Tag Archives: Work

Eye Candy Shows Slack?

By Robin Hanson · January 10, 2012 6:17 pm · Comments (24)

I had a meeting this morning at a management consulting firm that does a lot of government business. Waiting in the lobby, I noticed that their employees are especially good looking. I remembered also noticing this about a similar firm a few years ago.

This makes sense – if you were a government employee choosing among competing firms, you might well choose on the basis of the best eye candy for your regular meetings, since your other personal stakes in the outcomes are so weak.

This suggests that studying how physical attractiveness varies with industry, occupation, and position could give us a window into agency failures at work. That is, it could show us where some employees are especially free to choose for their personal benefit, rather than for a larger benefit. Even when they leave clear evidence of this self-dealing. Seems like a project for an enterprising data-gathering grad student.

Now it could be that some people just place an especially large value on working with attractive others, or that in simple places having attractive associates is an important signal of status. But honestly, while those might be contributing factors, it is hard to believe those are usually the main effects.

Added 11a: Eric Barker a while back:

[Advertising] firms with better-looking executives have higher revenues and faster growth than do otherwise identical firms whose executives are not so good-looking.

Yup – since it is so hard to tell which ads help, folks who hire ad firms probably have a lot of slack.

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You’d Take The Million

By Robin Hanson · January 9, 2012 11:25 am · Comments (48)

Imagine that a month ago you inherited or won a million dollars. You haven’t spent much, but you did tell people you know and you’ve been thinking about how you will spend it. (Probably including quitting your job.) Today you learn that your favorite pet will die unless you spend a million dollars on medical treatment. Ask yourself: would you spend it? What would most people you know do? In this situation, I’m pretty sure most folks wouldn’t spend a million to save their pet.

Now consider a new Vanity Fair survey:

Questions: Would most people you know kill their favorite pet for $1 million? What about you?
Answers: Most people: Yes (23%) No (72%); Yourself: Yes (11%) No (83%).

Matt Yglesias (Hat tip Sir Charles):

I don’t believe it for a minute. Saying you wouldn’t kill your favorite pet for $1 million is cheap talk. Actually declining an offer of $1 million in exchange for the life of your pet, by contrast, costs $1 million. How many people would really turn that offer down in these cash-strapped times?

Actually, my guess is that if no one you knew had ever taken such an offer, and if you took it you’d be in the news so that most folks you know would hear of it, most of you wouldn’t take the offer. But once a few associates had taken the offer, and such offers weren’t newsworthy anymore, most folks would take such offers.

This just shows how much we hate seeming weird. Accepting a million to kill your pet is weird, but then so is paying a million for your pet’s medical treatment. In each case most will do the non-weird thing.

(I posted in July on how you’d take a million to give up the internet.)

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Low Status Workers Are NOT More “Exploited”

By Robin Hanson · December 30, 2011 5:10 pm · Comments (74)

Russ Roberts once told me that when he lived in Asia he felt reluctant to hire a maid, even though they were very cheap there, and well worth the price. This makes sense to me — I suspect he felt that people would blame him for the poverty of his maid, even if he paid above market wages. It is sad that such feelings discourage beneficial trades.

I recently noted that we mainly limit work hours for low status workers, leaving doctors, lawyers, managers, financiers, artists, writers, athletes, academics, and software engineers to work crazy hours. Responses reminded me of how eager folks are to blame non-poor associates of the poor. Many said that only low status workers need protecting from employer “exploitation”: Continue reading "Low Status Workers Are NOT More “Exploited”" »

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Why Work Hour Limits?

By Robin Hanson · December 26, 2011 9:30 am · Comments (85)

Many laws discourage and limit work hours. Laws require holidays and vacations, limit hours per day and week, and require extra payment for work over these limits. And of course income taxes discourage work more generally. The standard economic explanation for these limits is to prevent inefficient signaling. People motivated to gain relative status, to show their extra dedication to success, and to appear more able, work extra hours, for a net social loss. Work hour limits can reduce such losses. (Academic articles here, here, here, here, here.)

This argument makes some sense, but it would make a lot more sense if we set broader and more consistent limits. Yet we don’t at all limit housework, and place few limits on self-employed work. Furthermore, high status occupations are especially exempt. Doctors, lawyers, managers, financiers, artists, writers, athletes, academics, and software engineers often work crazy hours. Yet the signaling argument would seem to apply nearly as well if not better to such high status work. Why are we so selective in our limits?

One explanation is a battle for relative status between professions and activities. Areas where work hours are limited produce less, and so look less impressive. Ambitious folks who want to show their high abilities then choose other areas, leading to an equilibrium were observers reasonably less respect folks who work in limited areas. On this story, work hour limits were set in manufacturing and manual labor in order to reduce the status of such activities.

A second related explanation is that each society is eager to look good to other societies. So each society prefers to encourage, not discourage, activities that are especially visible to outsiders. When outsiders evaluate societies more on the basis of their athletes than their shop technicians, societies naturally subsidize the former relative to the latter.

Another third explanation is that voters support limits on work hours in some jobs mainly as a way to defy and “stick it to” employers, who are seen as evil and in need of taking down. Firms who employ low status workers may themselves seem lower status and “exploitive,” and thus more acceptable targets of ire. Work hour limits serve as a quantity limit which raises wages and thus employer expenses. Any reduction of signaling losses is nice, but mainly a side effect.

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Construction Peaks At 60Hr/Wk

By Robin Hanson · December 24, 2011 1:00 pm · Comments (17)

Yesterday I puzzled over:

I have found many studies, conducted by businesses, universities, industry associations and the military, that support the basic notion that, for most people, eight hours a day, five days per week, is the best sustainable long-term balance point between output and exhaustion. Throughout the 30s, 40s, and 50s, these studies were apparently conducted by the hundreds. … Somehow, Silicon Valley didn’t get the memo. … Five-day weeks of eight-hour days maximize long-term output in every industry that has been studied over the past century. (more)

The most recent study this cites is from ’80 on construction. But I just dug a bit deeper, found some recent papers, and I can now say that this claim is just wrong, at least for construction.

First, an ’01 review found total product peaking at 60 hours per weak:

Now some claim that added product only comes in the first few weeks of long hours, after which exhaustion sets in. But an ’05 paper looked at 88 long construction projects, many over fifteen weeks duration, and it still found max product at 60 hr/wk. Also, an ’11 paper gives an integrated model that explicitly includes exhaustion effects, and it also has max product at 60 hr/wk.

So averaging over many construction projects, and including long-run exhaustion effects, total product tends to be highest at sixty hours of work per week. This leaves plenty of room for higher hours-per-week peaks 1) for especially hardy individuals, and 2) in less physically demanding industries.

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Work Hour Skepticism

By Robin Hanson · December 23, 2011 11:20 pm · Comments (15)

In the comments John Maxwell links again to a presentation claiming that folks who work more than about 40 hours a week don’t actually produce more:

Working more than 40 hours a week leads to decreased productivity. … >60 hour work week gives a small productivity book. The boost last 3 to 4 weeks and then turns negative. … Ford … [ran] dozens of experiments. As a result … he and his fellow industrialists lobbied Congress to pass 40 hour a week labor laws. Not because he was nice. He wanted to make the most money possible. … Performance for knowledge workers declines after 35 hours, not 40. … Past this they start becoming tired and making dumb decisions. (more)

The claim that Ford needed regulation to get his workers to work only 40 hours is clearly wrong. But the other claims are intriguing, and appeal to my contrarian tastes. These claims were also historically important:

During the first decades of the twentieth century, … a new cadre of social scientists began to offer evidence that long hours produced health-threatening, productivity-reducing fatigue. This line of reasoning, advanced in the court brief of Louis Brandeis and Josephine Goldmark, was crucial in the Supreme Court’s decision to support state regulation of women’s hours in Muller vs. Oregon. Goldmark’s book, Fatigue and Efficiency (1912) was a landmark. In addition, data relating to hours and output among British and American war workers during World War I helped convince some that long hours could be counterproductive. (more)

Now, the most productive people I know, including self-employed folks and those with a huge personal stake in their own productivity, tend to work tons of hours. Either these claims are just wrong about such folks, or they are right on average but don’t apply to the most productive folks, or these folks and their associaties consistently make a huge mistake (as did most of the working world before 1920). Which is it?

The presentation above cites this, which cites this, which cites books from 1894, 1908, 1909, 1913, 1926, and says:

I have found many studies, conducted by businesses, universities, industry associations and the military, that support the basic notion that, for most people, eight hours a day, five days per week, is the best sustainable long-term balance point between output and exhaustion. Throughout the 30s, 40s, and 50s, these studies were apparently conducted by the hundreds; and by the 1960s, the benefits of the 40-hour week were accepted almost beyond question in corporate America. In 1962, the Chamber of Commerce even published a pamphlet extolling the productivity gains of reduced hours. But, somehow, Silicon Valley didn’t get the memo. .. Five-day weeks of eight-hour days maximize long-term output in every industry that has been studied over the past century.

This article quotes a 1980 article “Scheduled Overtime Effect on Construction Projects” as saying:

Where a work schedule of 60 or more hours per week is continued longer than about two months, the cumulative effect of decreased productivity will cause a delay in the completion date beyond that which could have been realized with the same crew size on a 40-hour week.

I couldn’t find that source, but I found a 2001 review article:

Based on the foregoing overview of available studies it is evident that only a few are based on original data. Moreover, less than reliable data have been published and republished over and over giving a false appearance of originality. Finally, data are available for a limited number of trades only. Figure 16 compares the reported efficiency from various studies for the 50-hour, 60-hour and 70-hour work weeks with the majority based on 10-hour workdays and an overtime schedule of four consecutive weeks. (more)

That figure 16 estimates a max total productivity over four weeks at 60 hours per week. But the study it cites that looked longest, found that by sixteen weeks median per hour productivity had fallen by 30%, 50% and 62% for 50, 60, and 84 hour work weeks. (Though for that source “The origin of the data and the work environment are unknown.”) So yes, the basic claims above do weakly check out, at least for the construction industry. But basic questions still remain: How solid is the data here, does this apply to all industries, and does it apply to our most productive workers?

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Creativity Clues

By Robin Hanson · December 7, 2011 2:00 pm · Comments (13)

People like creativity less than they say, especially when they feel uncertain. (more)

Sex is near and love is far, logical analysis is near while “aha” creativity is far, and conventional art is near while unconventional art is far. These results seem to confirm my suggestion that near mode emphasizes practical action, while far mode emphasizes social image. … “When in love, people typically focus on a long-term perspective, which should enhance holistic thinking and thereby creative thought.” … Far mode does better at word creativity. (more)

I’ve argued “school functions in part to help folks accept workplace domination,” said modern workplaces don’t reward creativity, and cited evidence that schools discourage creativity. … So I’m not surprised to learn creativity has been falling for decades. (more)

Participants with creative personalities tended to cheat more than less creative individuals and that dispositional creativity is a better predictor of unethical behavior than intelligence. .. Participants who were primed to think creatively were more likely to behave dishonestly than those in a control condition and that greater ability to justify their dishonest behavior explained the link between creativity and increased dishonesty. (more)

Consistent with distrust’s social consequences, subliminal distrust (vs. trust) priming had detrimental effects on creative generation presumed to be public. Consistent with distrust’s cognitive consequences, though, an opposite tendency emerged in private. Study 2 confirmed a beneficial effect of distrust on private creative generation with a different priming method and pointed to cognitive flexibility as the mediating process. Studies 3 and 4 showed increased category inclusiveness versus increased remote semantic spread after distrust priming, consistent with enhanced cognitive flexibility as a consequence of distrust. (more)

We are more creative in far mode, and we are happier there too, but we are only more conformist and trustworthy on publicly visible acts. On private hidden acts we are more likely to cheat. This confirms far mode as more focused on managing social images. And it helps us appreciate why employers, and hence schools, aren’t so eager to encourage creativity.

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Easy Job Fix?

By Robin Hanson · December 6, 2011 4:00 pm · Comments (22)

I’ve been slowly working my way through Triver’s book Folly of Fools. Chapter six reviews the many amazing benefits that appear to arise from having people write about their troubles. For example:

Writing about job loss improves one’s chance of reemployment. This sort of writing appears to be cathartic – people immediately feel better. More striking, at least in one study, is a sharply increased chance of getting a job. After six months, 53 percent of writers had found a new job, compared with only 18 percent of non writers. One effect of writing is that it helps you work through your anger so it is not displaced onto a new, prospective employer or, indeed, revealed to the employer in any form.

Here is the cited ’94 study:

Subjects in the study were 63 professionals (62 men, 1 woman), with a mean age of 54 years (representing of range of 40 to 68 years) and an average tenure of 20 years with their former employer, a large computer and electronics firm. Subjects had held engineering or other professional positions with the company. They were voluntarily recruited to the Writing in Transition Project from … an outplacement firm, following a large-scale layoff from their company. At the time of the study the length of unemployment was five months for all subjects. All [100] potential subjects were informed that the project involved a writing process that was expected to benefit them in their search process. Forty-one of [them] volunteered for the study and were randomly assigned to either the experimental writing (N = 20) or the control writing (N = 21) conditions. …

[We saw] a significant difference (… p = .018) between those who got jobs and those who did not. … The effects were not mediated by measures of heightened motivation. That is, subjects in the experimental condition did not receive more phone calls, make more contacts, or send out more letters than controls. … Most subjects had very powerful emotions about their termination experience. (more)

This suggests an easy way to increase employment, at least if the problem is employee attitudes. Digging more, I found this ’01 review, which seems to confirm the benefits of writing therapy. It all does seem a bit hard to believe, but stranger things have been true.

Added 31Dec: jsalvatier finds a good ’06 meta analysis:

One hundred forty-six randomized studies of experimental disclosure were collected and included in the present meta-analysis. Results of random effects analyses indicate that experimental disclosure is effective.

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Can’t Hear Bad News

By Robin Hanson · November 23, 2011 8:30 am · Comments (9)

I’ve long been puzzled with why students aren’t taught more about the consequences of choosing different careers, and why they don’t take more initiative to learn this for themselves. One clue: apparently students are only capable of hearing good news about future earnings. Maybe students don’t want to hear, and aren’t told, out of an urge to avoid hearing bad news? Details:

[Of] undergraduate college students … we ask … (1) their self beliefs about their own expected earnings if they were to major in different fields and (2) their beliefs about the population distribution of earnings. After the initial round in which the baseline beliefs are elicited, we provide students with accurate information on the population characteristics and then re-elicit their self beliefs. …

Students in our sample, despite belonging to a very high ability group, have biased beliefs about the population distribution of earnings. … More experienced students – those in their second or third year – hav[e] relatively more accurate beliefs about population earnings. …

The effect of information is asymmetric: There is signifcant updating when the information is good news for the respondent, i.e., when the respondent is informed that population earnings are higher than her prior beliefs, and no significant updating in instances where the respondent is informed that the population earnings are lower than her prior beliefs. … Relative to freshmen, experienced students are more likely to be non-updaters and less likely to react excessively to information. …

The information on earnings we provide causes nearly half of the students to revise their beliefs about graduating with the different majors. (more)

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True School Believers

By Robin Hanson · November 22, 2011 7:00 am · Comments (25)

A few weeks ago I met the head of a prestigious institute devoted to studying and promoting college education. He disapproved of Bryan Caplan’s writings skeptical of college social value, and felt so strongly that at one point he broke off our conversation to compose himself. Yet when I raised the point that most students don’t seem to ever use much of what they learn, he agreed and endorsed the view that college mainly helps students hone work habits, a view I find plausible and first heard from Tyler.

In a long review of education reform books, Steven Brint, who directs a similar pro-college institute, also ends up endorsing a similar view:

A few jobs require specialized skills that can only be acquired in technical programs, but most jobs are relatively routine. They require workers to know basic literacy and numeracy, but other skills can be picked up on the job. The most important requirements are that workers show up and do their jobs every day, feel comfortable working with people from a variety of backgrounds, and know how to find information they need in non-routine situations. Following the directives of supervisors is essential. Reliability and steady effort are highly valued. …

[In] the society in which we live, … educational structures that might otherwise seem low-performing, expensive, and inefficient make perfect sense. Dedicated work is not required in college because it will not be required at work. In most jobs, showing up and doing the work is more important than achieving outstanding levels of performance. … [People think] inequality is legitimate, talent can always be identified, a regulated work force is possible, technical training is possible, adjustments for credential inflation are possible, the regulation of ambition is possible, and the elite is preserved in gilded educational enclaves. (more)

Even so, Brint rejects the scenario where we use college less, and hone work habits on the job. He would instead “welcome” our “invest[ing] in a revival of the gospel” that college 1) should be available to all regardless of performance, 2) is the main route to personal success, and 3) solves all social problems, 4) including social inequality. This even though he “cannot be optimistic about the prospects for reform.” Like democracy fans who insist the only acceptable solution to democracy’s failings is more democracy, for many school fans the only acceptable solution to school failings is more school.

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