I am a firm believer that I would get more work done with a 4-day workweek than I currently do with my 5-day workweek. I already spend an embarrassing amount of time slacking off daily, it's not like I'm pressed for time to get stuff done in the office. I could easily meet my weekly objectives in 32 hours rather than 40, and having 3-day weekends every weekend I think would be incredible for my mental health and mood. And when I'm in a better mood, I get more work done!
One thing I feel like a lot of people don't realize is just how big a difference it is to go from a 5-day week to a 4-day week. Sure, it's "just one day" but when you think about the ratio between time-on and time-off, the shift becomes a lot more dramatic. 5-on, 2-off means you spend over twice as many days working as not working. 4-on, 3-off means you spend a nearly equal number of days on each. It's just one day of difference, but it feels like a major, major shift.
If you spend only ~75% of your time working (i.e. you can finish your work in 32 hours instead of 40), does this imply that in the event your company switched to a 4 day workweek you would be busy 100% of the time?
It seems more likely that people would retain a similar ratio of slacking to working.
As an aside, how does "I finish my work in 32 hours" even work? What does that mean? Are most developers out there getting paint-by-numbers printouts they need to color in and then they're all done for the week? Almost all of my roles in a professional capacity have required self-starting, and the project life cycles are much longer than a day/week such that there is literally always work to do.
If you're building a house and you're done nailing in shingles by noon you don't go home and come back tomorrow, you go put up sheetrock or install bathroom tiles. The "I finish my work in a few hours" that I see on HN and Twitter must be extremely poorly managed teams or people that are leaving a lot of work on the rest of their teammates.
I feel the same. If I work 5 days I'd feel like I'm wasting so much time, when realistically I can do the same amount of work in 4 days. I'm working as a developer so it's also about retaining my attention span. I just can't do it for 5 days straight anymore.
My perfect 4-day workweek is having the Wednesday off so I have a 'mini-weekend' in my week. I only ever have to work 1 more day until I have some time to clear my head, make some music, etc. It feels like a more healthy work/life balance. And I feel sharper after a day off.
Being fully remote gives me 6-8 hours back each week because I don't have to commute. It has been huge for my mental health, mostly because I'm able to get more sleep.
Same, it has always blown my mind how I'm consistently one of the most productive members on any team I've been on yet I know how much time I spend just idling. It's the spurts of activity where I get my work done and time off 100% correlates with the intensity and length of those spurts/flow states.
This article is so dramatic. "Look at how hard it was for these companies to go to four days a week."
It's not hard. You just declare Friday a weekend. Then you do everything like before.
Did you have meetings on weekends? No? Good, move the Friday ones to another day because they're on the weekend now. Who is going to answer customer support emails on Friday? The same people who answered on Saturday and Sunday, and maybe you'll pay them extra work on the weekend. What if we can't get everything done? You probably weren't getting everything done before, and you either worked on Saturday or just said screw it. Do the same thing.
The only slightly reasonable issue brought up was the lawyers who wanted to work four days but kept having to go to court on Friday. Yes, if you work with external entities, you either have to be willing to say no to working on Friday or if you can't, you have to wait for them to also move to four days. But very few people are actually in a position where they can't say no to the client (the lawyer being one of the few exceptions).
The WSJ wants to make it sound like a massive undertaking because they are pro-business and anti-worker. Don't buy the hype.
> But very few people are actually in a position where they can't say no to the client (the lawyer being one of the few exceptions).
Yea, I agree with this. As the lawyer, when the court asks you your preferred dates for scheduling something, don't give them a Friday.
If the Court asks you to schedule something on a Friday, you could politely request it moved to another day. If the Court says: "too bad, this Court works Fridays, and I'm going to schedule something for Friday", then you show up on Friday. Exactly the same way that you would if the Court said: "I'm going to schedule something for a Saturday".
To be far, the metric of a salary at 40 hours is not valid. The time to commute should be count against that 40 hours and yet we exclude it. You're driving to work means work is taking your time, they also know where you live and how long it takes so there should be no scruples there.
Current metric fuzzes reality and allows for persuasion against 35 work weeks because people think they are only working 40 hours a week.
To be far, I find 9:00-17:00 to be a destructive cookie-cut mentality too. Prefer having about 12 hours of continual time when implementing a new feature or working a new solution. This allows for laying out the solution and better refactoring to make it cleaner. 9:00 to 17:00 does not allow for this because continual thoughts have to be shelved for the next day which takes more energy and time to try and rev-up again to continue where one left off.
To be far, a CEO or President or Owner or Manager seeing you in the office is a social engineering hack. "They are there so they must be doing work, I'm getting what I payed for."
I was surprised to see this in the WSJ at all. Obviously they did it so they could sow doubt. This entire article is likely PR for ActivTrak though:
"Many four-day-week employers don’t appear to be operating more efficiently, though, according to data from ActivTrak, a maker of workforce analytics software. Gabriela Mauch, vice president of ActivTrak’s productivity lab, suspects that is because management hasn’t revamped the way teams work."
> The WSJ wants to make it sound like a massive undertaking because they are pro-business and anti-worker.
I agree. It's just a shame that for the most part we're still using a lens that's so binary. I understand why say Fortune 500 companies are so slow to change. But why are the rest? If you're competing for talent - and nearly all companies are - and "we're on a 4-day workweek" would be appealing, why not do it?
On my last contract I worked 4 days x ~8.5 hrs with Fridays off. LOVED IT. I was more productive and never had to face "This client / project annoys the shit out of me...And even nore so on a Friday." There's nothing to be said for that ;)
I'm on a true 4x8 work week and it's life changing. I have Tuesdays off. It feels close to half my days at work and half off. I'm more productive at work and the extra day off has allowed me so much flexibility in life; from going to Costco when it's quiet to 5 hour bike rides around Denver and even spending the day with my kids if they're off. It's huge. It's hard to place a value on it, but I'd probably turn down another job that was 5 a week unless it was at least $70k+ in more annual pay.
A midweek day off sounds pretty uninteresting relatively speaking. I'd much rather have (official) long weekends--though Fridays seem to be there in a lot of informal arrangements at many companies these days.
Same here - love my Tuesdays off and going for long bike rides before collecting the kids from school to play. Costco never seems to have quiet times near me any more though! I get the Friday Feeling on a Monday afternoon, get the out of office ready and switch off mentally. Every Public holiday that falls on a Monday gives an automatic 4 day weekend. I try to avoid squeezing in too many odd-jobs like a weekly food shop. Like you, I would also only look for a new job that could be flexible on 4 days.
> I'm on a true 4x8 work week and it's life changing.
while many have shared positive experiences, mine was quite the opposite. i did a 4-day work week for around 1.5 months and didn't find it to be beneficial at all. i went back to a 40-50 hour work week. i really love my work and want a lot more of it. not having a family also probably helps.
> Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University, says it is doubtful most businesses can shed a fifth of the workweek and maintain productivity. “Whenever I talk to managers, they find the topic pretty insulting—they argue it implies they are completely wasting a day a week,” he said.
Yeah, that's the point. You shouldn't expect the same productivity. You should expect less. Just like in theory if we went back to a six day week we'd expect more productivity.
The change isn't expected to hold productivity, it's expected to make people's lives easier and take advantage of technological advantages. Go to a four day work week and you can expect the same productivity that you had 20 years ago at five days.
Nothing wrong with that, if reduced productivity is even true, but most studies refute that anyway.
I'd rather five day workweeks but with shorter days, to be honest. I feel I have about 3 hours of peak mental acuity each day that I'd like to spend on my work. It seems like a better time-for-value trade for my employer.
To be fair I work more remotely than not these. If I had to commute in more often I'd almost certainly prefer 4-day workweeks.
Por que no los dos? For lots of jobs peak productivity is probably around 20-30 hours of work. Could easily be 5-6 hours, 4 days per week. Gives you time to warm up and cool down from your more intense work.
4-day weeks have a lower cost than 32 hours spread over 5 days, because some of the days you’re off would have been off anyway due to holidays or whatever. You can also get away with offering fewer days off without doing any harm—all weekends are three-day weekends, and you see fewer parents taking days off because of e.g. a Friday school in-service day.
The cost of having Fridays always off is a fair bit lower than 20% of actual hours worked in most 5-day-a-week workplaces.
I've worked 4-10s for 3 years at an aerospace contractor but after 8 hours I felt done. I worked 5-7s during COVID as WFH and really enjoyed it. Sometimes we would do 4-8s around holidays and vacations and that was also great. It's really about defining a culture that supports quality over quantity of work.
one thing I’ve realised is working style is really something that is highly preferential, you cant possibly satisfy everyone.
Working from Office, Working from home, hybrid- working hours, lunch hours.
you cant ever hope to satisfy everybody.
In my case for example, i bloody hate commuting, I feel like any work I do in a day eats disproportionately too much of my day (like going to the gym, where if you work out for 45 minutes you should allocate 90 minutes actually due to prep, shower, travel etc).
I used to work 5 days a week, 9 am to 2pm. I quite liked it, but my employer would often call or ask for "urgent" stuff to be down after my hours, which meant I could not be fully present for family or whatever I had planned. I have now switched to a 3 days workweek at another job, and I find it much easier to set effective boundaries. If I'm not there I'm not there and that's it. I don't think I could ever go back to working 40 hour weeks to be honest. When do you get anything personal done?
Depends on the job I'm sure, but genuinely only have 3 good hours too. After 5-6, I may as well just not be working. I'm writing garbage code and I'm grumpy.
I interviewed with one place for a kernel dev role that was explicitly 12-4pm. Yes you read that right. They were in the “defense” space and lowball salary so I didn’t take that offer but always thought it was interesting idea
I like this better in theory, but my experience is that, given my current hours, work tends to very frequently spill over until later in the evening. If my day was supposed to end at 3 or even noon I don't think it would make a practical impact on how late I worked.
Work spilling over into extra days does happen during crunch times, but is much rarer. Though I likewise fear that 4 day work weeks would simply mean you end up working 8-8 everyday to get the same amount of stuff done.
I went on ADD meds (Dexedrine, 10mg) ohh 6 months ago. I used to be like you and now I'm the other way around - it's easier to Just Keep Going.
Note that I would totally support you getting "five sixes" (~30hours); I'm just finding it interesting that with the meds, for myself I'd now want "three tens" (or whatever).
PS - It helps a lot that I freakin' love working in Ruby/Rails, so I kinda... want to just keep going anyway.
This!!! Kids (where i live) go to school 9-2, and it is a true nightmare to extend those hours to fit with parents longer work schedule. Let's just make both the same!
Also free afternoons every day, better than a longer weekend.
I have a four-day, 32-hour work week, and I am less productive, but that was the plan up front and I'm very okay with that (and luckily, so is my management).
I wanted more personal time, and I also needed more time to take care of my physical and mental health with appointments -- which all of my providers schedule during the 9-AM-to-5-PM period anyway -- and simple rest and relaxation. If I didn't have this schedule, there's a good chance I wouldn't still be at this current job or would have burned out earlier in general, and my contributions are valued, so it works out well for all parties involved.
But I don't think you have to justify it so concretely or morally -- you can just want to do a day's less formal work, or want to work toward a society with less work and more leisure time! The 40-hour work week is arbitrary, anyway.
I've had a 3 day work week for years (at 20 hours per week) and I love it. I feel like I'm more productive than before, too. Not just productivity per hour, but total productivity. I was surprised by this result since I'm working half the hours per week.
When applying for senior positions, a 4-day work week is already quite an ask. I feel like the whole agile/scrum approach is so deeply rooted into modern companies that ironically they are unable to adapt.
We had somebody in a different timezone join the team and there was a long discussion about when we should do stand ups. I almost suggested just dropping it, but that would have been heresy.
One detail about the 4-day work week that tends to be ignored is that a 4 day work week is not the same as a part-time position, and, crucially, it should be compensated the same as a "full-time" 40 hours per week position. Some companies claim to have a 4 day work week schedule, when in fact they simply negotiate an equal reduction in salary.
The point of working less is for people to have more personal time without this impacting their livelihood. There are many well-studied benefits of this[1], both to workers and companies, yet greedy companies still cling to archaic practices to squeeze as much profits as possible out of each employee.
Even after considerable productivity increases gained in part by automation and technology, we've seen decades of wage stagnation and an increasing productivity-pay gap[2,3,4]. Workers have lived with this short end of the stick for far too long, and the least controversial step forward would be to make the 4 day work week without pay reduction a general policy in all companies in nonessential industries. There are industries that need to operate with longer schedules, and those positions should be compensated accordingly, but most IT companies can certainly operate with much less than 5 days per week.
I think of a "work week" as a bit of a fishbowl situation for most professionals. If you extend it from 40 hours to 80 hours you'll generally get the same output over time.
Of course, this productivity can only be squeezed into only so small a frame, but I think what we're learning is that 40 hours is probably not the maxima for efficiency.
The simplest way to have more efficient workers is to make them happy. I don't have a panacea for that problem, but giving them an extra day for leisure sure doesn't hurt when possible. But more than that, companies rarely ask and listen to employees about what they want/need, and there's so much social pressure that people seldom speak up. Fundamentally this is a cultural problem.
At Close we have been offering an 80% salary / 4-day week option for engineering roles for a few years now. This originally was mandatory during early 2020 COVID-19 economic uncertainty as a way to cut costs without doing layoffs. Quickly it became optional – most people moved back to 100% but some people decided they enjoyed it and wanted to continue that arrangement.
What's interesting about 4d weeks is that it's 20% less work but 50% more days off, which can be very impactful for folks.
Our 80% option is a flexible thing, as in you can choose to do it for the summer but not the rest of the year. We try to adjust workloads accordingly. I've taken advantage of it myself for a period of time and it gave me more free time to be with family and also work on side projects.
Some people really love taking our 80% option / 4d and others absolutely don't want to.
Companies offering flexibility in work hours can really help retention IMO, and is a natural progression after (a) remote / freedom of location, and (b) freedom of specific work schedule.
I know a few companies offer "4-day week summers" to everybody or even "everyone always does 4-day weeks". But I like the "fairness" of giving people an option, since different people are in different life situations at different times where working more vs. less can be especially helpful.
> This originally was mandatory during early 2020 COVID-19 economic uncertainty as a way to cut costs without doing layoffs.
I'm surprised I've never heard of this solution before. I think it's brilliant, especially for engineering roles where we can still make rent on 80% pay.
I would gladly move back and forth between the options as I get more or less burnt out with work, or take on a new extra curricular.
Since becoming a freelancing contractor I’ve experimented a fair bit with my work week and for me the sweet spot is 5 6-hour days, split up as 2x90min, 2 hour lunch and another 2x90min.
I prefer a five day workweek with shorter days because I rarely have 8 good hours in me. That, and as long as the rest of the world is working 5 days a week it’s easier to conform.
This is pretty much how I work anyway as someone who technically should be working 5 8-hour days and I tell everyone on my team that I really don't care how much they're working as long as: their output is at least meeting expectations, they attend any meetings they're required to be at (although at this point it's almost only stand-up and 1:1s), and they handle on-call when it's their turn on the schedule (although we're a data team so the stakes are a bit lower in terms of incident response).
I usually start anywhere from 8-10, work until around 12-1, get some chores done/eat something/work out, work until around 4-6. Some days there's more in the tank or whatever problem is interesting and I can't put the laptop down. Some days I'm done by 3 pm because I'm not getting anything done. And sometimes it's like 8 pm on a Sunday and I have a great idea about how to solve something so I pick up the laptop.
I feel like the 4 day workweek will need to be led by new businesses rather than hoping large corporations will ever go there. In my mind a 4 day work week would also increase consumption across the board as people have more time to vacation/have experiences/get into hobbies/etc…
Of course it is not a silver bullet but spreading awareness is a good step.
If I was asked to test a four-day work week, I would work harder and more efficient than I usually would to make a four-day work week look like a better option, even if it wasn't.
I have a split lunch schedule -- I usually take 30 minute lunches during Mon-Thu and take an hour for lunch on Friday. Based on my internal notes (and a bunch of metrics) I am more productive on Friday (especially afternoons) than I am on a given Tuesday afternoon. There's a ton of other variables and probably some contraindications in that anecdote, but it's the kind of counter-intuitive result that a 4-day work week is based on.
I'm also amazed at how variable an hour can be in terms of output. I can easily do 5-10x work at my best compared to my worst. The key here is being completely in the zone, and not trying to do it all the time.
I believe a 4-day work week could help put more people in that productive zone,resulting in as much/more output for less hours spent. Of course, you have to have employees trusting enough and stable enough to use the extra time to decompress.
I find this very interesting from the tax perspective too.
In case you reduce your pay by 20% to accommodate for fewer hours, in many countries with progressive tax rates, the effect on take-home pay in absolute terms is not as significant as relative.
For example, in Germany, 100K gross leaves you with 57 after tax. Whereas 80K results in ~47k. In absolute terms, it is 'just 10k less', on a salary of 57k, but with 20% less working hours.
I'd like a model where every other Friday is off for half the staff. A lot less complicated for companies because they can still operate 5 days a week. Also a lot less radical/daunting from their perspective. But all those extra 3-day weekends, some of which become 4-day weekends due to holidays, will create a lot of much-needed time and space in most working peoples lives.
So brass tacks, these articles have been circulating for the last year or so. Microsoft literally put out a study showing the 4-day workweek led to an increase in employee productivity. They aren’t going to just give us a 4-day workweek. The articles have become an echo chamber of non-change.
The trend is going the OPPOSITE direction- corporate overlords want us all back in the office where they can see us.
Change won’t happen through writing and sharing these articles… we already all know 4-day workweek is a no-brainer. Strike. Resign. Unionize.
If you want to work less and get paid more, there are better alternatives:
1) start a business
2) become a contractor/consultant. You can charge much more than a regular job and cut hours to get paid the same amount as you did before. I've been a consultant for 10 years and almost never work 40 hours. If I do, it's on my side-business and it's by choice.
The problem with these 4-day work weeks is that you are imposing your lifestyle changes on potential employers by expecting to get paid more for working less. It's a losing battle and will most-likely only be temporary, like remote work (I've been remote for 10+ years and it's written into my contracts).
[+] [-] mkaic|2 years ago|reply
One thing I feel like a lot of people don't realize is just how big a difference it is to go from a 5-day week to a 4-day week. Sure, it's "just one day" but when you think about the ratio between time-on and time-off, the shift becomes a lot more dramatic. 5-on, 2-off means you spend over twice as many days working as not working. 4-on, 3-off means you spend a nearly equal number of days on each. It's just one day of difference, but it feels like a major, major shift.
[+] [-] missedthecue|2 years ago|reply
It seems more likely that people would retain a similar ratio of slacking to working.
As an aside, how does "I finish my work in 32 hours" even work? What does that mean? Are most developers out there getting paint-by-numbers printouts they need to color in and then they're all done for the week? Almost all of my roles in a professional capacity have required self-starting, and the project life cycles are much longer than a day/week such that there is literally always work to do.
If you're building a house and you're done nailing in shingles by noon you don't go home and come back tomorrow, you go put up sheetrock or install bathroom tiles. The "I finish my work in a few hours" that I see on HN and Twitter must be extremely poorly managed teams or people that are leaving a lot of work on the rest of their teammates.
[+] [-] woudsma|2 years ago|reply
My perfect 4-day workweek is having the Wednesday off so I have a 'mini-weekend' in my week. I only ever have to work 1 more day until I have some time to clear my head, make some music, etc. It feels like a more healthy work/life balance. And I feel sharper after a day off.
[+] [-] manicennui|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zingababba|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedberg|2 years ago|reply
It's not hard. You just declare Friday a weekend. Then you do everything like before.
Did you have meetings on weekends? No? Good, move the Friday ones to another day because they're on the weekend now. Who is going to answer customer support emails on Friday? The same people who answered on Saturday and Sunday, and maybe you'll pay them extra work on the weekend. What if we can't get everything done? You probably weren't getting everything done before, and you either worked on Saturday or just said screw it. Do the same thing.
The only slightly reasonable issue brought up was the lawyers who wanted to work four days but kept having to go to court on Friday. Yes, if you work with external entities, you either have to be willing to say no to working on Friday or if you can't, you have to wait for them to also move to four days. But very few people are actually in a position where they can't say no to the client (the lawyer being one of the few exceptions).
The WSJ wants to make it sound like a massive undertaking because they are pro-business and anti-worker. Don't buy the hype.
[+] [-] ncallaway|2 years ago|reply
Yea, I agree with this. As the lawyer, when the court asks you your preferred dates for scheduling something, don't give them a Friday.
If the Court asks you to schedule something on a Friday, you could politely request it moved to another day. If the Court says: "too bad, this Court works Fridays, and I'm going to schedule something for Friday", then you show up on Friday. Exactly the same way that you would if the Court said: "I'm going to schedule something for a Saturday".
[+] [-] yndoendo|2 years ago|reply
Current metric fuzzes reality and allows for persuasion against 35 work weeks because people think they are only working 40 hours a week.
To be far, I find 9:00-17:00 to be a destructive cookie-cut mentality too. Prefer having about 12 hours of continual time when implementing a new feature or working a new solution. This allows for laying out the solution and better refactoring to make it cleaner. 9:00 to 17:00 does not allow for this because continual thoughts have to be shelved for the next day which takes more energy and time to try and rev-up again to continue where one left off.
To be far, a CEO or President or Owner or Manager seeing you in the office is a social engineering hack. "They are there so they must be doing work, I'm getting what I payed for."
[+] [-] manicennui|2 years ago|reply
"Many four-day-week employers don’t appear to be operating more efficiently, though, according to data from ActivTrak, a maker of workforce analytics software. Gabriela Mauch, vice president of ActivTrak’s productivity lab, suspects that is because management hasn’t revamped the way teams work."
[+] [-] treebeard5440|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chiefalchemist|2 years ago|reply
I agree. It's just a shame that for the most part we're still using a lens that's so binary. I understand why say Fortune 500 companies are so slow to change. But why are the rest? If you're competing for talent - and nearly all companies are - and "we're on a 4-day workweek" would be appealing, why not do it?
On my last contract I worked 4 days x ~8.5 hrs with Fridays off. LOVED IT. I was more productive and never had to face "This client / project annoys the shit out of me...And even nore so on a Friday." There's nothing to be said for that ;)
[+] [-] gwbas1c|2 years ago|reply
That only works if you cancel the bullshit meetings, and empower your employees to say no to bullshit meetings.
[+] [-] 303uru|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghaff|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benbjohnson|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexhjones|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmlx|2 years ago|reply
while many have shared positive experiences, mine was quite the opposite. i did a 4-day work week for around 1.5 months and didn't find it to be beneficial at all. i went back to a 40-50 hour work week. i really love my work and want a lot more of it. not having a family also probably helps.
[+] [-] jedberg|2 years ago|reply
Yeah, that's the point. You shouldn't expect the same productivity. You should expect less. Just like in theory if we went back to a six day week we'd expect more productivity.
The change isn't expected to hold productivity, it's expected to make people's lives easier and take advantage of technological advantages. Go to a four day work week and you can expect the same productivity that you had 20 years ago at five days.
Nothing wrong with that, if reduced productivity is even true, but most studies refute that anyway.
[+] [-] hiAndrewQuinn|2 years ago|reply
To be fair I work more remotely than not these. If I had to commute in more often I'd almost certainly prefer 4-day workweeks.
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hotnfresh|2 years ago|reply
The cost of having Fridays always off is a fair bit lower than 20% of actual hours worked in most 5-day-a-week workplaces.
[+] [-] Unbeliever69|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dijit|2 years ago|reply
Working from Office, Working from home, hybrid- working hours, lunch hours.
you cant ever hope to satisfy everybody.
In my case for example, i bloody hate commuting, I feel like any work I do in a day eats disproportionately too much of my day (like going to the gym, where if you work out for 45 minutes you should allocate 90 minutes actually due to prep, shower, travel etc).
I’d much rather have longer fewer days.
[+] [-] jfoucher|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koromak|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dilyevsky|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IKantRead|2 years ago|reply
Work spilling over into extra days does happen during crunch times, but is much rarer. Though I likewise fear that 4 day work weeks would simply mean you end up working 8-8 everyday to get the same amount of stuff done.
[+] [-] RangerScience|2 years ago|reply
I went on ADD meds (Dexedrine, 10mg) ohh 6 months ago. I used to be like you and now I'm the other way around - it's easier to Just Keep Going.
Note that I would totally support you getting "five sixes" (~30hours); I'm just finding it interesting that with the meds, for myself I'd now want "three tens" (or whatever).
PS - It helps a lot that I freakin' love working in Ruby/Rails, so I kinda... want to just keep going anyway.
[+] [-] marbartolome|2 years ago|reply
Also free afternoons every day, better than a longer weekend.
[+] [-] hackermatic|2 years ago|reply
I wanted more personal time, and I also needed more time to take care of my physical and mental health with appointments -- which all of my providers schedule during the 9-AM-to-5-PM period anyway -- and simple rest and relaxation. If I didn't have this schedule, there's a good chance I wouldn't still be at this current job or would have burned out earlier in general, and my contributions are valued, so it works out well for all parties involved.
But I don't think you have to justify it so concretely or morally -- you can just want to do a day's less formal work, or want to work toward a society with less work and more leisure time! The 40-hour work week is arbitrary, anyway.
[+] [-] el_benhameen|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] statquontrarian|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emerongi|2 years ago|reply
We had somebody in a different timezone join the team and there was a long discussion about when we should do stand ups. I almost suggested just dropping it, but that would have been heresy.
[+] [-] jawns|2 years ago|reply
Most people I know who are working under 30 hours a week do not qualify for important benefits such as health insurance.
Are you benefiting from a partner's income and health plan, or are you able to sustain yourself entirely on your own income?
And out of curiosity ... how do you spend the extra 4 days per week?
[+] [-] imiric|2 years ago|reply
The point of working less is for people to have more personal time without this impacting their livelihood. There are many well-studied benefits of this[1], both to workers and companies, yet greedy companies still cling to archaic practices to squeeze as much profits as possible out of each employee.
Even after considerable productivity increases gained in part by automation and technology, we've seen decades of wage stagnation and an increasing productivity-pay gap[2,3,4]. Workers have lived with this short end of the stick for far too long, and the least controversial step forward would be to make the 4 day work week without pay reduction a general policy in all companies in nonessential industries. There are industries that need to operate with longer schedules, and those positions should be compensated accordingly, but most IT companies can certainly operate with much less than 5 days per week.
[1]: https://time.com/6256741/four-day-work-week-benefits/
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_of_wages_from_produ...
[3]: https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
[4]: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
[+] [-] nkozyra|2 years ago|reply
Of course, this productivity can only be squeezed into only so small a frame, but I think what we're learning is that 40 hours is probably not the maxima for efficiency.
The simplest way to have more efficient workers is to make them happy. I don't have a panacea for that problem, but giving them an extra day for leisure sure doesn't hurt when possible. But more than that, companies rarely ask and listen to employees about what they want/need, and there's so much social pressure that people seldom speak up. Fundamentally this is a cultural problem.
[+] [-] philfreo|2 years ago|reply
What's interesting about 4d weeks is that it's 20% less work but 50% more days off, which can be very impactful for folks.
Our 80% option is a flexible thing, as in you can choose to do it for the summer but not the rest of the year. We try to adjust workloads accordingly. I've taken advantage of it myself for a period of time and it gave me more free time to be with family and also work on side projects.
Some people really love taking our 80% option / 4d and others absolutely don't want to.
Companies offering flexibility in work hours can really help retention IMO, and is a natural progression after (a) remote / freedom of location, and (b) freedom of specific work schedule.
I know a few companies offer "4-day week summers" to everybody or even "everyone always does 4-day weeks". But I like the "fairness" of giving people an option, since different people are in different life situations at different times where working more vs. less can be especially helpful.
[+] [-] wnolens|2 years ago|reply
I'm surprised I've never heard of this solution before. I think it's brilliant, especially for engineering roles where we can still make rent on 80% pay.
I would gladly move back and forth between the options as I get more or less burnt out with work, or take on a new extra curricular.
[+] [-] GGO|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brtkdotse|2 years ago|reply
I prefer a five day workweek with shorter days because I rarely have 8 good hours in me. That, and as long as the rest of the world is working 5 days a week it’s easier to conform.
[+] [-] rockostrich|2 years ago|reply
I usually start anywhere from 8-10, work until around 12-1, get some chores done/eat something/work out, work until around 4-6. Some days there's more in the tank or whatever problem is interesting and I can't put the laptop down. Some days I'm done by 3 pm because I'm not getting anything done. And sometimes it's like 8 pm on a Sunday and I have a great idea about how to solve something so I pick up the laptop.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mym1990|2 years ago|reply
Of course it is not a silver bullet but spreading awareness is a good step.
[+] [-] atleastoptimal|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hasz|2 years ago|reply
I'm also amazed at how variable an hour can be in terms of output. I can easily do 5-10x work at my best compared to my worst. The key here is being completely in the zone, and not trying to do it all the time.
I believe a 4-day work week could help put more people in that productive zone,resulting in as much/more output for less hours spent. Of course, you have to have employees trusting enough and stable enough to use the extra time to decompress.
[+] [-] elAhmo|2 years ago|reply
In case you reduce your pay by 20% to accommodate for fewer hours, in many countries with progressive tax rates, the effect on take-home pay in absolute terms is not as significant as relative.
For example, in Germany, 100K gross leaves you with 57 after tax. Whereas 80K results in ~47k. In absolute terms, it is 'just 10k less', on a salary of 57k, but with 20% less working hours.
[+] [-] standardUser|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gymbeaux|2 years ago|reply
The trend is going the OPPOSITE direction- corporate overlords want us all back in the office where they can see us.
Change won’t happen through writing and sharing these articles… we already all know 4-day workweek is a no-brainer. Strike. Resign. Unionize.
[+] [-] billy99k|2 years ago|reply
1) start a business 2) become a contractor/consultant. You can charge much more than a regular job and cut hours to get paid the same amount as you did before. I've been a consultant for 10 years and almost never work 40 hours. If I do, it's on my side-business and it's by choice.
The problem with these 4-day work weeks is that you are imposing your lifestyle changes on potential employers by expecting to get paid more for working less. It's a losing battle and will most-likely only be temporary, like remote work (I've been remote for 10+ years and it's written into my contracts).