Technology employees all over the world are complaining that they are exhausted by heavy, long hours of work. After all, the technology industry itself has an abnormal workforce culture, because the industry is fast-paced and highly competitive. The first four-day-a-week experiment launched by Microsoft in Japan makes people wonder whether and to what extent we can change our thinking and work patterns in the future. This article is translated from medium, author Lance Ng, original title Microsoft vs 996 and the Game Coder's Grind.
I always joked that if you find that your working hours are always very long, then either you are being exploited or your work efficiency is too low.
The Chinese tech giants may not agree with me. Many programmers should have heard of the "996 culture" in China by now-it refers to working six days a week, from 9 am to 9 pm.
Some time ago, the health problems and negative effects of employees of Chinese technology companies aroused the attention of Western media-Bloomberg, Forbes, New York Times and BBC all reported the "996 culture".
Github (the online mecca for programmers) even launched a massive campaign-against the 996 culture, prohibiting companies that require employees to work long hours to use the open source code on Github, and the unity between Chinese and Western programmers has become A beautiful landscape.
Microsoft's move
In early November 2019, it was reported that Microsoft conducted a "four-day-a-week" experiment at its Japanese workplace in August 2019. This was to some extent a response to the aforementioned campaign. For a whole month, Microsoft employees began to rest on Friday.
As a result, productivity has increased by 40%.
Microsoft also places a 30-minute limit on all meetings and encourages remote communication between employees. By the end of the month, this experiment also saved 23.1% of electricity bills and reduced printing paper consumption by 58.7%.
In fact, many companies and academic studies have found that the shorter the weekly working hours, the happier the employees and the higher the work efficiency. Microsoft is just one of the examples.
So, is this theory true?
Save wasted time
A study by Ohio University found that in a typical 8-hour workday, employees spend an average of nearly 3 hours a day doing boring things, such as reading news, browsing social media, and working with colleagues that are not related to work. to chat with. Interestingly, 26 minutes are spent on finding work!
This phenomenon is not necessarily due to employee laziness. In fact, many studies have shown that the average person can only work 6 hours a day. Then their attention and efficiency will begin to decline. But because it is not time to leave work and must stay in the company, many people will try to do all kinds of miscellaneous things to kill time.
On LinkedIn, there are all kinds of professionals-now nearly 28,000-professionals from different industries all over the world contact me. In the past few years, I have noticed that many company employees browse my posts during working hours. (Some companies are always in the top three in the industry...so I'm pretty sure their work efficiency is not very high...)
What are the requirements for working 4 days a week and 6 hours a day?
Before all of us rush out to cheer and scream for the dream of working 6 hours a day or 4 days a week, consider this question: Most of the respondents about shorter working hours or working days are office workers.
Indeed, in industries such as nursing, reducing working hours or days will definitely make employees happier. But if salaries remain the same, reducing working hours may also lead to higher company costs. A Swedish experiment on nursing home employees confirmed this. As working hours have been shortened, this nursing home has to hire more workers to make up for the shorter shift time.
Therefore, unless workers are willing to accept lower wages, companies that need to operate around the clock will be eliminated.
Based on the completed research, I further hypothesized that to successfully introduce shorter or more flexible working hours, the following prerequisites should be met:
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Industries driven by brainpower, knowledge or creativity
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Can work remotely, not necessarily attending
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Employees clearly understand their own performance goals and are motivated to achieve them
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Employees are not often distracted by colleagues or lengthy meetings during working hours
The "sweatshop" of game publishers
I like the "Patriot Act" series that Hasan Minhaj aired on Netflix. In each episode, Hasan uses well-researched materials to reveal important issues in our current society.
In one of the episodes, he exposed the slavery operation of the game industry. Game publishers have developed a habit of setting strict deadlines for their own company’s programmers. If they perform poorly, they will simply fire the programmer.
This is entirely possible for game publishers, because there are no shortage of young programmers in the world who want to add luster to their resumes, and if a game is sold, it will bring huge benefits to the company and the entire industry. There are reasons and incentives to do so.
The same principle applies to many other areas of the technology industry, where labor supply and yield curves will only make the situation worse. Moreover, the technology industry itself is particularly vulnerable to this abnormal workforce culture because of the fast pace of the industry and fierce competition.
Innovations are emerging all over the world. The barriers to entry for technology startups are very low, because their businesses are mainly driven by intellectual property rights. The fight for market share is also very fast, so the company hopes to develop and release products as soon as possible.
So, is there a dilemma here, that is, the contradiction between the actual need of work rhythm and the exploitation of labor?
Link efficiency and rewards
In entrepreneurial centers around the world, young people spend a lot of time at work to realize their dreams, hoping to grow rapidly and become the founder of the next big technology company.
Do they complain about long working hours? No, not at all, they hope to earn reputation and wealth by their work!
At this time, there is no contradiction between working long hours and employee satisfaction, because efficiency and rewards are now linked. The founders of startups are willing to work long hours because they are fighting for their own rewards and dreams. Considering ownership and the returns associated with it, these people will only work harder.
vice versa. If a person pays more attention to work-life balance, then he must be prepared to accept lower returns, especially when his work efficiency cannot create the value required for high returns.
Therefore, to be honest, my own opinion is: the number of working hours is not the focus of debate. The key is what you want, not how efficient you are.
When there is a disconnect between the two, you need to re-examine yourself and your work choices. If you are interested in Python, you can add the teacher's WeChat: abb436574, get a set of learning materials and video courses for free~
In other words, I can give you another suggestion that many of us often ignore the well-known saying "health is wealth" when we are young.
So let me remind everyone here that if you are using your health to gain wealth and reputation, then such success is meaningless. Success should be enjoyment, not lament.
Work smart, not just work hard.