24 ms·

Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

257 points by lxm 5y ago

mjfl 5y ago
I've been looking for a job where I'd only have to work 3 days per week. Then my life would be only 3/7 work and 4/7 rest, which would be great for my work life balance. I also prefer a bay area salary, because of my high rental costs. Does anyone know where I could find such a job?
- zffr 5y ago
  Build a low maintenance business that generates a profit higher than a Bay Area salary and requires less than 3 full days to keep it going. Here’s an example: https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/22807858/tiktok-influencer-microsoft-excel-instagram-decoder-podcast https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/22807858/tiktok-influe... The founder makes >100k per month as mostly passive income.
ElijahLynn 5y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20211201195030/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/23/business/dealbook/four-day-workweek.html https://web.archive.org/web/20211201195030/https://www.nytim...
kashkhan 5y ago
two day work week would be even better...
seniorsassycat 5y ago
I've been working 4 days a week, 32 hours, for 4 years and I will never go back. It has made me hesitant to look for other work, I'm not sure if get the same deal, but so far I'm happy where I am. As others have said the ratios are awesome. I have 15 days off every 20 days instead of 8. For a 20% pay cut, while getting full benefits.
- mrtranscendence 5y ago
  For my geographical area, I get paid what feels like a very good salary (enough that I no longer have to worry about money at all). If my company said “hey, we’ll pay you half as much and you only have to work 20 hours a week” I’d take it in a heartbeat, even though I’d have to start being more careful with money. Sadly, I don’t see that offer ever coming, even though I could totally do my job in half as much time with some creative meeting deletion.
  - eadz 5y ago
    I think a lot are in the same boat. Is Job-Sharing a potential solution?
- saghm 5y ago
  > I have 15 days off every 20 days instead of 8 Wait, what? How does working one day less a week get you to 15 days off?
  - twobitshifter 5y ago
    The ratio is a little unusual but the math is right, the divisor is per days worked. 15 days off / 20 days worked (5 weeks of 4 day workweeks) 8 days off / 20 days worked (4 weeks of 5 day workweeks) Another way of saying it would be: in a 4 day work week you have 4/3 (1.33) ratio of work days to days off whereas in a traditional workweek is 5/2 (2.5). So although it is just one day it dramatically shifts the balance between work and time off.
    - saghm 5y ago
      Oh, I see! I thought they were saying they had 15 days off in a 20 day period, not in a period when they worked 20 days
- nickd2001 5y ago
  Same for me and agree with it being awesome. I think you might've meant, 12 days off per 28? Over 4 weeks, you get 2 weekend days and an extra weekday so 4 * 3 = 12 ?
BitwiseFool 5y ago
I would actually love a 4.5 day workweek, where the half-day is up to the employee to take.
- macinjosh 5y ago
  My company started 1/2 day Fridays a few months ago in what was billed as a temporary experiment. Today it was announced that we'd be keeping them permanently. From my point of view it has been a big improvement for everyone there. Having some time to play with my daughter during the day time is great, especially during winter while the days are short and the sun is already down by the time I am done working.
- seiferteric 5y ago
  We had something like that at my work. From June-Aug we had "Summer Hours" where we would not have any meetings after 2pm and could stop working if then if there was nothing vital. Not exactly half day but still nice, though not sure why it's just for summer time...
  - ghaff 5y ago
    The thinking is probably that more people are likely to be heading somewhere for the weekend in the summer or at least doing some Friday evening activity. In general though I observe that I'm seeing a lot fewer scheduled Friday meetings than on other days and, while things sometimes need to get handled on Friday afternoon, people are often pretty apologetic is they schedule a Friday PM meeting.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mlyle 5y ago
  Better to do 9 days in 10 or really make it to 4 (longer) days, IMO. Because then you're saving some commuter trips for people who have to be on site. I think 4x9 as a nominal workweek makes a whole lot of sense. (9 days x 8 hours) / (2 weeks) is almost as good.
stuff4ben 5y ago
https://archive.md/PVjCZ https://archive.md/PVjCZ
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
I'm currently working for a company that forces office staff to work a half day on christmas eve with the additional stipulation, of course, that you must burn a full day of vacation to skip it. This despite the fact that no one in the company can ever remember a customer calling on christmas eve. So I'm very skeptical that this trend will grow. It took the IWW to get us the concepts of The Weekend and Sick Days, and I expect it will take nothing less extreme to claw back any more of our time from the corporate slave-driving overlords. Absent a few easily-dismissed outliers, of course.
- teawrecks 5y ago
  Sure would be a shame if the employees collectively bargained with the company for more reasonable policies...
  - azinman2 5y ago
    Yup… because their jobs may then go abroad as has been the trend for the past 20 years…
    - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
      An ultimately the company will suffer in quality, be bought by private equity and gutted in the next twenty years.
      - RexM 5y ago
        Unfortunately, most companies aren't looking past the next few quarters.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      You can't ship pretty much any service industry job abroad.
      - klipklop 5y ago
flipbrad 5y ago
I started working a 4 day work week a few years ago and would not go back. The benefits to the employee are obvious, but consider those for the company: it gets a motivated, energised employee, and if like me they're a parent or for some other reason the employee has appointments (school, Dr etc), the employee often schedules them during the day off (or moves the day off to accomodate them), meaning the employee isn't taking any time off (usually, paid!) for them - I suspect I've had a lot less PTO than fulltime colleagues.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  And less sick days probably.
- CountDrewku 5y ago
  Are you on a 32 hour or 40 hour week? I would not go back either but 10 hour days are exhausting. I go work out and eat when I get off work and then I pretty much have to go to bed.
  - flipbrad 5y ago
    9 to 5.45 or thereabouts. Leaves plenty of family / hobby time if you're working from home. Commute takes away from that.
wayoutthere 5y ago
I work a 4 day week; just don’t tell my boss.
- icedchai 5y ago
  You and everyone else "working from home."
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - rectang 5y ago
    No, that's not true, and it's that fantasy which gets us the "butts-in-seats" management style. This is correlated first to workplace morale and second to the individual worker. The workers who would do this from home are the same workers who would do it in the office. And employers who make their workers' lives miserable will have endemic problems with people not putting in effort.
  - wayoutthere 5y ago
    Be the change you want to see in the world.
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    You joke, I assume. My boss was notoriously against working from home. COVID proved him VERY wrong. People where just as effective, if not more. They where much more flexible with customer. It doesn't matter that a client ask you to say a bit longer, if you're already home and have everything set up.
    - icedchai 5y ago
      Most people I know never worked 5 days a week. They just pretended. Now they don't have to pretend as much (as long as that little Slack dot stays green!)
  - handrous 5y ago
    The ones in the office do the same. They just spread the day of not-working over the whole week and have the added stress of having to pretend to work some of the time. Though actually it's more like 2-3 days of not working, spread out, more often than not.
vitno 5y ago
4 day work weeks as a concept real clicked for me when put into ratios. It's a 50% increase in personal time and only a 20% reduction in work hours.
- Tarsul 5y ago
  and less than 20% in net income lost (due to income taxes usually being progressive).
  - bradjohnson 5y ago
    Why should there be any loss in income?
    - smithza 5y ago
      If you negotiate with management to go from 40 hrs a week to 32 hrs a week, there is usually an expectation you will take a 20% paycut. Parent was saying that since income taxes are tiered, you will likely take a < 20% take-home paycut.
  - usefulcat 5y ago
    ..and even less if you consider the value of benefits, like health insurance in the US
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    On the other hand, if large parts of your income are tied in near-fixed expenses (e.g. mortgage), then 20% more net income can mean doubling your discretionary spending, and 20% decrease - almost eliminating it.
- GordonS 5y ago
  I switched to a 4-day work week several years ago (maybe 7 or 8, forget), taking. 20% pay cut. Ot really does feel like such a better work-life balance - as you say, it's a much bigger increase in personal time than it is a decrease in working hours. And I am just as productive as when I worked 5 days a week!
robotsquidward 5y ago
As long as a 4-day work week doesn't mean 10-hour work days.
- williamtwild 5y ago
  Working 5 10 hours work days (at least ) already , four would be great.
- mitigating 5y ago
  I would do 10 hours day for Friday off. Working an extra two hours doesn't put a huge strain as you are already at work or in the work mode. During crunch time I would end up working until 21:00 to 22:00 and I felt it was like exercise in that as long as you don't stop it's not as bad. You also avoid commute overhead if you work from the office.
- GordonS 5y ago
  That would defeat the point - time with arse in seat does not equal productivity. I switched to a 4-day work week years ago, and still work 7.5h each day. I found that I'm much more focused during working hours, and spend less time procrastinating - I'm just as productive as I was before.
willcipriano 5y ago
If you got no raise this year, working roughly two and a half hours less per week would bring your compensation back in line with inflation. If firms can't stomach wage increases this may be a valid alternative.
- ericd 5y ago
  Shrinkflation comes to the workweek.
- lukas099 5y ago
  This is the secret reason some Oklahoma public schools switched to a 4-day week a few years back: as a retention bonus for underpaid teachers.
swayvil 5y ago
You mean NOT extract the maximum return on our labor investment? Lol, no. Sincerely, your ruling oligarchs.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  Came here to post something similar. Sort of nation-wide legislation (or some combo of CA, TX, FL and NY going this way on their own), we'll never see it. The ruling class has too much to loose. Even for creates and professionals, where there's an arguable case for higher productivity over 4 days vs 5, I don't see them ever giving up the control granted to them by the 5th day.
throwaway803453 5y ago
FWH has exposed how many white-collar jobs were only full-time in the ass-in-seat sense and how many employees should have Professional Meeting Attender as their job title. I used to be the guy who would champion efficient meeting practices. Now it's the last thing I want given that I can now work-out, make breakfast, do manual labor, etc., while listening to meeting. 4 day work week in grasp you ask ? For many I'd be surprised if they actually did 15hrs of work a week. I'd never hire a full time employee who can work remotely. I'd employ a contractor who has to itemize their invoice.
- nimbius 5y ago
  an excellent point. speaking from a more blue-collar perspective, i would argue most "real" (non meeting attender) jobs have been 3-4 day for a long time now thanks to automation and a perverse incentive to avoid paying benefits. bartenders, repair staff, custodial, fast food and construction have never offered a solid 40 hour week. many of these roles are highly automated and simply do not need a full 40 woman or man hours of work anymore. farming has been this way for a very long time and as such, most farmers wives would take jobs as lunchroom staff for the local elementary school to provide health insurance for the family that a farming job simply couldnt. what i wonder now is that if this affects 'white' collar workers, will the rules change? will nail-swatters in the construction yard see benefits and retirement? or will an elaborate machination take place to ensure only the cloistered ass-in-seat see affordable flu shots and checkups.
  - lupire 5y ago
    benefit-less jobs are up to 29hr/week, not 15. and it's not because of automation. Fast food restaurant isn't run by one person with downtime.
  - piva00 5y ago
    You should include your location, I assume you are talking about the USA because this isn't reality in the countries I've lived in my life.
- dboreham 5y ago
stackedinserter 5y ago
The whole idea that our lives should be divided into seven days chunks always seemed strange to me. If I'm "in a flow", 5 days is too little for me – I almost force myself to switch to "weekend mode". And two days of weekend is too short – I can't travel to anywhere, I can't switch so something else that requires another "flow". Basically, 5-2 cycle gives you sense of having some personal time without giving you any personal time. Probably 10-4 or 10-5 would be more healthy and liberating in some sense.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  10 continuous days of work would be horrible for me, as a programmer, and would probably jeopardize the health and even lives of many blue collar workers. While I think flexible schedules are a good thing, the default for most people is already too many working days in a row.
  - ByteJockey 5y ago
    Fair, but I think the idea that everyone has to have the same schedule regardless of field of work (or even within the same field) isn't necessarily the best idea.
rectang 5y ago
I haven't taken a position which required more than 32 hours a week since 2016. The trick is that I've gotten everything through word-of-mouth networking where my reputation made bargaining down the hours feasible. Our biggest hiring institutions (e.g. LinkedIn) for the most part don't provide a way to specify that you are only willing to consider "full-time but not 40+ hours". So I indicate "part-time only", but I still tend to get recruiters who ignore that and ping me for 40+ hour jobs. The four-day workweek will be within our grasp when we can actually specify it in a job search.
helij 5y ago
I took a new position in March this year and only accepted it after they agreed to 4 day workweek. I took 20% pay cut. One of the best decisions I made in my life. I wish all people who can, to do this. There's nothing you'll miss on Friday or any other weekday and so much to gain.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  Most of my colleagues, and myself, could easily take a 20% without a noticeable impact to quality of life. That's also a problem, if we where allowed to make that trade, I believe that most would. If, as others have seen, productivity goes up, then it might not matter. It's a risky bet for companies with highly paid staff.
- tick_tock_tick 5y ago
  I mean most other tech people I know just take a de facto half day on Friday or "Worked" from home that day.
  - nickd2001 5y ago
    Which is part of the reason why you can work 32 hours a week and look no less productive. ;)
ed25519FUUU 5y ago
I did a few interviews this year. I specially asked for a 4 day work week. Almost every single recruiter seemed baffled by the idea. One said they offered it but I have to be available on my off day for “important” (they couldn’t give me a definition) meetings, which defeats the purpose.
entropicgravity 5y ago
How about a four day week and a three day week? That would even out the economy through the week and accommodate different appetites for work.
pkrotich 5y ago
I’m close to doing 4-day workweek for my team. For now we do 4.5 (half a day on Friday). That said, had to subscribe to answering services to cover off hours including Friday afternoon. You’ll be surprised how many people call at 5pm on Friday.
koch 5y ago
Shoutout to philmcp who was able to quit his job recently to work on https://4dayweek.io https://4dayweek.io full time!
- yupper32 5y ago
  For being so progressive, I'm surprised that not a single listing I clicked had salary ranges. It's just not worth the effort of even considering these companies without salary ranges. 4-day work weeks mean nothing if it means getting paid <80% market rate.
  - helij 5y ago
    Why not? I gladly took a pay cut to be able to work 4 days a week.
    - yupper32 5y ago
      Easy: Because I don't want a pay cut. I'd do four 10-hour days. if that's what it takes. But it's not worth the effort and time to research dozens of companies if they're all going to tell me that I'd need to take a significant pay cut. And if a listing on that site doesn't have the salary range, that's what I'm going to assume is going to happen.
- philmcp 5y ago
  Thanks for the shoutout Koch! Appreciated :)
mmlkrx 5y ago
I have both worked 32 hours per week over 5 work days, as well as 28 hours over 4 work days. While they both have their merits, I found working 4 days better for my work life balance. I typically work on creative projects on Fridays or run errands. This frees up my weekend and I feel very rested returning to work on Monday --even during stressful times. Strangely, working on a different cycle than most of my co-workers has also increased my focus quite a bit. disclaimer: I haven't read the linked article, apologies if the comment is slightly off-topic.
- ElijahLynn 5y ago
  I think most people here likely don't have a NYTimes subscription so it is likely most are just discussing the headline as well.
cherrycherry98 5y ago
I always found this quote from The Wealth of Nations to be quite insightful and was one of those surprising moments reading the actual text: "It will be found, I believe, in every sort of trade, that the man who works so moderately, as to be able to work constantly, not only preserves his health the longest, but, in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work."
- missedthecue 5y ago
  I think that is just saying to work smarter, not harder. I don't think it's saying put in fewer hours. The "as to be able to work constantly" seems to be vital here.
  - pietrovismara 5y ago
    I don't think so; it says "moderately". As in, this is a marathon, not a sprint. If you run too fast, you won't get to the end of the race.
  - cherrycherry98 5y ago
    I provided the quote which I thought most concisely communicated his thesis in this passage. The immediately proceeding lines I believe clarify it: "Great labour, either of mind or body, continued for several days together is, in most men, naturally followed by a great desire of relaxation, which, if not restrained by force, or by some strong necessity, is almost irresistible. It is the call of nature, which requires to be relieved by some indulgence, sometimes of ease only, but sometimes too of dissipation and diversion. If it is not complied with, the consequences are often dangerous and sometimes fatal, and such as almost always, sooner or later, bring on the peculiar infirmity of the trade. If masters would always listen to the dictates of reason and humanity, they have frequently occasion rather to moderate, than to animate the application of many of their workmen." This is all from Chapter VIII: Of The Wages Of Labour.
xhrpost 5y ago
I'd like to point out a less popular point that the FDWW does not lie only with employers improving but also is the decision of individuals. I remember reading somewhere about a survey where they asked people what they would do if they had 1 extra day every week (so, 8 days). The response on average was "that would be great because I could get so much more done". Now the "so much done" may not be for primary employer, but the point is that people say they would spend more time with friends and family, if they had more time, but when offered, we don't take the opportunity. My point is, even if we did reduce our primary employment to 4 days, there are still a lot of people who will simply take this as an opportunity to work an additional part time job or side hustle. Then the bar for standard of living rises with them and we're back to where we started. Until we actually value rest, relationships etc, the maximal output mindset will endure.
- narraturgy 5y ago
  I doubt that the majority of people who would take on a second job or "side hustle" would be so affluent because of it that they would raise the standard of living. Given all the people I know who have worked second jobs, the "choice" to do so has come from them needing more money to make ends meet or to provide for their families, all while dreaming of being able to spend some time with the families they are providing for, as opposed to being in traffic driving from one job to another or in another meeting where they are expected to talk once for 5 minutes. The people in the world working 2 jobs don't tend to be affluent because of it. There are exceptions among the 3-letter elites, such as Jack Dorsey and his multiple CEO-ships, but those people /already/ represent a standard of living that is all but unachievable for the rest of us.
rectang 5y ago
It certainly doesn't seem like it's within our grasp on HN. Looking at the December 2021 "who is hiring" thread, I see four posts which offer "part-time" but aside from that nothing which specifies that either a 4-day or sub-40-hour workweek is an option.
- silentsea90 5y ago
  Bolt in SF has a 4 day workweek. Check them out.
  - rectang 5y ago
    Thank you, I did. :) While I'm not looking for a position at this moment, I've added Bolt to the list of companies I'll actively consider when I'm back in the market a few months from now.
gingerlime 5y ago
My company switched to 4-day workweeks at the beginning of 2021[0]. I can't imagine we'll ever go back. I guess it's one of the advantages of running a bootstrapped company with no VCs breathing down your neck... [0] https://blog.gingerlime.com/2020/how-we-switched-to-4-day-weeks/ https://blog.gingerlime.com/2020/how-we-switched-to-4-day-we...
- philmcp 5y ago
  This is awesome, congrats on making the leap! I'll be adding any of your jobs to https://4dayweek.io https://4dayweek.io :)
  - gingerlime 5y ago
    thank you! checked out your site, but it says software jobs? and we hire primarily for content-related tasks (medical writing, video production etc)
    - philmcp 5y ago
      Ah damn, ye it's mostly software jobs atm - but I've got plans to extend this. Will get in touch when this goes live :)
frontman1988 5y ago
I would rather have a 6 day work week with 2 months of paid holidays every year. There isn't much you can do on a 3 day break that you can't do in a 1 day or 2 day break. But a month long break and you can do crazy stuff like hiking in Papua New Guinea or sailing across an ocean.
- handrous 5y ago
  We could just have 8 weeks of paid vacation by law and not also work 6-day weeks. That's not so far from what other countries do as to be obviously crazy or unreasonable.
- maximus-decimus 5y ago
  What you can do with 3 days per week instead of a month per year is to set good habbits. Fit a sport into your schedule, learn music. Anything requiring discipline is gonna be much easier if you're able to build a daily/weekly schedule around it.
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  Why trade away your year for 2 months? 40 hour per week with 40 days PTO is not very common but in larger companies in Europe is not unheard of specially for senior ICs.
- lolsal 5y ago
  Life happens outside of two months a year, though.
  - frontman1988 5y ago
    Yet those two months will be more memorable than the ten months of monotonous life. I just feel work and related city life bullshit stays with you even on the weekends. There is some fun in just escaping. Or maybe I am too much vacation starved due to covid lol.
    - lolsal 5y ago
14 5y ago
No we are not within grasp. I work as a care worker and we are short staffed every day. You could deem the official work week 4 days but they would still need ya to work 5. All this would change is when someone would be deemed full time and when they can get benefits. The companies would still be short staffed but after declaring 4 days a week would be forced to pay overtime for the last day. There are no more workers available we are constantly trying to hire.
tombert 5y ago
My dad, my sister, and sister in law all work for Lockheed Martin and they do the 4-10 schedule: 4 days a week, ten hours a day, and they get every Friday off. I'm a little jealous of it, honestly; it's pretty rare that I work less than ten hours a day anyway, so I think economically it would be better for me.
- smithza 5y ago
  I work at LM and most of my colleagues here do the 4x10. I opted for a traditional 5x8 because I have young children at home and found that being gone for 10.5-11 hrs means I don't see them during their waking hours. If I could afford it, I would choose 4x8 and take the 20% paycut.
- iggldiggl 5y ago
  Is that ten hours including lunch break (and if yes, how much?), or not? Based on the stereotypical 9-to-5 office job in the UK or elsewhere, a "40" hour work week in those countries must obviously include some amount of paid lunch break (at a guess at least half an hour, maybe even one hour, giving somewhere between 35 and at worst 37.5 actually worked hours) In Germany on the other hand lunch breaks are typically unpaid, so 40 hours means 40 actually worked hours, plus however long your lunch break is (at least half an hour is the legal minimum when working between six and nine hours per day).
  - tombert 5y ago
    I believe that LM is closer to Germany on this; I don't think the lunches are paid, so you're potentially at the office for ~11 hours a day.
    - iggldiggl 5y ago
      Okay – a four-day week sounds tempting on the one hand, but on the other hand the place I'm working has a smaller-scale version of that arrangement whereby 8.75 hours Monday thru Thursday instead of 8 hours (lunch break not included) gives six additional days off per year plus a slightly earlier finish on Fridays, and personally that already often felt long enough, nevermind 10 hours plus x days. At least this autumn the working week has been reduced by two hours, so now it's only 8.25 hours + x. Because our working hours are somewhat flexible within reason, I might possibly get away with unofficially implementing that 4x10 model on my own, but 10 + x hour days really don't sound that tempting to me.
yupper32 5y ago
Easy: No. We can barely get a small percentage of jobs converted to remote. What makes people even hope for 4-day work weeks to be common? See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
- JetAlone 5y ago
  Stress makes it feel like less work and more time is necessary. I think the stress we feel is really a crisis about work feeling meaningless. If our work felt more meaningful, and engaging, we'd be happy to work far longer, and far more intensely. That stress gets exploited by the journalists, who, needing clicks, keep rewriting the same prose variants promising some "hope" of less raw obligated hours of meaningless work. This hope looks to be pregnant with the promise that shorter work hours would leave more time to pursue work that feels meaningful to us while allowing us to support ourselves... But a question worth asking is how much of it would just get absorbed into the indolence that most of us have let ourselves slip too much time and energy into. I contend that the hope for shorter hours is indeed not pregnant, but simply sporting a beer gut. EDIT: I went through the struggle of clinging to this hope. I'm still stressed by exhausting time management problems and there seems to be no systematic panacea approach that will make them go away. But fully letting go of this hope, and the tacit resentfulness that comes with its unfulfillment was one of the best things I've done in the last few months and I would whole heartedly recommend it. My psychological resources can be re-distributed to something better; I could dedicate that mental energy to finding or performing work I do consider meaningful.
unklefolk 5y ago
If you have a young family, working a 4 day week would make all the difference. At the moment I work 5 days and then go into a weekend which can be just as tiring as a work day with kids to tend to. With an extra day, this would mostly be when the kids are at school, so it would be genuine time to myself.
kungito 5y ago
I wish I didn't hate my job. I would work proper 10+ hours a day for a worthy cause. 4 days of boring and unfulfilling stuff is too much
jcvhaarst 5y ago
Please people, step out of your USA bubble. I (Dutch guy) haven't had a more than 4 day workweek in the last 20 years. It is _your_ choice to "work" 5 days. The 40 hour workweek wasn't created for the worker's benefit, it was created because the owner of the factory saw that that was the most efficient. Paying people to work longer didn't give him benefit.
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  Hell I’m in the USA and I work a four day work week (four six hour days!!). Last time I was job hunting I simply told every prospective employer my desired schedule and I found one small organization that was fine with that. It’s life changing!
- procinct 5y ago
  It’s definitely not just a US thing. In NZ the vast majority of people work 5 days. I suspect probably the same in AU and UK.
  - emptysongglass 5y ago
    Definitely also still the case in Denmark, which is a stone's throw away from the Dutch. Don't think this is in any way illustrative of a US-bubble.
- jorblumesea 5y ago
  Most of Europe works 5 days, 40 hr weeks. Sounds like you're in a bubble.
  - iggldiggl 5y ago
    But 40 hours with or without lunch breaks? Based on the stereotypical 9-to-5 job, in the UK lunch breaks seem to be paid, so at a guess there's only 35 to at worst 37.5 actually worked hours per week. In Germany on the other hand lunch breaks typically aren't paid, and a 40 hr week means 40 actually worked hours, plus however long your lunch breaks are (half an hours is the legal minimum for an eight hour workday).
simonsquiff 5y ago
As of January I’m moving to 50% of full time - generally 2.5 days a week, I expect there will be certain months where I do a couple of weeks in a row and little else rest of the month. After 20+ years working full time am incredibly excited about the change and what I can do with the extra space in my life. Due to how tax rates work I get about 58% of previous pay for 50% of the work. I expect to deliver about 80% of the value I do today - by having a good excuse to jettison the low value stuff, feel more motivated and engaged in the time I do have, feel more refreshed with more mental energy Time will show if that proves the case…
waspight 5y ago
What about five days but 6 hours a day? How is that compared to four day workweek?
- zimbabwe_zim 5y ago
  5 Days x 6 Hours = 30 Hours per Week 4 Days x 8 Hours = 32 Hours per Week
- Karawebnetwork 5y ago
  You still need to do your full commute every day, twice a day. So you don't get the full range of personal time available by reducing your hours. You also lose the advantage of having a free day during office hours for personal appointments. I would also argue that (for me at least), a 6 hours day will be just as stressful as a 7 hour day.
more_corn 5y ago
Our company is shifting to a 4 day week. The fifth day you can take off, work on a side project or even work on a company backed R&D effort. Work smart, not long.
irrational 5y ago
My company typically gives everyone half days on Fridays from Memorial Day to Labor Day (and most people only put in a token amount of work - if that - on those Fridays - no meetings are allowed to be scheduled on any Friday of the year). This year, in addition to that, they gave everyone every Friday off for the month of July. And... the company still functioned just fine. We run on sprints and we finished just as many story points during those sprints as during sprints when we work full Fridays. I'm pretty sure we could all stop working every Friday and things would go perfectly well. Also, we aren't allowed to make any code changes from Thanksgiving to New Years. So nothing really happens from Thanksgiving to mid-December and then the entire company stops working the last two weeks of December - we don't even submit time off for it, you just don't show up. That is essentially 10-20 business days where no real work happens. That is almost the equivalent of a year's worth of Fridays.
- magicroot75 5y ago
  I have the opposite experience at my company. We are given half days on summer Fridays. However, because the workload and client communications were not reduced, 80% of weeks the junior team members would take off, and myself and other senior members would not only have to unofficially work the full Friday, but also take on the work of the rest of the team.
- EastSmith 5y ago
  Similar thing - half of the year now with no meeting Fridays & 4hrs Fridays. This gets extended month to month based on performance, so it could stop, but if they stop it I will really try to find a job where they do a similar thing. No meetings on Friday means that in four hours you can do as much as with normal Friday but with meetings (given the meetings produce 0 value, which is not the case of course, but also sometimes the meetings could have been an email, a tweet, or a joke).
- cm2012 5y ago
  No code changes from Nov to Jan seems crazy to me. But if it works good for you guys.
  - 5y ago
penjelly 5y ago
wasnt there a post about this recently and the comments pointed out how 50 years ago articles like this existed? iirc then we havent made a lot of progress
rackjack 5y ago
I think 9 hours per day for 4 days a week would be very reasonable, since this is only a 10% reduction in work time and for me personally, work days are a wash anyways.
dfxm12 5y ago
I almost fell for the clickbait, but then I remembered Betteridge's law of headlines.
- JetAlone 5y ago
  Nice, didn't know about that one. Cool law.
ElijahLynn 5y ago
I can't reply to the "https://archive.md/PVjCZ https://archive.md/PVjCZ" comment by stuff4ben, the reply link is missing. But first I got a "DNS Probe Possbile" in Brave, and after 4 refreshes I just got a Privacy error with "NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID".
petesergeant 5y ago
I’m doing a part-time Masters and have used that as an excuse for why I need to work a 4-day week, but honestly, I’m never going back unless I get desperate. It’s a huge quality of life improvement.
taneq 5y ago
The problem with this idea (and don't get me wrong, I love the idea!) is that as automation takes away the busywork, what's left requires an increasing amount of specialized domain-specific knowledge, and this kind of knowledge is expensive. Finding someone good with the right broad skillset is hard enough. Then they also need just the right combination of experience, or extensive on the job training, to be useful in the role. And once you have the right person with the right knowledge, they then need a lot of knowledge about the specific project they're working on, which also costs time and money for them to acquire. Also as your hours worked per worker goes down, the number of workers goes up, and your communication and coordination costs for a project are at least quadratic in the number of workers on that project. As a consequence, it costs more than twice as much to run a project with two half-time workers as it does to run the same project with one full-time worker.
philmcp 5y ago
I'd say its definitely within our grasp. It's a longterm trend which has only been accelerated by COVID Plus there are now many companies offering this benefit, which is one of the most powerful hiring selling points for companies who cannot compete with FAANG salaries: https://4dayweek.io/companies https://4dayweek.io/companies
jamesliudotcc 5y ago
Funny how two of these companies are a clothing store and a burger joint. I wonder if warehouse workers and line cooks get 4 day work weeks too.
jsnyder47 5y ago
Java/Web Developers, Experienced Software Engineer Base 36-hour, 4-day work week Apply at https://www.opttek.com/2021/03/java-web-developers-experienced-software-engineers-boulder/ https://www.opttek.com/2021/03/java-web-developers-experienc...
elisbce 5y ago
People are just lazy, greedy, and never satisfied. After 4-day workweek is a norm, people would think working 4 days a week is a horrible crime against mankind by capitalism, and ask for 3-day workweeks, etc. This will keep going until the country is broke and everyone is f*ked, but who cares if it doesn't happen in the next 10 years?
GoOnThenDoTell 5y ago
The rigid 5-day expectation is just as odd as the old commute-to-the-office expectation
kbos87 5y ago
The next 6 months will be really telling. I know many people who are being groomed by their employers to feel good about a January return. “We’re asking you to come in three days a week if you are within committing distance of the office, oh by the way, enjoy a half day on Friday!” is the common theme of the message right now. I’m usually hesitant to make predictions but I really think this is going to be a losing POV if we look two years out. The cat is out of the bag - good talent is going to gravitate toward employers who give their folks autonomy and optionality. This is the moment when the corporate world finally realizes that having a reputation for treating people well actually matters.
Proven 5y ago
[dead]
helpfulmandrill 5y ago
My main worry about doing this personally is that it would be a form of "golden handcuffs". I'm pretty sure I could persuade my current employer to let me do a 4-day week (for a pay cut), but I'm also sure making that a negotiating point for future jobs would be problematic (at least while a 4-day week isn't standard or widespread). Also, money.
- nickd2001 5y ago
  My current (and hope to stay a very long time) job is 4-day week, and so were my last 2 before that. Its easy to negotiate in my experience. The thing is, most people simply don't ask. Maybe they're scared it makes them look not committed or something. But that's easy to fix by cranking out decent work for the 4 days you're there. Its probably harder if you have line management responsibility or some other expectation that needs you there more. But coding? No problem. I have an "excuse" in terms of extra caring responsibilities, which I declare, and that probably puts to bed any idea people have that its out of laziness. As for golden handcuffs, some truth in that perhaps, but if you enjoy 4 days a week and that frees up time, does it really matter if you then feel a bit tied to that employer? Its a trade-off. One other thing, you can save random bits of money with a weekday off by doing jobs you might otherwise paid someone to do, or cook cheaper but fiddlier foot etc. good luck asking. ;)
  - helpfulmandrill 5y ago
    Thanks. Lots to think about. I do lack the "excuse", which might be a problem, but we'll see.

257 points by lxm 5y ago

mjfl 5y ago

I've been looking for a job where I'd only have to work 3 days per week. Then my life would be only 3/7 work and 4/7 rest, which would be great for my work life balance. I also prefer a bay area salary, because of my high rental costs. Does anyone know where I could find such a job?

zffr 5y ago
Build a low maintenance business that generates a profit higher than a Bay Area salary and requires less than 3 full days to keep it going. Here’s an example: https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/22807858/tiktok-influencer-microsoft-excel-instagram-decoder-podcast https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/22807858/tiktok-influe... The founder makes >100k per month as mostly passive income.

ElijahLynn 5y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20211201195030/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/23/business/dealbook/four-day-workweek.html https://web.archive.org/web/20211201195030/https://www.nytim...

kashkhan 5y ago

two day work week would be even better...

seniorsassycat 5y ago

I've been working 4 days a week, 32 hours, for 4 years and I will never go back. It has made me hesitant to look for other work, I'm not sure if get the same deal, but so far I'm happy where I am. As others have said the ratios are awesome. I have 15 days off every 20 days instead of 8. For a 20% pay cut, while getting full benefits.

mrtranscendence 5y ago
For my geographical area, I get paid what feels like a very good salary (enough that I no longer have to worry about money at all). If my company said “hey, we’ll pay you half as much and you only have to work 20 hours a week” I’d take it in a heartbeat, even though I’d have to start being more careful with money. Sadly, I don’t see that offer ever coming, even though I could totally do my job in half as much time with some creative meeting deletion.
- eadz 5y ago
  I think a lot are in the same boat. Is Job-Sharing a potential solution?
saghm 5y ago
> I have 15 days off every 20 days instead of 8 Wait, what? How does working one day less a week get you to 15 days off?
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  The ratio is a little unusual but the math is right, the divisor is per days worked. 15 days off / 20 days worked (5 weeks of 4 day workweeks) 8 days off / 20 days worked (4 weeks of 5 day workweeks) Another way of saying it would be: in a 4 day work week you have 4/3 (1.33) ratio of work days to days off whereas in a traditional workweek is 5/2 (2.5). So although it is just one day it dramatically shifts the balance between work and time off.
  - saghm 5y ago
    Oh, I see! I thought they were saying they had 15 days off in a 20 day period, not in a period when they worked 20 days
nickd2001 5y ago
Same for me and agree with it being awesome. I think you might've meant, 12 days off per 28? Over 4 weeks, you get 2 weekend days and an extra weekday so 4 * 3 = 12 ?

BitwiseFool 5y ago

I would actually love a 4.5 day workweek, where the half-day is up to the employee to take.

macinjosh 5y ago
My company started 1/2 day Fridays a few months ago in what was billed as a temporary experiment. Today it was announced that we'd be keeping them permanently. From my point of view it has been a big improvement for everyone there. Having some time to play with my daughter during the day time is great, especially during winter while the days are short and the sun is already down by the time I am done working.
seiferteric 5y ago
We had something like that at my work. From June-Aug we had "Summer Hours" where we would not have any meetings after 2pm and could stop working if then if there was nothing vital. Not exactly half day but still nice, though not sure why it's just for summer time...
- ghaff 5y ago
  The thinking is probably that more people are likely to be heading somewhere for the weekend in the summer or at least doing some Friday evening activity. In general though I observe that I'm seeing a lot fewer scheduled Friday meetings than on other days and, while things sometimes need to get handled on Friday afternoon, people are often pretty apologetic is they schedule a Friday PM meeting.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mlyle 5y ago
Better to do 9 days in 10 or really make it to 4 (longer) days, IMO. Because then you're saving some commuter trips for people who have to be on site. I think 4x9 as a nominal workweek makes a whole lot of sense. (9 days x 8 hours) / (2 weeks) is almost as good.

stuff4ben 5y ago

https://archive.md/PVjCZ https://archive.md/PVjCZ

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

I'm currently working for a company that forces office staff to work a half day on christmas eve with the additional stipulation, of course, that you must burn a full day of vacation to skip it. This despite the fact that no one in the company can ever remember a customer calling on christmas eve. So I'm very skeptical that this trend will grow. It took the IWW to get us the concepts of The Weekend and Sick Days, and I expect it will take nothing less extreme to claw back any more of our time from the corporate slave-driving overlords. Absent a few easily-dismissed outliers, of course.

teawrecks 5y ago
Sure would be a shame if the employees collectively bargained with the company for more reasonable policies...
- azinman2 5y ago
  Yup… because their jobs may then go abroad as has been the trend for the past 20 years…
  - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
    An ultimately the company will suffer in quality, be bought by private equity and gutted in the next twenty years.
    - RexM 5y ago
      Unfortunately, most companies aren't looking past the next few quarters.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    You can't ship pretty much any service industry job abroad.
    - klipklop 5y ago

flipbrad 5y ago

I started working a 4 day work week a few years ago and would not go back. The benefits to the employee are obvious, but consider those for the company: it gets a motivated, energised employee, and if like me they're a parent or for some other reason the employee has appointments (school, Dr etc), the employee often schedules them during the day off (or moves the day off to accomodate them), meaning the employee isn't taking any time off (usually, paid!) for them - I suspect I've had a lot less PTO than fulltime colleagues.

spaetzleesser 5y ago
And less sick days probably.
CountDrewku 5y ago
Are you on a 32 hour or 40 hour week? I would not go back either but 10 hour days are exhausting. I go work out and eat when I get off work and then I pretty much have to go to bed.
- flipbrad 5y ago
  9 to 5.45 or thereabouts. Leaves plenty of family / hobby time if you're working from home. Commute takes away from that.

wayoutthere 5y ago

I work a 4 day week; just don’t tell my boss.

icedchai 5y ago
You and everyone else "working from home."
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rectang 5y ago
  No, that's not true, and it's that fantasy which gets us the "butts-in-seats" management style. This is correlated first to workplace morale and second to the individual worker. The workers who would do this from home are the same workers who would do it in the office. And employers who make their workers' lives miserable will have endemic problems with people not putting in effort.
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  Be the change you want to see in the world.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  You joke, I assume. My boss was notoriously against working from home. COVID proved him VERY wrong. People where just as effective, if not more. They where much more flexible with customer. It doesn't matter that a client ask you to say a bit longer, if you're already home and have everything set up.
  - icedchai 5y ago
    Most people I know never worked 5 days a week. They just pretended. Now they don't have to pretend as much (as long as that little Slack dot stays green!)
- handrous 5y ago
  The ones in the office do the same. They just spread the day of not-working over the whole week and have the added stress of having to pretend to work some of the time. Though actually it's more like 2-3 days of not working, spread out, more often than not.

vitno 5y ago

4 day work weeks as a concept real clicked for me when put into ratios. It's a 50% increase in personal time and only a 20% reduction in work hours.

Tarsul 5y ago
and less than 20% in net income lost (due to income taxes usually being progressive).
- bradjohnson 5y ago
  Why should there be any loss in income?
  - smithza 5y ago
    If you negotiate with management to go from 40 hrs a week to 32 hrs a week, there is usually an expectation you will take a 20% paycut. Parent was saying that since income taxes are tiered, you will likely take a < 20% take-home paycut.
- usefulcat 5y ago
  ..and even less if you consider the value of benefits, like health insurance in the US
- PeterisP 5y ago
  On the other hand, if large parts of your income are tied in near-fixed expenses (e.g. mortgage), then 20% more net income can mean doubling your discretionary spending, and 20% decrease - almost eliminating it.
GordonS 5y ago
I switched to a 4-day work week several years ago (maybe 7 or 8, forget), taking. 20% pay cut. Ot really does feel like such a better work-life balance - as you say, it's a much bigger increase in personal time than it is a decrease in working hours. And I am just as productive as when I worked 5 days a week!

robotsquidward 5y ago

As long as a 4-day work week doesn't mean 10-hour work days.

williamtwild 5y ago
Working 5 10 hours work days (at least ) already , four would be great.
mitigating 5y ago
I would do 10 hours day for Friday off. Working an extra two hours doesn't put a huge strain as you are already at work or in the work mode. During crunch time I would end up working until 21:00 to 22:00 and I felt it was like exercise in that as long as you don't stop it's not as bad. You also avoid commute overhead if you work from the office.
GordonS 5y ago
That would defeat the point - time with arse in seat does not equal productivity. I switched to a 4-day work week years ago, and still work 7.5h each day. I found that I'm much more focused during working hours, and spend less time procrastinating - I'm just as productive as I was before.

willcipriano 5y ago

If you got no raise this year, working roughly two and a half hours less per week would bring your compensation back in line with inflation. If firms can't stomach wage increases this may be a valid alternative.

ericd 5y ago
Shrinkflation comes to the workweek.
lukas099 5y ago
This is the secret reason some Oklahoma public schools switched to a 4-day week a few years back: as a retention bonus for underpaid teachers.

swayvil 5y ago

You mean NOT extract the maximum return on our labor investment? Lol, no. Sincerely, your ruling oligarchs.

alistairSH 5y ago
Came here to post something similar. Sort of nation-wide legislation (or some combo of CA, TX, FL and NY going this way on their own), we'll never see it. The ruling class has too much to loose. Even for creates and professionals, where there's an arguable case for higher productivity over 4 days vs 5, I don't see them ever giving up the control granted to them by the 5th day.

throwaway803453 5y ago

FWH has exposed how many white-collar jobs were only full-time in the ass-in-seat sense and how many employees should have Professional Meeting Attender as their job title. I used to be the guy who would champion efficient meeting practices. Now it's the last thing I want given that I can now work-out, make breakfast, do manual labor, etc., while listening to meeting. 4 day work week in grasp you ask ? For many I'd be surprised if they actually did 15hrs of work a week. I'd never hire a full time employee who can work remotely. I'd employ a contractor who has to itemize their invoice.

nimbius 5y ago
an excellent point. speaking from a more blue-collar perspective, i would argue most "real" (non meeting attender) jobs have been 3-4 day for a long time now thanks to automation and a perverse incentive to avoid paying benefits. bartenders, repair staff, custodial, fast food and construction have never offered a solid 40 hour week. many of these roles are highly automated and simply do not need a full 40 woman or man hours of work anymore. farming has been this way for a very long time and as such, most farmers wives would take jobs as lunchroom staff for the local elementary school to provide health insurance for the family that a farming job simply couldnt. what i wonder now is that if this affects 'white' collar workers, will the rules change? will nail-swatters in the construction yard see benefits and retirement? or will an elaborate machination take place to ensure only the cloistered ass-in-seat see affordable flu shots and checkups.
- lupire 5y ago
  benefit-less jobs are up to 29hr/week, not 15. and it's not because of automation. Fast food restaurant isn't run by one person with downtime.
- piva00 5y ago
  You should include your location, I assume you are talking about the USA because this isn't reality in the countries I've lived in my life.
dboreham 5y ago

stackedinserter 5y ago

The whole idea that our lives should be divided into seven days chunks always seemed strange to me. If I'm "in a flow", 5 days is too little for me – I almost force myself to switch to "weekend mode". And two days of weekend is too short – I can't travel to anywhere, I can't switch so something else that requires another "flow". Basically, 5-2 cycle gives you sense of having some personal time without giving you any personal time. Probably 10-4 or 10-5 would be more healthy and liberating in some sense.

tsimionescu 5y ago
10 continuous days of work would be horrible for me, as a programmer, and would probably jeopardize the health and even lives of many blue collar workers. While I think flexible schedules are a good thing, the default for most people is already too many working days in a row.
- ByteJockey 5y ago
  Fair, but I think the idea that everyone has to have the same schedule regardless of field of work (or even within the same field) isn't necessarily the best idea.

rectang 5y ago

I haven't taken a position which required more than 32 hours a week since 2016. The trick is that I've gotten everything through word-of-mouth networking where my reputation made bargaining down the hours feasible. Our biggest hiring institutions (e.g. LinkedIn) for the most part don't provide a way to specify that you are only willing to consider "full-time but not 40+ hours". So I indicate "part-time only", but I still tend to get recruiters who ignore that and ping me for 40+ hour jobs. The four-day workweek will be within our grasp when we can actually specify it in a job search.

helij 5y ago

I took a new position in March this year and only accepted it after they agreed to 4 day workweek. I took 20% pay cut. One of the best decisions I made in my life. I wish all people who can, to do this. There's nothing you'll miss on Friday or any other weekday and so much to gain.

mrweasel 5y ago
Most of my colleagues, and myself, could easily take a 20% without a noticeable impact to quality of life. That's also a problem, if we where allowed to make that trade, I believe that most would. If, as others have seen, productivity goes up, then it might not matter. It's a risky bet for companies with highly paid staff.
tick_tock_tick 5y ago
I mean most other tech people I know just take a de facto half day on Friday or "Worked" from home that day.
- nickd2001 5y ago
  Which is part of the reason why you can work 32 hours a week and look no less productive. ;)

ed25519FUUU 5y ago

I did a few interviews this year. I specially asked for a 4 day work week. Almost every single recruiter seemed baffled by the idea. One said they offered it but I have to be available on my off day for “important” (they couldn’t give me a definition) meetings, which defeats the purpose.

entropicgravity 5y ago

How about a four day week and a three day week? That would even out the economy through the week and accommodate different appetites for work.

pkrotich 5y ago

I’m close to doing 4-day workweek for my team. For now we do 4.5 (half a day on Friday). That said, had to subscribe to answering services to cover off hours including Friday afternoon. You’ll be surprised how many people call at 5pm on Friday.

koch 5y ago

Shoutout to philmcp who was able to quit his job recently to work on https://4dayweek.io https://4dayweek.io full time!

yupper32 5y ago
For being so progressive, I'm surprised that not a single listing I clicked had salary ranges. It's just not worth the effort of even considering these companies without salary ranges. 4-day work weeks mean nothing if it means getting paid <80% market rate.
- helij 5y ago
  Why not? I gladly took a pay cut to be able to work 4 days a week.
  - yupper32 5y ago
    Easy: Because I don't want a pay cut. I'd do four 10-hour days. if that's what it takes. But it's not worth the effort and time to research dozens of companies if they're all going to tell me that I'd need to take a significant pay cut. And if a listing on that site doesn't have the salary range, that's what I'm going to assume is going to happen.
philmcp 5y ago
Thanks for the shoutout Koch! Appreciated :)

mmlkrx 5y ago

I have both worked 32 hours per week over 5 work days, as well as 28 hours over 4 work days. While they both have their merits, I found working 4 days better for my work life balance. I typically work on creative projects on Fridays or run errands. This frees up my weekend and I feel very rested returning to work on Monday --even during stressful times. Strangely, working on a different cycle than most of my co-workers has also increased my focus quite a bit. disclaimer: I haven't read the linked article, apologies if the comment is slightly off-topic.

ElijahLynn 5y ago
I think most people here likely don't have a NYTimes subscription so it is likely most are just discussing the headline as well.

cherrycherry98 5y ago

I always found this quote from The Wealth of Nations to be quite insightful and was one of those surprising moments reading the actual text: "It will be found, I believe, in every sort of trade, that the man who works so moderately, as to be able to work constantly, not only preserves his health the longest, but, in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work."

missedthecue 5y ago
I think that is just saying to work smarter, not harder. I don't think it's saying put in fewer hours. The "as to be able to work constantly" seems to be vital here.
- pietrovismara 5y ago
  I don't think so; it says "moderately". As in, this is a marathon, not a sprint. If you run too fast, you won't get to the end of the race.
- cherrycherry98 5y ago
  I provided the quote which I thought most concisely communicated his thesis in this passage. The immediately proceeding lines I believe clarify it: "Great labour, either of mind or body, continued for several days together is, in most men, naturally followed by a great desire of relaxation, which, if not restrained by force, or by some strong necessity, is almost irresistible. It is the call of nature, which requires to be relieved by some indulgence, sometimes of ease only, but sometimes too of dissipation and diversion. If it is not complied with, the consequences are often dangerous and sometimes fatal, and such as almost always, sooner or later, bring on the peculiar infirmity of the trade. If masters would always listen to the dictates of reason and humanity, they have frequently occasion rather to moderate, than to animate the application of many of their workmen." This is all from Chapter VIII: Of The Wages Of Labour.

xhrpost 5y ago

I'd like to point out a less popular point that the FDWW does not lie only with employers improving but also is the decision of individuals. I remember reading somewhere about a survey where they asked people what they would do if they had 1 extra day every week (so, 8 days). The response on average was "that would be great because I could get so much more done". Now the "so much done" may not be for primary employer, but the point is that people say they would spend more time with friends and family, if they had more time, but when offered, we don't take the opportunity. My point is, even if we did reduce our primary employment to 4 days, there are still a lot of people who will simply take this as an opportunity to work an additional part time job or side hustle. Then the bar for standard of living rises with them and we're back to where we started. Until we actually value rest, relationships etc, the maximal output mindset will endure.

narraturgy 5y ago
I doubt that the majority of people who would take on a second job or "side hustle" would be so affluent because of it that they would raise the standard of living. Given all the people I know who have worked second jobs, the "choice" to do so has come from them needing more money to make ends meet or to provide for their families, all while dreaming of being able to spend some time with the families they are providing for, as opposed to being in traffic driving from one job to another or in another meeting where they are expected to talk once for 5 minutes. The people in the world working 2 jobs don't tend to be affluent because of it. There are exceptions among the 3-letter elites, such as Jack Dorsey and his multiple CEO-ships, but those people /already/ represent a standard of living that is all but unachievable for the rest of us.

rectang 5y ago

It certainly doesn't seem like it's within our grasp on HN. Looking at the December 2021 "who is hiring" thread, I see four posts which offer "part-time" but aside from that nothing which specifies that either a 4-day or sub-40-hour workweek is an option.

silentsea90 5y ago
Bolt in SF has a 4 day workweek. Check them out.
- rectang 5y ago
  Thank you, I did. :) While I'm not looking for a position at this moment, I've added Bolt to the list of companies I'll actively consider when I'm back in the market a few months from now.

gingerlime 5y ago

My company switched to 4-day workweeks at the beginning of 2021[0]. I can't imagine we'll ever go back. I guess it's one of the advantages of running a bootstrapped company with no VCs breathing down your neck... [0] https://blog.gingerlime.com/2020/how-we-switched-to-4-day-weeks/ https://blog.gingerlime.com/2020/how-we-switched-to-4-day-we...

philmcp 5y ago
This is awesome, congrats on making the leap! I'll be adding any of your jobs to https://4dayweek.io https://4dayweek.io :)
- gingerlime 5y ago
  thank you! checked out your site, but it says software jobs? and we hire primarily for content-related tasks (medical writing, video production etc)
  - philmcp 5y ago
    Ah damn, ye it's mostly software jobs atm - but I've got plans to extend this. Will get in touch when this goes live :)

frontman1988 5y ago

I would rather have a 6 day work week with 2 months of paid holidays every year. There isn't much you can do on a 3 day break that you can't do in a 1 day or 2 day break. But a month long break and you can do crazy stuff like hiking in Papua New Guinea or sailing across an ocean.

handrous 5y ago
We could just have 8 weeks of paid vacation by law and not also work 6-day weeks. That's not so far from what other countries do as to be obviously crazy or unreasonable.
maximus-decimus 5y ago
What you can do with 3 days per week instead of a month per year is to set good habbits. Fit a sport into your schedule, learn music. Anything requiring discipline is gonna be much easier if you're able to build a daily/weekly schedule around it.
DoingIsLearning 5y ago
Why trade away your year for 2 months? 40 hour per week with 40 days PTO is not very common but in larger companies in Europe is not unheard of specially for senior ICs.
lolsal 5y ago
Life happens outside of two months a year, though.
- frontman1988 5y ago
  Yet those two months will be more memorable than the ten months of monotonous life. I just feel work and related city life bullshit stays with you even on the weekends. There is some fun in just escaping. Or maybe I am too much vacation starved due to covid lol.
  - lolsal 5y ago

14 5y ago

No we are not within grasp. I work as a care worker and we are short staffed every day. You could deem the official work week 4 days but they would still need ya to work 5. All this would change is when someone would be deemed full time and when they can get benefits. The companies would still be short staffed but after declaring 4 days a week would be forced to pay overtime for the last day. There are no more workers available we are constantly trying to hire.

tombert 5y ago

My dad, my sister, and sister in law all work for Lockheed Martin and they do the 4-10 schedule: 4 days a week, ten hours a day, and they get every Friday off. I'm a little jealous of it, honestly; it's pretty rare that I work less than ten hours a day anyway, so I think economically it would be better for me.

smithza 5y ago
I work at LM and most of my colleagues here do the 4x10. I opted for a traditional 5x8 because I have young children at home and found that being gone for 10.5-11 hrs means I don't see them during their waking hours. If I could afford it, I would choose 4x8 and take the 20% paycut.
iggldiggl 5y ago
Is that ten hours including lunch break (and if yes, how much?), or not? Based on the stereotypical 9-to-5 office job in the UK or elsewhere, a "40" hour work week in those countries must obviously include some amount of paid lunch break (at a guess at least half an hour, maybe even one hour, giving somewhere between 35 and at worst 37.5 actually worked hours) In Germany on the other hand lunch breaks are typically unpaid, so 40 hours means 40 actually worked hours, plus however long your lunch break is (at least half an hour is the legal minimum when working between six and nine hours per day).
- tombert 5y ago
  I believe that LM is closer to Germany on this; I don't think the lunches are paid, so you're potentially at the office for ~11 hours a day.
  - iggldiggl 5y ago
    Okay – a four-day week sounds tempting on the one hand, but on the other hand the place I'm working has a smaller-scale version of that arrangement whereby 8.75 hours Monday thru Thursday instead of 8 hours (lunch break not included) gives six additional days off per year plus a slightly earlier finish on Fridays, and personally that already often felt long enough, nevermind 10 hours plus x days. At least this autumn the working week has been reduced by two hours, so now it's only 8.25 hours + x. Because our working hours are somewhat flexible within reason, I might possibly get away with unofficially implementing that 4x10 model on my own, but 10 + x hour days really don't sound that tempting to me.

yupper32 5y ago

Easy: No. We can barely get a small percentage of jobs converted to remote. What makes people even hope for 4-day work weeks to be common? See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

JetAlone 5y ago
Stress makes it feel like less work and more time is necessary. I think the stress we feel is really a crisis about work feeling meaningless. If our work felt more meaningful, and engaging, we'd be happy to work far longer, and far more intensely. That stress gets exploited by the journalists, who, needing clicks, keep rewriting the same prose variants promising some "hope" of less raw obligated hours of meaningless work. This hope looks to be pregnant with the promise that shorter work hours would leave more time to pursue work that feels meaningful to us while allowing us to support ourselves... But a question worth asking is how much of it would just get absorbed into the indolence that most of us have let ourselves slip too much time and energy into. I contend that the hope for shorter hours is indeed not pregnant, but simply sporting a beer gut. EDIT: I went through the struggle of clinging to this hope. I'm still stressed by exhausting time management problems and there seems to be no systematic panacea approach that will make them go away. But fully letting go of this hope, and the tacit resentfulness that comes with its unfulfillment was one of the best things I've done in the last few months and I would whole heartedly recommend it. My psychological resources can be re-distributed to something better; I could dedicate that mental energy to finding or performing work I do consider meaningful.

unklefolk 5y ago

If you have a young family, working a 4 day week would make all the difference. At the moment I work 5 days and then go into a weekend which can be just as tiring as a work day with kids to tend to. With an extra day, this would mostly be when the kids are at school, so it would be genuine time to myself.

kungito 5y ago

I wish I didn't hate my job. I would work proper 10+ hours a day for a worthy cause. 4 days of boring and unfulfilling stuff is too much

jcvhaarst 5y ago

Please people, step out of your USA bubble. I (Dutch guy) haven't had a more than 4 day workweek in the last 20 years. It is _your_ choice to "work" 5 days. The 40 hour workweek wasn't created for the worker's benefit, it was created because the owner of the factory saw that that was the most efficient. Paying people to work longer didn't give him benefit.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
Hell I’m in the USA and I work a four day work week (four six hour days!!). Last time I was job hunting I simply told every prospective employer my desired schedule and I found one small organization that was fine with that. It’s life changing!
procinct 5y ago
It’s definitely not just a US thing. In NZ the vast majority of people work 5 days. I suspect probably the same in AU and UK.
- emptysongglass 5y ago
  Definitely also still the case in Denmark, which is a stone's throw away from the Dutch. Don't think this is in any way illustrative of a US-bubble.
jorblumesea 5y ago
Most of Europe works 5 days, 40 hr weeks. Sounds like you're in a bubble.
- iggldiggl 5y ago
  But 40 hours with or without lunch breaks? Based on the stereotypical 9-to-5 job, in the UK lunch breaks seem to be paid, so at a guess there's only 35 to at worst 37.5 actually worked hours per week. In Germany on the other hand lunch breaks typically aren't paid, and a 40 hr week means 40 actually worked hours, plus however long your lunch breaks are (half an hours is the legal minimum for an eight hour workday).

simonsquiff 5y ago

As of January I’m moving to 50% of full time - generally 2.5 days a week, I expect there will be certain months where I do a couple of weeks in a row and little else rest of the month. After 20+ years working full time am incredibly excited about the change and what I can do with the extra space in my life. Due to how tax rates work I get about 58% of previous pay for 50% of the work. I expect to deliver about 80% of the value I do today - by having a good excuse to jettison the low value stuff, feel more motivated and engaged in the time I do have, feel more refreshed with more mental energy Time will show if that proves the case…

waspight 5y ago

What about five days but 6 hours a day? How is that compared to four day workweek?

zimbabwe_zim 5y ago
5 Days x 6 Hours = 30 Hours per Week 4 Days x 8 Hours = 32 Hours per Week
Karawebnetwork 5y ago
You still need to do your full commute every day, twice a day. So you don't get the full range of personal time available by reducing your hours. You also lose the advantage of having a free day during office hours for personal appointments. I would also argue that (for me at least), a 6 hours day will be just as stressful as a 7 hour day.

more_corn 5y ago

Our company is shifting to a 4 day week. The fifth day you can take off, work on a side project or even work on a company backed R&D effort. Work smart, not long.

irrational 5y ago

My company typically gives everyone half days on Fridays from Memorial Day to Labor Day (and most people only put in a token amount of work - if that - on those Fridays - no meetings are allowed to be scheduled on any Friday of the year). This year, in addition to that, they gave everyone every Friday off for the month of July. And... the company still functioned just fine. We run on sprints and we finished just as many story points during those sprints as during sprints when we work full Fridays. I'm pretty sure we could all stop working every Friday and things would go perfectly well. Also, we aren't allowed to make any code changes from Thanksgiving to New Years. So nothing really happens from Thanksgiving to mid-December and then the entire company stops working the last two weeks of December - we don't even submit time off for it, you just don't show up. That is essentially 10-20 business days where no real work happens. That is almost the equivalent of a year's worth of Fridays.

magicroot75 5y ago
I have the opposite experience at my company. We are given half days on summer Fridays. However, because the workload and client communications were not reduced, 80% of weeks the junior team members would take off, and myself and other senior members would not only have to unofficially work the full Friday, but also take on the work of the rest of the team.
EastSmith 5y ago
Similar thing - half of the year now with no meeting Fridays & 4hrs Fridays. This gets extended month to month based on performance, so it could stop, but if they stop it I will really try to find a job where they do a similar thing. No meetings on Friday means that in four hours you can do as much as with normal Friday but with meetings (given the meetings produce 0 value, which is not the case of course, but also sometimes the meetings could have been an email, a tweet, or a joke).
cm2012 5y ago
No code changes from Nov to Jan seems crazy to me. But if it works good for you guys.
- 5y ago

penjelly 5y ago

wasnt there a post about this recently and the comments pointed out how 50 years ago articles like this existed? iirc then we havent made a lot of progress

rackjack 5y ago

I think 9 hours per day for 4 days a week would be very reasonable, since this is only a 10% reduction in work time and for me personally, work days are a wash anyways.

dfxm12 5y ago

I almost fell for the clickbait, but then I remembered Betteridge's law of headlines.

JetAlone 5y ago
Nice, didn't know about that one. Cool law.

ElijahLynn 5y ago

I can't reply to the "https://archive.md/PVjCZ https://archive.md/PVjCZ" comment by stuff4ben, the reply link is missing. But first I got a "DNS Probe Possbile" in Brave, and after 4 refreshes I just got a Privacy error with "NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID".

petesergeant 5y ago

I’m doing a part-time Masters and have used that as an excuse for why I need to work a 4-day week, but honestly, I’m never going back unless I get desperate. It’s a huge quality of life improvement.

taneq 5y ago

The problem with this idea (and don't get me wrong, I love the idea!) is that as automation takes away the busywork, what's left requires an increasing amount of specialized domain-specific knowledge, and this kind of knowledge is expensive. Finding someone good with the right broad skillset is hard enough. Then they also need just the right combination of experience, or extensive on the job training, to be useful in the role. And once you have the right person with the right knowledge, they then need a lot of knowledge about the specific project they're working on, which also costs time and money for them to acquire. Also as your hours worked per worker goes down, the number of workers goes up, and your communication and coordination costs for a project are at least quadratic in the number of workers on that project. As a consequence, it costs more than twice as much to run a project with two half-time workers as it does to run the same project with one full-time worker.

philmcp 5y ago

I'd say its definitely within our grasp. It's a longterm trend which has only been accelerated by COVID Plus there are now many companies offering this benefit, which is one of the most powerful hiring selling points for companies who cannot compete with FAANG salaries: https://4dayweek.io/companies https://4dayweek.io/companies

jamesliudotcc 5y ago

Funny how two of these companies are a clothing store and a burger joint. I wonder if warehouse workers and line cooks get 4 day work weeks too.

jsnyder47 5y ago

Java/Web Developers, Experienced Software Engineer Base 36-hour, 4-day work week Apply at https://www.opttek.com/2021/03/java-web-developers-experienced-software-engineers-boulder/ https://www.opttek.com/2021/03/java-web-developers-experienc...

elisbce 5y ago

People are just lazy, greedy, and never satisfied. After 4-day workweek is a norm, people would think working 4 days a week is a horrible crime against mankind by capitalism, and ask for 3-day workweeks, etc. This will keep going until the country is broke and everyone is f*ked, but who cares if it doesn't happen in the next 10 years?

GoOnThenDoTell 5y ago

The rigid 5-day expectation is just as odd as the old commute-to-the-office expectation

kbos87 5y ago

The next 6 months will be really telling. I know many people who are being groomed by their employers to feel good about a January return. “We’re asking you to come in three days a week if you are within committing distance of the office, oh by the way, enjoy a half day on Friday!” is the common theme of the message right now. I’m usually hesitant to make predictions but I really think this is going to be a losing POV if we look two years out. The cat is out of the bag - good talent is going to gravitate toward employers who give their folks autonomy and optionality. This is the moment when the corporate world finally realizes that having a reputation for treating people well actually matters.

Proven 5y ago

[dead]

helpfulmandrill 5y ago

My main worry about doing this personally is that it would be a form of "golden handcuffs". I'm pretty sure I could persuade my current employer to let me do a 4-day week (for a pay cut), but I'm also sure making that a negotiating point for future jobs would be problematic (at least while a 4-day week isn't standard or widespread). Also, money.

nickd2001 5y ago
My current (and hope to stay a very long time) job is 4-day week, and so were my last 2 before that. Its easy to negotiate in my experience. The thing is, most people simply don't ask. Maybe they're scared it makes them look not committed or something. But that's easy to fix by cranking out decent work for the 4 days you're there. Its probably harder if you have line management responsibility or some other expectation that needs you there more. But coding? No problem. I have an "excuse" in terms of extra caring responsibilities, which I declare, and that probably puts to bed any idea people have that its out of laziness. As for golden handcuffs, some truth in that perhaps, but if you enjoy 4 days a week and that frees up time, does it really matter if you then feel a bit tied to that employer? Its a trade-off. One other thing, you can save random bits of money with a weekday off by doing jobs you might otherwise paid someone to do, or cook cheaper but fiddlier foot etc. good luck asking. ;)
- helpfulmandrill 5y ago
  Thanks. Lots to think about. I do lack the "excuse", which might be a problem, but we'll see.