Interesting Links for 24-08-2015

[andrewducker]

• Reminder: If you're working more than 40 hours per week then you're harming your health and getting less done.
  • (tags: work hours working_hours time health efficiency )
• Finally, I have a list of reasons people hate me
  • (tags: relationships emotion socialskills communication emotions )
• Martial art acrobatics. Really impressive, in a simple way.
  • (tags:

Comments

[woodpijn]

"It is eight years since British TV got its first major transgender character.
But, with Julie Hesmondhalgh playing Hayley Cropper, Coronation Street did not cast a trans performer, as Boy Meets Girl has."

Do they mean eighteen years? I remember her from when I used to watch Corrie with my mum as a teenager, and I haven't watched it since I left home.

[cmcmck]

you'd be right- it was a lot longer than eight years ago that Julie got that part.

Just checked- Google-fu reveals she played the part from 1998-2014

[cartesiandaemon]

Yeah, I remember Hayley from before I remember having ANY awareness of trans activism. And the little I remember, I remember being a pretty good portrayal! And then I don't remember seeing many other high-profile sympathetic portrayals until fairly recently.

[bart_calendar]

Stone Mattress really is an amazing collection of short stories.

The final story is set roughly 10 to 15 years from now when most of the salaries from Millennials are used to support the retirement lifestyles of Baby Boomers and the Millennials finally say "fuck this shit" and shit gets real.

[bart_calendar]

Also I've always found the "name five novels by female authors you've read" challenge to be really weird and genre specific.

I read mostly crime novels and YA novels. The vast majority of novels in both of those (very popular) genres are written by men. I'd have a much harder time trying to name five male authors I've read this year.

I sort of feel like it's only a challenge if you stick to either scifi/fantasy or else books that were popular 100 yeas ago. (And even then between the Bronte sisters, Mary Wolstencraft Shelly and Jane Austin getting to five is not that hard.)

[simont]

Over on Dreamwidth (because I wasn't paying attention to which site I was on, ahem) I commented that the challenge doesn't seem to rule out all five books being by the same author, in which case Harry Potter alone is going to give a lot of people a no-effort technical win.

[bart_calendar]

That's true.

Also, I just realized my sentence should have read " I read mostly crime novels and YA novels. The vast majority of novels in both of those (very popular) genres are written by women."

[andrewducker]

Wow. I just looked at the top twenty crime writers, and I hadn't realised how high the percentage of women was:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/books/72/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_b_1_2

[gwendysmile]

The 40 hours thing is on my mind a lot right now. I think I'm averaging about 38-40 hours of work a week (probably a bit more when it's taken into account that I usually work some/most of my lunch break), which is totally manageable. But for the last few months there's been about 20 hours a week of studying on top of that, which, I'm realizing, I need to be counting as "work" time if I'm being honest about the tax I'm putting on myself. It'll ease up around Christmas, just in time for busy season.

Why do we think this system is a good idea? The attitudes discussed in the article seem prominent in finance too - everyone likes a good brag/moan about how many hours they pulled in busy season and what amenities their firm has brought into the office to "help" during it, f'rinstance. But does anyone really think that having a masseuse in the office or free dinners means people are actually going to be productive past 8 PM? Really?... It's just some kind of ego thing, and I don't understand why it's so persistent.

[andrewducker]

People higher up don't believe it, and places run by macho people who went through it themselves tend to pass on that culture to the next generation "Because it never did them any harm."

[threegoldfish]

Overtime (if the employee even qualifies for it) is cheaper than paying salary and benefits to an additional staff person, thus companies encourage it.

[witchwestphalia]

One of the commenters on the 40 hour workweek piece hit the nail in the head. If the employee is salaried there is no extra cost to the employer for more hours worked. Even if the employee isn't all that productive, if they're even a little bit productive the employer wins.

Many people are finding themselves in workplaces where excessive hours are needed to meet "targets". I know I work 60-80 hours a week just to keep my job. If I didn't I wouldn't have a job.

[andrewducker]

The thing is, if you're working 60 hours per week, then you are getting _less_ done than someone working 40 hours per week. The graph shows this. The research shows this. They're working you longer hours, and getting less back than if they didn't.

[octopoid_horror]

It doesn't really matter to my employer what research might show.

If piece of work X needs finished by Friday and it takes more hours than an employee has in a week, they need to work extra hours until it's finished. And if after 40 hours the quality/quantity of their work drops then that just means it takes even longer.

In theory there's an upper limit on how much paid overtime staff in jobs where they have that should do (staff who don't get paid for overtime, such as myself, have no such limit) but in practice if there's work that needs to be done, then it's open-ended as long as it can be justified. Completion of the work at an expected level of quality is the important (and measured and target-driven) thing, not what it took to do it orwhether it was done healthily.

[andrewducker]

So the question is - why don't they care that they're getting less out if you then they could be?