4 ms·

I'm surprised we haven't seen more of the mixed compromise: Monday - Thursday: 10 hour days Friday - Monday: 4 day weekend Tuesday - Friday: 10 hour d

I'm surprised we haven't seen more of the mixed compromise: Monday - Thursday: 10 hour days Friday - Monday: 4 day weekend Tuesday - Friday: 10 hour days Saturday - Sunday: 2 day weekend and then it repeats. Same hours worked overall. Work longer days, but get 4 day weekends every other week. The people I've known who've had this setup would generally work 6am-4pm.

dionidium 8y ago
My strong impression is that this is a waste of time. You can keep people in their seats for 10 hours, I guess, but you're not going to consistently get 10 hours of productivity. If we want to give people an extra day off -- and I think we should! -- then we should just do it. You can't really make up the time somewhere else.
- amelius 8y ago
  Yes, and after hundreds of years of technological progress, it seems a bit silly to still force people to work the same amount of time.
- strictnein 8y ago
  > My strong impression is that this is a waste of time. Have you done it or worked with people who have? Worked really well for the people who I knew who did it. Highly productive and the two 4 day weekends a month seemed great. My point wasn't that this was better than an additional day off and less work. My point is that this should be acceptable today, and I'm surprised there isn't more buy in for flexible schedules like this.
  - jartelt 8y ago
    I worked somewhere that did 9 hour days with every other Friday off. It basically made Fridays unproductive because half the company was off every Friday and it seemed like you always ended up needing to talk to someone who was off that Friday in order to make progress. I certainly liked the Fridays off. But, I'd say the 9 hours part was not optimal. Salaried employees typically already put in that much time so it didn't affect them. Hourly employees didn't seem to be that much more productive. They were just there longer and probably took slightly longer lunches... I feel like just instilling a hard working culture and giving the whole company every other Friday off would have been better for productivity.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  I believe this is very person-specific. I can work 10 hours day without any problem. I'd MUCH prefer to work 10 hours a few days and take a day off, or work only in the morning and take afternoon to myself. For me, most weekdays are "lost" days since I work 9:30 to 5:30 then I work out until 7:30 or 8pm. I love cooking elaborate meals so dinner takes me until 9 to 10pm. I like sleeping 7.5 to 8 hours so I have only 2 hours to socialize/chill/read/play a game/watch youtube, which is usually not enough "cooling" time for me. I'd prefer if I worked 9 to 7 instead, then work out, then eat dinner, then sleep but take one more day off for socialization/entertainment I'd enjoy my life better, I think. I don't care that much though, I'm fairly content with my current schedule.
- ramblerman 8y ago
  > You can keep people in their seats for 10 hours, I guess, but you're not going to consistently get 10 hours of productivity I feel the same about 8 hours
amelius 8y ago
How does this compare to the recently proposed workday of 6 hours, see link? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-17/how-the-six-hour-workday-actually-saves-money https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-17/how-the-s...
frereubu 8y ago
This might work if you don't have kids - I tried a four-day week like this so I could spend a day a week with my daughter in the years before she goes to school, but I was so knackered by the day off that the extra day was an extremely low-quality one!
adjkant 8y ago
The huge problem for me would be the 10 hour days followed by a 2 day weekend. Hard pass. I'll also second the 10 hours being useless. Most days I really get about 4-5 hours of 100% work in. I don't think this would be any more productive than simply doing 3 day weekends with 8 hours of work, which I would prefer between the two.
- walshemj 8y ago
  I think that most workplaces you wont get 4-5 hours of useful work done on average.
  - adjkant 8y ago
    As in lower or higher?
    - walshemj 8y ago
      Lower getting 4 or 5 hours is the exception in my experience.
honkycat 8y ago
Personally, I do not have 10 hours of work in me per-day. Honestly: I don't have 8 hours of work in me per-day, but my employer demands it. If they want to pay me to browse hacker news for an hour a day, so be it.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  I can usually do a solid 4-hour block of real work. Then, after a short break, I can do another 2-hour block of real work. Then my brain is just toasted for any serious stuff until after a good sleep. For an 8-hour workday, that means I'm spending 2 hours on fluff tasks and clock-watching. The current job I'm in doesn't even use up my entire 6 daily hours of real-work capacity, but they still need my butt in my seat for 8 hours for contract billing purposes. A 10-hour workday, 4 days per week, would be a 20% cut in my real work capacity, unless that extra 4 hours in the day were filled with mindless menial labor or some other form of brain-on-autopilot work. The model is broken. The company divides my revenue generated by the number of hours my butt was in my seat to get some value-generated-per-hour metric. But it's not constant over time. In a work block, my productivity ramps up until I'm in "the zone", plateaus, and then rapidly tapers off at the mental fatigue limit. So my productivity in a day looks like this: | .::::::. . | 100% | :::::::::. .::. | 80% |.:::::::::: :::: | 60% |:::::::::::: .::::. . | 40% |:::::::::::: :::::: ::. .. .. . . | 20% +---------------------------------------+ 0% 0h 1h 2h 3h 4h 5h 6h 7h 8h 9h 10h11h12h

dionidium 8y ago

My strong impression is that this is a waste of time. You can keep people in their seats for 10 hours, I guess, but you're not going to consistently get 10 hours of productivity. If we want to give people an extra day off -- and I think we should! -- then we should just do it. You can't really make up the time somewhere else.

amelius 8y ago
Yes, and after hundreds of years of technological progress, it seems a bit silly to still force people to work the same amount of time.
strictnein 8y ago
> My strong impression is that this is a waste of time. Have you done it or worked with people who have? Worked really well for the people who I knew who did it. Highly productive and the two 4 day weekends a month seemed great. My point wasn't that this was better than an additional day off and less work. My point is that this should be acceptable today, and I'm surprised there isn't more buy in for flexible schedules like this.
- jartelt 8y ago
  I worked somewhere that did 9 hour days with every other Friday off. It basically made Fridays unproductive because half the company was off every Friday and it seemed like you always ended up needing to talk to someone who was off that Friday in order to make progress. I certainly liked the Fridays off. But, I'd say the 9 hours part was not optimal. Salaried employees typically already put in that much time so it didn't affect them. Hourly employees didn't seem to be that much more productive. They were just there longer and probably took slightly longer lunches... I feel like just instilling a hard working culture and giving the whole company every other Friday off would have been better for productivity.
gnulinux 8y ago
I believe this is very person-specific. I can work 10 hours day without any problem. I'd MUCH prefer to work 10 hours a few days and take a day off, or work only in the morning and take afternoon to myself. For me, most weekdays are "lost" days since I work 9:30 to 5:30 then I work out until 7:30 or 8pm. I love cooking elaborate meals so dinner takes me until 9 to 10pm. I like sleeping 7.5 to 8 hours so I have only 2 hours to socialize/chill/read/play a game/watch youtube, which is usually not enough "cooling" time for me. I'd prefer if I worked 9 to 7 instead, then work out, then eat dinner, then sleep but take one more day off for socialization/entertainment I'd enjoy my life better, I think. I don't care that much though, I'm fairly content with my current schedule.
ramblerman 8y ago
> You can keep people in their seats for 10 hours, I guess, but you're not going to consistently get 10 hours of productivity I feel the same about 8 hours

amelius 8y ago

How does this compare to the recently proposed workday of 6 hours, see link? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-17/how-the-six-hour-workday-actually-saves-money https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-17/how-the-s...

frereubu 8y ago

This might work if you don't have kids - I tried a four-day week like this so I could spend a day a week with my daughter in the years before she goes to school, but I was so knackered by the day off that the extra day was an extremely low-quality one!

adjkant 8y ago

The huge problem for me would be the 10 hour days followed by a 2 day weekend. Hard pass. I'll also second the 10 hours being useless. Most days I really get about 4-5 hours of 100% work in. I don't think this would be any more productive than simply doing 3 day weekends with 8 hours of work, which I would prefer between the two.

walshemj 8y ago
I think that most workplaces you wont get 4-5 hours of useful work done on average.
- adjkant 8y ago
  As in lower or higher?
  - walshemj 8y ago
    Lower getting 4 or 5 hours is the exception in my experience.

honkycat 8y ago

Personally, I do not have 10 hours of work in me per-day. Honestly: I don't have 8 hours of work in me per-day, but my employer demands it. If they want to pay me to browse hacker news for an hour a day, so be it.

logfromblammo 8y ago
I can usually do a solid 4-hour block of real work. Then, after a short break, I can do another 2-hour block of real work. Then my brain is just toasted for any serious stuff until after a good sleep. For an 8-hour workday, that means I'm spending 2 hours on fluff tasks and clock-watching. The current job I'm in doesn't even use up my entire 6 daily hours of real-work capacity, but they still need my butt in my seat for 8 hours for contract billing purposes. A 10-hour workday, 4 days per week, would be a 20% cut in my real work capacity, unless that extra 4 hours in the day were filled with mindless menial labor or some other form of brain-on-autopilot work. The model is broken. The company divides my revenue generated by the number of hours my butt was in my seat to get some value-generated-per-hour metric. But it's not constant over time. In a work block, my productivity ramps up until I'm in "the zone", plateaus, and then rapidly tapers off at the mental fatigue limit. So my productivity in a day looks like this: | .::::::. . | 100% | :::::::::. .::. | 80% |.:::::::::: :::: | 60% |:::::::::::: .::::. . | 40% |:::::::::::: :::::: ::. .. .. . . | 20% +---------------------------------------+ 0% 0h 1h 2h 3h 4h 5h 6h 7h 8h 9h 10h11h12h