11 ms·

Burnout, stress lead more companies to try a four-day work week

245 points by joeyespo 8y ago

adrianmonk 8y ago
Another thing a lot of companies could try is a five-day work week.
onetimemanytime 8y ago
I have a feeling that if you can work 5-6 hours a day you've more than earned your salary. So, if a company can figure it out and let thew workers stay at home instead of browsing the internet at "work" more power to them.
- _RPM 8y ago
  So then I have confirmed it. I read about browsing the internet and generally no one working 8 hours a day it they work in software. Some days I literally don’t have work to do, so I browse the internet. Sometimes it’s nice to work on tasks around the home if I am working from home that day. Management must know this. I consider it an unwritten/not talked about fact of working as a software developer.
  - onetimemanytime 8y ago
    >>Some days I literally don’t have work to do, so I browse he internet. Go home, that's the nature of the job. You earn your money on a few big projects for the entire year, but you are needed for the next round. Alternate and keep track so the team gets a break and are somewhat indebted to the company. Maybe a few stay on call just in case...depending on the job.
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    Why would you bother staying at work if you have nothing to do. Take your laptop home and VPN for OC issues if that’s why. But I can’t unders how you can have nothing to do. If you feel like doing nothing, that I understand. Some days just don’t work. But having nothing to do is quite surprising.
    - _RPM 8y ago
      I like to work from home when there isn’t much work to do, so then I can have my laptop. It’s common for us to have a code freeze, where we do not have any items in our backlog.
      - vidanay 8y ago
        That's just piss poor management on several layers.
      - scarejunba 8y ago
        Perhaps have release branches and hotfix there, merging into master? May be a more enjoyable development cycle.
        _RPM 8y ago
        Unfortunately we only branch on release. We don’t have separate branches. Consider it as everyone working on master, and no merges m, just code reviews.
    - hinkley 8y ago
      I once heard this described as “in-office on-call”. If your work is done but your collaborators or subordinates aren’t then you never know when they’ll need your help. People get pretty bristly when they need you and can’t find you. Better for you to be there, or be officially sanctioned to be gone.
AltruisticGap 8y ago
Monday morning off sounds like an awful idea. First off, even when I lack sleep, I'll function better in the morning if I force myself out of bed, and I'll have a big slump in the afternoon. If I sleep in instead to supposedly catch up sleep, I'll do OK.. but I won't feel any better in the afternoon.. I'll be a little off because of getting up late. Secondly, afternoons are more depressing. I'd rather get out of bed, do a monday morning and then go home. It's really depressing in the winter, to leave work when it's already night outside. :/ But really screw "monday mornings" off, give me a monday off or nothing. edit: not to mention the most obvious... people with long commutes coming to work for a few hours... really dumb.
- forgotmysn 8y ago
  cool anecdotal evidence. that doesn't necessarily mean we should completely dismiss the concept entirely.
  - AltruisticGap 8y ago
    Feeling a slump early afternoon after midday meal is not anecdotal evidence, it's biology. edit: At least, it's a common issue that people have . A simple google search for "afternoon slump" reveals tons of related articles and suggestions to address it. Besides, those who feel otherwise likely don't give sufficient context. Such as, likely that they work from home. Or that they run their business so they can work afternoons and like to get up at 11 AM everyday. The article is talking about "staff" at "companies".
    - AltruisticGap 8y ago
      Note for later, "evidence" for the afternoon slump: > "The so-called “window of circadian low” — the hours when the body is least adapted for wakefulness — typically occurs between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. There’s another, smaller dip 12 hours later, in the midafternoon." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/well/mind/work-schedule-hours-sleep-productivity-chronotype-night-owls.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/well/mind/work-schedule-h...
- 8y ago
rationalfaith 8y ago
As long as you're productive and meeting deadlines, I couldn't care less about the "hours" you're in the office. Also, the market well balance itself. If someone is more productive they'll be rewarded more. I just don't want the "equal outcome" crowd to start enforcing equal pay when most of them are clocking in minimum hours and others are over-delivering. This is for merit based companies, which personally I can't fathom non-merit based ones.
- jshowa3 8y ago
  Last I checked, reality doesn't operate based on merit at all. If it did, wages would rise with productivity, but they don't, at least not in the US.
- Sharlin 8y ago
  That’s not sufficient. If your deadlines de facto force people to do 12 hour days, I couldn’t care less what you think about office hours.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  "Also, the market well balance itself. If someone is more productive they'll be rewarded more." I don't think that's true at all. If you don't spend significant amounts of time on self promotion you will not get rewarded but taken for granted.
  - hire_charts 8y ago
    In one of my early jobs out of college I had a manager who really got this. He knew I was getting my work done, so our 1:1's turned more into career coaching, and his focus was almost always around improving my "visibility" within the org. Looking back, it's hard to say whether he was genuinely interested in helping me get promoted, or if he just wanted to improve his own visibility by proxy, but either way it worked, and the lesson stuck with me.
    - fhbdukfrh 8y ago
      That's how good managers should be measured though, by the success of their charges
alexashka 8y ago
It'd help to avoid lumping all jobs into a single pile and proceeding to suggest a planet-wide remedy. A software developer has different needs from a convenience store employee. I hope that's obvious. I don't understand why this is even on HackerNews, because this article contains no news at all. It's just pandering to those who feel that working fewer hours is a good idea for them, nothing more. ps. if you're in a job that involves using your brain, you're not working more than 3-4 hours/day max. Maybe when there's basic income, we can start having honest conversations about how people actually work in software.
- paulcole 8y ago
  > I don't understand why this is even on HackerNews, because this article contains no news at all. It's just pandering... Same goes for the constant cycle of "Hiring Software Developers Is Broken" articles that never fail to get a million comments.
- aviv 8y ago
  > ps. if you're in a job that involves using your brain, you're not working more than 3-4 hours/day max This (not necessarily the quoted part, more so the article concept in general) is non-sense. People don't work enough. The problem is not the long hours, it's that people no longer have the stamina (mental, physical and emotional) to sustain a long work cycle so they think they "burn out".
  - kadendogthing 8y ago
    >People don't work enough. Based on what metrics?
  - Sharlin 8y ago
    What makes you think they ever did? And why should they anyway?
  - adetrest 8y ago
    > so they think they "burn out". Do you not believe burnout is real? If so, I hope you never find out, because it is very real and sucks a lot.
amygdyl 8y ago
Make a SLA for the world beyond your individual tasks. We had a global one: 1000 thru 1530hrs, real time customer service. Outside those hours, we'd respond according to impermeable limits of triage.
cpuguy83 8y ago
It's not the number of days but the constant fire drills, everything is always top priority, notifications coming at all hours... and at least with software dev very rarely is it a priority to fix poor quality things thereby making even more fire drills.
- _RPM 8y ago
  If you’re at a startup this is my experience, but working for a stable company, I have not had a fire drill in my two years here. I write software only though, I’m not doing DevOps. DevOps probably handles the fires.
  - waz0wski 8y ago
    That's ... not remotely devops What you're describing is a legacy, traditional, (and terrible!) 'ops will fix it' mentality that often permeates larger companies where dev teams 'throw stuff over the wall' to another team for production deployments, outage triage, etc A company with a devops culture deeply involves both developers and operations oriented folks from the start of a project to ensure best practices, reliability, and observability are being baked in from the start, that deployments are automated, and usually developers are more directly responsible for and involved in the operations of their software rather than having dedicated 'ops' teams doing 'firefighting' Read some of the content put out by Gene Kim or Martin Fowler for a much more in depth look at devops culture and the benefits it can bring a company.
    - Retric 8y ago
      Devops makes this worse. When the cycle between issue discovery and new code deployment shortens enough everything becomes an emergency. If it’s possible for a minor change to go into production within 24 hours, everything needs to be this fast. http://www.cc.com/video-clips/1myllo/the-miracle-of-flight http://www.cc.com/video-clips/1myllo/the-miracle-of-flight
      - beat 8y ago
sys_64738 8y ago
I only get stressed when I'm forced to attend stupid meetings. Without meetings a 4 days week would be doable for everybody.
- fhbdukfrh 8y ago
  Well it may seem obvious, but work to eliminate "stupid" meetings. Hold people to scheduled start times and time limits. Push hard for agendas and stick to them. Question the need for meetings you think are redundant or unnecessary. Or do you mean meetings in general?
tareqak 8y ago
I've thought about this idea quite a lot and shared it with a bunch of people. I've found that having that third day off (taking it as a vacation day to experiment) definitely helps me personally when it is adjacent to the weekend (e.g. Friday or Monday). However, I can totally see the need for having this third day be in the middle of the week to break up the week (e.g. Wednesday) or help with things like doing chores and getting to appointments when other people are working, but you're not. As a result, I think the third day off is most useful when you get to pick which day it is according to your particular circumstances. I know having the day be flexible adds additional complexity, and even the risk of it not being taken / pressured into not taking, but I think it adds the most utility for everyone.
- snarf21 8y ago
  True but there is no reason you can't do Wednesday > Friday > Wednesday every other week to give people a mix of three days off and a day during the week to do errands that are harder to do on the weekends.
  - tareqak 8y ago
    I guess you could have a default day or default rotation (e.g. your Wednesday > Friday > Wednesday every other week) and then negotiate for one of the other days in lieu of the default when it makes things more convenient.
maxxxxx 8y ago
I have worked at a company where we had a mandatory 35 hours week and I definitely feel that less working hours leads to a more disciplined workplace where less time is being wasted. At that company we actually worked during work hours whereas in my current company we spend a lot of time in meetings and other interruptions so I think I actually work less time than 35 hours.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law "Parkinson's law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". It is sometimes applied to the growth of bureaucracy in an organization. This law is likely derived from ideal gas law, whereby a gas expands to fit the volume allotted."
beat 8y ago
When talking about this, I usually mention the utility cost vs straight cost. Not all hours are created equal! How many employees are as productive on friday as they are on tuesday? The employer may be losing 20% of the hours, but maybe only 10% of the productivity. I could see this actually breaking even, as employees rested from their three-day weekends become ever more productive. And it's a tremendous hiring and retention perk, at least as long as it's not standard practice. "Work for us, and you get three day weekends every week!" And that turns into "So, recruiter, does this new gig you're trying to hire me for offer a four day workweek? No? Well okay then, bye."
watwut 8y ago
If people are burning out and stressed, then 4 vs 5 days is not issue, but rather total number of hours and overall conditions.
- johnward 8y ago
  Like me having 20 days worth of vacation but being looked at sideways when I actually try to use them. Giving me more days won't solve the issue.
mark_l_watson 8y ago
For decades, I almost always worked four days a week, 32 hours/week total. Since I was working for mostly large companies, I didn’t make any sort of special deal to do this, I simply took a 20% pay cut. Well worth it. Looking back over the last 35 years, I don’t regret working less at all, with the extra time off spent with friends and family, and giving me time to write several books.
- godDLL 8y ago
  I could never negotiate that, so I quit the industry after 10-ish years and went into "leaner life-style, honest day's work" type of deal. Best thing I did with my life. Oh, and Wim Hof breathing. Just the breathing, for now.
  - combatentropy 8y ago
    I'm curious what kind of job you got after quitting the tech industry. Maybe I'll try it some day. :)
    - godDLL 8y ago
      I go up a rope or down a rope to trim/take down a tree, sometimes to do some construction work. Industrial alpinism.
  - EForEndeavour 8y ago
    EDIT: for anyone curious, here is the official guide on Wim Hof breathing, copy-pasted from https://www.wimhofmethod.com/breathing-exercises https://www.wimhofmethod.com/breathing-exercises --- Never practice the breathing exercises in a place where it could be dangerous to faint. Step 1: Get comfortable Before you start practicing the breathing exercises, it is important to get as comfortable as possible. Sit in a comfortable posture in which you can expand your lungs freely. To make sure that you can expand your lung for the fullest, it is recommended to practice the exercises on an empty stomach. Step 2: 30 power breaths For this first breathing exercise, imagine that you are blowing up a balloon. While using your midriff fully, inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Use short and powerful bursts. Close your eyes and repeat 30 times. You can become light-headed during this exercise or experience a tingling sensation. This is normal. Step 3: Retention after exhalation After your 30 power breaths, fill your lungs to maximum capacity, but don’t force it. Exhale and hold for as long as you can. Hold your breath without forcing it, until you experience the gasp reflex. Step 4: Recovery breath Inhale to maximum capacity and feel your chest expanding. When your lungs are full, hold your breath for 10 seconds. Release the breath, and begin a new round. Repeat 3 to 4 times. Step 5: Enjoy the feeling Take your time to enjoy the feeling that the breathing exercises invoke. This feeling is similar to the effects of meditation and will get more powerful when you practice more often.
itamarst 8y ago
If you're thinking "but my employer will never do this", there's another alternative: you can negotiate. As an existing employee you are hugely valuable, you know how things work, the tech stack, the business, who to talk to... Replacing that is hard. So you have a good negotiating position. It's also possible to negotiate for a shorter workweek at new jobs, though it's more difficult. I've done this at 3 different companies, and you'll see in the comments here that others have as well. E.g. I interviewed one programmer who has been working 4 days a week for 15 years: https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer/ https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer... And if you want to learn how to do this but aren't sure where to begin, I've condensed my experience and research into a book: https://codewithoutrules.com/3dayweekend/ https://codewithoutrules.com/3dayweekend/
austincheney 8y ago
Less work would not solve the problem for me. I enjoy solving problems and creating tools. I like it so much I do it outside of work and possibly inside when I have nothing else to do. What I find stressful is stupid people. This really burns me out. I can understand a lack of experience and mistakes in code. We are always learning and in need of mentorship. What I can’t stand are cowardly people who aren’t learning. These are people who refuse to write original code to save their lives, or their careers. It seems common to avoid code by hoping some Maven or NPM package will easily do your job for you. These are the people who need multiple frameworks and 10mb of dependency code for what could be accomplished in about 12 lines of original code. It’s a hatred of craftsmanship. These people make me hate coding and life in general.
kgwxd 8y ago
I don't think this would help a ton in tech. The people that get burned out the hardest can't stop thinking about work if they're on the clock or not. They'll just have another day to stress about not getting stuff done or how much more they'll have to do when they get back.
combatentropy 8y ago
From the article: "companies around the world that have cut their work week have found that it leads to higher productivity". I'm disappointed that the article does not even explore the question, at what point does productivity decrease? It says that going from 5 to 4 days brought about an increase. The natural question is, what would happen if you went to 3? To 2? 1? Certainly at 0 days per week, productivity will decrease. And I know it will be a long time before even a 4-day week is the norm. But at least as an academic exercise, why is no one asking the question? What is the fewest number of hours per week that yields the same amount of productivity as 40? (Such a study would have use averages, of course.)
perfunctory 8y ago
Many people seem to believe it's hard/impossible to negotiate 4 day work week. Your negotiation position might be stronger than you think. Give it a try. Get creative. Approach it as you would a coding problem. Read a book about negotiations. I have worked 4 days or less for about a decade now. Well worth it.
jklepatch 8y ago
This is going in the right direction :) Funnily enough, decades ago when France introduced the 35h workweek the world (and in particular the US and UK) ridiculed France for it and berated the (supposed) laziness of French people.
- thr0w__4w4y 8y ago
  Brit by birth, and I've never visited France, so take this with a grain of salt, but: I've worked with many Japanese, German and British engineers who have worked with French engineers (in France, often as "ex pats"), and these guys never complained about France's 35 hour work week. They did, however, complain about the (this is my summary, from memory) excessive smoking breaks, longer lunches, casual attitude towards work, and (yes, sorry for the stereotype) a good amount of lost time talking about women in the office they'd like to bang. I don't know. The 2 French engineers I've worked with have been fine, but that was on U.K. soil... maybe on the home field it's different? My wife, who's American but both parents are French, says that the French generally have an inferiority complex but over-compensate by shit-talking other European countries and the U.S. I don't think I've experienced this personally, although I'm in tech and she's not, so maybe in her world that is more common (or maybe she's wrong? dunno)

245 points by joeyespo 8y ago

Another thing a lot of companies could try is a five-day work week.

I have a feeling that if you can work 5-6 hours a day you've more than earned your salary. So, if a company can figure it out and let thew workers stay at home instead of browsing the internet at "work" more power to them.

_RPM 8y ago
So then I have confirmed it. I read about browsing the internet and generally no one working 8 hours a day it they work in software. Some days I literally don’t have work to do, so I browse the internet. Sometimes it’s nice to work on tasks around the home if I am working from home that day. Management must know this. I consider it an unwritten/not talked about fact of working as a software developer.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  >>Some days I literally don’t have work to do, so I browse he internet. Go home, that's the nature of the job. You earn your money on a few big projects for the entire year, but you are needed for the next round. Alternate and keep track so the team gets a break and are somewhat indebted to the company. Maybe a few stay on call just in case...depending on the job.
- scarejunba 8y ago
  Why would you bother staying at work if you have nothing to do. Take your laptop home and VPN for OC issues if that’s why. But I can’t unders how you can have nothing to do. If you feel like doing nothing, that I understand. Some days just don’t work. But having nothing to do is quite surprising.
  - _RPM 8y ago
    I like to work from home when there isn’t much work to do, so then I can have my laptop. It’s common for us to have a code freeze, where we do not have any items in our backlog.
    - vidanay 8y ago
      That's just piss poor management on several layers.
    - scarejunba 8y ago
      Perhaps have release branches and hotfix there, merging into master? May be a more enjoyable development cycle.
      - _RPM 8y ago
        Unfortunately we only branch on release. We don’t have separate branches. Consider it as everyone working on master, and no merges m, just code reviews.
  - hinkley 8y ago
    I once heard this described as “in-office on-call”. If your work is done but your collaborators or subordinates aren’t then you never know when they’ll need your help. People get pretty bristly when they need you and can’t find you. Better for you to be there, or be officially sanctioned to be gone.

AltruisticGap 8y ago

Monday morning off sounds like an awful idea. First off, even when I lack sleep, I'll function better in the morning if I force myself out of bed, and I'll have a big slump in the afternoon. If I sleep in instead to supposedly catch up sleep, I'll do OK.. but I won't feel any better in the afternoon.. I'll be a little off because of getting up late. Secondly, afternoons are more depressing. I'd rather get out of bed, do a monday morning and then go home. It's really depressing in the winter, to leave work when it's already night outside. :/ But really screw "monday mornings" off, give me a monday off or nothing. edit: not to mention the most obvious... people with long commutes coming to work for a few hours... really dumb.

forgotmysn 8y ago
cool anecdotal evidence. that doesn't necessarily mean we should completely dismiss the concept entirely.
- AltruisticGap 8y ago
  Feeling a slump early afternoon after midday meal is not anecdotal evidence, it's biology. edit: At least, it's a common issue that people have . A simple google search for "afternoon slump" reveals tons of related articles and suggestions to address it. Besides, those who feel otherwise likely don't give sufficient context. Such as, likely that they work from home. Or that they run their business so they can work afternoons and like to get up at 11 AM everyday. The article is talking about "staff" at "companies".
  - AltruisticGap 8y ago
    Note for later, "evidence" for the afternoon slump: > "The so-called “window of circadian low” — the hours when the body is least adapted for wakefulness — typically occurs between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. There’s another, smaller dip 12 hours later, in the midafternoon." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/well/mind/work-schedule-hours-sleep-productivity-chronotype-night-owls.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/well/mind/work-schedule-h...
8y ago

rationalfaith 8y ago

As long as you're productive and meeting deadlines, I couldn't care less about the "hours" you're in the office. Also, the market well balance itself. If someone is more productive they'll be rewarded more. I just don't want the "equal outcome" crowd to start enforcing equal pay when most of them are clocking in minimum hours and others are over-delivering. This is for merit based companies, which personally I can't fathom non-merit based ones.

jshowa3 8y ago
Last I checked, reality doesn't operate based on merit at all. If it did, wages would rise with productivity, but they don't, at least not in the US.
Sharlin 8y ago
That’s not sufficient. If your deadlines de facto force people to do 12 hour days, I couldn’t care less what you think about office hours.
maxxxxx 8y ago
"Also, the market well balance itself. If someone is more productive they'll be rewarded more." I don't think that's true at all. If you don't spend significant amounts of time on self promotion you will not get rewarded but taken for granted.
- hire_charts 8y ago
  In one of my early jobs out of college I had a manager who really got this. He knew I was getting my work done, so our 1:1's turned more into career coaching, and his focus was almost always around improving my "visibility" within the org. Looking back, it's hard to say whether he was genuinely interested in helping me get promoted, or if he just wanted to improve his own visibility by proxy, but either way it worked, and the lesson stuck with me.
  - fhbdukfrh 8y ago
    That's how good managers should be measured though, by the success of their charges

alexashka 8y ago

It'd help to avoid lumping all jobs into a single pile and proceeding to suggest a planet-wide remedy. A software developer has different needs from a convenience store employee. I hope that's obvious. I don't understand why this is even on HackerNews, because this article contains no news at all. It's just pandering to those who feel that working fewer hours is a good idea for them, nothing more. ps. if you're in a job that involves using your brain, you're not working more than 3-4 hours/day max. Maybe when there's basic income, we can start having honest conversations about how people actually work in software.

paulcole 8y ago
> I don't understand why this is even on HackerNews, because this article contains no news at all. It's just pandering... Same goes for the constant cycle of "Hiring Software Developers Is Broken" articles that never fail to get a million comments.
aviv 8y ago
> ps. if you're in a job that involves using your brain, you're not working more than 3-4 hours/day max This (not necessarily the quoted part, more so the article concept in general) is non-sense. People don't work enough. The problem is not the long hours, it's that people no longer have the stamina (mental, physical and emotional) to sustain a long work cycle so they think they "burn out".
- kadendogthing 8y ago
  >People don't work enough. Based on what metrics?
- Sharlin 8y ago
  What makes you think they ever did? And why should they anyway?
- adetrest 8y ago
  > so they think they "burn out". Do you not believe burnout is real? If so, I hope you never find out, because it is very real and sucks a lot.

amygdyl 8y ago

Make a SLA for the world beyond your individual tasks. We had a global one: 1000 thru 1530hrs, real time customer service. Outside those hours, we'd respond according to impermeable limits of triage.

cpuguy83 8y ago

It's not the number of days but the constant fire drills, everything is always top priority, notifications coming at all hours... and at least with software dev very rarely is it a priority to fix poor quality things thereby making even more fire drills.

_RPM 8y ago
If you’re at a startup this is my experience, but working for a stable company, I have not had a fire drill in my two years here. I write software only though, I’m not doing DevOps. DevOps probably handles the fires.
- waz0wski 8y ago
  That's ... not remotely devops What you're describing is a legacy, traditional, (and terrible!) 'ops will fix it' mentality that often permeates larger companies where dev teams 'throw stuff over the wall' to another team for production deployments, outage triage, etc A company with a devops culture deeply involves both developers and operations oriented folks from the start of a project to ensure best practices, reliability, and observability are being baked in from the start, that deployments are automated, and usually developers are more directly responsible for and involved in the operations of their software rather than having dedicated 'ops' teams doing 'firefighting' Read some of the content put out by Gene Kim or Martin Fowler for a much more in depth look at devops culture and the benefits it can bring a company.
  - Retric 8y ago
    Devops makes this worse. When the cycle between issue discovery and new code deployment shortens enough everything becomes an emergency. If it’s possible for a minor change to go into production within 24 hours, everything needs to be this fast. http://www.cc.com/video-clips/1myllo/the-miracle-of-flight http://www.cc.com/video-clips/1myllo/the-miracle-of-flight
    - beat 8y ago

sys_64738 8y ago

I only get stressed when I'm forced to attend stupid meetings. Without meetings a 4 days week would be doable for everybody.

fhbdukfrh 8y ago
Well it may seem obvious, but work to eliminate "stupid" meetings. Hold people to scheduled start times and time limits. Push hard for agendas and stick to them. Question the need for meetings you think are redundant or unnecessary. Or do you mean meetings in general?

tareqak 8y ago

I've thought about this idea quite a lot and shared it with a bunch of people. I've found that having that third day off (taking it as a vacation day to experiment) definitely helps me personally when it is adjacent to the weekend (e.g. Friday or Monday). However, I can totally see the need for having this third day be in the middle of the week to break up the week (e.g. Wednesday) or help with things like doing chores and getting to appointments when other people are working, but you're not. As a result, I think the third day off is most useful when you get to pick which day it is according to your particular circumstances. I know having the day be flexible adds additional complexity, and even the risk of it not being taken / pressured into not taking, but I think it adds the most utility for everyone.

snarf21 8y ago
True but there is no reason you can't do Wednesday > Friday > Wednesday every other week to give people a mix of three days off and a day during the week to do errands that are harder to do on the weekends.
- tareqak 8y ago
  I guess you could have a default day or default rotation (e.g. your Wednesday > Friday > Wednesday every other week) and then negotiate for one of the other days in lieu of the default when it makes things more convenient.

maxxxxx 8y ago

I have worked at a company where we had a mandatory 35 hours week and I definitely feel that less working hours leads to a more disciplined workplace where less time is being wasted. At that company we actually worked during work hours whereas in my current company we spend a lot of time in meetings and other interruptions so I think I actually work less time than 35 hours.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law "Parkinson's law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". It is sometimes applied to the growth of bureaucracy in an organization. This law is likely derived from ideal gas law, whereby a gas expands to fit the volume allotted."

beat 8y ago

When talking about this, I usually mention the utility cost vs straight cost. Not all hours are created equal! How many employees are as productive on friday as they are on tuesday? The employer may be losing 20% of the hours, but maybe only 10% of the productivity. I could see this actually breaking even, as employees rested from their three-day weekends become ever more productive. And it's a tremendous hiring and retention perk, at least as long as it's not standard practice. "Work for us, and you get three day weekends every week!" And that turns into "So, recruiter, does this new gig you're trying to hire me for offer a four day workweek? No? Well okay then, bye."

watwut 8y ago

If people are burning out and stressed, then 4 vs 5 days is not issue, but rather total number of hours and overall conditions.

johnward 8y ago
Like me having 20 days worth of vacation but being looked at sideways when I actually try to use them. Giving me more days won't solve the issue.

mark_l_watson 8y ago

For decades, I almost always worked four days a week, 32 hours/week total. Since I was working for mostly large companies, I didn’t make any sort of special deal to do this, I simply took a 20% pay cut. Well worth it. Looking back over the last 35 years, I don’t regret working less at all, with the extra time off spent with friends and family, and giving me time to write several books.

godDLL 8y ago
I could never negotiate that, so I quit the industry after 10-ish years and went into "leaner life-style, honest day's work" type of deal. Best thing I did with my life. Oh, and Wim Hof breathing. Just the breathing, for now.
- combatentropy 8y ago
  I'm curious what kind of job you got after quitting the tech industry. Maybe I'll try it some day. :)
  - godDLL 8y ago
    I go up a rope or down a rope to trim/take down a tree, sometimes to do some construction work. Industrial alpinism.
- EForEndeavour 8y ago
  EDIT: for anyone curious, here is the official guide on Wim Hof breathing, copy-pasted from https://www.wimhofmethod.com/breathing-exercises https://www.wimhofmethod.com/breathing-exercises --- Never practice the breathing exercises in a place where it could be dangerous to faint. Step 1: Get comfortable Before you start practicing the breathing exercises, it is important to get as comfortable as possible. Sit in a comfortable posture in which you can expand your lungs freely. To make sure that you can expand your lung for the fullest, it is recommended to practice the exercises on an empty stomach. Step 2: 30 power breaths For this first breathing exercise, imagine that you are blowing up a balloon. While using your midriff fully, inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Use short and powerful bursts. Close your eyes and repeat 30 times. You can become light-headed during this exercise or experience a tingling sensation. This is normal. Step 3: Retention after exhalation After your 30 power breaths, fill your lungs to maximum capacity, but don’t force it. Exhale and hold for as long as you can. Hold your breath without forcing it, until you experience the gasp reflex. Step 4: Recovery breath Inhale to maximum capacity and feel your chest expanding. When your lungs are full, hold your breath for 10 seconds. Release the breath, and begin a new round. Repeat 3 to 4 times. Step 5: Enjoy the feeling Take your time to enjoy the feeling that the breathing exercises invoke. This feeling is similar to the effects of meditation and will get more powerful when you practice more often.

itamarst 8y ago

If you're thinking "but my employer will never do this", there's another alternative: you can negotiate. As an existing employee you are hugely valuable, you know how things work, the tech stack, the business, who to talk to... Replacing that is hard. So you have a good negotiating position. It's also possible to negotiate for a shorter workweek at new jobs, though it's more difficult. I've done this at 3 different companies, and you'll see in the comments here that others have as well. E.g. I interviewed one programmer who has been working 4 days a week for 15 years: https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer/ https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer... And if you want to learn how to do this but aren't sure where to begin, I've condensed my experience and research into a book: https://codewithoutrules.com/3dayweekend/ https://codewithoutrules.com/3dayweekend/

austincheney 8y ago

Less work would not solve the problem for me. I enjoy solving problems and creating tools. I like it so much I do it outside of work and possibly inside when I have nothing else to do. What I find stressful is stupid people. This really burns me out. I can understand a lack of experience and mistakes in code. We are always learning and in need of mentorship. What I can’t stand are cowardly people who aren’t learning. These are people who refuse to write original code to save their lives, or their careers. It seems common to avoid code by hoping some Maven or NPM package will easily do your job for you. These are the people who need multiple frameworks and 10mb of dependency code for what could be accomplished in about 12 lines of original code. It’s a hatred of craftsmanship. These people make me hate coding and life in general.

kgwxd 8y ago

I don't think this would help a ton in tech. The people that get burned out the hardest can't stop thinking about work if they're on the clock or not. They'll just have another day to stress about not getting stuff done or how much more they'll have to do when they get back.

combatentropy 8y ago

From the article: "companies around the world that have cut their work week have found that it leads to higher productivity". I'm disappointed that the article does not even explore the question, at what point does productivity decrease? It says that going from 5 to 4 days brought about an increase. The natural question is, what would happen if you went to 3? To 2? 1? Certainly at 0 days per week, productivity will decrease. And I know it will be a long time before even a 4-day week is the norm. But at least as an academic exercise, why is no one asking the question? What is the fewest number of hours per week that yields the same amount of productivity as 40? (Such a study would have use averages, of course.)

perfunctory 8y ago

Many people seem to believe it's hard/impossible to negotiate 4 day work week. Your negotiation position might be stronger than you think. Give it a try. Get creative. Approach it as you would a coding problem. Read a book about negotiations. I have worked 4 days or less for about a decade now. Well worth it.

jklepatch 8y ago

This is going in the right direction :) Funnily enough, decades ago when France introduced the 35h workweek the world (and in particular the US and UK) ridiculed France for it and berated the (supposed) laziness of French people.

thr0w__4w4y 8y ago
Brit by birth, and I've never visited France, so take this with a grain of salt, but: I've worked with many Japanese, German and British engineers who have worked with French engineers (in France, often as "ex pats"), and these guys never complained about France's 35 hour work week. They did, however, complain about the (this is my summary, from memory) excessive smoking breaks, longer lunches, casual attitude towards work, and (yes, sorry for the stereotype) a good amount of lost time talking about women in the office they'd like to bang. I don't know. The 2 French engineers I've worked with have been fine, but that was on U.K. soil... maybe on the home field it's different? My wife, who's American but both parents are French, says that the French generally have an inferiority complex but over-compensate by shit-talking other European countries and the U.S. I don't think I've experienced this personally, although I'm in tech and she's not, so maybe in her world that is more common (or maybe she's wrong? dunno)