Why you and I will never have a 15 hour work week
tldr: time to market . Recently Keynes' prediction of a 15 hour work week has resurfaced in discussions ranging from automation to basic income. Why exactly do we still work 40+ hours? I've seen many reasons*, but I'd like to focus on something I missed in all the articles and comments: time to market . Companies need their creative employees to deliver at peak performance to achieve the fastest time to market. How can they invent & ship their products as soon as possible? Sticking to a small, stable team that works about 40 hours per week per person. There are two reasons for this: In creative professions the individuals are not easily interchangeable. You can have a different bricklayer continue your part of a wall the next day, getting another programmer to continue your piece of code is much more difficult. The same people have to work on a project for sustained periods of time. In the last century it has been demonstrated that you get most out of employe