14 ms·

Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?

144 points by 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

After covid, and the temporary transition to remote (for some), it seem that switching from 5 days to 4 days would be an arbitrary decision, with very little real impact. (Of course I'm referring to jobs done in typical 5 day week). For those who say it would lead to a decrease in productivity. Well that is only relative to the 5 day week. And the 5 day week, only exist because of some archaic reasons. It is not some law ingrained in the universe. And beyond that we can see that increases of productivity has not led to increase of leisure time, maybe the opposite. And we know many people who work barely a fraction of the week, yet need to maintain this kind of presenteeism. It seems absurd. Will we be trapped in this irrational mindset forever, or just until a certain generations dies out?

racheltanks 4y ago
The 40 hours split into 5 days is so ingrained into American culture that anything different wouldn't be seen as normal. I had a job I loved that we did 40 hours in 4 days. It was nice having that extra weekday off.
- core-utility 4y ago
  4/10's are fantastic, especially if you commute. The extra 2 hours a day really doesn't feel like much, and I often find I have better "productive" time than in a standard 8 hour day.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bjourne 4y ago
The few times during the 20th century the working class had a realistic change to enact such a change it prioritized higher wages instead. Now it doesn't have enough power anymore and reduced working hours isn't a very popular idea anyway.
seibelj 4y ago
I work 70 hours a week. Surely you wouldn’t outlaw my ethic? And if a run a company, surely I could require my employees to work 5 days, 40 hours? The solution is to let business owners switch to 4 day weeks and then let the free market sort it out.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  The free market would grind every last human into powder if it could. Labor regulations exist because you can’t trust humans to be various degrees of moral, decent, and empathetic. If labor regulations ratchet the work week down, you’d be free to offer 32 hour work weeks to employees, and pay them for overtime beyond that. Productivity has exploded over the last four decades (across various economies, developed and developing), it just hasn’t been shared equitably with labor. This effort contributes towards correcting that. Unions in the US brought about the 8 hour day and weekend, for example. https://www.pbs.org/livelyhood/workday/weekend/8hourday.html https://www.pbs.org/livelyhood/workday/weekend/8hourday.html High level, humans exist to live, not to work. The work is a means to economically support one’s life.
  - core-utility 4y ago
    Humans are free to enter contracts of their own choosing, not forced by arbitrary government regulations. As many other commenters here have pointed out, negotiating oneself to a 4 day workweek (or other offers) is possible. I for one, choose to not take the 20% pay cut and will happily work a 40 hour work week. That's my choice.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      I strongly encourage you to find a jurisdiction that agrees with your belief systems, versus making everyone else suffer due to yours. I welcome government protecting my labor rights from businesses, and I will vote every election for people who will steward such policy. I will even show up to help organize others, even if it provides myself no benefit whatsoever. The world libertarians describe of “everyone is free to enter into contracts” is the modern day version of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.” We’re currently trying it, and to be frank, it’s pretty fucking terrible for a majority of workers. Perhaps that’s why support of unions in the US is at record highs (since 1965); the beatings continued until we were all out of morale. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2014.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2014.html (Refer to Key findings) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle https://news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-highest-point-1965.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-hi... (crafted as politely as possible and not intended as a personal attack; my belief system is a natural result of robust amounts of consumed data, actively collected ground truth, and an overwhelming amount of empathy)
TedShiller 4y ago
Because it’s a bad idea
lofaszvanitt 4y ago
More time you have without purpose the more idiotic people will be. Less hours spent working daily though might lead to more creativity.
- x86x87 4y ago
  Yes. People are basically idiots /s
toomuchtodo 4y ago
Soon! https://www.4dayweek.com/ https://www.4dayweek.com/
- carabiner 4y ago
  Also https://4dayweek.io/companies https://4dayweek.io/companies
spoonjim 4y ago
You can negotiate a 4 day workweek for yourself if you have the right skill level or are willing to accept the market wage.
sokoloff 4y ago
In some places in Europe, after some period of employment, you can demand of your employer to let you work 80% of hours for 80% of pay. I have team members in Europe on this schedule and it works out well for everyone. Based on that experience, I'd also be open to such an arrangement for employees based in geographies where that's not legally required, but is legally and practically permitted. My guess is that most people are working a 5-day workweek because they're most comfortable doing that, from both a "well, all of my friends are doing that anyway, so I wouldn't have anyone to hang out with" as well as from a "I'm working for my financial future and working only X hours per week is unlikely to give me the same career trajectory as working 25% more hours per week" perspective.
- t0mas88 4y ago
  It's not a legal right in my part of Europe but it's super common here for couples that both work and have young kids. The kids go to daycare 3 days per week and each parent takes a day off to cover the rest. Having done that now for a while, I would probably keep my 4 days even when the kids get older and aren't at home. The total output in knowledge work doesn't decrease much (if at all) working 4 instead of 5 days. It's much more about what you output then about how much time you spend on it. And working less hours for me meant being more focused in those hours. My targets and bonus remained the same.
  - Bakary 4y ago
    Knowledge work output would probably increase significantly for most knowledge workers. Time is the resource but really it's just energy management
- lm28469 4y ago
  > My guess is that most people are working a 5-day workweek because they're most comfortable doing that People are always surprised when I tell them I work 4 days a week; asking if I have kids or a sick mother to attend to. Recruiters are especially weird with questions like: "why do you only want to work 4 days a week?" I usually just reply "Why do you want to work 5 days a week?", most of the time they don't know what to answer
BurningFrog 4y ago
I got 4 day weeks by asking my employer, and I know others who have done the same. Employment is a mutually consensual relationship, and communication is key to make it good.
overlordalex 4y ago
To maybe throw the question back - what have you done to make 3 day weekends a reality? The way the post is worded right now seems to be phrased in a way that 3-day weekends are blindingly obvious, but if you look at the history of labour rights I dont see why anyone expects it to just happen without a massive amount of organising
- pwinnski 4y ago
  Most advances in labor rights came about as a result of hard work: blood, sweat, and tears. Not, it turns out, this particular one! The five-day work-week came about because Henry Ford declared it to be so in 1926, and wasn't made any sort of law until 1939. Ultimately, the decision to move to four-day work weeks can only be made by CEOs or equivalents, and while some have, most haven't. At my previous company, the head of HR proposed it, the CTO agreed, and it went to the CEO, who said no. He didn't want the CTO org to have benefits the rest of the company didn't have, and didn't want to extend a four-day work week to all departments. When they continue to have trouble filling open job positions because they aren't competing will in the market, perhaps he'll change his mind. https://www.4dayweek.com https://www.4dayweek.com
  - slively 4y ago
    Attributing the 5 day work week to Henry Ford is not placing the credit correctly. He may have been the first big CEO, but it was the work of labor rights activists and unions. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-image/does-8-hour-day-and-40-hour-come-henry-ford-or-lab/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-imag...
    - pwinnski 4y ago
      The trade unionists had been pushing for eight-hour days, not five-day weeks. The thing Ford did largely unprompted was switch from six days to five days. Even your own link seems to confuse the two, but is focused on the eight-hour day part of the original false image.
codegeek 4y ago
"And we know many people who work barely a fraction of the week, yet need to maintain this kind of presenteeism." I don't disagree with you necessarily but the people who game it now, will game it with 4 day week as well. Slackers are always going to slack. 5 day or 4 day.
- gnulinux 4y ago
  I do not consider myself a slacker, in fact I consider myself a miracle worker in terms of the output I generate (in terms of code, business organization, end product, $$$ generated in the long term); but I do not "work" even a fraction of a 5 day work week, I would even admit this to my manager. Do you have any evidence to suggest programmers/engineers/managers who are productive work every moment of a 9AM-5PM day? Literally never seen a person do that before and I've seen some productivity legends. Let's be real here we're all on HN at 3PM on a Thursday. EDIT: To give context, I'm a software engineer.
  - n8cpdx 4y ago
    There’s a lot of background thinking that happens with knowledge work. Spending 3 hours at a desk and 5 hours milling about in the office isn’t necessarily “not being productive”. It’s pretty often that I’ll get stuck on a problem, distract myself on HN for a few minutes, then pump out a solution in minutes or otherwise have an epiphany. Similarly, talking to coworkers, even (especially) at unrelated parts of a company can be super valuable, even if it codes as “unproductive time wasting”. TLDR your definition of work might be too constrained.
- _flat20 4y ago
  Choosing life over work isn't slacking.
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    If your compensation agreement is based on x-hours of work and you deliberately put in less to “choose life” then you are slacking. You agreed to exchange a fixed amount of time for a fixed amount of money and are not delivering on your promise because you are slacking. I wouldn’t call it theft, but it’s definitely slacking.
throwaway22032 4y ago
I know people who work 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, 4 days, 5 days, 6 days, 7 days and all sorts of other schedules. 9-5 5 day office jobs aren't everything that's out there, they're not even probably "most jobs". Shift work and contract work are obvious counter examples.
karaterobot 4y ago
This feels like a rhetorical question, you've clearly got an answer you're satisfied with.
marcinzm 4y ago
> For those who say it would lead to a decrease in productivity. Well that is only relative to the 5 day week. And the 5 day week, only exist because of some archaic reasons. It is not some law ingrained in the universe. But it is ingrained in the profit metrics of the company so are you okay taking a 25% or so compensation hit (the extra 5 is due to benefits not scaling down)?
Freak_NL 4y ago
I do. My wife works four days a week, and so do I — our weekend starts on Friday. That's actually more than our parents worked back when husbands worked full time and the wives did the household and perhaps some part time work on the side. There is no way we're going to do five days, and in the current economy employers have little choice but to accept it — at least in countries like the Netherlands where there is no real downside to working part time if you can make do with a lower salary, and both parents of children can work at the same time due to childcare being heavily subsidised. Presenteeism is blight on society and ruins many a fine country and its people (Japan, the US, etc.).
tomcam 4y ago
Well then it sounds like a great idea for a start up. You could corner the market on people who only want to work four days a week.
photochemsyn 4y ago
A lot depends on the industry in question. For some things, a 24/7 presence is really needed - network management, many manufacturing processes, power plant and grid operation, etc. Moving to shorter working hours simply requires hiring more people to keep those things up and running. Now if hourly wages remain the same then labor costs don't change much and it might even improve hourly productivity (as tired people make more mistakes). However, will the resulting decrease in income for the workers be worth it to them, in terms of having more free time? To maintain income levels, there would have to be a raise in hourly wages, resulting in an increase in labor costs, which would have to be balanced by a reduction in shareholder dividends and executive salaries and bonuses. That's the answer to the question. Corporations have been doing everything they can to cut labor costs since the 1970s (global outsourcing and automation) while directing the profits to relatively small group of executives and shareholders, and won't change direction willingly.
- DavidPeiffer 4y ago
  From a manufacturing standpoint, having to add an additional crew to a 24 hour schedule would also mean additional handoffs and opportunities for things to be missed. In my experience, manufacturing shifts are typically not more than 12.5 hours, but may bump to 16ish if there are calloffs and the like. My understanding is that in the medical field, handoffs are viewed as large opportunities for mistakes to happen through miscommunication, and that's at least some of the justification behind having people work 12-24+ hour shifts.
hannob 4y ago
Because society has decided it does not want to. I mean... If you increase work productivity there's basically two things you can do: Increase free time or increase consumption. Increasing free time is not a popular position. It is widely seen as a given that "increasing consumption" and "economic growth" are good things by itself that don't need any further justification (while of course society could strive for "free time growth" instead). Switzerland had a referendum on reducing work time not so long ago. It failed. I say this noting that I disagree with the popular position here, but I can't avoid seeing that this is what most people seem to want.
dchuk 4y ago
Because most people equate value with output instead of focusing on outcomes and impact, and output is easiest to measure in hours worked (it's not actually, but people incorrectly think it is)
jollyllama 4y ago
People have chosen to pick the easier battle of remote work instead of pushing for shorter work days or weeks directly.
n8cpdx 4y ago
Why not a one day weekend? How is three days any less absurd and arbitrary than two? Frankly, given where we are at as a society in terms of labor and productivity relative to demand, it seems like now isn’t the time to be pumping the brakes. The basis of fully automated luxury communism has not yet been delivered and won’t be for a while; Europeans will likely freeze this winter and even in the US, if I call 911 I’m lucky if the wait time is less than 10 minutes. We still need humans working, as much as it pains me to say it. Maybe a better approach than specifying an arbitrary number would be to have full flexibility. Example: I work hourly at a software company. Some days I work 12 hours. Some days I work 3.5. If I’m not going to be productive that day, I just don’t work (this is to my employer’s benefit, because I’m paid by the hour). If I’m on a roll, I keep on rolling. Some days I plan for 9 hours then leave at 6 because my focus is shot. Others I think it will be 5, then leave after 10. I get to use my time as I see fit, the employer doesn’t deal with me wasting time in the office unproductively, and on net I think I’m as productive if not more than my coworkers. In jobs where you need time-based coverage, an Lyft-like bidding system to get a wage premium would probably make sense and let people self-sort based on desire to work and schedule preferences. Why replace one arbitrary system with another?
- pwinnski 4y ago
  In the US, we had a 1-day weekend until 1926, and in 1939 the force of law was added to make anything over 40 hours of work "overtime." Henry Ford thought his workers could be just as productive, if not more so, in 40 hours as 48, and would be happier at the second day off to boot, and he was correct.[0] You call it arbitrary, and it was, except it's based on what has been collectively deemed obvious: one gets dramatically diminishing returns when requiring an employee to work more than eight hours in a day, or more than (now) five days a week. It could be that we are also seeing diminishing returns from five days a week, and would be just as productive in four[1], but it will take CEOs acting on that theory to move the established norm. 0. https://www.truthorfiction.com/henry-ford-invented-the-5-day-work-week/ https://www.truthorfiction.com/henry-ford-invented-the-5-day... 1. https://www.4dayweek.com https://www.4dayweek.com
  - ceeplusplus 4y ago
sudden_dystopia 4y ago
They aren’t just going to give you a free day off. There would be a commensurate decrease in your pay. I don’t find the 5 days/week to be “irrational”, “irrational” to whom? It’s completely rational from an employers perspective that they have a job to fulfill and it requires employees to complete the job. If they have people working 4 days /week, they need coverage for the other days. It’s not rational for the customers either, who want everything now. I think you need to get out of the Silicon Valley bubble and see what most people do for work. Insurance claims and other service type things don’t just happen 4 days/week, meaning they would have to hire more workers to accommodate. What will end up happening, is they will just make everyone part time. Be careful what you wish for.
- swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
  > they will just make everyone part time. The implicit threat here is withdrawal of benefits - specifically health care insurance
  - irrational 4y ago
    So the USA doesn’t have universal healthcare so that it can be used to blackmail employees?
    - zach_garwood 4y ago
      Correct
    - bell-cot 4y ago
      Closer to the opposite - lack of universal healthcare in the USA is a huge downside for most employers here. And I suspect that any decent study would find that just not offering real healthcare (to employees) is 2+ orders of magnitude more common than "or else you won't get healthcare" blackmail.
    - spoils19 4y ago
      Healthcare is a benefit and the lack of universal healthcare has resulted in a competitive market where customers are free to choose the level of care for their need and budget. Universal healthcare is the worst of all worlds, comparatively.
panzagl 4y ago
What I want to know is how 'salaried' turned into ">=40 hours a week"
- pwinnski 4y ago
  It was the other way around. Works weeks were 48 hours or more until Henry Ford enacted a five-day 40-hour week in his factory in 1926[0]. Later, in 1939, laws were passed that officially established the new only-40-hour week as the norm, with 32 hours as the official mark of full- vs part-time, and anything over 40 being deemed "overtime." At least in the United States, that's the trend. 0. https://www.truthorfiction.com/henry-ford-invented-the-5-day-work-week/ https://www.truthorfiction.com/henry-ford-invented-the-5-day...
  - slively 4y ago
    Attributing the 5 day work week to Henry Ford is not placing the credit correctly. He may have been the first big CEO, but it was the work of labor rights activists and unions. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-image/does-8-hour-day-and-40-hour-come-henry-ford-or-lab/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-imag...
    - pwinnski 4y ago
      The trade unionists had been pushing for eight-hour days, not five-day weeks. The thing Ford did largely unprompted was switch from six days to five days. Even your own link seems to confuse the two, but is focused on the eight-hour day part of the original false image.
      - slively 4y ago
        > Ford’s initiative was not widely copied overnight. In 1916, the federal government passed an act to require an eight-hour day and overtime pay for railroad workers, but most workers still didn’t have those protections, and working hours remained a hotly contested issue. "Demands for the five-day week began to proliferate in 1919, a year in which 4 million American workers went out on strike,"
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
Because 5 (or 6 or 7) day workweeks, all-nighters, crunch-time, etc are all badges of honor to far too many people.
catears 4y ago
Maybe it's because I live in Sweden but I know a lot of people in the company that I work at that work between 50-90%. I myself plan to go down to 80% sometime in the near-ish future (current plan is 2025). Definitely not the norm tough.
Grim-444 4y ago
How did you arrive at 3 days? Why not 2? Why not 1? Why work at all when we can just print ourselves money until it all collapses? Do you own a business where you've allowed your employees to work different sized workweeks and were able to evaluate the changes in productivity? What data do you have to back up any of your viewpoints that's more substantive than just believing whatever people on reddit or elsewhere on the internet told you is true?
- iandanforth 4y ago
  If you'd like to learn more about the four-day work week there is plentiful material. For relatively recent studies I'd start here: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=four+day+work+week&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&as_ylo=2010&as_yhi= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=four+day+work+week&hl=e...
- _oghd 4y ago
  the fact that you have to have owned a business to be allowed to have an opinion about working productivity to so fucking telling about capitalist ideology
  - spoils19 4y ago
    How else are you supposed to intelligently judge whether a sweeping change like this will work?
    - LesZedCB 4y ago
      work for who? because I can tell you how it will work for me and OP. again, the metrics used are only ones that measure business ends, not human ends. human wellbeing is only a means to an end (production/productivity) in capitalism.
      - spoils19 4y ago
        I'm not entirely sure what's wrong with that - as humans we are generally hardwired to productivity, especially in conservative environments that I grew up in.
nprz 4y ago
Currently working at smallish startup (~20 people) that gives every other Monday off. Been enjoying it, especially during summer.
ratherbefuddled 4y ago
We went from 5x7.5 to 4x8 without reducing pay. 4 months into it and so far it's working on all fronts. No loss of momentum or productivity, no reduction in client billing, happier and more effective people. We had to get much smarter about how to organise time, work asynchronously and write things down to a better level - but it is the way forward make no mistake.
mkl95 4y ago
My country has plenty of companies that offer 2 1/2 day weekends ON PAPER. The reality is that unpaid overtime is endemic here and you are likely to work as much there as you would at a place with a regular workweek. I don't want a 4 day workweek where I'm working dozens of hours for free every month. I'd rather see the government use their absurdly high taxes to chase those companies. We can think of a 4 day workweek after that's fixed.
clumpthump 4y ago
What does productivity have to do with wages, hours, or conditions? The labour movement, which got us the weekend and the 8-hour workday, has had its power greatly diminished. That is why we don't work less.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  It is my understanding that religion, not unions, gave us the two day weekend. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/where-the-five-day-workweek-came-from/378870/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/where-t...
jrochkind1 4y ago
I've been working a 4-day work week for 80% of what would otherwise be my salary for much of my career, through several different jobs. With different ways of it coming about, sometimes I start the job like that, sometimes I negotiate into it after being there a bit. The first time it happened it was what my employer actually wanted... but now I love it and it would be hard to go back. I wish more employers were open to it. I realize not everyone has the luxury to take 80% of the salary they _could_ be making, and still take care of what they consider necessary expenses... but a lot of software engineers do. At this point I don't understand how anyone has the "luxury" to work 5 days a week and still have enough time to take care of what needs taking care of without going insane! I am fully confident I am a more "efficient" worker at 4 days than 5, I get done probably 95% of what I would at full time, for 80% of the salary. It's actually a great deal for the employer. I wish employers were universally open to it.
gmac 4y ago
If we take this over a longer timeframe (as in Keynes' famous prediction, say), then one reason may be: we do actually have a lot more leisure than we did a century ago, but we've largely "chosen" to take it as a lengthier retirement instead of a shorter working week. See: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecca.12439 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecca.12439
sgjohnson 4y ago
Because in macroeconomics productivity is (almost) everything. Yes, sure, we can debate all day over “how people are going to be more productive and hate their jobs less if there’s a 4 day working week”, but that’s only applicable to office drones. If we’re going to get a 4 day working week, it’s going to be by (some) employers doing it as a perk/experiment. No reasonable legislature anywhere is going to make it a reality any time soon. Or you can always negotiate yourself 20% less hours for 20% less pay.
carabiner 4y ago
We live in a plutocracy. This can't exist without monopolizing the waking life of the working class, because free time gives rise to thought and rebellion. It's better to have workers output N units of work in 5 days rather than 4 days, simply because it does a better job of dominating and controlling our lives.
worldpeace12 4y ago
why are we not getting 1 day weekend. With services such as amazon, drive pickups we should be more efficient and generate a bigger value instead of becoming dumber.
Apreche 4y ago
I do have a three day weekend. This weekend is actually a four day weekend because of Labor Day on Monday. I negotiated for it. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544658 If enough other people do the same, eventually it will become expected, and more people will get it without having to fight. Either negotiate it yourself, or join a union to negotiate for it on your behalf. It's not just going to be handed to you on a silver platter just because there are good arguments for it.
- coding123 4y ago
  I also have a 4 day weekend this week, but we didn't negotiate directly. Instead people were quitting because we all got pay cuts (in the form of not getting raises for 2 years). I wonder if this long weekend is a good time to prep the old resume.
- triyambakam 4y ago
  Do you find it socially challenging to work alongside people who still work 5 days a week though? Do you feel that they are jealous?
  - Apreche 4y ago
    I have exactly the same concerns you have. So far, nobody has treated me any differently or expressed any ill will. However, if it does happen, I am entirely prepared for it. Because I'm not in this just for myself. If any co-worker also wants to work less, I am not just willing, but eager, to advocate for them and all my other co-workers to get the same deal. Labor solidarity.
humanrebar 4y ago
A lot of folks are paid by the hour or by the day and would not enjoy getting their hours cut to 32 per week or something. Especially because various laws and regulations create expectations around "full time" and "part time" employment based on the number of hours worked. Even if the number of hours were cut back per employer, a lot of folks would need a supplemental part-time job to make ends meet. I guess what I'm saying is that the average HN commenter probably doesn't wear steel-toed boots or a uniform to work.
chensformers 4y ago
The same reason we dont' have universal base income.
jiveturkey 4y ago
it’s not “we” it’s “you” that are trapped in this mindset. i’ve worked 4 day weeks for 6 years now. i started after being annoyed that my dentist is only open 4 days
pklausler 4y ago
I would find a weekend of any length welcome at this point in my death march project, tbh.
duxup 4y ago
I wonder if the issue is the folks who do have unofficial 3 day weekends ... don't "officially" have them and don't want to expose that "hey we're doing that already"? I worked at a place where it was painfully obvious that the only folks showing up (when everyone was in the office) on Fridays consistently were the tech support guys. Try and get a hold of anyone else? Chances are nope ... So some folks have it already and sure as hell don't want to fight for it if they've got it without asking already.
HomeDeLaPot 4y ago
I've never had a full workday of getting absolutely nothing done. Maybe working 1 day less per week would boost productivity even in the long run, but there would be no going back, so I imagine employers are hesitant to take the risk. It's also because we consume more. Instead of working less than our great-great-grandparents, we drive big cars, live in huge houses, etc.
ml_basics 4y ago
> And beyond that we can see that increases of productivity has not led to increase of leisure time, maybe the opposite. Something that is often overlooked when this is debated is the fact that people are living longer, but not retiring much later. Combined with the fact that people generally start working later due to longer studies, taking the long view over a full life time, I think we are experiencing a decrease in the fraction of time spent working. Example with rough-and-ready numbers: 100 years ago, the median male in the UK might have started working aged 14, worked until 65, and died shortly after. In contrast, today they might start working aged 20, retire at 65, and live until 80.
kareemsabri 4y ago
Network effects.
BerislavLopac 4y ago
It's very simple: if you can do five days' worth of work in only four days, you can do even more if you maintain the same level of productivity over five days. A more interesting approach would be to combine the following: * Unlimited holidays (offered by more and more companies) * No difference within week and weekend days - you choose your free days whenever you want * Fully remote, async work
- freedom2099 4y ago
  Unlimited holidays is a scam!
somenewaccount1 4y ago
If you can't develop a business that sustains itself with 4-day work weeks, why are you expecting anyone else to? From what I understand though, some companies are indeed trying 4-day work weeks.
- ghaff 4y ago
  I've also seen a general shift away from meetings on Fridays for example. Combined with WFH, there is probably some percentage of people (in the more privileged worker class) who, even if they aren't taking Fridays off, are sliding into the weekends.
omoikane 4y ago
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544315 - Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?
deathanatos 4y ago
> For those who say it would lead to a decrease in productivity. Well that is only relative to the 5 day week. I mean, yeah? That's not a logical argument against it; compared to a 5 day week, a naïve view of it is that that's a 20% productivity loss¹. > It is not some law ingrained in the universe. It's not … but I'd also like the work, as I need to make ends meet. What I would prefer is raise … which is why I'm not at all clear why people are so hot on this shorter workweek. Implicit, I think, in your post, is the assumption that an employer isn't going to go "yes, you can work 80% of the standard week for 80% of the standard week's pay". And why would I take that deal? ¹(yes, I know there are other, better arguments for a 4d week.)
- 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
  i think it's a matter of perspective, this is why i said its relative. 80% of 5 days sure. but if we had 3 days weekend, then in 20 years or 30 years, 4 days would be considered 100% of your productivity. in the same way people thought you cannot do your job remotely, but we saw how easy it was actually, despite the issues some extroverts and managers have with it.
mmastrac 4y ago
My last job was 60% time. I only committed three days a week to it. The roles are there - you just need to ask for them.
AlchemistCamp 4y ago
The entire idea of week days is arbitrary. Days are rotations of Earth around its axis, years are orbits of Earth around the Sun and months almost match lunar cycle. Weeks of seven days are just something somebody came up with a long time ago. Ancient Egyptians, ancient Chinese and pre-Napoleon French revolutionaries used ten day weeks.
egypturnash 4y ago
Please allow me to answer your question in the form of some more questions. Why are all the bosses trying so hard to get everyone back in the office? Why are people working from home being subjected to all kinds of "productivity tracking" that results in things like special cradles to put your mouse in to keep it moving around so you look like you're at the computer when you're actually staring off into space thinking about work stuff, at the bathroom, or slacking off in the many ways nobody would care about if you were doing that slacking at work? [1] Why doesn't your job have a union that can decide that 3-day weekends is a thing they want to negotiate with your bosses for? Why is modern life structured so that we spend most of our waking hours at work, with little to no room to make social connections elsewhere? How much more money does your boss make than you do? Why? Why has the US minimum wage only barely begun to budge past the $7.25/h it was set to in 2009, despite that being below poverty lines for most of the country? 1: https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#soli...
- ceeplusplus 4y ago
  > Why has the US minimum wage only barely begun to budge past the $7.25/h it was set to in 2009, despite that being below poverty lines for most of the country? Nobody actually gets paid $7.25/h. Amazon pays $15/h or more nationwide. That's a baseline. In HCOL areas shitty big chain jobs like Target/Chipotle/Starbucks pay $18-22/h and restaurant servers make 25-30. Making those numbers bigger just enriches landlords unless you vastly increase the amount of housing in HCOL areas.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    This simply isn't true. The Taco Bell nearest my house is paying $7.25/hr for kitchen staff (more for front-of-house), even though they've had to cut hours and are now "drive-through-only" for big chunks of every day. If nobody got paid $7.25/hr, then there would be no problem raising the minimum wage. As it is, almost nobody in HCOL areas gets paid that, but enough people do, especially outside HCOL areas, that companies spend a lot of money lobbying to ensure the minwage isn't raised.
bowsamic 4y ago
Because that contradicts the capitalist mode of production and thus the bourgeoisie ideology associated with it.
hkgjjgjfjfjfjf 4y ago
latexr 4y ago
Euronews has a breakdown you might be interested in: https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/06/06/the-four-day-week-which-countries-have-embraced-it-and-how-s-it-going-so-far https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/06/06/the-four-day-week-w...
jpswade 4y ago
You really have to understand why weekends were created in the first place. How would an increase in leisure time increase GDP?
anticristi 4y ago
For some of my colleagues, including me, a 4-days workweek would only make sense if kids got a 4-days school week. I don't think I'm ready to make such a change and reduce my kids' education and socialization by 20%.
bvoq 4y ago
We do in Europe. It's the future.
vgchh 4y ago
This is likely going to be controversial. I am all for more time off. But the way the world is evolving, to maintain its competitiveness, America cants really afford to be slacking any further. Ultimately, it’s the work of the people that transforms a country and I am afraid, America is working less harder!
LittlePeter 4y ago
On a side note, has anyone ever negotiated an effective raise by asking for 100% salary for an 80% employment? - "We're sorry but your salary range is above what we are willing to offer." - "I am prepared to accept your upper range salary for 80% employment." - "Deal!"
- wlonkly 4y ago
  In my experience, hiring managers and recruiters are given specific knobs they can turn. Salary, of course, and a few knobs around equity. Things that aren't presented to the hiring managers are next to impossible to change: vacation time is a big one, but also working hours, because that's all in company policies that are written to apply to all.
sys_64738 4y ago
If you have more time off then you have more time to find better uses for yourself than being beholden to the corporate world. Your employer doesn't want you to think like that so they don't want to give you more time to think about doing better things with your life.
BLanen 4y ago
Because everyone keeps arguing against their own interests by rationalizing the status quo. Including in the comments here.
rizoma_dev 4y ago
Because there would be an increased chance you would unionize
RickJWagner 4y ago
Because the more people work, the more stuff is produced. The more stuff is produced, the more of it there is. The more of it there is, the less it costs. There is more to go around.

racheltanks 4y ago

The 40 hours split into 5 days is so ingrained into American culture that anything different wouldn't be seen as normal. I had a job I loved that we did 40 hours in 4 days. It was nice having that extra weekday off.

core-utility 4y ago
4/10's are fantastic, especially if you commute. The extra 2 hours a day really doesn't feel like much, and I often find I have better "productive" time than in a standard 8 hour day.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bjourne 4y ago

The few times during the 20th century the working class had a realistic change to enact such a change it prioritized higher wages instead. Now it doesn't have enough power anymore and reduced working hours isn't a very popular idea anyway.

seibelj 4y ago

I work 70 hours a week. Surely you wouldn’t outlaw my ethic? And if a run a company, surely I could require my employees to work 5 days, 40 hours? The solution is to let business owners switch to 4 day weeks and then let the free market sort it out.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
The free market would grind every last human into powder if it could. Labor regulations exist because you can’t trust humans to be various degrees of moral, decent, and empathetic. If labor regulations ratchet the work week down, you’d be free to offer 32 hour work weeks to employees, and pay them for overtime beyond that. Productivity has exploded over the last four decades (across various economies, developed and developing), it just hasn’t been shared equitably with labor. This effort contributes towards correcting that. Unions in the US brought about the 8 hour day and weekend, for example. https://www.pbs.org/livelyhood/workday/weekend/8hourday.html https://www.pbs.org/livelyhood/workday/weekend/8hourday.html High level, humans exist to live, not to work. The work is a means to economically support one’s life.
- core-utility 4y ago
  Humans are free to enter contracts of their own choosing, not forced by arbitrary government regulations. As many other commenters here have pointed out, negotiating oneself to a 4 day workweek (or other offers) is possible. I for one, choose to not take the 20% pay cut and will happily work a 40 hour work week. That's my choice.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    I strongly encourage you to find a jurisdiction that agrees with your belief systems, versus making everyone else suffer due to yours. I welcome government protecting my labor rights from businesses, and I will vote every election for people who will steward such policy. I will even show up to help organize others, even if it provides myself no benefit whatsoever. The world libertarians describe of “everyone is free to enter into contracts” is the modern day version of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.” We’re currently trying it, and to be frank, it’s pretty fucking terrible for a majority of workers. Perhaps that’s why support of unions in the US is at record highs (since 1965); the beatings continued until we were all out of morale. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2014.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2014.html (Refer to Key findings) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle https://news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-highest-point-1965.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-hi... (crafted as politely as possible and not intended as a personal attack; my belief system is a natural result of robust amounts of consumed data, actively collected ground truth, and an overwhelming amount of empathy)

TedShiller 4y ago

Because it’s a bad idea

lofaszvanitt 4y ago

More time you have without purpose the more idiotic people will be. Less hours spent working daily though might lead to more creativity.

x86x87 4y ago
Yes. People are basically idiots /s

toomuchtodo 4y ago

Soon! https://www.4dayweek.com/ https://www.4dayweek.com/

carabiner 4y ago
Also https://4dayweek.io/companies https://4dayweek.io/companies

spoonjim 4y ago

You can negotiate a 4 day workweek for yourself if you have the right skill level or are willing to accept the market wage.

sokoloff 4y ago

In some places in Europe, after some period of employment, you can demand of your employer to let you work 80% of hours for 80% of pay. I have team members in Europe on this schedule and it works out well for everyone. Based on that experience, I'd also be open to such an arrangement for employees based in geographies where that's not legally required, but is legally and practically permitted. My guess is that most people are working a 5-day workweek because they're most comfortable doing that, from both a "well, all of my friends are doing that anyway, so I wouldn't have anyone to hang out with" as well as from a "I'm working for my financial future and working only X hours per week is unlikely to give me the same career trajectory as working 25% more hours per week" perspective.

t0mas88 4y ago
It's not a legal right in my part of Europe but it's super common here for couples that both work and have young kids. The kids go to daycare 3 days per week and each parent takes a day off to cover the rest. Having done that now for a while, I would probably keep my 4 days even when the kids get older and aren't at home. The total output in knowledge work doesn't decrease much (if at all) working 4 instead of 5 days. It's much more about what you output then about how much time you spend on it. And working less hours for me meant being more focused in those hours. My targets and bonus remained the same.
- Bakary 4y ago
  Knowledge work output would probably increase significantly for most knowledge workers. Time is the resource but really it's just energy management
lm28469 4y ago
> My guess is that most people are working a 5-day workweek because they're most comfortable doing that People are always surprised when I tell them I work 4 days a week; asking if I have kids or a sick mother to attend to. Recruiters are especially weird with questions like: "why do you only want to work 4 days a week?" I usually just reply "Why do you want to work 5 days a week?", most of the time they don't know what to answer

BurningFrog 4y ago

I got 4 day weeks by asking my employer, and I know others who have done the same. Employment is a mutually consensual relationship, and communication is key to make it good.

overlordalex 4y ago

To maybe throw the question back - what have you done to make 3 day weekends a reality? The way the post is worded right now seems to be phrased in a way that 3-day weekends are blindingly obvious, but if you look at the history of labour rights I dont see why anyone expects it to just happen without a massive amount of organising

pwinnski 4y ago
Most advances in labor rights came about as a result of hard work: blood, sweat, and tears. Not, it turns out, this particular one! The five-day work-week came about because Henry Ford declared it to be so in 1926, and wasn't made any sort of law until 1939. Ultimately, the decision to move to four-day work weeks can only be made by CEOs or equivalents, and while some have, most haven't. At my previous company, the head of HR proposed it, the CTO agreed, and it went to the CEO, who said no. He didn't want the CTO org to have benefits the rest of the company didn't have, and didn't want to extend a four-day work week to all departments. When they continue to have trouble filling open job positions because they aren't competing will in the market, perhaps he'll change his mind. https://www.4dayweek.com https://www.4dayweek.com
- slively 4y ago
  Attributing the 5 day work week to Henry Ford is not placing the credit correctly. He may have been the first big CEO, but it was the work of labor rights activists and unions. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-image/does-8-hour-day-and-40-hour-come-henry-ford-or-lab/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-imag...
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    The trade unionists had been pushing for eight-hour days, not five-day weeks. The thing Ford did largely unprompted was switch from six days to five days. Even your own link seems to confuse the two, but is focused on the eight-hour day part of the original false image.

codegeek 4y ago

"And we know many people who work barely a fraction of the week, yet need to maintain this kind of presenteeism." I don't disagree with you necessarily but the people who game it now, will game it with 4 day week as well. Slackers are always going to slack. 5 day or 4 day.

gnulinux 4y ago
I do not consider myself a slacker, in fact I consider myself a miracle worker in terms of the output I generate (in terms of code, business organization, end product, $$$ generated in the long term); but I do not "work" even a fraction of a 5 day work week, I would even admit this to my manager. Do you have any evidence to suggest programmers/engineers/managers who are productive work every moment of a 9AM-5PM day? Literally never seen a person do that before and I've seen some productivity legends. Let's be real here we're all on HN at 3PM on a Thursday. EDIT: To give context, I'm a software engineer.
- n8cpdx 4y ago
  There’s a lot of background thinking that happens with knowledge work. Spending 3 hours at a desk and 5 hours milling about in the office isn’t necessarily “not being productive”. It’s pretty often that I’ll get stuck on a problem, distract myself on HN for a few minutes, then pump out a solution in minutes or otherwise have an epiphany. Similarly, talking to coworkers, even (especially) at unrelated parts of a company can be super valuable, even if it codes as “unproductive time wasting”. TLDR your definition of work might be too constrained.
_flat20 4y ago
Choosing life over work isn't slacking.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  If your compensation agreement is based on x-hours of work and you deliberately put in less to “choose life” then you are slacking. You agreed to exchange a fixed amount of time for a fixed amount of money and are not delivering on your promise because you are slacking. I wouldn’t call it theft, but it’s definitely slacking.

throwaway22032 4y ago

I know people who work 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, 4 days, 5 days, 6 days, 7 days and all sorts of other schedules. 9-5 5 day office jobs aren't everything that's out there, they're not even probably "most jobs". Shift work and contract work are obvious counter examples.

karaterobot 4y ago

This feels like a rhetorical question, you've clearly got an answer you're satisfied with.

marcinzm 4y ago

> For those who say it would lead to a decrease in productivity. Well that is only relative to the 5 day week. And the 5 day week, only exist because of some archaic reasons. It is not some law ingrained in the universe. But it is ingrained in the profit metrics of the company so are you okay taking a 25% or so compensation hit (the extra 5 is due to benefits not scaling down)?

Freak_NL 4y ago

I do. My wife works four days a week, and so do I — our weekend starts on Friday. That's actually more than our parents worked back when husbands worked full time and the wives did the household and perhaps some part time work on the side. There is no way we're going to do five days, and in the current economy employers have little choice but to accept it — at least in countries like the Netherlands where there is no real downside to working part time if you can make do with a lower salary, and both parents of children can work at the same time due to childcare being heavily subsidised. Presenteeism is blight on society and ruins many a fine country and its people (Japan, the US, etc.).

tomcam 4y ago

Well then it sounds like a great idea for a start up. You could corner the market on people who only want to work four days a week.

photochemsyn 4y ago

A lot depends on the industry in question. For some things, a 24/7 presence is really needed - network management, many manufacturing processes, power plant and grid operation, etc. Moving to shorter working hours simply requires hiring more people to keep those things up and running. Now if hourly wages remain the same then labor costs don't change much and it might even improve hourly productivity (as tired people make more mistakes). However, will the resulting decrease in income for the workers be worth it to them, in terms of having more free time? To maintain income levels, there would have to be a raise in hourly wages, resulting in an increase in labor costs, which would have to be balanced by a reduction in shareholder dividends and executive salaries and bonuses. That's the answer to the question. Corporations have been doing everything they can to cut labor costs since the 1970s (global outsourcing and automation) while directing the profits to relatively small group of executives and shareholders, and won't change direction willingly.

DavidPeiffer 4y ago
From a manufacturing standpoint, having to add an additional crew to a 24 hour schedule would also mean additional handoffs and opportunities for things to be missed. In my experience, manufacturing shifts are typically not more than 12.5 hours, but may bump to 16ish if there are calloffs and the like. My understanding is that in the medical field, handoffs are viewed as large opportunities for mistakes to happen through miscommunication, and that's at least some of the justification behind having people work 12-24+ hour shifts.

hannob 4y ago

Because society has decided it does not want to. I mean... If you increase work productivity there's basically two things you can do: Increase free time or increase consumption. Increasing free time is not a popular position. It is widely seen as a given that "increasing consumption" and "economic growth" are good things by itself that don't need any further justification (while of course society could strive for "free time growth" instead). Switzerland had a referendum on reducing work time not so long ago. It failed. I say this noting that I disagree with the popular position here, but I can't avoid seeing that this is what most people seem to want.

dchuk 4y ago

Because most people equate value with output instead of focusing on outcomes and impact, and output is easiest to measure in hours worked (it's not actually, but people incorrectly think it is)

jollyllama 4y ago

People have chosen to pick the easier battle of remote work instead of pushing for shorter work days or weeks directly.

n8cpdx 4y ago

Why not a one day weekend? How is three days any less absurd and arbitrary than two? Frankly, given where we are at as a society in terms of labor and productivity relative to demand, it seems like now isn’t the time to be pumping the brakes. The basis of fully automated luxury communism has not yet been delivered and won’t be for a while; Europeans will likely freeze this winter and even in the US, if I call 911 I’m lucky if the wait time is less than 10 minutes. We still need humans working, as much as it pains me to say it. Maybe a better approach than specifying an arbitrary number would be to have full flexibility. Example: I work hourly at a software company. Some days I work 12 hours. Some days I work 3.5. If I’m not going to be productive that day, I just don’t work (this is to my employer’s benefit, because I’m paid by the hour). If I’m on a roll, I keep on rolling. Some days I plan for 9 hours then leave at 6 because my focus is shot. Others I think it will be 5, then leave after 10. I get to use my time as I see fit, the employer doesn’t deal with me wasting time in the office unproductively, and on net I think I’m as productive if not more than my coworkers. In jobs where you need time-based coverage, an Lyft-like bidding system to get a wage premium would probably make sense and let people self-sort based on desire to work and schedule preferences. Why replace one arbitrary system with another?

pwinnski 4y ago
In the US, we had a 1-day weekend until 1926, and in 1939 the force of law was added to make anything over 40 hours of work "overtime." Henry Ford thought his workers could be just as productive, if not more so, in 40 hours as 48, and would be happier at the second day off to boot, and he was correct.[0] You call it arbitrary, and it was, except it's based on what has been collectively deemed obvious: one gets dramatically diminishing returns when requiring an employee to work more than eight hours in a day, or more than (now) five days a week. It could be that we are also seeing diminishing returns from five days a week, and would be just as productive in four[1], but it will take CEOs acting on that theory to move the established norm. 0. https://www.truthorfiction.com/henry-ford-invented-the-5-day-work-week/ https://www.truthorfiction.com/henry-ford-invented-the-5-day... 1. https://www.4dayweek.com https://www.4dayweek.com
- ceeplusplus 4y ago

sudden_dystopia 4y ago

They aren’t just going to give you a free day off. There would be a commensurate decrease in your pay. I don’t find the 5 days/week to be “irrational”, “irrational” to whom? It’s completely rational from an employers perspective that they have a job to fulfill and it requires employees to complete the job. If they have people working 4 days /week, they need coverage for the other days. It’s not rational for the customers either, who want everything now. I think you need to get out of the Silicon Valley bubble and see what most people do for work. Insurance claims and other service type things don’t just happen 4 days/week, meaning they would have to hire more workers to accommodate. What will end up happening, is they will just make everyone part time. Be careful what you wish for.

swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
> they will just make everyone part time. The implicit threat here is withdrawal of benefits - specifically health care insurance
- irrational 4y ago
  So the USA doesn’t have universal healthcare so that it can be used to blackmail employees?
  - zach_garwood 4y ago
    Correct
  - bell-cot 4y ago
    Closer to the opposite - lack of universal healthcare in the USA is a huge downside for most employers here. And I suspect that any decent study would find that just not offering real healthcare (to employees) is 2+ orders of magnitude more common than "or else you won't get healthcare" blackmail.
  - spoils19 4y ago
    Healthcare is a benefit and the lack of universal healthcare has resulted in a competitive market where customers are free to choose the level of care for their need and budget. Universal healthcare is the worst of all worlds, comparatively.

panzagl 4y ago

What I want to know is how 'salaried' turned into ">=40 hours a week"

pwinnski 4y ago
It was the other way around. Works weeks were 48 hours or more until Henry Ford enacted a five-day 40-hour week in his factory in 1926[0]. Later, in 1939, laws were passed that officially established the new only-40-hour week as the norm, with 32 hours as the official mark of full- vs part-time, and anything over 40 being deemed "overtime." At least in the United States, that's the trend. 0. https://www.truthorfiction.com/henry-ford-invented-the-5-day-work-week/ https://www.truthorfiction.com/henry-ford-invented-the-5-day...
- slively 4y ago
  Attributing the 5 day work week to Henry Ford is not placing the credit correctly. He may have been the first big CEO, but it was the work of labor rights activists and unions. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-image/does-8-hour-day-and-40-hour-come-henry-ford-or-lab/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-imag...
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    The trade unionists had been pushing for eight-hour days, not five-day weeks. The thing Ford did largely unprompted was switch from six days to five days. Even your own link seems to confuse the two, but is focused on the eight-hour day part of the original false image.
    - slively 4y ago
      > Ford’s initiative was not widely copied overnight. In 1916, the federal government passed an act to require an eight-hour day and overtime pay for railroad workers, but most workers still didn’t have those protections, and working hours remained a hotly contested issue. "Demands for the five-day week began to proliferate in 1919, a year in which 4 million American workers went out on strike,"

JustSomeNobody 4y ago

Because 5 (or 6 or 7) day workweeks, all-nighters, crunch-time, etc are all badges of honor to far too many people.

catears 4y ago

Maybe it's because I live in Sweden but I know a lot of people in the company that I work at that work between 50-90%. I myself plan to go down to 80% sometime in the near-ish future (current plan is 2025). Definitely not the norm tough.

Grim-444 4y ago

How did you arrive at 3 days? Why not 2? Why not 1? Why work at all when we can just print ourselves money until it all collapses? Do you own a business where you've allowed your employees to work different sized workweeks and were able to evaluate the changes in productivity? What data do you have to back up any of your viewpoints that's more substantive than just believing whatever people on reddit or elsewhere on the internet told you is true?

iandanforth 4y ago
If you'd like to learn more about the four-day work week there is plentiful material. For relatively recent studies I'd start here: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=four+day+work+week&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&as_ylo=2010&as_yhi= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=four+day+work+week&hl=e...
_oghd 4y ago
the fact that you have to have owned a business to be allowed to have an opinion about working productivity to so fucking telling about capitalist ideology
- spoils19 4y ago
  How else are you supposed to intelligently judge whether a sweeping change like this will work?
  - LesZedCB 4y ago
    work for who? because I can tell you how it will work for me and OP. again, the metrics used are only ones that measure business ends, not human ends. human wellbeing is only a means to an end (production/productivity) in capitalism.
    - spoils19 4y ago
      I'm not entirely sure what's wrong with that - as humans we are generally hardwired to productivity, especially in conservative environments that I grew up in.

nprz 4y ago

Currently working at smallish startup (~20 people) that gives every other Monday off. Been enjoying it, especially during summer.

ratherbefuddled 4y ago

We went from 5x7.5 to 4x8 without reducing pay. 4 months into it and so far it's working on all fronts. No loss of momentum or productivity, no reduction in client billing, happier and more effective people. We had to get much smarter about how to organise time, work asynchronously and write things down to a better level - but it is the way forward make no mistake.

mkl95 4y ago

My country has plenty of companies that offer 2 1/2 day weekends ON PAPER. The reality is that unpaid overtime is endemic here and you are likely to work as much there as you would at a place with a regular workweek. I don't want a 4 day workweek where I'm working dozens of hours for free every month. I'd rather see the government use their absurdly high taxes to chase those companies. We can think of a 4 day workweek after that's fixed.

clumpthump 4y ago

What does productivity have to do with wages, hours, or conditions? The labour movement, which got us the weekend and the 8-hour workday, has had its power greatly diminished. That is why we don't work less.

missedthecue 4y ago
It is my understanding that religion, not unions, gave us the two day weekend. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/where-the-five-day-workweek-came-from/378870/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/where-t...

jrochkind1 4y ago

I've been working a 4-day work week for 80% of what would otherwise be my salary for much of my career, through several different jobs. With different ways of it coming about, sometimes I start the job like that, sometimes I negotiate into it after being there a bit. The first time it happened it was what my employer actually wanted... but now I love it and it would be hard to go back. I wish more employers were open to it. I realize not everyone has the luxury to take 80% of the salary they _could_ be making, and still take care of what they consider necessary expenses... but a lot of software engineers do. At this point I don't understand how anyone has the "luxury" to work 5 days a week and still have enough time to take care of what needs taking care of without going insane! I am fully confident I am a more "efficient" worker at 4 days than 5, I get done probably 95% of what I would at full time, for 80% of the salary. It's actually a great deal for the employer. I wish employers were universally open to it.

gmac 4y ago

If we take this over a longer timeframe (as in Keynes' famous prediction, say), then one reason may be: we do actually have a lot more leisure than we did a century ago, but we've largely "chosen" to take it as a lengthier retirement instead of a shorter working week. See: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecca.12439 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecca.12439

sgjohnson 4y ago

Because in macroeconomics productivity is (almost) everything. Yes, sure, we can debate all day over “how people are going to be more productive and hate their jobs less if there’s a 4 day working week”, but that’s only applicable to office drones. If we’re going to get a 4 day working week, it’s going to be by (some) employers doing it as a perk/experiment. No reasonable legislature anywhere is going to make it a reality any time soon. Or you can always negotiate yourself 20% less hours for 20% less pay.

carabiner 4y ago

We live in a plutocracy. This can't exist without monopolizing the waking life of the working class, because free time gives rise to thought and rebellion. It's better to have workers output N units of work in 5 days rather than 4 days, simply because it does a better job of dominating and controlling our lives.

worldpeace12 4y ago

why are we not getting 1 day weekend. With services such as amazon, drive pickups we should be more efficient and generate a bigger value instead of becoming dumber.

Apreche 4y ago

I do have a three day weekend. This weekend is actually a four day weekend because of Labor Day on Monday. I negotiated for it. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544658 If enough other people do the same, eventually it will become expected, and more people will get it without having to fight. Either negotiate it yourself, or join a union to negotiate for it on your behalf. It's not just going to be handed to you on a silver platter just because there are good arguments for it.

coding123 4y ago
I also have a 4 day weekend this week, but we didn't negotiate directly. Instead people were quitting because we all got pay cuts (in the form of not getting raises for 2 years). I wonder if this long weekend is a good time to prep the old resume.
triyambakam 4y ago
Do you find it socially challenging to work alongside people who still work 5 days a week though? Do you feel that they are jealous?
- Apreche 4y ago
  I have exactly the same concerns you have. So far, nobody has treated me any differently or expressed any ill will. However, if it does happen, I am entirely prepared for it. Because I'm not in this just for myself. If any co-worker also wants to work less, I am not just willing, but eager, to advocate for them and all my other co-workers to get the same deal. Labor solidarity.

humanrebar 4y ago

A lot of folks are paid by the hour or by the day and would not enjoy getting their hours cut to 32 per week or something. Especially because various laws and regulations create expectations around "full time" and "part time" employment based on the number of hours worked. Even if the number of hours were cut back per employer, a lot of folks would need a supplemental part-time job to make ends meet. I guess what I'm saying is that the average HN commenter probably doesn't wear steel-toed boots or a uniform to work.

chensformers 4y ago

The same reason we dont' have universal base income.

jiveturkey 4y ago

it’s not “we” it’s “you” that are trapped in this mindset. i’ve worked 4 day weeks for 6 years now. i started after being annoyed that my dentist is only open 4 days

pklausler 4y ago

I would find a weekend of any length welcome at this point in my death march project, tbh.

duxup 4y ago

I wonder if the issue is the folks who do have unofficial 3 day weekends ... don't "officially" have them and don't want to expose that "hey we're doing that already"? I worked at a place where it was painfully obvious that the only folks showing up (when everyone was in the office) on Fridays consistently were the tech support guys. Try and get a hold of anyone else? Chances are nope ... So some folks have it already and sure as hell don't want to fight for it if they've got it without asking already.

HomeDeLaPot 4y ago

I've never had a full workday of getting absolutely nothing done. Maybe working 1 day less per week would boost productivity even in the long run, but there would be no going back, so I imagine employers are hesitant to take the risk. It's also because we consume more. Instead of working less than our great-great-grandparents, we drive big cars, live in huge houses, etc.

ml_basics 4y ago

> And beyond that we can see that increases of productivity has not led to increase of leisure time, maybe the opposite. Something that is often overlooked when this is debated is the fact that people are living longer, but not retiring much later. Combined with the fact that people generally start working later due to longer studies, taking the long view over a full life time, I think we are experiencing a decrease in the fraction of time spent working. Example with rough-and-ready numbers: 100 years ago, the median male in the UK might have started working aged 14, worked until 65, and died shortly after. In contrast, today they might start working aged 20, retire at 65, and live until 80.

kareemsabri 4y ago

Network effects.

BerislavLopac 4y ago

It's very simple: if you can do five days' worth of work in only four days, you can do even more if you maintain the same level of productivity over five days. A more interesting approach would be to combine the following: * Unlimited holidays (offered by more and more companies) * No difference within week and weekend days - you choose your free days whenever you want * Fully remote, async work

freedom2099 4y ago
Unlimited holidays is a scam!

somenewaccount1 4y ago

If you can't develop a business that sustains itself with 4-day work weeks, why are you expecting anyone else to? From what I understand though, some companies are indeed trying 4-day work weeks.

ghaff 4y ago
I've also seen a general shift away from meetings on Fridays for example. Combined with WFH, there is probably some percentage of people (in the more privileged worker class) who, even if they aren't taking Fridays off, are sliding into the weekends.

omoikane 4y ago

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544315 - Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?

deathanatos 4y ago

> For those who say it would lead to a decrease in productivity. Well that is only relative to the 5 day week. I mean, yeah? That's not a logical argument against it; compared to a 5 day week, a naïve view of it is that that's a 20% productivity loss¹. > It is not some law ingrained in the universe. It's not … but I'd also like the work, as I need to make ends meet. What I would prefer is raise … which is why I'm not at all clear why people are so hot on this shorter workweek. Implicit, I think, in your post, is the assumption that an employer isn't going to go "yes, you can work 80% of the standard week for 80% of the standard week's pay". And why would I take that deal? ¹(yes, I know there are other, better arguments for a 4d week.)

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
i think it's a matter of perspective, this is why i said its relative. 80% of 5 days sure. but if we had 3 days weekend, then in 20 years or 30 years, 4 days would be considered 100% of your productivity. in the same way people thought you cannot do your job remotely, but we saw how easy it was actually, despite the issues some extroverts and managers have with it.

mmastrac 4y ago

My last job was 60% time. I only committed three days a week to it. The roles are there - you just need to ask for them.

AlchemistCamp 4y ago

The entire idea of week days is arbitrary. Days are rotations of Earth around its axis, years are orbits of Earth around the Sun and months almost match lunar cycle. Weeks of seven days are just something somebody came up with a long time ago. Ancient Egyptians, ancient Chinese and pre-Napoleon French revolutionaries used ten day weeks.

egypturnash 4y ago

Please allow me to answer your question in the form of some more questions. Why are all the bosses trying so hard to get everyone back in the office? Why are people working from home being subjected to all kinds of "productivity tracking" that results in things like special cradles to put your mouse in to keep it moving around so you look like you're at the computer when you're actually staring off into space thinking about work stuff, at the bathroom, or slacking off in the many ways nobody would care about if you were doing that slacking at work? [1] Why doesn't your job have a union that can decide that 3-day weekends is a thing they want to negotiate with your bosses for? Why is modern life structured so that we spend most of our waking hours at work, with little to no room to make social connections elsewhere? How much more money does your boss make than you do? Why? Why has the US minimum wage only barely begun to budge past the $7.25/h it was set to in 2009, despite that being below poverty lines for most of the country? 1: https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#soli...

ceeplusplus 4y ago
> Why has the US minimum wage only barely begun to budge past the $7.25/h it was set to in 2009, despite that being below poverty lines for most of the country? Nobody actually gets paid $7.25/h. Amazon pays $15/h or more nationwide. That's a baseline. In HCOL areas shitty big chain jobs like Target/Chipotle/Starbucks pay $18-22/h and restaurant servers make 25-30. Making those numbers bigger just enriches landlords unless you vastly increase the amount of housing in HCOL areas.
- deleted 4y ago
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- pwinnski 4y ago
  This simply isn't true. The Taco Bell nearest my house is paying $7.25/hr for kitchen staff (more for front-of-house), even though they've had to cut hours and are now "drive-through-only" for big chunks of every day. If nobody got paid $7.25/hr, then there would be no problem raising the minimum wage. As it is, almost nobody in HCOL areas gets paid that, but enough people do, especially outside HCOL areas, that companies spend a lot of money lobbying to ensure the minwage isn't raised.

bowsamic 4y ago

Because that contradicts the capitalist mode of production and thus the bourgeoisie ideology associated with it.

hkgjjgjfjfjfjf 4y ago

latexr 4y ago

Euronews has a breakdown you might be interested in: https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/06/06/the-four-day-week-which-countries-have-embraced-it-and-how-s-it-going-so-far https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/06/06/the-four-day-week-w...

jpswade 4y ago

You really have to understand why weekends were created in the first place. How would an increase in leisure time increase GDP?

anticristi 4y ago

For some of my colleagues, including me, a 4-days workweek would only make sense if kids got a 4-days school week. I don't think I'm ready to make such a change and reduce my kids' education and socialization by 20%.

bvoq 4y ago

We do in Europe. It's the future.

vgchh 4y ago

This is likely going to be controversial. I am all for more time off. But the way the world is evolving, to maintain its competitiveness, America cants really afford to be slacking any further. Ultimately, it’s the work of the people that transforms a country and I am afraid, America is working less harder!

LittlePeter 4y ago

On a side note, has anyone ever negotiated an effective raise by asking for 100% salary for an 80% employment? - "We're sorry but your salary range is above what we are willing to offer." - "I am prepared to accept your upper range salary for 80% employment." - "Deal!"

wlonkly 4y ago
In my experience, hiring managers and recruiters are given specific knobs they can turn. Salary, of course, and a few knobs around equity. Things that aren't presented to the hiring managers are next to impossible to change: vacation time is a big one, but also working hours, because that's all in company policies that are written to apply to all.

sys_64738 4y ago

If you have more time off then you have more time to find better uses for yourself than being beholden to the corporate world. Your employer doesn't want you to think like that so they don't want to give you more time to think about doing better things with your life.

BLanen 4y ago

Because everyone keeps arguing against their own interests by rationalizing the status quo. Including in the comments here.

rizoma_dev 4y ago

Because there would be an increased chance you would unionize

RickJWagner 4y ago

Because the more people work, the more stuff is produced. The more stuff is produced, the more of it there is. The more of it there is, the less it costs. There is more to go around.