14 ms·

Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?

278 points by endorphine 4y ago

I'm pretty interested in finding a fully remote company, that hires for a 4-day workweek (as opposed to 5). How can someone (in Europe) find such employers?

tpayet 4y ago
We are building Meilisearch, an open-source search engine API and we are working 4-day a week :) -> https://jobs.lever.co/meili https://jobs.lever.co/meili
brtkdotse 4y ago
If you're in Europe I'd wholeheartedly looking into becoming a freelance contractor. Companies regularly hire contractors at 50%-100% more than the equivalent payroll cost, meaning you can easily work less (I haven't worked a 40h week since 2018)
kinow 4y ago
I've been doing 4 days per week here in New Zealand, but I asked it when being hired. Maybe check some companies with remote work if they'd be keen to hire you for 4 days per week too, maybe write in your cover letter or in an email when applying.
neals 4y ago
Hi! Hope this reply is appropriate here, I'll delete it if not. I run a medium-size bootstrapping startup, working on environmental problems and financial equality. What are you looking for? (except 4 days and remote)
- nkb_ 4y ago
  how does one get in touch with you?
Tepix 4y ago
What i'd like to see is a job that lets me work part time and be super flexible about it. E.g. i may be offline for 4 days and then work 7 days in a row. Obviously it would require that i can work on things without being able to contact my colleagues at times (like weekends). Has anyone seen such an arrangement?
manuelleduc 4y ago
XWiki SAS has a 4.5 days workweek (https://xwiki.com/en/Blog/XWiki-four-days-work-week/ https://xwiki.com/en/Blog/XWiki-four-days-work-week/), and is hiring.
pyuser583 4y ago
I’d rather have a six hour day
Blackstrat 4y ago
I worked for a very progressive company in the mid-80s that did 4 1/2 day work week, 7:30-5:30, and 7:30-11:30 with flex time options. Productivity was through the roof. We also experimented with other trends common today like open floor plans, shared office space, etc. and gave them up due to negative impact. Sadly, a new CEO and a sell off of a couple of divisions ended the practice, back to 8-5, no flex option, just like everyone else.
pistoriusp 4y ago
Plug: www.snaplet.dev is such a company. We're building tools for developers. Our idea is that if our own company doesn't have the happiest, creative, and engaged developer's that we won't be able to build a product that's meant to help other developers. Our internal state should reflect the way we want developer's to feel about our products.
- c-fe 4y ago
  This sounds very nice. Im a MSc student about to graduate (linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charel-felten/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/charel-felten/, CV: https://cfx.lu/cv https://cfx.lu/cv). My main areas are data science, but I also have a bachelors in computer science so I am flexible. I see that there is only a vacancy as Full-stack React developer. I dont have the necessary experience for that probably. Do you think there are any positions closer to my area of expertise?
tren 4y ago
This site is a start: https://4dayweek.io/ https://4dayweek.io/
- philmcp 4y ago
  Thanks for the shoutout :)
drpancake 4y ago
I'm currently hiring for a 3-day workweek in case that's of interest: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/110323-remote-pt-full-stack-software-engineer-rephonic https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/110323-remote-pt-full-stack... I had a job like this in the past and I loved the freedom of it the fact that I had plenty of energy left over to pursue other interests. So I wanted to recreate that for those that I hire. EDIT: my role is part-time so it's not a fair comparison.
- microtonal 4y ago
  This is a bit disingenuous. A 4-day work week usually means that a work week is reduced from 40 to 32 hours without a loss of compensation. Like previous reductions in work time, the theory is that while someone puts in fewer hours, it’s worth it because people can’t be fully productive for 40 hours. Your linked offer is a part-time position. It even states that you only get a cut of FTE and that there is the possibility to change to a full-time employment.
  - drpancake 4y ago
    That's a fair criticism! I didn't consider that 4-day usually implies the same compensation as a full workweek.
    - hedora 4y ago
      A pay cut seems OK, as long as benefits stay the same, and any equity deals stay (proportionally) the same.
  - ByteJockey 4y ago
    > A 4-day work week usually means that a work week is reduced from 40 to 32 hours without a loss of compensation. Is that what's being discussed here? My mind immediately went to a 4 10s situation (which, while not the norm, is fairly common in the US).
  - bartvk 4y ago
    To me as a Dutch person, that's not disingenious at all, that is exactly what you want. You go from a 5 day workweek to 4 days, and take a 20% paycut. Sometimes it's possible to work 4 days of 9 hours, but it always comes with a paycut.
rectang 4y ago
Anecdata: I advertised that I was only available part time on an HN "who's hiring" thread and got picked up by a startup (Smarter Dx). They weren't necessarily looking for someone part time, but I was a good fit.
thomasahle 4y ago
I like 4-day weeks, but what I would like even more is a month consecutive vacation a year. (Which is just 20-23 days off, rather than the ~50 Fridays every year.) This is pretty common places in Europe like France or Denmark (where you must take at least three weeks consecutive vacation.) Is this something any US companies are advertising?
- likeabbas 4y ago
  Not specifically but I’ve managed to find my way onto two teams at different companies where I’m allowed to do so. The first company had unlimited PTO, the second company has 21 PTO days that roll over so I saved up last year to use them this year! Today is the first day of my month long vacation in Italy on my new team
- vkazanov 4y ago
  At Bumble we have: - an unlimited PTO (you'd have to explain going beyond, say, 4 weeks, but otherwise working) - mandatory 2 payed weeks off (1 in December and 1 in Jun) - mostly remote using the "office-hub" model, only requiring presence when necessary - every 2 weeks there something we call a Focus Friday, when nobody can contact you and you are free to concentrate on things you want to work on. This covers all offices, i.e. Texas, UK, Spain. Pretty comfortable, I'd say. I don't feel I need more time to restore some energy.
  - thomasahle 4y ago
    > mandatory 2 payed weeks off Mandatory PTO is the best. That way you don't have fomo, no pressure to work whole on vacation and no catching up to do when you're back. I'd like to work somewhere with more mandatory vacation.
  - nightski 4y ago
    Clearly it's not unlimited. On the one hand if your co-worker takes 4 weeks off then you'll feel cheated if you take 2. On the other if you take 4 weeks off you have no way of knowing if that is frowned upon. This seems like more stress than it is worth.
leipert 4y ago
In certain European countries (e.g. Germany, Netherlands) you have a right to do part time. So you could just be transparent from the start that you want to work part time. It’s likely not as well compensated as „SV-company-moving-to-4-workdays“, but might be an option if 4 workdays is more important.
Mave83 4y ago
At croit.io you can decide how much time you wanna work and change that whenever you need. It's therefore more of a free time schedule system and not a fixed 4 days.
dorianmariefr 4y ago
Thoughtbot has 4 days of client work and 1 day of Investment Time https://thoughtbot.com/blog/investment-time https://thoughtbot.com/blog/investment-time
- benjaminwootton 4y ago
  Having ran a consulting company, I wonder be interested in the economics of that. You would need huge margins to cover the employment costs of the fifth day.
janosdebugs 4y ago
This may not exactly be the answer you are looking for, but Red Hat (my employer) has 4wd employees, even in my current team. Depending on the team, you may be able to negotiate a 4 day workweek without problems. However, you'd have to reside in a country where RH has an office. I have been at previous companies too where negotiating a shorter workweek was not a problem.
- jen20 4y ago
  Does Red Hat require office presence or just hire in countries where they have HR set up etc?
mikemcquaid 4y ago
adithyasrin 4y ago
On my job board, you'll see some postings from Germany / remote. I see more and more every week! https://www.arbeitnow.com/4-day-work-week-jobs https://www.arbeitnow.com/4-day-work-week-jobs
petesergeant 4y ago
I got my current 4 day gig just by being upfront with everyone I interviewed with that that's what I was looking for, and waiting until someone said yes.
- i_like_robots 4y ago
  Same, although I'd add it wasn't easy (in the UK.) I found most of the companies I spoke to the last time I was on the job market were open to me working 4 days a week. I made sure to raise my part time status at the earliest opportunity and added it to my CV to make sure I was only interviewing for positions where this could be accommodated. However, when it eventually came to negotiating after successfully interviewing it was still difficult and I had at least a few companies - to my huge frustration - try to push me into a full time role or even tell me they weren't setup to handle my request yet but would be in future! With the role I eventually accepted I still had to work full-time during my probation period before I could reduce my hours due to limitations with their processes (apparently.) To help answer the originl question, at my former employer - The Financial Times - a 4 day week was fairly common amongst folks with young children.
- keraf 4y ago
  Same here. I just laid my 3 conditions (4 days week, 100% remote, X€ per month) right away in the introduction interview and made it clear that I wouldn't be interested to move forward if these were not met. Most companies I interviewed with were OK with this. The job market for SE (depending on experience) nowadays allows these types of requests with good compensation.
svacko 4y ago
Piktochart.com is working 4DWW plus national vacations - there are currently searching for a frontend dev https://piktochart.com/careers/#jobs https://piktochart.com/careers/#jobs .There are also other companies, like https://buffer.com/journey https://buffer.com/journey part of the people-first initiative https://peoplefirstjobs.com https://peoplefirstjobs.com following the 4DWW.
nkmnz 4y ago
In Germany, employers with more than 15 employees cannot deny the request of an employee to work only part-time without a strong reason (e.g. the company cannot operate without you because you are the only employee with a specific license). That said, it’s difficult to be a remote employee vs. a remote freelancer because of taxes and insurance law.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  This is also true in NL, the right to work less than full time is enshrined in law, and most software / IT companies I know of have no problem with working 32 or 36 hours a week instead of 40. Consultancy will probably push for working full time, because that's where their profit margins are.
- avion23 4y ago
  Be careful. I've done that. They don't lower the meeting load. The overhead is fixed. Also they want to 'own' you. It's a question of power. They felt personally insulted
  - Tepix 4y ago
    I've done it in two companies and it wasn't an issue.
bartvk 4y ago
Almost all Dutch companies will honor such a request. Of course, it comes with a 20% salary decrease if you simply go from 5 to 4 days of 8 hours.
- dutchmartin 4y ago
  Also, some Dutch companies and jobs within the government let you work 4x9 hours
- osener 4y ago
  It is the norm to work fewer hours in many sectors, especially if you're a government worker, but in tech it hasn't been my experience (as an expat in NL). If you don't have kids it seems to be 40+ hrs or nothing and requesting anything below full time is "unfair to other colleagues" or "signals a lack of commitment".
  - BozeWolf 4y ago
    Not sure where you work then. As a (dutch) freelancer I worked at at least 10 companies where without exception 32hrs was possible. Developer jobs though. But at my internship long time ago, as a mechanical engineer, it was also possible. None of them offer fully remote jobs though.
  - dtech 4y ago
    Not my experience in NL, having worked 4x9 at 3 companies for the past years, only some minor pushback easily set aside. Might be different at Booking or fintech companies.
  - trevormcneal 4y ago
    I recently tried and got exactly this, wouldn't be fair for the others to have to work more to compensate for me, and they wanted some committed to working. I will keep trying, maybe is the moment to shame these companies back to see if they change their behaviour.
- superice 4y ago
  It's not just them being nice, it's the law! As an employer you legally cannot deny a request for working part-time unless you have a halfway decent reason. In my case I was able to start working 32 hours a week at my previous employer, even explicitly communicating that I was going to work (teaching CS in high school) on my day off. I initially requested 30 hours, for working 7.5 hours on the remaining days, but they figured they should set a company wide minimum of 32 hours for people in (more-or-less) managerial positions. If I had pushed it, they probably would have budged on that too.
vonunov 4y ago
https://improvmx.com/jobs/ https://improvmx.com/jobs/
victormours 4y ago
In my experience, almost every startup in France is okay with a 4 day workweek (even if it's not said explicitly in their job offers). You just have to tell them about it during the recruiting process.
a-saleh 4y ago
Yeah, I managed to get this last time during salary negotiation. They wouldn't give me $offer+20%, or $offer+4day week, but I managed to get $offer-10%+4day week.
egman_ekki 4y ago
At Automattic, you can do 4 days à 10 hours with 100% pay, 4 days à 8 hours with 80% pay, or 3 days à 8 hours with 60% pay. https://automattic.com/work-with-us/ https://automattic.com/work-with-us/
- jeanlucas 4y ago
  Kinda random, but I'm curious: what's your native language? The "à" looks different in use here from my native language (Portuguese).
  - c-fe 4y ago
    Not the OP, but the usage of à in the sentence is typical for french, where it means 'at'
  - egman_ekki 4y ago
    Native language is Slovak, but saw it used in various languages.
- mhitza 4y ago
  I think 4 days at 10 hours is the worst possible arrangement for both employer and employee. I'm curios, isn't there anyone that would prefer a 5 day 6 hour work schedule instead?
  - Tepix 4y ago
    Yes i did that for several years. It's great if you have kids.
  - bluedevil2k 4y ago
    No, having an entire day off is sooo much nicer than working less per day. You can plan something for the entire day, like golf for me as example. Plus, if you have kids, working 6 hours likely means your off time is all spent with your kids. Having a Friday off means you get that free time purely for yourself. (Advice from someone who’s done both).
Philip-J-Fry 4y ago
How doss 4 day work week work with public holidays. Say that one week you have a bank holiday on Monday, but you usually only do Tue-Fri, would you be allowed the Tuesday off as well? Making that week a 3 day week?
- niekmaas 4y ago
  Depends on the industry/company but for me it works like this: when the holiday is on a Friday (my day off) it's bad luck and I don't get an extra day. Simultaneously though, when I have to go to a specific conference on a Friday I can switch my day off to a different day in that week since then I will be "forced" to work on my day off.
- OJFord 4y ago
  Usually/makes sense to prorate them so you only get 4/5 of themif you work Mondays, or get an extra 4/5 of them days holiday if you don't. In the UK this would be required if you're only offered the statutory minimum (which is also prorated) leave, since you don't have to be offered the bank holidays but have to then have as many days extra (just not on guaranteed dates).
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
  In Poland you cut hours, so if the month has 21 working days in total, that's 168 hours full time, or 126 hours if you're on 3/4th of full time. You need to agree with the employer how you allocate those (there are limits, e.g. you can't work 12h days even if you want to).
- pm215 4y ago
  The way my UK employer handles this is to add N extra days to your holiday/leave allowance, where N is 80% (or whatever % of fulltime you work) of the number of public holidays in a year; then they require you to book any public holidays which would be on your usual working days from your leave allowance. The net effect is that everybody gets the pro-rata fair number of extra days whatever their part-time schedule is, and nobody is in the office on a public holiday.
mickeyben 4y ago
We do have a few people working 3 or 4 days / week for 60/80% of the full-time salary. You can check our offers https://fr.getaround.com/careers https://fr.getaround.com/careers. Otherwise, my experience is that if you specify it during the 1st call or in your application there's a good chance it's accepted.
damenci 4y ago
Check out sanscubicle.com , a community of service DAOs where they limit members to 60 hours per month.
apexalpha 4y ago
Here in the Netherlands it's your legal right to work less hours for the same pay (per hour). In my company, the largest ISP, lots of people work either 32 hours, 36 (4x9) or something else. A standard contract at our company is 36 hours. Meaning every other Friday off by default. So I think finding a job in the Netherlands would be a good start.
- louwrentius 4y ago
  Just want to support this response. I work 32 hours as a contractor, it should not be and issue in NL. The 100% remote part may in practice be more of a challenge than working 32 hours. For others: That extra day off means less income, but to me the value of that extra day off is almost incalculable.
- c-fe 4y ago
  I am a MSc student about to graduate in Amsterdam - domain is Data science (but i have a BSc in CS) - how would I approach a company about part-time work? Most positions are advertised as full-time, do I just apply for them and then if they chose me, mention that I only would like to work part-time? I feel like if i mention it too early in the hiring process they may actually chose a candidate that is able to work full-time.
  - apexalpha 4y ago
    Get hired and then reduce your hours is the legal fool-proof way. But honestly ask about their policies regarding this and you'll get a sense of the possibilities.
ge96 4y ago
The job I want is unset hours. I have a terrible sleep pattern. I know what the job is (no job) but have to get there.
cocoflunchy 4y ago
Hello, we have people working 3 or 4-day work weeks at Dashdoc. We're in France and Belgium for now, hiring software engineers! https://dashdoc.welcomekit.co/companies/dashdoc/jobs/full-stack-developer-paris_paris https://dashdoc.welcomekit.co/companies/dashdoc/jobs/full-st...
JulienSchmidt 4y ago
That should be rather easily doable but finding a company obviously depends on what you're looking for. Most likely you're in Software Engineering? If so, with which preferences and specialities? Here at SumUp we're hiring fully remotely across the EU and most teams are very flexible regarding the working hours. A 4-day week should be easily doable and I've personally done that before. Contact me via my email address in my profile and I'm happy to connect you with the best matching team.
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Taurenking 4y ago
ivanhoe 4y ago
I stroke such a deal by accident, clients informed me that due to budget cuts they can't afford my full-time services anymore, so rather than lowering my fees (never do that) or loosing the client, I offered them to hire me for 32h a week instead. My initial plan was to take another part-time project to fill the gap, and I did that for a while, but in the end now I really enjoy having 3-days weekends. You come on Monday to work with so much more energy.
- giancarlostoro 4y ago
  > so rather than lowering my fees (never do that) Seriously underrated advise. If they magically find funding for you to go back to full time again they will not be so quick to return you to your original rate not because they don't like you or anything but because accounting witchcraft. Always make sure they never degrade your pay. If they want to pay you for less hours fine.
- drums8787 4y ago
  +1. Being able to keep my rate and adjust for inflation is important to me, so in cases of budget crunch I've negotiated less time. Which has turned out to work great for everybody, over years now.
Simon_M 4y ago
I'm founder of Meetupcall, a startup working to help care organisations reduce loneliness and isolation for those most in need. We're currently looking for a senior Rails engineer on these terms. If that sounds like something you might be interested in, let's have a conversation, my e-mail address is in my profile.
golergka 4y ago
My company has a 4-day workweek, and personally, this is the best place I've ever worked at. It's an American startup, but about half of us (including) me are from Europe, and communication is very async-friendly. Here's our post from this April's who's hiring thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30879344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30879344
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andrewcross 4y ago
My startup Goosechase switched to a 4 day week last summer and it's awesome. The two easiest ways to find companies already doing a 4 day week would likely be: 1. Dedicated 4 day week job boards, such as 4 Day Week (https://4dayweek.io/ https://4dayweek.io/). 2. Looking for articles highlighting companies with 4 day weeks, such as this piece from Angel (https://angel.co/job-collections/20-startups-with-4-day-workweeks https://angel.co/job-collections/20-startups-with-4-day-work...).
- philmcp 4y ago
  One of the 4 day week pioneers! And thanks for the shoutout Andrew
melenaos 4y ago
I have an open position with a 4 working days week for a full stack developer. The post is for junior but i need a medium/senior developer https://menelabs.com/Careers https://menelabs.com/Careers
- _ink_ 4y ago
  > The male candidates must have finished the military service What's that about?
  - H1Supreme 4y ago
    Military service is mandatory in some countries.
  - InitialLastName 4y ago
    They look to be based in Greece, which requires that all males over the age of 18 (with a number of exceptions) serve a set period of time in the military. They presumably do not want to hire somebody who might disappear for a year soon after starting.
vinay_ys 4y ago
In most tech companies you can negotiate a lower number of days per week for lesser pay. In the last two decades I've been in the industry, I knew very junior people (early in their career) and very senior people doing 3-4 day workweek due to personal reasons in pretty much every company I worked in. It wasn't a big deal. Ability to take 3-6 month long unpaid breaks (sabbaticals), 4 weeks of PTOs, plus sick/carer leaves are quite standard in most good tech companies. During Covid, many companies started doing rest/reset days every quarter that is basically a forced holiday for everyone together (no FOMO, no pressure to check emails, attend calls etc). Some companies have started to do rest/reset week every quarter! (because they think its necessary given their higher stress level work). Getting time off isn't that hard. What is actually hard is getting high-quality work (where you get back as much as you give), satisfying work and a great team to do it with. Without great work and team, but have lot of PTO/perks etc it becomes very unsatisfying and not able to sustain interest. I also see many companies screwing up by not investing in talent/skill development activities (not the typical corp L&D where they organise a workshop with some random person who seems very preachy and doesn't really practice). I wish they did this better and enabled people to manage their personal time better on their own.
- shostack 4y ago
  Part of the challenge with these random days off is everyone rushing to get five days of work done in four (usually because of poor or insufficient planning). I always feel more stressed those weeks.
- _gabe_ 4y ago
  Your point on talent/skill development rings so true with me! At my company they created this required training course for all SE1 and SE2 level positions. I'd be completely ok with this, except for the fact that the few workshops I've attended so far have been hastily put together by people with maybe a half year more experience than me. In addition to this, they expect me to dedicate 4 hours a week to these courses. In my opinion, a well developed workshop should have very condensed, focused information that's targeted at specific goals. Instead what I'm getting is an engineer who studied some AWS CDK library for a few months, than threw together a PowerPoint in a couple hours teaching me stuff that has no clearly defined outcome :pain:
misakwa 4y ago
My company is hiring for a 4-day workweek with an 8-hour workday. There are several fully remote openings. We have openings across various departments in the UK, US, Mexico, Brazil - https://www.signifyd.com/jobs/ https://www.signifyd.com/jobs/ Here is a post about our adoption of the 4-day workweek: https://www.signifyd.com/blog/signifyd-adopts-four-day-workweek/ https://www.signifyd.com/blog/signifyd-adopts-four-day-workw... Disclaimer: I've worked here for a little over three years, and I believe this is one of the few companies with the best work/life balance I've EVER worked at.
philmcp 4y ago
For companies offering 4 day week jobs in Europe @ full salary, try: https://4dayweek.io/remote-jobs/europe https://4dayweek.io/remote-jobs/europe There are currently ~100 companies on the platform atm but I have a backlog of new companies to add and see more companies every day And @HN, if your company is open to 4 days @ 80% salary, please get in touch :)
- throw1138 4y ago
  Thanks for 4dayweek.io! Quick bit of feedback: It's the only job site I check regularly that doesn't have a feed I can subscribe to (that I could find, anyway). It's made worse by having to scroll past the same group of prioritized listings every time I visit. Would really appreciate some improvement here <3
  - philmcp 4y ago
    Thanks for the kind words, and totally agree I'm going to prioritise an RSS feed :)
- mhitza 4y ago
  Please do paginated listing, or save the state of the progress across the infinite list. Currently the back button starts you from scratch.
  - philmcp 4y ago
    Ye, agreed - this has been annoying me for a while Added to my todo list
raminassemi 4y ago
Close CRM offers team members the option to work a 4-day workweek (at 80% of the salary). 100% remote. Open roles: https://www.close.com/careers https://www.close.com/careers
jlengrand 4y ago
A lot of companies in the Netherlands will be open to that. My experience is also that it's usually OKish, if you make it part of the salary negotiations. If you are open to that, let them pick one day a week off / fewer hours per day and it'll be even easier to convince folks
- cr1895 4y ago
  >A lot of companies in the Netherlands will be open to that. It's part of employment law. So long as you fulfill the criteria & there isn't a very compelling reason for your employer to say no, you're allowed to reduce hours.
nemesisj 4y ago
krm01 4y ago
Currently not hiring (will hire in the coming months again), but I run a small UI/UX design agency where we help B2B software teams design cleaner & more user friendly products [1]. A 4-day workweek is a core part of our culture. It dramatically increased productivity, increased energy levels and reduced overall mental pressure. The way we make it work is to not have everyone be away during the same day. It’s really surprising that not more companies have 4-day work weeks. If you’re an employer and you read this, just give it a try. All your concerns are most likely just limiting beliefs. [1] http://www.fairpixels.pro http://www.fairpixels.pro
- willnz 4y ago
  Does everyone in your team take the same day off? Or do some take Monday off, and others take Friday off?
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  This is awesome to hear. Check out 4dayweek.io for opportunities to surface this to candidates. (four day work week proponent, no other affiliation)
  - philmcp 4y ago
    Haha thanks for the plug, and I totally agree, although I'm a little bias :p Let me know if you want to get added @krm01 :)
    - deleted 4y ago
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- janeerie 4y ago
  Definitely bookmarking for when you're hiring again!
adalu 4y ago
I'd be more interested in 2 or 3 day weeks, optionally up to 7. And 100% remote. I've been or still am self-employed and what I like about that is that I can work when I have the brainjuice to work and not work when I have no brain for it. I do Go on the backend, Vue mostly on the front. Angular in the past. Some experiments with React and Svelte. Sometimes I do classic websites (in Go). Self-employed in Germany, but willing to give it up for the right employer, however I'm scared to do so. I value my freedom. I'm also 7 months in Germany 5 elsewhere, so 100% remote is required. I don't really know what an employed work life looks like nowadays, tbh. Isn't it time for a "who's hiring" on HN? Or when does that usually happen? It's the 2nd of May, beginning of the month.
- Sinidir 4y ago
  Any tips for starting self-employment? Always dreamed of doing that, atleast for a while. But trying to find clients seems the most daunting. Also can you give some insight into your work schedule and coordinating that with clients(in terms of flexibility)? Thank you.
  - adalu 4y ago
    I did it out of necessity. There were no jobs and there was a market. I had the expertise. Nowadays it's all different. I stopped working for other people about 9 years ago. Things went well, 2 years ago my main source of income went away. So I've been trying to rebuild - or - find a job with similar freedom. But the job part isn't working for me. I can't seem to bear authority.
cwoolfe 4y ago
The 4-day workweek is great! Have you asked your current employer yet? If you like where you're at, it's not necessarily a reason to leave. Twice in my career I've started at a full time schedule, built trust for years, and then asked to work 20% less hours for 20% less pay. Each time with success.
genezing 4y ago
At WeGroup (https://www.wegroup.be/en/join-us https://www.wegroup.be/en/join-us) we are running a 4-day workweek without pay cuts. We are still experimenting with it, but everyone is loving it so far. The experiment is running for 2 months now, we saw a drop in output, which I think is normal. With a 4-day workweek comes more responsibility, so we are pushing the teams to take more ownership over the planning and feedback loops. We are running the experiment till end of June. We are looking for: * Backend (Python/Go/Postgres) * Frontend (React) * Infra/DevOps/Tooler (k8s/Docker/AWS/OpenSource-tools/CI-CD)
Exeon 4y ago
In Switzerland it is quite standard that companies - including Exeon - hire employees with 80% workload. (We also have many colleagues working 20%, 50%, 60% and 100%) This model is very popular with people with kids and with university students, who need time to finish their studies. Work-life balance is important, so we also offer 5 weeks of paid time-off (at 100% workload), remote and flexible working and other benefits. We are a cybersecurity scale-up and we are actually hiring: https://www.exeon.com/company/career https://www.exeon.com/company/career
brightball 4y ago
Anecdotally, a friend of mine started a therapy practice to be open 4 days a week in person. After a while, they realized everybody was just moonlighting at other businesses on Friday because they just wanted to make more money...so now the business is open on Friday mornings as well. Just thought it was interesting because odds are pretty high that any 4-day work week option is going to pay less and when given the option, a lot of people would rather just have the extra 52 paid days per year. EDIT: I don't usually comment on down voting...but I'm really curious about this one.
silexia 4y ago
Fully remote employer that allows for a flexible schedule after your first ninety days: coalitiontechnologies.com.
eschneider 4y ago
The company I'm at is fully remote and we (usually) have every other Friday off and the Fridays we do work are meeting-free. As someone who has to schedule medical appointments during the week, it's an absolute godsend.
sgadimbayli 4y ago
It's easier to do on contracting. Been doing it for almost 3 years now and won't change it back. However, I have seen plenty of my friends who does the same who are employed full time, even some who work in the offices physically. EU/Remote

278 points by endorphine 4y ago

I'm pretty interested in finding a fully remote company, that hires for a 4-day workweek (as opposed to 5). How can someone (in Europe) find such employers?

tpayet 4y ago

We are building Meilisearch, an open-source search engine API and we are working 4-day a week :) -> https://jobs.lever.co/meili https://jobs.lever.co/meili

brtkdotse 4y ago

If you're in Europe I'd wholeheartedly looking into becoming a freelance contractor. Companies regularly hire contractors at 50%-100% more than the equivalent payroll cost, meaning you can easily work less (I haven't worked a 40h week since 2018)

kinow 4y ago

I've been doing 4 days per week here in New Zealand, but I asked it when being hired. Maybe check some companies with remote work if they'd be keen to hire you for 4 days per week too, maybe write in your cover letter or in an email when applying.

neals 4y ago

Hi! Hope this reply is appropriate here, I'll delete it if not. I run a medium-size bootstrapping startup, working on environmental problems and financial equality. What are you looking for? (except 4 days and remote)

nkb_ 4y ago
how does one get in touch with you?

Tepix 4y ago

What i'd like to see is a job that lets me work part time and be super flexible about it. E.g. i may be offline for 4 days and then work 7 days in a row. Obviously it would require that i can work on things without being able to contact my colleagues at times (like weekends). Has anyone seen such an arrangement?

manuelleduc 4y ago

XWiki SAS has a 4.5 days workweek (https://xwiki.com/en/Blog/XWiki-four-days-work-week/ https://xwiki.com/en/Blog/XWiki-four-days-work-week/), and is hiring.

pyuser583 4y ago

I’d rather have a six hour day

Blackstrat 4y ago

I worked for a very progressive company in the mid-80s that did 4 1/2 day work week, 7:30-5:30, and 7:30-11:30 with flex time options. Productivity was through the roof. We also experimented with other trends common today like open floor plans, shared office space, etc. and gave them up due to negative impact. Sadly, a new CEO and a sell off of a couple of divisions ended the practice, back to 8-5, no flex option, just like everyone else.

pistoriusp 4y ago

Plug: www.snaplet.dev is such a company. We're building tools for developers. Our idea is that if our own company doesn't have the happiest, creative, and engaged developer's that we won't be able to build a product that's meant to help other developers. Our internal state should reflect the way we want developer's to feel about our products.

c-fe 4y ago
This sounds very nice. Im a MSc student about to graduate (linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charel-felten/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/charel-felten/, CV: https://cfx.lu/cv https://cfx.lu/cv). My main areas are data science, but I also have a bachelors in computer science so I am flexible. I see that there is only a vacancy as Full-stack React developer. I dont have the necessary experience for that probably. Do you think there are any positions closer to my area of expertise?

tren 4y ago

This site is a start: https://4dayweek.io/ https://4dayweek.io/

philmcp 4y ago
Thanks for the shoutout :)

drpancake 4y ago

I'm currently hiring for a 3-day workweek in case that's of interest: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/110323-remote-pt-full-stack-software-engineer-rephonic https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/110323-remote-pt-full-stack... I had a job like this in the past and I loved the freedom of it the fact that I had plenty of energy left over to pursue other interests. So I wanted to recreate that for those that I hire. EDIT: my role is part-time so it's not a fair comparison.

microtonal 4y ago
This is a bit disingenuous. A 4-day work week usually means that a work week is reduced from 40 to 32 hours without a loss of compensation. Like previous reductions in work time, the theory is that while someone puts in fewer hours, it’s worth it because people can’t be fully productive for 40 hours. Your linked offer is a part-time position. It even states that you only get a cut of FTE and that there is the possibility to change to a full-time employment.
- drpancake 4y ago
  That's a fair criticism! I didn't consider that 4-day usually implies the same compensation as a full workweek.
  - hedora 4y ago
    A pay cut seems OK, as long as benefits stay the same, and any equity deals stay (proportionally) the same.
- ByteJockey 4y ago
  > A 4-day work week usually means that a work week is reduced from 40 to 32 hours without a loss of compensation. Is that what's being discussed here? My mind immediately went to a 4 10s situation (which, while not the norm, is fairly common in the US).
- bartvk 4y ago
  To me as a Dutch person, that's not disingenious at all, that is exactly what you want. You go from a 5 day workweek to 4 days, and take a 20% paycut. Sometimes it's possible to work 4 days of 9 hours, but it always comes with a paycut.

rectang 4y ago

Anecdata: I advertised that I was only available part time on an HN "who's hiring" thread and got picked up by a startup (Smarter Dx). They weren't necessarily looking for someone part time, but I was a good fit.

thomasahle 4y ago

I like 4-day weeks, but what I would like even more is a month consecutive vacation a year. (Which is just 20-23 days off, rather than the ~50 Fridays every year.) This is pretty common places in Europe like France or Denmark (where you must take at least three weeks consecutive vacation.) Is this something any US companies are advertising?

likeabbas 4y ago
Not specifically but I’ve managed to find my way onto two teams at different companies where I’m allowed to do so. The first company had unlimited PTO, the second company has 21 PTO days that roll over so I saved up last year to use them this year! Today is the first day of my month long vacation in Italy on my new team
vkazanov 4y ago
At Bumble we have: - an unlimited PTO (you'd have to explain going beyond, say, 4 weeks, but otherwise working) - mandatory 2 payed weeks off (1 in December and 1 in Jun) - mostly remote using the "office-hub" model, only requiring presence when necessary - every 2 weeks there something we call a Focus Friday, when nobody can contact you and you are free to concentrate on things you want to work on. This covers all offices, i.e. Texas, UK, Spain. Pretty comfortable, I'd say. I don't feel I need more time to restore some energy.
- thomasahle 4y ago
  > mandatory 2 payed weeks off Mandatory PTO is the best. That way you don't have fomo, no pressure to work whole on vacation and no catching up to do when you're back. I'd like to work somewhere with more mandatory vacation.
- nightski 4y ago
  Clearly it's not unlimited. On the one hand if your co-worker takes 4 weeks off then you'll feel cheated if you take 2. On the other if you take 4 weeks off you have no way of knowing if that is frowned upon. This seems like more stress than it is worth.

leipert 4y ago

In certain European countries (e.g. Germany, Netherlands) you have a right to do part time. So you could just be transparent from the start that you want to work part time. It’s likely not as well compensated as „SV-company-moving-to-4-workdays“, but might be an option if 4 workdays is more important.

Mave83 4y ago

At croit.io you can decide how much time you wanna work and change that whenever you need. It's therefore more of a free time schedule system and not a fixed 4 days.

dorianmariefr 4y ago

Thoughtbot has 4 days of client work and 1 day of Investment Time https://thoughtbot.com/blog/investment-time https://thoughtbot.com/blog/investment-time

benjaminwootton 4y ago
Having ran a consulting company, I wonder be interested in the economics of that. You would need huge margins to cover the employment costs of the fifth day.

janosdebugs 4y ago

This may not exactly be the answer you are looking for, but Red Hat (my employer) has 4wd employees, even in my current team. Depending on the team, you may be able to negotiate a 4 day workweek without problems. However, you'd have to reside in a country where RH has an office. I have been at previous companies too where negotiating a shorter workweek was not a problem.

jen20 4y ago
Does Red Hat require office presence or just hire in countries where they have HR set up etc?

mikemcquaid 4y ago

adithyasrin 4y ago

On my job board, you'll see some postings from Germany / remote. I see more and more every week! https://www.arbeitnow.com/4-day-work-week-jobs https://www.arbeitnow.com/4-day-work-week-jobs

petesergeant 4y ago

I got my current 4 day gig just by being upfront with everyone I interviewed with that that's what I was looking for, and waiting until someone said yes.

i_like_robots 4y ago
Same, although I'd add it wasn't easy (in the UK.) I found most of the companies I spoke to the last time I was on the job market were open to me working 4 days a week. I made sure to raise my part time status at the earliest opportunity and added it to my CV to make sure I was only interviewing for positions where this could be accommodated. However, when it eventually came to negotiating after successfully interviewing it was still difficult and I had at least a few companies - to my huge frustration - try to push me into a full time role or even tell me they weren't setup to handle my request yet but would be in future! With the role I eventually accepted I still had to work full-time during my probation period before I could reduce my hours due to limitations with their processes (apparently.) To help answer the originl question, at my former employer - The Financial Times - a 4 day week was fairly common amongst folks with young children.
keraf 4y ago
Same here. I just laid my 3 conditions (4 days week, 100% remote, X€ per month) right away in the introduction interview and made it clear that I wouldn't be interested to move forward if these were not met. Most companies I interviewed with were OK with this. The job market for SE (depending on experience) nowadays allows these types of requests with good compensation.

svacko 4y ago

Piktochart.com is working 4DWW plus national vacations - there are currently searching for a frontend dev https://piktochart.com/careers/#jobs https://piktochart.com/careers/#jobs .There are also other companies, like https://buffer.com/journey https://buffer.com/journey part of the people-first initiative https://peoplefirstjobs.com https://peoplefirstjobs.com following the 4DWW.

nkmnz 4y ago

In Germany, employers with more than 15 employees cannot deny the request of an employee to work only part-time without a strong reason (e.g. the company cannot operate without you because you are the only employee with a specific license). That said, it’s difficult to be a remote employee vs. a remote freelancer because of taxes and insurance law.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago
This is also true in NL, the right to work less than full time is enshrined in law, and most software / IT companies I know of have no problem with working 32 or 36 hours a week instead of 40. Consultancy will probably push for working full time, because that's where their profit margins are.
avion23 4y ago
Be careful. I've done that. They don't lower the meeting load. The overhead is fixed. Also they want to 'own' you. It's a question of power. They felt personally insulted
- Tepix 4y ago
  I've done it in two companies and it wasn't an issue.

bartvk 4y ago

Almost all Dutch companies will honor such a request. Of course, it comes with a 20% salary decrease if you simply go from 5 to 4 days of 8 hours.

dutchmartin 4y ago
Also, some Dutch companies and jobs within the government let you work 4x9 hours
osener 4y ago
It is the norm to work fewer hours in many sectors, especially if you're a government worker, but in tech it hasn't been my experience (as an expat in NL). If you don't have kids it seems to be 40+ hrs or nothing and requesting anything below full time is "unfair to other colleagues" or "signals a lack of commitment".
- BozeWolf 4y ago
  Not sure where you work then. As a (dutch) freelancer I worked at at least 10 companies where without exception 32hrs was possible. Developer jobs though. But at my internship long time ago, as a mechanical engineer, it was also possible. None of them offer fully remote jobs though.
- dtech 4y ago
  Not my experience in NL, having worked 4x9 at 3 companies for the past years, only some minor pushback easily set aside. Might be different at Booking or fintech companies.
- trevormcneal 4y ago
  I recently tried and got exactly this, wouldn't be fair for the others to have to work more to compensate for me, and they wanted some committed to working. I will keep trying, maybe is the moment to shame these companies back to see if they change their behaviour.
superice 4y ago
It's not just them being nice, it's the law! As an employer you legally cannot deny a request for working part-time unless you have a halfway decent reason. In my case I was able to start working 32 hours a week at my previous employer, even explicitly communicating that I was going to work (teaching CS in high school) on my day off. I initially requested 30 hours, for working 7.5 hours on the remaining days, but they figured they should set a company wide minimum of 32 hours for people in (more-or-less) managerial positions. If I had pushed it, they probably would have budged on that too.

vonunov 4y ago

https://improvmx.com/jobs/ https://improvmx.com/jobs/

victormours 4y ago

In my experience, almost every startup in France is okay with a 4 day workweek (even if it's not said explicitly in their job offers). You just have to tell them about it during the recruiting process.

a-saleh 4y ago

Yeah, I managed to get this last time during salary negotiation. They wouldn't give me $offer+20%, or $offer+4day week, but I managed to get $offer-10%+4day week.

egman_ekki 4y ago

At Automattic, you can do 4 days à 10 hours with 100% pay, 4 days à 8 hours with 80% pay, or 3 days à 8 hours with 60% pay. https://automattic.com/work-with-us/ https://automattic.com/work-with-us/

jeanlucas 4y ago
Kinda random, but I'm curious: what's your native language? The "à" looks different in use here from my native language (Portuguese).
- c-fe 4y ago
  Not the OP, but the usage of à in the sentence is typical for french, where it means 'at'
- egman_ekki 4y ago
  Native language is Slovak, but saw it used in various languages.
mhitza 4y ago
I think 4 days at 10 hours is the worst possible arrangement for both employer and employee. I'm curios, isn't there anyone that would prefer a 5 day 6 hour work schedule instead?
- Tepix 4y ago
  Yes i did that for several years. It's great if you have kids.
- bluedevil2k 4y ago
  No, having an entire day off is sooo much nicer than working less per day. You can plan something for the entire day, like golf for me as example. Plus, if you have kids, working 6 hours likely means your off time is all spent with your kids. Having a Friday off means you get that free time purely for yourself. (Advice from someone who’s done both).

Philip-J-Fry 4y ago

How doss 4 day work week work with public holidays. Say that one week you have a bank holiday on Monday, but you usually only do Tue-Fri, would you be allowed the Tuesday off as well? Making that week a 3 day week?

niekmaas 4y ago
Depends on the industry/company but for me it works like this: when the holiday is on a Friday (my day off) it's bad luck and I don't get an extra day. Simultaneously though, when I have to go to a specific conference on a Friday I can switch my day off to a different day in that week since then I will be "forced" to work on my day off.
OJFord 4y ago
Usually/makes sense to prorate them so you only get 4/5 of themif you work Mondays, or get an extra 4/5 of them days holiday if you don't. In the UK this would be required if you're only offered the statutory minimum (which is also prorated) leave, since you don't have to be offered the bank holidays but have to then have as many days extra (just not on guaranteed dates).
isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
In Poland you cut hours, so if the month has 21 working days in total, that's 168 hours full time, or 126 hours if you're on 3/4th of full time. You need to agree with the employer how you allocate those (there are limits, e.g. you can't work 12h days even if you want to).
pm215 4y ago
The way my UK employer handles this is to add N extra days to your holiday/leave allowance, where N is 80% (or whatever % of fulltime you work) of the number of public holidays in a year; then they require you to book any public holidays which would be on your usual working days from your leave allowance. The net effect is that everybody gets the pro-rata fair number of extra days whatever their part-time schedule is, and nobody is in the office on a public holiday.

mickeyben 4y ago

We do have a few people working 3 or 4 days / week for 60/80% of the full-time salary. You can check our offers https://fr.getaround.com/careers https://fr.getaround.com/careers. Otherwise, my experience is that if you specify it during the 1st call or in your application there's a good chance it's accepted.

damenci 4y ago

Check out sanscubicle.com , a community of service DAOs where they limit members to 60 hours per month.

apexalpha 4y ago

Here in the Netherlands it's your legal right to work less hours for the same pay (per hour). In my company, the largest ISP, lots of people work either 32 hours, 36 (4x9) or something else. A standard contract at our company is 36 hours. Meaning every other Friday off by default. So I think finding a job in the Netherlands would be a good start.

louwrentius 4y ago
Just want to support this response. I work 32 hours as a contractor, it should not be and issue in NL. The 100% remote part may in practice be more of a challenge than working 32 hours. For others: That extra day off means less income, but to me the value of that extra day off is almost incalculable.
c-fe 4y ago
I am a MSc student about to graduate in Amsterdam - domain is Data science (but i have a BSc in CS) - how would I approach a company about part-time work? Most positions are advertised as full-time, do I just apply for them and then if they chose me, mention that I only would like to work part-time? I feel like if i mention it too early in the hiring process they may actually chose a candidate that is able to work full-time.
- apexalpha 4y ago
  Get hired and then reduce your hours is the legal fool-proof way. But honestly ask about their policies regarding this and you'll get a sense of the possibilities.

ge96 4y ago

The job I want is unset hours. I have a terrible sleep pattern. I know what the job is (no job) but have to get there.

cocoflunchy 4y ago

Hello, we have people working 3 or 4-day work weeks at Dashdoc. We're in France and Belgium for now, hiring software engineers! https://dashdoc.welcomekit.co/companies/dashdoc/jobs/full-stack-developer-paris_paris https://dashdoc.welcomekit.co/companies/dashdoc/jobs/full-st...

JulienSchmidt 4y ago

That should be rather easily doable but finding a company obviously depends on what you're looking for. Most likely you're in Software Engineering? If so, with which preferences and specialities? Here at SumUp we're hiring fully remotely across the EU and most teams are very flexible regarding the working hours. A 4-day week should be easily doable and I've personally done that before. Contact me via my email address in my profile and I'm happy to connect you with the best matching team.

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Taurenking 4y ago

ivanhoe 4y ago

I stroke such a deal by accident, clients informed me that due to budget cuts they can't afford my full-time services anymore, so rather than lowering my fees (never do that) or loosing the client, I offered them to hire me for 32h a week instead. My initial plan was to take another part-time project to fill the gap, and I did that for a while, but in the end now I really enjoy having 3-days weekends. You come on Monday to work with so much more energy.

giancarlostoro 4y ago
> so rather than lowering my fees (never do that) Seriously underrated advise. If they magically find funding for you to go back to full time again they will not be so quick to return you to your original rate not because they don't like you or anything but because accounting witchcraft. Always make sure they never degrade your pay. If they want to pay you for less hours fine.
drums8787 4y ago
+1. Being able to keep my rate and adjust for inflation is important to me, so in cases of budget crunch I've negotiated less time. Which has turned out to work great for everybody, over years now.

Simon_M 4y ago

I'm founder of Meetupcall, a startup working to help care organisations reduce loneliness and isolation for those most in need. We're currently looking for a senior Rails engineer on these terms. If that sounds like something you might be interested in, let's have a conversation, my e-mail address is in my profile.

golergka 4y ago

My company has a 4-day workweek, and personally, this is the best place I've ever worked at. It's an American startup, but about half of us (including) me are from Europe, and communication is very async-friendly. Here's our post from this April's who's hiring thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30879344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30879344

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andrewcross 4y ago

My startup Goosechase switched to a 4 day week last summer and it's awesome. The two easiest ways to find companies already doing a 4 day week would likely be: 1. Dedicated 4 day week job boards, such as 4 Day Week (https://4dayweek.io/ https://4dayweek.io/). 2. Looking for articles highlighting companies with 4 day weeks, such as this piece from Angel (https://angel.co/job-collections/20-startups-with-4-day-workweeks https://angel.co/job-collections/20-startups-with-4-day-work...).

philmcp 4y ago
One of the 4 day week pioneers! And thanks for the shoutout Andrew

melenaos 4y ago

I have an open position with a 4 working days week for a full stack developer. The post is for junior but i need a medium/senior developer https://menelabs.com/Careers https://menelabs.com/Careers

_ink_ 4y ago
> The male candidates must have finished the military service What's that about?
- H1Supreme 4y ago
  Military service is mandatory in some countries.
- InitialLastName 4y ago
  They look to be based in Greece, which requires that all males over the age of 18 (with a number of exceptions) serve a set period of time in the military. They presumably do not want to hire somebody who might disappear for a year soon after starting.

vinay_ys 4y ago

In most tech companies you can negotiate a lower number of days per week for lesser pay. In the last two decades I've been in the industry, I knew very junior people (early in their career) and very senior people doing 3-4 day workweek due to personal reasons in pretty much every company I worked in. It wasn't a big deal. Ability to take 3-6 month long unpaid breaks (sabbaticals), 4 weeks of PTOs, plus sick/carer leaves are quite standard in most good tech companies. During Covid, many companies started doing rest/reset days every quarter that is basically a forced holiday for everyone together (no FOMO, no pressure to check emails, attend calls etc). Some companies have started to do rest/reset week every quarter! (because they think its necessary given their higher stress level work). Getting time off isn't that hard. What is actually hard is getting high-quality work (where you get back as much as you give), satisfying work and a great team to do it with. Without great work and team, but have lot of PTO/perks etc it becomes very unsatisfying and not able to sustain interest. I also see many companies screwing up by not investing in talent/skill development activities (not the typical corp L&D where they organise a workshop with some random person who seems very preachy and doesn't really practice). I wish they did this better and enabled people to manage their personal time better on their own.

shostack 4y ago
Part of the challenge with these random days off is everyone rushing to get five days of work done in four (usually because of poor or insufficient planning). I always feel more stressed those weeks.
_gabe_ 4y ago
Your point on talent/skill development rings so true with me! At my company they created this required training course for all SE1 and SE2 level positions. I'd be completely ok with this, except for the fact that the few workshops I've attended so far have been hastily put together by people with maybe a half year more experience than me. In addition to this, they expect me to dedicate 4 hours a week to these courses. In my opinion, a well developed workshop should have very condensed, focused information that's targeted at specific goals. Instead what I'm getting is an engineer who studied some AWS CDK library for a few months, than threw together a PowerPoint in a couple hours teaching me stuff that has no clearly defined outcome :pain:

misakwa 4y ago

My company is hiring for a 4-day workweek with an 8-hour workday. There are several fully remote openings. We have openings across various departments in the UK, US, Mexico, Brazil - https://www.signifyd.com/jobs/ https://www.signifyd.com/jobs/ Here is a post about our adoption of the 4-day workweek: https://www.signifyd.com/blog/signifyd-adopts-four-day-workweek/ https://www.signifyd.com/blog/signifyd-adopts-four-day-workw... Disclaimer: I've worked here for a little over three years, and I believe this is one of the few companies with the best work/life balance I've EVER worked at.

philmcp 4y ago

For companies offering 4 day week jobs in Europe @ full salary, try: https://4dayweek.io/remote-jobs/europe https://4dayweek.io/remote-jobs/europe There are currently ~100 companies on the platform atm but I have a backlog of new companies to add and see more companies every day And @HN, if your company is open to 4 days @ 80% salary, please get in touch :)

throw1138 4y ago
Thanks for 4dayweek.io! Quick bit of feedback: It's the only job site I check regularly that doesn't have a feed I can subscribe to (that I could find, anyway). It's made worse by having to scroll past the same group of prioritized listings every time I visit. Would really appreciate some improvement here <3
- philmcp 4y ago
  Thanks for the kind words, and totally agree I'm going to prioritise an RSS feed :)
mhitza 4y ago
Please do paginated listing, or save the state of the progress across the infinite list. Currently the back button starts you from scratch.
- philmcp 4y ago
  Ye, agreed - this has been annoying me for a while Added to my todo list

raminassemi 4y ago

Close CRM offers team members the option to work a 4-day workweek (at 80% of the salary). 100% remote. Open roles: https://www.close.com/careers https://www.close.com/careers

jlengrand 4y ago

A lot of companies in the Netherlands will be open to that. My experience is also that it's usually OKish, if you make it part of the salary negotiations. If you are open to that, let them pick one day a week off / fewer hours per day and it'll be even easier to convince folks

cr1895 4y ago
>A lot of companies in the Netherlands will be open to that. It's part of employment law. So long as you fulfill the criteria & there isn't a very compelling reason for your employer to say no, you're allowed to reduce hours.

nemesisj 4y ago

krm01 4y ago

Currently not hiring (will hire in the coming months again), but I run a small UI/UX design agency where we help B2B software teams design cleaner & more user friendly products [1]. A 4-day workweek is a core part of our culture. It dramatically increased productivity, increased energy levels and reduced overall mental pressure. The way we make it work is to not have everyone be away during the same day. It’s really surprising that not more companies have 4-day work weeks. If you’re an employer and you read this, just give it a try. All your concerns are most likely just limiting beliefs. [1] http://www.fairpixels.pro http://www.fairpixels.pro

willnz 4y ago
Does everyone in your team take the same day off? Or do some take Monday off, and others take Friday off?
toomuchtodo 4y ago
This is awesome to hear. Check out 4dayweek.io for opportunities to surface this to candidates. (four day work week proponent, no other affiliation)
- philmcp 4y ago
  Haha thanks for the plug, and I totally agree, although I'm a little bias :p Let me know if you want to get added @krm01 :)
  - deleted 4y ago
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janeerie 4y ago
Definitely bookmarking for when you're hiring again!

adalu 4y ago

I'd be more interested in 2 or 3 day weeks, optionally up to 7. And 100% remote. I've been or still am self-employed and what I like about that is that I can work when I have the brainjuice to work and not work when I have no brain for it. I do Go on the backend, Vue mostly on the front. Angular in the past. Some experiments with React and Svelte. Sometimes I do classic websites (in Go). Self-employed in Germany, but willing to give it up for the right employer, however I'm scared to do so. I value my freedom. I'm also 7 months in Germany 5 elsewhere, so 100% remote is required. I don't really know what an employed work life looks like nowadays, tbh. Isn't it time for a "who's hiring" on HN? Or when does that usually happen? It's the 2nd of May, beginning of the month.

Sinidir 4y ago
Any tips for starting self-employment? Always dreamed of doing that, atleast for a while. But trying to find clients seems the most daunting. Also can you give some insight into your work schedule and coordinating that with clients(in terms of flexibility)? Thank you.
- adalu 4y ago
  I did it out of necessity. There were no jobs and there was a market. I had the expertise. Nowadays it's all different. I stopped working for other people about 9 years ago. Things went well, 2 years ago my main source of income went away. So I've been trying to rebuild - or - find a job with similar freedom. But the job part isn't working for me. I can't seem to bear authority.

cwoolfe 4y ago

The 4-day workweek is great! Have you asked your current employer yet? If you like where you're at, it's not necessarily a reason to leave. Twice in my career I've started at a full time schedule, built trust for years, and then asked to work 20% less hours for 20% less pay. Each time with success.

genezing 4y ago

At WeGroup (https://www.wegroup.be/en/join-us https://www.wegroup.be/en/join-us) we are running a 4-day workweek without pay cuts. We are still experimenting with it, but everyone is loving it so far. The experiment is running for 2 months now, we saw a drop in output, which I think is normal. With a 4-day workweek comes more responsibility, so we are pushing the teams to take more ownership over the planning and feedback loops. We are running the experiment till end of June. We are looking for: * Backend (Python/Go/Postgres) * Frontend (React) * Infra/DevOps/Tooler (k8s/Docker/AWS/OpenSource-tools/CI-CD)

Exeon 4y ago

In Switzerland it is quite standard that companies - including Exeon - hire employees with 80% workload. (We also have many colleagues working 20%, 50%, 60% and 100%) This model is very popular with people with kids and with university students, who need time to finish their studies. Work-life balance is important, so we also offer 5 weeks of paid time-off (at 100% workload), remote and flexible working and other benefits. We are a cybersecurity scale-up and we are actually hiring: https://www.exeon.com/company/career https://www.exeon.com/company/career

brightball 4y ago

Anecdotally, a friend of mine started a therapy practice to be open 4 days a week in person. After a while, they realized everybody was just moonlighting at other businesses on Friday because they just wanted to make more money...so now the business is open on Friday mornings as well. Just thought it was interesting because odds are pretty high that any 4-day work week option is going to pay less and when given the option, a lot of people would rather just have the extra 52 paid days per year. EDIT: I don't usually comment on down voting...but I'm really curious about this one.

silexia 4y ago

Fully remote employer that allows for a flexible schedule after your first ninety days: coalitiontechnologies.com.

eschneider 4y ago

The company I'm at is fully remote and we (usually) have every other Friday off and the Fridays we do work are meeting-free. As someone who has to schedule medical appointments during the week, it's an absolute godsend.

sgadimbayli 4y ago

It's easier to do on contracting. Been doing it for almost 3 years now and won't change it back. However, I have seen plenty of my friends who does the same who are employed full time, even some who work in the offices physically. EU/Remote