[HN Gopher] World's largest four-day work week trial finds few a...
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World's largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back
Author : SirLJ
Score : 94 points
Date : 2023-02-21 21:03 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| mrmincent wrote:
| I've gone down to 4 days, taking Fridays off to look after my
| son, and I certainly won't be going back to 5 days until he's in
| school. Looking after a toddler all day isn't exactly a day off,
| but it is extremely rewarding, and something I'd recommend to any
| parent thinking about dropping down a day.
|
| It definitely has some downsides however, I'm the only one in the
| team that's off that day, so there's usually meetings and
| information that I miss out on, as well as a 20% cut in pay, but
| I'm very lucky to be in a position where we could afford it, and
| the time with my son is worth it.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Based on most of the studies i've seen, at least for
| office/information jobs, that pay cut is unjustified. People
| mostly get as much done in 4 days as 5.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| It may be "justified" while five days remains the norm, as it
| may be possible to get similarly-capable employees to take
| the position for lower pay, to get that extra day off every
| week. This should provide a pretty big benefit to companies
| that can leverage it while five is still typical (assuming
| that the shift to four is _in fact_ going to become a trend)
| kennywinker wrote:
| Thinking like an employer - how can i leverage social norms
| to get same or more work for less pay. If you're not an
| employer, why are you thinking about it this way?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Oh, sure, I think employees ought to organize to increase
| wages in general. But absent that, the value of perks
| like a four-day work week (while it remains an unusual
| perk, at least) do factor into wage negotiations, and
| individuals can't do much to resist that on their own
| (aside from... not get the job and keep working five days
| somewhere else). I'm talking "is", not, "ought", in
| describing it the way I did.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Honestly I don't even care. If I could take an extra day off
| at only 20% cut from my pay check I'd do it in a heart beat.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Usual counterpoint is that you're not being paid just for the
| things you get done, but also for _availability_ - for being
| there when there 's a need to handle something unexpected.
| This has real value to a business, so you being available for
| 80% of the time justifies some degree of pay cut.
| mysterydip wrote:
| If only I was paid for all those "on call" hours when I was
| a sysadmin :)
| bayindirh wrote:
| Our team is paid no overtime, because we're considered
| "able to tend any emergencies and organize themselves if
| required" at off-hours too.
|
| Well, our system almost never creates that kind of
| emergency, but we think this is a fair assumption.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Maybe for some jobs. But for the majority of software jobs?
| Not really.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| It depends. There are some people who bring a lot of
| value by just being there to answer the occasional
| questions. When I'm oncall and I know that some
| colleagues are on vacation, I'm definitely more tense. In
| an ideal world, knowledge would be spread within the
| team, but with turnover it's hard to reach and maintain
| that state.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I can't really tell. I mean, there's enough people on HN
| who say they do pair programming at work, and some even
| that they do whole projects almost exclusively in some
| sort of group coding sessions - to me this seems like a
| bizarro world, so what do I know about majority of
| software jobs?
|
| For me personally, every software job I've done so far -
| including both the ones where I was one of few (or even
| the only) coders in the company, and ones where I was but
| a small cog in a multinational corporation - all of them
| had an availability component. Usually in the form of
| being there to answer some question, or help someone
| who's blocked or slowed down by an issue I'm the best
| suited to resolve (or the only one in the
| team/branch/company who can).
| EarthIsHome wrote:
| https://archive.is/7sqfj
| ravenstine wrote:
| Good.
|
| If civilization isn't moving to improve quality of life, but to
| make sure that we keep working more and more, we have to ask
| ourselves what exactly is the point of technological progress.
| neogodless wrote:
| Alternate publications:
|
| https://apnews.com/article/business-d114ef8be69e1665fd22c395...
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/4-day-work-week-trial-yie...
|
| Related story:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230220-is-a-4-day-workw...
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| Instead of 3 day weekends, why don't we go to a 6 day week? The
| only reason we have 7 days is because of the 7 classical planets.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| It's probably easier to effect change within a small region
| using the existing days than persuade the entire world to
| change their calendar simultaneously.
| RupertEisenhart wrote:
| Couldn't help think of this[0]: the idea that chatgpt and other
| such breakthroughs might help us hit escape velocity from
| bullshit jobs.
|
| [0] https://thezvi.substack.com/p/escape-velocity-from-
| bullshit-...
| permo-w wrote:
| as I see it, until now automation has done the opposite. it's
| scarcified valuable skilled manufacturing jobs and forced more
| and more people into the service industry. I don't see why this
| will be any different.
|
| that's the dystopia I'm terrified of, no one starving or
| homeless, but as penance we all have to be waitors and shop
| attendants for the landed upper classes
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| When was a mathematician, I worked as hard as I could until I was
| mentally exhausted. I actually calculated how much I worked per
| week over a period of two years.
|
| On actual "hard thinking", like working through logic, I spent
| about 7 hours. There was another 7 hours writing and clarifying
| topics, and another 6 hours or so on classes, seminars (sort of
| like meetings, but productive). That gives a total of 20 hours
| per week on work. Beyond that, I was not productive and so I
| didn't do any math-related work.
|
| If you add the administrative overhead of a job, that might be
| another 5 hours at most, so about 3 full workdays. I think if you
| are _truly_ just doing productive, meaningful _technical_ work,
| beyond 3 full days most people can 't do it. People can do it for
| short periods of time, but more than 3 days leads to universal
| burnout.
|
| Now, I'm just talking about mentally demanding, technical work. I
| can work longer if the work isn't very mentally demanding, but
| even so, not for more than 4-5 hours a day. And now I'm an
| independent content creator, so every additional hour I work is
| proportional to profit.
|
| My conclusions after observing a ton of people in technical _and_
| nontechnical jobs is that beyond working 20-25 hours a week,
| having people do more is useless, especially when it comes to
| fostering people in the long-term (short term is different).
|
| I feel the only reason why we have 9-5, Monday to Friday jobs is
| because of infantile narcissists who have no other purpose in
| life than to go to work and push people like machines.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| That reasoning is complicated IMO by the fact that many jobs
| involve projects and tasks that are perceived as very
| important, yet will never be started, let alone continued, let
| alone completed.
|
| That's a pretty big deal as-is. It can easily make the boss
| feel justified--OK this employee said we need to do this thing,
| they said they want to take it on, but it's not being done. The
| boss is in the loop and may feel like the employee wants to be
| pushed, checked in on, and so on.
|
| But even then, add to this the stronger element of subjective
| mental torture often found at work, where the infantile pusher
| is none other than the self.
|
| This element will stick the butt in the chair and turn the
| individual into a workaholic who sees no point in leaving to go
| home, because they are staying until it gets done. So still--
| 50, 60, 80 hours in the office. Frustration, try harder. See
| some progress. OK, keep doing this.
|
| Mix in a little bit of competitive thinking on the part of
| others ("wait, _they_ are working 50 hours even though we
| green-lit 25 hour weeks?") and this gets hour-reduction going
| sideways.
|
| (This also relates fairly easily to persona-based theories of
| personality dynamics)
| permo-w wrote:
| I read somewhere that the 9-5 workweek was first implemented
| before the emancipation of women. whether it's true or not I do
| not know, but it's an interesting artifact to consider
| bachmeier wrote:
| > The rest were convinced by revenue gains, drops in turnover and
| lower levels of worker burnout that four is the new five when it
| comes to work days.
|
| This is not surprising. The 20% of time that's getting cut is
| probably the 20% that shouldn't have been done anyway. Telling
| workers they can cut the 20% of the crap they hated doing is
| obviously going to lead to better results.
| Vinnl wrote:
| It's the one thing I miss most from working for Dutch companies:
| being able to take a 20% pay cut and work 20% less.
|
| Theoretically, that should be a great deal for my employer: the
| extra rest, and just the way productive work is usually spread
| out across the week, means that my productivity definitely was
| not down 20% compared to now, so I was cheaper per hour.
|
| Yet even that culturally seems to be a hard sell in a majority-
| North American org, let alone keeping pay the same. Shame.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| You get healthcare 7 days a week but only work for 4. Salary is
| only one component of compensation
| iamacyborg wrote:
| What a strange way to think about health care.
|
| Can you explain what you mean when you say you only work for
| 4?
|
| In the UK where this trial was run both the employer and the
| employee pay for National Insurance which covers nationalised
| healthcare. Whether you work 1 day or 7 a week, you still get
| covered.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Dock it off my paycheck too, I don't care, I want that 4-day
| work week!
|
| Though of course, being in the Netherlands, my employer
| doesn't pay for my health insurance.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| > You get healthcare 7 days a week but only work for 4.
| Salary is only one component of compensation
|
| Thinking of healthcare as compensation is what got America
| into the healthcare mess it's in today.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| In the 90s my girlfriend worked for the American office of a
| Danish industrial design company that closed at noon on
| Fridays. They claimed it was how everyone in Denmark worked,
| but I had no way to confirm it at the time.
| GordonS wrote:
| I did this for years in the UK too, it was a tradeoff I was
| willing to make, and I'm glad I did.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I've had 4 day workweeks at two different times in my career.
| Once in my 20s, when I worked 10 hours days to get an extra day
| off. Didn't matter since I worked close to that anyway, and often
| more. The day off was flexible, so I chose Wednesday whenever
| possible. Two "weeks" of two days each worked great for me. Best
| schedule I ever had.
|
| Another place, the salary was slightly lower (but not much due to
| the way they did levels), but the tradeoff was worth it. This was
| near the end of my time working for other people, so I was
| honestly on my way out anyway.
|
| I think it's hard to make an entire company work on a 4 day
| schedule if you're interfacing with clients and so on. Or do the
| thing where half are off Monday, half off Friday.
| dmarlow wrote:
| I would welcome this, but won't skeptics say that remote work was
| also touted as a huge benefit and companies are now looking to go
| back to office? I can see the same thing happening with 4 day
| work week.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > won't skeptics say that remote work was also touted as a huge
| benefit and companies are now looking to go back to office?
|
| These are not mutually exclusive concepts. It isn't like
| companies don't routinely make bad decisions despite plenty of
| evidence that it is the bad decision.
| adoxyz wrote:
| Four day work week sounds amazing. I doubt we'll see massive
| adoption anytime soon, but having that extra day every week
| really gives you time to enjoy life rather than just running
| around doing chores, preparing for the week to start again. Maybe
| someday!
| kennywinker wrote:
| If you wait around for it, it may happen. If you organize with
| your coworkers and demand it - you can make it happen.
| quacked wrote:
| I don't like the Four Day Work Week because most of the people
| who are allowed to experiment with it are working on bullshit.
| I'm not a big Graeber fan, but I emphatically agree with his idea
| that the majority of actual hours worked inside the continental
| US are largely useless make-work in order to justify the
| existence of a monied consumer class.
|
| Such a huge amount of the actual work that needs to be done so
| that we live in first-world comfort--textiles, agriculture, fuel
| chemicals, etc.--is so outsourced to developing countries that
| use serf-equivalent labor working 6 or 7 day weeks (in the same
| way that Americans did 150 years ago), or foreign migrant
| workers, that I don't actually have a sense of how much work is
| really needed to make the modern world function. If I get a four
| day workweek to make PowerPoints and write requirements documents
| for video calling software, is that actually a fair amount of
| work? If you divided the amount of non-bullshit work that went
| into sustaining America by the number of workers here, would we
| have a one-day workweek? A seven-day workweek?
|
| Perhaps it's less accurate to say "I don't like the four day work
| week" than it is to say "I am suspicious that I deserve a four
| day work week given my consumption of resources". I of course
| would like to work as little as possible and would immediately
| accept a 4-day if it were offered.
| aantix wrote:
| Thought-work is work. Logistical planning is work. Having
| conversations where everyone makes sure that the others are on
| the same page, is work.
| quacked wrote:
| Whether or not something is 'work' has no bearing on whether
| or not it's bullshit. I am in perfect agreement that one hour
| of useful work requires many hours of equally useful thought-
| work.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Why would they want to return? One you do an "upgrade" in your
| life, i.e. like remote work, quality family time, it's
| difficult/impossible to go back. The same is true for many other
| life "upgrades" like fiber internet connection, smart devices,
| smartphones, color TVs and so on
| IanCal wrote:
| Most _companies_.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Some people might actually like working for its own sake, just
| as some truly prefer going into the office despite the
| tradeoffs.
|
| I am not one of those people. lol
|
| Not that I don't have a constant drive to _do something_ , of
| course. I just wouldn't engage in surrogate work in order to
| feel like I'm worth something.
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