We still work hard and will continue to do so because we are conditioned for the first 21 years of our lives to work hard at school.
21 years is a third of your productive life, a time when you body still works reliably, can repair itself rapidly, you have very little responsibilities and thus can take more risk and explore the frontiers of possibility.
The math teacher tells you to write out twenty tables of addition, so you do it.
The chemistry teacher tells you to balance out fifty chemical equations, so you do it.
If you question why, you fail.
If you question is there's a better way to demonstrate the understanding, you fail.
If you refuse to do these assignments and start a lemonade stand, you fail.
Thankfully working hard is going to get disrupted. An LLM doesn't sleep, take breaks, fall asleep after three 6 hour shifts or take sick leave. Nothing works as hard as an LLM and even basic LLMs that can run on commodity GPUs with 6GB of VRAM can write out twenty tables of addition and balance out fifty chemical equations.
People will argue that balancing out fifty chemical equations and writing out twenty tables of addition is necessary to gain the foundation necessary to do more abstract tasks. That to be an effective Front End developer you need to code in x86 assembly. I would like to save those debates for another day.
ProblemExplorer
Productivity gains have mostly gone to the investor class, they’re not only not working but making more for not working than they ever have. Elon could go sniff glue for a day and he’ll make more money than most of us would working 10 jobs for the rest of our lives.
an0malous
I'm no economist but it seems like competition for housing drives up prices as wages increase. Also, more generally, people's happiness seems to be more correlated with their economic rank in a society, rather than their wealth in absolute terms [1]. So, people want to do better than their neighbors, not just do well.
1. Boyce, Brown & Moore (2010), “Money and Happiness: Rank of Income, Not Income, Affects Life Satisfaction”
jpatten
[delayed]
Swizec
The simple answer is that we will continue to work this hard as long as some members of society are willing to work this hard. The hardest working participants of the labor market will set the tone of the competition for high-paying jobs.
A typical tech job requires far more than 40 hour work weeks.
Dr_Birdbrain
This reminded me of a strange quote I heard a while ago:
"I think the problem we've had is, people decided they didn't want to work so much anymore. (...)
We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around. (...)
So it's a dynamic that has to change. We've got to kill that attitude, and it's go to come through hurting the economy, and that's what the whole world, the governments around the world are trying to increase unemployment, to get that to some sort of normality."
Someone from the shadow wizard money gang will have to chime in and explain how this is all actually a good thing ;)
andai
Nobody wants to admit they are having a 15 hour work week with AI, but if in office attendence is any indication, I think many knowledge workers are starting to reduce work hours. It is much easier to do so remotely.
Some are filling hours with more work however it seems like many are not increasing work volume, just quietly reducing the amount of labor.
XenophileJKO
IMO: if my company slows down to a healthier 30 hours, we lose to competitors and lose our livelihoods. So we have to keep up the 40 hours or disappear. Seems like so much effort is wasted in competition.
chrisra
Seems like tragedy of the commons principle - if everyone was chilling and working 20 hour weeks, I'd do the same. But people hustle and grind to get rich so that's the culture I have to adapt to.
comments (10)
21 years is a third of your productive life, a time when you body still works reliably, can repair itself rapidly, you have very little responsibilities and thus can take more risk and explore the frontiers of possibility.
The math teacher tells you to write out twenty tables of addition, so you do it.
The chemistry teacher tells you to balance out fifty chemical equations, so you do it.
If you question why, you fail.
If you question is there's a better way to demonstrate the understanding, you fail.
If you refuse to do these assignments and start a lemonade stand, you fail.
Thankfully working hard is going to get disrupted. An LLM doesn't sleep, take breaks, fall asleep after three 6 hour shifts or take sick leave. Nothing works as hard as an LLM and even basic LLMs that can run on commodity GPUs with 6GB of VRAM can write out twenty tables of addition and balance out fifty chemical equations.
People will argue that balancing out fifty chemical equations and writing out twenty tables of addition is necessary to gain the foundation necessary to do more abstract tasks. That to be an effective Front End developer you need to code in x86 assembly. I would like to save those debates for another day.
ProblemExplorer
an0malous
1. Boyce, Brown & Moore (2010), “Money and Happiness: Rank of Income, Not Income, Affects Life Satisfaction”
jpatten
Swizec
A typical tech job requires far more than 40 hour work weeks.
Dr_Birdbrain
"I think the problem we've had is, people decided they didn't want to work so much anymore. (...)
We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around. (...)
So it's a dynamic that has to change. We've got to kill that attitude, and it's go to come through hurting the economy, and that's what the whole world, the governments around the world are trying to increase unemployment, to get that to some sort of normality."
-Tim Gurney
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJHP0VfeOrU&t=12s
andai
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
Someone from the shadow wizard money gang will have to chime in and explain how this is all actually a good thing ;)
andai
Some are filling hours with more work however it seems like many are not increasing work volume, just quietly reducing the amount of labor.
XenophileJKO
chrisra
lurker919