[HN Gopher] Switching to a four-day workweek (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
Switching to a four-day workweek (2021)
Author : fumblebee
Score : 215 points
Date : 2022-01-10 17:43 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bolt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bolt.com)
| claytonjy wrote:
| Somewhat relevant, Bolt is also paying top-of-market, e.g. 800k
| for an eng manager:
| https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1479865906729730052?...
| whoisjuan wrote:
| $250k base salary. That's not top of market if the other $550k
| are illiquid options with no clear liquidity horizon.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I know of this org pretty well; they just did a massive round
| compared to their size and any rational business metric.
| They've convinced a big group of investors that they can
| basically disintermediate almost all ecommerce transactions,
| but this is a very frothy/competitive space, with really big
| players like Apple and Amazon, plus your paypals and a bunch of
| other unified checkout players. I'm skeptical but have my
| popcorn & I'm ready to watch.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| If that's not indicative of another dotcom bubble I don't know
| what is. That's an insane amount of money to be paying,
| especially for a pre-IPO company.
| derex wrote:
| I have a close friend who got Sr Engineer offer from Bolt. The
| 500k yearly TC is somewhat misleading because it's assuming
| more than 2x growth in evaluation. While they may very well
| achieve that, you're not gonna see the full 500k for an
| uncertain amount of time. More people should be aware of the
| nuances in these compensation figures.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Wow, I imagined stock comp would usually be based on
| _current_ valuation.
| claytonjy wrote:
| Yup, same!
| Maxburn wrote:
| I've worked a four day work week in a construction related job
| for years now. I do 4 10 hour days. I figure the company saves
| money because they cover site travel time when I'm not in the
| office. Mostly it's sort of difficult for others to understand
| I'm not available at all any Friday and weekend rates apply then.
| A 10 hour day isn't too bad but it's definitely the sort of thing
| where I'm not really doing anything else those days, work eat and
| sleep.
|
| The weird thing I run into is I try to schedule things like
| dental cleanings or tax work etc on Fridays (when I'm off) and I
| run into all the other people that also take Fridays off.
|
| 4 Day work weeks aren't that uncommon.
| breakyerself wrote:
| 4/10s is better than 5/8s, but I think the 4 day workweek
| movement is trying to reduce the hours worked to 32 hours as a
| matter of principle. The idea behind 5/8s was 8 hours work, 8
| hours leisure, 8 hours sleep. For that lifestyle to work it
| assumed a wife at home doing a similar amount of work to keep
| the household running.
|
| Now most families have both parents working 40 hours a week.
| Which means they're working for 8 hours, coming home and doing
| a bunch of chores, then going to sleep. Leisure activities are
| often done at the expense of sleep.
|
| A 32 hour work week would give people back some of the leisure
| time they lost.
| cebert wrote:
| When I first graduated college in 2008, I got a job at Lockheed
| Martin which offered flexible working schedules. I loved it, but
| was so naive to think this was commonplace. Adopting flexible
| working arrangements seems like an easy way for organizations to
| improve morale.
|
| At Lockheed, they let you pick if you wanted to work the standard
| 5x8 days 40 hour week, 4x10 days 40 hour week, or the 9x9 80 hour
| two-weeks with every other Friday off. This worked great.
| Everyone was aware that not everyone on the team could be counted
| as being available on Fridays depending on their schedule.
| Unfortunately for me when I left there, I realized how unusual
| this working arrangement is.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| I find the 9x9 80 hour two-weeks option very interesting. How
| common was this choice among employees?
| jcims wrote:
| Now that my kids are grown I would absolutely love this. You
| can stay in the pocket, get a quieter few days over the
| working weekend and it would help enforce good comms/docs
| when you wrap up your week.
|
| The only issue is that I would try to pack too much into the
| 5 day 'weekend' and be exhausted when I start back up.
| DerArzt wrote:
| I may be mistaken, but for this 9x9 they may mean five 9
| hour days, the weekend, four 9 hour days, three day
| weekend.
| jcims wrote:
| Could be. My step-dad was just telling me about his night
| shift at AT&T in the 70's doing operations for switching
| sytems. They would to 10 8's in a row b/c it was hard for
| them to stay on the night shift schedule over the
| weekends, so this just let them stretch the weekend. He
| really liked it.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| That's right. Often called '9-80' and was pretty popular
| in aerospace.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| 9-80 used to be extremely common in the oil and gas world.
| It's started to go away now that it's not just a "good ol
| boy" industry but plenty of supermajors still offer it.
| apohn wrote:
| I used to work with different Oil&Gas companies in Houston,
| and one of the things that enabled this was that they
| started work at 6AM and ended at 3PM. Part of the reason
| was to have time overlap with other Oil producing countries
| (e.g. the Middle East), and part of this was to avoid
| Houston rush hour traffic.
|
| I think it's easier to do 9 hour days when you start that
| early. It's nice to end your day at 3 and still feel like
| you have some daylight hours in the winter.
| shagie wrote:
| I'm in the public sector, and a number of my coworkers do it.
| I had that schedule in the before times too - the entire day
| being off was advantageous for going out and doing _things_
| and eliminated an entire pair of commutes.
|
| Now, I have a 9x4+4 schedule where Fridays are half days. The
| reduction of the commute isn't as valuable when its "put on
| pants and down the stairs" and the full day to "do things" is
| reduced.
|
| The trick with the 9-80 schedule is to define the week
| starting at Friday at noon. Week 1: F: 0h; M:
| 9h; T: 9h; W: 9h; R: 9h; F: 4h (8-noon) = 40h Week 2:
| F: 4h (noon - 4); M: 9h; T: 9h; W: 9h; R: 9h; F: 0h = 40h
|
| And thus, for the defined 7 day period, the work doesn't
| exceed 40h. Additionally, no day is more than 9h (some places
| have requirements when 10h is worked within one 24h period).
|
| https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-
| development/80-w...
|
| https://gusto.com/blog/people-management/9-80-work-schedule
|
| https://www.zoomshift.com/blog/9-80-work-schedule/
| [deleted]
| hinkley wrote:
| > but was so naive to think this was commonplace.
|
| Been there, got the t-shirt, had it signed.
|
| Over the years it has been a bitter pill to swallow to discover
| that the majority of my first ten years was spent working at
| places that were exceptionally forward thinking in ways that
| matter to me but it turns out don't matter as much to loads of
| other people. I've spent a lot of time butting heads with
| people who are 5, 10, 15 years behind where I empirically
| observed 'standard practices' are at.
|
| The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed.
|
| All of the Agile Manifesto signatories had been doing their own
| thing for at least 5-10 years before they tried to compare
| notes in 2001, and it was another 10 before most of us accepted
| half of XP as de rigeur. 15 years is a long, long time to wait
| for 'rain'.
|
| > At Lockheed, they let you pick if you wanted to work the
| standard 5x8 days 40 hour week
|
| Boeing was also once that way, and that survived the MD merger,
| though I don't know if that's still true.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| This is nice, but I find it disappointing that they didn't
| offer 4x8 32 hour weeks, when the company's culture seems to
| have already been set up for it. They could have let people opt
| in to reduced pay.
| brixon wrote:
| That is very likely an option, but probably not used a lot. I
| have worked with several people that had a similar schedule,
| but they did not start at the company with that schedule and
| of course took a pay cut due to the lower hours.
|
| It is very difficult to argue for hiring someone that is not
| 40 hours. HR and management thinks in terms of full time (40)
| or part time (<30). The 30-39 hour schedules seem to be used
| to keep someone they really don't want to lose and not
| offered to new people. I have seen it with people getting
| close to retirement and people caring for someone sick or
| small.
| jhawk28 wrote:
| LM does offer part time arrangements, but it is not well
| known.
| jjice wrote:
| I have friends at Lockheed and they all love the flexible
| schedules. What I find interesting is that a company as large
| as Lockheed does this, but it hasn't picked up much steam.
| ska wrote:
| Fwiw these schedules seem to show up in a number of large
| organizations (both private and public).
| sys_64738 wrote:
| And the shutdown week at Christmas. Few companies do this
| either.
| trwhite wrote:
| I've stayed on much longer at the business I work for because of
| my 4 day week arrangement. Definitely golden handcuffs; I
| recognise that I probably wouldn't have this anywhere else. It's
| my life admin day mostly: chores, going to the dentist etc and
| when it isn't I make time for fun. Generally I feel much more
| rested in the week.
| pkrumins wrote:
| No thanks, I'll take a 7-day workweek, 12 hours per day.
| woah wrote:
| This is basically like the famous "20% time" but way better
| some_furry wrote:
| I hope this change is 4 days, 8 hours per day, no pay cut.
| perfunctory wrote:
| I love this development. Especially since as a bonus it might
| help solving climate change _.
|
| _ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/27/four-day...
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| that's pretty optimistic/naive thinking when you see they have
| seven(!) open postings for Crypto developer roles.
| jebronie wrote:
| I read the related "conscious culture" manifesto and came across
| this "gem":
|
| _" When hiring a new person, wait until their official start
| date to onboard them, which includes granting access to email and
| internal documents. Avoid letting a new hire start early because:
|
| [...]
|
| Information in Slack or Google drive could tip them away from
| your company"_
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Oh dear, they're really telling on themselves aren't they?
|
| I mean not giving them access to e-mail and internal documents
| until their formal start date is pretty normal, unless they
| sign an NDA that kicks in earlier.
| CPLX wrote:
| It's quite possible that they're a dubious organization, but
| this note hardly proves it. It's really hard to get a read on
| internal company docs without any context whatsoever, they
| weren't written for an outside audience and it doesn't seem
| surprising that they could cause major confusion for someone
| unfamiliar with the local jargon and so on.
| gwright wrote:
| That seems like a silly reason -- there are lots more perfectly
| reasonable legal/security reasons to not have "early access"
| though.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| So is this "work 32 hours, get paid 40" kind of four-day work
| week, or a "you can decide how many contract hours you have" kind
| of four-day work week? I feel like it's important to make this
| distinction, because not working 40 hours / week is normalized
| where I live (about half the working population works part-time),
| with lots of people opting for 36 hours (then 4x9 for one day a
| week off, or 5x8 and 4x8 for one day per two weeks off), 32 hours
| (4x8), or less (e.g. two parents alternating work days to look
| after the kids, or minimize day care / grandparents).
|
| Anyway that's a long-winded way of saying, flexibility in
| contracts isn't too challenging. It's maintaining decent pay at
| the same time that the US seems to have trouble with, with some
| people having to balance multiple different jobs simultaneously
| because none is offering a stable 40ish hour contract or decent
| pay.
|
| 32 hours / week at 40 hour pay would be interesting.
| hinkley wrote:
| All through the dotcom collapse I kept trying to point out to
| employers that while they felt that I deserved at 10% raise
| that they could ill afford, that I would be happy reducing my
| hours by 10% for the same pay and they would hardly notice the
| difference in my output.
|
| Specifically I was thinking about how hard it is for me to get
| going on Monday mornings, and how often my weekend plans were
| curtailed by trying to make sure that I was absolutely back in
| town by 8pm at the latest on Sunday night.
|
| It doesn't take many experiences getting bumped from -or to-
| the last flight on Sunday to grow wary of trying to take a
| quick jaunt out of town. Not being expected until noon on
| Monday would have opened up a whole lot of options.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| I don't want to work more, I want to work less. The 4x32 would be
| a start, but I don't want to spend my life "working" when I could
| be "living".
| atarian wrote:
| 4 day work week is the new remote.
| boringg wrote:
| The amount of earned media for this company is quite amazing for
| something that really isn't that novel imho.
| fleddr wrote:
| I've been working a four day week for over a decade, so can share
| some personal experiences.
|
| I'm basically outputting the same amount of work at the same
| quality as before. As the article hints at, the consequence of
| working one day less is that it forces you to more aggressively
| reject distractions. Which not only was much easier than I
| expected, it's in fact enjoyable.
|
| The deal is simple. We have sprints where it's clear what needs
| to be delivered every two weeks. Output-based work, not presence-
| based work. I generously reject or ignore anything else.
|
| The way to do this is to dismiss meetings that do not contribute
| to your core tasks. Meetings are the true productivity killer.
| They cut up your day into useless snippets where you can't get
| anything done.
|
| The trick to get rid of them is stupidly simple: flip the script.
| Right now, it's common culture that people can start as many
| meetings as they want and it's common courtesy for the invitees
| to attend, and if not, explain why.
|
| I simply stopped complying with the expectation. I may not at all
| respond to the invite or give it a decline without reason. The
| default is no, and it's on you to convince me how the meeting is
| needed for me to deliver. Because my job is to deliver, not to
| sit in meetings. My time belongs to me and my manager, and nobody
| else. If you want a piece of it, have a good story.
|
| I'm serious when I say this: not once in my decade of making this
| change have I ever been frowned upon, got into issues, had
| negative feedback or reviews due to clearing crap from my agenda.
| In fact, it earns respect. That is the key lesson: don't be
| afraid to defend your time and do not forget what you're at work
| for. I'm effectively only helping my employer by being more
| productive in the time that I work, how can anybody complain
| about that?
|
| Same for overtime culture and managers sending emails at night or
| in the weekend. Their problem. Send a million, I won't read any
| of them.
|
| Has this ever gotten me into trouble? No. Have they ever asked
| why I don't respond to weekend emails? No. But if they would, I'd
| tell them I couldn't read them because I was fucking my wife, and
| recommend they do the same.
|
| Get this: work is making your manager look good, and never bad.
| That's the job. When you do this, you're already a top performer,
| as the standard is really very low. You can do all of this by
| rejecting nonsense, which is in your interest as well as your
| manager's interest.
| digianarchist wrote:
| A four day week is going to get my attention next time I hop
| jobs. Before that it was remote work but now that dam has well
| and truly broken.
|
| The shorter work week has the chance to be a major differentiator
| between employers.
|
| I'll let employers in on a little secret. A lot of us will take
| more than a 20% pay cut in return for that day.
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| thats a dangerous idea for greedy business owners
| stuff4ben wrote:
| No, we won't take a pay cut to work less! It's time American
| employers realized that we don't want to be wage slaves
| anymore. Pay us a good wage, let us relax and enjoy life. A
| 4x32 work week is just a start to that...
| josephcsible wrote:
| > No, we won't take a pay cut to work less!
|
| Who are you speaking for when you say "we"?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Or a cut for more vacation time. I've had to threaten to get a
| labor lawyer just for the right to actually take my 2 weeks off
| consecutively. They responded by letting me "purchase" a few
| more days off... but of course if you don't take them, you
| don't get your money back.
| cmckn wrote:
| > A lot of us will take more than a 20% pay cut in return for
| that day.
|
| Can't agree with you on this one, losing that money would
| meaningfully limit what I could do with my new-found free time.
| While I totally agree that a 4-day week would make a lot of
| folks respond to a recruiter's email, I think the vast majority
| would balk at the pay cut.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| For a lot of us, it wouldn't be a paycut. We're already on
| the bottom of the salary range. It'd be pure upside for me. I
| think there's room for both models to exist. But I can't
| imagine not being envious of the guy that has 3 days off a
| week. Keep your 20%, I could die next year and want to feel
| good while I'm here.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Seems like the fastcompany article linked from the bottom of that
| press release has a bit more detail:
| https://www.fastcompany.com/90678612/this-tech-unicorn-just-...
|
| One thing I wonder is if everyone's getting a pay cut, or if they
| just got a net 25% raise on their hourly rates.
|
| I guess if 94% of employees liked it[1], there was no pay cut
| involved...
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/05/the-4-day-workweek-
| becomes-p...
| yboris wrote:
| Japan's Panasonic Joins Global Trend Toward Four-Day Week
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-10/japan-s-p...
|
| Let's make 2022 the year Four-Day Workweek spread like wildfire
| ;) Talk to your coworkers -- I suspect many of them would _love_
| for this to happen.
| simonswords82 wrote:
| Check out this comment on a Reddit thread about this
| announcement, apparently it's not as legit as Panasonic would
| like us to believe which is a shame if true:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/s0i0cx/comment/hs...
| [deleted]
| chiyc wrote:
| The article says they're testing it, but it must be old. Bolt has
| apparently gone permanent on the four day work week now.
| red_hare wrote:
| Seems to be from September. I couldn't find a published date
| but there's this: <meta
| property="article:published_time"
| content="2021-09-27T16:29:51+00:00" />
| ModernMech wrote:
| Proposal: switch to a four day work week, but everyone has to do
| community service of their choice once a month on the 5th day.
| Thoughts?
| 1270018080 wrote:
| I read on Blind (You can stop reading here, I don't blame you)
| that even though they have a 4-day workweek, their KPIs
| essentially require you to work Friday anyway. You officially
| have 4 days off, but few are able to do it.
| ghaff wrote:
| Maybe it's just me but it seems as if a four day work week would
| almost have to come at the expense of a larger basket of time off
| that you can take when you want to. Which, in general, isn't a
| tradeoff I would like--nor, I imagine, would many people who
| prefer to take trips rather than having more free time around
| their home.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I get 5 weeks of PTO (25 days, or 200 hours) now*. If I worked
| 4x10 weeks, I'd expect the most fair equivalent amount of PTO
| would be 5 weeks (now 20 days, still 200 hours).
|
| On one hand, that is fewer Mondays or Wednesdays that you could
| take off, but it seems a more than fair trade, given that you
| don't ever have to take a Friday off.
|
| Indeed, if the employer said "now that we have 4 day weeks,
| we're taking away 10 days of PTO, leaving you with 15 (150
| hours instead of 200)", I'd then view that as something taken
| away.
|
| * It's possible that it's actually 24 days, not 25, and I'm too
| lazy to chase it down in the employee handbook. For this post,
| it's 25. :)
| matwood wrote:
| Much like microservices provide a defined enforcement of system
| component boundaries, a 4 day work week is a way to force the
| removal of 'theater' work.
|
| Neither should be required to achieve the end goal, but then
| there is reality.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| Yeah back when we lived in Sweden, Swedes are kind of known to
| "take lots of breaks" and "pack up when the clock strikes 5".
| Between coffee breaks, lunch, and fika, people barely worked...
| except during those precious hours they did work -- they were
| very productive. The idea was that you get your stuff done as
| much as you can, up until the next break, which was always
| right around the corner.
| supernova87a wrote:
| I've said this before, but I find the belief that 4-day work
| weeks are broadly supported / feasible to be a bit of the typical
| tech-world conceit or the bubble tech people live in. Or maybe
| it's just in advanced heavily intangible-services-based
| economies.
|
| If you imagine this being applied to everything in the
| corporate/services world (and work is not "divisible"), would you
| be happy to have businesses closed 1 additional day per week? The
| DMV closed on Mondays -- but the fees and pay of employees remain
| the same? How about if prices go up by 20% to pay for the cost of
| having a 4 day week? Your plumber or car mechanic or doctor
| having 20% fewer available times to see you?
|
| The idea of the 4 day work week where people can do all that they
| do now, but be more efficient about it in 4 days instead, is
| something exclusively a privilege that white collar workers can
| even consider.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Why would business be closed? The workers just get scheduled
| less often.
|
| Part of the 4 day workweek idea is that we're not actually
| realizing the benefits of technological advances, instead of
| having the same output but working less were working more and
| outputting more.
|
| Self employed contractors like plumbers are free to do what
| ever they want
| nicoburns wrote:
| People said all the same things about the 5 day work week
| before it was introduced. And the 8 hour day. IMO the economy
| absolutely can support it, but it may require some wealth
| distribution to make it work.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| If it's not doable in the age of fiat and 10-20% of the
| workforce actually producing things we actually need (food,
| housing), and doing it at extreme scale.. then it'll never
| happen.
|
| What I mean to say is that it is doable. Most of us are doing
| work that serves no real need other than contrived needs.
|
| It's absurd to think that given no one dies if I don't do my
| job, that we can't go to 4-10s. I could die tomorrow myself,
| and nothing changes. That's how inconsequential many
| employees and thus businesses are today.
| rupak_k wrote:
| Hey! I'm a Software Engineer @ Bolt and have been at the company
| for a little over 1.5 years now. I talk about my experiences with
| the 4-Day Work Week here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0aLQRwxIWY&t=15s&ab_channel...
|
| Check it out and let me know if you have any questions!
| draw_down wrote:
| arrakis2021 wrote:
| Why four? Why not one?
| mavelikara wrote:
| Someone responded to you when you left this same comment on a
| previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29835132
| echelon wrote:
| It's perfectly fine to ask the same question to a new
| audience. There might be different answers. Not everyone saw
| it the first time.
|
| My answer to op, assuming they're not being facetious:
|
| - We need time to recharge and let our brains work
| asynchronously on problems.
|
| - We need more coordination and integration points with
| colleagues. If we're steamrolling ahead, there's little
| chance to coordinate.
|
| - Quality of work begins to suffer after a certain point and
| reaches diminishing returns.
|
| - Expending that much effort at once, repeatedly, likely
| leads to incredible burnout.
|
| - Personally, the will to do Herculean tasks isn't a
| renewable resource you can tap into week over week. It
| happens, but it depletes. There have to be breaks.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| I think that over time, the Overton window of what's
| acceptable will slowly shrink to 4 hours a week. But it'll
| be the optionality of work, like the 4-hour-work week,
| rather than a work-to-survive model we currently live in
| BuckRogers wrote:
| What would help me at my job is just having the
| benefits/money to feel appreciative of the job. Instead I
| feel exploited. The easiest way is 4-10s. Working 8-6 daily
| and having a 3 day workweek would make me so much happier
| with my life. I would LOVE to have 3 days with my family,
| and would likely never leave the job.
| staz wrote:
| Why five ? why not a seven day week?
| wy35 wrote:
| I'm sure people said the same thing when we went from a 7 day
| workweek to a 5 day workweek.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| _we're encouraging employees to set the following out-of-office
| email notification of Fridays: "I'm out of the office today
| because we're working consciously here at Bolt and are currently
| testing out a four-day workweek. I'll be back in touch with you
| on [Monday]."_
|
| Ugh. Just say "I'm out of the office today and will respond on
| Monday" no need to tout your experimental company philosophy.
| wy35 wrote:
| Disagree. While the "we're working consciously" bit can be left
| out, you have to let the people you communicate with know that
| it's not just this Friday, it's EVERY Friday. Just saying "I'm
| out of the office today and will respond on Monday" implies
| it's a one-time thing.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Why would that matter? If it comes up again next week, the
| person will get the same message. If I have a one-time
| interaction with you, all I need to know is that you're out
| today and back Monday.
| wy35 wrote:
| It helps parties coordinate in the future.
|
| For example, if I need X done by Friday, and I know Y
| company doesn't work on Fridays, I have a better idea of
| how much workload there is per day. It saves me from
| sending another email asking "hey, I know you weren't here
| on Friday, but is that every Friday or a one-time thing?
| And does that affect Joe from marketing and Sally from
| DevOps, or is it just you?"
| [deleted]
| pm215 wrote:
| You only have to do that if you're in a situation where your
| correspondent expects same-day responses. Mostly you should
| try to avoid creating that expectation -- or where you do
| want to provide that level of service, eg for customer
| interactions, that sort of email should be going via some
| kind of role address or internal ticketing system so that it
| gets reliable rapid responses that don't depend on individual
| employees not happening to fall ill and so you can ensure
| cover during holidays or whatever.
|
| (I work a four day week personally, and I never set an out-
| of-office response.)
| kbenson wrote:
| Not necessarily _just_ for that. It 's also useful for
| people knowing whether they send you something Thursday
| towards the end of the day that's somewhat time sensitive
| whether to expect/hope you'll get to it, or if that's
| something they shouldn't expect any more than sending it
| towards the end of the day Friday. It's useful in the same
| way as knowing when holidays are and not estimating when
| someone might get something done while including a Monday
| they will not be working.
|
| Not required, but useful.
| bmhin wrote:
| I feel like many or most places already have the "be cool
| late Friday" mindset. Emergencies or critical things can
| still happen, but if possible maybe don't schedule a long
| meeting end of day Friday. Don't ask for something that
| needs turn around after the morning as people already are
| going to likely be in a wrap-up mode. It always feels
| like a very implicit "can this wait till Monday?"
| attitude permeates the day. And it's not just being nice,
| splitting a task over a weekend can lead to things being
| forgotten or missed or just the context being lost. Hell,
| I've seen places operate more in a "be cool all of
| Friday, it's the pseudo-weekend".
|
| All that is a long way of saying that that group feeling
| now exists a whole day before and it's important to
| communicate that.
| sigzero wrote:
| No, they don't need to know your policy at all. They only
| need the "I am not here..." message regardless of how many
| times you use it.
| wy35 wrote:
| IMO it is much better to be transparent and predictable.
| Makes things easier for everyone.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| "when to expect me to be here" is often worth
| communicating. "Why" less so. Avoids confusion like:
|
| > I tried him last Friday, and the one before that, and the
| one before that. He's never available.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Plenty of people in my country - where part-time-by-choice
| work is normalized - is to set your message to "I don't work
| on Fridays".
| abletonlive wrote:
| How do ideas spread if you don't tout them?
| isoskeles wrote:
| Why would you want to spread the idea of the "experiment"
| before gathering results? What if you conclude the experiment
| was a failure?
| yboris wrote:
| Pre-registration of studies is a virtue ;)
| abletonlive wrote:
| So people can learn about what other people are
| experimenting w/? Seems pretty straightforward to me.
| edoceo wrote:
| They made a blog post, we're currently commenting on it.
| sophacles wrote:
| The blog post touts the idea. If they didn't tout the idea,
| we wouldn't be here commenting.
| paxys wrote:
| Audience for a blog post and HN link is minuscule compared
| to the total set of people Bolt employees interact with
| over email.
| spicybright wrote:
| Just broadcasting this will ruin "testing".
|
| I genuinely don't understand how HR/higher handle these things.
| Are they just extremely out of touch or something?
| janandonly wrote:
| Here in Holland many e-mail footers will read like:
|
| - Name
|
| - Company
|
| - Department
|
| - Mon-Wed-Thur
|
| Or something like that, to signal when a person is working...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Ugh. Four day work week trials have proven very successful in
| Japan, Iceland, Spain, and now the US. It _absolutely_ makes
| sense to tout this proven benefit to others. The only folks
| complaining are the ones who don't believe data driven evidence
| or have an unhealthy relationship with work. No need to
| denigrate positive, _no cost_ efforts to drag forward work life
| balance and quality of life.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Disagree, if I have to interact with someone only on Fridays
| and I'm getting back an out of office notification literally
| every time I email them, I want to know what's going on.
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| "I'm not available on Fridays" wouldn't suffice?
| kupopuffs wrote:
| Think this begs the question, Why? Saying it's company-wide
| is fair. But honestly I think people have their own cases
| and can make the judgment on too much/too little info
| maccard wrote:
| Definitely not. Childcare, company policy, focus time on
| development, playing darts - it doesn't matter. All that
| matters is they're not reachable on Fridays and that
| they've chosen not share the why.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Exactly - or you might try emailing someone else, and get
| some other strangely worded auto-response.
| imjared wrote:
| My new gig does a 4days x 8hr work week. It was a major reason
| for joining the company and has proven to really help reshape how
| I work and how I think about work. Interestingly, we take
| Wednesdays off with the ability to trade that day on an as-needed
| basis. This gives us 2x 2-day work sprints per week. I find that
| I roll into Thursdays having had a day to reset a little bit,
| tackle personal projects, cook a huge meal, or go for a long bike
| ride. Friday comes and I haven't once felt the "Thank god it's
| Friday" feeling, but rather "Oh, it's Friday already?" in the
| same way that I used to feel it after a 3-day weekend.
|
| Here's a bit more on our operating philosophy from our CEO:
| https://www.fastcompany.com/90501241/my-companys-always-had-...
| gumby wrote:
| Note that in California, hourly people will be getting two hours
| of overtime per working day. About a decade ago the unions got a
| law passed that overtime was after 8 hours in a day not 40 hours
| in a week. This ended up screwing people who had been able to
| move their schedule to four ten hour days.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Does this also apply to those on salary/exempt?
| rupi wrote:
| No, it doesn't.
| gumby wrote:
| No, those people don't get overtime at all.
| yboris wrote:
| "Brits to quit jobs if not offered four-day week, say
| researchers"
|
| link: https://employernews.co.uk/news/brits-to-quit-jobs-if-not-
| of...
|
| On HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29877234
| hinkley wrote:
| I would just like to say that in a world of SaaS SLAs, remote-
| first, and the specter of a 4 day work week, that what we
| actually need is a better way for people to collaborate when not
| colocated in time and space.
|
| I shouldn't be limited to banker's hours for doing things,
| especially if that now means a 3 day weekend. What really should
| happen is that some of us should be working on Saturday but not
| Monday, or at 8 am versus 8 pm.
|
| Otherwise 4 day work weeks just become 32 hours + permanent on-
| call, which is worse than nothing.
| Smoosh wrote:
| So, maybe next they will experimentally employ someone over 40?
| Kranar wrote:
| As an FYI to others who might jump to conclusions... my
| experience as a VC involved in several tech companies as well
| as a founder is that older people generally do not like to
| apply to work for early stage startups. The compensation and
| risk profile of early stage startups often does not appeal or
| work well for older developers.
|
| Second to that, the number of software developers doubles
| approximately every 5 years, meaning that developers 40 years
| and older make up only about 20% of the workforce [1] [2]. The
| end result is that it's not unusual that older developers are
| not well represented at smaller tech companies and one should
| not jump to the conclusion that there is age discrimination on
| that basis alone.
|
| [1] https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2004/2004.05847.pdf
|
| [2] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019
| mrcwinn wrote:
| Former and maybe future startup CEO here. It's funny because I've
| always subscribed to the notion that I'd rather work 6 days a
| week than 4, so long as I can pick when and where I work.
|
| And likewise, to trust the team to make decisions as to how they
| approach work, so long as they fulfill their commitments and
| remain sustainably ambitious.
|
| That is, I personally have always enjoyed a lot of autonomy. I
| work harder when I have flexibility. I feel happier and healthier
| when I don't try to construct huge brick walls between personal
| and work, but rather accept the two ebb and flow.
|
| But to each their own, and I certainly support companies sending
| more time back to people. Heavens know software has given us
| plenty of productivity gains in the last 30 years.
| shtopointo wrote:
| Smart move - Bolt just jumped to the top of the work-for list for
| me.
| smm11 wrote:
| How about just "work," and whenever it makes sense? I've always
| figured that if I achieve what I'm supposed to achieve, why does
| it matter how or where that happens?
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| How much are you "supposed to achieve"?
|
| -----
|
| Edit
|
| Since some of the replies seem to have missed what I was
| alluding to, I want to put here what I replied below:
|
| Sprint goals are based on capacity, which is loosely defined by
| how much your team works. Defining how much you need to work by
| basing it on how much you should achieve, which is based on a
| number defined by how much you roughly work, is circular
| reasoning.
| beambot wrote:
| Hence the need for good managers to set expectations and
| manage timelines.
| echelon wrote:
| Incredibly difficult to quantify, but there are heuristics.
|
| Look at what your peers with a similar level of experience
| are doing.
|
| Look at what you're committing to do during sprint planning
| or 1:1s with your manager. (Assuming you're in a reasonable
| organization with a healthy workload.)
|
| Anything above that is deserving of a raise or promotion.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Sprint Goals.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Sprint goals are based on capacity, which is loosely
| defined by how much your team works. Defining how much you
| need to work by basing it on how much you should achieve,
| which is based on a number defined by how much you (and
| your team) work, is circular reasoning.
| adolph wrote:
| > How much
|
| Some jobs are process oriented in which the value contributed
| is in volume and efficiency.
|
| >> achieve what I'm supposed to achieve
|
| Other jobs are development oriented in which value
| contributed in defining the process or the end result of the
| process.
|
| It seems like the former is more amenable to "regular hours"
| and the latter to great swings in hours spent in effort
| directly related to a specific purpose.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Alas, this isn't sufficient. For the same reason that unlimited
| vacation results in people actually taking less vacation, if
| you say this to someone without a ton of security in their
| position they will work approximately as much as their boss.
|
| If the boss keeps sending emails on Friday there is no way that
| other people will really feel secure disconnecting.
| davidw wrote:
| Bingo. People are social animals and we take our cues from
| other people. "Unlimited vacation" sounds good but is not
| great in practice.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Unlimited vacation is, like you said, dependent on social
| cues.
|
| Plenty of places with unlimited vacation cue or even
| pressure employees to take a minimum amount of vacation.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| How much vacation you have is how much the company is
| required to pay out as earned income when you separate
| from the org. Anything else is generosity that can be
| rescinded without notice or recourse.
|
| Edit: u/babycake's comment says it better:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29879742
| babycake wrote:
| Unlimited Vacation is great if there is a base guarantee of
| vacation given to the employees. That is, give them their
| usual 2 weeks (or more) of PTO in their contract. Then
| anything on top of that is unlimited.
|
| But companies know full well what they're doing. They know
| that if they replace guaranteed PTO with unlimited, not
| only does the employee take less vacation (more bang for
| the company's buck), but they also get to skirt around
| state laws on paying for unused PTO when the employee
| quits.
|
| Plus, without any guaranteed PTO, companies can just
| decline your request for vacation any time. They can say
| they're in busy season, or they need office coverage,
| whatever. Whereas with guaranteed vacation, the manager
| would have a harder time declining those hours you earned
| due to bad optics.
|
| Unlimited vacation without a guaranteed PTO base is a scam.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| I work for a small org, joined when it was like.. 7, now we're
| ~50, and fully remote. The where doesn't matter, but the when
| does for us. We still exploit synchronous communication quite
| heavily.
|
| Yes i know some orgs can async everything. Some people prefer
| it. You could argue many cases on why async makes for a more
| mature interaction process, more efficient, etc. However we
| have not managed it. I'd say largely 50->80% of our
| communication is sync, and i don't see anyone advocating for
| changing that with us, despite having basically fully flexible
| hours and a global team.
| dojitza1 wrote:
| I agree. Async communication is hard. Humans are not equipped
| for this. We are limited in our focus and prioritization
| ability. It is the same reason calling someone on the phone
| gets you results and information 10x faster.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Even if most communication is async there is a part of
| "somewhat async" and a part of "mostly sync" communication.
| And then there is the social aspect of not being alone, but
| "seeing" that others are working as well.
|
| On the semi-async stuff: If I am stuck with a task I probably
| can grab a coffee and eat a snack or check mails, but I would
| like to get some feedback soon, while I'm in the state of
| mind of that task. Else I switch completely to a different
| task, which has effort to come back on speed on the initial
| task on e the feedback is there. And if there is some
| clarification needed, it is good if all parties focus on that
| topic for a while, till key questions are cleared and
| everybody is unblocked.
|
| Of course it is a balance.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Fully async is hard; I prefer it however a lot of people do
| not. So I adapt to the timezone of who I work with as I am
| usually the most flexible (no children and enough space to
| not disturb my wife or dogs). I overlap significantly with
| Asia now and in other years with the US. Works well enough to
| not risk too much change.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| I think the issue is coordination costs. In fact, Coase's
| entire theory of the firm is predicated that they exist to
| minimize coordination costs. I think it is interesting to think
| about this shift (and the remote from work phenomena as a
| whole), as adaptations that are essentially following a drastic
| reduction in coordination costs. More of our work can be
| asynchronous, done from disparate places, communication tools
| are infinitely better, etc. If you take the theory seriously,
| all else equal, you'd expect smaller company sizes, remote work
| weeks, and more generous time off. But that you'd still have a
| sense of needing to know "when it happens" equally makes sense
| given that coordination costs for a lot of these scenarios
| haven't reached zero (i.e. I can decide to work Tuesday but if
| I need Bob and he's decided to not work Tuesday that's a
| problem. Yes, maybe we could work something out individually,
| but if this happens enough times, and with enough people, its
| more efficient for the company as a whole to dictate a schedule
| when we can reasonably expect folks to be available)
| skadamat wrote:
| World Without Email by Cal Newport talks a bit about the
| challenges here.
|
| Specifically, Peter Drucker advocated for autonomy in knowledge
| work. However, this often leads to a lot of creep around
| meetings, Slack pings, and other context-switching activities.
| Cal, in the book, talks about the need to have good,
| organization level policies AND org-level processes to actively
| align to the work traits that the org needs.
| adam_gyroscope wrote:
| We (bit.io) do a 4 day work week, and have since our founding.
| It's the 32-hours get paid for 40-hours kinda; our salaries are
| competitive with companies of the same stage & size who do a
| 40-hour work week.
|
| I was skeptical at first (I'm the CEO), but my co-founder showed
| me the data and we've been doing it since the start with no
| regrets. Happy to answer any practical questions; we're about 10
| full time folks right now, work monday-thursday, all remote.
| buzzdenver wrote:
| Can you tell us more about the data that convinced you?
| adam_gyroscope wrote:
| Check out the links in our post on this:
| https://blog.bit.io/we-have-a-four-day-work-week-and-you-
| sho...
| moritonal wrote:
| How do you manage the temptation to think you'd get more work
| done if you worked an extra day? Do your stats show an improved
| retention of staff?
|
| Do employees take into account the reduced hours when comparing
| salaries or is it disregarded similar to benefits like
| pensions?
|
| Does the company rely on a sneeky bit of work done on an off-
| day, or is it a true, tools-down, have fun, day?
| adam_gyroscope wrote:
| As a founder, the temptation is real, but anecdotally
| (anecdataly?) I'm so much more motivated on the work days I
| don't think the extra day matters. But, my company is not big
| enough to have enough sample data to prove it one way or the
| other.
|
| Employees do take the extra free time into consideration when
| comparing offers, since we make offers that are competitive
| to a 40-hour offer.
|
| Re: sneaky bit of work on the off day. We don't rely on it,
| or ask for it. We do have an on-call rotation that covers
| support and site issues on Fridays, but you're in that
| rotation once every 5 weeks or so.
| emj wrote:
| FWIW, I love places that actively prevent you from working
| too much, I over worked at a young age, it took two good
| bosses to teach me being effective limiting my work hours.
| This stopped me from hurting myself, never going back to
| forced 40 hour weeks. Thanks for being part of that.
|
| Warning though, forced on call can be hell as an employee.
| We are an group of five and can handle on call every five
| weeks if there is more we would start to get attrition.
| [deleted]
| bberenberg wrote:
| Who responds to customer issues on Fridays?
| thanatos519 wrote:
| He didn't say that everyone works the same 4 days.
| soneca wrote:
| He did say that
| CountDrewku wrote:
| He did, but he mentioned later there was on-call. So it's a
| 4 day facade, similar to unlimited vacation.
| autarch wrote:
| I wouldn't call it a "facade". It's 4-day weeks where in
| some weeks you have to be on call on Friday. If there's
| enough people that means being on call every month or
| two.
|
| As long as they're up front with us when hiring it seems
| fine to me. If you don't want to be on call, that's
| something you need to factor into your job search. I've
| always factored it in for my searches!
| Kranar wrote:
| >work monday-thursday, all remote.
| adam_gyroscope wrote:
| Great question. The sad fact of the 4 day work week is that
| the rest of the world doesn't do it, so external support is a
| challenge. Right now, my co-founder and I try to do any
| external customer _meetings_ that have to take place on a
| friday. But for support we have an on-call rotation (like we
| do for engineering), and that does cover fridays. So, the
| support on-call person handles friday support requests.
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| do they take a different day off in the week or do they
| have an occasional 5 day work week?
|
| Not a comment out of the side of my mouth, I am legit
| curious. at any rate, an occasional 5 day week is better
| than an occasional 6 day week
| adam_gyroscope wrote:
| It's oncall, like any engineering on-call rotation, so
| there's an SLA for responding to support requests;
| currently our oncall is 6am-6pm Pacific time (weekdays).
| So, it's as much as work day as any on-call rotation is.
| maccard wrote:
| The same people who respond on Saturdays presumably?
| bberenberg wrote:
| There is usually a decent difference in support volume
| between a customer weekday and a customer weekend. I would
| like to understand how they are thinking about this. It's
| especially perplexing since their site has no support info
| that I could find, so maybe they take the Google approach
| of not providing support.
| adam_gyroscope wrote:
| We have a chat box that pops up for all support, and
| offer support@bit.io. Both get routed to our Intercom
| instance, and both generate opsgenie alerts for some
| cases. We do an on-call rotation for answering the
| support requests.
|
| We don't _yet_ do support on-call on the weekends.
| dannyeei wrote:
| Why is the 4 day week always talked about but never the 9 day
| fortnight? I feel like that would be far easier to pull off
| moneywoes wrote:
| Do they work more hours per day?
| yboris wrote:
| Two Major Companies Announced Four-Day Workweeks--This May Be The
| Tipping Point For Businesses To Join The Growing Movement
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/01/10/two-major-...
| throwaway889900 wrote:
| So is it 4/10 or 4/9 or 4/8?
| david422 wrote:
| 4/8
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| I'd take any of those over 5/8
| jareds wrote:
| With two small kids I'd much rather have 5/8 instead of 4/10
| so I can spend more time with them every day. I don't know
| how I feel about 4/9.
| T-zex wrote:
| Not switching yet, but evaluating the switch. Will be interesting
| to know how it goes.
| alexjray wrote:
| I like the idea of having a four day work week that everyone is
| expected to work and one day that is a flexible optional deep
| work type of day. No required meetings and no shipping etc. The
| idea being that people can choose to take it off if they want to
| or work half the day etc.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| this would be fine for factory work, but I don't think it would
| be effective for knowledge work where most people can only
| consistently grind out maybe 3-5 hours of "real" work in terms of
| coding/writing/whatever. I think this is pretty commonly
| acknowledged on HN that nobody is grinding out 8 hours of
| hardcore coding every day
|
| Working 4 days for 10 hours is going to result in reduced output
| for the company, but better for the individual who wants to work
| on their side project with a fresh mind 3 days per week. I'd love
| it as an employee.
|
| Other obvious issue is that the rest of the world is pretty much
| working 5 days, so you risk losing deals and delaying all sorts
| of stuff over weekends and things like that
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