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4-day workweek boosted workers' productivity by 40%, Microsoft Japan says
- thinkingkong 5y agoHidden in here is the “reasonable default” change for meetings from 1 hour to 30 minutes. If you havent already done so, go and change your entire organizations default meeting length to 30 minutes. Force people to justify why they need an hour. Still not sure why it isnt the default.
- FredPret 5y ago…or even 0 minutes!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dpeck 5y ago25 minutes and everything starts at either XX:05 or XX:35. People get to be human and do things like use the restroom, get a drink, or just take a breath in between meetings without being flustered and apologizing for being late.
- amoorthy 5y agoThe sentiment and logic here is good but I think all employees have to agree otherwise wastes some time for those folks who do show up on time. My personal observation is the timing matters less than the number of participants. More people usually equals less insights and more wasted time. One rule could be "if you can't emerge with an action item you shouldn't be here." But I'm not sure if that's practical as an organization grows and social/political relationships matter more.
- fennecfoxen 5y agoNot everyone takes an action item out of the meeting. Some people provide information to the meeting. But if you're not contributing or taking something away, you should go, yes.
- travisjungroth 5y agoI’ve seen early endings but not late starts. That seems way better.
- zaphod12 5y agoEveryone ignores early endings, late starts is so much better!
- Graffur 5y agoI don't even apologize for being late anymore.
- loloquwowndueo 5y agoI just sprinkle short events that show me as “busy” and start at odd offsets like :15 and :45 so I can have some blocks of time where I get to take a break from meetings and do some of the work that stems from those meetings (otherwise when the hell do I do the work). The weird offsets really confuse calendaring applications :) which always try to align things to :30 or :00.
- dpeck 5y agoJust block off times as “reserved” for work, and unapologetically so.
- CameronNemo 5y agoLast time I did that, a PM just ignored it.
- loloquwowndueo 5y agoThen you just say “no” to the meeting and don’t attend :)
- dimitrios1 5y agoExactly. Make your own schedule, or others will make it for you.
- SiempreViernes 5y agoThe anecdote said that they did make their own schedule but then someone made it for them anyway.
- tspike 5y agoIt sounds like they attempted to make their own schedule, but then acquiesced when faced with an inconsiderate ask.
- javiramos 5y agoAt MIT, all classes started 5 minutes after the scheduled time and ended 5 minutes before the scheduled time.
- Someone 5y agoSomething like that is fairly normal at universities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_quarter_(class_timing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_quarter_(class_timing...: “An academic quarter (localized into various languages in the countries where it is practiced[a]) is the quarter-hour (15 minute) discrepancy between the defined start time for a lecture or lesson ("per schema") and the actual starting time, at some universities in Europe including Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the United States.”
- viceroyalbean 5y agoThis was applied in 100% of classes at my university in Sweden. A 14-16 lecture would start at 14:15, take a break from 15-15:15 and end at 16. The practice was frequently applied in student union meetings and events.
- xwolfi 5y agoWhile in France they d start on time but the students would trickle down for 15 minutes. You can imagine our respective surprise when I had a german boss one day and I d arrive always 2 minutes late not understanding why it would be written on the meeting note as if it was a huge mega deal :D Complete disrespect for him, absolutely the norm for me :D He learned to be less angry and I learned to be less "late"
- saiya-jin 5y agoThis is so common... and a few kind words in the beginning would avoid any negative effect once and for all. Yet its so hard for so many folks
- mcot2 5y agoOr just cancel almost all meetings and do async communication. Works great.
- rjzzleep 5y agoI try to schedule them at 20 minutes, so that people have 10 minutes to prepare for the next meeting. If I'm on point that's usually enough. A lot of these organizations put status updates as meetings though, which is never necessary. There are a lot of better ways to send status updates.
- macjohnmcc 5y agoI only lost 2 hours to meetings yesterday give or take.
- kwdc 5y agoMake it 25 minutes instead. Now there's a break of time in-between allowing your brain to properly context switch so your night's sleep isn’t messed up.
- Graffur 5y agoThe only problem with this is that it frees your calendar so that other people can book things in. If something is booked for an hour but it can be wrapped up in 30 mins.. that gives 30 mins breathing room.
- steveBK123 5y agoDefinitely don't join an agile shop with 2hr ceremony BS meetings
- ipaddr 5y agoYour comment made me realize why burnout exists.
- steveBK123 5y agoIt's funny because we all think the grass is always greener and yet.. my most recent 2 job leads: * a firm that was demanding devs return to office already in January pre-vaccine, justifying it by paying for Ubers & doing PCR testing in office * a firm which in its job-spec explicitly listing that "8a-6p are standard hours" and "plus other hours as required for role / due to support / meetings out of region / some flexibility required" what a shitshow tech can be
- danjac 5y agoWe can push back by publicly shaming bad actors and ensuring they go to the back of the queue along with the firms with psychopathic interview processes when it comes to choosing tech talent at a time of high demand. Unionising would probably be better but for some reason a bad word around these parts...
- janandonly 5y agoMuch Good has come from unions. So why would that be a "bad word around these parts" ?
- mixedCase 5y agoBecause Much Evil has also come from unions, devs are in high demand, and unions are political structures instead of technical ones.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y agoIt would be awesome if every meeting had a scoreboard that displayed a running total of the cost of the meeting based on the salaries of the participants.
- jsilence 5y agoThat could be a plugin in OBS.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago> Force people to justify why they need an hour. Force people to justify why they need a meeting as well, have an agenda, keep a tight schedule, don't let people change the agenda or rant on. One thing I found in the scrum style meetings is that people love to be on the soapbox for their allotted time.
- tails4e 5y agoAnd try have meeting free zones. 8 half hour meetings spread over a day is nearly as bad as 8 hour meetings in terms of getting work done, 30 mins gaps only allows for easy tasks (email, etc), but not true engineering/deeper work.
- toyg 5y agoI feel 30 mins is often not enough to get things done, but if you give it an hour people get too "relaxed" or tune out. So the best approach would probably be to schedule 30min meetings that are always followed by 30min free time; so that everyone knows there is an urgency to be brief, but it's not the end of the world if you overrun 10mins. Otherwise you end up with back-to-back meetings and "I have to go, sorry", even if we're not actually done, or the 1h snoozefests. I think there is space for some software here, that could automatically tweak one's calendar to "block out" post-meeting time by a predetermined amount in Outlook (yes, don't try to pry people out of Outlook, you're not going to win).
- aliasEli 5y ago> So the best approach would probably be to schedule 30min > meetings that are always followed by 30min free time It seems better to have no free time between meetings. That way everybody is much more motivated to keep them to the allotted time. 30 min is much too short an interval to do serious technical work.
- rorykoehler 5y agoEven better make it 25 minutes to allow for transition time between meetings
- wly_cdgr 5y agoFor me, the most important thing isn't that meetings be short - they can be a good way to build relationships as well as get work done, after all. The most important thing is for meetings to be bunched up with no gaps at either the beginning or end of the day, and never added to the schedule outside of those blocks
- Philip-J-Fry 5y agoIt's an old article, so did they continue it? We see reports like this all the time but barely any companies actually have the balls to go through with it long term.
- hbcondo714 5y agoFrom 2019, this is a popular topic on HN! 210 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21433710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21433710 242 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21441689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21441689 149 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26495933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26495933 30 commennts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21919721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21919721
- jonas21 5y agoThe top comment in the third link points out that Microsoft Japan later walked back the productivity claim: In the announcement dated October 31, one of the listed "improvements" from the 2019 Summer Work-Life Choice Challenge was an increase of 39.9% in labor productivity (sales revenue per employee) in August 2019 compared to August 2018, with a graph below. While this number is factual, it is not solely the result of this challenge, and was achieved due to a number of different factors. To avoid misunderstanding, we have removed that claim from the above summary of the direct effects of the challenge.
- vsareto 5y agoI guess they had to attribute this boost to something, but it was politically unsavory for it to be the number of days worked
- cuddlybacon 5y agoYeah. I'm interested if it was extended or not. I cannot really tell from the article. I expect this works great for 2 to 3 months when it is novel and everyone is keen to prove it works, but will begin to regress back after that. Where it ends up longterm is the big deal.
- tamrix 5y agoI feel like they're trying to sell me 4 day work weeks when they include cut electricity cost and paper usage in their opening paragraph.
- chrisseaton 5y ago> they printed nearly 60 percent fewer pages What on earth are they printing at Microsoft?
- robotresearcher 5y agoDraft resumes? </friendly_banter>
- kosvke 5y agoUnfortunately, everything is printed in the work culture in Japan.
- throwaway3699 5y agoSame with Fax machines: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34667380 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34667380
- ironmagma 5y agoUnfortunately? These kinds of cultural differences are what make countries different. We could use more variety like this. There are probably a lot of downsides to having everything digital as is done in America.
- quartesixte 5y agoThat moment when the the Jira server goes down but no one cares because the production teams were all working off of good ol' whiteboards to do their Kanban.
- rvba 5y agoBetter from ecology point of view. More trees are cut than planted (also new trees are very small / often dont survive).
- ironmagma 5y agoFrom https://theconversation.com/is-the-paper-industry-getting-greener-5-questions-answered-76274 https://theconversation.com/is-the-paper-industry-getting-gr...: > Each year the amount of wood harvested from U.S. forests is much less than annual forest growth. Land covered by forests in the United States increased by 4.5 percent between 1997 and 2012, even as suburban development expanded.
- Animats 5y agoWhat, not 996?[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system
- ekianjo 5y agoNpr repeating the PR lies...
- EGreg 5y agoImagine how many companies would give their workers 4 day work weeks and enjoy greater productivity, if we introduced a UBI (and abolished labor unions and minimum wage laws).
- hartator 5y agoShouldn't productivity increase mathematically when reducing number of hours? Like if you reduce everyone to 10h per week. Sales may go down from 4M to 3M but because hours went 4x less you can still claim 300% increase in productivity. It doesn't meant anything in term of efficiency, creativity, or actual performance of the organization. I would be interested to see actual studies on this.
- forbiddenvoid 5y agoProductivity increased per week, not just per hour which is significantly different.
- routerl 5y agoYou're confusing efficiency and productivity. Your example is correct but is about efficiency. In the case of Microsoft Japan, 40% more work was done in four fifths of the time, which is a greater than 40% increase in efficiency.
- elefanten 5y agoBut that's not what they were measuring. They measured sales revenue per employee and then admitted in errata that the claim was misleading anyway since other factors also contributed to sales revenue increase.
- routerl 5y ago> But that's not what they were measuring. They measured sales revenue per employee How is that not a measure of productivity?
- elefanten 5y agoYou can’t say 40% more work was done from their conclusions.
- rvba 5y agoSales depends mostly on sales tram ability. In software it is much easier to scale sales: the infrastructure costs when selling 1M copies and 1.4M copies are quite similar. Maybe some devops will have to spin more servers. But programmers allready did their job. Compare this to selling physical objects. If you can make 1M cars per month, you cannot easily make 1.4M per month: it requires more workers, machines, supply. Those are quite neglible in software. Also your workers can make cars 2x faster than everyone else (better productivity) but nobody will buy them, since they are poor quality
- jeffchuber 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
- scotuswroteus 5y ago"This interpretation was dubbed "the Hawthorne effect," although the data does not support that view."
- trentnix 5y ago7-minute-abs! </something-about-Mary>
- hellbannedguy 5y agoConstruction should be a 4 day work week. I remember my father telling me about a push to a 4 day work week in the 80's at local 6 in San Francisco. For some reason, the union officials didn't want it. Looking back the contractors probally nixed it?) I remember how sad my father was over that. He was getting older, and wanted a job easier on his body, and he thought the 4 day work week would be enough time to start a side business. I did electrical for awhile, and mirrored his thinking. I used to think 10 hr days were not a problem. (Union construction. Mon-union construction is way harder work.)
- quartesixte 5y agoManual Labor will incredibly benefit from shorter work weeks. More rest = fresher bodies = less mistakes. There is a definite drop off point where a technician/mechanic/welder isn’t working at even 80% normal capacity, and that’s where mistakes begin to happen. And unlike software, mistakes can be costly to undo or perhaps even impossible. The flipside of course is that their hourly wages must go up to match the decrease in hours worked. And overtime pay is a big motivator for many skilled manual labor jobs.
- swader999 5y agoTreeplanting up north in Canada for a decade in the nineties. You get paid piecework (how much you plant) and there are only a fixed number of trees for the whole contract. The idea is to get the millions of trees in the ground as fast as possible and get out. We tried 3-1, 4-1, 5,6 and so on. Even worked 14 day shift once. The '1' being the day off. The most productive cadence over a season was 5-1 with 9 hour days. 4-1 at ten hour days was a close second. We would switch to 4-1 when drives got longer. It felt like a sport more than a manual labor job. Your trying everything you can to maximize your tally.
- rvba 5y agoWas this tested for quality somehow? Also after time wouldnt there be inprovement due to experience? (Or is it cancelled out by injury?)
- ascar 5y agoThis comment [1] should probably also be mentioned here: The productivity claim has been removed from the Japanese report[0]. An erratum at the bottom of the page dated November 8, 2019 says this: "In the announcement dated October 31, one of the listed "improvements" from the 2019 Summer Work-Life Choice Challenge was an increase of 39.9% in labor productivity (sales revenue per employee) in August 2019 compared to August 2018, with a graph below. "While this number is factual, it is not solely the result of this challenge, and was achieved due to a number of different factors. "To avoid misunderstanding, we have removed that claim from the above summary of the direct effects of the challenge." Especially the definition of productivity as "labor productivity (sales revenue per employee)" is interesting and adds some perspective to this claim. [0] https://news.microsoft.com/ja-jp/2019/10/31/191031-published-the-results-of-measuring-the-effectiveness-of-our-work-life-choice-challenge-summer-2019/ https://news.microsoft.com/ja-jp/2019/10/31/191031-published... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26495933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26495933
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- EvilEy3 5y agoDirected by Robert B Weide.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sharken 5y agoWorkers productivity in this context means Workforce productivity, not to be confused with employee productivity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workforce_productivity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workforce_productivity It's interesting that working on a two plus year product cycle does not add to productivity, at least not how it's used here. So as an employee it would seem to be a better career move to always work on something that can be shipped within a year.
- deleted 5y ago
- philmcp 5y agoIn years to come we will look down on the 5 day working week in the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the industrial revolution. It absolutely blows my mind that 99% of office roles are still 5 days / week, Monday to Friday - why is there basically no variation on this model? It annoys me so much that I recently launched https://4dayweek.io/ https://4dayweek.io/ (Software Jobs with a better work / life balance)
- MattGaiser 5y agoYou need consistent variation for everyone if you are in a fast moving organization. I worked for an organization where people had one flex day off every two weeks. In practice, it made Tue-Thur the only days for collaboration as it was otherwise normal for someone to be out of the office. It worked because it was government with long project cycles. It would not work for my current company. It would cause issues with clients and project speed.
- luffapi 5y agoI feel like if you need all hands on deck 100% of the time, your process is flawed. Software productivity is exclusively driven by good devs who are properly motivated. If you want to succeed, maximize their creativity and peace of mind. The 5 day work week is diametrically opposed to that and one of the reasons devs burn out so quickly. They’re being treated like manual labor in a creative field.
- missedthecue 5y agoIt's not that you need all hands on deck 100% of the time. It's that having people take random days off week to week is very sub-optimal and youre liable to get outcompeted. You're no longer a well oiled machine at that point, but more of a janky chaotic mess. Consistency is good.
- luffapi 5y agoThat’s not true at all. Look at open source. Some of the most important software in the world was written when the devs were motivated to write it, not 9-5 m-f.
- giantg2 5y agoAnd our company says we are more productive working from home. Guess what? They are making us come back into the office...
- xyzelement 5y agoThis is obviously a topic that a lot of people have an opinion on, but in my mind both of what you're writing above are compatible with each other. "Raw output" by which I mean things on the level of "code written/tickets resolved" probably scales pretty directly with undisturbed hours of work, which WFH isolation + no commute is great for. So I can see that type of productivity going up. However there's a short term trap involved in that - since by optimizing for the above, you are neglecting the ability to get stuff done as an organization - ie benefit from everyone's insight, have things properly stress-tested and socialized, planning company-wide programs, etc. The second bucket of things benefits from activities that hurt the first bucket (namely, in person meetings.) Now, it's possible that most of the company is in role that are measured for #1 only, however #2 matters to the overall health of the company and long term excellence. So it may seem weird, if one is accountable for churning out tickets, that they are being asked to work in a way that's not optimized for that, but the answer may be - this enables other work to happen in the company which is required for your work to be meaningful.
- giantg2 5y ago"ability to get stuff done as an organization - ie benefit from everyone's insight, have things properly stress-tested and socialized, planning company-wide programs, etc." Unless they're running a good ol boys network, I really dont see that as a valid concern. They certainly dont care about us lower people's insight and the important people socialize things virtually.
- xyzelement 5y agoI have worked in both huge market leaders and start ups and what you're saying is false. If yout org is like that, too bad and sorry
- Proven 5y agoI don't think so, but you should still get paid 20% less in that case. Or they could lay off the least productive 20%-30% of employees. Sorry, Marxists! (By the way, nonsense like this is constantly posted because our socialist friends think they should get paid 40% more, or at least the same, for working 4 days a week. No, you should get fired because with that attitude you employer can find someone more interested in doing your work, and for less than you.)
- bsder 5y agoI would also be careful generalizing this as Japan is likely to have a very outsized improvement because of culture. Japan is noted for having to be "at work doing nothing" for obscene number of hours because the boss is also "at work doing nothing" and then having to go drinking afterward. This is a recipe for unproductiveness. Being able to actually have the day off because you don't have to emulate the boss breaks this significantly and is likely to have an outsized improvement on productivity.
- mrandish 5y agoI'm totally open to the possibility that this result could be sustainable over longer time periods and persist in other countries and even (some) other types of work. However, it seems prudent to discount the odds of broader applicability due to all the obvious confounding factors. * Cultural norms. * Poorer pre-existing efficiency. * Introduction of new focus on time and efficiency creating optimization which fades over time. * Gains on shorter-term metrics offset by longer-term, hidden costs (eg sufficient 'slack time' is asserted to sometimes enable innovation or tasks which management may prioritize lower but which have yield important benefits). Over several decades I've been either an early employee or founder in four startups where I was able to help imagine, specify and implement what eventually became high-performing organizations. I'm often asked about "secrets of success" but all four had substantial enough differences that the only constant is they each were either created or evolved to have uniquely effective set of parameters including structure, style, culture, personnel, etc. Each org was uniquely adapted to it's competencies, customers, context and even era. Obviously, "good people" are "good" but figuring out what that looks like in advance for any particular problem set is error-prone and rife with confirmation bias upon post-hoc rationalization. The best meta-advice I'm confident enough in to share are things like adaptability, the right metrics, perceptive leaders willing to question assumptions and change course based on new evidence. Unfortunately, these come across as vague platitudes. As near as I can tell, the magic is more in custom fitting a sufficiently winning mix of org parameters, from team to metrics to work hours and more, to succeed against the specific challenges and context the org must solve to succeed. In light of my world-view that dozens or hundreds of interacting parameters need to fit (and that there are many workable "solves"), I feel that this experiment, at best, exposes another possible lever to put into your "solve" that might be beneficial contingent on a bunch of other factors.
- Sparkyte 5y agoReal reason 10 x 4 works is because every day you lose an hour of focus at the beginning and end of the day. Typical work week 6 x 5 = 30hrs. 8x4 work week = 32 hrs. Longer periods for developers to hit technical strides or remain in flow.
- paulpauper 5y agoI am skeptical of this narrative that shorter workweeks boost productivity . Shorter workweeks means less possible productivity at the endpoints of the shorter week, due to people slacking off or being hungover due to long weekend. It also means time wasted trying to resume where one left off, similar to children returning to school from Summer break. For these reasons, the discontinuity of a long weekend cannot be beneficial to productivity. I am sure any employer can attest that productivity tends to fall off a cliff before and after 3-day weekends. I hypothesize that productivity can be maximized with a 7-day workweek but a shorter workday to keep the # of hours constant, eliminating the loss of productivity between weekends. I think this is also why productivity boomed during the pandemic, thanks to Zoom and remote working, again, by eliminating or minimizing the discontinuity.
- reificator 5y ago> I hypothesize that productivity can be maximized with a 7-day workweek but a shorter workday to keep the # of hours constant, eliminating the loss of productivity between weekends. I take it you don't have children, elderly or disabled family, other responsibilities outside work, or even hobbies? Having a day free to go shopping, take a hike, do laundry, and even just not have to worry about stresses from work is critical. Having two of them sequentially provides even more benefit because for one of them you don't have to plan to get up the next day and go back to work. The answer is obviously not 7 day work weeks, and obviously not 0 day work weeks, but is 5 on 2 off optimal, or is there room for improvement? I have family who switched from 5 8 hour days (plus substantial overtime and on-call) to 3 12 hour days, and the difference in their health, mood, and energy levels is enormous. They get more done better at work than they did before, their job satisfaction is way up, and even their personal finances are night and day compared to before, even though they're making the same exact yearly dollar amount. > 7-day workweek but a shorter workday to keep the # of hours constant Why is 40 hours a sacred value? Why is it important that employees perform exactly 40 hours of labor per 168 hour period? > eliminating the loss of productivity between weekends. As a software developer with pretty free reign to do whatever helps the business the most, I would bet a paycheck that weekends create more productivity than they "lose". Over the weekend I've come up with ideas that saved hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. If I didn't have time to myself to relax and gather my thoughts, if every day was sitting there churning out code, I can't imagine I'd have even considered those things. Thinking about it I bet I could even go over my past work and compare average productivity to weeks where I was just on-call over the weekend. I imagine there'd be a measurable drop after on-call weekends, even if I never was actually called.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoI haven't worked a 5-day week in decades. It was always 5 days (9-12 hours per day. 8 hours? HAH!), and then my "nights and weekends" work. Since leaving my last job, I've been working seven days a week, but at my pace. Lots of breaks and downtime (naps, even), and I don't mind taking full days, every now and then. Amazingly, I get more done, in less time, than I ever did before. In Japan, the traditional salaryman workweek is 6 days, with Saturday being "casual," and sometimes, a "half day" (only 6-8 hours). We'll have to see how this works out. Lots of cultural hysteresis.
- maxgashkov 5y ago> In Japan, the traditional salaryman workweek is 6 days It seems it's starting to change. Currently I'm leaving the company which indeed has 6 days work week (with the 6 hr Saturday) and literally every opening I'm seeing right now is 5d. Maybe I'm biased though as I'm looking for jobs in IT companies or departments.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoThe killer, for me, was the meetings. Oh. My. God. Japanese corporations run on meetings as fuel. I don’t miss those cramped conference rooms, one tiny bit.
- joejerryronnie 5y agoDid one’s ability to run meetings effectively (or at least perceived as effectively run meetings) factor significantly in promotion opportunities?
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoProbably. I was a Yank, and not in the main food chain. But they run their meetings in a very organized fashion. Everyone has their marching orders, when the meeting is done. Japanese corporations tend to use a consensus-based system, where meetings are confirmation of consensus. Being at a meeting, meant that you were part of the stakeholders, and also part of the accountable parties. Many times, people sleep in meetings. Their presence is all that is required.
- andrewmcwatters 5y agoIt's crazy how it works out that if you own your own business, you realize you need every hour you can get your hands on but when you're an employee then you just magically become more productive working only 4 days instead 5 or more.
- ipaddr 5y agoThat's because you are under staffed. You decided to do the job of many people wearing many hats to save money. Once you reach a certain revenue you will hand those jobs off to other people. They will be able to focus and will do a better job compared to someone who is constantly running on fumes. The business owner isn't more productive at 5 days vs 4 but they make up for it by working 16 hours and 7 days a week.
- jasonkester 5y agoIs it possible that you don’t actually need every one of those hours? Is there something you could optimize to gain some of them back? I also run my own business and have never once felt the need to work 40 hours in a single week. It’s your business so you can design it to work any way you like.
- piva00 5y agoBecause... You own the business, the buck should stop with you and if you are understaffed of course you will be having to get your hands on all the time to play all the different hats you are wearing. It's not too dissimilar from working in a very early stage startup as a very experienced engineer: you know that there are lots to do, from infrastructure to the product code. You need to get your hands dirty all the time, playing multiple positions, to beat time to market. As an employee of an organisation that you have no other vested interest apart from your salary? Yeah, this stress will only grind you, not motivate you, at least it did to me, the thought of "why am I sacrificing my life for a paycheck so someone else's grand vision [and ultimately, profits] come to them?". So yeah, as an employee I'm much more productive and creative to my employer if I have time for myself out of work and good rest. As a business owner: you are running the risk all the time, some people cope with it by overworking to not feel like they are "falling behind".
- swman 5y agoAs long as 4 day weeks don’t come at a pay cut, and I can’t believe I’ve seen people on HN even be okay with it. If your company continues to make more profit while you work less it’s in your interest to not lose your wage position. It would be stupid to work 4 days to make more money for the company and make less than if you worked 5…
- ergocoder 5y agoHere is where it is okay to ignore science, folks. Vaccines, nah? You get yelled at for that. More work life balance? It's okay not to trust science.
- 29athrowaway 5y agoThinking this initiative can be extended to every country may not be a good idea. Comparing most countries to Japan will not be an apples to apples comparison. In terms of work-life balance and job satisfaction, Japan does not rank very high. Not every country is in that situation. So an initiative like having a 4-day workweek will likely be an improvement given those conditions.
- stakkur 5y agoWhat a sad, poor measure. ‘Productivity’. Everyone knows the ‘eight hour’ day was invented and has no particular meaning. So—make a human decision, and stop pretending you can science your way to something else.
- ironmagma 5y agoWe know that, say, 60 hours is too many. And 10 hours is too little. So there must be a most efficient number in between; why would it be a round number like 40, the exact number we happened to decide on decades ago? Science sounds like the best way to find that number.
- aussieguy1234 5y agoJapan is famous for excessive overtime and overwork, which both make productivity drop in the long run. So this isn't surprising. It would be interesting to know if those 4 days are filled with similar hours to a normal working week in western countries because of the overtime culture.
- rekwah 5y ago4-day workweeks would be nice but what I really want is 50 hour weeks (2hr extra per day) with a summer vacation in June/July/August. Let's say the typical job has 3w vacation: 40hr x (52w - 3w vacation) => 1960hr/yr Now to get back to that same territory: 50hr x (52w - 12w vacation) => 2000hr/yr Yes please.
- koyote 5y agoMaybe you should move to France where something very similar to the above is pretty much encoded in law (with caveats of course). I have not worked in France but as far as I understand, if you work more than 35 hours a week you will get the extra hours as additional time towards your annual leave: https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F34151 https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F34151
- gield 5y agoMost countries in Europe have similar schemes. In Belgium, a work week is 38 hours. If your contract states that you work 40 hour weeks, you get 12 extra days off every year.
- jobigoud 5y agoIn practice the extra time worked above the 35 hours goes into a different counter that you typically take one or two days at a time rather than batch it along the rest. Also it's fairly rare for people to take their 5 vacation weeks in one setting, the employer still has a say and you still have to coordinate with colleagues.
- koyote 5y agoThat is a good point, although I used to work for a US multinational with people based in France and they often took 3-4 weeks in one go. More than that might be pushing it a bit.
- darthrupert 5y agoPerhaps move to Finland? We have a default 37,5 hour work weeks and a 1mo summer vacation.
- grawprog 5y agoFour 10 hour days was always preferable for me to five 8 hour days every time. The extra two hours ends up barely noticed. You miss rush hour after work so travel time is almost halved at the end of the day meaning you get home not much later than normal anyway. That extra day off more than makes up for it. If you've gotta work a 40 hour a week schedule, 4x10 is what i prefer for sure.
- rvba 5y agoImpossible for those with kids. Also if you want to have some "life" during week (gym? hobbies?) it is problematic. I dont say that this is bad, but one of the things that works for young, single people. I had to work 5x10 (then add 1 more for travel..) and even basic stuff like buying and cooking food could become a problem, especially if some day was 12h.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoAs someone who is for the first time ever starting a 20 hour a week project I can't help but wonder if I won't feel like doing an extra 2-5 hours in the week just making things better and thus increasing my productivity.
- benrbray 5y agoFor a salaried position, it would be cool to have a system where you can "deposit" time by working extra one week when you're in the zone, then later "withdraw" some of that time when you need a break. Rather than "we're paying you for your results, not your time, but uhhh you still need to be here from 9-5, k?"
- theriddlr 5y agoYeah we have this in the UK. It's called Time Off In Lieu (TOIL).
- Leherenn 5y agoIn some countries that's the case. I mean, from what I can tell, in (most of?) Europe, salaried position means you're supposed to work for X hours a week. Anything above is overtime. Depending on the local regulations, they often have to be paid or compensated in kind (work less later). They're pretty much never paid, but being able to work less after a big week is not uncommon.
- iamgopal 5y agoAmazing. I’m working ( in hard core ( read unscalable ) manufacturing industry ) almost 70 hours a week since about ~12 years, barely increasing income and wealth by about interest rate. How do I achieve 4 days a week ? With couple of months of vacation ?
- jerome-jh 5y agoIn April and May 2021 I worked 4 days a week because I had holidays to use up but could not leave the office for an extended period time. It was truly great! I much more appreciated my weekends and was more focused at work. I am pretty sure I had a higher productivity, in the sense of amount of work per time unit. I am of the type that needs deadlines to remain motivated. That condensed work week suited me.
- thewhitetulip 5y agoI guess this will never happen in India and even if it happens, it'll be like 12 hr for 4days.. which will negate the point
- ForFreedom 5y agoSo this 4 day work/week pays less or pay remains the same?
- JohnWhigham 5y agoPays the same ideally. It's 10 hours/day instead of 8. Much more doable. Helps if you're an early riser.
- rcarmo 5y agoMost productive time of my life was when I was forced to book 8 outstanding vacation days and I took two months’ worth of Fridays. I had enough energy to do a week’s work in four days, plus people got so used to me not being around on Friday that I pretty much got the rest of the year free of Friday meetings as well. (I also just came back from two week’s worth of bank holidays on Thursdays and Fridays, which seems to be having the same effect).
- jbverschoor 5y agoThat's still a 50 hr workweek over there :-)
- andix 5y agoFor me a 4 day work week boosts my motivation and efficiency, because there is less time to get the work done. It stops me from procrastinating. I had the deal with my boss that I will come in on Friday, if there was some important work left undone. I never had to come in on Friday :D
- philmcp 5y agoMe too! This is why it works imo p.s. that phenomena is called "Parkinson's Law" i.e. work expands to fill the time allotted to it
- regularfry 5y agoWhen I've got holiday to use up, I book Wednesdays off. It means I've never got more than two work days in a row, and I also get the benefit of the general slow-down on Friday afternoons to actually get stuff done uninterrupted.
- dusted 5y agoI guess it depends on the person, I'm not sure my own output would adjust tbh.. I'm generally a slow burner, and if I had a day less to do stuff, I don't think I'd get as much done.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoI don't get it. What's the catch. I've been led to believe that corporations operate on purely logic and seek only profit. If this statistic is true why isn't every corporation immediacy switching to a 4-day work week?
- fairity 5y agoBecause the statistic isn't true. Take the following quote from the article. It's laughable. > The question was straightforward, as Schawbel recalls: "If your pay is constant, how many days a week do you want to work?" One of the potential replies to that question was simply, "None." But only 4% of the workers chose that answer.
- HWR_14 5y agoOne explanation would be that corporations are acting on imperfect information, either unaware of or disbelieving the study. Another is that the study is wrong (but your question posits the study is correct). But, more likely, there are a host of well-known reasons that corporations don't operate like that. Primarily based around the fact that corporations don't make decisions, people in corporations do. And their interests may conflict.
- JW_00000 5y agoThere is something strange going on with the numbers in the article. People worked 20% less, but electricity costs fell by 23% and the "number of printed pages" fell by 60%? Scrolling through the Google Translated version of the original Japanese article, it seems a bunch of other changes were implemented at the same time, including more remote meetings, pushing text chat over meetings, and paying back more expenses. Also the number of printed pages just followed a trend that had been going on for several years, and the electricity usage was also already decreasing [1]. [1] https://news.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/47/2019/10/2019_summer_1107.png https://news.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/47/...