[HN Gopher] Eidos-Montreal Offices shifting to the 4 day work week
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Eidos-Montreal Offices shifting to the 4 day work week
Author : uglygoblin
Score : 119 points
Date : 2021-10-07 15:04 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eidosmontreal.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eidosmontreal.com)
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Progress! Bit by bit
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Rather than a 4 day work week, I always thought that a 4 hour
| work day was far superior (or at least, a 4 day work week of 5
| hour work days; 20 hours a week total). You're not truly doing 8
| hours of full work a week, so why not focus the time down to only
| productive hours? Here's an interesting article about it [0].
|
| [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2021/05/28/the-
| future...
| IshKebab wrote:
| You're assuming that by working fewer hours you'd magically
| eliminate _only the unproductive hours_. That seems extremely
| unlikely.
|
| I read an article years ago from someone that tried it,
| expecting exactly what you're expecting, but they found that
| proportional of their working time that was productive was
| about the same.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| There is probably an inflection point we've silently passed,
| where increased consolidation, high standards of living, and
| diminishing value in additional productivity mean that we can
| reduce the amount of work we need to do. However defending it
| will also require bold coalition building and trade policy.
| Countries that want to give their citizens a better life through
| shorter work weeks cannot do so if they're competing against
| other countries where workers are willing or forced to commit to
| 996 hours. Defending a better work week means enacting tariffs or
| other controls against trade partners that don't share the same
| policy, just as we should with offshored environmental
| violations.
| TwinProduction wrote:
| Will their salaries be lowered to match the new number of hours
| per week?
| tomstuart wrote:
| No:
|
| > In the next few weeks, the Montreal and Sherbrooke studios
| will be officially closed on Fridays, without changing the
| working conditions currently in place nor the salaries of
| employees, thus switching from the 40-hour week to 32-hour.
| sdf131 wrote:
| They're likely earning ~40-70k so the shift isn't very
| significant
|
| The real question is: are they changing the deadlines? Studio
| already suffer from crunch and all the meetings you had on
| Friday are now spread throughout the week
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > They're likely earning ~40-70k so the shift isn't very
| significant
|
| On an annual basis some internships are better paid. Where
| do these folks hire?
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| > They're likely earning ~40-70k so the shift isn't very
| significant
|
| Exactly. I don't work in the video-game industry, but the
| local (Quebec) programmer scene is pretty small and
| information travels fast.
|
| I've been told by people that work there that the employer
| already pays the equivalent of a 4 day week and that many
| employees are quitting now that WFH has opened up the
| market.
|
| My personal understanding is that instead of increasing the
| pay, they are betting that by cutting a day, people will
| stay and keep the same level of crunch time.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > My personal understanding is that instead of increasing
| the pay, they are betting that by cutting a day, people
| will stay and keep the same level of crunch time.
|
| How's the option package?
|
| A credible company will have most employees in the core
| business getting the majority of their revenue from the
| stock performance. Switching to 4 days a week should
| lower the number of release they can have per year...
| NortySpock wrote:
| "Crunch, and also crunch on Friday, which you now 'have
| off' but since you are (by design, perpetually) behind,
| we're going to need you to come in."
| djmips wrote:
| They live in Canada, their salaries are already lowered. This
| will help them from leaving for better $ elsewhere.
| slothtrop wrote:
| It's the game industry, these salaries aren't generally high
| in the U.S. either.
| djmips wrote:
| Don't forget the 20% exchange rate, and lower US taxes.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Don't forget the cost of living in Montreal vs any major
| part of California.
| imtringued wrote:
| Instead of mandating that everyone should work a fixed work week
| why not just let people decide how much they want to work? The 40
| hour work week is just a "social construct". Let the unit of
| labor be half a work day (4 hours) instead of a whole person. If
| people want to work 24 or 32 or 44 hours let them.
|
| The labor market isn't much of a market if you can't even do
| something as basic as decide how much you want to work.
| onion2k wrote:
| Why base it on time at all? If I can be as effective in 20
| hours as my coworker is in 40 hours, why not just pay us the
| same salaries for the same value produced?
|
| The fact I get stuff done twice as quickly shouldn't be a
| factor unless I choose to work 40 hours and do twice as much as
| him. Then I should be paid more.
| bserge wrote:
| That's called being a freelancer.
| bosie wrote:
| Do you work in a silo? never have any meetings, answer
| questions that might span over a 40 hour time frame? How do
| you figure out your value vs your co-workers value?
| 0des wrote:
| Your value is the amount of currency you exchange for an
| acceptable amount of your free time.
| aeyes wrote:
| Because it works both ways, there are a lot of companies which
| offer "unlimited vacations" on paper. In theory you could use
| that to only work 3 days per week. In practice the employer
| will just argue that you don't meet expected performance goals
| (even if you do).
|
| I work at a company which doesn't have any hours in the
| contract. People are active from 10-7 in general. This is the
| time where you have most overlap with your team and usually you
| have some dependency on others. If you aren't available you are
| letting your team down and again - you'll be flagged for not
| meeting performance goals.
| sokoloff wrote:
| There's a market for people who want to work shorter workweeks.
| It's not as crowded with employers as the "more common" market,
| but it's there.
|
| I can offer 0.5oz beers and if no one buys them, do I conclude
| there's no market or a broken market for beer?
| ekianjo wrote:
| If they really believe in this they should stop half ass it and
| work only one day a week for optimal productivity.
| glonq wrote:
| Age 49 here. I'm seriously considering that my next job should be
| 3 or 4 days per week, even if that means a somewhat
| proportionately reduced paycheck. Would fight for 4+ weeks
| vacation too.
|
| I need quality of life more than I need cash right now.
| luxurytent wrote:
| Do it!
|
| I'm 36 and my current gig offers 5 weeks vacation, and I just
| came back from 3 months (topped up) parental leave.
|
| Life is too beautiful to work 5 days a week
| autarch wrote:
| I'm 47 and I just left my last job. I'm going to take some time
| off, but I'm committed to only working 4 days per week or less
| when I look for my next position.
| lm28469 wrote:
| I'm in my mid 20s and I'll never go back to 5 days workweek,
| definitely go for it, it's a life changing move, no amount of
| money makes up for time lost
| [deleted]
| christkv wrote:
| Probably 4 days of 20h instead of 5 at 16h if it's anything like
| other triple A publishers.
| juice_bus wrote:
| Come on man, its in the article:
|
| > without changing the working conditions currently in place
| nor the salaries of employees, thus switching from the 40-hour
| week to 32-hour.
| nohr wrote:
| You can't expect them to release how much they're actually
| working their employees. Games is a notoriously vicious cycle
| of work.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I wouldn't be quite that cynical, but gaming is known for
| tons of extra hours.
|
| All companies I have known with bad hours have also
| officially had 40 hour weeks.
| Jare wrote:
| I want to point my finger at you and accuse you of cynicism
| (sp?). But then I remember that colleague who was crunching
| as a part time employee, and yeah you have all the right in
| the world to be because gamedev has always been quite
| fucked up.
|
| I do believe (and hope to be correct) that many gamedev
| studios are getting much better, but there's plenty still
| to do.
| christkv wrote:
| Sure but one thing is saying it and the other thing is living
| it. The hard deadlines of peak sales periods like Christmas
| seem like are still constant drivers of death marches in that
| industry.
|
| Sentiments seems good but I'm skeptical.
| akersten wrote:
| In the spirit of always starting your negotiation high and
| working toward a palatable middle, I'd like to propose a 2-day
| work week and 5 days off.
|
| You may think that sounds crazy, but how many hours of dedicated,
| actual work do you do in a week? If you work a "9-5" and are
| reading this comment at work right now, I can give you a hint:
| it's not 40 ;)
|
| I think we'd all be less distracted and more focused if we forced
| the "week's work" to happen in 2 , 8-hour days, and we could feel
| less guilty about not being perfectly-oiled constantly productive
| machines for the remaining 5/7 days of the week.
| poetaster wrote:
| I have a frame. 28 hours. M/W/F I do 8 hours, am available. T/T
| I do 2, alone. Sometimes I do more. I have the good fortune to
| say when and where, but this gives me modalities and no one has
| to wait too long and I get quality work time in both parts. Pay
| is not that good, perks are.
| endisneigh wrote:
| that's an interesting idea, but wouldn't work.
|
| my personal theory is that all uncertainty ultimately is
| derived from the weather and cascades down. that is, even if
| you eliminated inattention, carelessness, tardiness, and
| laziness and what not, the weather would inevitably cause
| accidents and other unpredictable things.
|
| as a result much of the time people spend is actually just
| waiting around for other people.
| jstx1 wrote:
| You can only compress things so much though. You can't just
| tell people to show up and do only the productive n% of the
| hours. You can't force 2 days of perfect productivity out of
| people. That's not how any of this works. When you cut hours,
| you're cutting productive and unproductive hours at the same
| time, you don't get to cherry pick.
|
| Or if you can cherry pick, go into management consulting -
| you'll be able to squeeze so much more out of everyone who
| still works full time by telling them to only do productive
| things at work.
|
| While we're at it, we can tell people who gamble to only go to
| the casino on the days when they win.
| akersten wrote:
| My hypothesis is that most of our "unproductive time" in the
| 40h workweek is just filler time spent warming seats, a
| direct result of there actually not being all that much work
| that a human can consistently accomplish in a week.
|
| So, by removing the expectation that you have your butt in a
| chair 8 hours a day 5 days a week, the new model is "get
| everything you were already painfully stretching across 5
| days done in only the time it actually takes (2 days), and
| let's all go home and enjoy the free time we otherwise would
| have spent scrolling on our phones under florescent lights
| and quickly tabbing back to Excel when the boss walks by."
|
| I truly do believe 95% of office-based business would get the
| same "amount" of work done in this system.
| bserge wrote:
| Coming soon, the 0 day work week. No one needs lazy meatbags
| when 10 robots can work 24/7.
| throwaway889900 wrote:
| Not until the robots can build themselves. Hah!
| dont__panic wrote:
| I wonder if the increasing shift toward remote work (often in
| disparate timezones) will end up pushing teams to eventually
| adopt 1-3 "core hours" 2-3 days per week with team meetings and
| collaboration sessions and a more laissez-faire attitude toward
| working the rest of the usual 9-5 day; I would love to just
| focus on getting my work done any time I feel like it, attend
| meetings during core hours, and have the ability to get out of
| the house and go do things during the normal workweek.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| In the 9-5's defense, a good chunk of my "downtime" at work is
| due to waiting on other people and/or not having something I
| can make progress on.
|
| I would love less than a 40 hour work week where the effort is
| more concentrated, but after a certain point you just can't
| expect full productivity in a shorter space of time.
| packetlost wrote:
| This. If I'm chest deep in code (or other deep technical
| stuff) I can get about 6 hours of real work a day before my
| productivity nosedives. But that's maybe a once a week
| occurrence. The rest of the week is shorter bursts of
| productivity sprinkled between coordinating with teammates,
| other teams, etc.. I don't think actually shortening my work
| week would allow me to meaningfully be as productive with
| what I currently do. That being said, I WFH some of the time
| and I took like 30-40 min to vacuum my apartment and it had
| basically zero effect on my productivity.
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