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Genuine question though - isn't there some tradeoff for this like labor benefits (vacation, healthcare, etc)?

sokoloff 4y ago
If you had 25 days of PTO per year before, I would view having 20 days per year as the equivalent, but others will no doubt disagree.
youngtaff 4y ago
Earlier this year I went from a 5 day week to 4 days spread over 5 with no loss of PTO / benefits etc. Some people were already on a 4 day week and they were essentially given a 25% pay rise instead
VLM 4y ago
I've worked a couple places like this and the real argument is "thanksgiving in the USA is always a thursday which is unfair to the wed-sat team" if they're forced to work or "unfair to the sun-wed team" if they wanted to work for triple overtime holiday pay and similar arguments about election day always being a Tuesday there are five federal holidays IIRC that are off on Mondays but no federal holidays on fri or sat, etc. Usually whining problems were solved by "this system has been here since your grandparents and you signed up for it so suck it up or transfer teams or quit" Technically the system was only there for their grandparents in operations and finance always worked 9-5 m-f until thirty years ago so it is new out of operations, but whatever. The vacation problem was solved by providing "weeks" to everyone along with the interesting legal fiction that everyone worked ten hours so our "weeks" were implemented using "hours". So new employees got "two weeks" which on paper were implemented as 80 hours. These are all very old issues in 24x7 operations environments including outside IT/tech/computer-stuff. The only "innovation" is when the payroll clerk starts doing 4x10s like she's a front line nurse, or the graphics artist in marketing starts doing 4x10s 3rd shift like he's a field service tech.
tialaramex 4y ago
The UK has a National Health Service for all its permanent residents, which is over-stretched right now because people keep voting for Tories who claim to cherish it but won't fund it (and divert funding to their pet projects). Also COVID burned out medics at a high rate and Brexit made it harder to attract foreign medics to work here. UK workers are (with some narrow exceptions) entitled to 5.6 weeks per year of paid leave. Employers can choose to make you take some of this leave when they want it taken rather than when you want it, including the Bank Holidays (national holidays). In a tech job you are almost certainly going to get 5.6 weeks plus the Bank Holidays and maybe more. It's calculated as 5.6 weeks because logically if I work 5 days per week, and you work 4 days per week, and our employer gives us both 20 days of leave to take whenever we like, for you that would be five weeks whereas for me it's only four weeks which isn't the same. 5.6 weeks will be 28 full days for a full time Monday-Friday office worker, but only 14 full days for their colleague who only works Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning in a job share.

If you had 25 days of PTO per year before, I would view having 20 days per year as the equivalent, but others will no doubt disagree.

youngtaff 4y ago

Earlier this year I went from a 5 day week to 4 days spread over 5 with no loss of PTO / benefits etc. Some people were already on a 4 day week and they were essentially given a 25% pay rise instead

VLM 4y ago

I've worked a couple places like this and the real argument is "thanksgiving in the USA is always a thursday which is unfair to the wed-sat team" if they're forced to work or "unfair to the sun-wed team" if they wanted to work for triple overtime holiday pay and similar arguments about election day always being a Tuesday there are five federal holidays IIRC that are off on Mondays but no federal holidays on fri or sat, etc. Usually whining problems were solved by "this system has been here since your grandparents and you signed up for it so suck it up or transfer teams or quit" Technically the system was only there for their grandparents in operations and finance always worked 9-5 m-f until thirty years ago so it is new out of operations, but whatever. The vacation problem was solved by providing "weeks" to everyone along with the interesting legal fiction that everyone worked ten hours so our "weeks" were implemented using "hours". So new employees got "two weeks" which on paper were implemented as 80 hours. These are all very old issues in 24x7 operations environments including outside IT/tech/computer-stuff. The only "innovation" is when the payroll clerk starts doing 4x10s like she's a front line nurse, or the graphics artist in marketing starts doing 4x10s 3rd shift like he's a field service tech.

tialaramex 4y ago

The UK has a National Health Service for all its permanent residents, which is over-stretched right now because people keep voting for Tories who claim to cherish it but won't fund it (and divert funding to their pet projects). Also COVID burned out medics at a high rate and Brexit made it harder to attract foreign medics to work here. UK workers are (with some narrow exceptions) entitled to 5.6 weeks per year of paid leave. Employers can choose to make you take some of this leave when they want it taken rather than when you want it, including the Bank Holidays (national holidays). In a tech job you are almost certainly going to get 5.6 weeks plus the Bank Holidays and maybe more. It's calculated as 5.6 weeks because logically if I work 5 days per week, and you work 4 days per week, and our employer gives us both 20 days of leave to take whenever we like, for you that would be five weeks whereas for me it's only four weeks which isn't the same. 5.6 weeks will be 28 full days for a full time Monday-Friday office worker, but only 14 full days for their colleague who only works Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning in a job share.