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 di

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.