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Comment by divenorth | Hacker News Reader

I think we should be looking at efficiency. If we can find a way to maximize the tradeoff between productivity and hours worked it would greatly benefit employers and employees.

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i think the author did a pretty good job at looking at the tradeoffs.

in a lot of ways, some businesses are already trying to take advantage of both options by using a mix of contractors/consultants and full time employees.

I guess my opinion is that we should all be working less and earning a living wage. I feel that's the trend that must happen with all the automation taking place. And welcome UBI.

The author addresses that and suggests that 40 hours is generally the right number there - productivity on a units per hour basis is maximized. For salaried employees though employers rationally care more about units per week, which continues to increase as hours per week go to 50 and beyond. Of course this is all research of factory work, so its application to software development is questionable.

Obviously the more you work the you produce. From his graph the best productivity is less than 40 hours but he thinks 40 is a good trade off between production and productivity. I disagree. In my ideal world we would be working less and still earning a good wage. I hope to see that in my lifetime but probably unlikely.

> Obviously the more you work the you produce.

That's not so obvious in software development, where mistakes from yesterday or 5 years ago can mire you in unproductive work for hours or days.

But then I look at lines of code not as value produced but as a resource spent.

yes, and i would like to see people thinking of efficiency in terms where hours not worked are considered a good. putting it in overly simplistic terms, if someone has a better time not working than the sum of (them working + people consuming their product) then they shouldn't work.

My goal in life is to automate myself so I can spend more time at the beach.

that would be great, but many employers would just use that as a reason to pay employees less, or not give them benefits.

Yeah that's the problem. Potential solution is universal basic income.

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