[throwaway803453]

FWH has exposed how many white-collar jobs were only full-time in the ass-in-seat sense and how many employees should have Professional Meeting Attender as their job title.

I used to be the guy who would champion efficient meeting practices. Now it's the last thing I want given that I can now work-out, make breakfast, do manual labor, etc., while listening to meeting.

4 day work week in grasp you ask ? For many I'd be surprised if they actually did 15hrs of work a week. I'd never hire a full time employee who can work remotely. I'd employ a contractor who has to itemize their invoice.

[OldHand2018]

> I'd never hire a full time employee who can work remotely. I'd employ a contractor who has to itemize their invoice.

That's a knee-jerk reaction that you probably already know has some serious problems ;)

People who are working 40 hours a week have no capacity to take on some important task with no notice unless they go past 40 hours a week. Which generally doesn't cost any extra money.

Hiring a contractor to work 40 hours per week is going to get really expensive really fast when you need them to suddenly ramp up beyond 40 hours on no notice. If you can even get them to do it!

If you're any kind of normal modern business, this is going to eat all your cost savings and probably even cause you to unnecessarily miss a lot of deadlines.

[Animats]

People who are working 40 hours a week have no capacity to take on some important task with no notice unless they go past 40 hours a week. Which generally doesn't cost any extra money.

Which is the problem. What we need is overtime for all. Time and a half after 8 hours in a day. Time and a half after 40 hours in a week. Time and a half after 5 days in a week. Double time on Sunday. Minimum of 4 hours of pay per workday or if called in. Those factors multiply. That's not at all unusual in union shops.

[welshwelsh]

>I'd never hire a full time employee who can work remotely. I'd employ a contractor who has to itemize their invoice.

That's not going to save you any money though.

A FT developer who makes $75 an hour only accepts that pay because it's closer to $300/hr in practice (if you only count the hours they are actually productive, which maxes out at 2-3 per day for knowledge work).

A freelance developer of similar skill, who accurately bills per hour worked, will simply charge $300 per hour.

[CountDrewku]

Yeah I don't understand this mentality. You're paying for finished work not hours. People cannot seem to separate themselves from the hourly concept. If you want finished work faster then who cares about the hours?

All you're doing by requiring a certain amount of hours is ensuring the employee stretches out the time it takes to get things done.

[taneq]

> (if you only count the hours they are actually productive, which maxes out at 2-3 per day for knowledge work).

What's "productive", though? Typing at a keyboard? For creative knowledge work (like designing stuff, not answering technical email queries) sometimes the back of your mind just needs time to chew on something.

[throwaway39203]

Time spent tethered to the computer or in the office looking busy isn't as valuable as real free time though, assuming this fully efficient job market a given dev might take $300 for real work + busywork or $250 for just the actual work

[ajacksified]

I'm not surprised you made a throwaway to hide behind, because not only are you a coward, but this is the worst take I've ever seen on a website full of terrible takes. I can't imagine working for someone with this point of view, and I'll happily say that, on the record, without a throwaway account.

As an engineering manager- an actual one- I'm not paying for hours, I'm paying for output. I couldn't care less if my employee was working 15 hours or 40, as long as they got an appropriate amount of work done for my investment in them.

Are we praising someone for demanding itemized timesheets? How absolutely toxic.

[throwaway803453]

This is why I choose to be a contractor and an engineer. If I work, I bill. I never understood how anyone in good conscience can work 15hrs while the others at the company work 40hrs and still collect full-time benefits. As an engineer I have never had that luxury though, somehow we are always busy and I have to make an effort to reduce my billable hours without needing to pad them. I am probably also culturally biased from working class roots that overpraises hours worked and that mindset is admittedly self-defeating.

Preparing/eating a meal during a meeting is admittedly perk but it doesn't affect my focus or participation.

[wayoutthere]

> I'd employ a contractor who has to itemize their invoice.

As a contractor, I would just charge you for the time it takes to itemize an invoice while I do it sitting on a call for another job I’m also billing for. And I would be very thorough with my itemization so you know exactly what you’re getting…

The non-itemized invoice is free. We can argue over contract terms if you want to or come to an arrangement if you don’t feel you got your money’s worth, but if I disagree the result is going to be completion of the terms of the contract and we go our separate ways. I’m not hurting for work, I can fire an obnoxious customer if it buys me QoL.

The pandemic tipped the balance of power from the money men to the workers. We’re going to watch this dynamic play out in ways large and small, but the net is that employees have a lot more power to set the terms of engagement than employers do right now.

[throwaway803453]

Here's what my invoice looks like for today

0.5hr chats, code reviews, time-audit

1.25hr Bug#12345

...

So I have captured the ~15 minutes I spent itemizing/cleaning up my invoice for the past day or two in a "time-audit"/misc line item.

"very thorough with my itemization" implying you'll just over bill your customer because they have the nerve to have you professionally account for your time ?

"tipped the balance of power from the money men to the workers"

Right so if they weren't operating with integrity that doesn't mean the worker shouldn't either. Tit-fot-tat might be an optimal game theory but better to optimize for a clear conscience.

Note, I realize I am being unfair to your comment. When my customer first asked me to itemize my invoice it was an annoyance, but now I am efficient at it and see it as win-win. I just keep adding to it in real time as I work through out the day and then do a periodic clean up and aggregation.

[lolsal]

> I'd never hire a full time employee who can work remotely. I'd employ a contractor who has to itemize their invoice.

I'm just curious as I've been the employer and the contractor in this scenario - do you think the output between a FTE and a contractor would be different? Do you think it would be different financially?

In my experience, developers tend to behave like a gas that expands to fill their container - people tend to work up to their compensation (whether it's hourly contracting or some form of salary + comp), and no more.

[meetingthrower]

I started a management consulting job during pandemic, and quickly realized that this Big 4 firm did nothing but meetings. I had my assistant color code any non client meeting with more than 10 people.

Very quickly I got 15-20 hours a week back.

(And my hourly billing rate was in the 4 figures.)

[taneq]

> I'd never hire a full time employee who can work remotely. I'd employ a contractor who has to itemize their invoice.

I don't understand this. Doesn't your full time employee itemise their time? Don't you do timesheets or something? Does the full time employee not have deliverables that you track with deadlines that they need to meet?

"Hours of work" is a terrible measure of productivity. I'll take an employee who gets the job done in four hours, goes to walk the dogs, and then spends the afternoon coming up with neat improvements, over a "hardworking" employee who spends 15 hours trying to get the job done.

[nimbius]

an excellent point. speaking from a more blue-collar perspective, i would argue most "real" (non meeting attender) jobs have been 3-4 day for a long time now thanks to automation and a perverse incentive to avoid paying benefits.

bartenders, repair staff, custodial, fast food and construction have never offered a solid 40 hour week. many of these roles are highly automated and simply do not need a full 40 woman or man hours of work anymore. farming has been this way for a very long time and as such, most farmers wives would take jobs as lunchroom staff for the local elementary school to provide health insurance for the family that a farming job simply couldnt.

what i wonder now is that if this affects 'white' collar workers, will the rules change? will nail-swatters in the construction yard see benefits and retirement? or will an elaborate machination take place to ensure only the cloistered ass-in-seat see affordable flu shots and checkups.

[piva00]

You should include your location, I assume you are talking about the USA because this isn't reality in the countries I've lived in my life.

[FredPret]

I went from a corporate job to bill-by-the-hour consulting.

The volume of work I have to get done in 40 hours has roughly multiplied by ten since I now have to justify every hour spent.

It’s pretty easy to ten times almost-nothing though!

[jollybean]

While meetings can be a waste, it's a misunderstanding of communications to suggest they are 'entirely a waste'.

One level above manager (basically Director and above), it's practically all you do, i.e. 80% meetings and emails because that's the mechanics of the job.

Imagine a fisherman fishing at the dock: he is paying attention to signals, and then being super active for short moments, that's the nature of fishing. Managing is a lot of fodder communicating and hyper action / participation in some instances.

Imagine how much time you have to spend interviewing, listening to multiple vendors, talking to the legal department about the 'why you can't use some SaaS and how to get around it', the commercial guys trying to get under budget, your IP lawyers worried about the wording of the license, the DevOps team who are totally understaffed to release your product, the HR team pressuring you to hire 'the other person' in order to meet some strategic staffing targets, or their launch of the new HR portal which is a mess, prepping your slides for the conf. talk next month and the marketing team wants you to tweak your language, the Research Agency completely missed their objectives and you have to get them to re-do part of the research and you're not going to pay them extra, and you have to get your managers to focus on that. It's a lot of meetings.

FYI it's perfectly reasonable to listen to meetings while doing labour if the situation allows for it!

[dboreham]

The true killer feature for the remote tech stack would be to attend more than one meeting concurrently.

[jacksonkmarley]

Tried that with Teams just the other day, sadly no go.

[throwaway6734]

You can do this on zoom although