[HN Gopher] A hundred UK companies sign up for four-day week wit...
___________________________________________________________________
A hundred UK companies sign up for four-day week with no loss of
pay
Author : nigerian1981
Score : 262 points
Date : 2022-11-27 14:19 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| hunglee2 wrote:
| Some progressive stuff coming out of the UK; there isn't much of
| it, as political chaos unleashed by Brexit remains all consuming
| for the party that runs the country, but this experiment was the
| largest of its type, and so far, looks a great success. Remains
| to be seen whether firms who make this commitment will be able to
| outcompete traditional '5-day-ers' in a recessionary environment,
| you hope they will but that will be the big test
| kypro wrote:
| I want to support this, but I guess I just don't understand how
| the economics of it works?
|
| Firstly, I would just note that wealth can't be legislated into
| existence. It has to be created against entropy, with effort. If
| something is effortless then there is no value in it.
|
| So in an efficient economy where all labour was being used
| productively at all times it's basically just physics that a 4
| day work week would reduce total economic output, and as a
| consequence lower per-capita wealth.
|
| However, being charitable here, I think there are some nuances in
| the real world because labour isn't always used productively --
| especially when companies are unprofitable due to high energy
| bills.
|
| > "With many businesses struggling to afford 10% inflation pay
| rises, we're starting to see increasing evidence that a four-day
| week with no loss of pay is being offered as an alternative
| solution."
|
| I used to work on the a high street in the UK and we'd often
| close an hour or two early in the winter if it was quiet. Reason
| being it made little sense keeping the shop heated and powered
| for us just to be sat around doing nothing until close of
| business. In those few hours (late on the day in winter, often
| when raining) the company was briefly unprofitable to operate and
| therefore closing early made economic sense.
|
| I can only assume a lot of shops and restaurants are in a similar
| position in the UK today. So if you can do 95% of your typical
| business over just 4 days then this probably makes a lot of
| sense. But what I don't understand is that surely in the vast
| majority of cases it would make far more sense to close a bit
| earlier instead of closing for an entire day? If you're a
| restaurant for example, just operating at peak times could be a
| good idea.
|
| But whether this is good or bad will massively vary from business
| to business. Companies which don't have peak days or times will
| see little benefit from something like this. Perhaps some
| companies could neglect certain customers and clients for more
| profitable ones. A plumber might just focus on jobs for wealthier
| clients for example then perhaps they can take the Friday off.
|
| But what I don't understand here is this idea that we can reduce
| the work week to 4 days without cost as a general rule. Let's
| take a fairly typical company which has a 5% profit margin and
| where 50% of costs are labour costs. Eg, for every PS100 in
| sales, PS50 goes to labour and PS5 is profit. Lets now increase
| the hourly cost of that labour by 20% as suggested... Now for
| every PS100 in sales, PS60 goes to labour and -PS5 is made in
| profit.
|
| Of course, big business with better margins will probably be fine
| but a move like this would likely bankrupt most typical
| highstreet businesses. The economics just doesn't make any sense
| without some plan to increase productivity by 20%.
|
| And then how would something like this work in the NHS? Can we
| even afford to reduce nurses hours by 20%? Are we really
| suggesting that would have no economic impact or would we need to
| increase the NHS workforce by 20%? Could we even afford that?
|
| But if you really want to reduce your work week by 20% the
| correct way to do it (imo) is to find more productive uses for
| your labour. If you can increase your income by 20% you can spend
| 20% less time working at no cost to your annual income. Or you
| can just take a 20% hit to your annual income. Most of us here
| could probably afford to do that now. We just choose to work
| because we're greedy.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| The corporate insects will just suck out your life energy in four
| days instead of five so that you need three days of recovery
| instead of two.
| agsamek wrote:
| I live in Poland. We are recently being recognized as a developed
| economy most often. Still, we earn 1/3 in dollar terms per Capita
| compared to the US or Germany.
|
| I think 4 days week would result in people having two jobs
| regularly. I wonder if the situation is simalar with basic job
| workers in more advanced economies.
|
| One interesing point is that people in my IT company were willing
| to put 5-10% of their income in exchange for work from home. But
| this is IT.
|
| I think that the right way to go is not to reduce the number of
| hours but just allow people to work 4 days per week with hourly
| rate intact. This might be a very welcomed option by many people.
|
| Also - signing up for this in the high inflation time might work
| well instead of raising compensations. So this is a good time to
| carry such experiments.
| 0xmarcin wrote:
| I am also from Poland and I would be willing to sacrifice 20%
| of my salary for 1 extra day off per week. I would certainly
| not look for another job. Also in my employment agreement there
| is a rule stating that I need my current employer approval
| before I get a side gig.
|
| I even expect that this would have a rather minor impact on my
| work (like 10% decrease). I think for jobs like writing CRUD
| screens for entire week the productivity drop may be more
| significant.
|
| Actually this inspires me to ask my employer this January for
| such offer.
|
| Disclaimer: Single person, no children or other commitments.
| agsamek wrote:
| > Also in my employment agreement there is a rule stating
| that I need my current employer approval before I get a side
| gig.
|
| I do not think this is lawful. In our agreements we only
| prohibit doing a work for our competitors or directly
| competitive work. If you like your employer then do not come
| up with this with them, but stay informed of your rights.
| varispeed wrote:
| > were willing to put 5-10% of their income in exchange for
| work from home.
|
| Why? The company is going to use your home as an office and
| they should be paying that 5-10% extra. Why business paying
| corporate landlord for office space is okay, but when Joe
| Public offers his own lowly place then it's a no no? When
| people don't recognise their value, they are prime for being
| exploited.
| bluesign wrote:
| There is no inherit value, it is determined by market, mostly
| supply and demand.
| zach_garwood wrote:
| Maybe you folks don't have to pay property taxes, but in
| the US we do, and that's a pretty clear indication of an
| "inherent value".
| bluesign wrote:
| Sorry if it was not clear, I meant value of work.
| [deleted]
| agsamek wrote:
| We did the experiment to check if people are serious about
| WFH. There is a lot of work to make it happen inside a
| company. In particular to treat remote people as first class
| citizens. WFH was also a choice after covid and not
| necessity.
|
| With a pay cut we are sure people are serious about WFH and
| not only demanding.
| varispeed wrote:
| > With a pay cut we are sure people are serious about WFH
| and not only demanding.
|
| How that correlates with "seriousness"?
|
| Wouldn't pay rise equally make sure people are serious
| about it?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Still, we earn 1/3 in dollar terms per Capita compared to the
| US or Germany.
|
| It's not a meaningful comparison without cost of living
| adjustment. You're not paying 3000 dollars for a one bedroom
| apartment either. In fact last time I visited Poland I think a
| place in central Warsaw was like 600 bucks. Poland is
| exceptionally affordable.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Poland is exceptionally affordable._
|
| For those on tech wages, which have reached near parity with
| the west, or work remotely for western companies, yes. But
| not everyone in Poland earns tech wages.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Rents in the West aren't high just for tech workers.
| bernawil wrote:
| >Still, we earn 1/3 in dollar terms per Capita compared to the
| US or Germany.
|
| How could that be if Germans already make 1/3 dollars compared
| to the US.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Even a single 4 day week a month is a huge bonus for most people
| I'd say.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| My under-informed perception is that the UK is suffering from an
| overall productivity crisis, having prioritized other things for
| the last decade.
|
| This resulting in inflation and a weakening of the pound, and
| with a lower quality of life on average than they would have
| otherwise.
|
| When people produce less, then there is obviously less to go
| around. Will these folks produce as much in 4 days as 5? Maybe, I
| guess we'll see. Maybe they'll produce MORE. But unless they do,
| or find something economically productive to do with their extra
| time, the UK will have less as a result.
|
| Will the farmers work less? How about those in the energy sector?
| Or medicine? Or construction?
|
| I'll be happy to hear from people with better information who can
| corroborate or refute my perception.
| ITB wrote:
| Just what we need to fight global inflation.
| spoonjim wrote:
| This will only work if the labor laws allow for easy firing. The
| 4-day week at a regular market salary will be very attractive and
| will attract top performers as long as the company has the
| flexibility to remove the underperformers.
| Moissanite wrote:
| Getting rid of underperformers in regular private sector roles
| in the UK isn't really that bad; certainly closer to Germany
| than the US, but on the whole about right. Public sector is
| another matter; getting rid of dead weight in the civil service
| is a tough problem and suppresses the salaries of other
| employees there, leading to a downward spiral.
| maccard wrote:
| > Getting rid of underperformers in regular private sector
| roles in the UK isn't really that bad; certainly closer to
| Germany than the US, but on the whole about right <...>
| Public sector is another matter
|
| The uk has practically no employment rights when you have
| less than 2 years service. One of the (many) articles on the
| subject [0]. The employment rights in the public sector are
| similar, with most of the "unfireable" aspect being people
| who have been there long enough that it's easier to move them
| around than it is to get rid of them. The civil service in
| the UK has an unreasonably long probationary period (9
| months) which if people actually cared about removing
| unproductive employees could be much better applied.
|
| [0] https://www.davidsonmorris.com/dismissing-an-employee-
| with-l...
| varispeed wrote:
| The UK wages are laughably low, so these corporations are doing
| no favours. The still enjoy record profits and their board
| members probably laugh that serfs even think that these
| corporations are being so "generous".
| dazc wrote:
| Only two companies were mentioned, Atom Bank and Awin - neither
| of which I would describe as 'corporations'?
|
| I think it's a gimmick that some businesses will use for
| publicity purposes and nothing more.
|
| Anyone looking for a bit of an SEO boost for their website can
| feel free to jump on board...
| logifail wrote:
| > I think it's a gimmick that some businesses will use for
| publicity purposes and nothing more
|
| Google "theguardian four day week" and you'll see this outlet
| has form on the topic.
|
| Q: Can you work a four-day week at full pay if you're
| employed by Guardian Media Group?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| The Guardian also reports on war. Does this mean you can go
| to war for the Guardian?
| logifail wrote:
| Dozens of articles but no genuine explanation of the
| employer's end of this issue.
|
| If the Guardian newspaper were to let _all_ its staffers
| take every Friday off without any reduction in pay, I
| wholeheartedly agree that the staff would be much happier
| and more productive too (at least on Mondays to
| Thursdays, when they 're actually working).
|
| However, wouldn't the newspaper EITHER need to cancel
| Saturday's edition completely, thus losing a big chunk of
| revenue, OR employ more part-time staff to cover the
| missing work on Fridays - and out of interest, where
| would the money for those additional fractional salaries
| come from? Are we seriously suggesting that the product
| on Monday to Thursday becomes so much better due to the
| happier staff that consumers are going to pay more for
| it? <boggle>
|
| "Details", I can almost hear you say :)
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Aren't the Guardian reporting news? Rather than giving an
| option themselves? It isn't a gotcha to say the Guardian
| don't do it, unless you think it's a gotcha that they
| reported on the invasion of Ukraine but have not also
| invaded Ukraine.
| logifail wrote:
| > It isn't a gotcha to say the Guardian don't do it,
| unless you think it's a gotcha that they reported on the
| invasion of Ukraine but have not also invaded Ukraine.
|
| From one of their articles on this topic, from June 2022:
|
| "More than 3,300 workers at 70 UK companies, ranging from
| a local chippy to large financial firms, start working a
| four-day week from Monday with no loss of pay in the
| world's biggest trial of the new working pattern."[0]
|
| "The trial is based on the 100:80:100 model - 100% of pay
| for 80% of the time, in exchange for a commitment to
| maintain 100% productivity"
|
| Q: How can you 'maintain 100% productivity' when you're
| not there 20% of the time?
|
| Like I already said, no actual discussion on how this can
| [possibly] work in practice _at any company_. They
| certainly don 't say whether the chippy is going to be
| closed every Friday when all the previously "full time"
| staff are having their additional day off...
|
| The issue suits someone's agenda, though, or why would
| they be pushing it so hard?
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jun/06/thou
| sands-w...
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Q: How can you 'maintain 100% productivity' when you're
| not there 20% of the time?
|
| That's a question for the 4 Day Week Campaign, not for
| the Guardian, and the research they publish and the
| people who peer-review it. The Guardian are reporting
| what other people think and say, not thinking it or
| saying it themselves.
| logifail wrote:
| > That's a question for the 4 Day Week Campaign, not for
| the Guardian
|
| Umm ... I don't think we get to give media outlets a free
| pass like that. Reporters used to ask these questions and
| get answers _before_ they published.
|
| Gushingly positive reporting about a topic that your
| reporters and/or your readership agree with is almost
| certainly part of the reason that only 25% of people
| trust journalists[0]. I suppose that's marginally more
| than than trust politicians (21%)... :)
|
| "[The Guardian has] a slight to moderate liberal bias.
| They often publish factual information that utilizes
| loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an
| audience by appeals to emotion or stereotypes) to favor
| liberal causes. These sources are generally trustworthy
| for information but may require further investigation
| [..]
|
| Overall, we rate The Guardian Left-Center biased based on
| story selection that moderately favors the left and Mixed
| for factual reporting due to numerous failed fact checks
| over the last five years."
|
| https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/
|
| I'd never come across mediabiasfactcheck.com until a
| friend recently referred me to it over a source that I'd
| quoted which he claimed was biased :)
|
| Full disclosure: I grew up in a household where The
| Guardian was on the breakfast table every day, and I
| still call up theguardian.com every morning. Either it's
| changed, or I've changed :(
|
| [0] https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/politicians-are-still-
| trusted-le...
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > neither of which I would describe as 'corporations'
|
| What do you mean? The former looks like a public limited
| company and the latter a private limited company, both of
| which are forms of incorporation, as opposed to a
| partnership. What kind of company did you think they were?
| sokoloff wrote:
| What would you describe as a corporation then?
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Genuine question though - isn't there some tradeoff for this
| like labor benefits (vacation, healthcare, etc)?
| VLM wrote:
| I've worked a couple places like this and the real argument
| is "thanksgiving in the USA is always a thursday which is
| unfair to the wed-sat team" if they're forced to work or
| "unfair to the sun-wed team" if they wanted to work for
| triple overtime holiday pay and similar arguments about
| election day always being a Tuesday there are five federal
| holidays IIRC that are off on Mondays but no federal holidays
| on fri or sat, etc. Usually whining problems were solved by
| "this system has been here since your grandparents and you
| signed up for it so suck it up or transfer teams or quit"
| Technically the system was only there for their grandparents
| in operations and finance always worked 9-5 m-f until thirty
| years ago so it is new out of operations, but whatever.
|
| The vacation problem was solved by providing "weeks" to
| everyone along with the interesting legal fiction that
| everyone worked ten hours so our "weeks" were implemented
| using "hours". So new employees got "two weeks" which on
| paper were implemented as 80 hours.
|
| These are all very old issues in 24x7 operations environments
| including outside IT/tech/computer-stuff. The only
| "innovation" is when the payroll clerk starts doing 4x10s
| like she's a front line nurse, or the graphics artist in
| marketing starts doing 4x10s 3rd shift like he's a field
| service tech.
| youngtaff wrote:
| Earlier this year I went from a 5 day week to 4 days spread
| over 5 with no loss of PTO / benefits etc.
|
| Some people were already on a 4 day week and they were
| essentially given a 25% pay rise instead
| tialaramex wrote:
| The UK has a National Health Service for all its permanent
| residents, which is over-stretched right now because people
| keep voting for Tories who claim to cherish it but won't fund
| it (and divert funding to their pet projects). Also COVID
| burned out medics at a high rate and Brexit made it harder to
| attract foreign medics to work here.
|
| UK workers are (with some narrow exceptions) entitled to 5.6
| weeks per year of paid leave. Employers can choose to make
| you take some of this leave when _they_ want it taken rather
| than when you want it, including the Bank Holidays (national
| holidays). In a tech job you are almost certainly going to
| get 5.6 weeks _plus_ the Bank Holidays and maybe more.
|
| It's calculated as 5.6 weeks because logically if I work 5
| days per week, and you work 4 days per week, and our employer
| gives us both 20 days of leave to take whenever we like, for
| you that would be _five weeks_ whereas for me it 's only
| _four weeks_ which isn 't the same. 5.6 weeks will be 28 full
| days for a full time Monday-Friday office worker, but only 14
| full days for their colleague who only works Monday, Tuesday
| and Wednesday morning in a job share.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If you had 25 days of PTO per year before, I would view
| having 20 days per year as the equivalent, but others will no
| doubt disagree.
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah, and now they save on heating also.
| Reason077 wrote:
| From a macroeconomic perspective, this doesn't seem like the best
| time to be trying this sort of thing. We already have a labour
| shortage and a lot of inflationary pressure!
|
| If we had high productivity, high unemployment, and low
| inflation, then introducing a 4 day week would be a great
| solution.
| rainsford wrote:
| The argument is that in a lot of jobs, working 4 days a week
| isn't significantly less productive than working 5 days a week
| but you get all the benefits of an extra day off every week
| (less time/money spent commuting, more free time, etc). If the
| productivity argument is true, then not only would going to a 4
| day work week not have economic downsides, but it would
| potentially be even better economically.
|
| I'm not sure I 100% buy that argument, but I do think many jobs
| have a non-linear relationship between time spent working and
| productivity and you end up reaching the point of diminishing
| returns. I also think it would be a mistake to assume that 2
| days vs 3 days off per week is the optimal trade-off just
| because that's what we're already used to.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Thats why for me, I want it. It increases my days off by
| 150%. I'd gladly take a 20% pay cut to have proportionally
| far more free time
| bratbag wrote:
| With problem solving jobs, like software engineering, you end
| up with equal or greater productivity.
|
| There is a low-level of constant burnout that occurs with 5 day
| weeks, but you don't notice the difference between feeling
| normal and that low-level burnout until the first week back
| from holiday (after which it starts again).
|
| I've simulated 4-day-weeks before using annual leave one day a
| week spread out over a prolonged period, and those times have
| been some of my most productive. Every week has had that post-
| holiday high.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| This is the best time to try it. Labor has all the power, and
| will into the future due to structural demographics.
|
| For capital, it never seems to be a good time to try anything
| that doesn't allow for maximum extraction or any semblance of
| labor power or quality of life improvements. For example, US
| railroad workers are about to strike because they dare ask for
| paid sick leave. It'll cost $2B/day to the US economy, not
| because of unreasonable demands (paid sick leave!), but because
| of unreasonable management and shareholders.
|
| Edit: (can't reply, HN throttling) Good luck attempting to
| solve for labor power with immigration. Folks who lean right
| (and a cohort of centrists) don't want it, and they still have
| enough voting power to be somewhat relevant for the next 5-10
| years (in the US, the UK, and many parts of Europe; Italy's
| most recent elections showcase this), as electorate turnover
| takes time, not to mention declining fertility rates
| _everywhere_ squeezing the young, productive cohort globally.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/11/21/1137640529/railroads-freight-...
| mantas wrote:
| Capital will just push for ever bigger immigration to counter
| labour.
| Jensson wrote:
| How? Labour has all the voting power, capital only wins if
| they can manipulate labour to vote against its own
| interests like they managed in USA.
| michaelt wrote:
| Simply invite labour over from countries like Poland -
| then deny them a vote, because they're not citizens.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| "Labor" in many EU countries have been manipulated into
| voting against their own interests on several topics
| (Brexit, anti nuclear energy, pro illegal immigration,
| anti taxes for the rich, longer working hours, etc.) to
| the point most voters don't care anymore.
|
| And plus, even if the "pro-labor" leader would win
| elections, there's nothing that forbid him/her from
| following up on the election promises till the end of
| his/her term. They can just do whatever their campaign
| donors/lobbyists pay them to do as once their political
| career is over, they'll have a cushy job guaranteed in
| the private sector enterprises they "helped" during their
| term. It's the classic political-private sector revolving
| dor.
|
| Case in point, all EU leader have promised to tackle
| housing, and yet, during their terms, housing has gotten
| more and more out of reach with each passing year,
| proving that your voted leaders are not on your side,
| they just claim they are to win your votes. German and
| Austrian politicians who helped kill nuclear, took major
| lucrative jobs in Russian oil and gas companies
| afterwards. The list can go on. We basically have
| legalized high level corruption.
| mantas wrote:
| It looks like in US labour can vote either for
| corporations or for importing ever more cheap labour.
|
| Some in Europe were labour was manipulated to vote for
| migration-friendly parties. Although now this seems to be
| changing with growing economically left but anti-
| immigration so-called ,,right wing" parties.
| hdjdnnsbsbs wrote:
| Doesn't European labor want to move to the US for the
| higher wages?
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| Eh? The majority don't. Quality of life in western Europe
| is generally excellent.
|
| Pay in the US is attractive, but doesn't make up for what
| you lose from being in many European countries. Health
| care, public transport, well maintained roads, better
| work-life balance, more vacation time, less poverty,
| won't get murdered in a mass shooting etc. Your mobility
| as a citizen in the EU is excellent as well, free to
| travel to so many different cultures.
|
| I live in the UK, and this country is probably going to
| get much worse. But I still wouldn't trade it just for a
| higher US salary.
| vidarh wrote:
| Only sub-Saharan Africa is left with fertility rates above
| replacement. China is likely to start seeing population
| decline within 15 years or so. Which is not to say that
| they won't try, but we're about to see competitive pressure
| applied to immigration as well, coupled with a significant
| number of voters still opposed to immigration.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Folks who lean right (and a cohort of centrists) don't
| want it_
|
| Right wing isn't really that popular in most developed/rich
| EU countries though. Most of them have quite left leaning
| population and leaders.
|
| And many of the richer countries want immigration but not
| publicly admitting it, but do it under the table, due to
| pressure from business groups and lobbyists, who hope this
| will aid with the labor shortage (translation for jobs with
| shitty pay and downward pressure on wages) while also pushing
| up demand for housing/rents, and demand for consumer goods in
| the retail sector. All of which benefit the business and
| ruling elite.
|
| Immigration to UK is at its highest year ever despite Brexit
| and Covid having thrown wrenches in immigration movements.
|
| Same for continental Europe. Refugees and migrants are coming
| weekly by the thousands by sea and land, and there's nothing
| the right wing parties can do about it, as long as migrants
| can cross the border then claim refugee status and know how
| to play the refugee game, the host country can't deny them
| that as it's guaranteed by the European Court of Human Rights
| (ECHR), and if they do deny them that right, then the country
| can be sued and will lose.
|
| So, for that to work, the right wing leaders would have to
| first get their country out of the ECHR, and then they can
| deny refugees/migrants.
| mattkevan wrote:
| At a place I used to work for, the four day week question was put
| to the CEO at an all-hands company town hall.
|
| Not a fan of the idea, he scoffed and said something like, 'I pay
| you to be at your desk from 9am-5.30pm Monday-Friday. Why should
| I pay you the same for a day less?'
|
| I don't think he realised it at the time, but that answer was
| devastating to company productivity and morale. He'd just
| demonstrated to everyone that he didn't value results and all
| that was important was bums on seats.
|
| People stopped putting in extra effort, waited out their hours as
| that was all that was required and started brushing up their CVs.
| I left not long after and so did many others.
| heather45879 wrote:
| The problem with folks in America is they've lost their
| entrepreneurial spirit. If people are given a shorter work week
| --great--they're nice and relaxed. But I've witnessed folks
| getting more-and-more lazy these days.
|
| There needs to be a better method of incentives put in place
| that coincides with an extra day off.
|
| I would propose not an extra day off, but perhaps an extra day
| of personal development instead? Something relaxing but related
| to work maybe?
|
| People are simply too distracted with all the crack social
| media and Netflix's auto-play algorithm. So I'd wager that
| sometimes people will use that day productively, but maybe 7/10
| it'll be wasted down some rabbit hole.
|
| In fact, you could probably argue that people are so distracted
| these days that they're productivity and happiness would both
| go up if they were no longer wasting time online and you ADDED
| another work day.
| danparsonson wrote:
| Alternative thesis: most people are getting tired of working
| hard only for the lion's share of the reward to go to a small
| handful of people at the top.
| ethanbond wrote:
| > the problem with the most productive civilization in
| history is that it's _lazy_
| lostlogin wrote:
| Have you a source for that criticism? Any 'these days'
| criticism seems to favour a past that never existed.
|
| Productivity in the US is up as far as I can tell.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/productivity/
| tchalla wrote:
| Here's a brief history on how people don't want to work
| anymore
|
| 1894-2002
|
| https://twitter.com/paulisci/status/1549527748950892544
| greedo wrote:
| Kind of generalizing an entire workforce I think. How are you
| measuring lazy? You say that people are nice and relaxed with
| a shorter work week. But it seems you expect that a team that
| isn't as relaxed will be more effective?
|
| Who are you to decide if people use their days off
| "productively?" And most orgs that have a day in the office
| scheduled for personal development/training, inevitably end
| up pushing other responsibilities into those hours,
| eventually making them useless. If someone is in the office,
| it's just too easy for them to be pestered for "real work."
|
| The idea isn't that to get more work out of people, it's to
| provide them with a healthy WLB; so they don't get burned
| out, so they're more productive when they're "nice and
| relaxed" from their time off.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> I left not long after and so did many others._
|
| The question from me is, did you manage to move to a company
| where you got paid the same or more, but for " _a day less_
| hours "?
|
| Employers can make that claim if the job market is in their
| favor, i.e. if most other companies agree with them and decide
| that they need staff available Mo-Fr 9-5 or for less hours but
| also for proportionally less salary, which to my experience is
| most employers.
|
| To normalize this, we need the majority of employers (>51% of
| them) to switch to paying market rate for less hours, putting
| pressure on the rest that this is the new norm, but I haven't
| seen that yet in my EU country, except for a notable couple of
| companies that made headlines, out of which one recently filed
| for bankruptcy. So as long as only a tiny minority of companies
| are doing this, the norm will not change. All businesses here
| think like your ex-boss: 'Why should I pay you the same for a
| day less?' and the market favors their approach as they have
| seen no mass resignations since they all can afford to act like
| this.
|
| Therefore, the only solution would be the same as the one that
| lead to the 8 hour workweek being normalized almost 100 years
| ago: mass strikes and labor movements followed by government
| regulations that makes the 4 day workweek the new norm for
| everyone.
| benmanns wrote:
| I don't think you need 51% to affect things at the margins.
| At one company, we were early to the "remote is OK" and
| "remote is good" camps. It helped a lot with recruiting and
| retention, and let us hire a better talent pool. Post-COVID
| with everyone offering remote the benefit has dwindled for
| companies early to accept remote work. I think someone
| offering 4 day work weeks would be able to hire talent they
| wouldn't normally be able to. If the promise of "same
| productivity, less hours, same pay" is true, then they'll
| outperform and out recruit.
|
| Mass strikes are certainly quicker though.
| [deleted]
| hdjdnnsbsbs wrote:
| He stopped paying people who wanted to be paid 5 days for 4
| days of work? How is this different from 99.9% of companies?
| onion2k wrote:
| It's how most companies _think_ they work, but really very
| few companies actually track output. They track time. They
| 're not measuring how much work you do, but instead how much
| time you're available for. The idea of a 4 day week is that
| people stop procrastinating, wasting time, daydreaming,
| sitting in meetings doing nothing, etc, and that saves a day
| a week. The employer gets the same amount of work for the
| money, and the employee doesn't have to pretend to work any
| more. Everyone wins.
| galoisscobi wrote:
| The director for the org I work in says something along those
| lines after every release cycle. He thanks everyone for working
| long hours and on burning the midnight oil on weekends, and
| that's it. I personally never work long hours or work on
| weekends and those speeches feel alienating. I think hard
| during the day, strive to be creative and then go back to my
| life outside work without donating my free hours to a company
| that would be just fine without them.
|
| I've heard that what we appreciate in people also tells a lot
| about us and when I hear my director only acknowledge the long
| hours, I realize that only the long hours are appreciated.
|
| Luckily my immediate management chain knows better and
| understand the importance of creativity, meaningful output and
| WLB that I stick around.
| debevv wrote:
| I'll repeat a comment I saw here on HN some time ago about the
| productivity issue: if an asteroid were to hit the earth in one
| month, and there were a team of NASA engineers working to stop
| it, would you rather say them to work 4 days per week, or 6-7?
| Chirono wrote:
| Stretch the timelines out a bit. Say the asteroid is two years
| off (a fairly typical startup runway). I would much rather know
| the planning, decisions and execution of the one thing that
| could save my life were done by well rested and level headed
| individuals, not stressed out sleep deprived people more prone
| to missing details and making mistakes.
| onion2k wrote:
| I make web apps for a living. Why would anyone use a human-race
| saving, rocket-science complexity, literally life and death
| situation analogy to determine my working conditions?
|
| I mean, if those scientists are successful they'll be getting a
| congressional medal of honor, millions of dollars in speaking
| fees, and probably given their choice of job in space science
| afterwards. Am I getting those things for pushing some HTML?
| aeze wrote:
| 6-7 for the month, then take the next several months (or
| longer) off.
| jjcon wrote:
| I guess I'd rather live on a planet where most people didn't
| have to work like their life was in dire jeopardy all the
| time...
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| I'd like to see them round up as many engineers as possible and
| rota them on a healthy 24/7 schedule. There comes a point where
| you just can't be productive for 7 days a week. If 4 days is
| proven to be productive, then put them on a 4 day rota.
| Otherwise, the status quo of 5 days.
|
| Some of the greatest ideas are conceived when away from work
| with just time to think on your own. We always need breaks and
| rest.
| idlehand wrote:
| Most people have working lives spanning decades, so maximizing
| the output of any one month is generally counterproductive.
|
| However, if you have a well-rested, happy and productive team
| that has adequate time for leisure and recreation, you can turn
| up the pace for those exceptional months that are really make
| or break.
|
| But if you try to get people to run at that pace continuously,
| you'll get a lot of resignations and a few heart attacks at 50.
| ojkelly wrote:
| Working in a crisis (crunch, etc) mode 100% of the time is not
| healthy or sustainable.
|
| People can stretch to meet a deadline, or avert a crisis--but
| they need time to recover afterwards. The extra effort and
| productivity comes at a cost that needs to be repaid for their
| health and wellbeing.
|
| The purpose of the 4 day week trials around the world has been
| to evaluate if there's a measurable drop in productivity, and
| it seems overwhelmingly there hasn't been.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Zero. Everyone is going to die anyway
| theptip wrote:
| > They argue that a four-day week would drive companies to
| improve their productivity, meaning they can create the same
| output using fewer hours.
|
| The idea that there is a population-wide 25% productivity boost
| just lying unnoticed on the sidewalk sounds asinine to me. Strong
| claims require strong evidence and I don't see it.
|
| That said, I have worked a 4-day week before and it was great,
| but I took a proportional pay cut and wasn't expected to somehow
| become super-productive.
|
| Some more charitable interpretations of why this approach might
| be great:
|
| * We can afford to take the pay cut and would be happier (and
| perhaps a little more productive) working fewer hours;
|
| * Companies with a 50-60 hour work week might have pervasive
| burnout and therefore get a substantial performance boost by
| decreasing their workload by 20%, with "4-day workweek" being a
| better coordination point than "only work 9-5";
|
| * Optionality will be a good perk for employees allowing the
| small number of companies deploying this to get better employees
| (this doesn't work if 4-day is widely adopted).
| whywhywhydude wrote:
| At the startup that I work at the biggest complaint from
| customers is no 24 hour support, but my company doesn't want
| people to work on weekends or work overnight. Doesn't four hour
| week mean even less support? You'd have to deal with crappy AI -
| automated bots with canned response, awful self checkouts at
| groceries and restaurants, waiting even longer at DMV for an
| appointment, etc.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| Why doesn't your company want people to work on weekends or
| overnight?
|
| Hire some people to do it, those who want to will apply. Some
| people would rather work on weekends and have days off in the
| week. Some people are night owls who would prefer to work
| overnight.
|
| No other 24/7 company with good compensation struggles to hire
| for these jobs.
| mietek wrote:
| Hire more people.
| poszlem wrote:
| I expect to be downvoted for saying this, as some people are
| really precious about the idea of 4-day work week, but I really
| struggle to understand how working fewer hours will not result in
| loss of productivity. If for some reason it is true that working
| 4 days a week results in the same amount of productivity, then
| why are 3 days a week not even more productive? Or 2? This is
| obviously reductio ad absurdum but that would mean that people
| who work 0 hours are the most productive ones.
|
| I know that there is the argument about "if I have fewer hours
| they will be more focused", but that to me sounds like it's
| entirely wishful thinking and in a few years will be having the
| same amount of wasted hours in those days too, as people start
| thinking of Thursday as the new Friday.
|
| I assume there is some sort of middle ground between working too
| much and working too little. Are there any actual evidence that
| that optimum middle ground is 4 days and not 3, or 5?
|
| I would find the whole idea much more palatable if it wasn't sold
| by claiming something likely isn't true (people working fewer
| hours do more work), and instead someone was honest and admitted
| that this is a political project.
|
| What I find much more interesting is switching from a 7 day week
| to something else entirely, for example working on: Monday,
| Tuesday, Wednesday is free, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday is
| free. I can see how that might result in people being more
| productive, as they still work the same amount of hours, but they
| don't get as exhausted as before.
| fleddr wrote:
| Two very simple answers, which I won't bother to back up with
| any science.
|
| 1) Many office workers spent some 50-80% of their work hours on
| overhead (meetings, email), leaving very little time for actual
| focused tasks, things that actually need to get done. When you
| work one day less, you just optimize the overhead part whilst
| still outputting the same net productivity.
|
| 2) The human mind cannot be cognitively productive 5 x 8.
| Consciously or subconsciously, you'll bleed downtime into your
| day, quite a lot of it. Pretending to be busy, sitting out the
| time. Not because you're a slacker, you're just human. Office
| work is deeply unnatural.
| octodog wrote:
| You are quick to dismiss this as political.
|
| Counterpoint: what makes 40 hours a week the sweet spot? Why is
| 40 more productive than 50?
| unity1001 wrote:
| > but I really struggle to understand how working fewer hours
| will not result in loss of productivity
|
| Microsoft Japan did 4 day workweeks and saw 40% increase in
| productivity.
|
| https://mashable.com/article/microsoft-japan-4-day-work-week...
|
| Its likely because a 3 day weekend allows people to totally
| disconnect from work and rest. It even allows you to travel,
| visit family etc.
| somedude895 wrote:
| I don't really get it either. Sure I'd like to work less and
| get paid more, but if employees can do 5 days of work in 4
| days, doesn't that mean that you should fire 20% of your staff?
|
| I could see it have no effect at first while people appreciate
| the extra time off, so they work harder for four days, but if
| it becomes the norm that would normalize and productivity would
| slowly drop across that society.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Sure I'd like to work less and get paid more, but if
| employees can do 5 days of work in 4 days, doesn't that mean
| that you should fire 20% of your staff?
|
| No, because the argument for the four-day work week is that
| the extra day takes 20% more time but does not contribute
| anything like 20% more productivity.
|
| People are worn out by the time they get to Friday, and so 5
| people working 4 days can get more done than 4 people working
| 5 days, even though "man-hours" is the same.
| twblalock wrote:
| > I assume there is some sort of middle ground between working
| too much and working too little. Are there any actual evidence
| that that optimum middle ground is 4 days and not 3, or 5?
|
| That's the problem with this whole thing. People don't have a
| rationale for it. They just want to work fewer hours.
|
| If the 4-day week happens, we will see the same arguments being
| made for the 3-day week, because there is no actual basis for
| any of this: people will always want to work fewer hours than
| they work now.
| lolinder wrote:
| You can _disagree_ with the rationale, but if you think there
| isn 't one then you didn't read the article or any of the
| comments, you're just sharing your knee-jerk reaction.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| The theory is that the weekend is not enough to "recharge" and
| that productivity wanes over the week.
|
| Now, I can buy the theory of very unproductive fridays when
| nothing gets done, but I think a better model would be to just
| work 6 hours instead of 8.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| We need to do experiments and gather data to test hypothesis.
|
| This is one of those experiments.
| brightball wrote:
| There's a business that I know which had a 4 day work week and
| all the employees just moonlighted at other jobs on Friday to
| make extra money...so they just opened for a half day on
| Fridays to give people the option to make more money there.
|
| It was an actual service based company where more hours meant
| more customers served.
| ozim wrote:
| In my opinion, especially when it comes to individual employees
| "productivity" is overrated.
| adamckay wrote:
| The no loss of productivity can be a combination of multiple
| things:
|
| a) There is loss in productivity but it isn't (or can't be)
| properly measured or does not make an impact on the business,
| e.g. a help desk responds to customers with 1 business day
| rather than 4 business hours.
|
| b) People are more motivated (including it being a novelty) so
| employees are eager to work harder in their reduced hours to
| ensure they can continue a 4-day working week. If this becomes
| the norm after a while you may see this slack off.
|
| c) Lots of people are doing busy-work or "bullshit tasks" which
| do not actually affect business productivity or are simply just
| looking busy and procrastinating, e.g. office workers browsing
| Twitter, Reddit or HN for a short time every couple of hours
| which is eliminated.
|
| It highlights saying "don't confuse activity with
| achievement/productivity".
| didibus wrote:
| Before productivity, this is also about simple social quality
| of life.
|
| I know we often think in the smaller system of capitalism, but
| the point of any economic system is to bring overall better
| quality of life to citizens.
|
| A lot of people are now observing that additional work doesn't
| bring additional quality of life, and so the next push for
| improved quality of life now might come at reconsidering the 5
| day work week and maybe making it 4.
|
| Now about productivity, there's a few arguments:
|
| 1. Reducing wasted time. Lots of work is inefficient, lots of
| meetings going in circles, distractions, etc. If you have only
| 4 days, you hope that it will push companies to reduce the
| waste.
|
| 2. Rest/leisure and productivity have correlations. Maybe an
| extra day of rest can boost people's work days and actually
| make them more productive.
|
| 3. Most type of work where people are considering 4 day work
| week is creative work. Productivity often comes simply from
| better ideas and better decisions. An extra work day doesn't
| really affect the quality of your decisions and the potential
| of your ideas.
|
| 4. Most type of work where people are considering 4 day work
| week have uneven value output. Something you did in the first
| quarter on its own can provide enough value to justify your
| entire year's salary.
| Moissanite wrote:
| I think it helps to start with the assertion that benefits from
| economic/productivity growth have accrued to owners, not
| workers, and that a correction is overdue - if you don't agree
| with that, discussion over working fewer hours feels moot.
|
| Going forward with the idea that workers deserve a bit of a
| break:
|
| > sounds like it's entirely wishful thinking and in a few years
| will be having the same amount of wasted hours in those days
|
| I can see that to some extent, but if expectations stay the
| same I think "trimming the fat" would be a more likely outcome
| - i.e. more push-back on pointless meetings and other
| inefficiency. I'd expect it to take a longer time than just a
| few years for apathy to set in - at which point we would have
| more data about the effectiveness of the plan over time.
|
| > Are there any actual evidence that that optimum middle ground
| is 4 days and not 3, or 5?
|
| I think lots of us have anecdata that "meaningful work done"
| does not drop by 20% (if at all) in a 4-day week, and
| satisfaction increases substantially. I can imagine a future
| push to reduce further to 3 days - but isn't that a realistic
| expectation given further productivity-boosting technology will
| arrive?
| poszlem wrote:
| >I think it helps to start with the assertion that benefits
| from economic/productivity growth have accrued to owners, not
| workers, and that a correction is overdue - if you don't
| agree with that, discussion over working fewer hours feels
| moot.
|
| That is exactly what I meant by this being a political
| project to which we try to will evidence into existence.
| lolinder wrote:
| Most systems don't have a nice, clean, linear relationship.
|
| You did a reductio ad absurdum in one direction, let's do it in
| the other: if hours worked directly translates to productivity,
| then we should be able to add more hours and continually get
| more productivity. Why not add Saturdays and Sundays back in?
| Then we can go to 10 hour workdays. Maybe 12 hours?
|
| Even aside from the humanitarian arguments against this, it
| should be obvious that there reaches a point where the marginal
| return for additional hours is _negative_ --where adding extra
| hours reduces total productivity.
|
| Experiments like this are designed to find out where that
| inflection point is, and the evidence that's coming in so far
| suggests that the inflection point is somewhere below 40 hours.
| More research is needed, but that's exactly what is happening.
| logifail wrote:
| > Experiments like this are designed to find out where that
| inflection point is, and the evidence that's coming in so far
| suggests that the inflection point is somewhere below 40
| hours. More research is needed, but that's exactly what is
| happening
|
| If someone's job is in customer service and the key part of
| their role is to answer the phone when it rings/respond to
| the email when it arrives ... you don't need research to
| determine that if they are not there, the phone/email doesn't
| get answered.
|
| If you let them stay at home on Fridays, either you pay
| someone else to come in on those Fridays, or you accept that
| phone calls/emails won't be answered on Fridays. Ever.
|
| This appears to be really easy to propose/promote when _it 's
| not your company_ :(
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| Here's what I think you're missing: Most people who answer
| telephones for a living are not paid to answer telephones.
| They're paid to answer customers.
|
| If I'm speaking to someone who's worked too much for their
| capacity (whatever that is) and I get a curt, wrong, or
| bad-mannered answer I'm very likely to take my business
| elsewhere. In fact I've done so, to the tune of a few good
| thousands, a few times. Off of a repeat bad experience with
| customer service.
|
| Would it be better for the business for that same position
| to be filled with someone whose energy were better at the
| time I rung?
|
| (To give you credit, some positions do need to fill shifts
| and it is what it is, but you can always split them between
| more people)
| danparsonson wrote:
| > If someone's job is in customer service... you don't need
| research to determine that if they are not there, the
| phone/email doesn't get answered.
|
| Except perhaps in the case of very small companies with a
| single CS person - someone else can answer the phone?
|
| Can they never have a holiday too?
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| >If someone's job is in customer service and the key part
| of their role is to answer the phone when it rings/respond
| to the email when it arrives ... you don't need research to
| determine that if they are not there, the phone/email
| doesn't get answered.
|
| You're correct that the phone doesn't get answered. But
| that's not "productivity". Productivity is the function of
| the hours worked and the results gained. Their job isn't
| just to answer the phone, it's to resolve problems and
| leave a customer satisfied. Too little sleep and a foggy
| brain? Might take them more time to resolve an issue. Might
| leave them unhappy and the customer can detect that.
|
| The results might surprise you, they could be more
| productive and more phone calls are answered in less time
| because issues are resolved quickly. To get around the
| problem of no phones being answered on a Friday you could
| propose a rota so staff is properly covering every day of
| the week. If everyone is 20% more productive, then every
| day can afford to have 20% less staff. Problem solved. 24/7
| businesses already rota customer service staff.
|
| Maybe the rest of the staff are more productive and there's
| less problems. The knock on effect being that there's 20%
| less phone calls. The problem sorts itself there, they
| don't even need to be more productive.
|
| Lets say that there is no productivity increase at all.
| Well, hire 20% more staff then. Large companies can afford
| it. The wealth gap is widening, capitalists with hundreds
| of millions or billions of pounds have convinced workers
| there's not enough money to go around, but we know that's
| bullshit.
| eesmith wrote:
| If the customer service rep works more hours, at a
| decreased productivity (tired workers make mistakes, over-
| stressed workers may be more impatient) such that the
| marginal return becomes negative, then YES! it becomes more
| cost effective to pay someone else to come in on those
| Fridays.
|
| Just like we don't expect those reps to also work evenings
| and weekends, even if the company has 24/7 support.
|
| The article points out some indirect benefits, like
| improved employee retention, which would decrease training
| costs and result in more experienced reps working the
| phone/email, which may improve customer service and
| relations.
|
| This is really hard to promote, which is why there have
| been experiments along these lines for the last 5-10 years.
| bluesign wrote:
| 40 hours work vs 40 hours office is not the same thing
| though. Maybe diminishing return starts at 30 hours of work,
| but still you can benefit from some relaxed schedule at the
| office.
|
| 30 hours work at 40 hours office time vs 30 hours work at 30
| hours office time would have different outputs for sure.
| akiselev wrote:
| If those 10 relaxed hours actually mattered there'd be a
| measurable productivity drop. If it's not measurable or
| significant, then those 10 hours don't matter and we should
| get them back for stuff that does.
| eesmith wrote:
| Several weeks back, in the thread at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33561648 , I hit Google
| Scholar to find seemingly relevant papers. Here are two
| showing negative productivity.
|
| The first is munitions production in England during WWI.
| There was linear production in hours worked, up to about 48
| hours per week, then the marginal product went down; going
| negative after about 63 hours. See Figure 5 of "The
| Productivity of Working Hours", John Pencavel, 2014 at
| https://docs.iza.org/dp8129.pdf for a graph.
|
| On a more national level, "The effects of working time on
| productivity and firm performance: a research synthesis
| paper", Lonnie Golden (2011) at http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/gro
| ups/public/---ed_protect/---pro... points out:
|
| ] A recent analysis of 18, mostly European, Member countries
| of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
| explores the degree to which longer annual hours have been
| associated with per-hour productivity at the national level,
| since 1950. It finds that the responsiveness of per-hour
| productivity for a given increase in working time is always
| negative. Not only are there decreasing returns on added
| working time, the returns in the form of added production
| diminish more rapidly for longer working times. When annual
| working time climbs above a threshold of 1,925 hours, a 1-per
| cent increase in working time would lead to a decrease in
| productivity of roughly 0.9 per cent at the threshold and a
| fully proportional decrease of 1 per cent past the threshold
| of 2,025 hours (Cette et al., 2011).
| neets wrote:
| Currency collapses a bit and the government plans to print money
| to subsidize 4 day work week. The world sounds more and more like
| a Ayn Rand novel by the day.
| coding123 wrote:
| So instead of developers working 3 hours a day for 4 days, they
| work 3 hours a day for 3 days. Because Thursday become the new
| Friday, which was already an "off" day.
| mkl95 wrote:
| At my previous place we did half day Fridays. But there was
| MASSIVE overtime from Monday to Thursday. I don't want a four-day
| week where I'm expected to "compensate" by working for free.
| Companies should stop bullshitting their employees before
| offering a four-day week.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| In the US nuclear navy, the power plants have to be manned 24
| hours a day both operating and shutdown. Ships in maintenance
| periods also generally go through a phase where ship personnel
| have to support maintenance work around the clock. Additionally,
| some parts of the training pipeline are run 24 hours a day.
|
| I say all that to say that while I am not a subject matter
| expert, I have a significantly above average amount of experience
| working various types of rotating shift work as well as duty
| rotations (a duty rotation is working 24 hours every 2, 3, 4, or
| 5 days depending on available manpower. Yes, you read that right
| - for a month, I was at work 28 to 32 out of every 48 hours).
|
| Forget 4 8 hour days, I would work 4 10 hour days right now in a
| heartbeat with no discussion or regrets.
|
| 1) it is invaluable to have a normal working day where you can do
| tasks - change your oil, get your haircut, go grocery shopping
| without a crowd, see a matinee, the list is endless.
|
| 2) the scope of weekend trip you can plan across 3 days instead
| of two is exponentially higher. So much room for activities.
|
| 3) time after the working day just isn't that useful. Drive home,
| eat dinner, now it's 630/7pm. Waste a couple hours, go to sleep.
| After a 10hour day, the time after work is precious and useful to
| relax, but then you get a whole other day off.
|
| It surely isn't for everyone, but it surely is for a lot of
| people. The thing that blows my mind is no one is even willing to
| try.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| I used to be a paramedic in a large USA city and worked either
| 4 10-hour shifts, or 3 14-hour shifts per week every other
| month.
|
| For instance:
|
| January (10 hr): * Mon: 8AM - 6PM * Tue:
| 8AM - 6PM * Wed: 8AM - 6PM * Thu: 8AM - 6PM *
| Fri: off * Sat: off * Sun: off
|
| February (14 hr): * Mon: 8AM - 10PM *
| Tue: off * Wed: 8AM - 10PM * Thu: off * Fri:
| 8AM - 10PM * Sat: off * Sun: off
|
| I loved that schedule since I never had fewer than 3 days off,
| and every other month I had 4 days off. But I still had at
| least 2 consecutive days off every week no matter which month
| rotation I was on.
|
| It was great.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| There are different type of works. I can push boxes or clean a
| ship as long as I have strength, which is likely to be 10
| hours.
|
| I can't make productive decisions for 10 hours in a row. If you
| increase the amount of hours, you don't get more knowledge work
| done. You just get more meetings and useless fillers or
| procrastination.
|
| All in all, I think dictating when employees work is stupid,
| exactly how it's stupid to pay a contractor per hour. You
| should always pay based on output, no matter when that output
| was achieved. On the contrary, you might even want to pay more
| if the desired output was achieved earlier than expected (and
| not pay less because he must have worked less hours).
|
| Be ruthless on the output, don't bother about the hours.
| mtreis86 wrote:
| I had one job, night shift snowmaking at a ski resort, that was
| on a 12hr 3-day/4-day schedule. So 36 hours one week, 48 the
| next. It was wonderful because the 4-day weekend felt like a
| vacation every other week. Plus, at that amount of time on
| shift, you get paid to eat two meals.
| badcppdev wrote:
| "The thing that blows my mind is no one is even willing to
| try."
|
| Your sleep deprivation is getting to you. Lots of people work
| 4x10.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I didn't interpret that as "there is not a person who has
| discovered 4x10" but rather that there aren't notable
| companies making it their official schedule.
| hansvm wrote:
| Last time Lockheed Martin reached out that was one of their
| selling points.
| shadowfoxx wrote:
| I think some industries are going to be "better suited" to this
| than others. But it doesn't have to be that way. If we could
| shift ever so slightly away from "Biggest Number at end of year -
| bigger than last years number - at all costs" we could increase
| staff by just a little bit and move just about any industry to 4
| or even 3 day work week.
|
| This and worker-cooperative-businesses. I've yet to hear a
| legitimately compelling argument against, especially when we see
| the results. (I mean, the arguments are typically, "They have
| problems, too!" and "Bob Votes to be CEO") Theory is great but
| how can you hold onto the theory when the experimental data is at
| least promising?
| williamtrask wrote:
| I imagine the main argument has to do with having enough
| surplus to innovate. That said of course there's plenty of
| times where surplus doesn't go to innovation.
| shadowfoxx wrote:
| The fact that a company has profit at all means there is
| surplus. They mean the same thing.
|
| as a side note; "Innovation" in my view is not a reason in
| and of itself to do something. Its too nebulous a term to
| have real meaning. Like - how much innovating are 7-11's
| doing or most other commercial shops? Would that money be
| better spent elsewhere? What percentage of 'innovations'
| actually fail vs those that prove worth it? etc etc.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > If we could shift ever so slightly away from "Biggest Number
| at end of year - bigger than last years number - at all costs"
| we could increase staff by just a little bit and move just
| about any industry to 4 or even 3 day work week.
|
| The problem with this approach is buyers are looking for the
| lowest price, so it requires efforts on the national government
| scale (or multiple national governments, even significantly all
| of them) to put a floor on this lowest price.
|
| Otherwise you will get outcompeted by someone able to
| obtain/perform labor for cheaper.
| shadowfoxx wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand who the parties are in your
| example.
|
| Who are the buyers? (Employers? People buying your product?)
| How does any business not get outcompeted by a race to the
| bottom where people are always willing to perform/obtain the
| labor more cheaply? Why do the costs of goods get more
| expensive every year?
|
| If our system is so dysfunctional it can't give an inch
| towards the quality of life of the people living under it.
| Burn it to the ground, I say. We used to say the Divine Right
| of Kings was the best we could do.
| VLM wrote:
| My actual experience with 4 day work is the closer the team is
| to operations (2nd and 3rd shift 7 days per week) and the
| closer to contractor/consultants the easier the transition.
|
| I would caution people to be careful what they wish for; my
| longest 4-day gig involved sun-wed and wed-sat shifts. 4-day
| doesn't necessarily mean mon-thr ever week for everyone.
| Another problem was our overlap day was wed thus "wednesday is
| non productive its for meetings and stuff" so you really only
| worked three days because you couldn't trust not to be
| interrupted on wednesday. Its probably of enormous productivity
| value to move all interruptions to exactly one day every week,
| however you don't need 4-day to do that, technically speaking.
|
| Another oddity probably of more interest to bean counters is
| our overlap day was wednesday so with all hands on deck we did
| maint and rollouts and upgrades on wednesday, but the rest of
| the world did maintenance windows on the weekend at 2am so our
| meaningless measure of fake uptime was lower than non-4day
| companies. Now does your employer value rolling out better
| stuff faster, or do they value a "better" meaningless heavily
| gamed number? So 4-day might be better or worse depending on if
| your local management lives in reality or spreadsheet-metric-
| land. "Oh no how will we get fake nine nines of uptime if we
| roll out new SaaS on Wednesdays?"
| coding123 wrote:
| Has anyone else noticed that after the layoffs most of these
| articles have been vanishing lately.
| Moissanite wrote:
| The key to this in my view is having it be an officially
| "approved" option. Working at a FAANG company in the UK, I could
| already afford to take a 20% pay cut and work a 4 day week. I
| would love to do so in fact - but since that working pattern is
| relatively uncommon, I don't have the confidence that colleagues
| would respect or acknowledge it - basically I see myself spending
| an excessive amount of time telling people that I am not
| available on Friday for that meeting, and no I won't make an
| exception just for this week. Or, I would make an exception and
| get sucked into work - and now the company is getting 20% of my
| time for free.
|
| If a 4-day week was more widespread, I would have more confidence
| in maintaining it - and on the odd occasion I have to work the
| extra day, I wouldn't feel so bad given the 100% pay model
| described here.
| svnpenn wrote:
| sounds like you just need more confidence in yourself. This
| doesn't need to be "norm" worldwide or even company wide for
| you to start doing it. All it takes is for you to have the will
| to decide that this is something you want and are going to do.
| logifail wrote:
| > This doesn't need to be "norm" worldwide or even company
| wide for you to start doing it. All it takes is for you to
| have the will to decide that this is something you want and
| are going to do.
|
| If the (overwhelming?) majority of staff in the company are
| at work on Friday, every Friday, and they can't ever reach
| you on a Friday, isn't that pretty much guaranteed to be a
| [potential] source of friction?
| watwut wrote:
| I had collegues working 4 days a week, including a team
| leader of adjacent team.
|
| People get used to it and it becomes nothingburger.
| svnpenn wrote:
| > If the (overwhelming?) majority of staff in the company
| are
|
| you could replace the end of that sentence, with any number
| of other options:
|
| If the (overwhelming?) majority of staff in the company are
| [race]
|
| If the (overwhelming?) majority of staff in the company are
| [gender]
|
| If the (overwhelming?) majority of staff in the company are
| [age]
|
| If the (overwhelming?) majority of staff in the company are
| [non-disabled]
|
| Its only a source of friction, _if the majority makes it
| one_. And just like the other options, it could be seen as
| a form of discrimination. Someone can work four days, and
| still be a valuable member of the team, maybe even more
| than "five day" workers.
| benjiweber wrote:
| Do people ask you to make an exception and attend meetings when
| you have a Friday booked off from your holiday allowance? What
| would be different if you have it booked off for working
| pattern?
| Moissanite wrote:
| Not unheard of, but also I do think it would be different -
| everyone knows holiday time is limited, which feels different
| to having an unusually long weekend every week. It shouldn't,
| and maybe I am overly concerned by the impact this would have
| - but I would still be much more comfortable with the idea if
| it is at least available org-wide rather than by exception
| only.
| logifail wrote:
| > I do think it would be different
|
| Q: If a cow-orker isn't at work on a given day, for
| whatever reason (sickness, holiday, part-timer), why would
| one expect to be able to contact them?
| orzig wrote:
| Anecdata: I worked at a large non-FAANG tech company, and went
| down to 60%. There were many fewer issues like that than I
| expected.
|
| There were downsides (A project failed because I didn't have
| time to fill in the shortcomings of a teammate, which I'd been
| quietly doing), but on the balance it was very positive.
| Moissanite wrote:
| Interesting, thanks. With hindsight, would you have chosen
| 60% again, or gone with 80% instead?
|
| My tentative plan is to get promoted first, then step down to
| 80% - that way the pay cut is even smaller relative to now
| and with a bigger tax saving.
|
| Aside from the other concerns mentioned, I'm currently
| working on "what would I do with an extra day per week" -
| which is a deeper lifestyle question and not at all related
| to work, but still very important for getting the most out of
| this change.
| orzig wrote:
| I suspect it depends strongly on what you will do with the
| extra time. I started consulting, which would have been
| impossible at just one day per week, but it is totally
| legitimate to use it for non-revenue pursuits and going
| "one step at a time" (going 80 -> 60 would likely be much
| easier) could make sense in that case.
|
| Another consideration is whether you would lose benefits
| under a certain threshold. I almost guarantee that HR will
| not know off the top of their heads, so before spinning
| your wheels, on fuzzy lifestyle questions you should start
| the process of getting official documentation on how things
| like healthcare and vacation days will be handled, it might
| make the decision a no-brainer.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Just create recurring OOO meeting on Friday for the whole day
| and you're done, no?
| Moissanite wrote:
| I've been trying this on and off for a couple of years,
| blocking out time in my day to do "actual work" and avoiding
| meetings. All that happens is the sales people (inevitably it
| is sales people) book a meeting with a customer without
| checking my calendar first.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Why don't you decline?
| benmanns wrote:
| Or set up a rotation with a few other coworkers so that
| _someone_ can always take a sales call and pass it off to
| them if it's during your off/focus day and vice versa for
| theirs.
| noveltyaccount wrote:
| No...there's always a pushy person asking you to make an
| exception, or a deadline, or "this time works for the CEO and
| we need you there." Never that simple without widespread buy-
| in.
| logifail wrote:
| > there's always a pushy person asking you to make an
| exception, or a deadline, or "this time works for the CEO
| and we need you there." Never that simple without
| widespread buy-in
|
| My OH has been on official sick leave and has been
| contacted by team members demanding input because
| "something was urgent" :(
|
| Unless you actually go completely offline, it's rarely
| simple.
| moconnor wrote:
| I've worked a 4-day work week at three companies now, ranging
| from tens to thousands of employees. You just block the time on
| your calendar and remind people when they try to schedule
| something there anyway.
|
| I would recommend you try it. It's always going to be easy to
| go back to full time if it isn't working out for you.
| bmsleight_ wrote:
| I work 90% - every other Friday not working, taking the pay
| cut. The majority work 100%, about 2% work 60%. The confidence
| to maintain it is not that hard. I think my productivity is as
| good as I can be more focuses on the shorter week. Some
| colleagues need reminding I will not be in on the Friday - I
| take this as validation that it works.
|
| Have the confidence.
| varispeed wrote:
| bloqs wrote:
| This sounds very much like you've dealt with some middle
| class snobbishness. Old money types in the UK seldom work at
| FAANG, they typically saturate the ownership level of
| startups of varying quality, or exist within the folds of the
| financial services that sustain them.
|
| Upwardly-mobile middle class people (who would love for you
| to think they are old money) are the types who end up in
| FAANG.
|
| They are highly competitive and hard-working, and nearly
| always entirely fuelled on the pursuit of being better than
| everyone else. You sometimes get a variety of them who seem
| to have left wing values, don't be fooled - this is simply
| another competition, this time of moral superiority. Often
| they achieve these positions due to an absolute mastery of
| political and interpersonal mechanics, which british
| education and society seems to do a much better job of
| producing than lots of brilliant engineers.
| Moissanite wrote:
| I came from a working class background and aspirations got me
| this far, with no plans to slow down - but I could if I chose
| to. Tax rates are so high that a 20% pay cut would be a much
| smaller real terms pay decrease.
|
| > while you won't be working Fridays, your mind is still
| going to be occupied
|
| This is another reason why I haven't gone through with it
| yet.
|
| > at least in the UK, pay laughable salaries anyway if you
| compare it to the profit
|
| Agreed; another reason why the 100% pay for 80% time is
| appealing.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Slightly OT:
|
| "Tax rates are so high that a 20% pay cut would be a much
| smaller real terms pay decrease."
|
| This is about the difference between your marginal tax rate
| and your average tax rate (and the progressive tax bands
| that cause the difference), not about tax rates being high.
|
| If income tax rates were 90% at all income levels, this
| would be high, but a 20% cut in gross income would result
| in a 20% cut in net income.
| alexfoo wrote:
| There's a slight noticeable effect of tax-free allowances
| (or 0% band if you think of it that way).
|
| UK PS100k gross income = PS66,692.76 take home
|
| UK PS80k gross income = PS55,092.76 take home
|
| So that's a 20% cut in gross income for a 17.4% cut in
| net income.
|
| Put it another way, you're PS1,738.55 better off than a
| flat 20% cut in net income.
|
| https://listentotaxman.com/?year=2021&taxregion=uk&marrie
| d=t...
|
| https://listentotaxman.com/?year=2021&taxregion=uk&marrie
| d=t...
| varispeed wrote:
| Coming from working class you should recognise that
| agreeing for a pay cut also means that you will be avoiding
| paying tax (that you would have paid if you had not agreed
| to a pay cut) and thus depriving public services of
| funding, for some sort of weird corporate virtue
| signalling. When one says they would happily take 20% pay
| cut, they are being selfish, because they also take money
| away from nurses, doctors, police etc...
| eropple wrote:
| This is like that effective altruism nonsense, but with
| extra guilt added. No thank you.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Interesting take, I never met anyone at those companies who
| met your description of working for "fun" or parents.
| Moissanite wrote:
| Me neither. I could imagine it at a big consulting firm
| like BCG or auditor like KPMG, but I've seen no evidence of
| "old money" in the tech giants this far.
| cornstalks wrote:
| Woah there. That's not the reality I've witnessed. Most of
| the people at FAANG companies don't come from old money. The
| reason a 20% paycut isn't ruinous is because these companies
| pay top(ish) of market rates, so a 20% cut just takes you
| from the top-end and moves you towards the middle. It has
| nothing to do with "old money."
| asah wrote:
| This is a fascinating mix of wrong, insensitive, boorish and
| stereotyping.
|
| (I'm ex-FAANG and met 1000s of people, no two alike)
| alexfoo wrote:
| I worked a 4 day week (although technically 33h in 4 days for a
| 4/37 reduction in base salary) for ~10 years. All for work/life
| balance due to having a young kid. Two days in the office, two
| days from home.
|
| Generally it worked ok but not being around one day a week did
| cause some annoying situations - but that's partly because I
| moved into a different role that had more responsibility (and
| that was their doing). I think I made an exception for a
| meeting on my day off once or twice in all that time, and that
| was just to make my life easier, everything else was batted
| back with a flat "no" which was understood after an initial
| period of grumbling.
|
| Now that child is older I don't need as much flexibility and so
| I moved company to go full time again. Work life balance is
| still good thanks to it being a fully remote role.
| yawz wrote:
| In the past, I worked at a small company that allowed people to
| work 4-day weeks with a 20% drop in their salary. Because it
| was part of the company culture, people respected the
| additional constraints of working with their 4-day-week
| colleagues.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| I haven't seen a single large company that doesn't offer some
| sort of a flexible working arrangement including a 4 day work
| week.
|
| And you know it's quite easy to block your calendar don't let
| FOMO hold you back.
| Moissanite wrote:
| Offering it on paper versus accepting it culturally is the
| gap we need to close.
| macintux wrote:
| This is reminiscent of my suspicions about hybrid on-
| site/remote working environments: unless a critical mass is
| remote, those employees are generally at a serious
| disadvantage. Left out of impromptu face to face
| conversations, etc.
| VLM wrote:
| One of the few benefits of giant faceless corporations is
| most of my direct coworkers were 1000 miles apart anyway
| under normal conditions, so an extra 20 miles away
| sitting in his house never mattered vs sitting in an
| office.
| nigerian1981 wrote:
| A few people at my IT company don't work Fridays, but at least
| from the cases I know it seems to be Product people.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| drstewart wrote:
| > and on the odd occasion I have to work the extra day, I
| wouldn't feel so bad given the 100% pay model described here.
|
| Something tells me you don't feel that way if you have to work
| the occasional Saturday today, so I doubt this would be the
| case after this change after a very short amount of time.
| Moissanite wrote:
| The difference is whether the overtime is driven by my own
| conscientiousness, or external expectations. The former is OK
| in small doses, the latter rapidly causes resentment. The
| problem with being an "early adopter" of a shortened week is
| that other people don't necessarily adjust their expectations
| accordingly.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| I guess the key question is whether or not you can produce 80%
| of as much in 80% of the time. For me the answer is maybe.
|
| I do more than twice as much in 40 hours as I could in 20. I do
| _far_ more than 40x in 40 hours as I could in 1 hour since
| there's some overhead in task shifting. But four days a week is
| probably okay.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I've loved the idea of moving to an 8 day week, where two 4-day a
| week people share the same 7-day a week job, and use the surplus
| day to coordinate with each other or work on tasks that would be
| better with two.
| alanlammiman wrote:
| I find the work week is often short to get bigger multi-person
| things done, and when doing them over 2 weeks the weekend in the
| middle really breaks the rhythm. A lot of the discussion centers
| on individual productivity - but so little of what companies do
| is individual! My dream scenario in terms of getting stuff done
| would be something like a 10 day work week, 10h per day (nice
| round 100h block) - and then something like a 5 day weekend
| tomohawk wrote:
| Contrast the attitude here with the attitude from this guy:
|
| https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/12821/making-steam-the...
| upmostly wrote:
| There are likely several hundreds, if not thousands of companies
| already offering a 4-day work week or something similar.
|
| For example, I work at a company called Forestreet
| (https://forestreet.com) and we already offer a 9-day fortnight.
|
| The idea is that you condense your work week into 9 days, and
| take the 10th day off.
|
| There are pros and cons to this model, but overall it's working
| very well.
| 5555624 wrote:
| We've had that "9-day fortnight" for years. Initially, it was
| slow to catch on, as the "10th day" was Wednesday. Once it was
| changed so that employees could pick the day, most people
| picked Monday or Friday.
|
| An added "bonus": It all but eliminated meetings on Mondays and
| Fridays, as there were always some people out on those days. On
| Sundays, you don't need to worry about a meeting the next day;
| on Friday, you can catch up on stuff.
| bArray wrote:
| You're being sold "work less hours, get paid the same". In actual
| fact:
|
| > "With many businesses struggling to afford 10% inflation pay
| rises, we're starting to see increasing evidence that a four-day
| week with no loss of pay is being offered as an alternative
| solution."
|
| When compared to inflation, you'll get paid less. It says 10%,
| but wages have been frozen for _years_.
|
| Worse still, you will still be expected to achieve the same
| amount in less time. The only difference is that they will expect
| your most productive hours without also paying for your less
| productive hours.
|
| _You_ may be in a position to take a 20% pay cut, but as they
| mention, they want this to become the norm for everybody. As the
| cost of living increases less and less will be in this position.
| rose_ann_ wrote:
| I think more companies should sign up for this. It would really
| help the employees. Others might say it's just one added day to
| the days of rest you have. But an additional day can go a long
| way.
| ggm wrote:
| Australian standard working day is 37.5 hours. What is this 40
| hours of which you speak?
| methodical wrote:
| Australians work 37.5 hours out of the 24 hours in a day
| regularly? What an incredible display of work ethic.
|
| On a less sarcastic note off of your typo, in the US and
| presumably UK, the regular work week is 9-5 M-F which
| translates into 40 hour work weeks.
| leni536 wrote:
| 9-5 with a .5 hour lunch break comes out 37.5 hours.
| joeman1000 wrote:
| This is 'shrinkflation', but for worker-hours. Like when you buy
| some potato chips and the packet is smaller, but you pay the same
| price as before.
| retrac98 wrote:
| I never really understood the push for a 4 day work week here. As
| things stand, part time work seems really common in the UK
| anyway. Loads of people I know work 2-4 days per week for a
| variety of reasons. There's no stigma. It's already pretty
| normal?
| dtagames wrote:
| The keyword here is "no loss of pay." These people will work 4
| days a week for their previous 5-day salary.
| OJFord wrote:
| But perhaps pay rises will stagnate and they'll gradually not
| be competitive with 5-day companies at full pay.
|
| Edit: Oh, it's started already, from the article:
|
| > "With many businesses struggling to afford 10% inflation
| pay rises, we're starting to see increasing evidence that a
| four-day week with no loss of pay is being offered as an
| alternative solution."
| ksec wrote:
| Yes, with inflation and stagnant wage growth ( even before
| the pandemic ) I think and hope the 4 days work solution
| will push for increase in productivity per working hours.
|
| Unfortunately not every industry is suited for 4 days work.
| But May be UK should start with Civil Servant?
| nigerian1981 wrote:
| Work life balance
| LightG wrote:
| You've been downvoted but, in simplicity, that is the message
| and what employees want now. Employers/managers, listen up.
|
| It's worth emphasising beause many bosses still haven't got
| this message.
|
| I'm currently quiet-quitting, and will actually-quit shortly,
| because of this attitude.
|
| It's not about being work-shy. It's about busting your arse
| for a company (and self/respect) and then when the
| realisation dawns on everyone that flexibility is not only
| possible but has helped productivity (n=1 our productivity
| and balance sheet improved during covid), and then to have
| the door shut on that realisation ... you can expect
| employees to switch off.
|
| Our entire team feels this way. We'll all be gone soon.
|
| /rant
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