4 ms·
Based on most of the studies i’ve seen, at least for office/information jobs, that pay cut is unjustified. People mostly get as much done in 4 days as 5.
by kennywinker 4y ago
Based on most of the studies i’ve seen, at least for office/information jobs, that pay cut is unjustified. People mostly get as much done in 4 days as 5.
- yamtaddle 4y agoIt may be "justified" while five days remains the norm, as it may be possible to get similarly-capable employees to take the position for lower pay, to get that extra day off every week. This should provide a pretty big benefit to companies that can leverage it while five is still typical (assuming that the shift to four is in fact going to become a trend)
- kennywinker 4y agoThinking like an employer - how can i leverage social norms to get same or more work for less pay. If you’re not an employer, why are you thinking about it this way?
- yamtaddle 4y agoOh, sure, I think employees ought to organize to increase wages in general. But absent that, the value of perks like a four-day work week (while it remains an unusual perk, at least) do factor into wage negotiations, and individuals can't do much to resist that on their own (aside from... not get the job and keep working five days somewhere else). I'm talking "is", not, "ought", in describing it the way I did.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoUsual counterpoint is that you're not being paid just for the things you get done, but also for availability - for being there when there's a need to handle something unexpected. This has real value to a business, so you being available for 80% of the time justifies some degree of pay cut.
- kennywinker 4y agoMaybe for some jobs. But for the majority of software jobs? Not really.
- yodsanklai 4y agoIt depends. There are some people who bring a lot of value by just being there to answer the occasional questions. When I'm oncall and I know that some colleagues are on vacation, I'm definitely more tense. In an ideal world, knowledge would be spread within the team, but with turnover it's hard to reach and maintain that state.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoI can't really tell. I mean, there's enough people on HN who say they do pair programming at work, and some even that they do whole projects almost exclusively in some sort of group coding sessions - to me this seems like a bizarro world, so what do I know about majority of software jobs? For me personally, every software job I've done so far - including both the ones where I was one of few (or even the only) coders in the company, and ones where I was but a small cog in a multinational corporation - all of them had an availability component. Usually in the form of being there to answer some question, or help someone who's blocked or slowed down by an issue I'm the best suited to resolve (or the only one in the team/branch/company who can).
- cbushko 4y agoI've only had successful paired programming in one situation and it was amazing. I believe it worked because we were friends and at the same knowledge level. In three days, we ripped through a project that should have taken a month. Our 'C' code was perfect because there was always someone looking at it in real time and catching the errors on the spot. I do not think that I will ever encounter this level of productivity ever again.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoIt’s beautiful when that happens.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoHonestly I don't even care. If I could take an extra day off at only 20% cut from my pay check I'd do it in a heart beat.