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It's time to switch to a four-day working week, say two experts

313 points by joeyespo 7y ago

mycall 7y ago
I would love to but a 10 hour day would increase my time stuck in traffic 50%, so I would actually lose free time overall.
wsc981 7y ago
In The Netherlands /a lot/ of people work 4-day workweeks already [0]. It's not that novel. But it'd be good if more countries could largely make the switch. Due to the progressive tax in The Netherlands, working 5 days instead of 4 doesn't earn /that/ much more money and if you have toddlers, you will spend a day less for daycare, a day extra with your kids and probably have more time for the fun things in life as well. As a salaried employee I often chose a 4-day workweek as well when living in The Netherlands. But once I started freelancing, the 5-day workweek seemed the better choice for me. As freelancer you are taxed a bit less compared to a salaried employee, so there's more incentive to make as much money as possible during the workweek. --- [0]: https://www.equaltimes.org/a-four-day-work-week-is-only-a#.XPxZxC2B27w https://www.equaltimes.org/a-four-day-work-week-is-only-a#.X...
- Freak_NL 7y ago
  At my small (Dutch) company the standard contract is 36 hours, so most employees work 4 × 8. I have a four month old son, and my wife normally works 4 × 8 as well, but she does 3 × 8 + 4 until we find our bearings with the young one. That means two days of daycare (partly subsidized by the government), one day, each, at home with the child, and one day where she works from home for four hours. This is fairly typical for white collar workers in the Netherlands. Four days is more than enough for me.
frankbreetz 7y ago
There us nothing to disagree with here, but I feel like America is so far to the right that an idea like this will be answered with "people are so lazy" and "you signed a contract" or something similarly ridiculous. My response to all this is wasn't the goal of our forefathers to give us a better life? Doesn't that mean less hours working? Even if my parents grew up in the best economic period of the past thousand years, shouldn't my life be marginally better then their's? Maybe I am a "wuss" compared to the people who stormed Normandy, but maybe those people are wusses compared to medival people, and those people are wusses compared to cavemen, shouldn't you want to create the type of world where your wuss children can survive?
- daodedickinson 7y ago
  The problem is there are so many over-demand jobs and under-demand jobs because schools stole so many billions from students learning information that could not be put to fruitful use. And those jobs are so unequal in how much work they take. So you have many jobs or situations where people are paid to sit and many like in medicine where more people might die if you want to sleep a healthy amount. The time should fit the job. But the pay should fit the time, and then that's the next problem to sove, and on.
deevolution 7y ago
How do I go about convincing my company to give me a 4 day work week? Will I need to sacrifice part of my wage?
b0rsuk 7y ago
Working as a programmer, I already started de facto shortening my shifts without cheating on my employer: on 7th, and especially 8th hour, I don't write new code anymore unless it's in places I have very solid understanding of. My mind tends to slow down in the final hours, and it takes a lot of effort to come up with something new, and my bug rate increases. What do I do instead? Binge read documentation to learn about new functions and parameters that may make my work easier. Tweak vim configuration. Experiment with new shell commands. Clean up my email inbox and various notifications. These activities still push the work forward, but don't require as much creative juice and there's no consequence for mistake. I would still prefer a 4 day week, but it's the next best thing.
- jlawson 7y ago
  I do this too. Same principle applies in the gym - you start out the workout with the super strenuous squats and deadlifts, then move to the difficult bench press and dips, then finish with relatively easy bicep curls, tricep pushdown, and cardio. Some things just can't be done effectively unless you're above a certain level of rest; other things can be done even if you're tired. It just makes sense to sort things into the period of time where you can actually do them. In coding this extends all the way to watching lightweight YouTube videos about coding late at night when you're tired.
stmfreak 7y ago
I have been trying to work from home one day per week and wish we could standardize on this. It would reduce traffic 20%. It saves everyone a round trip commute and that is time that can be put to productive use. I also appreciate having a solid day of few meetings. Four day work week would be fine, but I suspect people would just cram more meetings in and it may become less productive.
SteveGerencser 7y ago
My dad ran his factory this way from day one. I forget exactly when they started, late 80s I think, and they always worked 4 10 hour days, Monday thru Thursday, 3 day weekend. Worked great when they went to 2 shifts as well. 4 hour a day downtime for maintenance to do their magic each day. Employees loved it, management loved it, the only ones that complained were some of their very large customers, and even they got used to it after a year of not being able to reach anyone on Friday.
disconnection 7y ago
From my own research, I would say that 4 days is still too much in many cases: http://www.disconnectionist.com/blog/becoming-a-part-time-superhuman.html http://www.disconnectionist.com/blog/becoming-a-part-time-su...
SubiculumCode 7y ago
I submit that the problem is the denominator: 7 The ratios: 5|2. Just right and too little 4|3. Too little and just right Weeks should be 8 days 5|3. Just right and just right. 7 has nothing to do with human health and happiness. Why stick with that week length dogma? 8 days a week, thr Beatles had it right.
johnmarinelli 7y ago
A few months ago, I requested a 32 hour work week at my job. I took the appropriate paycut (I'm a single bachelor that doesn't spend much anyway). Instead of a 4-day workweek, I do ~6.5 hours for 5 days. It's been great and I couldn't recommend it more. edit - I should add that I started the job at 40 hours/week, and after 1 year of being there I asked for 32 hours/week.
tempodox 7y ago
> Critically, they also say workers were 20% more productive. So, there wouldn't even be an actual loss in productivity. Still I predict this recommendation will fall on deaf ears. The problem is not economic or rational, it's cultural and religious. “Society” still adheres to the notion that a person's worth is largely determined by the extent of their economic activities (independent of productivity, obviously). Working less is perceived as a dangerous moral failure (“Idle hands are the devil's workshop”, in christian cultures).
purplezooey 7y ago
The worst part of this is that it will, like most everything else in the US, be an option for the wealthy, some white collar workers and those fortunate enough to live in California while leaving everyone else behind.
throwaway82137 7y ago
Data point from BigCo: almost no-one (at a US BigCo) would take reduced hours for proportionally less pay. I work at a silicon valley BigCo, and I work half-time (20 hrs per week). I got this by just asking for it, though it did require high up approval. I didn't even hide the fact that it was for the purpose of personal projects. I get half my salary, and half my stock and bonus. It is still more than plenty to afford living here for me. I have 1 kid. I've done this for 5 years now, during which time I've spoken to many BigCo colleagues about this, and I'd estimate about 100 of them know my "deal", and so far no-one has followed my path. Note that 80% and 60% are also options. When asked they uniformly say that they couldn't take the reduction in pay. Median total comp for these people is easily 300k. Some don't even have kids. So no, if you want to improve society you'd have to force a 4-day work week by law, otherwise no-one will follow-thru.
ppcelery 7y ago
we are switching to a six-day working week, in china...
triplee 7y ago
I've been saying this for years, so I'm glad I agree with the experts.
xtrimsky1234 7y ago
Would be only great if my kids stay in school 5 days a week. Otherwise it will be just another day I need to entertain my kids. Sure 3 day weekends for traveling would be great, but I already do that with PTOs. I want 6 hour work days 5 times a week. Not 4 work days. And banks being closed an extra day would just be annoying. (not that I go to a physical bank, but just transfers and such).
chemmail 7y ago
I've been doing 4 day work weeks and its like i'm on vacation all the time. We need this.
Causality1 7y ago
I would be happy just to switch to a five day 40 hour work week.
ksec 7y ago
Well in many places and across many industry, it would be great if we could get 5 days work week standard in the first place. Instead, not only just tech industry in China, many are now moving more towards 996.
- FabHK 7y ago
  where 996 is 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. Jack Ma, defending 996: “To be able to work 996 is a huge bliss,” China’s richest man said. “If you want to join Alibaba, you need to be prepared to work 12 hours a day, otherwise why even bother joining.”
  - tathougies 7y ago
    > “If you want to join Alibaba, you need to be prepared to work 12 hours a day, otherwise why even bother joining.” So as someone who works neither 12 hours a day, nor 6 days a week (on paid labour at least), I agree with Jack Ma. I don't see the point in joining a company that is clear it expects this. I think that would be self defeating if you were a person like me.
  - teknologist 7y ago
    These characters love to bandy this around because they've done it themselves, once upon a time, to establish their companies. BUT what they fail to mention is that they had a HUGE share in those fledgling companies at that time. Potential reward was HUGE so they put in the time and effort. Employees who join Alibaba aren't given a lick of equity these days.
  - dheera 7y ago
    Jack Ma is a massive hypocrite IMO. In another speech Jack Ma said: "Independent thinking, teamwork, care for others, these are the soft parts. Knowledge may not teach you that. That's why I think we should teach our kids sports, music, painting, art -- making sure humans are different from machines." Yeah, the FIRST thing you need to do to do that is to end this 996 horror. 996 IS treating humans like machines. People already have kids and parents to care for; if you want them to engage in sports, music, painting, art, they need normal work hours.
filleokus 7y ago
Have there been largeish tests of company wide four-day work weeks in the software sector? Here in Sweden the movement has mostly been push by the left, and for workers with lower wage/burnout/high amounts of sick leave etc. I think it's mostly been tested in the health care sector. I think it lowered the amount of sick leave, but was too expensive to keep since those type of jobs are very hard to make more productive. I.e, we always need nurses on staff at the ER, or to look after the elderly. Most office-type work seems that it could potentially benefit from this though.
- Swizec 7y ago
  I don't know about largeish tests, but 37signals is famous for their 4-day workweeks during summer. https://m.signalvnoise.com/why-we-only-work-4-days-a-week-during-summer/ https://m.signalvnoise.com/why-we-only-work-4-days-a-week-du...
  - thatfrenchguy 7y ago
    That article makes it sound like they don’t go on vacation in exchange, which is a bad deal. Americans already take pity time off.
- astrobe_ 7y ago
  France has 35 hours work weeks, so that's four days and half with 8 hours a day [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek
amiga_500 7y ago
But then my rent would drop 20% and I'd just be better off.
jowdones 7y ago
"The dogs bark, but the caravan goes on". "the caravan" == employers.
wrong_variable 7y ago
The idea is good in principal but its going to be gamed to death. Some people derive satisfaction from their work ! Others don't. Also will the pay be the same ? Call me a cynic but knowing business owners they will never accept lower hours for same pay. They will spend all their time figuring out how to game it. All these solutions, studies seem like busy work for though leaders who have nothing better to do. The best solution is quite simple - Universal Basic Income. It can't be gamed as easily and by definition it costs less and gives everybody more freedom at the same time. Normally I feel like rules that restrict freedom ( like you can ONLY work 40 hours ), you have to be skeptical.
- perfunctory 7y ago
  The same logic could be applied back in the day when 40-hour week was introduced. Yet somehow we managed. There is no reason we can't do again.
  - wrong_variable 7y ago
    I never said the introduction of 40-hour week was bad. Its just more economically efficient to have UBI.
- rq1 7y ago
  You need to take into account the added value of productivity gains: who’s getting it? If I have a better yield for a given task, then I will provide exactly what my employer asked me for the price we agreed. Eg. That means that if we agreed for 8h * 5d for a given task, and manage to do it in 8h * 3d, I obviously won’t work more. At least not before discussing the share of my productivity gains added value. Being zealous is the best way to get fooled. Another thing, these 40h or even 35h in France won’t limit your freedom, you can obviously work more: it’s a disguised pay raise. I think also that’s not ideal if applied uniformly. The price of some goods and services will mechanically rise, and you might end up “richer” but everything got expensive at the same time. It should be bound to the marginal cost of production or the derivative of the price wrt quantity. If you’re sublinear then you’re good to go. Otherwise it’s simply a no no. Sorry if there’s some mistakes, I’m typing on my phone.
peatmoss 7y ago
I think three day weekends would be undeniably good for the health of our society and everyone living in it. I have long (semi-jokingly) professed belief in the Church of the SubGenius. They extol the virtues of slack. I think the intended meaning of “slack” is as in “to slack off.” But I choose to believe in it as slack (i.e. spare capacity) in a system. While some might use that extra day to slack off, plenty more would use that day to invest labors in their communities, maybe to get some exercise, maybe do some neglected repairs around the house. I feel like in the name of efficiency, we’ve purged a lot of slack from the system, but that has left us with a lot of institutions that are at risk for catastrophic failure. For people who are stretched to their breaking point, there needs to be more slack.
- meej 7y ago
  > But I choose to believe in it as slack (i.e. spare capacity) in a system. This is essentially how Tom DeMarco defines it in his book Slack. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123715.Slack https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123715.Slack
- drivingmenuts 7y ago
  In the US, if you don't work, you don't get paid, so this sounds like a recipe for disaster for most workers here. Small to medium businesses would potentially be losing 42 days a year of production (52 days - 10 days std vacation time) and that would hurt the profits that they would need to increase wages to make up for that lost day per week just for the workers. Shareholders will still expect year-over-year increase in profits, which won't happen if you're paying people who aren't working. Where exactly is that happiness supposed to come from? Workers may be miserable, but less money equals even more misery, near as I can tell. I guess the rich will be happy.
  - kennywinker 7y ago
    1. There are very few jobs where doing them in a miserable state does not greatly reduce the quality and quantity of work you do. 2. Successful businesses are making their owners and shareholders lots of money. As an absolute worst-case scenario, every company takes a 1/5 hit to the profit they produce for their owners. 3. Point #2 means that a four-day work week would do a lot to rebalance the value of capital vs the value of labour. The balance has been tipped towards capital for far too long.
deleted 7y ago
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madspindel 7y ago
"In thirty years America will be a post-industrial society with a per capita income of $ 7,500. There will be only four work days a week of seven hours per day. The year will be comprised of 39 work weeks and 13 weeks of vacation. With weekends and holidays this makes 147 work days a year and 218 free days. All this within a single generation." From The American Challenge by Jean Jacques Servan-Schreiber published in 1967. Too bad this will never happen since most managers are workaholics.
- benjohnson 7y ago
  I'm my estimation - you can almost live this way if you limit your expectations to someone from 1967 - limited food choices, single car, small home, frugal car-based vacations and heathy living.
  - esturk 7y ago
    Funny you added 'healthy living' at the end. It makes you wonder why people would live beyond their means to be unhealthy.
    - sokoloff 7y ago
      Because people are terrible at accounting for the future. Shows up in diet, exercise, personal finance, and probably a bunch of other places.
  - stunt 7y ago
    I have several Dutch friends who work four-day and don't mind a lower salary in exchange for healthy living.
  - imesh 7y ago
    Two problems: I can't afford a 1967 size small home anywhere near me, nor can I also support 3 kids and a non working spouse.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
itamarst 7y ago
You don't have to wait for society to make this happen (and in fact waiting will fail you). This is something many programmers have negotiated on their own (e.g. https://codewithoutrules.com/2019/05/09/part-time-software-developer/ https://codewithoutrules.com/2019/05/09/part-time-software-d...). More broadly this is one of many good reasons for programmers to unionize; even if salaries are high, working hours are still far too long.
- ddeokbokki 7y ago
  Yup, went contracting for this reason. Code is a passion of my and I love that it's also my trade but I have other personal ventures I need to focus my attention on and I have absolutely no juice left in a regular 5day/40hrs engineering week.
- ASlave2Gravity 7y ago
  To chime in here, I've only ever worked part-time as a programmer. I'm in the UK, so YMMV, but if you're looking for part-time programming roles (i.e. 4-day working week, what I work) just ask. A lot of places are pretty open about 4 day work weeks. Some places jeer and it's a firm no. But it's worth a stab. Generally, the atmosphere is improving and the stigma seems to be dying off.
  - aiisjustanif 7y ago
    UK is almost a standard 35 hour work week anywhere. Salesforce, Tesco, Skyscanner, Google UK, almost anywhere. Why you part time at 4 days?
    - ASlave2Gravity 7y ago
      Well, I work 30 hours a week, so it's five hours less than that! Plus I don't even need to travel on Fridays for a half day. :) I was working 25 hours a week, 5 5-hour days, which was good fun too. But I kept bumping heads with people at work. I'd work 10-3, with no lunch, and people would schedule meetings for 3, or 4, forgetting I wouldn't be there. Jira also didn't make things easy for the accounting people, so I am told... If I could afford to go down to 3 days a week, I would. I'm not quite there yet with my annual salary. I think 3 days a week is the sweet spot. Though I feel my firm would be a tad peeved at 3 days a week. I'm not sure if they'd go for it. But it's a conversation I'm keen to have. Some things aren't geared for pro-rata either. Things like the NHS top up, share schemes, cycle to work, you might lose them when you drop below 25 hours, rather then them scaling down like salary and holiday allowances.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
I can barely afford working 5 as it is, I have to level up my wages or get an extra source of income, not decrease.
- isostatic 7y ago
  One reason housing is so expensive now compared to the 50s is that there are 10 working days per household now, and were 6 in the 50s. With more money, the price of limited resources increases to fill the void. If a 3 or 4 day week is mandated, there’s less for housing, it’s the same demand, the same supply, so prices have to come down.
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    one reason that prices did not increase to fill the void immediately is that systems have an information lag between events, thus I expect a few years of mismatch. Furthermore some resources are going to increase in cost no matter what because external pressures - climate change - are going to drive up the costs of those resources (primarily food) no matter what.
nameisu 7y ago
what about 996?
RandomInteger4 7y ago
How would this affect service workers?
necovek 7y ago
I've long argued for a 4-day 6-hour-day work week. I've even questioned a few potential employers about it, citing research: I've even offered to take a pay cut (per hour, i.e. hourly rate was cheaper than for 5-day 8-hour day weeks), but nobody was interested. They would frequently say how they are not interested in "part time" work. I'd counter that this is full time work, with efficiency higher than the full time work, because people can focus on intellectually hard problems only for a short while sustainably. Sure, I can put in a couple of weeks of 12h days, but after that, I'd struggle to put in 4h days of quality, focused work (well known as burnout). Similarly, 8h days are not sustainable either, though it takes longer to burn out. As people have noted, the extra time I get would not be spent in pyjamas watching netflix: it would be quality time with my family, working on projects and research, etc (if it wasn't for miserable pay and state of academia, I'd probably be doing research exclusively). Civilization as a whole would benefit as a result if there were more people putting their brains to problems they think matter. And as stated numerous times, even employeers would benefit. But alas, when there's the next guy willing to submit to the "norm", it's hard to get the ball rolling.
- loosetypes 7y ago
  > "... 12h days, ..." I recently read Sebastian Junger's Tribe, which had many memorable takeaways for me. One, in particular, was the assertion that, historically, subsistence farmers and the like generally only needed to work, on average, 12 hours per week. While I know modern farming practices require copious amounts of work, it is nonetheless an interesting idea. Imagine all the remaining time to just sit in sun or socialize. Progress, what is that?
  - SomeOldThrow 7y ago
    > One, in particular, was the assertion that, historically, subsistence farmers and the like generally only needed to work, on average, 12 hours per week. I’ve seen this claim before, and it typically revolves around careful definition of the word “work” rather than any fundamental difference in how we structure activities and priorities. iirc altering the definition to “any work that provides utility” puts the time at 30-40 hours a week. Still very much for a 30 hour/ 4 day work week, but I’ve found that particular argument to be very weak. Granted, the west never seems to count reproductive labor when talking about work, which is itself a problem. Most Americans spend the vast majority of their waking hours in some form of labor.
amelius 7y ago
Good news, except we've justed started a trade war with China.
hobo_mark 7y ago
European here. This summer I'm taking all Fridays off until October (since I had too many holidays left). Yesterday was the second time, I still showed up in the office but just worked on my own projects all day (it's allowed). Once I was in the flow, I've been doing the same on Saturdays (like today) and Sundays (albeit shorter hours). I'm definitely making more progress than when I was only working on it at night, try it if you have the opportunity (and no kids/spouses of course).
sakisv 7y ago
It's kind of disheartening to read things like this on one hand and on the other hand read news that Austria "increased the flexibility" of the working pattern by bumping up the limit of what is considered legal to 12 hours: http://www.mondaq.com/Austria/x/733020/employee+rights+labour+relations/Amendmends+To+The+Working+Hours+Law+The+12Hour+Working+Day+Light http://www.mondaq.com/Austria/x/733020/employee+rights+labou... Given that this is a country which is in the EU I'm very much worried about this being adopted by more countries and becoming the norm, all in the spirit of maintaining our "competitiveness"
- asdf21 7y ago
  What issue do you have with people working three twelve hour days?
mto 7y ago
I work 25 hours a week remotely as freelancer (although I'm available in slack more or less all the time) and earn nearly twice as much as during my PhD. Only that in more than 3 years I never really got into demotivated/frustrated phases. During my PhD I often felt depressed when sitting in the office all day, never getting a bit of daylight... And paying 300€ a month to have someone walk my dog. I have lots of time for learning new stuff and also teach a course twice a year at a local college for some extra cash. Started when my daughter was born and never stopped ;). Couldn't be happier and I really hope I can somehow keep it that way.
neilv 7y ago
That would work for some kinds of work. But I live to work, and often work 7 days. I can't imagine doing a project with delivery time pressure (like a startup trying to execute in a timely manner), working only 4 days, with a 3-day gap. I'd rather have flexible hours, and an emphasis on working sharp in the hours we do put in -- not have frequent 3-day interruptions of project mental space, and putting off gratification in seeing the project come together.
- stevesimmons 7y ago
  Me too. I feel very lucky to have found a company that is a perfect fit for my skills and interests, and that is at the right stage that me working hard now will make a big difference. I can't imagine not working 6-7 days a week.
  - Apocryphon 7y ago
    That's great for the both of you. But workaholics shouldn't get to dictate the norms for the rest of humanity.
    - neilv 7y ago
      Agreed, no one should dictate norms. But I'd rather have expectations of flexibility (e.g., take day off or a short day because didn't sleep well, or family activity, or enjoy the nice weather, or just finished a work crunch), than (I imagine) expectations that, on those 4 days, one had better be there the full day and at least pretending to work. For some jobs, flexibility could mean that someone can arrange with their manager&team to personally have a predictable 4-day schedule.
vermilingua 7y ago
I’m sure this is great for some people, but what about casual workers? What about people that rely on overtime to get by? I can only see this pushing employers into further reducing hours, screwing those people.
- coldtea 7y ago
  We shouldn't optimize society based on the needs of "people that rely on overtime to get by", we should optimize so that people don't have to rely on overtime to get by. It's like someone was asking back in the day: "Abolishing child labor? What about all those 10 and 12 year olds that depend on their job to eat?"
epaulson 7y ago
We should all aim for 4 days as the ideal instead of 5, but we should also drop the M-F work, S-S weekend ideal too. For large chunks of the workforce they're already working something other than M-F anyway because we want 7 day coverage of our retail and service sectors. More professionals - dentists and veterinarians and insurance offices and you name it - should be open on the "weekend" or should not all dentists need to share the same "weekend", especially if we're dropping down to a 4-on, 3-off standard. If for no other reason, we build a lot of infrastructure for "peak" usage, like rush hour traffic. If we all have the same 3 day weekend that means we have lower "weekend" traffic one more day but the peaks stay the same, but if we better distributed our weekends, overall peak would go down a bit. It's a whole new set of coordination problems, of course, but we don't all go to church on Sundays anymore, we don't all need to be off the same day.
- david-gpu 7y ago
  I get what you are saying, but presumably weekends still exist because families and friends want to do group activities at a time when all are available. If you have children younger than 12 or so you need to be available when they are not in school.
  - kennywinker 7y ago
    If you have children of working age they are likely working service industry jobs and work weekends and evenings anyways.
    - obmelvin 7y ago
      Children that old don't need to be taken care of as much. It makes more sense to optimize for taking chare of younger children.
- b0rsuk 7y ago
  I agree. State-enforced Monday-Friday is just bad. In Poland they pretend it's about the employees, while in reality it's the government throwing a bone to the Church. Polish Church is heavily engaged in politics. But to limit employee abuse (rampant in Poland), the working days would have to be fixed in the contract. Plenty of people want to get something done on weekends when they have the most free time, but can't. Someone who is not a catholic would likely have no objections to working on Sunday.

313 points by joeyespo 7y ago

I would love to but a 10 hour day would increase my time stuck in traffic 50%, so I would actually lose free time overall.

wsc981 7y ago

In The Netherlands /a lot/ of people work 4-day workweeks already [0]. It's not that novel. But it'd be good if more countries could largely make the switch. Due to the progressive tax in The Netherlands, working 5 days instead of 4 doesn't earn /that/ much more money and if you have toddlers, you will spend a day less for daycare, a day extra with your kids and probably have more time for the fun things in life as well. As a salaried employee I often chose a 4-day workweek as well when living in The Netherlands. But once I started freelancing, the 5-day workweek seemed the better choice for me. As freelancer you are taxed a bit less compared to a salaried employee, so there's more incentive to make as much money as possible during the workweek. --- [0]: https://www.equaltimes.org/a-four-day-work-week-is-only-a#.XPxZxC2B27w https://www.equaltimes.org/a-four-day-work-week-is-only-a#.X...

Freak_NL 7y ago
At my small (Dutch) company the standard contract is 36 hours, so most employees work 4 × 8. I have a four month old son, and my wife normally works 4 × 8 as well, but she does 3 × 8 + 4 until we find our bearings with the young one. That means two days of daycare (partly subsidized by the government), one day, each, at home with the child, and one day where she works from home for four hours. This is fairly typical for white collar workers in the Netherlands. Four days is more than enough for me.

frankbreetz 7y ago

There us nothing to disagree with here, but I feel like America is so far to the right that an idea like this will be answered with "people are so lazy" and "you signed a contract" or something similarly ridiculous. My response to all this is wasn't the goal of our forefathers to give us a better life? Doesn't that mean less hours working? Even if my parents grew up in the best economic period of the past thousand years, shouldn't my life be marginally better then their's? Maybe I am a "wuss" compared to the people who stormed Normandy, but maybe those people are wusses compared to medival people, and those people are wusses compared to cavemen, shouldn't you want to create the type of world where your wuss children can survive?

daodedickinson 7y ago
The problem is there are so many over-demand jobs and under-demand jobs because schools stole so many billions from students learning information that could not be put to fruitful use. And those jobs are so unequal in how much work they take. So you have many jobs or situations where people are paid to sit and many like in medicine where more people might die if you want to sleep a healthy amount. The time should fit the job. But the pay should fit the time, and then that's the next problem to sove, and on.

deevolution 7y ago

How do I go about convincing my company to give me a 4 day work week? Will I need to sacrifice part of my wage?

b0rsuk 7y ago

Working as a programmer, I already started de facto shortening my shifts without cheating on my employer: on 7th, and especially 8th hour, I don't write new code anymore unless it's in places I have very solid understanding of. My mind tends to slow down in the final hours, and it takes a lot of effort to come up with something new, and my bug rate increases. What do I do instead? Binge read documentation to learn about new functions and parameters that may make my work easier. Tweak vim configuration. Experiment with new shell commands. Clean up my email inbox and various notifications. These activities still push the work forward, but don't require as much creative juice and there's no consequence for mistake. I would still prefer a 4 day week, but it's the next best thing.

jlawson 7y ago
I do this too. Same principle applies in the gym - you start out the workout with the super strenuous squats and deadlifts, then move to the difficult bench press and dips, then finish with relatively easy bicep curls, tricep pushdown, and cardio. Some things just can't be done effectively unless you're above a certain level of rest; other things can be done even if you're tired. It just makes sense to sort things into the period of time where you can actually do them. In coding this extends all the way to watching lightweight YouTube videos about coding late at night when you're tired.

stmfreak 7y ago

I have been trying to work from home one day per week and wish we could standardize on this. It would reduce traffic 20%. It saves everyone a round trip commute and that is time that can be put to productive use. I also appreciate having a solid day of few meetings. Four day work week would be fine, but I suspect people would just cram more meetings in and it may become less productive.

SteveGerencser 7y ago

My dad ran his factory this way from day one. I forget exactly when they started, late 80s I think, and they always worked 4 10 hour days, Monday thru Thursday, 3 day weekend. Worked great when they went to 2 shifts as well. 4 hour a day downtime for maintenance to do their magic each day. Employees loved it, management loved it, the only ones that complained were some of their very large customers, and even they got used to it after a year of not being able to reach anyone on Friday.

disconnection 7y ago

From my own research, I would say that 4 days is still too much in many cases: http://www.disconnectionist.com/blog/becoming-a-part-time-superhuman.html http://www.disconnectionist.com/blog/becoming-a-part-time-su...

SubiculumCode 7y ago

I submit that the problem is the denominator: 7 The ratios: 5|2. Just right and too little 4|3. Too little and just right Weeks should be 8 days 5|3. Just right and just right. 7 has nothing to do with human health and happiness. Why stick with that week length dogma? 8 days a week, thr Beatles had it right.

johnmarinelli 7y ago

A few months ago, I requested a 32 hour work week at my job. I took the appropriate paycut (I'm a single bachelor that doesn't spend much anyway). Instead of a 4-day workweek, I do ~6.5 hours for 5 days. It's been great and I couldn't recommend it more. edit - I should add that I started the job at 40 hours/week, and after 1 year of being there I asked for 32 hours/week.

tempodox 7y ago

> Critically, they also say workers were 20% more productive. So, there wouldn't even be an actual loss in productivity. Still I predict this recommendation will fall on deaf ears. The problem is not economic or rational, it's cultural and religious. “Society” still adheres to the notion that a person's worth is largely determined by the extent of their economic activities (independent of productivity, obviously). Working less is perceived as a dangerous moral failure (“Idle hands are the devil's workshop”, in christian cultures).

purplezooey 7y ago

The worst part of this is that it will, like most everything else in the US, be an option for the wealthy, some white collar workers and those fortunate enough to live in California while leaving everyone else behind.

throwaway82137 7y ago

Data point from BigCo: almost no-one (at a US BigCo) would take reduced hours for proportionally less pay. I work at a silicon valley BigCo, and I work half-time (20 hrs per week). I got this by just asking for it, though it did require high up approval. I didn't even hide the fact that it was for the purpose of personal projects. I get half my salary, and half my stock and bonus. It is still more than plenty to afford living here for me. I have 1 kid. I've done this for 5 years now, during which time I've spoken to many BigCo colleagues about this, and I'd estimate about 100 of them know my "deal", and so far no-one has followed my path. Note that 80% and 60% are also options. When asked they uniformly say that they couldn't take the reduction in pay. Median total comp for these people is easily 300k. Some don't even have kids. So no, if you want to improve society you'd have to force a 4-day work week by law, otherwise no-one will follow-thru.

ppcelery 7y ago

we are switching to a six-day working week, in china...

triplee 7y ago

I've been saying this for years, so I'm glad I agree with the experts.

xtrimsky1234 7y ago

Would be only great if my kids stay in school 5 days a week. Otherwise it will be just another day I need to entertain my kids. Sure 3 day weekends for traveling would be great, but I already do that with PTOs. I want 6 hour work days 5 times a week. Not 4 work days. And banks being closed an extra day would just be annoying. (not that I go to a physical bank, but just transfers and such).

chemmail 7y ago

I've been doing 4 day work weeks and its like i'm on vacation all the time. We need this.

Causality1 7y ago

I would be happy just to switch to a five day 40 hour work week.

ksec 7y ago

Well in many places and across many industry, it would be great if we could get 5 days work week standard in the first place. Instead, not only just tech industry in China, many are now moving more towards 996.

FabHK 7y ago
where 996 is 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. Jack Ma, defending 996: “To be able to work 996 is a huge bliss,” China’s richest man said. “If you want to join Alibaba, you need to be prepared to work 12 hours a day, otherwise why even bother joining.”
- tathougies 7y ago
  > “If you want to join Alibaba, you need to be prepared to work 12 hours a day, otherwise why even bother joining.” So as someone who works neither 12 hours a day, nor 6 days a week (on paid labour at least), I agree with Jack Ma. I don't see the point in joining a company that is clear it expects this. I think that would be self defeating if you were a person like me.
- teknologist 7y ago
  These characters love to bandy this around because they've done it themselves, once upon a time, to establish their companies. BUT what they fail to mention is that they had a HUGE share in those fledgling companies at that time. Potential reward was HUGE so they put in the time and effort. Employees who join Alibaba aren't given a lick of equity these days.
- dheera 7y ago
  Jack Ma is a massive hypocrite IMO. In another speech Jack Ma said: "Independent thinking, teamwork, care for others, these are the soft parts. Knowledge may not teach you that. That's why I think we should teach our kids sports, music, painting, art -- making sure humans are different from machines." Yeah, the FIRST thing you need to do to do that is to end this 996 horror. 996 IS treating humans like machines. People already have kids and parents to care for; if you want them to engage in sports, music, painting, art, they need normal work hours.

filleokus 7y ago

Have there been largeish tests of company wide four-day work weeks in the software sector? Here in Sweden the movement has mostly been push by the left, and for workers with lower wage/burnout/high amounts of sick leave etc. I think it's mostly been tested in the health care sector. I think it lowered the amount of sick leave, but was too expensive to keep since those type of jobs are very hard to make more productive. I.e, we always need nurses on staff at the ER, or to look after the elderly. Most office-type work seems that it could potentially benefit from this though.

Swizec 7y ago
I don't know about largeish tests, but 37signals is famous for their 4-day workweeks during summer. https://m.signalvnoise.com/why-we-only-work-4-days-a-week-during-summer/ https://m.signalvnoise.com/why-we-only-work-4-days-a-week-du...
- thatfrenchguy 7y ago
  That article makes it sound like they don’t go on vacation in exchange, which is a bad deal. Americans already take pity time off.
astrobe_ 7y ago
France has 35 hours work weeks, so that's four days and half with 8 hours a day [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek

amiga_500 7y ago

But then my rent would drop 20% and I'd just be better off.

jowdones 7y ago

"The dogs bark, but the caravan goes on". "the caravan" == employers.

wrong_variable 7y ago

The idea is good in principal but its going to be gamed to death. Some people derive satisfaction from their work ! Others don't. Also will the pay be the same ? Call me a cynic but knowing business owners they will never accept lower hours for same pay. They will spend all their time figuring out how to game it. All these solutions, studies seem like busy work for though leaders who have nothing better to do. The best solution is quite simple - Universal Basic Income. It can't be gamed as easily and by definition it costs less and gives everybody more freedom at the same time. Normally I feel like rules that restrict freedom ( like you can ONLY work 40 hours ), you have to be skeptical.

perfunctory 7y ago
The same logic could be applied back in the day when 40-hour week was introduced. Yet somehow we managed. There is no reason we can't do again.
- wrong_variable 7y ago
  I never said the introduction of 40-hour week was bad. Its just more economically efficient to have UBI.
rq1 7y ago
You need to take into account the added value of productivity gains: who’s getting it? If I have a better yield for a given task, then I will provide exactly what my employer asked me for the price we agreed. Eg. That means that if we agreed for 8h * 5d for a given task, and manage to do it in 8h * 3d, I obviously won’t work more. At least not before discussing the share of my productivity gains added value. Being zealous is the best way to get fooled. Another thing, these 40h or even 35h in France won’t limit your freedom, you can obviously work more: it’s a disguised pay raise. I think also that’s not ideal if applied uniformly. The price of some goods and services will mechanically rise, and you might end up “richer” but everything got expensive at the same time. It should be bound to the marginal cost of production or the derivative of the price wrt quantity. If you’re sublinear then you’re good to go. Otherwise it’s simply a no no. Sorry if there’s some mistakes, I’m typing on my phone.

peatmoss 7y ago

I think three day weekends would be undeniably good for the health of our society and everyone living in it. I have long (semi-jokingly) professed belief in the Church of the SubGenius. They extol the virtues of slack. I think the intended meaning of “slack” is as in “to slack off.” But I choose to believe in it as slack (i.e. spare capacity) in a system. While some might use that extra day to slack off, plenty more would use that day to invest labors in their communities, maybe to get some exercise, maybe do some neglected repairs around the house. I feel like in the name of efficiency, we’ve purged a lot of slack from the system, but that has left us with a lot of institutions that are at risk for catastrophic failure. For people who are stretched to their breaking point, there needs to be more slack.

meej 7y ago
> But I choose to believe in it as slack (i.e. spare capacity) in a system. This is essentially how Tom DeMarco defines it in his book Slack. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123715.Slack https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123715.Slack
drivingmenuts 7y ago
In the US, if you don't work, you don't get paid, so this sounds like a recipe for disaster for most workers here. Small to medium businesses would potentially be losing 42 days a year of production (52 days - 10 days std vacation time) and that would hurt the profits that they would need to increase wages to make up for that lost day per week just for the workers. Shareholders will still expect year-over-year increase in profits, which won't happen if you're paying people who aren't working. Where exactly is that happiness supposed to come from? Workers may be miserable, but less money equals even more misery, near as I can tell. I guess the rich will be happy.
- kennywinker 7y ago
  1. There are very few jobs where doing them in a miserable state does not greatly reduce the quality and quantity of work you do. 2. Successful businesses are making their owners and shareholders lots of money. As an absolute worst-case scenario, every company takes a 1/5 hit to the profit they produce for their owners. 3. Point #2 means that a four-day work week would do a lot to rebalance the value of capital vs the value of labour. The balance has been tipped towards capital for far too long.

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madspindel 7y ago

"In thirty years America will be a post-industrial society with a per capita income of $ 7,500. There will be only four work days a week of seven hours per day. The year will be comprised of 39 work weeks and 13 weeks of vacation. With weekends and holidays this makes 147 work days a year and 218 free days. All this within a single generation." From The American Challenge by Jean Jacques Servan-Schreiber published in 1967. Too bad this will never happen since most managers are workaholics.

benjohnson 7y ago
I'm my estimation - you can almost live this way if you limit your expectations to someone from 1967 - limited food choices, single car, small home, frugal car-based vacations and heathy living.
- esturk 7y ago
  Funny you added 'healthy living' at the end. It makes you wonder why people would live beyond their means to be unhealthy.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    Because people are terrible at accounting for the future. Shows up in diet, exercise, personal finance, and probably a bunch of other places.
- stunt 7y ago
  I have several Dutch friends who work four-day and don't mind a lower salary in exchange for healthy living.
- imesh 7y ago
  Two problems: I can't afford a 1967 size small home anywhere near me, nor can I also support 3 kids and a non working spouse.
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itamarst 7y ago

You don't have to wait for society to make this happen (and in fact waiting will fail you). This is something many programmers have negotiated on their own (e.g. https://codewithoutrules.com/2019/05/09/part-time-software-developer/ https://codewithoutrules.com/2019/05/09/part-time-software-d...). More broadly this is one of many good reasons for programmers to unionize; even if salaries are high, working hours are still far too long.

ddeokbokki 7y ago
Yup, went contracting for this reason. Code is a passion of my and I love that it's also my trade but I have other personal ventures I need to focus my attention on and I have absolutely no juice left in a regular 5day/40hrs engineering week.
ASlave2Gravity 7y ago
To chime in here, I've only ever worked part-time as a programmer. I'm in the UK, so YMMV, but if you're looking for part-time programming roles (i.e. 4-day working week, what I work) just ask. A lot of places are pretty open about 4 day work weeks. Some places jeer and it's a firm no. But it's worth a stab. Generally, the atmosphere is improving and the stigma seems to be dying off.
- aiisjustanif 7y ago
  UK is almost a standard 35 hour work week anywhere. Salesforce, Tesco, Skyscanner, Google UK, almost anywhere. Why you part time at 4 days?
  - ASlave2Gravity 7y ago
    Well, I work 30 hours a week, so it's five hours less than that! Plus I don't even need to travel on Fridays for a half day. :) I was working 25 hours a week, 5 5-hour days, which was good fun too. But I kept bumping heads with people at work. I'd work 10-3, with no lunch, and people would schedule meetings for 3, or 4, forgetting I wouldn't be there. Jira also didn't make things easy for the accounting people, so I am told... If I could afford to go down to 3 days a week, I would. I'm not quite there yet with my annual salary. I think 3 days a week is the sweet spot. Though I feel my firm would be a tad peeved at 3 days a week. I'm not sure if they'd go for it. But it's a conversation I'm keen to have. Some things aren't geared for pro-rata either. Things like the NHS top up, share schemes, cycle to work, you might lose them when you drop below 25 hours, rather then them scaling down like salary and holiday allowances.

bryanrasmussen 7y ago

I can barely afford working 5 as it is, I have to level up my wages or get an extra source of income, not decrease.

isostatic 7y ago
One reason housing is so expensive now compared to the 50s is that there are 10 working days per household now, and were 6 in the 50s. With more money, the price of limited resources increases to fill the void. If a 3 or 4 day week is mandated, there’s less for housing, it’s the same demand, the same supply, so prices have to come down.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  one reason that prices did not increase to fill the void immediately is that systems have an information lag between events, thus I expect a few years of mismatch. Furthermore some resources are going to increase in cost no matter what because external pressures - climate change - are going to drive up the costs of those resources (primarily food) no matter what.

nameisu 7y ago

what about 996?

RandomInteger4 7y ago

How would this affect service workers?

necovek 7y ago

I've long argued for a 4-day 6-hour-day work week. I've even questioned a few potential employers about it, citing research: I've even offered to take a pay cut (per hour, i.e. hourly rate was cheaper than for 5-day 8-hour day weeks), but nobody was interested. They would frequently say how they are not interested in "part time" work. I'd counter that this is full time work, with efficiency higher than the full time work, because people can focus on intellectually hard problems only for a short while sustainably. Sure, I can put in a couple of weeks of 12h days, but after that, I'd struggle to put in 4h days of quality, focused work (well known as burnout). Similarly, 8h days are not sustainable either, though it takes longer to burn out. As people have noted, the extra time I get would not be spent in pyjamas watching netflix: it would be quality time with my family, working on projects and research, etc (if it wasn't for miserable pay and state of academia, I'd probably be doing research exclusively). Civilization as a whole would benefit as a result if there were more people putting their brains to problems they think matter. And as stated numerous times, even employeers would benefit. But alas, when there's the next guy willing to submit to the "norm", it's hard to get the ball rolling.

loosetypes 7y ago
> "... 12h days, ..." I recently read Sebastian Junger's Tribe, which had many memorable takeaways for me. One, in particular, was the assertion that, historically, subsistence farmers and the like generally only needed to work, on average, 12 hours per week. While I know modern farming practices require copious amounts of work, it is nonetheless an interesting idea. Imagine all the remaining time to just sit in sun or socialize. Progress, what is that?
- SomeOldThrow 7y ago
  > One, in particular, was the assertion that, historically, subsistence farmers and the like generally only needed to work, on average, 12 hours per week. I’ve seen this claim before, and it typically revolves around careful definition of the word “work” rather than any fundamental difference in how we structure activities and priorities. iirc altering the definition to “any work that provides utility” puts the time at 30-40 hours a week. Still very much for a 30 hour/ 4 day work week, but I’ve found that particular argument to be very weak. Granted, the west never seems to count reproductive labor when talking about work, which is itself a problem. Most Americans spend the vast majority of their waking hours in some form of labor.

amelius 7y ago

Good news, except we've justed started a trade war with China.

hobo_mark 7y ago

European here. This summer I'm taking all Fridays off until October (since I had too many holidays left). Yesterday was the second time, I still showed up in the office but just worked on my own projects all day (it's allowed). Once I was in the flow, I've been doing the same on Saturdays (like today) and Sundays (albeit shorter hours). I'm definitely making more progress than when I was only working on it at night, try it if you have the opportunity (and no kids/spouses of course).

sakisv 7y ago

It's kind of disheartening to read things like this on one hand and on the other hand read news that Austria "increased the flexibility" of the working pattern by bumping up the limit of what is considered legal to 12 hours: http://www.mondaq.com/Austria/x/733020/employee+rights+labour+relations/Amendmends+To+The+Working+Hours+Law+The+12Hour+Working+Day+Light http://www.mondaq.com/Austria/x/733020/employee+rights+labou... Given that this is a country which is in the EU I'm very much worried about this being adopted by more countries and becoming the norm, all in the spirit of maintaining our "competitiveness"

asdf21 7y ago
What issue do you have with people working three twelve hour days?

mto 7y ago

I work 25 hours a week remotely as freelancer (although I'm available in slack more or less all the time) and earn nearly twice as much as during my PhD. Only that in more than 3 years I never really got into demotivated/frustrated phases. During my PhD I often felt depressed when sitting in the office all day, never getting a bit of daylight... And paying 300€ a month to have someone walk my dog. I have lots of time for learning new stuff and also teach a course twice a year at a local college for some extra cash. Started when my daughter was born and never stopped ;). Couldn't be happier and I really hope I can somehow keep it that way.

neilv 7y ago

That would work for some kinds of work. But I live to work, and often work 7 days. I can't imagine doing a project with delivery time pressure (like a startup trying to execute in a timely manner), working only 4 days, with a 3-day gap. I'd rather have flexible hours, and an emphasis on working sharp in the hours we do put in -- not have frequent 3-day interruptions of project mental space, and putting off gratification in seeing the project come together.

stevesimmons 7y ago
Me too. I feel very lucky to have found a company that is a perfect fit for my skills and interests, and that is at the right stage that me working hard now will make a big difference. I can't imagine not working 6-7 days a week.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  That's great for the both of you. But workaholics shouldn't get to dictate the norms for the rest of humanity.
  - neilv 7y ago
    Agreed, no one should dictate norms. But I'd rather have expectations of flexibility (e.g., take day off or a short day because didn't sleep well, or family activity, or enjoy the nice weather, or just finished a work crunch), than (I imagine) expectations that, on those 4 days, one had better be there the full day and at least pretending to work. For some jobs, flexibility could mean that someone can arrange with their manager&team to personally have a predictable 4-day schedule.

vermilingua 7y ago

I’m sure this is great for some people, but what about casual workers? What about people that rely on overtime to get by? I can only see this pushing employers into further reducing hours, screwing those people.

coldtea 7y ago
We shouldn't optimize society based on the needs of "people that rely on overtime to get by", we should optimize so that people don't have to rely on overtime to get by. It's like someone was asking back in the day: "Abolishing child labor? What about all those 10 and 12 year olds that depend on their job to eat?"

epaulson 7y ago

We should all aim for 4 days as the ideal instead of 5, but we should also drop the M-F work, S-S weekend ideal too. For large chunks of the workforce they're already working something other than M-F anyway because we want 7 day coverage of our retail and service sectors. More professionals - dentists and veterinarians and insurance offices and you name it - should be open on the "weekend" or should not all dentists need to share the same "weekend", especially if we're dropping down to a 4-on, 3-off standard. If for no other reason, we build a lot of infrastructure for "peak" usage, like rush hour traffic. If we all have the same 3 day weekend that means we have lower "weekend" traffic one more day but the peaks stay the same, but if we better distributed our weekends, overall peak would go down a bit. It's a whole new set of coordination problems, of course, but we don't all go to church on Sundays anymore, we don't all need to be off the same day.

david-gpu 7y ago
I get what you are saying, but presumably weekends still exist because families and friends want to do group activities at a time when all are available. If you have children younger than 12 or so you need to be available when they are not in school.
- kennywinker 7y ago
  If you have children of working age they are likely working service industry jobs and work weekends and evenings anyways.
  - obmelvin 7y ago
    Children that old don't need to be taken care of as much. It makes more sense to optimize for taking chare of younger children.
b0rsuk 7y ago
I agree. State-enforced Monday-Friday is just bad. In Poland they pretend it's about the employees, while in reality it's the government throwing a bone to the Church. Polish Church is heavily engaged in politics. But to limit employee abuse (rampant in Poland), the working days would have to be fixed in the contract. Plenty of people want to get something done on weekends when they have the most free time, but can't. Someone who is not a catholic would likely have no objections to working on Sunday.