South Korea Cuts Its Work Limit From 68 Hours a Week To 52 (cnn.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: South Korea has lowered its maximum working hours from 68 hours a week to 52 hours. The legislation, which went into effect Sunday, received overwhelming support in the National Assembly in an effort to limit the time employees spend on the job. South Korea has the third highest number of hours worked of 37 countries tracked by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, with the average person in South Korea working about 2,024 hours in 2017, or approximately 38.9 hours a week.

Comments

Re:Only 52

[king neckbeard]

A few factors to consider, depend on the exact methodology used.:

1. People not in the workforce, such as children and retirees.
2. Part timers.
3. Vacation time.

Just two weeks vacation turns a 40 hour week into a 38.5 workweek.

Re:Great idea

[dgatwood]

Wouldn't work in software since there's such a lack of programmers compared to demand and programming has such a huge communication overhead that it's more efficient to work more hours than add more people.

Actually, all the research I've seen in this area says the opposite — that you can work maybe one 60-hour week before you start to lose productivity, and over the long term, you're no better off working 60 hours than 30 hours. Your productivity actually goes negative at around 45 hours, IIRC, and diminishing returns begin at 25 or 30 hours. I forget the exact numbers, but that's in the right ballpark. So you're almost always better off adding more people than working more hours, unless the need is very short-term.

The only companies that do well by forcing people to work crazy hours are game developers, and that's because they know they can burn out one group of devs and move on to the next set of suckers. For everybody else, it is generally self-defeating.