But the reason we don’t work 15 hours a week is the weird equilibrium we’re in of what is valued by society.
Humans don’t intrinsically value “hours worked”. We value things like status, sex, community, pleasure. In modern society, we learned to associate a lot of this with work and consumption. This is especially true of men, which is why men left out of the work-consumption cycle fall into greater despondency than women.
For me, it is none of that. Ten years ago, when I was single and childless, I could have easily lived on 50% of my income. My status would be the same, and I would have more time to spend on things like sex, community, and pleasure. The problem was completely different, namely… signaling, when looking for a job.
When almost everyone works 40 hours a week, you signal conformity (one of the main traits employers are looking for) by working 40 hours a week. Working 40 hours is normal, wanting to work any other number of hours is weird. Why would anyone hire a weird person, when they have an option to hire a perfectly normal person instead?
How exactly are you going to explain, during the job interview, why the option good enough for everyone else is not good enough for you? “You know, I work to live; I don’t live to work. I do have dreams beyond working hard to make someone else rich; and I value things that don’t require much money, but require time, such as watching sunset or doing math. I already suspect that on my deathbed I will regret not spending more time following my dreams, but I still need to pay my bills today somehow, and none of my hobbies is profitable, at least in short term. Half of my market salary could cover my expenses; and I don’t see a reason to spend at job any more time than necessary. So, what benefits does your company offer?” …is probably not going to win hearts.
Sometimes you have a socially acceptable excuse for not working full time: you can be a student, or disabled, or a woman with kindergarten-age children. In other words, you would like to work 40 hours just like everyone else, but unfortunately you can’t, as everyone can see. When someone offers a part-time job, something like this is what they have in mind. None of that applied to me. When I explored my chances to get a part-time job, I found out that I would have to sacrifice a disproportionate part of my income. The best offer I got was working 4 days a week, i.e. 80% of the usual time, for 50% of my usual salary. And the employer still felt like they were doing me a huge favor by accommodating my weird desire for having more free time. Seeing that I can’t get the time down to 50% as I wanted, I gave up and returned to 40 hours a week.
tl;dr—working 40 hours a week is a conformity-signaling equilibrium, and it is difficult to get a job otherwise
It seems like almost everything you’ve described has an alternative description that isn’t about conformity-signalling: employers want employees who are willing to do a lot of work, and if right from the outset you say “I would like to work fewer hours than normal” you are identifying yourself as someone who may not be willing to do a lot of work. So it’s not signalling conformity so much as it’s signalling buy-in to the company’s goals, or submissiveness, or workaholism, or something like that—and obviously employees who are eager to do a lot of work are more valuable (all else being equal) than employees who aren’t. (Which is exactly why that little “work to live, not live to work” speech won’t win their hearts.)
I guess a part of my objection still remains… that unlike the article suggests “human value consumption, which is why they choose to work a lot” it is sometimes more about “employers prefer employees who work a lot (why exactly, that is debated), and in such case employees are only given the options to work a lot or not get the job, with no middle ground”.
If this is about knowledge work, there’s also the problem that each new employee introduces large fixed communication overhead—imagine instead of hiring one employee to work 40 hours a week, you hired 40 employees to work 1 hour a week. Most likely nothing at all would ever get done.
For me, it is none of that. Ten years ago, when I was single and childless, I could have easily lived on 50% of my income. My status would be the same, and I would have more time to spend on things like sex, community, and pleasure. The problem was completely different, namely… signaling, when looking for a job.
When almost everyone works 40 hours a week, you signal conformity (one of the main traits employers are looking for) by working 40 hours a week. Working 40 hours is normal, wanting to work any other number of hours is weird. Why would anyone hire a weird person, when they have an option to hire a perfectly normal person instead?
How exactly are you going to explain, during the job interview, why the option good enough for everyone else is not good enough for you? “You know, I work to live; I don’t live to work. I do have dreams beyond working hard to make someone else rich; and I value things that don’t require much money, but require time, such as watching sunset or doing math. I already suspect that on my deathbed I will regret not spending more time following my dreams, but I still need to pay my bills today somehow, and none of my hobbies is profitable, at least in short term. Half of my market salary could cover my expenses; and I don’t see a reason to spend at job any more time than necessary. So, what benefits does your company offer?” …is probably not going to win hearts.
Sometimes you have a socially acceptable excuse for not working full time: you can be a student, or disabled, or a woman with kindergarten-age children. In other words, you would like to work 40 hours just like everyone else, but unfortunately you can’t, as everyone can see. When someone offers a part-time job, something like this is what they have in mind. None of that applied to me. When I explored my chances to get a part-time job, I found out that I would have to sacrifice a disproportionate part of my income. The best offer I got was working 4 days a week, i.e. 80% of the usual time, for 50% of my usual salary. And the employer still felt like they were doing me a huge favor by accommodating my weird desire for having more free time. Seeing that I can’t get the time down to 50% as I wanted, I gave up and returned to 40 hours a week.
tl;dr—working 40 hours a week is a conformity-signaling equilibrium, and it is difficult to get a job otherwise
It seems like almost everything you’ve described has an alternative description that isn’t about conformity-signalling: employers want employees who are willing to do a lot of work, and if right from the outset you say “I would like to work fewer hours than normal” you are identifying yourself as someone who may not be willing to do a lot of work. So it’s not signalling conformity so much as it’s signalling buy-in to the company’s goals, or submissiveness, or workaholism, or something like that—and obviously employees who are eager to do a lot of work are more valuable (all else being equal) than employees who aren’t. (Which is exactly why that little “work to live, not live to work” speech won’t win their hearts.)
Yeah, could be any of that.
I guess a part of my objection still remains… that unlike the article suggests “human value consumption, which is why they choose to work a lot” it is sometimes more about “employers prefer employees who work a lot (why exactly, that is debated), and in such case employees are only given the options to work a lot or not get the job, with no middle ground”.
If this is about knowledge work, there’s also the problem that each new employee introduces large fixed communication overhead—imagine instead of hiring one employee to work 40 hours a week, you hired 40 employees to work 1 hour a week. Most likely nothing at all would ever get done.