13 ms·

'It's better for humans in general': The 4-day workweek is closer than you think

175 points by jader201 2y ago

barfbagginus 2y ago
After that we've got to work on the 3-day work week, and the 2-day work week, the 1-day work week, and 0-day work week. The AI Legacy Code - an AI-UBI inherited collectively by all humans - can make that happen. Let's work to end work!!!
tsunamifury 2y ago
Frankly after the pandemic aren’t we all going to learn humans can’t work all day and consume nothing. They need enough free time to actually buy and experience all this stuff we are toiling to create.
- antisthenes 2y ago
  What does the pandemic have to do with it? Working so much that you can't spend the money was absolutely a thing before the pandemic too.
  - t-writescode 2y ago
    The pandemic gave a large number of people a vision of what __could__ be rather than what is, and those that have tasted freedom and goodness don't want to be caged in the exact ways they have been caged before.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
bradjohnson 2y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20240530165320/https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-better-for-humans-in-general-the-four-day-workweek-is-closer-than-you-think-b85cc39e?mod=personal-finance&utm_content=295142497&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-2842743223 https://web.archive.org/web/20240530165320/https://www.marke...
Helmut10001 2y ago
I am working 75% since about 7 years now. However, I did not chose 4 days, but 6 hours (and 5 days). I like this much more because I can more evenly distribute my workload and I have a more regular schedule, including recovering from work on a daily basis. 6 hours is the maximum I found I can concentrate and be productive. Afterwards, my output always decreased significantly and I was mainly wasting time.
- fleshdaddy 2y ago
  Opposite for me. Much rather have an extra day where I can do anything I want with no one bugging me. Workdays are basically a wash for me anyways.
  - Helmut10001 2y ago
    I agree, but I am looking at it from a productivity perspective, not maximizing leisure quality.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- hinkley 2y ago
  I never got it to work during various economic cycles where they owed me more than they could afford, but I tried once or twice to go to 30-some hours and it seemed to me the best solution would be to come in late on Mondays. That was an at age when I still tried to take weekend trips and if anything unplanned happens it can make the return trip very stressful, which colors the entire experience if you don’t have to be in until noon you get to use more of Sunday without worrying about logistics.
j16sdiz 2y ago
Searching the very title on Google give me these: (2023) Is the 4-day work week closer than we think? - Nearly half of Aussies think it will happen within five years. https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2023/is-the-4-day-work-week-closer-than-we-think-.html https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2023/is-the-4-day-work-week-cl... (2021) Four-Day Workweeks Are Closer To Reality Than You Think https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeswigunski/2021/05/03/four-day-workweeks-are-closer-to-reality-than-you-think/?sh=447de41f7d53 https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeswigunski/2021/05/03/four-d... (2018) Why the 4-day workweek might be closer than you think — and the 10 careers best suited to it https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/24/future-of-the-workforce-careers-for-work-life-balance-four-day-week.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/24/future-of-the-workforce-care... .. Maybe it is as close as nuclear fusion.
- klyrs 2y ago
  Richard Nixon was hyping the 4 day work week in 1956!
  - Spastche 2y ago
    what a bizarre guy, I would not have expected that
    - PlunderBunny 2y ago
      It's amazing to see what 'right-wing' parties/politicians used to promote in the past vs now.
throttlebody 2y ago
> great as a retention tool. Until it becomes standard then its 3 days a week. Im all for it, if you can increase productivity, but it's likely too many people won't be able to.
- pasquinelli 2y ago
  well how long ago was the 5 day work week established as the standard? how long do you reckon it'll be before a 4 day work week is standard? do you think an additional day off takes less time than the prior one took to get? the same time as the prior one? more time than the prior one? i feel like you're getting way ahead of yourself and remarking on events that have only taken place in your mind.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > how long ago was the 5 day work week established as the standard? We work unusually hard compared to our ancestors [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo&t=1482s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo&t=1482s
    - card_zero 2y ago
      Or to put it another way, September 1926. https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1977881_1977883_1977922,00.html https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28... Also: ancient Rome, one day off in eight, revolutionary France, one day off in ten, Han China, one day off in five. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend#History
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
  K cool lets do three days a week
- BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
  Productivity is already increased, employees just never got the benefits from it.
esafak 2y ago
I wonder if productivity is ever going to increase to the point where we work one day a week.
- maximinus_thrax 2y ago
  No, we're not going to reach that point outside of sci-fi utopias. I don't believe even the 4-day workweek is going to become a thing. Any increase in productivity will be captured by the owners, it makes no sense to give it back to the workers in the form of free time.
  - willsoon 2y ago
    Comrade, what about the A.I. already doing some of our work? I recently read only the title of an article here that pointed out that drawing leaves less of a carbon footprint when it is done by the A.I. It is not a long way from there to getting paid for not going to work. This is how A.I. kills you (3x), not with a laser gun, but with a lullaby.
    - portaouflop 2y ago
      My carbon footprint while writing code is 100% lower than that of the AI, I would reckon by magnitudes
  - Ferret7446 2y ago
    There's an unfortunate mistake there > Any increase in productivity will be captured by s/the owners/society/ The population will grow to the limits set by our productivity.
- hinkley 2y ago
  Waiting six days to finish something because you didn’t get it done last time… that’s not gonna work.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Waiting six days to finish something because you didn’t get it done last time… that’s not gonna work You'd hand off work, to humans and machines, with a bit of overlap to sync expectations. With enough automation, it becomes plausible. But not in the near future.
jameslk 2y ago
I’m curious what the logical extreme of this is. Why 4 days? Why not 3 days? 2 days? 1 day? No days? When do we hit the equilibrium level between less work resulting in meaningfully less output? Were these jobs ever needed?
- para_parolu 2y ago
  Equilibrium is where people are most productive. Otherwise we can go to 6 days and no vacations. It may work for some jobs and short term.
- jvm___ 2y ago
  What happens to the economy when the contract janitor and the coffee cart lady have their hours cut and now can no longer afford rent. They only have one free day a week so they can't find a second job.
  - whythre 2y ago
    Uh… telling them they should have to get 2 jobs seems like the absolutely wrong solution, here.
    - BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
      There's already people with 2-3 part time jobs. I don't imagine if a 4 day work week became the norm, that suddenly it would become the only available option either...
- zolbrek 2y ago
  A friend of mine has this at her workplace and she loves it. She works 9 hours a day Monday through Thursday which at 36 hours isn't that far off from the 40 hours I put in over 5 days. I think anything beyond that starts to get ridiculous. Imagine working 11 to 12 hours a day for a three day work week, seems like that would just result in a lot of foot dragging to me.
  - 2y ago
robbyiq999 2y ago
The ai leaders should come out and say… “Ai advancement is so powerful (as we have been saying and hyping for our shareholders) we now will offer our beloved employees - 4 day workweeks, as the productivity gain has removed 1 days worth of work for the work week” And so will begin our fever dream tech utopia
- imiric 2y ago
  Productivity gains came from computers many decades ago, yet companies pocketed the difference, and workers got shafted. These changes won't happen until workers demand it, regardless of the technology that comes along.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
    Basically the only hope is that enough people start starving for the violence to become intolerable for the ruling classes.
trashface 2y ago
Kind of wish employers would use this to hire more people to get additional productivity. But they probably won't do that, which shows how strong their inclination is to only retain employees that meet established preferences. Treating healthcare as a benefit (as in the US) also works against expanding employment, as its a large fixed cost per employee that can't really be reduced.
- firesteelrain 2y ago
  Hiring more employees costs money.
firefoxd 2y ago
Last Sunday, I was walking down the street with my kids when a man bumped into me trying to cross the street. He turned around to apologize and we had a discussion at the red light. He was working a 12 hour shift and was now on his break which he had to rush to get to the store. He said memorial weekend was extremely busy. "After that we will go back to regular busy." When we talk about 4 day workweek, it's for some specific jobs. Not for that guy. Culturally, at least in the US, we would be happier if some people worked 7 days, 24 hours a day. Ex: wouldn't it be better if the bank was open after work? Wouldn't it be better if USPS would show up on Sunday? Isn't it annoying that Chick-fil-A is closed on sunday? Personally , I would love to work 4 days a week, but if the people that package and ship the product I help develop worked only 4 days, we would have angry customers. They will switch to our competitor who will brag about faster delivery. 4 day workweek is a cultural problem. We will have to give up on our instant gratification mentally to make it a reality.
- flax 2y ago
  You don't have to have individuals working 24/7 to have things open 24/7.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    Yeah, that guy could be two guys, working four day weeks. I guess they'd overlap on Thursdays, but that's a detail.
    - HDThoreaun 2y ago
      We're pretty much at full employment. Labor force could get a few percentages bigger but I dont see where all these new people will come from
      - card_zero 2y ago
        How is that happening - is a lot of that already gig jobs, part time, and so on? Edit: it's an increase in full-time workers, with less increase in part-time workers. https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2017/08/a-glass-half-full-or-half-empty/?utm_source=series_page https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2017/08/a-glass-half-full-or... I don't know if this covers everyone. Anyway you may be right, employers just want all the work from all the people, at the moment.
from-nibly 2y ago
No, the market cant handle that right now. A 4 day work week happens because of market forces. Companies don't need to offer perks unless they cant attract enough applicants or retain their top talent. We just saw this last year that companies done need anymore applicants. We are also seeing now that companies don't even care which part of their talent they keep. There might be a class divide coming that would include 4 day work weeks, but the vast majority of us scrubs are going to be 5 days a week for a while to come. At a minimum we are going to have to ride out this financial crisis for the next decade.
- azinman2 2y ago
  Seems you think that a 4 day work week is paid as 5 is currently. I don’t see why that’d be necessarily true. In that scenario, it’s kind of like a part time worker and I can see many businesses finding appeal in that.
  - whythre 2y ago
    I bet many businesses would love that. More places of employment start acting like Walmart, where you have to be management to get a full time job with benefits. Everyone else has a shifting 30-35 hour schedule that makes it effectively impossible to have a predictable, normal life outside of work. And no benefits for part time workers either. And the pay is so crappy food stamps are practically mandatory.
    - soco 2y ago
      Let me understand this: the state is actually indirectly subventioning Walmart with those food stamps right? It allows them to give crappy wages because the difference is supported with food stamps paid directly to the employees. And we still call this market economy and capitalism and and and.
      - BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
        And yet, I only ever hear rants about the unemployed being parasites, but never the same about corporations despite them getting way more tax dollars when you add up subventions, grants, tax cuts and indirect support like described above and letting others pay for the damage they do to the environment.
FranzFerdiNaN 2y ago
Here in the Netherlands plenty of companies already switched to a 36 hour fulltime workweek, and I know of at least one large company (15.000+ employees) went to a 34 hour workweek. And all those companies pay the same as 40 hour companies.
- BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
  Was it actually applied? I find work in Europe had more social breaks during the day, but my 35h schedule (working 40 and getting paid catch-up days off to be used monthly) still ended up looking like 70h weeks reported as 40 with no extra catch-up days and no overtime pay. Contrast to Canada, my 40h week does average to 40h and if I do overtime it is paid (provided I get it approved ahead of time) and I get to take that back as unpaid time off later. Though I am told to report my real hours in my timesheet provided they are 8h per day. So not my real hours. A lot of this comes from being salaried vs. hourly, but I'm not really hourly other than on paper. As salaried I was expected to do a lot more unpaid overtime though under the guise of flexibility. Oddly the flexibility was rarely in my favor :p
aussieguy1234 2y ago
A 4 day, 40 hour workweek works suprisingly well for international teams, because the longer days usually mean more timezone crossover.
- gorbypark 2y ago
  I worked this schedule for many years (not in tech, "skilled" labour) and it's amazing. This was a 7 day a week operation and it worked quite well in terms of crossover here too. Each person had a fixed schedule but the day of the week for each person would vary so there'd never be a full "shift change over", so to speak, but always some overlap between the shifts and it helped with information exchange greatly. The guy working Monday-Thursday would overlap with people starting their weeks from Tuesday to Thursday, for example, so there was always a "working knowledge" of what was going on. It worked well on the management side of things too, but with an actual "changeover", as you'd have a Monday-Thursday supervisor and another Thursday-Sunday supervisor, with one day a week of overlap however that Sunday-Monday changeover didn't have an overlap (although there was a lot of OT on this job so it did frequently happen).
qiqitori 2y ago
Just the other day I asked my boss if I can reduce my hours a bit, essentially giving me a 4-day workweek, just that even those days have slightly reduced hours (8->7 hours, though the lunch break is 1 hour, so really it's down from 9->8 hours. Subtext: I don't consider the forced 1 hour lunch break a good thing in my position BTW. It's okay when working from home because you can actually relax, but working from home doesn't always work so well in embedded software development) Personally I think it'll improve my productivity because it'll give me more time to spend on "hobby" software development, which should improve my general motivation and in turn improve my productivity at work. Well that's what I'm thinking anyway. I've been wanting to do this for a couple years, and finally it's likely that I'll manage to pull it off! Course, my salary will go down a bit, but it's probably high enough at the moment.
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  Fuck the money, I wish I could get this schedule. Dont want to speak for you, but I make more than enough money
  - tasuki 2y ago
    Do it! It's worth it! You seem to have the right mindset :)
dh2022 2y ago
If my company would switch to 4-day workweek I would use the extra time to work another job.
- rvense 2y ago
  Cool! I'd pick up my kids earlier and maybe learn to weld or sew.
  - hackable_sand 2y ago
    One of these you can safely do while watching TV or at a ball game. I highly recommend picking it up if you ever have down time like that! Learning to weld has actually augmented how I conceive system designs.
- juliogreff 2y ago
  Fun fact: a previous company I worked for denied my request for a 4-day workweek precisely because they were scared I'd work another job. I honestly just wanted more time to ride my bike.
goqu 2y ago
Companies are adopting the 4 day work week, but the numbers are still super small, even in tech industry that are most open to these type of experiments. Nevertheless it's happening and it's a movement with a lot of supporters around the world. For anyone interested here is a directory of 200 4-day week companies I work on: https://okjob.io/companies/ https://okjob.io/companies/ New company submissions are very welcome.
metabro 2y ago
I’ve been working 4 days a week informally for a decade. Everyone checks out on Fridays with the exception of the rare fire. I suspect it’s the same for other information workers.
- _glass 2y ago
  When I was working in consulting this was so unfair. I as a developer was hacking away on Fridays, while the rest was relaxing.
- jimbob45 2y ago
  Everyone checks out on Fridays with the exception of the rare fire. But, crucially, we're all still present or within arm's reach. It seems more likely that we'll get 5 short days rather than 4 long ones so that everyone is on hand should things arise while, at the same time, acknowledging that long days become quickly inefficient.
- card_zero 2y ago
  Historically, when the working week was six days, people informally took Mondays off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Monday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Monday
- doix 2y ago
  Eh, it's not really the same, because you need to be available. You can't go do something outside and be unreachable even if you're mentally checked out.
kkfx 2y ago
The point is not the productivity, the point is giving something to workers in exchange NOT pretending WFH, for me the answer is NO. In 2024 all jobs done at a desk should be REMOTE, I do not care about how many days per weeks or hours per day, I do REJECT to be geographically bound just to keep up the keynesian circus of digging a hole today, fill it tomorrow and dig again that is the modern city. In the past we have had paper archives, expensive office machines to handle paper and so we are bound to the office, this is not true anymore and there is NO REASONS behind the desire of human slavery to keep up the dense city model, needed only by surveillance capitalism and big real estate businesses, practically incompatible with the Green New Deal. 4-day work week, benefits and so on are this: gift in exchange to remain bound to the office. Not something else.
mrmincent 2y ago
4 days a week is great. I’ve dropped down to 4 days work (4x8hours paid), and look after my son one day a week. My wife has switched to doing compounded hours on 4 days (4x10hrs paid) and looks after our son on another day. We both get close to an extra 2 months a year with our son, which is phenomenal. One thing I wouldn’t recommend is having a Wednesday off - it’s what I’ve had to do, and I find it a big interruption to my week & flow, a Monday or Friday would be better.
- MattPalmer1086 2y ago
  It depends. My brother worked a 4 day week when he had his daughter, same reasons as you. He loved taking Wednesday off, since he never had more than 2 consecutive days in the office He really doesn't like offices...
xarope 2y ago
I know people think a 4 day work week is the bees knees, but I'm not sure I would enjoy working a 10 hour day (assuming we are still expected to work a nominal 40 hour week). With commute, it means 12 hours+ a day, so less time for fitness or post-work de-stress. As it is, the current 8 hour work day is really a 9 hour work day since lunchtime is not considered part of that 8 hour day, so if employees take that into consideration, it becomes an 11 hour day (or 13+ hours including commute). P.S. anybody remember when we used to also work saturdays? Can't be just me...
- Doxin 2y ago
  I dunno about other people, but cramming a 40hr workweek into 4 days seems bananas to me. On the other hand from experience I can say that doing a 32hr workweek in 4 days is, in fact, the bees knees.
  - harperlee 2y ago
    Some people are in areas where overtime is common, and a longer official schedule protects them from unofficial overtime.
    - Doxin 2y ago
      So we should make everyone schedule 24/7, that way there is no unofficial overtime at all. Unofficial overtime is a problem, but clearly the solution is not to make the official schedules longer. The solution is to actually do something about unofficial overtime.
      - BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
        I guess it's a stopgap solution so that more of the hours get paid at least, though I agree the problem is unofficial overtime issues should be solved to begin with.
- t-writescode 2y ago
  The "4 day work week", as I understand it, is not 4x10s. It's 4x8's to reduce overall stress and mental load while still retaining the same amount of productivity. Personally, for my own personal startup, I work 4-5 days a week, 4-6 hours a day, so 20-30 hours a week and I'm getting more work done than I did in 4-8s. The real reduction of stress is invaluable for me to make good decisions and write code both fast, well and with minimal bugs (which just mean more wasted time).
Roark66 2y ago
Yes, 4 day work week... Especially for contractors that are paid by the day (and the amount of work to be done stays the same). I'd love a 4 day week if the daily rate went up so the pay doesn't change. Somehow I'm not holding my breath.
- BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
  Pretty sure this would be a FTE only benefit.
Xenoamorphous 2y ago
I find it odd that everyone here is talking about productivity. Although I guess it's to be expected since posts about increasing productivity are popular in HN; lots of people here focusing on their careers I suppose. Personally I find we work way too many hours. We spend the good part of 5 days a week (if we're lucky) at work, often literally all the daylight hours, at least in winter. I have to take my daughter very early in the morning to the nursery, then I can't see her until the evening. I want to believe that future generations will look back and find this unconceivable, and I hope AI shows us the way.
- t-writescode 2y ago
  I think you're right - the average person absolutely works more hours than is healthy or most beneficial to the true, human experience. I would bet many people agree with you, too! Even many people in these threads. I think what you may be seeing (I'm speaking for myself, I suppose?) is people who've thought about it for a long while, and we have to think about it in ways we can introduce and fight for that stance with our bosses, or with our shareholders, etc, since those are the people we have to convince, not the people in the trenches doing the work. For myself, I have to operate as both my boss - trying to make enough money to continue or elevate my desired way of life - and myself the person - trying to live life to the most joyful and fullest.
- globular-toast 2y ago
  People spend all their lives doing pointless work, accumulating wealth, then have nothing to spend it on so buy something like a car they don't need (like an SUV). It's odd there aren't more people questioning this. Wouldn't they rather enjoy their lives while they're young and not worry about having tons of disposable income when they're old? I guess there's something about security that drives people to the latter. Also I feel like there's an addiction and/or conditioning element to it. I think people are scared of what will happen if certain people (thick people) no longer have to work. What will they do during the day etc?
  - card_zero 2y ago
    Henry Ford claimed his motivation for instituting the five-day week was so that people would want to go out driving on their newly available Saturdays, and buy a Ford for their leisure time. Which is some weird voodoo when you think about it. Produce extreme volumes, lower margins, lower production (per worker) and increase demand - huh?
marcus_holmes 2y ago
When I was nomadding around SE Asia, I worked 5 hours a day, 6 days a week (so I had time to do all the cool stuff in the places I was travelling through). That worked really well - I was at least as productive as I normally am in a standard 40-hour week. A decade ago I was working 5 days a week from an open-plan office, and mentally clocked out around 2pm each day. Office culture meant I was just moistening a chair from then until it was acceptable to leave around 6pm. For the last few years I've been working 35-45 hour weeks from home, especially during COVID, and that was fine productivity-speaking. I'm currently working 4 days from a co-working space, and 1 day from home. I know my productivity drops when I'm at home, but I'm not sure why this changed in the last year or so. I think a 4-day week would probably work well for me at the moment. But I'm not sure - I could end up with Tuesdays looking a lot like Mondays do at the moment. Or the extra day to do all the other stuff would be amazing and I'd really focus on the other four days. shrug Developer productivity is a strange beast. Can't measure it. Can't control it directly. I know it when I see it, but I couldn't explain why or how.
- _glass 2y ago
  I was nomadding in Istanbul, working 4h per day, whenever I wanted to. This was the perfect setup. Unfortunately, as one gets older the classical developer role is not really possible anymore. Now I work 8 to 9 hours, 2 days in the office per week, 3 days at home. While it is better than the normal 9 to 5, quality of life really suffers. But I think it is mostly about that the 4 hours I could do whenever I wanted without human contact, just deploy and make it work. Now I have more of a management lead role. Maybe I should switch back to pure development... But I am afraid, because I saw it, at least in Germany, this means it is going downhill career-wise with age.
  - marcus_holmes 2y ago
    I'm in my 50's, was nomadding around SE Asia when I turned 50. So yeah, age isn't it ;) Getting into management is definitely more of a hours thing. But manager productivity is different; it's about talking to lots of people and not maintaining focus on one thing for hours. It's a shit-load easier to do from anywhere. But at the same time, it's definitely time-intensive. When I was CEO of a 200+ organisation I worked 10+ hours a day. The hours were a lot easier, though. Less hard thinking and focused concentration, more half-hour meetings which seemed to be mostly about listening to other people tell me why they decided to do something. I was in Germany for COVID - I can see why you say this. But that's still only true if you stay in large organisations. In smaller orgs you get more flexibility, even in Germany. You can still become an expert developer and get the decent money without getting into management. Having said that, it is easier to climb the salary ladder if you get into management. But you can never go back; it's very hard to get back into a developer role if you've been a manager. Beware of what you wish for.
unsigner 2y ago
Let me offer an intentionally shocking counterpoint: The 4-day workweek only appears possible due to the peace divident, and the peace is rapidly coming to an end. We'll need the fifth, and maybe the sixth day of the week to produce shells, missiles, trucks, tanks, ships, planes, and to make up for the lost productivity of those who are on the battlefield.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
  What we really need to do is find a way to get the large nations to go to perpetual war with each other so that we can all live in miserable poverty and spend that beautiful economic output on mutilating random teenagers for no reason!
  - unsigner 2y ago
    or you can submit to Putin and Xi and see if they grant you your four-day work week
    - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
      True yeah huge risk that putin or xi initiates a US land invasion
  - hackable_sand 2y ago
    6 days to make the bomb. 1 day to blow it up.
frizlab 2y ago
I work in a remote friendly company (I can but don’t have to work fully remote). In addition to being remote friendly, they are also schedule friendly. If I have to take two hours for a personal matter during the day, I just say I’m afk on a chan on slack and I take two hours, the company trusts me to just do my job, time management is up to me. Honestly with this setup I don’t need a four days week.
- acchow 2y ago
  This is just how it is for software engineers in general, right?
  - frizlab 2y ago
    That I don’t know… All I can tell is my company is particularly permissive when I compare to other companies, from what people tell me.
vinyl7 2y ago
Another part of this is that companies are in competition with each other. If company A reduces their workweek/hours but their competitor does not, then that might lead to them falling behind. It could be the difference between company A getting their new product out before company B which could theoretically mean the difference between launching a successful product and the company failing. Whether this is how things actually work out...I'm not sure. It probably does in our short-term move fast economy over an economy that values long term investment, stability,\ and quality over quantity. To be able to switch to shorter work weeks, we also have to switch the economy to be more long-term oriented...which seems impossible after a decade of fake economy with free money getting everyone addicted to short-term games via gambling on startups and stock market.
rakkhi 2y ago
Just like research on X wonder drug cures y needs the mandatory [on nice] feels like 4 day work week articles need the mandatory [for the same pay as 5 days]
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
I wouldn't mind 5 day work weeks nearly as much if they had a 3 day weekend. This isnt a serious suggestion, but an 8 day week where I felt like I had a block of actual away time would be such a killer improvement for me. But I do hope I see a 4 day week in my lifetime. That would be massive.

175 points by jader201 2y ago

After that we've got to work on the 3-day work week, and the 2-day work week, the 1-day work week, and 0-day work week. The AI Legacy Code - an AI-UBI inherited collectively by all humans - can make that happen. Let's work to end work!!!

tsunamifury 2y ago

Frankly after the pandemic aren’t we all going to learn humans can’t work all day and consume nothing. They need enough free time to actually buy and experience all this stuff we are toiling to create.

antisthenes 2y ago
What does the pandemic have to do with it? Working so much that you can't spend the money was absolutely a thing before the pandemic too.
- t-writescode 2y ago
  The pandemic gave a large number of people a vision of what __could__ be rather than what is, and those that have tasted freedom and goodness don't want to be caged in the exact ways they have been caged before.
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bradjohnson 2y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20240530165320/https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-better-for-humans-in-general-the-four-day-workweek-is-closer-than-you-think-b85cc39e?mod=personal-finance&utm_content=295142497&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-2842743223 https://web.archive.org/web/20240530165320/https://www.marke...

Helmut10001 2y ago

I am working 75% since about 7 years now. However, I did not chose 4 days, but 6 hours (and 5 days). I like this much more because I can more evenly distribute my workload and I have a more regular schedule, including recovering from work on a daily basis. 6 hours is the maximum I found I can concentrate and be productive. Afterwards, my output always decreased significantly and I was mainly wasting time.

fleshdaddy 2y ago
Opposite for me. Much rather have an extra day where I can do anything I want with no one bugging me. Workdays are basically a wash for me anyways.
- Helmut10001 2y ago
  I agree, but I am looking at it from a productivity perspective, not maximizing leisure quality.
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hinkley 2y ago
I never got it to work during various economic cycles where they owed me more than they could afford, but I tried once or twice to go to 30-some hours and it seemed to me the best solution would be to come in late on Mondays. That was an at age when I still tried to take weekend trips and if anything unplanned happens it can make the return trip very stressful, which colors the entire experience if you don’t have to be in until noon you get to use more of Sunday without worrying about logistics.

j16sdiz 2y ago

Searching the very title on Google give me these: (2023) Is the 4-day work week closer than we think? - Nearly half of Aussies think it will happen within five years. https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2023/is-the-4-day-work-week-closer-than-we-think-.html https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2023/is-the-4-day-work-week-cl... (2021) Four-Day Workweeks Are Closer To Reality Than You Think https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeswigunski/2021/05/03/four-day-workweeks-are-closer-to-reality-than-you-think/?sh=447de41f7d53 https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeswigunski/2021/05/03/four-d... (2018) Why the 4-day workweek might be closer than you think — and the 10 careers best suited to it https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/24/future-of-the-workforce-careers-for-work-life-balance-four-day-week.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/24/future-of-the-workforce-care... .. Maybe it is as close as nuclear fusion.

klyrs 2y ago
Richard Nixon was hyping the 4 day work week in 1956!
- Spastche 2y ago
  what a bizarre guy, I would not have expected that
  - PlunderBunny 2y ago
    It's amazing to see what 'right-wing' parties/politicians used to promote in the past vs now.

throttlebody 2y ago

> great as a retention tool. Until it becomes standard then its 3 days a week. Im all for it, if you can increase productivity, but it's likely too many people won't be able to.

pasquinelli 2y ago
well how long ago was the 5 day work week established as the standard? how long do you reckon it'll be before a 4 day work week is standard? do you think an additional day off takes less time than the prior one took to get? the same time as the prior one? more time than the prior one? i feel like you're getting way ahead of yourself and remarking on events that have only taken place in your mind.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > how long ago was the 5 day work week established as the standard? We work unusually hard compared to our ancestors [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo&t=1482s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo&t=1482s
  - card_zero 2y ago
    Or to put it another way, September 1926. https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1977881_1977883_1977922,00.html https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28... Also: ancient Rome, one day off in eight, revolutionary France, one day off in ten, Han China, one day off in five. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend#History
BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
K cool lets do three days a week
BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
Productivity is already increased, employees just never got the benefits from it.

esafak 2y ago

I wonder if productivity is ever going to increase to the point where we work one day a week.

maximinus_thrax 2y ago
No, we're not going to reach that point outside of sci-fi utopias. I don't believe even the 4-day workweek is going to become a thing. Any increase in productivity will be captured by the owners, it makes no sense to give it back to the workers in the form of free time.
- willsoon 2y ago
  Comrade, what about the A.I. already doing some of our work? I recently read only the title of an article here that pointed out that drawing leaves less of a carbon footprint when it is done by the A.I. It is not a long way from there to getting paid for not going to work. This is how A.I. kills you (3x), not with a laser gun, but with a lullaby.
  - portaouflop 2y ago
    My carbon footprint while writing code is 100% lower than that of the AI, I would reckon by magnitudes
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  There's an unfortunate mistake there > Any increase in productivity will be captured by s/the owners/society/ The population will grow to the limits set by our productivity.
hinkley 2y ago
Waiting six days to finish something because you didn’t get it done last time… that’s not gonna work.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Waiting six days to finish something because you didn’t get it done last time… that’s not gonna work You'd hand off work, to humans and machines, with a bit of overlap to sync expectations. With enough automation, it becomes plausible. But not in the near future.

jameslk 2y ago

I’m curious what the logical extreme of this is. Why 4 days? Why not 3 days? 2 days? 1 day? No days? When do we hit the equilibrium level between less work resulting in meaningfully less output? Were these jobs ever needed?

para_parolu 2y ago
Equilibrium is where people are most productive. Otherwise we can go to 6 days and no vacations. It may work for some jobs and short term.
jvm___ 2y ago
What happens to the economy when the contract janitor and the coffee cart lady have their hours cut and now can no longer afford rent. They only have one free day a week so they can't find a second job.
- whythre 2y ago
  Uh… telling them they should have to get 2 jobs seems like the absolutely wrong solution, here.
  - BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
    There's already people with 2-3 part time jobs. I don't imagine if a 4 day work week became the norm, that suddenly it would become the only available option either...
zolbrek 2y ago
A friend of mine has this at her workplace and she loves it. She works 9 hours a day Monday through Thursday which at 36 hours isn't that far off from the 40 hours I put in over 5 days. I think anything beyond that starts to get ridiculous. Imagine working 11 to 12 hours a day for a three day work week, seems like that would just result in a lot of foot dragging to me.
- 2y ago

robbyiq999 2y ago

The ai leaders should come out and say… “Ai advancement is so powerful (as we have been saying and hyping for our shareholders) we now will offer our beloved employees - 4 day workweeks, as the productivity gain has removed 1 days worth of work for the work week” And so will begin our fever dream tech utopia

imiric 2y ago
Productivity gains came from computers many decades ago, yet companies pocketed the difference, and workers got shafted. These changes won't happen until workers demand it, regardless of the technology that comes along.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
  Basically the only hope is that enough people start starving for the violence to become intolerable for the ruling classes.

trashface 2y ago

Kind of wish employers would use this to hire more people to get additional productivity. But they probably won't do that, which shows how strong their inclination is to only retain employees that meet established preferences. Treating healthcare as a benefit (as in the US) also works against expanding employment, as its a large fixed cost per employee that can't really be reduced.

firesteelrain 2y ago
Hiring more employees costs money.

firefoxd 2y ago

Last Sunday, I was walking down the street with my kids when a man bumped into me trying to cross the street. He turned around to apologize and we had a discussion at the red light. He was working a 12 hour shift and was now on his break which he had to rush to get to the store. He said memorial weekend was extremely busy. "After that we will go back to regular busy." When we talk about 4 day workweek, it's for some specific jobs. Not for that guy. Culturally, at least in the US, we would be happier if some people worked 7 days, 24 hours a day. Ex: wouldn't it be better if the bank was open after work? Wouldn't it be better if USPS would show up on Sunday? Isn't it annoying that Chick-fil-A is closed on sunday? Personally , I would love to work 4 days a week, but if the people that package and ship the product I help develop worked only 4 days, we would have angry customers. They will switch to our competitor who will brag about faster delivery. 4 day workweek is a cultural problem. We will have to give up on our instant gratification mentally to make it a reality.

flax 2y ago
You don't have to have individuals working 24/7 to have things open 24/7.
- card_zero 2y ago
  Yeah, that guy could be two guys, working four day weeks. I guess they'd overlap on Thursdays, but that's a detail.
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    We're pretty much at full employment. Labor force could get a few percentages bigger but I dont see where all these new people will come from
    - card_zero 2y ago
      How is that happening - is a lot of that already gig jobs, part time, and so on? Edit: it's an increase in full-time workers, with less increase in part-time workers. https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2017/08/a-glass-half-full-or-half-empty/?utm_source=series_page https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2017/08/a-glass-half-full-or... I don't know if this covers everyone. Anyway you may be right, employers just want all the work from all the people, at the moment.

from-nibly 2y ago

No, the market cant handle that right now. A 4 day work week happens because of market forces. Companies don't need to offer perks unless they cant attract enough applicants or retain their top talent. We just saw this last year that companies done need anymore applicants. We are also seeing now that companies don't even care which part of their talent they keep. There might be a class divide coming that would include 4 day work weeks, but the vast majority of us scrubs are going to be 5 days a week for a while to come. At a minimum we are going to have to ride out this financial crisis for the next decade.

azinman2 2y ago
Seems you think that a 4 day work week is paid as 5 is currently. I don’t see why that’d be necessarily true. In that scenario, it’s kind of like a part time worker and I can see many businesses finding appeal in that.
- whythre 2y ago
  I bet many businesses would love that. More places of employment start acting like Walmart, where you have to be management to get a full time job with benefits. Everyone else has a shifting 30-35 hour schedule that makes it effectively impossible to have a predictable, normal life outside of work. And no benefits for part time workers either. And the pay is so crappy food stamps are practically mandatory.
  - soco 2y ago
    Let me understand this: the state is actually indirectly subventioning Walmart with those food stamps right? It allows them to give crappy wages because the difference is supported with food stamps paid directly to the employees. And we still call this market economy and capitalism and and and.
    - BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
      And yet, I only ever hear rants about the unemployed being parasites, but never the same about corporations despite them getting way more tax dollars when you add up subventions, grants, tax cuts and indirect support like described above and letting others pay for the damage they do to the environment.

FranzFerdiNaN 2y ago

Here in the Netherlands plenty of companies already switched to a 36 hour fulltime workweek, and I know of at least one large company (15.000+ employees) went to a 34 hour workweek. And all those companies pay the same as 40 hour companies.

BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
Was it actually applied? I find work in Europe had more social breaks during the day, but my 35h schedule (working 40 and getting paid catch-up days off to be used monthly) still ended up looking like 70h weeks reported as 40 with no extra catch-up days and no overtime pay. Contrast to Canada, my 40h week does average to 40h and if I do overtime it is paid (provided I get it approved ahead of time) and I get to take that back as unpaid time off later. Though I am told to report my real hours in my timesheet provided they are 8h per day. So not my real hours. A lot of this comes from being salaried vs. hourly, but I'm not really hourly other than on paper. As salaried I was expected to do a lot more unpaid overtime though under the guise of flexibility. Oddly the flexibility was rarely in my favor :p

aussieguy1234 2y ago

A 4 day, 40 hour workweek works suprisingly well for international teams, because the longer days usually mean more timezone crossover.

gorbypark 2y ago
I worked this schedule for many years (not in tech, "skilled" labour) and it's amazing. This was a 7 day a week operation and it worked quite well in terms of crossover here too. Each person had a fixed schedule but the day of the week for each person would vary so there'd never be a full "shift change over", so to speak, but always some overlap between the shifts and it helped with information exchange greatly. The guy working Monday-Thursday would overlap with people starting their weeks from Tuesday to Thursday, for example, so there was always a "working knowledge" of what was going on. It worked well on the management side of things too, but with an actual "changeover", as you'd have a Monday-Thursday supervisor and another Thursday-Sunday supervisor, with one day a week of overlap however that Sunday-Monday changeover didn't have an overlap (although there was a lot of OT on this job so it did frequently happen).

qiqitori 2y ago

Just the other day I asked my boss if I can reduce my hours a bit, essentially giving me a 4-day workweek, just that even those days have slightly reduced hours (8->7 hours, though the lunch break is 1 hour, so really it's down from 9->8 hours. Subtext: I don't consider the forced 1 hour lunch break a good thing in my position BTW. It's okay when working from home because you can actually relax, but working from home doesn't always work so well in embedded software development) Personally I think it'll improve my productivity because it'll give me more time to spend on "hobby" software development, which should improve my general motivation and in turn improve my productivity at work. Well that's what I'm thinking anyway. I've been wanting to do this for a couple years, and finally it's likely that I'll manage to pull it off! Course, my salary will go down a bit, but it's probably high enough at the moment.

HDThoreaun 2y ago
Fuck the money, I wish I could get this schedule. Dont want to speak for you, but I make more than enough money
- tasuki 2y ago
  Do it! It's worth it! You seem to have the right mindset :)

dh2022 2y ago

If my company would switch to 4-day workweek I would use the extra time to work another job.

rvense 2y ago
Cool! I'd pick up my kids earlier and maybe learn to weld or sew.
- hackable_sand 2y ago
  One of these you can safely do while watching TV or at a ball game. I highly recommend picking it up if you ever have down time like that! Learning to weld has actually augmented how I conceive system designs.
juliogreff 2y ago
Fun fact: a previous company I worked for denied my request for a 4-day workweek precisely because they were scared I'd work another job. I honestly just wanted more time to ride my bike.

goqu 2y ago

Companies are adopting the 4 day work week, but the numbers are still super small, even in tech industry that are most open to these type of experiments. Nevertheless it's happening and it's a movement with a lot of supporters around the world. For anyone interested here is a directory of 200 4-day week companies I work on: https://okjob.io/companies/ https://okjob.io/companies/ New company submissions are very welcome.

metabro 2y ago

I’ve been working 4 days a week informally for a decade. Everyone checks out on Fridays with the exception of the rare fire. I suspect it’s the same for other information workers.

_glass 2y ago
When I was working in consulting this was so unfair. I as a developer was hacking away on Fridays, while the rest was relaxing.
jimbob45 2y ago
Everyone checks out on Fridays with the exception of the rare fire. But, crucially, we're all still present or within arm's reach. It seems more likely that we'll get 5 short days rather than 4 long ones so that everyone is on hand should things arise while, at the same time, acknowledging that long days become quickly inefficient.
card_zero 2y ago
Historically, when the working week was six days, people informally took Mondays off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Monday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Monday
doix 2y ago
Eh, it's not really the same, because you need to be available. You can't go do something outside and be unreachable even if you're mentally checked out.

kkfx 2y ago

The point is not the productivity, the point is giving something to workers in exchange NOT pretending WFH, for me the answer is NO. In 2024 all jobs done at a desk should be REMOTE, I do not care about how many days per weeks or hours per day, I do REJECT to be geographically bound just to keep up the keynesian circus of digging a hole today, fill it tomorrow and dig again that is the modern city. In the past we have had paper archives, expensive office machines to handle paper and so we are bound to the office, this is not true anymore and there is NO REASONS behind the desire of human slavery to keep up the dense city model, needed only by surveillance capitalism and big real estate businesses, practically incompatible with the Green New Deal. 4-day work week, benefits and so on are this: gift in exchange to remain bound to the office. Not something else.

mrmincent 2y ago

4 days a week is great. I’ve dropped down to 4 days work (4x8hours paid), and look after my son one day a week. My wife has switched to doing compounded hours on 4 days (4x10hrs paid) and looks after our son on another day. We both get close to an extra 2 months a year with our son, which is phenomenal. One thing I wouldn’t recommend is having a Wednesday off - it’s what I’ve had to do, and I find it a big interruption to my week & flow, a Monday or Friday would be better.

MattPalmer1086 2y ago
It depends. My brother worked a 4 day week when he had his daughter, same reasons as you. He loved taking Wednesday off, since he never had more than 2 consecutive days in the office He really doesn't like offices...

xarope 2y ago

I know people think a 4 day work week is the bees knees, but I'm not sure I would enjoy working a 10 hour day (assuming we are still expected to work a nominal 40 hour week). With commute, it means 12 hours+ a day, so less time for fitness or post-work de-stress. As it is, the current 8 hour work day is really a 9 hour work day since lunchtime is not considered part of that 8 hour day, so if employees take that into consideration, it becomes an 11 hour day (or 13+ hours including commute). P.S. anybody remember when we used to also work saturdays? Can't be just me...

Doxin 2y ago
I dunno about other people, but cramming a 40hr workweek into 4 days seems bananas to me. On the other hand from experience I can say that doing a 32hr workweek in 4 days is, in fact, the bees knees.
- harperlee 2y ago
  Some people are in areas where overtime is common, and a longer official schedule protects them from unofficial overtime.
  - Doxin 2y ago
    So we should make everyone schedule 24/7, that way there is no unofficial overtime at all. Unofficial overtime is a problem, but clearly the solution is not to make the official schedules longer. The solution is to actually do something about unofficial overtime.
    - BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
      I guess it's a stopgap solution so that more of the hours get paid at least, though I agree the problem is unofficial overtime issues should be solved to begin with.
t-writescode 2y ago
The "4 day work week", as I understand it, is not 4x10s. It's 4x8's to reduce overall stress and mental load while still retaining the same amount of productivity. Personally, for my own personal startup, I work 4-5 days a week, 4-6 hours a day, so 20-30 hours a week and I'm getting more work done than I did in 4-8s. The real reduction of stress is invaluable for me to make good decisions and write code both fast, well and with minimal bugs (which just mean more wasted time).

Roark66 2y ago

Yes, 4 day work week... Especially for contractors that are paid by the day (and the amount of work to be done stays the same). I'd love a 4 day week if the daily rate went up so the pay doesn't change. Somehow I'm not holding my breath.

BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
Pretty sure this would be a FTE only benefit.

Xenoamorphous 2y ago

I find it odd that everyone here is talking about productivity. Although I guess it's to be expected since posts about increasing productivity are popular in HN; lots of people here focusing on their careers I suppose. Personally I find we work way too many hours. We spend the good part of 5 days a week (if we're lucky) at work, often literally all the daylight hours, at least in winter. I have to take my daughter very early in the morning to the nursery, then I can't see her until the evening. I want to believe that future generations will look back and find this unconceivable, and I hope AI shows us the way.

t-writescode 2y ago
I think you're right - the average person absolutely works more hours than is healthy or most beneficial to the true, human experience. I would bet many people agree with you, too! Even many people in these threads. I think what you may be seeing (I'm speaking for myself, I suppose?) is people who've thought about it for a long while, and we have to think about it in ways we can introduce and fight for that stance with our bosses, or with our shareholders, etc, since those are the people we have to convince, not the people in the trenches doing the work. For myself, I have to operate as both my boss - trying to make enough money to continue or elevate my desired way of life - and myself the person - trying to live life to the most joyful and fullest.
globular-toast 2y ago
People spend all their lives doing pointless work, accumulating wealth, then have nothing to spend it on so buy something like a car they don't need (like an SUV). It's odd there aren't more people questioning this. Wouldn't they rather enjoy their lives while they're young and not worry about having tons of disposable income when they're old? I guess there's something about security that drives people to the latter. Also I feel like there's an addiction and/or conditioning element to it. I think people are scared of what will happen if certain people (thick people) no longer have to work. What will they do during the day etc?
- card_zero 2y ago
  Henry Ford claimed his motivation for instituting the five-day week was so that people would want to go out driving on their newly available Saturdays, and buy a Ford for their leisure time. Which is some weird voodoo when you think about it. Produce extreme volumes, lower margins, lower production (per worker) and increase demand - huh?

marcus_holmes 2y ago

When I was nomadding around SE Asia, I worked 5 hours a day, 6 days a week (so I had time to do all the cool stuff in the places I was travelling through). That worked really well - I was at least as productive as I normally am in a standard 40-hour week. A decade ago I was working 5 days a week from an open-plan office, and mentally clocked out around 2pm each day. Office culture meant I was just moistening a chair from then until it was acceptable to leave around 6pm. For the last few years I've been working 35-45 hour weeks from home, especially during COVID, and that was fine productivity-speaking. I'm currently working 4 days from a co-working space, and 1 day from home. I know my productivity drops when I'm at home, but I'm not sure why this changed in the last year or so. I think a 4-day week would probably work well for me at the moment. But I'm not sure - I could end up with Tuesdays looking a lot like Mondays do at the moment. Or the extra day to do all the other stuff would be amazing and I'd really focus on the other four days. shrug Developer productivity is a strange beast. Can't measure it. Can't control it directly. I know it when I see it, but I couldn't explain why or how.

_glass 2y ago
I was nomadding in Istanbul, working 4h per day, whenever I wanted to. This was the perfect setup. Unfortunately, as one gets older the classical developer role is not really possible anymore. Now I work 8 to 9 hours, 2 days in the office per week, 3 days at home. While it is better than the normal 9 to 5, quality of life really suffers. But I think it is mostly about that the 4 hours I could do whenever I wanted without human contact, just deploy and make it work. Now I have more of a management lead role. Maybe I should switch back to pure development... But I am afraid, because I saw it, at least in Germany, this means it is going downhill career-wise with age.
- marcus_holmes 2y ago
  I'm in my 50's, was nomadding around SE Asia when I turned 50. So yeah, age isn't it ;) Getting into management is definitely more of a hours thing. But manager productivity is different; it's about talking to lots of people and not maintaining focus on one thing for hours. It's a shit-load easier to do from anywhere. But at the same time, it's definitely time-intensive. When I was CEO of a 200+ organisation I worked 10+ hours a day. The hours were a lot easier, though. Less hard thinking and focused concentration, more half-hour meetings which seemed to be mostly about listening to other people tell me why they decided to do something. I was in Germany for COVID - I can see why you say this. But that's still only true if you stay in large organisations. In smaller orgs you get more flexibility, even in Germany. You can still become an expert developer and get the decent money without getting into management. Having said that, it is easier to climb the salary ladder if you get into management. But you can never go back; it's very hard to get back into a developer role if you've been a manager. Beware of what you wish for.

unsigner 2y ago

Let me offer an intentionally shocking counterpoint: The 4-day workweek only appears possible due to the peace divident, and the peace is rapidly coming to an end. We'll need the fifth, and maybe the sixth day of the week to produce shells, missiles, trucks, tanks, ships, planes, and to make up for the lost productivity of those who are on the battlefield.

BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
What we really need to do is find a way to get the large nations to go to perpetual war with each other so that we can all live in miserable poverty and spend that beautiful economic output on mutilating random teenagers for no reason!
- unsigner 2y ago
  or you can submit to Putin and Xi and see if they grant you your four-day work week
  - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
    True yeah huge risk that putin or xi initiates a US land invasion
- hackable_sand 2y ago
  6 days to make the bomb. 1 day to blow it up.

frizlab 2y ago

I work in a remote friendly company (I can but don’t have to work fully remote). In addition to being remote friendly, they are also schedule friendly. If I have to take two hours for a personal matter during the day, I just say I’m afk on a chan on slack and I take two hours, the company trusts me to just do my job, time management is up to me. Honestly with this setup I don’t need a four days week.

acchow 2y ago
This is just how it is for software engineers in general, right?
- frizlab 2y ago
  That I don’t know… All I can tell is my company is particularly permissive when I compare to other companies, from what people tell me.

vinyl7 2y ago

Another part of this is that companies are in competition with each other. If company A reduces their workweek/hours but their competitor does not, then that might lead to them falling behind. It could be the difference between company A getting their new product out before company B which could theoretically mean the difference between launching a successful product and the company failing. Whether this is how things actually work out...I'm not sure. It probably does in our short-term move fast economy over an economy that values long term investment, stability,\ and quality over quantity. To be able to switch to shorter work weeks, we also have to switch the economy to be more long-term oriented...which seems impossible after a decade of fake economy with free money getting everyone addicted to short-term games via gambling on startups and stock market.

rakkhi 2y ago

Just like research on X wonder drug cures y needs the mandatory [on nice] feels like 4 day work week articles need the mandatory [for the same pay as 5 days]

jauntywundrkind 2y ago

I wouldn't mind 5 day work weeks nearly as much if they had a 3 day weekend. This isnt a serious suggestion, but an 8 day week where I felt like I had a block of actual away time would be such a killer improvement for me. But I do hope I see a 4 day week in my lifetime. That would be massive.