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Great question. I run a productivity software startup, and my cofounder brought up the 4-day week idea. We opted not to pursue it. It came down to a few things:

Great question. I run a productivity software startup, and my cofounder brought up the 4-day week idea. We opted not to pursue it. It came down to a few things: - Onboarding / Collaboration overhead (this compounds) An additional dev is one more to manage, one more to onboard, one more to keep happy, buy hardware and software licenses for, and all that for the same number of man-hours. - Work compounds. A programmer working on a system or feature for 10 days does the deepest learning in days 7-10. The internals, nitty-gritty stuff. For a 3 day a week employee, the same insights are gained in week 4 (10 days) instead of week 2 (10 days). Of course, I used 10 days as an example, but true expertise is built and compounded over months. It doesn’t matter how many 3-day-a-week hires we have, this process won’t be sped up. - Compensation / Performance - how do we do this in an equitable way? Again, comes down to compounding impact. If 5 day a week employee makes 5/8 of the impact at the same productivity rate as 3 day a week employee - does that mean they get promoted / rewarded at a different rate? - Availability / Scheduling - 30 hours is about 3.5 work days a week. It’s an added pain to manage and track who is going to be working when. If your company uses a system for taxes, payroll, vacation accrual, insurance, etc, chances are it is built for 8 by 5 employees first and foremost. - Various laws around part time and full time workers, based on hours in some jurisdictions. I think 28 hours is the cutoff here in Ontario?

nirushiv 6y ago
I took a look at your website. It’s quite clear, and I think a lot of people would love such an arrangement, but a word of warning: BusinessInsider is not a reliable citation - I would try to dig up the original study. Similarly for Forbes - it has lost a lot of the allure since their website hosts a lot of low-quality content now. Try to find more reputable sources, starting with the studies themselves, NYT, Time, etc
- philmcp 6y ago
  Thanks, Ill look for a better citation
philmcp 6y ago
Thanks, very interesting points! Maybe I need to target companies who have just raised money and don't currently have policies in place i.e. companies who are more flexible. On the downside, these early stage companies usually look for employees who are willing to pour blood sweat and 60hr weeks into the company i.e. less likely to want to employ people on 30hr contracts A tricky balancing act trying to identify the best market to target!
- aprdm 6y ago
  I would say a good path for it is to first prove yourself and then ask to work less hours. I’ve seen that work a couple of times.
high_byte 6y ago
although I would argue 4 developers @ 80hrs/week are better than 4 developers @ 100hrs/week. Both output will increase and cost will reduce. My humble opinion.
mattm 6y ago
Why not ask people to work 6 days a week then? /s I'd disagree about your work compounds part. A fresher mind, due to more leisure time, will solve problems faster and reach insights quicker. I've seen friends ramp up their work time and the thing I notice that goes downhill the fastest is their decision making ability. When you work longer hours, you have less time to think about harder problems so you push off making those decisions which may take 30 or 60 minutes of focused thinking about. With more free time, employees can have more energy to make decisions faster and better [1] We already know that working overtime leads to poorer results [2]. The companies I know of that have tried 4 day work weeks have found that total productivity has improved - not just productivity per hour. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/17/efficiency-up-turnover-down-sweden-experiments-with-six-hour-working-day https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/17/efficiency-up-... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2004-143/pdfs/2004-143.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2004-143/pdfs/2004-143.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20090824001133/http://www.curt.org/pdf/156.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20090824001133/http://www.curt.or...

nirushiv 6y ago

I took a look at your website. It’s quite clear, and I think a lot of people would love such an arrangement, but a word of warning: BusinessInsider is not a reliable citation - I would try to dig up the original study. Similarly for Forbes - it has lost a lot of the allure since their website hosts a lot of low-quality content now. Try to find more reputable sources, starting with the studies themselves, NYT, Time, etc

philmcp 6y ago
Thanks, Ill look for a better citation

philmcp 6y ago

Thanks, very interesting points! Maybe I need to target companies who have just raised money and don't currently have policies in place i.e. companies who are more flexible. On the downside, these early stage companies usually look for employees who are willing to pour blood sweat and 60hr weeks into the company i.e. less likely to want to employ people on 30hr contracts A tricky balancing act trying to identify the best market to target!

aprdm 6y ago
I would say a good path for it is to first prove yourself and then ask to work less hours. I’ve seen that work a couple of times.

high_byte 6y ago

although I would argue 4 developers @ 80hrs/week are better than 4 developers @ 100hrs/week. Both output will increase and cost will reduce. My humble opinion.

mattm 6y ago

Why not ask people to work 6 days a week then? /s I'd disagree about your work compounds part. A fresher mind, due to more leisure time, will solve problems faster and reach insights quicker. I've seen friends ramp up their work time and the thing I notice that goes downhill the fastest is their decision making ability. When you work longer hours, you have less time to think about harder problems so you push off making those decisions which may take 30 or 60 minutes of focused thinking about. With more free time, employees can have more energy to make decisions faster and better [1] We already know that working overtime leads to poorer results [2]. The companies I know of that have tried 4 day work weeks have found that total productivity has improved - not just productivity per hour. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/17/efficiency-up-turnover-down-sweden-experiments-with-six-hour-working-day https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/17/efficiency-up-... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2004-143/pdfs/2004-143.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2004-143/pdfs/2004-143.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20090824001133/http://www.curt.org/pdf/156.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20090824001133/http://www.curt.or...