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Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back
- laweijfmvo 2y agoFor workers, sure. We said the same thing about WFH, and well, employers disagreed as soon as they were able to.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoApparently for employers as well: "Employers saw benefits, too: 70% reported that recruiting workers was easier once they went to a four-day schedule—a boon in a country where many industries complain that intense competition for talent drives up costs. A dozen participants reported details of their financial performance, showing revenue and profit were stable overall."
- Vegenoid 2y agoThe exact same things have been shown for WFH as well, but that data is being overridden by the emotions and gut feelings of CEOs. When investors are pressuring you to make more money, doing RTO is a big, highly visible thing that feels good and is much simpler than analyzing and improving a business's fundamentals.
- btbuildem 2y agoIt's not about productivity, profitability, or anything measurable like that. It's about control, about keeping "us" different from "them". "Us" being the better, more worthy people, who deserve to enjoy life, and "them" being dirty lowly workers, who should be happy they have jobs, keep their heads down and not grumble.
- consteval 2y agoA measure could up productivity by 1 bajillion percent, but if it grants employees more happiness, mobility, and control it's dead in the water. The business world is not rationale by any means. The people in positions of control to make these decisions made it there because they LOVE being in control. They will often hurt themselves purely to maintain a delusion of strength. This self-destructive nature is an inherent flaw of humanity. Very few people have the ability to even recognize their own self-destruction, let alone fix it.
- odo1242 2y agoI mean, just about every trend encounters an equivalent amount of pushback, but there does seem to be a (very gradual) shift towards WFH happening. My guess is it'll follow demographic lines, with younger people working half- or even full-time remote and older people sticking to mostly in person work.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoArchive: https://archive.ph/6EtcE https://archive.ph/6EtcE
- astrodude 2y agoDon't all life's comforts work this way?
- dylanz 2y agoOnce You Try a Three-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back
- yarg 2y agoThis sort of snarky response fails to consider the actual benefits - for both the employer and the employee. Often by the end of the week, people in complex positions are well past the point of diminishing returns - pushing them harder may work in the short-term, but it's a recipe for burnout. It's better to have someone operating closer to their peek performance for longer - even if you sacrifice a day overall.
- t-writescode 2y agoAs I've been working for myself, this is exactly what I've noticed. The exhaustion and stress of pushing myself "another day" for "just another feature" is absolutely not worth the burnout that comes immediately after.
- yarg 2y agoOh no man - that's just regular exhaustion. Burnout's more insidious and pernicious than that - and it takes far more than a few days of rest to get over it.
- BizarroLand 2y ago2 days off for the weekend just isn't enough to fully recuperate once you're in the burnout zone. I think if I were to be fired I would like to take 2-3 months off to build up before I started looking for a new job, but that's only possible due to having some savings I could tap into. Back of the napkin calculations say I would need about $4,000/month liquid cash to not be in danger. Add another 1 month barrier in and I would need $16,000 on hand to take 3 months off assuming that I got another equally paying job almost immediately.
- chaos_emergent 2y agoYes, and when we're productive enough to do it, it'll probably happen.
- airstrike 2y ago> Employers saw benefits, too: 70% reported that recruiting workers was easier once they went to a four-day schedule—a boon in a country where many industries complain that intense competition for talent drives up costs. I mean, that's definitely going away if all other employers also move to four-day workweeks, so it seems like you shouldn't factor that in as one of the benefits of this schedule.
- yarg 2y agoIt won't be every employer - but it will come to cover large swaths of companies in industries where performance takes precedence over presence. And you're right, it would eventually go away - but only if and when late adopters find themselves being punished by the market.
- schnuri 2y agoI mean, that's definitely going away if all other employers also move to five-day workweeks, so it seems like you shouldn't factor that in as one of the benefits of this schedule. 1920 probably
- nuz 2y agoWait til you try a one day workweek
- srbhr 2y agoThat's the best!
- dougthesnails 2y agoStep into my office.
- penjelly 2y agoimo life is filled with too much these days to handle in 2 days. the rest, administrative and maintenance required to keep things moving takes 2 full days.
- accrual 2y agoI agree. I feel like I need at least a full day to just decompress from work and work on anything I want to, then another day to manage chores, house maintenance, etc. I end up feeling like I work 5 days for 1 day off.
- alexjplant 2y agoParts of US Department of Defense and their contractors do what they refer to as Compressed Work Schedule (CWS) wherein employees work 9-hour days and get every other Friday off. Some people opt to split their off day and make every Friday a half-day so that they can be on the links or at the riverside bar and grill by lunchtime. While in college I worked 10 hours a day Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Saturday was fairly productive on account of nobody being in the office to bother me. Ever since I've taken remote jobs that have unlimited PTO I haven't missed these arrangements at all. No commute and the ability to take time off with reasonable constraints means that I'm able to catch up on chores and personal obligations much more easily.
- marssaxman 2y agoBeing able to step away for a couple of minutes to start a load of laundry, empty the dishwasher, carry out the trash, or perform some other bit of household maintenance is a seriously underrated benefit of working from home! Baking bread, for example, is an hours-long process consisting of quick tasks separated by long waits; I used to bake several times a week, last time I was working from home, but I haven't done it once since I resumed the office commute.
- supportengineer 2y agoI am working from home and this reminded me to check the laundry
- allendoerfer 2y agoDo not disturb my deep work phases with your HN comments!
- 015a 2y agoIMO: I have never worked in a job where I would have been like "heck yeah, four day work week lets do it". Part of that is, there's kinda two distinct and separate camps, and sometimes its unclear which camp people are in and what we're fighting for. Is it "I work ~40 hours in four days" or "I work ~32 hours in four days"? And my take is, I don't like either of these solutions. I've never worked in a role where I feel like working 32 hours a week would deliver meaningfully similar results to working 40 hours. You're just gonna deliver less. That doesn't mean I'm coding for 40 hours a week, not even close, but there's so much admin and meetings (and even just finding availability for meetings!) that reducing net hours worked by 20% isn't going to have market success. Increasing the hours worked on each day by 20%, but getting an extra day off, also sucks. There's more "things I gotta do every day" than "things I gotta do every week". I need every hour I've got most nights. Cooking, working out, reading, entertainment to keep the sad away, some types of shopping, these aren't by and large things that I can just say "lets wait and do them all on my extra Friday off!", they need to be done ~every day. What you say is 100% my feeling as well: I am comfortable working 38-42 hours a week, and I want to by-and-large choose the hours and days I work to hit that. That is the best solution. If I need to schedule a dentist appointment for 1pm two weeks out, I want to do that without thinking even for a second that I need to check with "work", file PTO, etc. In exchange, I'll make up that hour by working until 6pm, or going to a coffee shop for a couple hours over the weekend, whatever feels like it makes the most sense for where I'm at and where the business is at. And, sure, there's core hours, there's meetings, we work around those; I'm talking policy, not the day to day. This pattern of handling time off is so important to me that I have quit a job within the first month because they misrepresented how they handled PTO. I was told "oh yeah you can take off for a doctors, whatever bro no big deal", which turned into "oh no you've gotta file PTO, any time off throughout the day costs a full day and needs to be approved". I quit on the spot. Policies like that, four day work weeks, limited PTO, attract cogs, not high performers.
- braza 2y agoOne of the aspects that has never been discussed in those studies is the competitor's offset, which wouldn't adopt the 4-day work week. Local companies in Germany have a very defensive business due to the nature of the market (not so internationalized, highly consolidated, a lot of small businesses that no big corporation would try to enter, and low competition in mid-sized businesses due to bureaucracy). For local SaaS companies or local companies for sure, it can work since no big competitor can rise. Still, the real test would be Germany placing that in their industrial base (e.g. cars, industrial instruments, chemical industry, logistics), or in some other businesses where the entry barrier is low.
- hotspot_one 2y agoFriend of mine worked for BMW in Germany. The 35 hour work week was strictly enforced. It's the law, it's the system, so of course that is what they are going to do.
- braza 2y agoYes. Those are the specific conventions that the betriebsrat (Workers Concil) decides, but this varies from company to company and state. My point is, considering this specific arrangement of 7 hours a day/workday (35h), what would be the offset comparing this same company with 28h/week (4D) with another company not in that arrangement in scenarios where throughput per hour matters?
- omani 2y agoI work only a few hours a week. best time of my life! everything else is modern slavery.
- shinycode 2y agoDoing what ?
- Night_Thastus 2y agoSo this is fewer hours as well, right? Not just the same 40 hours but compressed into 4 days? It doesn't seem unreasonable it could work for some jobs and people. Too many hours and people tend to get stressed, tired, worried about home matters they can't attend to, etc - and their performance suffers as a result. Depends a lot on the job and person, though.
- cooper_ganglia 2y agoFor me, I work 4x 10hr days, and it's the best work situation I've ever had. Having every single weekend be a 3-day weekend is something it would be very hard to move away from unless I was doubling my salary or something.
- Night_Thastus 2y agoI think that should be an option everywhere it's feasible for those who want it - but damn I will never take a 4x10 schedule. My performance drops quite a bit past the 6 hour mark if it's been a strong day - I'd definitely get nothing done in the remaining 2 hours of a 10 hour day.
- nntwozz 2y agoAldous Huxley imagined in the '20s we would automate most things and work less in the future. Today we work more than ever together with increased automation, and women work as well instad of being home to take care of the household. On paper it looks like progress, but I'm not so sure about the quality of life.
- 0xcafefood 2y agoMaybe all the gains went to the top? Quality of life for the ultra-high net worth set has never been better.
- listenallyall 2y agoFew people want to sit idle and just do nothing. We have, in fact, automated almost everything. Dishwashers, laundry machines, Amazon delivering to your door. People have a natural instinct to fill in the gaps and so they take on more activities, responsibilities, and work.
- uhtred 2y agoIf I didn't have to work I wouldn't sit idly and do nothing. I'd create things, have hobbies etc. Maybe do some volunteering.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tmn 2y agoAgree. In my observation people have a natural tendency to float towards a self determined 'busy'. Which is generally not that busy. As in there is a plenty of time to watch shows, indulge in frivolous pet household projects, go to wine tastings, etc. Note that some of these indulgences are what leads to the self determined 'busy'. But the point is they are discretionary.
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- johnea 2y agoPersonally, I'm really a fan of the 0 day workweek! But I'm conflicted about all the work I have to do to get there...
- tomohelix 2y agoI know this is HN and most people here heavily support WFH. But as this article shows, people will support whatever benefits they can get, even if it is very likely come at the cost of productivity. With WFH, it is a mixed bag of whether that would affect productivity or not but from a risk averse management perspective, it is understandable that they don't want to risk it and go back to the traditional mode. In my (likely very controversial to HN) opinion, software devs are already heavily compensated compared to other professions and adding more benefits on top of that in the form of WFH just make it even more unfair. What is fair? It is what the employers are willing to pay and if most are demanding RTO then that is just what the market is willing to bear. Most jobs do not have the luxury of WFH. Not for a doctor, a biologist, a chemist, a civil engineer, a lawyer, etc. They are required to come to office to work and they are often paid less than a software dev.
- eweise 2y agoI don't see what fairness has to do with WFH. Its in the company's best interest to maximize employee productivity. If an employee has to travel three hours per day to sit on zoom meetings, they might not be motivated to perform as well as they would for a company that treats them better.
- tomohelix 2y agoI guess by using the word "fair" I may have caused the discussion to focus on the wrong idea. It is about what is acceptable to both the employer and the employee. The employee would like the freedom to WFH but the employer consider it a benefit that come at their cost and thus do not want to grant it. As shown by other professions, the idea of WFH is entirely new and rarely if ever granted or expected to most professionals. Software devs are in a unique position to demand and potentially getting it does not make it any less exceptional and a huge ask for the other side of the negotiation. Whether it is really good or bad is not the point I am making.
- consteval 2y agoEmployers only consider it a benefit because workers like it. If we all banded together and just lie and say WFH sucks, we'd then get it. Because that's how these things work. Often the metric to optimize for is employee control, and therefore a field I like to call "misery management". The objective world does not always, and in fact rarely, intersects with the world of business management. In reality, WFH is cheaper across the board. In time, space, money... every aspect you can think of. But a mutually beneficial nature makes is undesirable from a business perspective, because they don't want the implications of that word - "mutual". Employees advocate for themselves because they have to. If you are not selfish in that manner, you are ONLY hurting yourself. Employers have discovered the art of selfishness thousands of years ago. You must push, you must be entitled. And, remember, the only reason you have what you have is because a lot of workers before you were very entitled. So entitled they often got what they wanted via violence.
- CobaltFire 2y agoI did a schedule of four 10 hour days for a few years in the military (with every fourth week being an extra three six hour days because someone had to be there at all times). It was absolutely amazing for actually being able to get things done. I hated going back to the regular five day week after that.
- froddd 2y agoI’ve worked a 4 day week for a few years now. Best decision I’ve had the chance to make. I feel more productive on those 4 days, and my time away from work is more fulfilled too. I always recommend it to people who may be lucky enough to afford and choose it.
- helij 2y agoSame here. Almost 4 years now. Feel good at work and what I accomplish. Got steadily promoted with significant pay rises. Fridays are amazing. Drop kids at school, do some errands and code a little and then pick up the kids and spend time with family. My job nowadays is not programming but managerial. I'm lucky that a company offers a lot of flexibility, the main one being office not mandatory, so there are no issues when personal matter comes and you need to go out or something. Good companies like that are out there.
- ElevenLathe 2y agoI used to work 4x10 hour days, Sun-Wed, 2nd shift. It was OK, but I was ecstatic when I was finally able to move to a normal 9-5 Mon-Fri schedule. It's so much nicer to have society's expectations of when you are meant to be working to match when you are actually working.
- odo1242 2y agoWhat was it like, by the way, out of curiosity?
- ElevenLathe 2y agoWorking that schedule? It was great for some stuff (going out Fridays) but bad for others. For example I was taking night classes at the time and constantly had to beg for help with coverage because 7pm is not early enough release to make it to most night classes, which tend to begin then or a little earlier. I also didn't get to see my wife as much because she worked first shift, so only we had breakfast and an hour before bed on M-W. It was definitely much better than 11p-7a Sat-Wed which I had worked immediately before that.
- indoordin0saur 2y agoI think a three day weekend is more important than a four day work week. We should move to an 8 day week :)
- stavros 2y agoI work four eight-hour days (with a concomitant 20% pay cut), and I'm never going back. I did try a five-day year, after six or so years of a four-day week, but that just made me cement my decision to not work five days. A two-day weekend is too short, a five-day workweek is too long. 4/3 is the perfect split.
- pmg101 2y agoThis is true in my opinion. But if you worked the fifth day and invested all your fifth-day earnings, you could retire/become financially independent a decade earlier. I'm not sure it's so clear cut which of these is the better option.
- stavros 2y agoSure, but a 20% more twenties and thirties is much more valuable to me than 100% more sixties.
- odo1242 2y agoTo be honest, it probably depends on (a) how much you value your sixties over your twenties-thirties and (b) how much you trust the market to not take a barrel roll
- nxobject 2y agoI agree that there are upsides and downsides to both. What tipped 4 days in my favor was having one free day to schedule annoying errands in that would have otherwise Swiss cheesed my schedule or taken up my evenings between work days - seeing the doctor/psychiatrist/vet, getting your oil changed, reviewing my monthly spending, etc. There is a genuine trade off for me: I don’t make as much money, and concretely I’ve noticed that travel far less than my friends do, and unlike my friends I don’t own a car that I have to make long-term payments on. But I do get more focused work in during weekdays because of that, and time to explore my city during weekends, which scratches my traveling itch.
- helij 2y agoThat fifth personal day can be quite lucrative with various one off projects. You can also be quite selective as you're covered financially and can choose those one off projects carefully to align with your values or whatever matters to you.
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- BizarroLand 2y agoI had a 4-10s shift when I worked for a local college during the summers. Mon-thurs sucked about 20% more. Fridays were 1,000% better. It was a good trade and I miss it.
- nine_zeros 2y agoWhen a worker RTOs with a one hour commute each way, 5 days a week, they have already worked for 5 days that week.
- gepardi 2y agoDuh
- kazinator 2y agoIf the kids are also reduced to a four day school week, you will be wishing for five day again.
- sotix 2y agoEverywhere I’ve been interviewing at recently has told me upfront that they expect a 50-60 hour workweek with a few outright stating they work half the day on Sunday. I’d love a four-day workweek, but right now I’m just hoping for a five-day, 40-hour workweek to start.
- Apofis 2y agoI don't think I can code for 10 hours straight. My brain is usually pretty expanded by the late afternoon.
- fahimahmed05 2y agoMy brain shut down after 2 hours of coding.