4 ms·

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 resu

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.
- nprateem 2y ago
  But why should we work 36-40 hour weeks? I'm only productive for about 5 hours per day of concentrated thought.
  - t-writescode 2y ago
    Some jobs are thinking jobs, like software, accounting, screenwriting, basically the "creating for the first time" jobs. Some jobs are rote work jobs - manufacturing jobs, warehousing jobs, etc. Some jobs are butts-in-seats jobs, where you need a person physically there to "do the thing" - these are your customer-facing jobs. Your customer support, your banking teller jobs, etc. Each of these jobs has a comfortable "max amount of continuous" work time for different people. Since I can speak to it, in software, I'm only productive 4-6 hours a day with the rare day I enter obscene levels of flow and disappear for like 9 hours. I imagine many of the creative jobs are similar. I suppose the implications for 3-4 day, 'very high hour count' work week, in general* is one of the positions that can handle operating in the specific way they need to work for that long. * I understand that nursing is a 3-12's job. There's special details that make that the way it is - I think it has to do with nurse-patient changeover? I dunno, very outside my field.
ytoawwhra92 2y ago
> I’m curious what the logical extreme of this is. People being free to choose their own hours and schedules provided they meet the performance targets required to justify their compensation.
BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
>were these jobs ever needed Hehe funny thing is…

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.

nprateem 2y ago
But why should we work 36-40 hour weeks? I'm only productive for about 5 hours per day of concentrated thought.
- t-writescode 2y ago
  Some jobs are thinking jobs, like software, accounting, screenwriting, basically the "creating for the first time" jobs. Some jobs are rote work jobs - manufacturing jobs, warehousing jobs, etc. Some jobs are butts-in-seats jobs, where you need a person physically there to "do the thing" - these are your customer-facing jobs. Your customer support, your banking teller jobs, etc. Each of these jobs has a comfortable "max amount of continuous" work time for different people. Since I can speak to it, in software, I'm only productive 4-6 hours a day with the rare day I enter obscene levels of flow and disappear for like 9 hours. I imagine many of the creative jobs are similar. I suppose the implications for 3-4 day, 'very high hour count' work week, in general* is one of the positions that can handle operating in the specific way they need to work for that long. * I understand that nursing is a 3-12's job. There's special details that make that the way it is - I think it has to do with nurse-patient changeover? I dunno, very outside my field.

ytoawwhra92 2y ago

> I’m curious what the logical extreme of this is. People being free to choose their own hours and schedules provided they meet the performance targets required to justify their compensation.

BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago

>were these jobs ever needed Hehe funny thing is…