless bits, we don't scale back Bob's hours to 20 and pay him the same. We expect 40 again (never happened in the first place) or reduce his 'hours' (read: pay) to 20.

Maximizing for 40 is arbitrary for many jobs.

My google-fu is failing me, but I believe there's a study out there that postulates that the most efficient utilization rate for a secretary is about 40% -- in other words, they should be idle about 60% of the time.

The thesis is that the primary purpose of a secretary is to be available to do work. When the boss wants something done, an idle secretary can do it immediately whereas a busy secretary has to finish what they're doing before moving on to the next task.

Obviously the study contains a bunch of simplifying assumptions, but the general principle applies to many service jobs.

Strange; Ethernet segments/collision domains start to have collisions at 40%. It's 1/e again, isn't it?

<cue Theremin music>

The two delivery driver jobs that I had both paid per delivery. I was not paid to wait around. I would expect that if a delivery driver was paid per hour, that they would be given other tasks if deliveries were slow.

I've done a couple of food delivery jobs prior to college - as a pizza delivery driver, I was paid to be available (I made boxes, did light cleaning and tried to look busy while I was waiting for a delivery) and got consistent ($4) tips per delivery (not to mention all the pizza my midnight b-ball crowd could eat).

When delivering food for a small Chinese restaurant I was paid per delivery but there was a set run (usu. 4-6pm) and I got to expense miles, etc. No sitting around.

It's most definitely possible to put in 40 hours of work. This mainly happens in more labor-intensive jobs. Note that it doesn't have to be construction work. Even your primary care physician's job might be described as "labor-intensive," just because they have so many patients to meet with and so much administrative work to do for each one. I'm sure many (most?) doctors do put in a legitimate 40 hours of work a week.

As another example, when I was a college student there were definitely a lot of weeks when I put in a legitimate 40 hours of work. But it was distributed over many activities, from actually sitting in lecture, to attending office hours, taking tests, studying/reading, working on homework, and participating in extracurriculars. There was a ton of downtime mixed in, and there certainly were virtually no solid eight hour blocks of nothing but work.

I honestly think a major impediment to office workers like programmers getting in a full 40 hours of productive work is just the environment itself. Just remaining stationary in an office for 8-9 hours a day is intrinsically exhausting, not physically but mentally. The worst part is when you have downtime, but still must remain stationary at your desk in the office. It now feels like you're working, but you're not. Your energy is draining, but you're not actually doing anything productive with that spent energy.

(To be fair, I also frequently would do homework up to or beyond midnight, or even on the weekends, whereas today I very rarely do work for my employer after I go home, unless an emergency comes up or I just honestly am so interested in a project that I want to. The upside to the 9-5 workday is that it has a well-defined beginning and end. In college, there was never a feeling of being done, except maybe after your final final for that semester.)

I'm the same I'm a night person. When I was younger I operated the same as you. Chatting on irc during worktime and in the night do the work at home. But after marrying and getting kids I need the night time to rest...

Beste would be I work at home so during the day time I can take a nap. The kid wakes up early. Bring him to school. I take a nap. Pick him up again take some time out with him and when he sleeps I work. But because I have to sit at work I have to work during my least productive time. Because I don't have the energy to do 24/7.

So before marriage and kids I had 2 responsibilities. Going to work and actually working. But after marriage I had more and I couldn't cater it.

I used to very strongly feel this way, but recently I'm definitely been choosing to put in that much time (and I mean actual productive time), despite being at a company/team that puts a strong emphasis on work-life balance (there are a lot of parents on my team and they're out the door at ~4:45 to pick up kids, etc). I think it might have something to do with the fact that I happen to be particularly motivated and excited about what I'm working on right now (more so than basically ever before in my short working life). As you said, it may not be sustainable, but I've been doing it for about 8 months now.

It makes me wonder if the real issue is being able to do 40 hours of (relatively) unstimulating work, vs just 40 hours of work. I know for sure that I can't handle a tedious, brain-dead task for even half an hour without needing a break, and when I've had roles that were somewhat challenging but less interesting in, I killed a decent chunk of my 40 hours reading articles, etc.

That's not true. Some jobs may be too taxing to do for 40h but most are not. Even those that are extremely taxing still require the employee to do other tasks as part of their work (eg documentation / paperwork) that reduce the amount of intense work they must do.

I don't think so. I've worked kitchen jobs working 70 hours a week—so long as you don't have to think critically the entire time, it's definitely doable.

I agree. Maybe the solution would be to be paid per task completed. I.e. create a bug tracking system (just like JIRA) where employees (working from home) would bid for how much they could do the task in what timeframe. Something like desk but only company's employees could take part in bidding.

That seems like a horribly stressful way to work.

It also reminds me of 'the Feds' from Snow Crash for some reason.