A terrible sleep starter - an 8-hour working day?

This is an article, after translation of which I still reflect on historical facts that we forget in favor of fleeting and alluvial trends. She, not afraid of it, divides time into two parts, the one in which for me 8 working hours is a clear evil, and the one in which I understand that this is far from the worst.

Startups are known for trumpeting everywhere about “entrepreneurship as a lifestyle.” Prolonged workloads, poor food, and disgusting working conditions are common among many boasting founders. After they develop something, you should worry about their physical well-being and mental health. Clothing that is not a lost bottom from a tracksuit can wait for months to come out, although sometimes it does not wait for it.

They will tell you that they are not bound by any obligations to rest or spend time away from work. But I often wonder if their employees share such zeal or, dictated by a startup culture, a way of life is possible only for low-skilled employees.

Some of them have forgotten, and even did not know at all, that the introduction of the 8-hour working day was once the most important issue of working social reform. The right to a certain number of labor hours per day was not granted to workers out of the goodness of their soul, but was knocked out by the workers themselves. The pioneers of industrialization obviously worked in somewhat more difficult conditions than today's entrepreneurs. But despite this, they fought for changes in working conditions, so the middle class, which emerged from manufacturing workers, is not a bit like the stagnation of modern technical staff, whom they seem incredibly proud of.

The “8-hour working day movement” first appeared in the United Kingdom during the first industrial revolution through the work of reformer Robert Owen, who proposed the motto “eight hours of labor, eight hours of rest, eight hours of sleep” in 1817. The reform of the reduction of the working day was initiated simultaneously with the laws supporting child labor. While the industrial revolution was gaining momentum, a rise in the middle class and the creation of more favorable social conditions for ordinary people were observed, but the working conditions in factories and plants, especially for children, were still terrible. Eloquent statistics show that the infant mortality rate in the UK during the industrial revolution has declined, while the overall infant mortality rate has remained at the pre-industrial level.
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Industrial society was reformed extremely slowly. In 1819, Great Britain introduced one of the first factory laws , introducing a 12-hour working day for children aged 9 to 16 working in cotton spinning mills. But the forced 10-hour working day for women and children of textile workers was not adopted by British law until 1847.

The movement for the 8-hour working day gained momentum in America during the second industrial revolution, especially after the protests on Haymarket Square on May 1, 1886.

The Ford Motor Company was the first large American industrial concern to adopt an 8-hour day in 1914, 28 years after the riots in Haymarket Square. As a result, the company's productivity and profits have doubled. After that, many companies followed suit.

These terrible lessons of history are difficult to understand today. A long historical turnaround ultimately led to a more equitable working culture that puts pressure on employers. Creating a strong middle class improved the quality of life, created a banking system, spawned a modern system of public education, and generally allowed for the social mobilization of the working class. But that middle class did not use social mobility, for a simple increase in the number of things produced.

Since the onset of the “digital revolution”, many entrepreneurs have adopted a long working day. Such a concept is sometimes cited in technical entrepreneurial circles that claim that people work most productively and creatively in accordance with ultradian rhythms , three-hour blocks, with half-hour intervals of rest. Another popular concept was first voiced by the Hungarian psychology professor Mihai Chikszentmichayi, known as the “stream” .

An interesting aspect of both these concepts is that they focus on productivity, without going into the health and physical condition of employees. It is also interesting that the first strategy is expressed as a repeating cyclically process that does not correspond to the actual schedule. With an 8-hour working day, you work the very 8 hours, and according to this concept, the work can go on much longer.

Perhaps an 8-hour workday is wrong and based on an arbitrary number? May be. But the need to limit the number of working hours is obvious. According to the 2009 Harvard Business Review survey , 94 percent of the surveyed professionals worked for at least 50 hours a week or more, and a report on the state of American jobs from 2013 conducted by the American Public Opinion Institute showed that up to 70 percent of the time American workers feel unoccupied (demotivated and dissatisfied).

Confirming the importance of an 8-hour workday, or at least some time limit, is not a trick for lazy people. This is quite a humane argument that improves performance within real limits.

Many people, while reading this, will begin to shout, “problems of white people!” (“First World Problem!” To me too) to me, and in a sense, they are right. This is a dilemma faced by our industrialized, unfairly privileged, somewhat culturally flabby society. It's hard to feel sorry for bloggers and developers looking at the screen for 10 hours a day, listening to Katy Perry on Spotify, when people facing more serious problems do not get help. In addition, the difference between the everyday experience of workers in the modern IT industry, and the workers of the industrial revolution, is huge.

And yet, our technologically obsessed, culturally enriched society is still there. One of the biggest misconceptions of the #firstworldproblems meme is the idea that the solution to the “problem of white people” and the problems of third world countries are mutually exclusive. Creating suitable conveniences for everyday life of modern workers, one must recognize the contribution of labor reformers of the industrial era to the development of the principles of social equality and be guided by them.

This question is particularly relevant if you take into account the existing options for the working environment in which employees who spend a lot of time in the office, at the same time, are endowed with ample opportunities for recreation and entertainment, such as companies such as Facebook, Zynga and Google.

Google office in Switzerland

Provided that the discomfort of constantly harassing employees is the problem of white people #firstworldproblem , perhaps we could come up with a solution to the problem of white people #firstworldsolution , not related to unreasonable luxury. If we are going to choose between #firstworldproblems and the problems of third world countries, it may be better to pay attention to those whose fate is more hopeless than ours? There should be no or / or.

As previously, industrialists, startups and entrepreneurs, if necessary, work many hours a day, because the companies they develop need it. Numerous low-skilled workers in the technology industry, rushing into 12-hour working days, hope to get a piece of the company's capital by investing in person, in the hope of becoming part of something more than themselves.

With all this, startups should remember that in the short term, it may be necessary to change the approaches and methodology, ripe for reform, and not to chant any way of life.