Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?

I run www.4dayweek.io (Software Jobs with a better work / life balance) and recently I've talked to 100+ companies trying to convince them to offer their job listings on a 4 day work week (e.g. 32 hours) - for many companies they simply aren't interested.

Here are some common responses:

- We are a start up working hard to launch so it wouldn't work for us. I read this as: "we've advertised this as full time, but really it's 24/7"

- It would require too much effort to change our current culture. I read this as: "it's the way we've always done it, so no thanks"

- "We are only looking for full-time employees". This is the most common response. I always find it interesting when companies who struggle to attract top talent don’t consider offering a benefit such as a 4 day week. The law of diminishing returns means there is little difference between the output in a 4 vs 5 day week. This is also due to Parkinson’s Law.

If there was a financial incentive, however, I feel many of these companies would be more inclined to offering a 4 day week.

So my question is, if you weren't able to get a 4 day work week job (e.g. 32hrs) on a full salary, would you accept a small reduction in salary? Or would you instead stick to 5 days @ 100% salary?

I've also created a poll on Twitter asking this [1]. So if you have a moment to give your honest reply, I'd really appreciate it. It may help me convince more companies to offer their roles on a 4 day work week - there are huge benefits for both employers and employees imo.

I personally believe that working 4 days per week doesn't equate to 80% output, more like 90%, and therefore I feel the salary should reflect this. However, in order to normalise the 4 day week, I feel that a small salary reduction might be a good first step.

[1] Link to the poll: https://twitter.com/philostar/status/1393199633543966723

Its not like its actually 80% productivity. Work time usually does not equal productivity time. In most cases, it would probably be 95% productivity for 80% salary with the mentioned 100% overhead

> I've talked to 100+ companies trying to convince them to offer their developer roles

I wouldn't be happy if I heard that some random person is contacting my employer to change the contract and payment structure at the company I work for. Advocating for yourself is one thing, cold calling companies and potentially affecting people that never asked for this is just wrong. Even if it's just to offer it as an option and it doesn't sound compulsory in your pitch.

I hope that some unfortunate person with a couple of kids and a mortgage who is just getting by doesn't get get a 20% pay cut because of your actions.

I don't get what's in it for you but you're either underestimating the potential damage that you would do if you were successful, or you simply have bad intentions with this.

> consider offering what the majority of them want

It's a big assumption that you know what the majority of developers want. And advocating for people who have never asked for your help is both arrogant and immoral in my opinion.

In software, there's quite a few other questions to answer first.

Will you be on call?

Whats the culture around "off-hours" contact?

How often if ever does crunch happen? Will the company pay more after 32 hours?

What percent of my time is expected to be in meetings vs getting things done, and how much do you expect to be done?

I have worked at places with all fridays off during the summer. We did all our releases on time even though summer was usually the biggest time. 4 days really doesn't seem to make much of a difference at all. Fridays are so often either no meeting days or at least not important ones. Overall, I absolutely have taken a paycut for legitimate work life balance increases, and I prefer to work with others who would as well.