As someone who's managed to negotiate 4 day weeks in my current and last 2 jobs, I see some issues: You take a pay hit of 10-20% (depending what hours you work

As someone who's managed to negotiate 4 day weeks in my current and last 2 jobs, I see some issues: You take a pay hit of 10-20% (depending what hours you work over those 4 days) so need to be reasonably frugal and if you've a partner they need to be too, especially if you got kids. It may stand in the way of getting more seniority, which compounds the pay hit (however, I personally am happy as a mid-range, and feel like this may prolong my career life as I'm still coding all the time not doing less techy stuff). You need to keep your employer believing you're committed to your job. In my experience this isn't difficult because in practice you get pretty much the same work done in 4 days as 5, but some people are scared this won't appear the case. In terms of the pay hit, the other side is that with a weekday off you can do some cooking, shop around for cheaper things etc which reduces costs. If you have kids, both parents working 3 or 4 days a week may be tax advantageous over 1 working 5 days and the other 2, for example. To be honest, looking around, my colleagues could easily have asked for 4-day weeks too, and I don't think they would have been refused. A few did ask, and they were allowed too. People like to blame employers for being inflexible but actually I suspect this is cover for their own fear of the unknown. My advice = be bold, just try it. BTW just for the record I do have some above the normal caring responsibilities, so that's why I do a 4 day week and it also gives me an "excuse" to ask.