See? I told you they were a bad idea.

Why workplace regulation matters.

‘In fact, research shows that knowledge workers actually have fewer good hours in a day than manual laborers do — on average, about six hours, as opposed to eight.’

‘It’s really an impressive system, if you couldn’t give a damn about whether Britain is a pleasant place to live or not. If your ideal scenario is a country dotted by gated communities full of Croesus-rich suburbanites, surrounded by a great roiling ocean of resentful wage slaves and feral scumbags, then the present government’s strategy is working like a charm.’

‘Large companies, for understandable reasons, are uncomfortable with the impression of slave labour created by the threat of benefits removal.’

‘Working overtime doesn't increase your output. It makes you stupid.’

‘For many of us, the computer we work with during the day is the same one we relax with in the evening. We end up not being able to concentrate as well as we could when we’re working and not really being able to switch off when the work’s over.’

On the importance of a longer view in encouraging people into work.

‘unemployed people are being sent to work without pay … to do similar work to that of salaried staff while receiving only £67.50 a week in Jobseekers' Allowance.’

‘NPR is experimenting with something called “Serendipity Day,” wherein everyone on the technology side abandons their day jobs to work on…whatever they want.’

‘It's an extraordinary waste of talent, potential and smarts for people not to be doing something that matters to them, something that provides a sufficient level of satisfaction and/or enjoyment.’

‘A good programmer will spend most of his time doing work that he hates, using tools and technologies that he also hates.’

‘working for the sake of work is a waste of time, resources, and human potential’

Documentary about heavy manual labour. I want to see it.

The effects of overtime and working conditions on programmer productivity.

37signals on their work-week experiments. Lots of good points.

Or: 'talent evaporates'.

37 Signals are experimenting with three-day-weeks.