Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek
Something about this bothers me. Time-keeping is already not straightforward for an engineer. Because the work is done in our heads and doesn&#x27;t necessarily stop just because the workday is over. You don&#x27;t have to be sitting at a keyboard for your head to be grinding on a problem. More often some problem takes hold of you, occupying some mental bandwidth even while you&#x27;re away, at home trying to enjoy time with your family or whatever - technically you&#x27;re still working, your mind is preoccupied, you might not be able to sleep or when you do you dream about the problem.<p>From the outside it might appear like you came back to the office after a nice weekend break and quickly knocked out whatever task it was that was on your mind. But it&#x27;s not that simple and after unloading that task, even though it&#x27;s Monday you could be feeling like you need a break because you actually just worked through the weekend on it.<p>Because of this, I feel like engineers are already massively overworked and&#x2F;or underpaid when you consider their salary based on a 40hour workweek when the real mental effort can be pushing 60-80 hours a week. Things like unlimited&#x2F;discretionary PTO, flex hours, and management that understands the balance of overtime and undertime keeps things fair. Establishing a 30-hour workweek just seems like going hard in the other direction.