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Germany explores 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

askonomm 3y ago
I once brought up the idea of a 4-day work week to a PM I worked with, and her immediate reaction was very defensive, as she could not understand why would anyone want to work less, and who then would get all the work done. It made me realize that not all people actually want more freedom, some are most likely stockholm syndrom-ed to their job, and these are the people the rest of us are up against trying make positive change happen. Explain to me how we haven't had a significant change in the amount of days per week or hours per week we work in about 100 years, and yet the amount of things we can get done now in that same amount of time is orders of magnitude more? Tell me we're not part of an ant colony with a injected idea of freedom to strive for, that we'll never really get, but that serves as a motivator so that we keep on grinding, oiling that capitalistic system for the benefactors of the few. I swear it's like a sci-fi film plot.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  > Tell me we're not part of an ant colony with injected idea of freedom to strive for, that we'll never really get, but that keeps us motivated workers striving towards that something. Once the population pyramid is upside down, the ant colony model does not work anymore.
- psunavy03 3y ago
  People confusing outputs with outcomes. Being busy is not the same thing as being productive. You can be busy as hell working on things that are not valuable.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Measuring output is hard, so people are emotionally and behaviorally married to the performance art (appearing busy) vs objective measures of output. The only way to show it's possible is through experiments, which have been very successful showing limited reduction in productivity moving to a 4 day work week (which benefits workers by allowing them to live more full lives vs toiling at work an extra unnecessary day per week). Another example is the 900+ school districts in the US that have moved to a four day week, as it is the only way they can retain talent. As with everything, it will come as the population turns over, older workers aging out of power and relevance (either through retirement or death), and younger workers aging in with different ideas of work arrangements. Progress occurs one funeral at a time - Planck https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/companies-around-the-world-adopt-four-day-work-week-pilot-programs-to-meet-growing-demand-from-gen-z-and-millennial-employees/ https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/companies-around-the-wo... https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/21/four-day-work-week-results-uk/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/21/four-day-... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/uk-employers-4-day-workweek-worlds-largest-trial-rcna71722 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/uk-employers-4-day-workwe... https://www.thestar.com/business/could-a-4-day-work-week-work-in-canada-first-ever-pilot-program-reports-100/article_e074378a-6c1f-533d-b946-b0457a783d39.html https://www.thestar.com/business/could-a-4-day-work-week-wor... https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632901/schools-across-the-u-s-are-trying-a-4-day-week-why-to-retain-teachers https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632901/schools-across-the... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/school-districts-4-day-week-teachers-parents/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/school-districts-4-day-week-tea...
  - lm28469 3y ago
    Productivity per employee definitely increased, and profit of companies definitely increased, the only thing that didn't follow both of these trends is the average wage If you want to prove all the excess productivity of the last 50 years is useless busywork you have to bring some proofs. The money is moving from pockets to pockets so surely some value is created, it just happens that all these pockets are at the top, and not much trickles down https://economicsfromthetopdown.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/epi_pay_gap.png?resize=723%2C490 https://economicsfromthetopdown.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/...
- khazhoux 3y ago
  You seem to infer an emotional or psychological reaction to what is a rather straightforward question: today people typically work 5 days/week to get some amount of work done, so the most-simple assessment is that working 80% of that time would result in 80% of the work being done. Rather than saying people are stockholm-syndrome'd ants who dislike freedom and positive changes, by what reasoning does 100% of work get done in 80% of the time? Potential ideas would include: * Maybe people today spend 20% or more of their week slacking off. If they can eliminate that slack-off time, they could have every Friday off. * People could "work faster/harder" and get the same amount of work done in less time? * Maybe we don't need all this work to get done anyway? But then what are the side effects? 20% fewer medical services, restaurants, groceries, deliveries, plumbing, construction, government operations...?
  - askonomm 3y ago
    Or maybe if people had more time to enjoy life with their hobbies and loved ones, they'd be more motivated to do good work, and actually more would get done with 4 days than 5 days. From the few experiments[0] done on this topic, that seems to actually be the case. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/21/four-day-work-week-results-uk/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/21/four-day-...
    - khazhoux 3y ago
      So then some combination of my points (1) and (2), with the theory that there would be less wasted time during "work hours" and increased focus due to better work/life balance? The counterargument to that theory, of course, would be that neither would happen, and there would be the same amount of time not getting work done, and people would work at same rate without any increase in focus or motivation. As you said, experiments may help answer this. There's also another angle of why this is a contentious issue. The idea that people pushing for 4dww are already in cushy jobs with low accountability. Maybe of us here are software engineers being paid $$$$ meanwhile we're spending time writing long comments on HN instead of, say, working on that bugfix that people are waiting for. By contrast, a very large part of the workforce might be less affected by "motivation" than the kind of people pushing for 4dww.
- whstl 3y ago
  I find it kinda ironic that this is coming from a PM. Software is an area where you can get absurd productivity gains just from having different task definitions, by simplifying things where they can be simplified, or by simply planning better. I've seen plenty of bad PMs making a team work 2x, 3x, 4x more to accomplish something, purely because of unimportant details that ended up being too much trouble. Not to mention I've seen countless times teams growing from say, 2 to 10 developers and not having even close to 2x difference. Heck, half of Mythical Man Month is about that. So yeah, amount of time doesn't correlate to amount of work. And especially doesn't correlate to amount of value delivered.
appplemac 3y ago
Instead of a 4-day workweek how about setting reasonable hiring standards so that hundreds of thousands of people out of work, especially non-native German speakers, have a chance of getting past the job application screen. Most jobs, even in tech, in DE currently require good knowledge of German, and "good" is being interpreted as near-native.
- HellDunkel 3y ago
  That is not true. Not in germany, not from my experience. If you speak english you are good. Your colleagues will be happy to pratice their english too.
  - askonomm 3y ago
    Big Berlin start-ups probably are fine in English, but from most of the browsing on LinkedIn, I'd say if you venture out of the big start-up scene, you won't find English there, and that's the vast majority of tech jobs.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Not for all jobs like traditional industrial German companies where everyone speaks German and have little foreigners.
- lm28469 3y ago
  How dare people from a country mandate colleagues to speak the country's language! I guess that's what happens when digital nomad ideology collides with the real world...
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  I always assumed that if I moved to a different country and took a job there, I'd need to learn the language. It's part of what makes emigrating seem difficult actually.
- shasts 3y ago
  Can confirm this. My wife has a master's degree in engineering from a TU9(top 9 universities in Germany).And a B2 language certificate. She has not found a job so far. Been more than a year and half since she started actively applying. At times she ticks all the requirements in the job description, and still no luck. She is planning to go to a bakery starting next week. The guy at the bakery was so surprised to see someone with master's degree in engineering ready to work at a bakery. So the perception and reality is different. Unless you are in IT/software development, it is hard to get a job. Traditional engineering disciplines are hard to break into.
freitzkriesler2 3y ago
I wish someone would investigate what a 6 day week would look like(4 work, 2 off). This article was always a fun exercise what if scenario and if world wide agreement could come to be, would be an innovation on par with the 40 hour work week. https://calendars.fandom.com/wiki/6-Day_Week_Solar_Calendar_with_common_Muslim/Christian_weekend https://calendars.fandom.com/wiki/6-Day_Week_Solar_Calendar_...
- anticensor 3y ago
  Religious people would object violently.
  - pi-e-sigma 3y ago
    Saturday is already off and Christians don't seem to complain too much
    - anticensor 3y ago
      They still get Sunday though. With a 6-day week period, the Christian holy day (along with Muslim and Jewish holy days) would often clash with a work day.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  This is one of those things that would not work as soon as there's a significant number of people not doing it. It's just not practical. Doing something in the existing 7 day structure is much easier.
toomuchtodo 3y ago
https://www.4dayweek.com/ https://www.4dayweek.com/
jl2718 3y ago
Q: How do they define a 'labor shortage'? A: Companies hiring less. Hmmm... real earnings are down 4-6% every year, so... no. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Labour/Earnings/Real-Earnings-Net-Earnings/_node.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Labour/Earnings/Real-Earni...
- usrusr 3y ago
  Apparently it's already a labor shortage when HR departments can keep themselves busy running openings for mr and mrs perfect while rejecting everybody who is less than a 99.9% match.
  - diarrhea 3y ago
    From gut feeling, this effect is especially pronounced in Germany. You don’t have exactly those 4 years of experience in Java Spring Poop? Into the trash your CV goes. They cannot conceive people learning new skills quickly, being dynamic, or their two years worth of experience weighing much heavier than your average, mentally checked out 4 YoE developer. Screening hundreds of people quickly is tough, I get it, but either be actually open minded or quit crying about labour shortage.
poisonborz 3y ago
First maybe have a 2-3 month probation period like most of the continent instead of 6?
- diarrhea 3y ago
  Please no, because then the draconian 3 months notice period kicks in. Truly an artefact of a time past. Take today’s date: if you quit February 1st, you can only start at a new place June 1st! At least 3, but up to 4 months of a continued work relationship is unattractive for both parties I’d say. (At least that’s the widely used rule; the law only specifies a minimum notice period of 1 month)
  - poisonborz 3y ago
    I don't get this, what has probation to do with the notice period? I don't know of anyone in the industry who has a contract with less than 3 (maybe 2) months of notice. Your work is not serious if your employee can risk you leaving within 1 month (counting in unused holidays, 1-2 weeks even?)
    - diarrhea 3y ago
      Notice periods are much shorter during probation periods. It might kick up from 2 weeks (within probation) to the 3-4 months the day probation ends. There’s no progression in between. Of course, for serious work, notice periods of 3 months or even longer make sense. But those levels should only kick in after several years. If you’ve been with a company for only a year, there’s no point in a 3 month period.
mushufasa 3y ago
I spent the summer in Berlin and, as an American, was a bit culture shocked by how little time people worked, and how so many people I met bragged about collecting paid time off for reasons they admitted to making up, which the government enforced all employers must allow. As an employer, I'd be afraid of hiring in countries like Germany for an international workforce if that meant I have to have a patchwork of special policies to treat those workers differently, and I would not be excited about the unambitious "antiwork" ethos
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- JAlexoid 3y ago
  Take note, that in some countries the employer is reimbursed for prolonged employee absence due to illness or similar. Germans are also often paid less, which in many cases is a result of employer taking into account PTO and other absences. On the other hand working as an independent consultant (contractor, B2B model in EU) - you may get paid similar or even more than what you'd make in the US.
- yoyoinbog 3y ago
  Berlin is not really Germany. Working in Germany is mostly more exhausting than many jobs in the US.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >I spent the summer in Berlin and, as an American That's a pretty bad way to get an impression of a whole country. That's like those American tourists visiting only the instagramable parts of Paris and Rome and then say they "saw Europe" lol. Especially that Berlin is basically an American/Expat enclave in Germany where the native Germans are a minority to the point they're annoyed that nobody at cafes, bars and restaurants can take their orders in German. Try vising smaller cities in Germany where the locals are a majority to get an actual feel of the country's culture and people. Berlin is too far from representative, it's just the place most foreigners feel comfortable because they're surrounded by other foreigners.
bastardoperator 3y ago
The question I think needs answering is why we wouldn't do it. Obviously most people would love to have an extra 52 days a year to themselves to spend with family, do hobbies, handle personal business. Outside of greed or operational commitments, why aren't we doing this?
- ysofunny 3y ago
  > why aren't we doing this? because cultural inertia (see also why USA still uses imperial units instead of metric) but agree that we should have more poeple working less instead of a few people working a lot (or making all the money) 6 hour workdays would also be cool, instead of 3 shifts to cover a 24 hour period companies would be forced to have 4 shifts a day (for 24/7 operations)
- e-master 3y ago
  I always thought that in a highly automated world, reducing the mandated working hours would be the solution to bring prosperity and peace, but there are some obvious problems with that. For example, in a global economy, nations compete with each other, and for developing nations, an average german producing for fewer hours, but consuming the same or even more resources, would be a great competitive advantage. For something like this to truly work I think it would have to be rolled out globally, or certain tariffs would have to be in place against nations that don’t follow the practice - and let’s be honest, certain nations do much worse things today to gain competitive advantage, and really nobody cares, most people love cheap stuff, however morally questionable the source is.
- foxyv 3y ago
  If you don't grind yourself to a nub on the wheel of the economic machine then our country will be overrun by those OTHER people! Play the national anthem!
- effingwewt 3y ago
  For the US it's simply because with free time employees can look for better opportunities. This is famously why shitty minimum wage jobs have endlessly changing schedules. Many companies have actual rules against setting regularly scheduled shifts. Was interesting watching the shift happen, regular schedules used to be the norm and it was far easier to work several jobs. Especially once everything became part-time in the 90's.
mrks_hy 3y ago
Can someone change the misleading title to part of the subtitle? It is "Less work, same money, more happiness and productivity. As of February 1, 45 companies in Germany are testing a 4-day workweek.", which is much more meaningful. Title makes it sound like there is anything like a concerted effort, whereas these are just 45 random companies. No details on size of those companies, no data on number of employees or fields. I would expect that in particular the traditonal German "backbone" of the economy is not the kind of company amenable to this work week model or even participating in such a study. Example, classic automative supplier with more "blue collar" style work. The source seems to be https://www.intraprenoer.de/4tagewoche https://www.intraprenoer.de/4tagewoche but this is equally opaque. Overall a weird article with not a lot of original research. To not have this comment only be a rant, here is some data [1]: There are 3.4 Million companies (definition at link, they need to have employees and taxable turnover) in Germany, with 35 Million employees. That includes small 1-person shops as well as Fortune 500 companies. Anyone seems to be able to sign up for that study, and without any further details this seems hardly representative. I am very much interested in the outcome of these studies and would probably for myself assume that I can be productive in 4 days as well, but I'm not sure how this gives us usable data. 1: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterprises/Enterprises/Business-Register/Tables/business-register.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris...
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  "testing a 4-day workweek" So, it is a 4-day workweek? So how is title misleading? HN has a character limit, so sometimes titles get changed to fit.
  - mrks_hy 3y ago
    The title is misleading because it says Germany is exploring - suggesting there is anything like a cultural shift/push on a society-wide scale to explore. That unfortunately is not the case. German work culture as a whole is very much still "butts in seats", working for the predefined number of hours per week with a fixed quota each day, and the Stempeluhr [1] is very much alive even in white collar jobs. 1: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stempeluhr https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stempeluhr
ExMachina73 3y ago
Feel like the real question is what is the purpose of work, if not to feed the all powerful need to consume. Perhaps we need to look at the consumption end of things. Consume less. Work less.
- lm28469 3y ago
  > Consume less. Work less. The entire system we built during the last 200 years revolves around consuming more and working more, the inertia makes it nearly impossible to even imagine something else at that point (as we can see by reading the comments on this very thread)
missedthecue 3y ago
Wait... There's a shortage of labor so the solution is to restrict the supply of labor? Simply from a math perspective (not political) wouldn't going to a 6 day workweek do more to solve the problem?
- vinni2 3y ago
  I guess their logic is that it will attract labor from other countries. It certainly sounds attractive to me.
  - missedthecue 3y ago
    If it works I guess that's good for Germany but isn't that ultimately musical chairs? You're only poaching labor from other markets, not increasing the supply of it.
jonp888 3y ago
All employees in Germany(except in very small companies) have the right to request a reduction in their working hours, and the employer must allow it. The employee does not need to provide any justification for the request, and the employer must accept it unless they can show it would cause significant disruption to the business. That said, I can imagine in some companies there might be informal and social consequences to doing so.

I once brought up the idea of a 4-day work week to a PM I worked with, and her immediate reaction was very defensive, as she could not understand why would anyone want to work less, and who then would get all the work done. It made me realize that not all people actually want more freedom, some are most likely stockholm syndrom-ed to their job, and these are the people the rest of us are up against trying make positive change happen. Explain to me how we haven't had a significant change in the amount of days per week or hours per week we work in about 100 years, and yet the amount of things we can get done now in that same amount of time is orders of magnitude more? Tell me we're not part of an ant colony with a injected idea of freedom to strive for, that we'll never really get, but that serves as a motivator so that we keep on grinding, oiling that capitalistic system for the benefactors of the few. I swear it's like a sci-fi film plot.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
> Tell me we're not part of an ant colony with injected idea of freedom to strive for, that we'll never really get, but that keeps us motivated workers striving towards that something. Once the population pyramid is upside down, the ant colony model does not work anymore.
psunavy03 3y ago
People confusing outputs with outcomes. Being busy is not the same thing as being productive. You can be busy as hell working on things that are not valuable.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Measuring output is hard, so people are emotionally and behaviorally married to the performance art (appearing busy) vs objective measures of output. The only way to show it's possible is through experiments, which have been very successful showing limited reduction in productivity moving to a 4 day work week (which benefits workers by allowing them to live more full lives vs toiling at work an extra unnecessary day per week). Another example is the 900+ school districts in the US that have moved to a four day week, as it is the only way they can retain talent. As with everything, it will come as the population turns over, older workers aging out of power and relevance (either through retirement or death), and younger workers aging in with different ideas of work arrangements. Progress occurs one funeral at a time - Planck https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/companies-around-the-world-adopt-four-day-work-week-pilot-programs-to-meet-growing-demand-from-gen-z-and-millennial-employees/ https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/companies-around-the-wo... https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/21/four-day-work-week-results-uk/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/21/four-day-... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/uk-employers-4-day-workweek-worlds-largest-trial-rcna71722 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/uk-employers-4-day-workwe... https://www.thestar.com/business/could-a-4-day-work-week-work-in-canada-first-ever-pilot-program-reports-100/article_e074378a-6c1f-533d-b946-b0457a783d39.html https://www.thestar.com/business/could-a-4-day-work-week-wor... https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632901/schools-across-the-u-s-are-trying-a-4-day-week-why-to-retain-teachers https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632901/schools-across-the... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/school-districts-4-day-week-teachers-parents/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/school-districts-4-day-week-tea...
- lm28469 3y ago
  Productivity per employee definitely increased, and profit of companies definitely increased, the only thing that didn't follow both of these trends is the average wage If you want to prove all the excess productivity of the last 50 years is useless busywork you have to bring some proofs. The money is moving from pockets to pockets so surely some value is created, it just happens that all these pockets are at the top, and not much trickles down https://economicsfromthetopdown.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/epi_pay_gap.png?resize=723%2C490 https://economicsfromthetopdown.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/...
khazhoux 3y ago
You seem to infer an emotional or psychological reaction to what is a rather straightforward question: today people typically work 5 days/week to get some amount of work done, so the most-simple assessment is that working 80% of that time would result in 80% of the work being done. Rather than saying people are stockholm-syndrome'd ants who dislike freedom and positive changes, by what reasoning does 100% of work get done in 80% of the time? Potential ideas would include: * Maybe people today spend 20% or more of their week slacking off. If they can eliminate that slack-off time, they could have every Friday off. * People could "work faster/harder" and get the same amount of work done in less time? * Maybe we don't need all this work to get done anyway? But then what are the side effects? 20% fewer medical services, restaurants, groceries, deliveries, plumbing, construction, government operations...?
- askonomm 3y ago
  Or maybe if people had more time to enjoy life with their hobbies and loved ones, they'd be more motivated to do good work, and actually more would get done with 4 days than 5 days. From the few experiments[0] done on this topic, that seems to actually be the case. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/21/four-day-work-week-results-uk/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/21/four-day-...
  - khazhoux 3y ago
    So then some combination of my points (1) and (2), with the theory that there would be less wasted time during "work hours" and increased focus due to better work/life balance? The counterargument to that theory, of course, would be that neither would happen, and there would be the same amount of time not getting work done, and people would work at same rate without any increase in focus or motivation. As you said, experiments may help answer this. There's also another angle of why this is a contentious issue. The idea that people pushing for 4dww are already in cushy jobs with low accountability. Maybe of us here are software engineers being paid $$$$ meanwhile we're spending time writing long comments on HN instead of, say, working on that bugfix that people are waiting for. By contrast, a very large part of the workforce might be less affected by "motivation" than the kind of people pushing for 4dww.
whstl 3y ago
I find it kinda ironic that this is coming from a PM. Software is an area where you can get absurd productivity gains just from having different task definitions, by simplifying things where they can be simplified, or by simply planning better. I've seen plenty of bad PMs making a team work 2x, 3x, 4x more to accomplish something, purely because of unimportant details that ended up being too much trouble. Not to mention I've seen countless times teams growing from say, 2 to 10 developers and not having even close to 2x difference. Heck, half of Mythical Man Month is about that. So yeah, amount of time doesn't correlate to amount of work. And especially doesn't correlate to amount of value delivered.

appplemac 3y ago

Instead of a 4-day workweek how about setting reasonable hiring standards so that hundreds of thousands of people out of work, especially non-native German speakers, have a chance of getting past the job application screen. Most jobs, even in tech, in DE currently require good knowledge of German, and "good" is being interpreted as near-native.

HellDunkel 3y ago
That is not true. Not in germany, not from my experience. If you speak english you are good. Your colleagues will be happy to pratice their english too.
- askonomm 3y ago
  Big Berlin start-ups probably are fine in English, but from most of the browsing on LinkedIn, I'd say if you venture out of the big start-up scene, you won't find English there, and that's the vast majority of tech jobs.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Not for all jobs like traditional industrial German companies where everyone speaks German and have little foreigners.
lm28469 3y ago
How dare people from a country mandate colleagues to speak the country's language! I guess that's what happens when digital nomad ideology collides with the real world...
hotpotamus 3y ago
I always assumed that if I moved to a different country and took a job there, I'd need to learn the language. It's part of what makes emigrating seem difficult actually.
shasts 3y ago
Can confirm this. My wife has a master's degree in engineering from a TU9(top 9 universities in Germany).And a B2 language certificate. She has not found a job so far. Been more than a year and half since she started actively applying. At times she ticks all the requirements in the job description, and still no luck. She is planning to go to a bakery starting next week. The guy at the bakery was so surprised to see someone with master's degree in engineering ready to work at a bakery. So the perception and reality is different. Unless you are in IT/software development, it is hard to get a job. Traditional engineering disciplines are hard to break into.

freitzkriesler2 3y ago

I wish someone would investigate what a 6 day week would look like(4 work, 2 off). This article was always a fun exercise what if scenario and if world wide agreement could come to be, would be an innovation on par with the 40 hour work week. https://calendars.fandom.com/wiki/6-Day_Week_Solar_Calendar_with_common_Muslim/Christian_weekend https://calendars.fandom.com/wiki/6-Day_Week_Solar_Calendar_...

anticensor 3y ago
Religious people would object violently.
- pi-e-sigma 3y ago
  Saturday is already off and Christians don't seem to complain too much
  - anticensor 3y ago
    They still get Sunday though. With a 6-day week period, the Christian holy day (along with Muslim and Jewish holy days) would often clash with a work day.
barbazoo 3y ago
This is one of those things that would not work as soon as there's a significant number of people not doing it. It's just not practical. Doing something in the existing 7 day structure is much easier.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

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

jl2718 3y ago

Q: How do they define a 'labor shortage'? A: Companies hiring less. Hmmm... real earnings are down 4-6% every year, so... no. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Labour/Earnings/Real-Earnings-Net-Earnings/_node.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Labour/Earnings/Real-Earni...

usrusr 3y ago
Apparently it's already a labor shortage when HR departments can keep themselves busy running openings for mr and mrs perfect while rejecting everybody who is less than a 99.9% match.
- diarrhea 3y ago
  From gut feeling, this effect is especially pronounced in Germany. You don’t have exactly those 4 years of experience in Java Spring Poop? Into the trash your CV goes. They cannot conceive people learning new skills quickly, being dynamic, or their two years worth of experience weighing much heavier than your average, mentally checked out 4 YoE developer. Screening hundreds of people quickly is tough, I get it, but either be actually open minded or quit crying about labour shortage.

poisonborz 3y ago

First maybe have a 2-3 month probation period like most of the continent instead of 6?

diarrhea 3y ago
Please no, because then the draconian 3 months notice period kicks in. Truly an artefact of a time past. Take today’s date: if you quit February 1st, you can only start at a new place June 1st! At least 3, but up to 4 months of a continued work relationship is unattractive for both parties I’d say. (At least that’s the widely used rule; the law only specifies a minimum notice period of 1 month)
- poisonborz 3y ago
  I don't get this, what has probation to do with the notice period? I don't know of anyone in the industry who has a contract with less than 3 (maybe 2) months of notice. Your work is not serious if your employee can risk you leaving within 1 month (counting in unused holidays, 1-2 weeks even?)
  - diarrhea 3y ago
    Notice periods are much shorter during probation periods. It might kick up from 2 weeks (within probation) to the 3-4 months the day probation ends. There’s no progression in between. Of course, for serious work, notice periods of 3 months or even longer make sense. But those levels should only kick in after several years. If you’ve been with a company for only a year, there’s no point in a 3 month period.

mushufasa 3y ago

I spent the summer in Berlin and, as an American, was a bit culture shocked by how little time people worked, and how so many people I met bragged about collecting paid time off for reasons they admitted to making up, which the government enforced all employers must allow. As an employer, I'd be afraid of hiring in countries like Germany for an international workforce if that meant I have to have a patchwork of special policies to treat those workers differently, and I would not be excited about the unambitious "antiwork" ethos

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JAlexoid 3y ago
Take note, that in some countries the employer is reimbursed for prolonged employee absence due to illness or similar. Germans are also often paid less, which in many cases is a result of employer taking into account PTO and other absences. On the other hand working as an independent consultant (contractor, B2B model in EU) - you may get paid similar or even more than what you'd make in the US.
yoyoinbog 3y ago
Berlin is not really Germany. Working in Germany is mostly more exhausting than many jobs in the US.
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>I spent the summer in Berlin and, as an American That's a pretty bad way to get an impression of a whole country. That's like those American tourists visiting only the instagramable parts of Paris and Rome and then say they "saw Europe" lol. Especially that Berlin is basically an American/Expat enclave in Germany where the native Germans are a minority to the point they're annoyed that nobody at cafes, bars and restaurants can take their orders in German. Try vising smaller cities in Germany where the locals are a majority to get an actual feel of the country's culture and people. Berlin is too far from representative, it's just the place most foreigners feel comfortable because they're surrounded by other foreigners.

bastardoperator 3y ago

The question I think needs answering is why we wouldn't do it. Obviously most people would love to have an extra 52 days a year to themselves to spend with family, do hobbies, handle personal business. Outside of greed or operational commitments, why aren't we doing this?

ysofunny 3y ago
> why aren't we doing this? because cultural inertia (see also why USA still uses imperial units instead of metric) but agree that we should have more poeple working less instead of a few people working a lot (or making all the money) 6 hour workdays would also be cool, instead of 3 shifts to cover a 24 hour period companies would be forced to have 4 shifts a day (for 24/7 operations)
e-master 3y ago
I always thought that in a highly automated world, reducing the mandated working hours would be the solution to bring prosperity and peace, but there are some obvious problems with that. For example, in a global economy, nations compete with each other, and for developing nations, an average german producing for fewer hours, but consuming the same or even more resources, would be a great competitive advantage. For something like this to truly work I think it would have to be rolled out globally, or certain tariffs would have to be in place against nations that don’t follow the practice - and let’s be honest, certain nations do much worse things today to gain competitive advantage, and really nobody cares, most people love cheap stuff, however morally questionable the source is.
foxyv 3y ago
If you don't grind yourself to a nub on the wheel of the economic machine then our country will be overrun by those OTHER people! Play the national anthem!
effingwewt 3y ago
For the US it's simply because with free time employees can look for better opportunities. This is famously why shitty minimum wage jobs have endlessly changing schedules. Many companies have actual rules against setting regularly scheduled shifts. Was interesting watching the shift happen, regular schedules used to be the norm and it was far easier to work several jobs. Especially once everything became part-time in the 90's.

mrks_hy 3y ago

Can someone change the misleading title to part of the subtitle? It is "Less work, same money, more happiness and productivity. As of February 1, 45 companies in Germany are testing a 4-day workweek.", which is much more meaningful. Title makes it sound like there is anything like a concerted effort, whereas these are just 45 random companies. No details on size of those companies, no data on number of employees or fields. I would expect that in particular the traditonal German "backbone" of the economy is not the kind of company amenable to this work week model or even participating in such a study. Example, classic automative supplier with more "blue collar" style work. The source seems to be https://www.intraprenoer.de/4tagewoche https://www.intraprenoer.de/4tagewoche but this is equally opaque. Overall a weird article with not a lot of original research. To not have this comment only be a rant, here is some data [1]: There are 3.4 Million companies (definition at link, they need to have employees and taxable turnover) in Germany, with 35 Million employees. That includes small 1-person shops as well as Fortune 500 companies. Anyone seems to be able to sign up for that study, and without any further details this seems hardly representative. I am very much interested in the outcome of these studies and would probably for myself assume that I can be productive in 4 days as well, but I'm not sure how this gives us usable data. 1: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterprises/Enterprises/Business-Register/Tables/business-register.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris...

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
"testing a 4-day workweek" So, it is a 4-day workweek? So how is title misleading? HN has a character limit, so sometimes titles get changed to fit.
- mrks_hy 3y ago
  The title is misleading because it says Germany is exploring - suggesting there is anything like a cultural shift/push on a society-wide scale to explore. That unfortunately is not the case. German work culture as a whole is very much still "butts in seats", working for the predefined number of hours per week with a fixed quota each day, and the Stempeluhr [1] is very much alive even in white collar jobs. 1: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stempeluhr https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stempeluhr

ExMachina73 3y ago

Feel like the real question is what is the purpose of work, if not to feed the all powerful need to consume. Perhaps we need to look at the consumption end of things. Consume less. Work less.

lm28469 3y ago
> Consume less. Work less. The entire system we built during the last 200 years revolves around consuming more and working more, the inertia makes it nearly impossible to even imagine something else at that point (as we can see by reading the comments on this very thread)

missedthecue 3y ago

Wait... There's a shortage of labor so the solution is to restrict the supply of labor? Simply from a math perspective (not political) wouldn't going to a 6 day workweek do more to solve the problem?

vinni2 3y ago
I guess their logic is that it will attract labor from other countries. It certainly sounds attractive to me.
- missedthecue 3y ago
  If it works I guess that's good for Germany but isn't that ultimately musical chairs? You're only poaching labor from other markets, not increasing the supply of it.

jonp888 3y ago

All employees in Germany(except in very small companies) have the right to request a reduction in their working hours, and the employer must allow it. The employee does not need to provide any justification for the request, and the employer must accept it unless they can show it would cause significant disruption to the business. That said, I can imagine in some companies there might be informal and social consequences to doing so.