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(This is a duplicate of a story posted this past weekend. I want to copy my comment from it for greater visibility.) Fuck everything about 5 day work weeks. I

(This is a duplicate of a story posted this past weekend. I want to copy my comment from it for greater visibility.) Fuck everything about 5 day work weeks. I'll gladly switch to any job that offers a 4 day work week. It's one of the best perks. As someone with ADHD, work days are entirely spent getting work done. There isn't any extra slack or allotment for personal tasks. They're 100% owned by the employer. Weekends offer barely enough time to catch up with chores. There isn't enough time both to catch up and still have fun. I use vacation time to catch up on chores, so that's spent too. I don't want to spend most of my life working. I feel like a slave, and now my youth is almost gone. I don't care if it's a 10hr/4day schedule or a 9hr/4day 8hr/4day with less pay, I want an extra day for myself. I'm an excellent engineer aside from my ADHD quirks, and I'll go anywhere that offers this where I live. My own startup (I almost have the capital for a long runway) will be 9hr/4day. Fuck everything about 5 day work weeks.

thefrog 7y ago
You sound like a victim.
jacquesm 7y ago
You can contract for 4 days per week at plenty of employers. It's called a part-time job.
- jhenkens 7y ago
  Which is the problem. We're trying to say we've generally exhausted our productive capabilities after 4 days of work per week, which is what this article was saying as well. If I've contributed my maximum amount in 4 days rather than 5, it should not be called part time. Part time should be reserved for instances where you are indeed contributing less than a full amount per week, such that you could hold two part time jobs.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Well, if enough people do it then it will be full time. It's more about what is considered to be the norm than anything else, and of course you will get paid for four days, not five. But over time pay will go up again and then we can repeat the cycle with three days. The interesting question is not 6, 5 or 4 but what the lower limit is. I suspect still quite a bit lower than 4.
- drakythe 7y ago
  I'm gonna borrow OP's mindset for a second: Fuck this. In the United States the benefits of full time employment are mandatory if you want to live a much less stressful life. Tying benefits to employment has given employers far too much control over their employees lives, without a huge savings or secondary income source anyone without insurance is one bad day away from bankruptcy (and too many people /with/ benefits are as well). If a 4 day work week lowers stress and increases productivity that much, I don't see why many industries shouldn't adopt it. And don't tell people that "You have a choice, just get a part time job instead". Thats not a choice, thats a financial death sentence.
  - realbarack 7y ago
    I agree with your sentiment regarding benefits in the U.S. Couldn't companies provide the important benefits (healthcare, 401k matching) to employees who worked a 4-day week as well? One potential issue is that I think there are fewer legal requirements, but competitive employers already provide benefits that exceed the legal minima.
    - beat 7y ago
      Well, they could, but. Benefits, particularly health care, are very expensive for employers as well as employees, so employers, especially for lower wage work, look for ways to cut that. Not-quite-full-time is one way that's done. Getting health insurance, whether public or private, out of the hands of employers is probably the single best thing that could be done for working conditions in America.
      - lowercased 7y ago
        amen
    - Osiris 7y ago
      My understanding of the current law is benefits are mandatory for employees working more than 32 hours a week. I don't know what the rules are for exempt employees.
    - 7y ago
- rectang 7y ago
  For the purposes of health care in the US, 30 hours is the threshold for full time. At my last gig I was 32 hours a week and considered a full time employee. So the question is really why some employers insist on the full 40 rather than being open to a range from 30 to 40.
izolate 7y ago
Out of curiosity, why do you feel it necessary to use a throwaway? I echo your thoughts entirely and feel strongly enough about them to attribute them to my name. I think we (as a society/industry) need to start publicly having this discussion.
- throwawayforme1 7y ago
  ADHD is considered a mental illness. That's why.
  - IggleSniggle 7y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to create a throwaway to share. I get why people hide what society has deemed "mental illness." It requires powerful people that are non-normative to be open about their unique condition for these conditions to be widely understood to be something folks should want on their team rather than something to blacklist.
  - czbond 7y ago
    Yes - it can have that stigma. ADHD is present, however, in many entrepreneurs. It can also be a hindrance in SaaS startups, I'm mentioning it as a help. Pre-plan to have someone help with the details and keep someone on track. You either focus on opportunity, or have a project manager. I am not ADHD/ADD, but have interacted with a few in this situation..
    - bobly_today 7y ago
      As someone with ADHD, this is strikes me as overblown. I certainly wouldn’t require dedicated personnel to compensate for my ADHD. Especially if medicated.
      - codesnik 7y ago
        and as someone undiagnosed, but very probably with it too, someone with less variable productivity than me, and in the same time not my manager, would be of enormous value to me. That shouldn't be a "dedicated personnel", as an assistant or whatever, but project manager for example would be helpful for other people too. I'll certainly try to have such an arrangement at some point.
logfromblammo 7y ago
...as though the 7th through 10th hours of those days will be the same quality as the first 6. We do not need to assume that a 40-hour work week must be preserved in order to cut the work days per week to 4. A 6 hour x 4 day work week is 75% the regular work day and 80% of the regular work week, but I bet it gets a lot more than 60% of the regular work done. That is largely cutting out the unproductive "slack time", and giving it back to the employees so they don't have to look busy when they are already spent for the day/week. If you need to squeeze more out of the workforce, please hire more employees, and worry less about their specific "qualifications". Instead, spend more on management recruiting. Get managers who can coordinate the efforts of people working together asynchronously. Just like asynchronous programming, it takes a little bit more skill than just managing everyone together in the same office location, at the same time, doing the "manager walk" and demanding status reports and status meetings. And employees are universally happier with managers that are more skilled at management.
Vysero 7y ago
TBH I get 90% of my work done in the first 4-5 hours at work and then my productivity drops of significantly. When I was an independent roofing contractor me and my employees only worked in good conditions and only worked 4 days a week. I always paid them for 40 hours. I did really well as an independent contractor despite the offset in time.
- shaklee3 7y ago
  Do you mind me asking why you got off of it? Housing downturn?
  - dillonmckay 7y ago
    Not OP, but that is quite a physically demanding job with alot of time in the sun.
    - blotter_paper 7y ago
      Bad on the back and knees, high risk of falling, strokes from heat for older roofers, and the careless ones start throwing hammers around. (I'm not a roofer, but used to be a jack of all trades that sometimes did roofing alongside actual roofers.)
  - magashna 7y ago
    No one wants to roof forever. It's hard and dangerous.
  - Vysero 7y ago
    Yes as other have stated the profession is rather hard on your body. I suffered some serious back problems as a result of the manual labor and decided to peruse my interests in engineering instead.
ponsin 7y ago
Be careful starting a startup. It will be hard to find an investor willing to invest in a company whose founder only works 4/7 days a week
- dillonmckay 7y ago
  Sounds more like a lifestyle business strategy.
  - methehack 7y ago
    I understand this thinking. I think, though, that the more we understand about cognition (and sleep and health in general and its impact on thinking), the more we'll tend toward somewhat lighter hours (more like 30-40 hours a week even in a startup situation). Not because we can get away with it, but because the output is actually superior. From a business strategy standpoint, my experience has been that sometimes companies try to compensate for poor strategy by piling on the hours. To me, it's like trying to do push ups to solve math problems faster. Similarly, I have noticed that strategic structural soundness is vastly more important than hours worked. When the structure is there, all your efforts are leveraged many times over such that, effectively, 30 hours a week becomes more like 300. Hard work is important and satisfying but duration is not the real measure we should look at, imo.
- magashna 7y ago
  Not everyone wants to be a CEO.
- edf13 7y ago
  Not every startup seeks investors
- strictfp 7y ago
  Guilt tripping much? Also, that work ethic attitude isn't exactly healthy, just a chimera confusing bullheadedness with productivity.
ryanmercer 7y ago
>I don't want to spend most of my life working. I feel like a slave I've never understood this line of thinking. Providing for yourself is being a contributing member of the species, work is a means of providing for yourself. For all of human history you've either had to get up every day and go be productive bringing resources in or you had to depend upon someone else to do it for you. I see this "working is slavery" attitude constantly in /r/leanfire and other personal finance subs and I just don't get it. Every single thing you use required labor to come into existence. Your phone, your computer, where you live, the clothes you are wearing, the food you eat, all of that required human labor to produce. Worse, I often seen the 'work is slavery' form 6-figure salary types (at least in /r/leanfire) that have great benefits and are griping they won't be able to retire by 35 or from people that are on their first job (usually retail) and think it is unfair they can't sit at home playing video games and having all their needs met. This sort of mentality can't be good for the future of mankind. Sitting in an air conditioned building, listening to spotify, while you decide if you want to go get the catered lunch or sit in your cubicle while you screw around on HN/reddit and pretend to work is NOT slavery. If you genuinely feel this way, go get a job throwing trucks/planes in the dead of summer or go get a landscaping job for a few weeks. Seriously, go get a manual labor job part time on the weekends and realize there are people doing that 40, 50, 60 hours a week all year long. Go tell someone from the 1950s, 1850s, 1750s, 1650s how hard you have it and how bad it is having to sit at a computer all day in a climate controlled building. They'd look at you in utter disbelief and beg you to tell them how to have such a wonderful life. I've had a job since I was 12 and working full time since the day I turned 18. I'm grateful that I get to work, grateful that I am able to provide for myself, grateful that I do get to sit a desk and am no longer humping a backpack full of diesel weed eating and digging graves. I'll take sitting at a monitor over getting sunburn to the point of blistered skin from being outside working all day with no cover any day.
- Miner49er 7y ago
  When you take a normal job you're submitting yourself to a tyranny. The only true power you have is the ability to quit, but depending on your circumstance, you may not even have that (seems most people don't). Plus, you quit and you'll just have to find a different tyranny. That's how it is for most people anyway. Sure there's other options like starting a business or whatever, but those are restrictive in their own ways and aren't possible for most people. There's no reason work needs to be structured in the tyrannical matter it is. Work could be democratic, but it's not. Obviously work is necessary, but not _all_ work is, especially in today's world. Society as a whole is taking the path of working more in order to consume more, instead of working less and having more free time. It's hard to escape this. Most part-time jobs are minimum wage type jobs.
macspoofing 7y ago
>I don't want to spend most of my life working. I feel like a slave, and now my youth is almost gone. That's a first-world problem if I ever saw one. You're going to work most of your life because if you don't somebody else will have to support you. Very few people can provide for their lifestyle without working (it can be done, but it can be very hard and would require a sacrifice of some of the comforts of modern-day). And yes, you can do 4-day work-weeks. Become a contractor and then you can set your own hours and your own schedule though you'll have to find your customers. >Weekends offer barely enough time to catch up with chores. There isn't enough time both to catch up and still have fun. I use vacation time to catch up on chores, so that's spent too Please don't tell me you're single because if you're single or in a relationship without children, you can easily get caught up on your 'chores'.
- dageshi 7y ago
  You missed the AHDH bit, I can't speak for everyone with ADHD but I understand what op is is saying. With ADHD you've got to constantly force yourself to remain focused on whatever task you're meant to be doing while your mind really just wants to wander off. Sometimes you fall into "flow" on whatever you're working on and everything's great until that task is finished then you've got to mentally whip yourself to move onto the next. For op, chores are basically just more work, more things for him to mentally whip himself to concentrate on. Op wants a break from that mental process of forcing his concentration but can't because it's the only way he knows to actually make himself do anything useful.
  - anon9001 7y ago
    That's also exactly my experience. Thankfully (maybe?) society recognizes that I'm too mentally deficient to do it on my own, so they pump me full of amphetamines so that I can be a good boy at and get my work done. It would be a worse situation for everyone if I wasn't given the drugs, but there's something awfully dystopian about the whole thing. I can't wait to be done forever.
  - macspoofing 7y ago
    >You missed the AHDH bit I didn't miss it. Every single person is going to have something they need to work through that others don't. ADHD is a cross that OP needs to bear and he has to learn to deal with it the same as a single mother of 2 has to juggle raising her children and providing for them, or a recent immigrant may have to work through language and cultural barriers while working their job and sending money back home for their family. >Op wants a break from that mental process of forcing his concentration We all want it to be a little easier, but sometimes life doesn't give you that option. And OP didn't make it easy to empathize with him when he shifted the blame on the world and likening himself to a slave because he has to work 5 days a week (leaving not enough time to do 'chores' and 'still have fun') until retirement.
JJMcJ 7y ago
Worked 4 x 9 at one job, so only 36 hours. Would have gladly worked 4 x 10 for the joy that having a day off added to my life.
metalliqaz 7y ago
You're going to have a startup that doesn't demand life-consuming overtime? I find that hard to believe.
- treyfitty 7y ago
  I know plenty of non unicorn startup founders that don’t work overtime, and they net about $1Mm per year. Sure, not a path to billionaire status, but not too shabby either.
  - bernierocks 7y ago
    That doesn't sound like a startup. It sounds like they are running a lifestyle business, which isn't a bad thing. Startups, by definition, try to scale up quickly..which means lots of money (investors) and lots of time (overtime and long hours).
    - riffraff 7y ago
      I don't understand this point of view. Developers generally agree that it's better to spend some time writing tests, as even if it increases our latency in the small term, it will improve output it in the long term. Yet, we also seem to think that it's totally fine to sacrifice mental and physical being for the sake of short term gains instead of long term ones? I am not saying one should not do the occasional push, but surely as a founder it's better to work 40 hours a week and keep yourself sane, than push yourself into burn out after 1 year of 70h/week and no holidays?
    - hervature 7y ago
      Show me a definition of startup from a reputable source that claims that scaling up quickly is a requirement. All companies start off by being a startup [0] [0] - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/startup.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/startup.asp
- kbenson 7y ago
  Not everyone thinks of the same thing when they think startup. I think the main difference is that some people also include starting a lifestyle business, or a business that's much less ambitious in scope than being a globally known name. There's nothing wrong with a business that employs less than 20 people, and nothing that necessarily means it has to grow.
moeamaya 7y ago
We do 4-day (32 hour) work weeks at Monograph, and we've been doing it for 3 years now. I believe we're one of the only companies in SF that are advocates for working less, but more productively. Similar to Microsoft, we only have one 45-min meeting each week and then everything else is heads down work. To maintain efficiency, we also have strict Slack protocols in place to keep everyone in deep work throughout the day. (No @ or DMs, everyone checks Slack at 11am and 4pm). The major downside so far has been customer support, which the founders still manage to maintain our response rate. Oh and we're hiring! If you're frontend engineer and like 4-day weeks + side projects, reach out directly moe@monograph.io https://monograph.io/jobs/frontend/ https://monograph.io/jobs/frontend/
- AhtiK 7y ago
  The team behind Todoist came out with a product called Twist, meant for more async and productivity focused approach and directly going against Slack distractions. I wonder if there are companies who have tried it in a bit bigger scale or why isn't Twist more known?
  - moeamaya 7y ago
    Thanks for the suggestion, it does seem like a compelling product. Your same questions about working at a bigger scale also give me pause to move our team off of Slack.
- TomK32 7y ago
  Re customer support: A company-wide four-day week doesn't mean that everyone has to work the same four days. Actually, there might be people who'd prefer their weekend to be Sunday to Tuesday for some obscure reason.
- mylons 7y ago
  right on.
- andy_ppp 7y ago
  Will you consider people from London who would need a H1B?
bsanr2 7y ago
Don't sell yourself short. The economy could support everyone working four 8-hour days or five 6-hour days at the same pay (or, rather, with the same median pay, better distributed) as now. Our productivity gains over the past 4 decades prove it. People who want to work more should be able to, but we generally need a massive reevaluation of what work in America is worth, in favor of labor. We're giving up way too much because we're afraid.
- vosper 7y ago
  > People who want to work more should be able to, but we generally need a massive reevaluation of what work in America is worth, in favor of labor. We also need a reevaluation of what work is worth, in terms of self-worth and position in society. We're too far on the side of "you are your job" (and its less-savory friend "your net worth is your worth").
paco_sinbad 7y ago
Your own startup will probably be 12hr/7day until it's funded or otherwise self-sufficient. It could be 9hr/4day, and you will do that until you run out of capital after 1800 work hours.
buboard 7y ago
OK don't get mad - just work remotely
technofiend 7y ago
I worked at Chevron when they were first toying with 4/40s and 9/80s. The firm decided people could either choose Monday or Friday off. It was glorious! Suddenly 40% of the schedule was free of meetings since there was no way to get a quorum on Monday or Friday.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
I'm with you, though I'd go further and say that 3 day work week is probably the maximum I could be content with. I'd gladly trade half my salary for half my work hours back.
dang 7y ago
Please don't copy/paste comments on HN. Threads are supposed to be conversations. In conversation, people don't play recordings of previous conversations. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20copy%20paste&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- loco5niner 7y ago
  > In conversation, people don't play recordings of previous conversations. Although, sometimes we wish we could.
caiocaiocaio 7y ago
Slightly off topic, but I was just thinking about how when I was young, I was under the impression that most of my work week would be showing up on time, and doing work for roughly 40 hours a week. In my 10+ years of office experience I never even come close to 20 hours of actual work in a week, even if I was there for 40-60 hours. Usually, half the time or more was dedicated to office politics and making people who need to constantly socialize feel good about themselves with various meetings and team-building exercises and chit-chat. During one particularly bad period of time, work often only happened the little gap between morning meetings and noon because certain people would come back from lunch pissed out of their minds and make it impossible for anyone to do anything. I never had a problem with the actual work, but the non-work I was putting most of my time and effort into was exhausting and lead to long bouts of depressions. Now that I'm freelancing from home, with no commute and no babysitting egos, not only am I spending most of my work time on work, but the time I do spend is about 10x more productive, due to lack of office (and commute) stress.
not_a_cop75 7y ago
It's easy to say that, but the competition that exists IS slave labor and is from countries that don't care about people dying, organ harvesting, etc. I won't name them out of fear of censorship but if you've been around you know who they are.

thefrog 7y ago

You sound like a victim.

jacquesm 7y ago

You can contract for 4 days per week at plenty of employers. It's called a part-time job.

jhenkens 7y ago
Which is the problem. We're trying to say we've generally exhausted our productive capabilities after 4 days of work per week, which is what this article was saying as well. If I've contributed my maximum amount in 4 days rather than 5, it should not be called part time. Part time should be reserved for instances where you are indeed contributing less than a full amount per week, such that you could hold two part time jobs.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Well, if enough people do it then it will be full time. It's more about what is considered to be the norm than anything else, and of course you will get paid for four days, not five. But over time pay will go up again and then we can repeat the cycle with three days. The interesting question is not 6, 5 or 4 but what the lower limit is. I suspect still quite a bit lower than 4.
drakythe 7y ago
I'm gonna borrow OP's mindset for a second: Fuck this. In the United States the benefits of full time employment are mandatory if you want to live a much less stressful life. Tying benefits to employment has given employers far too much control over their employees lives, without a huge savings or secondary income source anyone without insurance is one bad day away from bankruptcy (and too many people /with/ benefits are as well). If a 4 day work week lowers stress and increases productivity that much, I don't see why many industries shouldn't adopt it. And don't tell people that "You have a choice, just get a part time job instead". Thats not a choice, thats a financial death sentence.
- realbarack 7y ago
  I agree with your sentiment regarding benefits in the U.S. Couldn't companies provide the important benefits (healthcare, 401k matching) to employees who worked a 4-day week as well? One potential issue is that I think there are fewer legal requirements, but competitive employers already provide benefits that exceed the legal minima.
  - beat 7y ago
    Well, they could, but. Benefits, particularly health care, are very expensive for employers as well as employees, so employers, especially for lower wage work, look for ways to cut that. Not-quite-full-time is one way that's done. Getting health insurance, whether public or private, out of the hands of employers is probably the single best thing that could be done for working conditions in America.
    - lowercased 7y ago
      amen
  - Osiris 7y ago
    My understanding of the current law is benefits are mandatory for employees working more than 32 hours a week. I don't know what the rules are for exempt employees.
  - 7y ago
rectang 7y ago
For the purposes of health care in the US, 30 hours is the threshold for full time. At my last gig I was 32 hours a week and considered a full time employee. So the question is really why some employers insist on the full 40 rather than being open to a range from 30 to 40.

izolate 7y ago

Out of curiosity, why do you feel it necessary to use a throwaway? I echo your thoughts entirely and feel strongly enough about them to attribute them to my name. I think we (as a society/industry) need to start publicly having this discussion.

throwawayforme1 7y ago
ADHD is considered a mental illness. That's why.
- IggleSniggle 7y ago
  Thanks for taking the time to create a throwaway to share. I get why people hide what society has deemed "mental illness." It requires powerful people that are non-normative to be open about their unique condition for these conditions to be widely understood to be something folks should want on their team rather than something to blacklist.
- czbond 7y ago
  Yes - it can have that stigma. ADHD is present, however, in many entrepreneurs. It can also be a hindrance in SaaS startups, I'm mentioning it as a help. Pre-plan to have someone help with the details and keep someone on track. You either focus on opportunity, or have a project manager. I am not ADHD/ADD, but have interacted with a few in this situation..
  - bobly_today 7y ago
    As someone with ADHD, this is strikes me as overblown. I certainly wouldn’t require dedicated personnel to compensate for my ADHD. Especially if medicated.
    - codesnik 7y ago
      and as someone undiagnosed, but very probably with it too, someone with less variable productivity than me, and in the same time not my manager, would be of enormous value to me. That shouldn't be a "dedicated personnel", as an assistant or whatever, but project manager for example would be helpful for other people too. I'll certainly try to have such an arrangement at some point.

logfromblammo 7y ago

...as though the 7th through 10th hours of those days will be the same quality as the first 6. We do not need to assume that a 40-hour work week must be preserved in order to cut the work days per week to 4. A 6 hour x 4 day work week is 75% the regular work day and 80% of the regular work week, but I bet it gets a lot more than 60% of the regular work done. That is largely cutting out the unproductive "slack time", and giving it back to the employees so they don't have to look busy when they are already spent for the day/week. If you need to squeeze more out of the workforce, please hire more employees, and worry less about their specific "qualifications". Instead, spend more on management recruiting. Get managers who can coordinate the efforts of people working together asynchronously. Just like asynchronous programming, it takes a little bit more skill than just managing everyone together in the same office location, at the same time, doing the "manager walk" and demanding status reports and status meetings. And employees are universally happier with managers that are more skilled at management.

Vysero 7y ago

TBH I get 90% of my work done in the first 4-5 hours at work and then my productivity drops of significantly. When I was an independent roofing contractor me and my employees only worked in good conditions and only worked 4 days a week. I always paid them for 40 hours. I did really well as an independent contractor despite the offset in time.

shaklee3 7y ago
Do you mind me asking why you got off of it? Housing downturn?
- dillonmckay 7y ago
  Not OP, but that is quite a physically demanding job with alot of time in the sun.
  - blotter_paper 7y ago
    Bad on the back and knees, high risk of falling, strokes from heat for older roofers, and the careless ones start throwing hammers around. (I'm not a roofer, but used to be a jack of all trades that sometimes did roofing alongside actual roofers.)
- magashna 7y ago
  No one wants to roof forever. It's hard and dangerous.
- Vysero 7y ago
  Yes as other have stated the profession is rather hard on your body. I suffered some serious back problems as a result of the manual labor and decided to peruse my interests in engineering instead.

ponsin 7y ago

Be careful starting a startup. It will be hard to find an investor willing to invest in a company whose founder only works 4/7 days a week

dillonmckay 7y ago
Sounds more like a lifestyle business strategy.
- methehack 7y ago
  I understand this thinking. I think, though, that the more we understand about cognition (and sleep and health in general and its impact on thinking), the more we'll tend toward somewhat lighter hours (more like 30-40 hours a week even in a startup situation). Not because we can get away with it, but because the output is actually superior. From a business strategy standpoint, my experience has been that sometimes companies try to compensate for poor strategy by piling on the hours. To me, it's like trying to do push ups to solve math problems faster. Similarly, I have noticed that strategic structural soundness is vastly more important than hours worked. When the structure is there, all your efforts are leveraged many times over such that, effectively, 30 hours a week becomes more like 300. Hard work is important and satisfying but duration is not the real measure we should look at, imo.
magashna 7y ago
Not everyone wants to be a CEO.
edf13 7y ago
Not every startup seeks investors
strictfp 7y ago
Guilt tripping much? Also, that work ethic attitude isn't exactly healthy, just a chimera confusing bullheadedness with productivity.

ryanmercer 7y ago

>I don't want to spend most of my life working. I feel like a slave I've never understood this line of thinking. Providing for yourself is being a contributing member of the species, work is a means of providing for yourself. For all of human history you've either had to get up every day and go be productive bringing resources in or you had to depend upon someone else to do it for you. I see this "working is slavery" attitude constantly in /r/leanfire and other personal finance subs and I just don't get it. Every single thing you use required labor to come into existence. Your phone, your computer, where you live, the clothes you are wearing, the food you eat, all of that required human labor to produce. Worse, I often seen the 'work is slavery' form 6-figure salary types (at least in /r/leanfire) that have great benefits and are griping they won't be able to retire by 35 or from people that are on their first job (usually retail) and think it is unfair they can't sit at home playing video games and having all their needs met. This sort of mentality can't be good for the future of mankind. Sitting in an air conditioned building, listening to spotify, while you decide if you want to go get the catered lunch or sit in your cubicle while you screw around on HN/reddit and pretend to work is NOT slavery. If you genuinely feel this way, go get a job throwing trucks/planes in the dead of summer or go get a landscaping job for a few weeks. Seriously, go get a manual labor job part time on the weekends and realize there are people doing that 40, 50, 60 hours a week all year long. Go tell someone from the 1950s, 1850s, 1750s, 1650s how hard you have it and how bad it is having to sit at a computer all day in a climate controlled building. They'd look at you in utter disbelief and beg you to tell them how to have such a wonderful life. I've had a job since I was 12 and working full time since the day I turned 18. I'm grateful that I get to work, grateful that I am able to provide for myself, grateful that I do get to sit a desk and am no longer humping a backpack full of diesel weed eating and digging graves. I'll take sitting at a monitor over getting sunburn to the point of blistered skin from being outside working all day with no cover any day.

Miner49er 7y ago
When you take a normal job you're submitting yourself to a tyranny. The only true power you have is the ability to quit, but depending on your circumstance, you may not even have that (seems most people don't). Plus, you quit and you'll just have to find a different tyranny. That's how it is for most people anyway. Sure there's other options like starting a business or whatever, but those are restrictive in their own ways and aren't possible for most people. There's no reason work needs to be structured in the tyrannical matter it is. Work could be democratic, but it's not. Obviously work is necessary, but not _all_ work is, especially in today's world. Society as a whole is taking the path of working more in order to consume more, instead of working less and having more free time. It's hard to escape this. Most part-time jobs are minimum wage type jobs.

macspoofing 7y ago

>I don't want to spend most of my life working. I feel like a slave, and now my youth is almost gone. That's a first-world problem if I ever saw one. You're going to work most of your life because if you don't somebody else will have to support you. Very few people can provide for their lifestyle without working (it can be done, but it can be very hard and would require a sacrifice of some of the comforts of modern-day). And yes, you can do 4-day work-weeks. Become a contractor and then you can set your own hours and your own schedule though you'll have to find your customers. >Weekends offer barely enough time to catch up with chores. There isn't enough time both to catch up and still have fun. I use vacation time to catch up on chores, so that's spent too Please don't tell me you're single because if you're single or in a relationship without children, you can easily get caught up on your 'chores'.

dageshi 7y ago
You missed the AHDH bit, I can't speak for everyone with ADHD but I understand what op is is saying. With ADHD you've got to constantly force yourself to remain focused on whatever task you're meant to be doing while your mind really just wants to wander off. Sometimes you fall into "flow" on whatever you're working on and everything's great until that task is finished then you've got to mentally whip yourself to move onto the next. For op, chores are basically just more work, more things for him to mentally whip himself to concentrate on. Op wants a break from that mental process of forcing his concentration but can't because it's the only way he knows to actually make himself do anything useful.
- anon9001 7y ago
  That's also exactly my experience. Thankfully (maybe?) society recognizes that I'm too mentally deficient to do it on my own, so they pump me full of amphetamines so that I can be a good boy at and get my work done. It would be a worse situation for everyone if I wasn't given the drugs, but there's something awfully dystopian about the whole thing. I can't wait to be done forever.
- macspoofing 7y ago
  >You missed the AHDH bit I didn't miss it. Every single person is going to have something they need to work through that others don't. ADHD is a cross that OP needs to bear and he has to learn to deal with it the same as a single mother of 2 has to juggle raising her children and providing for them, or a recent immigrant may have to work through language and cultural barriers while working their job and sending money back home for their family. >Op wants a break from that mental process of forcing his concentration We all want it to be a little easier, but sometimes life doesn't give you that option. And OP didn't make it easy to empathize with him when he shifted the blame on the world and likening himself to a slave because he has to work 5 days a week (leaving not enough time to do 'chores' and 'still have fun') until retirement.

JJMcJ 7y ago

Worked 4 x 9 at one job, so only 36 hours. Would have gladly worked 4 x 10 for the joy that having a day off added to my life.

metalliqaz 7y ago

You're going to have a startup that doesn't demand life-consuming overtime? I find that hard to believe.

treyfitty 7y ago
I know plenty of non unicorn startup founders that don’t work overtime, and they net about $1Mm per year. Sure, not a path to billionaire status, but not too shabby either.
- bernierocks 7y ago
  That doesn't sound like a startup. It sounds like they are running a lifestyle business, which isn't a bad thing. Startups, by definition, try to scale up quickly..which means lots of money (investors) and lots of time (overtime and long hours).
  - riffraff 7y ago
    I don't understand this point of view. Developers generally agree that it's better to spend some time writing tests, as even if it increases our latency in the small term, it will improve output it in the long term. Yet, we also seem to think that it's totally fine to sacrifice mental and physical being for the sake of short term gains instead of long term ones? I am not saying one should not do the occasional push, but surely as a founder it's better to work 40 hours a week and keep yourself sane, than push yourself into burn out after 1 year of 70h/week and no holidays?
  - hervature 7y ago
    Show me a definition of startup from a reputable source that claims that scaling up quickly is a requirement. All companies start off by being a startup [0] [0] - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/startup.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/startup.asp
kbenson 7y ago
Not everyone thinks of the same thing when they think startup. I think the main difference is that some people also include starting a lifestyle business, or a business that's much less ambitious in scope than being a globally known name. There's nothing wrong with a business that employs less than 20 people, and nothing that necessarily means it has to grow.

moeamaya 7y ago

We do 4-day (32 hour) work weeks at Monograph, and we've been doing it for 3 years now. I believe we're one of the only companies in SF that are advocates for working less, but more productively. Similar to Microsoft, we only have one 45-min meeting each week and then everything else is heads down work. To maintain efficiency, we also have strict Slack protocols in place to keep everyone in deep work throughout the day. (No @ or DMs, everyone checks Slack at 11am and 4pm). The major downside so far has been customer support, which the founders still manage to maintain our response rate. Oh and we're hiring! If you're frontend engineer and like 4-day weeks + side projects, reach out directly moe@monograph.io https://monograph.io/jobs/frontend/ https://monograph.io/jobs/frontend/

AhtiK 7y ago
The team behind Todoist came out with a product called Twist, meant for more async and productivity focused approach and directly going against Slack distractions. I wonder if there are companies who have tried it in a bit bigger scale or why isn't Twist more known?
- moeamaya 7y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion, it does seem like a compelling product. Your same questions about working at a bigger scale also give me pause to move our team off of Slack.
TomK32 7y ago
Re customer support: A company-wide four-day week doesn't mean that everyone has to work the same four days. Actually, there might be people who'd prefer their weekend to be Sunday to Tuesday for some obscure reason.
mylons 7y ago
right on.
andy_ppp 7y ago
Will you consider people from London who would need a H1B?

bsanr2 7y ago

Don't sell yourself short. The economy could support everyone working four 8-hour days or five 6-hour days at the same pay (or, rather, with the same median pay, better distributed) as now. Our productivity gains over the past 4 decades prove it. People who want to work more should be able to, but we generally need a massive reevaluation of what work in America is worth, in favor of labor. We're giving up way too much because we're afraid.

vosper 7y ago
> People who want to work more should be able to, but we generally need a massive reevaluation of what work in America is worth, in favor of labor. We also need a reevaluation of what work is worth, in terms of self-worth and position in society. We're too far on the side of "you are your job" (and its less-savory friend "your net worth is your worth").

paco_sinbad 7y ago

Your own startup will probably be 12hr/7day until it's funded or otherwise self-sufficient. It could be 9hr/4day, and you will do that until you run out of capital after 1800 work hours.

buboard 7y ago

OK don't get mad - just work remotely

technofiend 7y ago

I worked at Chevron when they were first toying with 4/40s and 9/80s. The firm decided people could either choose Monday or Friday off. It was glorious! Suddenly 40% of the schedule was free of meetings since there was no way to get a quorum on Monday or Friday.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

I'm with you, though I'd go further and say that 3 day work week is probably the maximum I could be content with. I'd gladly trade half my salary for half my work hours back.

dang 7y ago

Please don't copy/paste comments on HN. Threads are supposed to be conversations. In conversation, people don't play recordings of previous conversations. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20copy%20paste&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

loco5niner 7y ago
> In conversation, people don't play recordings of previous conversations. Although, sometimes we wish we could.

caiocaiocaio 7y ago

Slightly off topic, but I was just thinking about how when I was young, I was under the impression that most of my work week would be showing up on time, and doing work for roughly 40 hours a week. In my 10+ years of office experience I never even come close to 20 hours of actual work in a week, even if I was there for 40-60 hours. Usually, half the time or more was dedicated to office politics and making people who need to constantly socialize feel good about themselves with various meetings and team-building exercises and chit-chat. During one particularly bad period of time, work often only happened the little gap between morning meetings and noon because certain people would come back from lunch pissed out of their minds and make it impossible for anyone to do anything. I never had a problem with the actual work, but the non-work I was putting most of my time and effort into was exhausting and lead to long bouts of depressions. Now that I'm freelancing from home, with no commute and no babysitting egos, not only am I spending most of my work time on work, but the time I do spend is about 10x more productive, due to lack of office (and commute) stress.

not_a_cop75 7y ago

It's easy to say that, but the competition that exists IS slave labor and is from countries that don't care about people dying, organ harvesting, etc. I won't name them out of fear of censorship but if you've been around you know who they are.