Re: Seriously?
It's interesting at a deeper level as well. Soviet worker productivity was highly studied during and after the fall of the Iron Curtain (Managment Consultants no doubt looking for new ideas to sell, heh). Here's a nice article with a funny Soviet cartoon: https://libcom.org/article/labor-discipline-and-decline-soviet-system-don-filtzer
As a child of the cold war, I always heard anecdotes along similar lines, although getting older I did learn to "only believe half of what you see and none of what you hear". But it makes sense...the lack of additional personal incentive, and in fact, active discouragement of "working harder"/"standing out", probably did have exactly this effect, or worse. Double the work hours, production might drop more than half, wouldn't surprise me! Of course in the Soviet system, one also had to attend numerous Soviet meetings, vote on mundane matters, find time to stand in a bread line (depending on the year), etc.
I have no real idea what 'modern' Russia's labor laws say about hours. Is this a hypothetical maximum? Is the current one enforced? Or is it something more like the USA's Wartime Production act where industries can be forced to produce medical or war materials for stockpiling? In any case, if Russians (who themselves are not evil, just victims of their own rulers) have some profit motives, overtime pay, etc., perhaps this is good for them individually and will work out.
Even the West's 40-hour workweek is a fiction to a certain degree. People still go out and work on weekends with real outcomes, more sales, commissions paid and bonuses hit....but also not always!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
