The Productivity Myth | Hacker News Reader

The Productivity Myth

blogs.hbr.org

83 pointscwan17 comments

"Americans already put in more hours than workers in any country in the world..."

ORLY?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Differences_among_...

"By far, workers in South Korea have the longest work hours among OECD countries. The average South Korean works 2,390 hours each year, according to the OECD. This is over 400 hours longer than the next longest-working country and 34% more hours than the average in the United States."

Well, but that's per capita. That doesn't say anything about the average hours per worker, because we don't know (or at least I don't know) the relative figures for actual employment.

"Well, but that's per capita. That doesn't say anything about the average hours per worker..."

True, but presumably the author's claim is based on reports such as this one, where the figures are also per capita:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/439595.stm

It says the typical workweek in South Korea is "44 hours or longer", whatever that means.

I can also attest that the Japanese spend in general a lot more hours at work than Americans (although they are, at least in my experience, rather inefficient - socializing tends to be done on the workplace).

Occam's razor says the increase in productivity happened because when companies had to make cuts during the recession, they cut the least promising projects.

Indeed there are many potential reasons why productivity may not have declined in direct proportion to hours work. Less tiredness, more content workers, elimination of wasteful activities, firing the least productive people, even the good old Hawthorne effect. The article jumps straight in and goes for fear though, without anything to really back that up. It may be true, but it's a rather bold assertion to stand alone.

I'd like to see it taken a step further though - hours shouldn't be the measure of worth, sure - that they are is mainly because they're easier to measure than most other things. Value is good, but I'd like to see things be even more holistic. Happiness is almost impossible to measure, but worth a go. I'd love to see a company come out and say "This quarter we produced just as much as last quarter, but by working 5 hours less a week! Now our staff go home an hour earlier and spend time with their kids/pets/wii, and we can still afford to pay them well and make enough to re-invest in the company - happiness is up!"

And, I'm guessing some of the less productive employees.

> Americans already put in more hours than workers in any country in the world - and that doesn't include the uncounted shadow work that technology makes possible after the regular workday ends.

No, not really. Outsourcing firms in India often keep people at work for ten to twelve hours at a stretch, and they don't even bother to cover it up. I think the reason nobody makes a noise about it is that these sweatshops often hire freshers, who don't know any better.

Tony Schwartz turned around my attitude towards productivity around in an instant some 2 years or so ago, when i saw him as a guest speaker at Eben Pagan's 2007 "Get Altitude" event. It was an awe inspiring speech, and really, truly resonated with me.

Unfortunately, i'd be violating copyright if i uploaded it, but if anyone can get hold of it legitimately, i highly recommend it. Its the best 1hr you're ever going to see on managing your energy and productivity.

I'm hoping to read his book soon too.

Is this it? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luMpyS3mmLY

Yes, thats the one!!

I didnt know someone uploaded it to YouTube. I've searched for it on there many times!

Good find!

Let me know what you think!

There was a great article on HN a while back about how employees only do 2 hours of real, actual work per day:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=781182

p.s. I found this quickly and easily thanks to the Search link below (yay!). I like this feature, even though some don't see the point.

Regarding this particular article, I anecdotally heard of a case where a Boston company took on summer interns and had a pretty, shall we say, 'flexible' work arrangement that allowed the students to socialise to their hearts content but also get the required work done. The deal was that they had X amount of work to do by Friday each week, but it didn't matter when or what days they turned up, as long as the work got done by the Friday deadline.

So, on a Tuesday and Wednesday each week, the students were monsters of productivity, getting five days of work hammered out in two (long) days. From Thursday to Sunday/Monday they emptied their wallets into the many fine watering-holes around Boston.

There's a lesson to be learned here I think. If I were an employer, I'd like to think I'd be able to take a ballsy approach like this.

I remember reading in a book "exposing" management consulting business practices that one major firm of consultants (known as "The Butchers") always recommended the same thing to companies: sack 25% of your workforce, regardless of the real problems the company had, the answer was always the same (of course, as they were being paid to come up with this answer they pretended to do a lot of detailed analysis to justify this conclusion).

This actually worked - for most companies (especially ones addicated to management consultants) you can sack 25% of the workforce and see immediate gains in profitability - which the consultants can then use as references to get more victims/clients. Of course, in the long term this does a lot of damage to companies but as long as the short term figures look good nobody really cares.

The book is:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rip-off-Scandalous-Management-Consul...

When France implemented 35 hour work weeks, their productivity actually went up.

And so did their unemployment. Paradoxical, no?

When I heard about how productivity was up on npr the other day, my first thought is that research and development are probably just on the decrease.

And even if you could determine that R&D are down, you don't know if that just isn't a good development. Maybe a lot of dumb ideas were being developed before.

This does point out how much information is lost when you look at things in the aggregate.

People talk about public health rather than the health of individuals. Maybe its this sort of thinking that leads to the world of Logan's Run. "see how remarkably healthy our population is? our policies are a success!"

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