14 ms·

How a four-day workweek works, from the companies pulling it off

255 points by lxm 3y ago

hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
I'd rather five day workweeks but with shorter days, to be honest. I feel I have about 3 hours of peak mental acuity each day that I'd like to spend on my work. It seems like a better time-for-value trade for my employer. To be fair I work more remotely than not these. If I had to commute in more often I'd almost certainly prefer 4-day workweeks.
- dijit 3y ago
  one thing I’ve realised is working style is really something that is highly preferential, you cant possibly satisfy everyone. Working from Office, Working from home, hybrid- working hours, lunch hours. you cant ever hope to satisfy everybody. In my case for example, i bloody hate commuting, I feel like any work I do in a day eats disproportionately too much of my day (like going to the gym, where if you work out for 45 minutes you should allocate 90 minutes actually due to prep, shower, travel etc). I’d much rather have longer fewer days.
  - calvinmorrison 3y ago
    Best is to just have core hours that work for everyone. Ours are 9-12 and 1-3.
    - hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
      I'm a big fan of this. Having an idea of the "golden hours" for different parties is even moreso the way with geographically separated teams. I'm currently operating out of Finland as a software lead for a quite complex product (the displays on your bus/train that show you the next stop - a smorgasbord of bespoke hardware, embedded Linux, and everything you can imagine at the border of software and electrical engineering) and I keep a laser sharp eye on what hours I work so that I can efficiently communicate with my colleagues in North America. If I need to get ahold of my man in Chicago I thankfully have the clearance at work to come in an hour or two later in exchange for having an hour or two which matches his timezone. There's a golden window where my evenings wrap around to his mornings that I like to try to use for high bandwidth communication before I close out for the night.
  - emerongi 3y ago
    This is why working in a company with async communication is quite nice as you can do whatever works for you. I'd do 12h*3 and ~30min on the other days to answer any urgent questions from people working on a different schedule. Sadly I don't work in a company with that culture anymore :(.
    - TylerE 3y ago
      That sounds amazing. I often do my best stuff at 2-3AM (mega night owl), but I don't necessarily want to work that schedule - not least because it's a shared house so it's not a time frame I'd ever want to be, say, having to take a voice call.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  4-day weeks have a lower cost than 32 hours spread over 5 days, because some of the days you’re off would have been off anyway due to holidays or whatever. You can also get away with offering fewer days off without doing any harm—all weekends are three-day weekends, and you see fewer parents taking days off because of e.g. a Friday school in-service day. The cost of having Fridays always off is a fair bit lower than 20% of actual hours worked in most 5-day-a-week workplaces.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
    We are stating subtly different points here. Holding 32 hours a week constant, you are arguing that 4-day workweeks reduce cost to the employer, and I think your arguments are at least situationally true quite often; however, I am stating that shorter workdays would lead to greater average value per hour spent for my employer from me, which I think is also true in my case. The deciding factor is whether the difference in value generation is greater than the possible cost reduction you propose. That is a difficult question to give a definitive answer to, especially because there are large groups of people who want to spend as little mental effort as possible at work, to whom my personal preferences obviously don't apply. TLDR: You bring up an interesting point. Thank you for your reply.
    - hotnfresh 3y ago
      I do think a 6 hour 5 day schedule could see zero productivity drop, sure. At four 8s I’m gonna be zonked out short of 8 hours, anyway, just like with a five 8s. That’s a good point.
- Unbeliever69 3y ago
  I've worked 4-10s for 3 years at an aerospace contractor but after 8 hours I felt done. I worked 5-7s during COVID as WFH and really enjoyed it. Sometimes we would do 4-8s around holidays and vacations and that was also great. It's really about defining a culture that supports quality over quantity of work.
  - xur17 3y ago
    > I've worked 4-10s for 3 years at an aerospace contractor but after 8 hours I felt done. Same thing here - I enjoyed the day off, but 10 hours was definitely too long, and the day off wasn't really worth the trade off. My current employer has "my mondays" - half the Mondays are days with no meetings, half are completely off. From an employee retention perspective this is a pretty sticky benefit - it would be difficult for me to go back to a normal schedule.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- koromak 3y ago
  Depends on the job I'm sure, but genuinely only have 3 good hours too. After 5-6, I may as well just not be working. I'm writing garbage code and I'm grumpy.
- zemvpferreira 3y ago
  Por que no los dos? For lots of jobs peak productivity is probably around 20-30 hours of work. Could easily be 5-6 hours, 4 days per week. Gives you time to warm up and cool down from your more intense work.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
    You're speaking my language here.
  - imachine1980_ 3y ago
    peek productivity not means peek output, i'm agree than the possibility for 30 or 20 hour work week should exist but i'm working 20 hours and even when less productive i will make more in 30 hours, i don't want so i work 20, but i will make substantially more output in 30 hours not 50% more but 35% so my compensation make sense being lower , the 4 day work week means that productivity compensate the loss of hour so the output and to consequence the salary don't change.
- IKantRead 3y ago
  I like this better in theory, but my experience is that, given my current hours, work tends to very frequently spill over until later in the evening. If my day was supposed to end at 3 or even noon I don't think it would make a practical impact on how late I worked. Work spilling over into extra days does happen during crunch times, but is much rarer. Though I likewise fear that 4 day work weeks would simply mean you end up working 8-8 everyday to get the same amount of stuff done.
- dilyevsky 3y ago
  I interviewed with one place for a kernel dev role that was explicitly 12-4pm. Yes you read that right. They were in the “defense” space and lowball salary so I didn’t take that offer but always thought it was interesting idea
  - hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
    That is a fascinating idea. I could easily see myself going for that if I loved kernel hacking and they were willing to let me work remotely. I imagine you'd have to have a really stripped down warm up and cool down routine for such a role. 30 minutes to get into the flow, 3 hours flow state, 30 to step back down and do any documentation you needed to.
- jfoucher 3y ago
  I used to work 5 days a week, 9 am to 2pm. I quite liked it, but my employer would often call or ask for "urgent" stuff to be down after my hours, which meant I could not be fully present for family or whatever I had planned. I have now switched to a 3 days workweek at another job, and I find it much easier to set effective boundaries. If I'm not there I'm not there and that's it. I don't think I could ever go back to working 40 hour weeks to be honest. When do you get anything personal done?
  - jewayne 3y ago
    > When do you get anything personal done? This is why my stomach drops when this discussion turns into "the whole organization should shut down for another day". That's what I need a day off for. To go to doctor's appointments. To watch a contractor when he's working in my home. To talk to the lawyer planning my estate. Those people need to be working for me to get the full value of my extra day off.
    - zemvpferreira 3y ago
      We don't all need to shut down on the same day, and if we do, we'll schedule around it or use shift work. As you can plainly see, service work still gets done even with two days off in a week. Three won't make a difference.
      - jewayne 3y ago
        That's my point. I think the vast majority of adults have some amount of personal business that already isn't getting done. Shortening the week is going to make it worse.
- RangerScience 3y ago
  Interestingly - I went on ADD meds (Dexedrine, 10mg) ohh 6 months ago. I used to be like you and now I'm the other way around - it's easier to Just Keep Going. Note that I would totally support you getting "five sixes" (~30hours); I'm just finding it interesting that with the meds, for myself I'd now want "three tens" (or whatever). PS - It helps a lot that I freakin' love working in Ruby/Rails, so I kinda... want to just keep going anyway.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
    I could see that as being a quite straightforward effect from taking a drug that increases your ability to focus for prolonged periods at a time. I don't have ADD myself, however, and I find that even a stimulant as low grade as non-decaf coffee generally messes with my ability to stay focused. Different strokes, I guess.
    - RangerScience 3y ago
      Oh, it's more than that, I think! Dexedrine feels like it (1) increased the "volume" on the outside world, so that it could compete with whatever's happening inside my head and (2) increased my ability to choose what I was focusing on. Contrast with Adderral, which felt like cutting off my peripheral vision (like wearing blinders, or a costume mask), only for my sense of focus and awareness instead of literal vision. (I hated it). Caffeine "just" ups overall energy levels, so it would give me more energy to direct focus... but it also amped up the things that would generate distractions. Huberman Lad has a good episode going into the brain structures, which aligned with what I think I've experienced. But yeah! It's well known (AFAIK) that people with ADD have "opposite reactions", although it's more about the complex engine under the hood.
- marbartolome 3y ago
  This!!! Kids (where i live) go to school 9-2, and it is a true nightmare to extend those hours to fit with parents longer work schedule. Let's just make both the same! Also free afternoons every day, better than a longer weekend.
dudul 3y ago
Companies should just have roughly 20 "core hours" in the week during which everybody is expected to be reachable for calls, meetings, chats, etc. And then just let people do whatever they want as long as they deliver.
- erik_seaberg 3y ago
  Half of every week seems like a lot of talking. I don’t find the remaining 20 hours of deep work to be enough for the team’s goals, or for me personally.
  - dieselgate 3y ago
    That's reasonable and seems like parent was expecting some to work more hours where/when necessary (or not long as they deliver)
  - hotnfresh 3y ago
    I believe the proposal is to have 20 hours a week in which everyone’s expected to be available at the same time, not limiting weekly work hours to 20.
  - Filligree 3y ago
    To be clear, you’re saying it’s the non-core hours in which you’d get work done? This is probably true for most ICs, and false for most managers/execs. Hence the tension.
    - erik_seaberg 3y ago
      Yeah, clarified that.
  - dudul 3y ago
    You don't need to talk for the 20 core hours. It's just time where everybody is supposed to be around if there is need for collaborative work. It's a maximum.
nkozyra 3y ago
I think of a "work week" as a bit of a fishbowl situation for most professionals. If you extend it from 40 hours to 80 hours you'll generally get the same output over time. Of course, this productivity can only be squeezed into only so small a frame, but I think what we're learning is that 40 hours is probably not the maxima for efficiency. The simplest way to have more efficient workers is to make them happy. I don't have a panacea for that problem, but giving them an extra day for leisure sure doesn't hurt when possible. But more than that, companies rarely ask and listen to employees about what they want/need, and there's so much social pressure that people seldom speak up. Fundamentally this is a cultural problem.
statquontrarian 3y ago
I've had a 3 day work week for years (at 20 hours per week) and I love it. I feel like I'm more productive than before, too. Not just productivity per hour, but total productivity. I was surprised by this result since I'm working half the hours per week.
- emerongi 3y ago
  When applying for senior positions, a 4-day work week is already quite an ask. I feel like the whole agile/scrum approach is so deeply rooted into modern companies that ironically they are unable to adapt. We had somebody in a different timezone join the team and there was a long discussion about when we should do stand ups. I almost suggested just dropping it, but that would have been heresy.
  - statquontrarian 3y ago
    I'm a senior software engineer, but, yes, there are lots of complexities. 3 day work weeks might only work for top performers, but a lot of them never ask.
  - Paul-Craft 3y ago
    Did anyone suggest doing standups asynchronously, for instance, over Slack?
- jawns 3y ago
  Is that generalizable, though? Most people I know who are working under 30 hours a week do not qualify for important benefits such as health insurance. Are you benefiting from a partner's income and health plan, or are you able to sustain yourself entirely on your own income? And out of curiosity ... how do you spend the extra 4 days per week?
  - statquontrarian 3y ago
    I'm earning half my previous salary, and I'm single, so it was definitely an adjustment. I had heard about the 30 hour per week cutoff for benefits, but I was surprised that my company was able to provide full benefits at 20 hours per week. It's a very large company, so I know they're following all the laws properly. Maybe the ones that require a minimum of 30 simply aren't up-to-date on the latest laws. It probably helps to be a top performer and have years of experience. But if I were to be let go tomorrow, I'm sure it'll be difficult to find again. But I'm going to try! Never hurts to try when you know what you want. I keep a low profile but the extra days per week are fun to fill! There does seem to be some sort of mental flip between 3 days and 4 days because I know that the majority of my week is whatever I want to do versus the majority (or vast majority) being work.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
paulpauper 3y ago
What about tech support or sales reps. How do the gaps get filled.
- munk-a 3y ago
  No, we're not talking about 10/4 or supplemental employment. People are actually just more productive at creative tasks if you don't overwork them so eight hours a day, four days a week, the same team... Your productivity may not drop/Your productivity per hour may increase by 20% or more.
- footy 3y ago
  at my workplace it's done by having the same employees we had before, but working fewer hours each.
- Paul-Craft 3y ago
  You'd probably do staggered scheduling for positions that truly need the coverage. But, I suspect a lot of these needs are not really "needs."
GGO 3y ago
https://archive.ph/C6qmf https://archive.ph/C6qmf
atleastoptimal 3y ago
If I was asked to test a four-day work week, I would work harder and more efficient than I usually would to make a four-day work week look like a better option, even if it wasn't.
mkaic 3y ago
I am a firm believer that I would get more work done with a 4-day workweek than I currently do with my 5-day workweek. I already spend an embarrassing amount of time slacking off daily, it's not like I'm pressed for time to get stuff done in the office. I could easily meet my weekly objectives in 32 hours rather than 40, and having 3-day weekends every weekend I think would be incredible for my mental health and mood. And when I'm in a better mood, I get more work done! One thing I feel like a lot of people don't realize is just how big a difference it is to go from a 5-day week to a 4-day week. Sure, it's "just one day" but when you think about the ratio between time-on and time-off, the shift becomes a lot more dramatic. 5-on, 2-off means you spend over twice as many days working as not working. 4-on, 3-off means you spend a nearly equal number of days on each. It's just one day of difference, but it feels like a major, major shift.
- maxRN 3y ago
  Yup, another way to think about it is that it’s a difference of 16h, not 8h. You work 8h less and gain 8h of free time.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    Or you work 8h less and gain 24 of "contiguous hours that you control" per week.
    - tshaddox 3y ago
      Yes, the disproportionately huge increase in contiguous time off is the big win in my book.
      - coding123 3y ago
        We could just work Monday and Tuesday with a 40 hour marathon each week fueled by coffee, donuts and an occasional pizza.
  - elAhmo 3y ago
    Well... :D You can't add the gained time twice. It is like saying, instead of spending 20 USD on coffee, you spend 15 USD. You didn't gain 10 bucks, you are still left with only five more than you would have otherwise.
303uru 3y ago
I'm on a true 4x8 work week and it's life changing. I have Tuesdays off. It feels close to half my days at work and half off. I'm more productive at work and the extra day off has allowed me so much flexibility in life; from going to Costco when it's quiet to 5 hour bike rides around Denver and even spending the day with my kids if they're off. It's huge. It's hard to place a value on it, but I'd probably turn down another job that was 5 a week unless it was at least $70k+ in more annual pay.
- benbjohnson 3y ago
  Do you mind if I ask who you work for? I’m in Denver as well and I’m always curious what companies are doing 4x8 or even 4x10.
  - mym1990 3y ago
    There needs to be a catalogue for this!
    - imiric 3y ago
      https://4dayweek.io/ https://4dayweek.io/
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - wil421 3y ago
    Someone I know worked at Lockheed and had every other Friday off and worked 9-5. Not quite a 4 day work week because half the smallish team needed to be on call Fridays.
    - panzagl 3y ago
      A lot of government offices (and therefore their contractors) work '9 nines' to get every other Friday off, though in practice it really becomes '9 eights'.
  - 3y ago
Apocryphon 3y ago
Feels like this had some traction a year ago at the peak of the Great Resignation, when worker power seemed ascendent. Now after all of the mass layoffs, are there more companies actually experimenting with four day workweeks, as opposed to those who had made the switch earlier? Also a shame that one of the more high-profile tech startups with a four-day workweek, Bolt, imploded (though not as badly as their competitor, Fast).
yieldcrv 3y ago
doesnt seem like it would work for my overemployment so pass
jedberg 3y ago
> Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University, says it is doubtful most businesses can shed a fifth of the workweek and maintain productivity. “Whenever I talk to managers, they find the topic pretty insulting—they argue it implies they are completely wasting a day a week,” he said. Yeah, that's the point. You shouldn't expect the same productivity. You should expect less. Just like in theory if we went back to a six day week we'd expect more productivity. The change isn't expected to hold productivity, it's expected to make people's lives easier and take advantage of technological advantages. Go to a four day work week and you can expect the same productivity that you had 20 years ago at five days. Nothing wrong with that, if reduced productivity is even true, but most studies refute that anyway.
- tomcam 3y ago
  I assume you’d expect a 20% pay cut
  - jedberg 3y ago
    Why? Pay isn't related to output. It's related to what it costs to get me to work for you, ie worker supply and demand.
    - trescenzi 3y ago
      And even if it is related to output working less hours doesn't always mean less output. If you can genuinely retain the same output, or similar within reasonable bounds, I'd expect to see no pay cut. I know for a fact I'm more productive a tuesday after a 3 day weekend than a monday after a 2 day weekend so I'd expect to see at most a 5% decrease in output and I'd happily trade 5% of my pay for a 3 day weekend every week.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - thefurdrake 3y ago
    I'd expect to be paid the same amount for accomplishing the same tasks. It's not that hard to comprehend.
elAhmo 3y ago
I find this very interesting from the tax perspective too. In case you reduce your pay by 20% to accommodate for fewer hours, in many countries with progressive tax rates, the effect on take-home pay in absolute terms is not as significant as relative. For example, in Germany, 100K gross leaves you with 57 after tax. Whereas 80K results in ~47k. In absolute terms, it is 'just 10k less', on a salary of 57k, but with 20% less working hours.
hackermatic 3y ago
I have a four-day, 32-hour work week, and I am less productive, but that was the plan up front and I'm very okay with that (and luckily, so is my management). I wanted more personal time, and I also needed more time to take care of my physical and mental health with appointments -- which all of my providers schedule during the 9-AM-to-5-PM period anyway -- and simple rest and relaxation. If I didn't have this schedule, there's a good chance I wouldn't still be at this current job or would have burned out earlier in general, and my contributions are valued, so it works out well for all parties involved. But I don't think you have to justify it so concretely or morally -- you can just want to do a day's less formal work, or want to work toward a society with less work and more leisure time! The 40-hour work week is arbitrary, anyway.
- el_benhameen 3y ago
  Did you exchange the extra hours for a cut in pay?
  - hackermatic 3y ago
    Yes, so I get 80% of the normal salary for my role, but the same benefits package (insurance, 401(k) match, etc.).
mym1990 3y ago
I feel like the 4 day workweek will need to be led by new businesses rather than hoping large corporations will ever go there. In my mind a 4 day work week would also increase consumption across the board as people have more time to vacation/have experiences/get into hobbies/etc… Of course it is not a silver bullet but spreading awareness is a good step.
SirMaster 3y ago
Would there be some standard between companies to always agree on the same day being the day off? Seems like a nightmare for working with other companies if the employees are off on a day you are not, and you need to contact them to work on something with them.
- imiric 3y ago
  What we need is a culture change where companies accept that there are very few tasks that need to be done synchronously and with urgency.
- Paul-Craft 3y ago
  Why do you think that? Assuming both companies worked 4 days between M-F, that would always mean you'd have a minimum of 3 days overlap. Unless we're talking about urgent support type issues, for which scheduling would probably need to be staggered at each company, anyway, I think 3 days a week is totally enough time to schedule necessary meetings and get prompt responses to email communications.
jedberg 3y ago
This article is so dramatic. "Look at how hard it was for these companies to go to four days a week." It's not hard. You just declare Friday a weekend. Then you do everything like before. Did you have meetings on weekends? No? Good, move the Friday ones to another day because they're on the weekend now. Who is going to answer customer support emails on Friday? The same people who answered on Saturday and Sunday, and maybe you'll pay them extra work on the weekend. What if we can't get everything done? You probably weren't getting everything done before, and you either worked on Saturday or just said screw it. Do the same thing. The only slightly reasonable issue brought up was the lawyers who wanted to work four days but kept having to go to court on Friday. Yes, if you work with external entities, you either have to be willing to say no to working on Friday or if you can't, you have to wait for them to also move to four days. But very few people are actually in a position where they can't say no to the client (the lawyer being one of the few exceptions). The WSJ wants to make it sound like a massive undertaking because they are pro-business and anti-worker. Don't buy the hype.
- treebeard5440 3y ago
  I like how you broke this down - it’s really not that hard
- manicennui 3y ago
  I was surprised to see this in the WSJ at all. Obviously they did it so they could sow doubt. This entire article is likely PR for ActivTrak though: "Many four-day-week employers don’t appear to be operating more efficiently, though, according to data from ActivTrak, a maker of workforce analytics software. Gabriela Mauch, vice president of ActivTrak’s productivity lab, suspects that is because management hasn’t revamped the way teams work."
- ncallaway 3y ago
  > But very few people are actually in a position where they can't say no to the client (the lawyer being one of the few exceptions). Yea, I agree with this. As the lawyer, when the court asks you your preferred dates for scheduling something, don't give them a Friday. If the Court asks you to schedule something on a Friday, you could politely request it moved to another day. If the Court says: "too bad, this Court works Fridays, and I'm going to schedule something for Friday", then you show up on Friday. Exactly the same way that you would if the Court said: "I'm going to schedule something for a Saturday".
brtkdotse 3y ago
Since becoming a freelancing contractor I’ve experimented a fair bit with my work week and for me the sweet spot is 5 6-hour days, split up as 2x90min, 2 hour lunch and another 2x90min. I prefer a five day workweek with shorter days because I rarely have 8 good hours in me. That, and as long as the rest of the world is working 5 days a week it’s easier to conform.
- rockostrich 3y ago
  This is pretty much how I work anyway as someone who technically should be working 5 8-hour days and I tell everyone on my team that I really don't care how much they're working as long as: their output is at least meeting expectations, they attend any meetings they're required to be at (although at this point it's almost only stand-up and 1:1s), and they handle on-call when it's their turn on the schedule (although we're a data team so the stakes are a bit lower in terms of incident response). I usually start anywhere from 8-10, work until around 12-1, get some chores done/eat something/work out, work until around 4-6. Some days there's more in the tank or whatever problem is interesting and I can't put the laptop down. Some days I'm done by 3 pm because I'm not getting anything done. And sometimes it's like 8 pm on a Sunday and I have a great idea about how to solve something so I pick up the laptop.
Hasz 3y ago
I have a split lunch schedule -- I usually take 30 minute lunches during Mon-Thu and take an hour for lunch on Friday. Based on my internal notes (and a bunch of metrics) I am more productive on Friday (especially afternoons) than I am on a given Tuesday afternoon. There's a ton of other variables and probably some contraindications in that anecdote, but it's the kind of counter-intuitive result that a 4-day work week is based on. I'm also amazed at how variable an hour can be in terms of output. I can easily do 5-10x work at my best compared to my worst. The key here is being completely in the zone, and not trying to do it all the time. I believe a 4-day work week could help put more people in that productive zone,resulting in as much/more output for less hours spent. Of course, you have to have employees trusting enough and stable enough to use the extra time to decompress.
lnxg33k1 3y ago
To me it's the failure of our governments the fact that we're still discussing about a 32-hours work week, the processes have been evolving and have been optimised for the past couple of centuries, the value produced has seen an increased of a order of magnitude, but the benefits of it all has been squeezed from the working class into the pocket of a few individuals, I've broken my balls having to justify why we need shorter weeks, we could work 2 days and produce as much as it was produced 50 years ago, why do I have to have a life of misery always working, to not be able to afford even a house by myself, while these motherfuckers have everything and then tell me to work more, fucking capitalism, it's all useless existence and greed I feel it insulting that we need justify keeping the level of productivity with a shorter working week, while the change in process and tooling that boosted productivity were never adopted to make the sake of the working class but for the benefit of the powerful, its time to make it a law
- Draiken 3y ago
  Unfortunately that's 100% because of capitalism. We pay with our valuable time so they get more time to enjoy their yachts. The government can't really solve this anymore, because corporations control the politicians and public opinion through the media. The only real solution is, in my view, revolt. But the majority (like myself) are also way too comfortable to risk anything drastic, so the status quo will persist for the time being.
  - yoyohello13 3y ago
    > The only real solution is, in my view, revolt. But the majority (like myself) are also way too comfortable to risk anything drastic, so the status quo will persist for the time being. I tend to agree with this. My prediction is the capitalists will continue to extract more and more resources from the working class for the next 50-60 years until there is a breaking point. After some violence, society will swing back to prioritizing workers' rights, then regulations will be eroded slowly over another 100-200 years as people forget what it was like, and the cycle continues until the earth is no longer habitable.
    - 3y ago
freedude 3y ago
The challenge comes with debt. If you are not servicing debt, then it becomes easier to be free to do the things you need to do when you want to do them.
effnorwood 3y ago
[dead]
philfreo 3y ago
At Close we have been offering an 80% salary / 4-day week option for engineering roles for a few years now. This originally was mandatory during early 2020 COVID-19 economic uncertainty as a way to cut costs without doing layoffs. Quickly it became optional – most people moved back to 100% but some people decided they enjoyed it and wanted to continue that arrangement. What's interesting about 4d weeks is that it's 20% less work but 50% more days off, which can be very impactful for folks. Our 80% option is a flexible thing, as in you can choose to do it for the summer but not the rest of the year. We try to adjust workloads accordingly. I've taken advantage of it myself for a period of time and it gave me more free time to be with family and also work on side projects. Some people really love taking our 80% option / 4d and others absolutely don't want to. Companies offering flexibility in work hours can really help retention IMO, and is a natural progression after (a) remote / freedom of location, and (b) freedom of specific work schedule. I know a few companies offer "4-day week summers" to everybody or even "everyone always does 4-day weeks". But I like the "fairness" of giving people an option, since different people are in different life situations at different times where working more vs. less can be especially helpful.
- wnolens 3y ago
  > This originally was mandatory during early 2020 COVID-19 economic uncertainty as a way to cut costs without doing layoffs. I'm surprised I've never heard of this solution before. I think it's brilliant, especially for engineering roles where we can still make rent on 80% pay. I would gladly move back and forth between the options as I get more or less burnt out with work, or take on a new extra curricular.
imiric 3y ago
One detail about the 4-day work week that tends to be ignored is that a 4 day work week is not the same as a part-time position, and, crucially, it should be compensated the same as a "full-time" 40 hours per week position. Some companies claim to have a 4 day work week schedule, when in fact they simply negotiate an equal reduction in salary. The point of working less is for people to have more personal time without this impacting their livelihood. There are many well-studied benefits of this[1], both to workers and companies, yet greedy companies still cling to archaic practices to squeeze as much profits as possible out of each employee. Even after considerable productivity increases gained in part by automation and technology, we've seen decades of wage stagnation and an increasing productivity-pay gap[2,3,4]. Workers have lived with this short end of the stick for far too long, and the least controversial step forward would be to make the 4 day work week without pay reduction a general policy in all companies in nonessential industries. There are industries that need to operate with longer schedules, and those positions should be compensated accordingly, but most IT companies can certainly operate with much less than 5 days per week. [1]: https://time.com/6256741/four-day-work-week-benefits/ https://time.com/6256741/four-day-work-week-benefits/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_of_wages_from_productivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_of_wages_from_produ... [3]: https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ [4]: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
djhope99 3y ago
Everybody is different. We recently had 2 Fridays off a month and it just dropped back to 1 Friday off a month. I feel more productive, actually, contrary to what most people are saying. Fridays are mostly clear of meetings so I can actually focus more unlike other days of the week.
- zemvpferreira 3y ago
  If all your meetings take 20 hours per week and you're left with no time to do deep work, no wonder you feel more productive with an extra 100% focused day. Kind of like squeezing all your clothing from two closets into one won't make your room feel less cramped unless you cut half your clothing as well. Most people could do without that extra half and be better for it.
freitzkriesler2 3y ago
That feel when you work at a job where you can't work from home.
standardUser 3y ago
I'd like a model where every other Friday is off for half the staff. A lot less complicated for companies because they can still operate 5 days a week. Also a lot less radical/daunting from their perspective. But all those extra 3-day weekends, some of which become 4-day weekends due to holidays, will create a lot of much-needed time and space in most working peoples lives.
gwbas1c 3y ago
A few months ago a few recruiters approached me about a job with a company that works 4 days a week. They work 4 10 hour days a week. There's just no way to balance that kind of schedule and children. I was very frank when I responded to the recruiter.
billy99k 3y ago
If you want to work less and get paid more, there are better alternatives: 1) start a business 2) become a contractor/consultant. You can charge much more than a regular job and cut hours to get paid the same amount as you did before. I've been a consultant for 10 years and almost never work 40 hours. If I do, it's on my side-business and it's by choice. The problem with these 4-day work weeks is that you are imposing your lifestyle changes on potential employers by expecting to get paid more for working less. It's a losing battle and will most-likely only be temporary, like remote work (I've been remote for 10+ years and it's written into my contracts).
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  That's my long term plan. But that involves having significant capital and knowledge to start my own business. On top of an ability to either quickly start gathering revenue. I will of course have the worst of both worlds; likely working somewhere part time while preparing my product to sell, which is not proven income. Meanwhile, consulting similarly requires specialized and/or significant knowledge/value to bring to a business. People who can do either probably are already in a position where they don't rely on full time income to survive. >The problem with these 4-day work weeks is that you are imposing your lifestyle changes on potential employers by expecting to get paid more for working less. It's a losing battle and will most-likely only be temporary, like remote work 1. I woildnt mind the option even with reduced salary. Especially as my salary grows (80% of 150% of my salary is still 20% more of my current salary. And I live very comfortably t on begin with). I wouldn't even mind 4 10 hour days. But few offer it to begin with. Some progress there would be nice. 2. I don't see remote work as temporary. Pre-pandemic I'd say 80% of companies in my industry expected on-site full time and requesting wfh was like pulling teeth. 3 years later that more or less flipped; so many companies advertise remote first even if all the big employers are RTO'ing. I hope for a similar revolution with 4 day work weeks.
- somsak2 3y ago
  As is mentioned in the article, it's not a requirement that you get paid more for working less. Many would take a pay decrease to be able to do the 4-day work week. Why should an employer always be able to impose their desires on my lifestyle and not the other way around? Ultimately it's just another piece of negotiation, like pay, PTO, remote, etc.
hurril 3y ago
I always thought the perspectives of this question is weird. Are people asking to be paid more than they work, or is someone forcing them to work full time? I totally understand the urge (and suggestion) to not work too much on the other hand.
firesteelrain 3y ago
Just work 10 hour days for 4 days and you get every Friday off!
charlie0 3y ago
Legit question, how many of you would take a 20% paycut for a 4 day work week?
- x86x87 3y ago
  Do I have to do 80% of the work?
j7ake 3y ago
I am more productive working 7 days a week at 5 hours per day than working 4 days a week at any number or hours. Many hard problems are solved by the thinking deeply about a problem, consistently over the long period of time.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >Many hard problems are solved by the thinking deeply about a problem, consistently over the long period of time. Your brain isn't any different from physical muscles; it needs rest and can be overextended. Muscles need time to repair and reinforce tendons after a workout. Meanwhile, practice requires rest so your mind has time to form connections and store new knowledge in long term memory. There's been many situations where I threw myself at a problem for over a day, only to wake up the next morning and solve my blocker in under an hour.
Quinzel 3y ago
I currently only work 4 days a week. It's pretty good, but my goal is to get down to working just 3 days a week while getting paid more for those three days.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  What's your plan to achieve that? Consulting?
  - Quinzel 3y ago
    Upskilling/retraining into an even more niche area than I already work in.
kkfx 3y ago
I honesty believe that the recent new interest in such not-so-new concept spark from the failing RTO policies, those who want to keep humans like intensive farmed poultry because cities are a business, seen that the hard stick does not work try the sweet one "if you comply you'll work less days", added to the ridiculous hybrid work model. I sincerely hope that fails as well.
tamimio 3y ago
No need for a new working model like 4days a week, just get rid of the useless meetings (which is most if them) including the clowns show daily standup and the likes and you will be pretty much good to go.
rldjbpin 3y ago
with so much overhead with meetings that can happen with an email, don't think this can work unless you optimize your time elsewhere. also, many companies treat fridays (second half at least) as a write off for routine work as it is, and it does not practically lead to more productivity imo.
mailund 3y ago
Anecdotally, I intentionally never worked more than 4 hours any given day when writing my masters thesis. I ended up finishing many months ahead of my peers, which I feel like was because of, not in spite of, limiting the hours I worked. I was always refreshed and motivated, and it was trivially easy to be productive and effective during the 4 hours I was working. After starting a regular 9-5, I've never felt the same kind of productivity, because I am never as rested and refreshed.
rcbdev 3y ago
Reading this thread as an Austrian makes me shiver at the thought of people thinking the American model is in any way "normal".
gymbeaux 3y ago
So brass tacks, these articles have been circulating for the last year or so. Microsoft literally put out a study showing the 4-day workweek led to an increase in employee productivity. They aren’t going to just give us a 4-day workweek. The articles have become an echo chamber of non-change. The trend is going the OPPOSITE direction- corporate overlords want us all back in the office where they can see us. Change won’t happen through writing and sharing these articles… we already all know 4-day workweek is a no-brainer. Strike. Resign. Unionize.

255 points by lxm 3y ago

I'd rather five day workweeks but with shorter days, to be honest. I feel I have about 3 hours of peak mental acuity each day that I'd like to spend on my work. It seems like a better time-for-value trade for my employer. To be fair I work more remotely than not these. If I had to commute in more often I'd almost certainly prefer 4-day workweeks.

dijit 3y ago
one thing I’ve realised is working style is really something that is highly preferential, you cant possibly satisfy everyone. Working from Office, Working from home, hybrid- working hours, lunch hours. you cant ever hope to satisfy everybody. In my case for example, i bloody hate commuting, I feel like any work I do in a day eats disproportionately too much of my day (like going to the gym, where if you work out for 45 minutes you should allocate 90 minutes actually due to prep, shower, travel etc). I’d much rather have longer fewer days.
- calvinmorrison 3y ago
  Best is to just have core hours that work for everyone. Ours are 9-12 and 1-3.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
    I'm a big fan of this. Having an idea of the "golden hours" for different parties is even moreso the way with geographically separated teams. I'm currently operating out of Finland as a software lead for a quite complex product (the displays on your bus/train that show you the next stop - a smorgasbord of bespoke hardware, embedded Linux, and everything you can imagine at the border of software and electrical engineering) and I keep a laser sharp eye on what hours I work so that I can efficiently communicate with my colleagues in North America. If I need to get ahold of my man in Chicago I thankfully have the clearance at work to come in an hour or two later in exchange for having an hour or two which matches his timezone. There's a golden window where my evenings wrap around to his mornings that I like to try to use for high bandwidth communication before I close out for the night.
- emerongi 3y ago
  This is why working in a company with async communication is quite nice as you can do whatever works for you. I'd do 12h*3 and ~30min on the other days to answer any urgent questions from people working on a different schedule. Sadly I don't work in a company with that culture anymore :(.
  - TylerE 3y ago
    That sounds amazing. I often do my best stuff at 2-3AM (mega night owl), but I don't necessarily want to work that schedule - not least because it's a shared house so it's not a time frame I'd ever want to be, say, having to take a voice call.
hotnfresh 3y ago
4-day weeks have a lower cost than 32 hours spread over 5 days, because some of the days you’re off would have been off anyway due to holidays or whatever. You can also get away with offering fewer days off without doing any harm—all weekends are three-day weekends, and you see fewer parents taking days off because of e.g. a Friday school in-service day. The cost of having Fridays always off is a fair bit lower than 20% of actual hours worked in most 5-day-a-week workplaces.
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
  We are stating subtly different points here. Holding 32 hours a week constant, you are arguing that 4-day workweeks reduce cost to the employer, and I think your arguments are at least situationally true quite often; however, I am stating that shorter workdays would lead to greater average value per hour spent for my employer from me, which I think is also true in my case. The deciding factor is whether the difference in value generation is greater than the possible cost reduction you propose. That is a difficult question to give a definitive answer to, especially because there are large groups of people who want to spend as little mental effort as possible at work, to whom my personal preferences obviously don't apply. TLDR: You bring up an interesting point. Thank you for your reply.
  - hotnfresh 3y ago
    I do think a 6 hour 5 day schedule could see zero productivity drop, sure. At four 8s I’m gonna be zonked out short of 8 hours, anyway, just like with a five 8s. That’s a good point.
Unbeliever69 3y ago
I've worked 4-10s for 3 years at an aerospace contractor but after 8 hours I felt done. I worked 5-7s during COVID as WFH and really enjoyed it. Sometimes we would do 4-8s around holidays and vacations and that was also great. It's really about defining a culture that supports quality over quantity of work.
- xur17 3y ago
  > I've worked 4-10s for 3 years at an aerospace contractor but after 8 hours I felt done. Same thing here - I enjoyed the day off, but 10 hours was definitely too long, and the day off wasn't really worth the trade off. My current employer has "my mondays" - half the Mondays are days with no meetings, half are completely off. From an employee retention perspective this is a pretty sticky benefit - it would be difficult for me to go back to a normal schedule.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
koromak 3y ago
Depends on the job I'm sure, but genuinely only have 3 good hours too. After 5-6, I may as well just not be working. I'm writing garbage code and I'm grumpy.
zemvpferreira 3y ago
Por que no los dos? For lots of jobs peak productivity is probably around 20-30 hours of work. Could easily be 5-6 hours, 4 days per week. Gives you time to warm up and cool down from your more intense work.
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
  You're speaking my language here.
- imachine1980_ 3y ago
  peek productivity not means peek output, i'm agree than the possibility for 30 or 20 hour work week should exist but i'm working 20 hours and even when less productive i will make more in 30 hours, i don't want so i work 20, but i will make substantially more output in 30 hours not 50% more but 35% so my compensation make sense being lower , the 4 day work week means that productivity compensate the loss of hour so the output and to consequence the salary don't change.
IKantRead 3y ago
I like this better in theory, but my experience is that, given my current hours, work tends to very frequently spill over until later in the evening. If my day was supposed to end at 3 or even noon I don't think it would make a practical impact on how late I worked. Work spilling over into extra days does happen during crunch times, but is much rarer. Though I likewise fear that 4 day work weeks would simply mean you end up working 8-8 everyday to get the same amount of stuff done.
dilyevsky 3y ago
I interviewed with one place for a kernel dev role that was explicitly 12-4pm. Yes you read that right. They were in the “defense” space and lowball salary so I didn’t take that offer but always thought it was interesting idea
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
  That is a fascinating idea. I could easily see myself going for that if I loved kernel hacking and they were willing to let me work remotely. I imagine you'd have to have a really stripped down warm up and cool down routine for such a role. 30 minutes to get into the flow, 3 hours flow state, 30 to step back down and do any documentation you needed to.
jfoucher 3y ago
I used to work 5 days a week, 9 am to 2pm. I quite liked it, but my employer would often call or ask for "urgent" stuff to be down after my hours, which meant I could not be fully present for family or whatever I had planned. I have now switched to a 3 days workweek at another job, and I find it much easier to set effective boundaries. If I'm not there I'm not there and that's it. I don't think I could ever go back to working 40 hour weeks to be honest. When do you get anything personal done?
- jewayne 3y ago
  > When do you get anything personal done? This is why my stomach drops when this discussion turns into "the whole organization should shut down for another day". That's what I need a day off for. To go to doctor's appointments. To watch a contractor when he's working in my home. To talk to the lawyer planning my estate. Those people need to be working for me to get the full value of my extra day off.
  - zemvpferreira 3y ago
    We don't all need to shut down on the same day, and if we do, we'll schedule around it or use shift work. As you can plainly see, service work still gets done even with two days off in a week. Three won't make a difference.
    - jewayne 3y ago
      That's my point. I think the vast majority of adults have some amount of personal business that already isn't getting done. Shortening the week is going to make it worse.
RangerScience 3y ago
Interestingly - I went on ADD meds (Dexedrine, 10mg) ohh 6 months ago. I used to be like you and now I'm the other way around - it's easier to Just Keep Going. Note that I would totally support you getting "five sixes" (~30hours); I'm just finding it interesting that with the meds, for myself I'd now want "three tens" (or whatever). PS - It helps a lot that I freakin' love working in Ruby/Rails, so I kinda... want to just keep going anyway.
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
  I could see that as being a quite straightforward effect from taking a drug that increases your ability to focus for prolonged periods at a time. I don't have ADD myself, however, and I find that even a stimulant as low grade as non-decaf coffee generally messes with my ability to stay focused. Different strokes, I guess.
  - RangerScience 3y ago
    Oh, it's more than that, I think! Dexedrine feels like it (1) increased the "volume" on the outside world, so that it could compete with whatever's happening inside my head and (2) increased my ability to choose what I was focusing on. Contrast with Adderral, which felt like cutting off my peripheral vision (like wearing blinders, or a costume mask), only for my sense of focus and awareness instead of literal vision. (I hated it). Caffeine "just" ups overall energy levels, so it would give me more energy to direct focus... but it also amped up the things that would generate distractions. Huberman Lad has a good episode going into the brain structures, which aligned with what I think I've experienced. But yeah! It's well known (AFAIK) that people with ADD have "opposite reactions", although it's more about the complex engine under the hood.
marbartolome 3y ago
This!!! Kids (where i live) go to school 9-2, and it is a true nightmare to extend those hours to fit with parents longer work schedule. Let's just make both the same! Also free afternoons every day, better than a longer weekend.

dudul 3y ago

Companies should just have roughly 20 "core hours" in the week during which everybody is expected to be reachable for calls, meetings, chats, etc. And then just let people do whatever they want as long as they deliver.

erik_seaberg 3y ago
Half of every week seems like a lot of talking. I don’t find the remaining 20 hours of deep work to be enough for the team’s goals, or for me personally.
- dieselgate 3y ago
  That's reasonable and seems like parent was expecting some to work more hours where/when necessary (or not long as they deliver)
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  I believe the proposal is to have 20 hours a week in which everyone’s expected to be available at the same time, not limiting weekly work hours to 20.
- Filligree 3y ago
  To be clear, you’re saying it’s the non-core hours in which you’d get work done? This is probably true for most ICs, and false for most managers/execs. Hence the tension.
  - erik_seaberg 3y ago
    Yeah, clarified that.
- dudul 3y ago
  You don't need to talk for the 20 core hours. It's just time where everybody is supposed to be around if there is need for collaborative work. It's a maximum.

nkozyra 3y ago

I think of a "work week" as a bit of a fishbowl situation for most professionals. If you extend it from 40 hours to 80 hours you'll generally get the same output over time. Of course, this productivity can only be squeezed into only so small a frame, but I think what we're learning is that 40 hours is probably not the maxima for efficiency. The simplest way to have more efficient workers is to make them happy. I don't have a panacea for that problem, but giving them an extra day for leisure sure doesn't hurt when possible. But more than that, companies rarely ask and listen to employees about what they want/need, and there's so much social pressure that people seldom speak up. Fundamentally this is a cultural problem.

statquontrarian 3y ago

I've had a 3 day work week for years (at 20 hours per week) and I love it. I feel like I'm more productive than before, too. Not just productivity per hour, but total productivity. I was surprised by this result since I'm working half the hours per week.

emerongi 3y ago
When applying for senior positions, a 4-day work week is already quite an ask. I feel like the whole agile/scrum approach is so deeply rooted into modern companies that ironically they are unable to adapt. We had somebody in a different timezone join the team and there was a long discussion about when we should do stand ups. I almost suggested just dropping it, but that would have been heresy.
- statquontrarian 3y ago
  I'm a senior software engineer, but, yes, there are lots of complexities. 3 day work weeks might only work for top performers, but a lot of them never ask.
- Paul-Craft 3y ago
  Did anyone suggest doing standups asynchronously, for instance, over Slack?
jawns 3y ago
Is that generalizable, though? Most people I know who are working under 30 hours a week do not qualify for important benefits such as health insurance. Are you benefiting from a partner's income and health plan, or are you able to sustain yourself entirely on your own income? And out of curiosity ... how do you spend the extra 4 days per week?
- statquontrarian 3y ago
  I'm earning half my previous salary, and I'm single, so it was definitely an adjustment. I had heard about the 30 hour per week cutoff for benefits, but I was surprised that my company was able to provide full benefits at 20 hours per week. It's a very large company, so I know they're following all the laws properly. Maybe the ones that require a minimum of 30 simply aren't up-to-date on the latest laws. It probably helps to be a top performer and have years of experience. But if I were to be let go tomorrow, I'm sure it'll be difficult to find again. But I'm going to try! Never hurts to try when you know what you want. I keep a low profile but the extra days per week are fun to fill! There does seem to be some sort of mental flip between 3 days and 4 days because I know that the majority of my week is whatever I want to do versus the majority (or vast majority) being work.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

paulpauper 3y ago

What about tech support or sales reps. How do the gaps get filled.

munk-a 3y ago
No, we're not talking about 10/4 or supplemental employment. People are actually just more productive at creative tasks if you don't overwork them so eight hours a day, four days a week, the same team... Your productivity may not drop/Your productivity per hour may increase by 20% or more.
footy 3y ago
at my workplace it's done by having the same employees we had before, but working fewer hours each.
Paul-Craft 3y ago
You'd probably do staggered scheduling for positions that truly need the coverage. But, I suspect a lot of these needs are not really "needs."

GGO 3y ago

https://archive.ph/C6qmf https://archive.ph/C6qmf

atleastoptimal 3y ago

If I was asked to test a four-day work week, I would work harder and more efficient than I usually would to make a four-day work week look like a better option, even if it wasn't.

mkaic 3y ago

I am a firm believer that I would get more work done with a 4-day workweek than I currently do with my 5-day workweek. I already spend an embarrassing amount of time slacking off daily, it's not like I'm pressed for time to get stuff done in the office. I could easily meet my weekly objectives in 32 hours rather than 40, and having 3-day weekends every weekend I think would be incredible for my mental health and mood. And when I'm in a better mood, I get more work done! One thing I feel like a lot of people don't realize is just how big a difference it is to go from a 5-day week to a 4-day week. Sure, it's "just one day" but when you think about the ratio between time-on and time-off, the shift becomes a lot more dramatic. 5-on, 2-off means you spend over twice as many days working as not working. 4-on, 3-off means you spend a nearly equal number of days on each. It's just one day of difference, but it feels like a major, major shift.

maxRN 3y ago
Yup, another way to think about it is that it’s a difference of 16h, not 8h. You work 8h less and gain 8h of free time.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  Or you work 8h less and gain 24 of "contiguous hours that you control" per week.
  - tshaddox 3y ago
    Yes, the disproportionately huge increase in contiguous time off is the big win in my book.
    - coding123 3y ago
      We could just work Monday and Tuesday with a 40 hour marathon each week fueled by coffee, donuts and an occasional pizza.
- elAhmo 3y ago
  Well... :D You can't add the gained time twice. It is like saying, instead of spending 20 USD on coffee, you spend 15 USD. You didn't gain 10 bucks, you are still left with only five more than you would have otherwise.

303uru 3y ago

I'm on a true 4x8 work week and it's life changing. I have Tuesdays off. It feels close to half my days at work and half off. I'm more productive at work and the extra day off has allowed me so much flexibility in life; from going to Costco when it's quiet to 5 hour bike rides around Denver and even spending the day with my kids if they're off. It's huge. It's hard to place a value on it, but I'd probably turn down another job that was 5 a week unless it was at least $70k+ in more annual pay.

benbjohnson 3y ago
Do you mind if I ask who you work for? I’m in Denver as well and I’m always curious what companies are doing 4x8 or even 4x10.
- mym1990 3y ago
  There needs to be a catalogue for this!
  - imiric 3y ago
    https://4dayweek.io/ https://4dayweek.io/
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- wil421 3y ago
  Someone I know worked at Lockheed and had every other Friday off and worked 9-5. Not quite a 4 day work week because half the smallish team needed to be on call Fridays.
  - panzagl 3y ago
    A lot of government offices (and therefore their contractors) work '9 nines' to get every other Friday off, though in practice it really becomes '9 eights'.
- 3y ago

Apocryphon 3y ago

Feels like this had some traction a year ago at the peak of the Great Resignation, when worker power seemed ascendent. Now after all of the mass layoffs, are there more companies actually experimenting with four day workweeks, as opposed to those who had made the switch earlier? Also a shame that one of the more high-profile tech startups with a four-day workweek, Bolt, imploded (though not as badly as their competitor, Fast).

yieldcrv 3y ago

doesnt seem like it would work for my overemployment so pass

jedberg 3y ago

> Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University, says it is doubtful most businesses can shed a fifth of the workweek and maintain productivity. “Whenever I talk to managers, they find the topic pretty insulting—they argue it implies they are completely wasting a day a week,” he said. Yeah, that's the point. You shouldn't expect the same productivity. You should expect less. Just like in theory if we went back to a six day week we'd expect more productivity. The change isn't expected to hold productivity, it's expected to make people's lives easier and take advantage of technological advantages. Go to a four day work week and you can expect the same productivity that you had 20 years ago at five days. Nothing wrong with that, if reduced productivity is even true, but most studies refute that anyway.

tomcam 3y ago
I assume you’d expect a 20% pay cut
- jedberg 3y ago
  Why? Pay isn't related to output. It's related to what it costs to get me to work for you, ie worker supply and demand.
  - trescenzi 3y ago
    And even if it is related to output working less hours doesn't always mean less output. If you can genuinely retain the same output, or similar within reasonable bounds, I'd expect to see no pay cut. I know for a fact I'm more productive a tuesday after a 3 day weekend than a monday after a 2 day weekend so I'd expect to see at most a 5% decrease in output and I'd happily trade 5% of my pay for a 3 day weekend every week.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- thefurdrake 3y ago
  I'd expect to be paid the same amount for accomplishing the same tasks. It's not that hard to comprehend.

elAhmo 3y ago

I find this very interesting from the tax perspective too. In case you reduce your pay by 20% to accommodate for fewer hours, in many countries with progressive tax rates, the effect on take-home pay in absolute terms is not as significant as relative. For example, in Germany, 100K gross leaves you with 57 after tax. Whereas 80K results in ~47k. In absolute terms, it is 'just 10k less', on a salary of 57k, but with 20% less working hours.

hackermatic 3y ago

I have a four-day, 32-hour work week, and I am less productive, but that was the plan up front and I'm very okay with that (and luckily, so is my management). I wanted more personal time, and I also needed more time to take care of my physical and mental health with appointments -- which all of my providers schedule during the 9-AM-to-5-PM period anyway -- and simple rest and relaxation. If I didn't have this schedule, there's a good chance I wouldn't still be at this current job or would have burned out earlier in general, and my contributions are valued, so it works out well for all parties involved. But I don't think you have to justify it so concretely or morally -- you can just want to do a day's less formal work, or want to work toward a society with less work and more leisure time! The 40-hour work week is arbitrary, anyway.

el_benhameen 3y ago
Did you exchange the extra hours for a cut in pay?
- hackermatic 3y ago
  Yes, so I get 80% of the normal salary for my role, but the same benefits package (insurance, 401(k) match, etc.).

mym1990 3y ago

I feel like the 4 day workweek will need to be led by new businesses rather than hoping large corporations will ever go there. In my mind a 4 day work week would also increase consumption across the board as people have more time to vacation/have experiences/get into hobbies/etc… Of course it is not a silver bullet but spreading awareness is a good step.

SirMaster 3y ago

Would there be some standard between companies to always agree on the same day being the day off? Seems like a nightmare for working with other companies if the employees are off on a day you are not, and you need to contact them to work on something with them.

imiric 3y ago
What we need is a culture change where companies accept that there are very few tasks that need to be done synchronously and with urgency.
Paul-Craft 3y ago
Why do you think that? Assuming both companies worked 4 days between M-F, that would always mean you'd have a minimum of 3 days overlap. Unless we're talking about urgent support type issues, for which scheduling would probably need to be staggered at each company, anyway, I think 3 days a week is totally enough time to schedule necessary meetings and get prompt responses to email communications.

jedberg 3y ago

This article is so dramatic. "Look at how hard it was for these companies to go to four days a week." It's not hard. You just declare Friday a weekend. Then you do everything like before. Did you have meetings on weekends? No? Good, move the Friday ones to another day because they're on the weekend now. Who is going to answer customer support emails on Friday? The same people who answered on Saturday and Sunday, and maybe you'll pay them extra work on the weekend. What if we can't get everything done? You probably weren't getting everything done before, and you either worked on Saturday or just said screw it. Do the same thing. The only slightly reasonable issue brought up was the lawyers who wanted to work four days but kept having to go to court on Friday. Yes, if you work with external entities, you either have to be willing to say no to working on Friday or if you can't, you have to wait for them to also move to four days. But very few people are actually in a position where they can't say no to the client (the lawyer being one of the few exceptions). The WSJ wants to make it sound like a massive undertaking because they are pro-business and anti-worker. Don't buy the hype.

treebeard5440 3y ago
I like how you broke this down - it’s really not that hard
manicennui 3y ago
I was surprised to see this in the WSJ at all. Obviously they did it so they could sow doubt. This entire article is likely PR for ActivTrak though: "Many four-day-week employers don’t appear to be operating more efficiently, though, according to data from ActivTrak, a maker of workforce analytics software. Gabriela Mauch, vice president of ActivTrak’s productivity lab, suspects that is because management hasn’t revamped the way teams work."
ncallaway 3y ago
> But very few people are actually in a position where they can't say no to the client (the lawyer being one of the few exceptions). Yea, I agree with this. As the lawyer, when the court asks you your preferred dates for scheduling something, don't give them a Friday. If the Court asks you to schedule something on a Friday, you could politely request it moved to another day. If the Court says: "too bad, this Court works Fridays, and I'm going to schedule something for Friday", then you show up on Friday. Exactly the same way that you would if the Court said: "I'm going to schedule something for a Saturday".

brtkdotse 3y ago

Since becoming a freelancing contractor I’ve experimented a fair bit with my work week and for me the sweet spot is 5 6-hour days, split up as 2x90min, 2 hour lunch and another 2x90min. I prefer a five day workweek with shorter days because I rarely have 8 good hours in me. That, and as long as the rest of the world is working 5 days a week it’s easier to conform.

rockostrich 3y ago
This is pretty much how I work anyway as someone who technically should be working 5 8-hour days and I tell everyone on my team that I really don't care how much they're working as long as: their output is at least meeting expectations, they attend any meetings they're required to be at (although at this point it's almost only stand-up and 1:1s), and they handle on-call when it's their turn on the schedule (although we're a data team so the stakes are a bit lower in terms of incident response). I usually start anywhere from 8-10, work until around 12-1, get some chores done/eat something/work out, work until around 4-6. Some days there's more in the tank or whatever problem is interesting and I can't put the laptop down. Some days I'm done by 3 pm because I'm not getting anything done. And sometimes it's like 8 pm on a Sunday and I have a great idea about how to solve something so I pick up the laptop.

Hasz 3y ago

I have a split lunch schedule -- I usually take 30 minute lunches during Mon-Thu and take an hour for lunch on Friday. Based on my internal notes (and a bunch of metrics) I am more productive on Friday (especially afternoons) than I am on a given Tuesday afternoon. There's a ton of other variables and probably some contraindications in that anecdote, but it's the kind of counter-intuitive result that a 4-day work week is based on. I'm also amazed at how variable an hour can be in terms of output. I can easily do 5-10x work at my best compared to my worst. The key here is being completely in the zone, and not trying to do it all the time. I believe a 4-day work week could help put more people in that productive zone,resulting in as much/more output for less hours spent. Of course, you have to have employees trusting enough and stable enough to use the extra time to decompress.

lnxg33k1 3y ago

To me it's the failure of our governments the fact that we're still discussing about a 32-hours work week, the processes have been evolving and have been optimised for the past couple of centuries, the value produced has seen an increased of a order of magnitude, but the benefits of it all has been squeezed from the working class into the pocket of a few individuals, I've broken my balls having to justify why we need shorter weeks, we could work 2 days and produce as much as it was produced 50 years ago, why do I have to have a life of misery always working, to not be able to afford even a house by myself, while these motherfuckers have everything and then tell me to work more, fucking capitalism, it's all useless existence and greed I feel it insulting that we need justify keeping the level of productivity with a shorter working week, while the change in process and tooling that boosted productivity were never adopted to make the sake of the working class but for the benefit of the powerful, its time to make it a law

Draiken 3y ago
Unfortunately that's 100% because of capitalism. We pay with our valuable time so they get more time to enjoy their yachts. The government can't really solve this anymore, because corporations control the politicians and public opinion through the media. The only real solution is, in my view, revolt. But the majority (like myself) are also way too comfortable to risk anything drastic, so the status quo will persist for the time being.
- yoyohello13 3y ago
  > The only real solution is, in my view, revolt. But the majority (like myself) are also way too comfortable to risk anything drastic, so the status quo will persist for the time being. I tend to agree with this. My prediction is the capitalists will continue to extract more and more resources from the working class for the next 50-60 years until there is a breaking point. After some violence, society will swing back to prioritizing workers' rights, then regulations will be eroded slowly over another 100-200 years as people forget what it was like, and the cycle continues until the earth is no longer habitable.
  - 3y ago

freedude 3y ago

The challenge comes with debt. If you are not servicing debt, then it becomes easier to be free to do the things you need to do when you want to do them.

effnorwood 3y ago

[dead]

philfreo 3y ago

At Close we have been offering an 80% salary / 4-day week option for engineering roles for a few years now. This originally was mandatory during early 2020 COVID-19 economic uncertainty as a way to cut costs without doing layoffs. Quickly it became optional – most people moved back to 100% but some people decided they enjoyed it and wanted to continue that arrangement. What's interesting about 4d weeks is that it's 20% less work but 50% more days off, which can be very impactful for folks. Our 80% option is a flexible thing, as in you can choose to do it for the summer but not the rest of the year. We try to adjust workloads accordingly. I've taken advantage of it myself for a period of time and it gave me more free time to be with family and also work on side projects. Some people really love taking our 80% option / 4d and others absolutely don't want to. Companies offering flexibility in work hours can really help retention IMO, and is a natural progression after (a) remote / freedom of location, and (b) freedom of specific work schedule. I know a few companies offer "4-day week summers" to everybody or even "everyone always does 4-day weeks". But I like the "fairness" of giving people an option, since different people are in different life situations at different times where working more vs. less can be especially helpful.

wnolens 3y ago
> This originally was mandatory during early 2020 COVID-19 economic uncertainty as a way to cut costs without doing layoffs. I'm surprised I've never heard of this solution before. I think it's brilliant, especially for engineering roles where we can still make rent on 80% pay. I would gladly move back and forth between the options as I get more or less burnt out with work, or take on a new extra curricular.

imiric 3y ago

One detail about the 4-day work week that tends to be ignored is that a 4 day work week is not the same as a part-time position, and, crucially, it should be compensated the same as a "full-time" 40 hours per week position. Some companies claim to have a 4 day work week schedule, when in fact they simply negotiate an equal reduction in salary. The point of working less is for people to have more personal time without this impacting their livelihood. There are many well-studied benefits of this[1], both to workers and companies, yet greedy companies still cling to archaic practices to squeeze as much profits as possible out of each employee. Even after considerable productivity increases gained in part by automation and technology, we've seen decades of wage stagnation and an increasing productivity-pay gap[2,3,4]. Workers have lived with this short end of the stick for far too long, and the least controversial step forward would be to make the 4 day work week without pay reduction a general policy in all companies in nonessential industries. There are industries that need to operate with longer schedules, and those positions should be compensated accordingly, but most IT companies can certainly operate with much less than 5 days per week. [1]: https://time.com/6256741/four-day-work-week-benefits/ https://time.com/6256741/four-day-work-week-benefits/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_of_wages_from_productivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_of_wages_from_produ... [3]: https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ [4]: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

djhope99 3y ago

Everybody is different. We recently had 2 Fridays off a month and it just dropped back to 1 Friday off a month. I feel more productive, actually, contrary to what most people are saying. Fridays are mostly clear of meetings so I can actually focus more unlike other days of the week.

zemvpferreira 3y ago
If all your meetings take 20 hours per week and you're left with no time to do deep work, no wonder you feel more productive with an extra 100% focused day. Kind of like squeezing all your clothing from two closets into one won't make your room feel less cramped unless you cut half your clothing as well. Most people could do without that extra half and be better for it.

freitzkriesler2 3y ago

That feel when you work at a job where you can't work from home.

standardUser 3y ago

I'd like a model where every other Friday is off for half the staff. A lot less complicated for companies because they can still operate 5 days a week. Also a lot less radical/daunting from their perspective. But all those extra 3-day weekends, some of which become 4-day weekends due to holidays, will create a lot of much-needed time and space in most working peoples lives.

gwbas1c 3y ago

A few months ago a few recruiters approached me about a job with a company that works 4 days a week. They work 4 10 hour days a week. There's just no way to balance that kind of schedule and children. I was very frank when I responded to the recruiter.

billy99k 3y ago

If you want to work less and get paid more, there are better alternatives: 1) start a business 2) become a contractor/consultant. You can charge much more than a regular job and cut hours to get paid the same amount as you did before. I've been a consultant for 10 years and almost never work 40 hours. If I do, it's on my side-business and it's by choice. The problem with these 4-day work weeks is that you are imposing your lifestyle changes on potential employers by expecting to get paid more for working less. It's a losing battle and will most-likely only be temporary, like remote work (I've been remote for 10+ years and it's written into my contracts).

johnnyanmac 3y ago
That's my long term plan. But that involves having significant capital and knowledge to start my own business. On top of an ability to either quickly start gathering revenue. I will of course have the worst of both worlds; likely working somewhere part time while preparing my product to sell, which is not proven income. Meanwhile, consulting similarly requires specialized and/or significant knowledge/value to bring to a business. People who can do either probably are already in a position where they don't rely on full time income to survive. >The problem with these 4-day work weeks is that you are imposing your lifestyle changes on potential employers by expecting to get paid more for working less. It's a losing battle and will most-likely only be temporary, like remote work 1. I woildnt mind the option even with reduced salary. Especially as my salary grows (80% of 150% of my salary is still 20% more of my current salary. And I live very comfortably t on begin with). I wouldn't even mind 4 10 hour days. But few offer it to begin with. Some progress there would be nice. 2. I don't see remote work as temporary. Pre-pandemic I'd say 80% of companies in my industry expected on-site full time and requesting wfh was like pulling teeth. 3 years later that more or less flipped; so many companies advertise remote first even if all the big employers are RTO'ing. I hope for a similar revolution with 4 day work weeks.
somsak2 3y ago
As is mentioned in the article, it's not a requirement that you get paid more for working less. Many would take a pay decrease to be able to do the 4-day work week. Why should an employer always be able to impose their desires on my lifestyle and not the other way around? Ultimately it's just another piece of negotiation, like pay, PTO, remote, etc.

hurril 3y ago

I always thought the perspectives of this question is weird. Are people asking to be paid more than they work, or is someone forcing them to work full time? I totally understand the urge (and suggestion) to not work too much on the other hand.

firesteelrain 3y ago

Just work 10 hour days for 4 days and you get every Friday off!

charlie0 3y ago

Legit question, how many of you would take a 20% paycut for a 4 day work week?

x86x87 3y ago
Do I have to do 80% of the work?

j7ake 3y ago

I am more productive working 7 days a week at 5 hours per day than working 4 days a week at any number or hours. Many hard problems are solved by the thinking deeply about a problem, consistently over the long period of time.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
>Many hard problems are solved by the thinking deeply about a problem, consistently over the long period of time. Your brain isn't any different from physical muscles; it needs rest and can be overextended. Muscles need time to repair and reinforce tendons after a workout. Meanwhile, practice requires rest so your mind has time to form connections and store new knowledge in long term memory. There's been many situations where I threw myself at a problem for over a day, only to wake up the next morning and solve my blocker in under an hour.

Quinzel 3y ago

I currently only work 4 days a week. It's pretty good, but my goal is to get down to working just 3 days a week while getting paid more for those three days.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
What's your plan to achieve that? Consulting?
- Quinzel 3y ago
  Upskilling/retraining into an even more niche area than I already work in.

kkfx 3y ago

I honesty believe that the recent new interest in such not-so-new concept spark from the failing RTO policies, those who want to keep humans like intensive farmed poultry because cities are a business, seen that the hard stick does not work try the sweet one "if you comply you'll work less days", added to the ridiculous hybrid work model. I sincerely hope that fails as well.

tamimio 3y ago

No need for a new working model like 4days a week, just get rid of the useless meetings (which is most if them) including the clowns show daily standup and the likes and you will be pretty much good to go.

rldjbpin 3y ago

with so much overhead with meetings that can happen with an email, don't think this can work unless you optimize your time elsewhere. also, many companies treat fridays (second half at least) as a write off for routine work as it is, and it does not practically lead to more productivity imo.

mailund 3y ago

Anecdotally, I intentionally never worked more than 4 hours any given day when writing my masters thesis. I ended up finishing many months ahead of my peers, which I feel like was because of, not in spite of, limiting the hours I worked. I was always refreshed and motivated, and it was trivially easy to be productive and effective during the 4 hours I was working. After starting a regular 9-5, I've never felt the same kind of productivity, because I am never as rested and refreshed.

rcbdev 3y ago

Reading this thread as an Austrian makes me shiver at the thought of people thinking the American model is in any way "normal".

gymbeaux 3y ago

So brass tacks, these articles have been circulating for the last year or so. Microsoft literally put out a study showing the 4-day workweek led to an increase in employee productivity. They aren’t going to just give us a 4-day workweek. The articles have become an echo chamber of non-change. The trend is going the OPPOSITE direction- corporate overlords want us all back in the office where they can see us. Change won’t happen through writing and sharing these articles… we already all know 4-day workweek is a no-brainer. Strike. Resign. Unionize.