The alternative is to have everyone being forced (ahem, "incentivized") to work all the time, and having rest days becoming a privilege only for white-collar workers.
You can have a mandatory minimum number of rest days without fixing when those rest days are. In fact, this is already how it works for those professions that are allowed to work on Sundays; their rest day might just be a Tuesday instead.
Could you imagine how that would play out in case we started applying this logic everywhere, and we completely lost the concept of "the weekend"?
- "I know that this is your day off, but everyone will be requested to come to work this Wednesday because the team is about to miss the sprint goal"
- "Now that banks and stock markets open on Saturdays and Sundays, we will have to have everyone on call rotation, all week long."
- "We do not have the budget to increase our team by 2/7, so everyone will have to pick up the slack"
- "Sorry Jane, your refusal to continue on a strict Mon-Fri schedule is hurting your chances of making progress on this company. Yeah, I know you have children and that schools are not open all week long, but Mary has been showing up whenever asked and she seems to be more reliable".
This idea of "individuals should be free to choose all the time" is also another good example of cultural differences between North Americans and Europeans.
Look at the American companies that claim to offer "unlimited PTO", but when you probe it a bit further and ask how many vacation days employees took on average, the recruiter will tell you "oh, about 12 days".
This idea of "freedom to choose" works mostly to get in favor of the system to get peons pitting against each other. The only way to have the majority of people benefiting from a community-level policy is to apply it at that level.
It's funny that you bring up PTO, since all your examples could be applied to PTO as well (all-hands meeting when you're on vacation, on-call rotation throughout the year, 24 legally guaranteed minimum vacation days straining budgets, parents timing their vacation to coincide with school break) and the European solution is to have a minimum number of days everyone gets off, but they're free to choose when.
Vacations have a completely different context from weekend breaks. It's one thing to have an organization planning around a down time once in the year than a constant weekly reset of schedules, employee requests, etc.
we have laws to protect against this kind of nonsense.
if you are forced to work on a day off you have a right to get a free day within two weeks. the maximum worktime in a week is 48 hours.
same goes for the mother with children. childcare is an absolute right that can't be denied or lead to a disadvantage. the above behavior would be illegal, and it would be quite easy to put a stop to it.
so none of your scenarios would come to pass. except the first one maybe, because that can be compensated with extra days off after the sprint.
Your naivete would be cute if it wasn't so dangerous.
> maximum worktime in a week is 48 hours.
Ask anyone in a competitive industry, regardless of seniority, if there was ever a time in their career if they didn't work more than that.
> childcare is an absolute right that can't be denied or lead to a disadvantage.
Just today I saw a post on LinkedIn from a woman telling the story of how she came back from maternity leave to find out how her report was promoted to do her job and she was offered the lower position but kept with the original pay/benefits.
It's a shitty situation and the woman claimed she had the privilege to tell them to shove it, but there is nothing illegal about it.
The woman got back with her job title and pay intact, but because during her absence her report took over her work, the company had to decide which of the two employees would have to perform the secondary function.
What do you think that a company should have done instead? Take back the promotion of the employee that stayed? Keep two employees as the "boss" and be forced to hire a third one?
And then you are effectively discriminating against the employee that did not / wanted not / could not have a leave. How is that solving anything?
This is the typical Protestant/German absurdity, trying to reduce every interpersonal problem into a systematic process that can be blindly applied to everyone, like we were all disposable cogs.
it's not discrimination if i offer you a temporary position. it was never meant to be a permanent promotion. it's like a time limited contract. you know up front what you are getting. if you don't like it you can reject it. however, i am pretty sure that doing well in a temporary position will look good for future promotions.
having children is important for the future of our society, and this needs to be protected. in this situation it is the mother vs the temporary replacement. if i can't keep both, then in the interest of our children i must give preference to the mother.
Except it is not. You are probably very well aware that maternity leave in Germany protects the mother's job up to three years. There is never certainty about when the mother will come back.
Look, I am not saying that extended maternity leave is not important. What I am saying is one can not put someone else's career growth on the line over this.
> having children is important for the future of our society, and this needs to be protected.
Correct. Yet fertility rates keep going down and women keep delaying their pregnancies and favoring work over kids. Why is that?
Couldn't it be that we have been optimizing for economic output (dual family income becoming mandatory, the school system that is basically tailored to allow parents to work full time, laws that try to keep women working during the childbearing years) instead of optimizing for a system that keeps a nuclear family living well enough on a single income?
To go back to the original discussion: for Christ's sake, we are talking here about the idea of getting rid of weekends. Isn't that further propagating the idea that pushing our society to more work is a good thing? Where does this madness stop?
Except it is not. You are probably very well aware that maternity leave in Germany protects the mother's job up to three years. There is never certainty about when the mother will come back.
that's irrelevant, because there is a certainty that she will come back, and the contract for the replacement should be worded accordingly.
What I am saying is one can not put someone else's career growth on the line over this.
what is the alternative? force the employer to hire both? how is that reasonable? this is no different than getting contracted to work on a project, when i don't know when the project will end. i know the end will come eventually, and i can prepare accordingly. as i said before, this is a conflict between the needs of the mother and the needs of the replacement. protecting the mother (or the father, since they can take time off as a parent too) is simply more important than protecting the replacement who knows from the start that this will be temporary. they can plan their career accordingly.
Couldn't it be that we have been optimizing for economic output instead of optimizing for a system that keeps a nuclear family living well enough on a single income?
that is true, and i agree with you that this is a problem. but the solution is elsewhere. part of the problem is that raising children is still not supported enough. and not working is stigmatized. my dad was in this situation. as a single parent he could not work and had to rely on state support with zero income. once we got older he had to switch careers because he could not work in his old job due to health problems. that's basically the situation that any single mother faces who did not work and thus had no qualifications for any decently paying job.
and that's the problem right there. by only allowing one person in a family to work, we are greatly disadvantaging the other person. and that is the reason why living on a single income will never be popular. instead we need to address this problem in other ways. one way would be to reduce everyones (not just parents) work hours to 20-25 hours per week, so that parents can split the time raising children evenly and both parents have an equal chance of having a career at the same time.
the other idea would be to provide stay-at-home parents with resources to earn qualifications that they can use to work once the kids are old enough.
what we can't do is to expect stay-at-home parents to remain without qualifications for the rest of their lives. that would create a large segment of unemployable people, leaving them dependent on the state, or on their divorced earning partners, (which has the secondary effect of making divorce much more difficult because the earning partner would have to continue to provide for their ex, which means they possibly can't marry again)
especially among women this would create two classes of people. those that have a career and those that don't. you ask why the fertility rates are going down? this is one reason.
getting rid of weekends. Isn't that further propagating the idea that pushing our society to more work is a good thing?
we are not getting rid of weekends. we are adding flexibility. the maximum time to work in a week doesn't change, nor the right to a day of rest after working 6 days. (not sure if such a right exists, but i think it should.) added flexibility would also be beneficial for those who are not christians. the jewish day of rest is saturday. in islam traditionally people take a day off work on fridays. locking the day of rest to sunday is a very christian centric practice, and not compatible with a multicultural society.
also, in times where companies experiment with 4day work weeks i see absolutely no risk that allowing work on sunday will lead to people working more days. and making a day of rest mandatory is a simple protection against any abuse of that. allowing shops to open longer will also create more jobs. the only ones at risk are those who are seelfemployed. but they are already at risk. noone stops me from working on sundays, only my health, and my family.
It looks like we are not going to see eye-to-eye on this one:
> what is the alternative? force the employer to hire both?
The alternative is to do exactly what the company did. Parent-to-be gets the job secured but not the career prospect.
> we are not getting rid of weekends. we are adding flexibility.
If the line of where the work week begins and ends becomes blurry, you are by definition getting rid of weekends. You are arguing that "flexibility" is the only outcome of such a proposal, but you are ignoring the fact that all these schemes are introduced with the idea to benefit those who want some type of exception, but it doesn't take a long look at historical evidence to show that these "flexibility" usually gets exploited by employers to pit workers against each other and to push the price of labor down.
> locking the day of rest to sunday is a very christian centric practice, and not compatible with a multicultural society.
The only requirement is to have at least one day where the majority of society can not be compelled to work. If a Seventh Day Adventist does not work during Sabbath because of religious observance, fine. If a Muslim does not want to work on a Friday, also fine.
The alternative is to do exactly what the company did. Parent-to-be gets the job secured but not the career prospect.
so having children will hurt your career? and that is good why? the only effect we will get out of that is even less people who choose to have children. this is not what we want.
historical evidence to show that these "flexibility" usually gets exploited by employers to pit workers against each other and to push the price of labor down
is that really the case? i don't see anything like that happening in the US or other countries where sunday work is already a reality.
> the only effect we will get out of that is even less people who choose to have children. this is not what we want.
Combine with proper social policies that make it possible for families to live on a single income, and you can bet that most women will choose children over career.
> is that really the case? (...) where sunday work is already a reality.
Tell me what types of jobs have people willing working year round on the weekends. You will see that most are not doing by choice, but because of circumstances.
Combine with proper social policies that make it possible for families to live on a single income, and you can bet that most women will choose children over career.
i very much doubt that, for reasons already explained. most women will not want to be dependent on a man or the state to be able survive. they will choose independence over having children.
it used to be possible for a family to live on one salary. and for work in IT or other high paying jobs it still is. if you were right then most families who could afford to live on one salary would do so, but they don't, and those who could not would protest.
no matter what policies we enact, women do not want to stay at home.
they want a career just like men. and i see no reason why they shouldn't.
people do not want to live on a single income. besides the independence for women they also prefer the extra wealth.
if we want people to have more children we need to allow everyone to combine working and raising children.
You will see that most are not doing by choice, but because of circumstances
ok, i have to concede that point. if we allow sunday work we do need to have some strong protections to allow people to refuse, and it's probably not easy to work out what is needed to do that, and i don't know if we want to explore that in this discussion.
in the US btw people can demand the sunday off to practice their religion. it's not enough, but it is at least something.
First there are some societal standards just settled. Universal healthcare as an example which is mentioned in the article, but also the broader spectrum of social democratic policies as mentioned in other comments. While that gives you some stability in society, it could be seen as “groupthink”
Second, there is a tendency to (informally) label right-leaning policies, libertarian ideas and patriotism as Nazism. That’s not a problem of the “far right” but also the “far left” as criticism on Israel’s current policies could be labeled antisemitic. The slippery slope here is that outlawing one thing (nazism) is socially accepted but assigning the label of what actually constitutes “nazism” is the actual problem.
I guess there are two main effects of “screentime”: consumption only (doomscrolling or binge watching) and the light effect.
A book would not tick any of those marks
An ereader would account for looking into a light source only if you use background illumination. And even then, it can be set to emit significantly less light than a smartphone screen, especially in the blue frequencies
> You can change everything, from surface level appearances, to the final ranking of results.
People don’t want this. My first boss told me he would bet on regular TV if only streaming was left. He didn’t account for recommendation algorithms, so it’s easy to prove him wrong. But the takeaway here is that people prefer things working for them out of the box. That’s the secret to Apple’s or Google’s success: It just works.
Just works can mean that you’ll get “some” search results or a TV show that matches your preferences.
Almost nobody would like to put effort into customizing their experience.
Google provides “good” search results for a majority of users. From a business perspective it would be a wrong decision to enable customization for a neglectible fraction of users if the vast majority just want to “consume”.
> they could just use OOP composition to get the same thing and not have to invent a new kind of thing: it would all just be objects referencing objects.
Aren't decorators just syntactic sugar for composition?
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