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> Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University, says it is doubtful most businesses can shed a fifth of the workweek and maintain productivity. “Whenev

> 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.
- pelasaco 3y ago
  [flagged]
toomuchtodo 3y ago
People who make it to management are rarely combinations of self aware, empathetic, or rational about work output and arrangements, hence the challenges around these conversations. Look no further than Amazon, with their we “feel” in person is better. They don’t care about the data, they care about the control.
winwang 3y ago
I wonder if that's actually true, though. Especially since engineering is a creative field. For example, what if I churned out 20% less code, but bugs per line decreased by 50%? Or if we're architecting a system and the +50% weekend time led us to a significantly better design?
dv_dt 3y ago
It seems like that most formal studies show that it’s just as productive, at least in the few nations that did made specific processes to test it out.
Hammershaft 3y ago
Nicholas Bloom is an economist & yet he appears to be conflating productivity & output!?
- webel0 3y ago
  The journalist's phrasing surrounding his quote did seem to do this. But his actual quote did not.
kibwen 3y ago
I just now asked some friends who work in the enterprise space the question "how many hours per week do you spend in meetings that feel completely pointless and a waste of your time?" The lowest answer was 8 hours. The highest answer was 15. We can absolutely cut a day and lose no productivity. We already have a four-day workweek, we're just forcing people to spend a day of their de-facto three-day weekend in the office with their thumbs up their ass.
- unbalancedevh 3y ago
  I'm definitely not 40-hours-productive, and would love to go to a 4-day work week. But I think that a lot of down-time that I spend between tasks wouldn't go away, because my brain can't just switch contexts that quickly. Or maybe I'm waiting 15 minutes for my computer to run a job, and can't effectively work on some other task for that short of a time.
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  I don’t even have 8 hours a week in meetings total
manicennui 3y ago
But they are wasting a lot of time in most cases. How many people work in the corporate world and spend hours in meetings keeping people up to date who add nothing?
ncallaway 3y ago
> Whenever I talk to managers, they find the topic pretty insulting Most managers in most organizations *are* completely wasting a day a week. If they find that insulting, they should stop doing it.
_rwo 3y ago
> You shouldn't expect the same productivity Hmm, in my experience rarely anyone looks at a real productivity; you can thread water/even waste everyone else's time, but if you do it 5 days a week it's fine at _current place_ after more than a year of exceeding the expectations (I got really good feedback from my peers and I pushed many projects forward) I asked for 1 day off a week as a form of a raise and I could reasonably justify it (I need my time off so I can stay productive in the long-run, I felt a little bit burnout at that stage); I only got big fat middle finger obviously after that my productivity plummeted down to all-time-low, but seems like nobody really cares, so I stopped caring as well :)

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.
pelasaco 3y ago
[flagged]

toomuchtodo 3y ago

People who make it to management are rarely combinations of self aware, empathetic, or rational about work output and arrangements, hence the challenges around these conversations. Look no further than Amazon, with their we “feel” in person is better. They don’t care about the data, they care about the control.

winwang 3y ago

I wonder if that's actually true, though. Especially since engineering is a creative field. For example, what if I churned out 20% less code, but bugs per line decreased by 50%? Or if we're architecting a system and the +50% weekend time led us to a significantly better design?

dv_dt 3y ago

It seems like that most formal studies show that it’s just as productive, at least in the few nations that did made specific processes to test it out.

Hammershaft 3y ago

Nicholas Bloom is an economist & yet he appears to be conflating productivity & output!?

webel0 3y ago
The journalist's phrasing surrounding his quote did seem to do this. But his actual quote did not.

kibwen 3y ago

I just now asked some friends who work in the enterprise space the question "how many hours per week do you spend in meetings that feel completely pointless and a waste of your time?" The lowest answer was 8 hours. The highest answer was 15. We can absolutely cut a day and lose no productivity. We already have a four-day workweek, we're just forcing people to spend a day of their de-facto three-day weekend in the office with their thumbs up their ass.

unbalancedevh 3y ago
I'm definitely not 40-hours-productive, and would love to go to a 4-day work week. But I think that a lot of down-time that I spend between tasks wouldn't go away, because my brain can't just switch contexts that quickly. Or maybe I'm waiting 15 minutes for my computer to run a job, and can't effectively work on some other task for that short of a time.
zeroonetwothree 3y ago
I don’t even have 8 hours a week in meetings total

manicennui 3y ago

But they are wasting a lot of time in most cases. How many people work in the corporate world and spend hours in meetings keeping people up to date who add nothing?

ncallaway 3y ago

> Whenever I talk to managers, they find the topic pretty insulting Most managers in most organizations *are* completely wasting a day a week. If they find that insulting, they should stop doing it.

_rwo 3y ago

> You shouldn't expect the same productivity Hmm, in my experience rarely anyone looks at a real productivity; you can thread water/even waste everyone else's time, but if you do it 5 days a week it's fine at _current place_ after more than a year of exceeding the expectations (I got really good feedback from my peers and I pushed many projects forward) I asked for 1 day off a week as a form of a raise and I could reasonably justify it (I need my time off so I can stay productive in the long-run, I felt a little bit burnout at that stage); I only got big fat middle finger obviously after that my productivity plummeted down to all-time-low, but seems like nobody really cares, so I stopped caring as well :)