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> Taking entire days off is also possible unless it's expected to do something in a timely fashion such as meet with someone or produce results by XYZ day. I fo

> Taking entire days off is also possible unless it's expected to do something in a timely fashion such as meet with someone or produce results by XYZ day. I found in practice it wasn't possible to really drop off the grid for continuous 4 day weekends. I've tried to hire part-time employees or 4-day workweek employees in the past. You described essentially the #1 roadblock. It actually works okay as long as you have a steady stream of non-urgent, totally isolated, async-okay work for them to do. Most companies run out of that type of work fairly quickly and prefer full-time employees who can work together with their teammates. It actually becomes a constant annoyance for the rest of the team if the 1 person working part-time is only sporadically available, so they now have to shape their workweeks around that person's availability. > For example, if you only worked 3 days a week but had millions of dollars then this would be super interesting because you could go and do fun things all the time. Having $5,000 a month to spend guilt free to do whatever would be amazing if it didn't cut into any type of retirement fund because you're already set. Without going into too many details, I can actually speak to this. It's another scenario that's amazing at first, but (I really hate to say this) gets old over time. The problem for me was that few other people were available to do things during the week. I grew close to some friends with similarly erratic schedules (professional nurses often work 3x12 schedules, for example), but it's a small population. I enjoy doing a lot of things alone, but being able to do them with friends would be more fun. I also started feeling like I was missing out on interesting engineering problems that my friends were working on. Once you have the means to be selective about the jobs you take and money can be a secondary concern (to a degree) you have the option of joining a lot of very interesting companies and working with very interesting people.

deleted 5y ago
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jakupovic 5y ago
>The problem for me was that few other people were available to do things during the week. This describes what I felt after a few months of "not working". Most people I knew, and probably most people in US, are in a 5/2 schedule. Work 5 days then you get Friday night and whole weekend off. If you add 5 more days to that schedule it all mixes and after a while it got old, too. your millage may vary :)
sam_dusk 5y ago
maybe the problem is the 4day workweek. I worked 30h for some months and 32h for half a year in between always fulltime. People want to shovel one day free and then add a weekend but that creates all those sync issues and makes them just less productive. But instead work 6h every day in intelligence jobs like programming. When I did that I had zero sync issues because in core time I was always there, I had no downtime during work. Effectively I got just as much if not more done than fulltime but still everyday felt like I had half the day to myself (going swimming ...). It is a worlds difference in quality of life (unless you have to fill the free time with other family work or waste your life on Netflix). If I was an employer in IT, I would only hire 6h day workers (full pay). No breaks but no more than 6h 5 days a week. I can do 6h concentrated work almost any day with an afternoon/evening of other things. 8 or 12h only works occasionally on average when I work 8h I add more than the 2 extra hours of time wasting, because less satisfied/concentrated/happy.
tharkun__ 5y ago
Totally understood that someone not being available is an inconvenience, especially if that someone is the only one. I'm curious though how that's really so different from other situations than "4 day work week guy". I'd say that it could shape up as much of the same, depending on how you define "4 day work week". If that means someone is always unavailable for an entire Friday or Monday or Wednesday for example and everyone else works nine-to-five in the same office, that can seriously change some things, sure. Not a fun situation. Heck, being the "remote only guy" during the exact same 5 day work week when everyone else is in the exact same team room in the office together is not great. How about having teams made up only of people on 4 day work weeks? Suddenly it's not an issue any longer I would say and that is something I think the pandemic has taught us can be done. Not without some rules and not without some adjustments. I do think that those adjustments made permanent are well worth it for both sides. You gotta align when people work their 4 days at least a bit so that there is a chance to have some synchronous communication. I can think of a few examples of this actually. One would be a team that is not co-located but instead spread over multiple timezones. Say some people in London (GMT), some in New York (EST) and some in Los Angeles (PDT). There's a short period of overlap in a "normal workday". If we limit the 4 day work week such that everyone has to work during each weekday's overlap period but is free to choose when to work (during Mon-Fri "normal workdays", I would argue this is totally workable. Another example would be (mostly freelancers) that travel from their home town to work on Monday morning and leave for home on Friday afternoon. They will arrive at work around mid-day Monday and leave for home when everyone else goes for lunch on Friday and work a little longer than everyone else in the evenings Mon-Thu. Works perfectly well from my experience tbh. So what about "4 day" guy being that last example? He starts work Monday after lunch and is gone at lunch on Friday. Just no commute? Instead of working late the rest of the week he just doesn't. Should work just fine if you ask me without most of the effects that being off for an entire whole day (whichever it is) would have. Add in a few timezones across the team and you won't really notice the difference with a bit of planning of when someone will be available. Now one thing that is left are "urgent matters". I think that is not really an issue either. You gotta plan properly anyway. The fact that many C-levels (and some lower levels) can't plan and just "need to get this done by EOD" is completely irrelevant to me. They just gotta learn to plan instead of just making people bend to their will because they're utterly bad at even the tiniest bit of planning ahead. For everything else there's "on-call" or "tomorrow", because it's either really important and you pay for it or it's not that important.

deleted 5y ago

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jakupovic 5y ago

>The problem for me was that few other people were available to do things during the week. This describes what I felt after a few months of "not working". Most people I knew, and probably most people in US, are in a 5/2 schedule. Work 5 days then you get Friday night and whole weekend off. If you add 5 more days to that schedule it all mixes and after a while it got old, too. your millage may vary :)

sam_dusk 5y ago

maybe the problem is the 4day workweek. I worked 30h for some months and 32h for half a year in between always fulltime. People want to shovel one day free and then add a weekend but that creates all those sync issues and makes them just less productive. But instead work 6h every day in intelligence jobs like programming. When I did that I had zero sync issues because in core time I was always there, I had no downtime during work. Effectively I got just as much if not more done than fulltime but still everyday felt like I had half the day to myself (going swimming ...). It is a worlds difference in quality of life (unless you have to fill the free time with other family work or waste your life on Netflix). If I was an employer in IT, I would only hire 6h day workers (full pay). No breaks but no more than 6h 5 days a week. I can do 6h concentrated work almost any day with an afternoon/evening of other things. 8 or 12h only works occasionally on average when I work 8h I add more than the 2 extra hours of time wasting, because less satisfied/concentrated/happy.

tharkun__ 5y ago

Totally understood that someone not being available is an inconvenience, especially if that someone is the only one. I'm curious though how that's really so different from other situations than "4 day work week guy". I'd say that it could shape up as much of the same, depending on how you define "4 day work week". If that means someone is always unavailable for an entire Friday or Monday or Wednesday for example and everyone else works nine-to-five in the same office, that can seriously change some things, sure. Not a fun situation. Heck, being the "remote only guy" during the exact same 5 day work week when everyone else is in the exact same team room in the office together is not great. How about having teams made up only of people on 4 day work weeks? Suddenly it's not an issue any longer I would say and that is something I think the pandemic has taught us can be done. Not without some rules and not without some adjustments. I do think that those adjustments made permanent are well worth it for both sides. You gotta align when people work their 4 days at least a bit so that there is a chance to have some synchronous communication. I can think of a few examples of this actually. One would be a team that is not co-located but instead spread over multiple timezones. Say some people in London (GMT), some in New York (EST) and some in Los Angeles (PDT). There's a short period of overlap in a "normal workday". If we limit the 4 day work week such that everyone has to work during each weekday's overlap period but is free to choose when to work (during Mon-Fri "normal workdays", I would argue this is totally workable. Another example would be (mostly freelancers) that travel from their home town to work on Monday morning and leave for home on Friday afternoon. They will arrive at work around mid-day Monday and leave for home when everyone else goes for lunch on Friday and work a little longer than everyone else in the evenings Mon-Thu. Works perfectly well from my experience tbh. So what about "4 day" guy being that last example? He starts work Monday after lunch and is gone at lunch on Friday. Just no commute? Instead of working late the rest of the week he just doesn't. Should work just fine if you ask me without most of the effects that being off for an entire whole day (whichever it is) would have. Add in a few timezones across the team and you won't really notice the difference with a bit of planning of when someone will be available. Now one thing that is left are "urgent matters". I think that is not really an issue either. You gotta plan properly anyway. The fact that many C-levels (and some lower levels) can't plan and just "need to get this done by EOD" is completely irrelevant to me. They just gotta learn to plan instead of just making people bend to their will because they're utterly bad at even the tiniest bit of planning ahead. For everything else there's "on-call" or "tomorrow", because it's either really important and you pay for it or it's not that important.