Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Would you switch to a 4-day-a-week schedule if you could?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–66 of 66 posts

Re: Ask HN: Would you switch to a 4-day-a-week schedule if you could?

#61

Post by uranium »

zer0sand0nes wrote: post #56
uranium wrote: post #7

Yup. Did it. I'm so fortunate to have been able to afford it, and it's been awesome. When my first child was born, I dropped down to 3 days a week, at 60% pay/vesting/etc., but full medical (Google was awesome about it). After a few years, I moved to a new position that I felt really passionate about (Makani at Google[x]), and went up to 4 days a week to make that possible. After a few years there and the birth of an…

How does that work? Do u have to build a large reputation in that company so that they let you do whatever you want? Or do you apply for these 2 days a week jobs that offer medical and all that?

For my first part-time job, I'd been there long enough to have a solid reputation; I also had a fairly-new boss during what had been a super-productive time for me, so he'd really only seen great work from me. I'm sure he was afraid that I'd quit if I wasn't allowed to go part-time, although I was very careful not to say or even imply that.

It was company policy that if you worked at least 50% time, you got full medical. They had standard procedures and forms for it, but still, it was pretty rare. You needed approval up to VP level IIRC. My boss was a director, so that took care of two levels of approval to start with, and his boss [who didn't know me well] trusted his opinion, so it was approved pretty fast, on a see-how-it-goes basis. It went well, so I stayed at 60% for about 3 years, before deciding I wanted to move on.

I don't know how you'd get a job at Google at that duty cycle from the outside; I did hear of one person coming in at 80%, but it's got to be a hard sell.

The 40% job I'm working now was a pretty special case in a number of ways. I was already an adviser of the company before working there. I then started working at 40% for stock and minimum wage, since I didn't need paying for a while and they couldn't afford me at the time anyway. When I'd vested out the stock, just as my COBRA ran out, we negotiated that my salary would go up to maintain the same total comp, but then down by 60% of the cost of medical, and they'd cover the other 40%. You can do these things at small startups; everything's negotiable. At a big company, it's going to be a lot less flexible.

Re: Ask HN: Would you switch to a 4-day-a-week schedule if you could?

#62

Post by uranium »

bwb wrote: post #8
uranium wrote: post #7

Yup. Did it. I'm so fortunate to have been able to afford it, and it's been awesome. When my first child was born, I dropped down to 3 days a week, at 60% pay/vesting/etc., but full medical (Google was awesome about it). After a few years, I moved to a new position that I felt really passionate about (Makani at Google[x]), and went up to 4 days a week to make that possible. After a few years there and the birth of an…

That is awesome, thank you for sharing! Since you mentioned picking the right projects... if other people are doing 5 days a week, how do you find the right project and stay on top of it if you are out 1 or 2 days a week?

The projects that worked best for me at 60% were those that involved lots of independent work. I'd find something big that the team needed doing, that was important but not urgent--the kind of stuff that always gets put off until too late. Then I'd go off for a few months and come back with a prototype for approval. When it got through review, I'd go off again and make it solid, write all the tests, develop a staging strategy to get the parts in, etc. Once it was in, I'd find another project. I did a couple of really big things that each took 10-18 months that way.

The minuses of part-time work are pretty obvious: you have fewer work hours per week, but the same amount of overhead; you're harder to reach, since you've effectively got longer weekends; people aren't really sure if you're committed to the project or just slacking off.

However there are also pluses. The biggest one is that you have more mulling-problems-over-in-the-shower hours per work hour, which can make your work hours a lot more productive. A similar one is that if you're ever waiting on back-and-forth with other folks for information, approval, code reviews, etc., you get more hours of those per work hour as well. Another is that you take far fewer vacation and sick days. When my usual schedule was M-W, if I or a child was sick on a Monday, I'd just work Thursday to make it up. And I never needed a vacation day to take a long weekend, get shopping done during working hours, go to the doctor, or anything like that.

Communication with your coworkers is key, so that they know what to expect from you. And be sure to work within your company's culture. If you'd answer an email on the weekend, then you should on your day off. But it goes both ways: they shouldn't regularly ask you to come in on a day off if they're not asking others to come in on the weekend.

Re: Ask HN: Would you switch to a 4-day-a-week schedule if you could?

#64

Post by bwb »

uranium wrote: post #62
bwb wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is awesome, thank you for sharing! Since you mentioned picking the right projects... if other people are doing 5 days a week, how do you find the right project and stay on top of it if you are out 1 or 2 days a week?

The projects that worked best for me at 60% were those that involved lots of independent work. I'd find something big that the team needed doing, that was important but not urgent--the kind of stuff that always gets put off until too late. Then I'd go off for a few months and come back with a prototype for approval. When it got through review, I'd go off again and make it solid, write all the tests, develop a staging…

Thank you so much for sharing!

Re: Ask HN: Would you switch to a 4-day-a-week schedule if you could?

#66

Post by sharma_pradeep »

bwb wrote: post #65
sharma_pradeep wrote: post #63

No. We have 7 days in a week.

Can you explain a bit what that means :)?

I find it odd to limit ourselves to the structure of 4-day workweek or 40hr work-week

I utilize all 7 days to work on my professional & personal projects

To do everything sustain-ably and optimize output, for some projects, I dedicate couple of hrs for 4 days and for some only a day and for some everyday.

How you time-box your work for maximum potential is a personal discovery and the strategies vary based on the person, environment and the nature of the project.

So if we are talking about weeks, I have 7 days to get things done which are important in my life and I will neither follow 40hr work-week not 4-days a week. I will see the project, where it stands against all things in life, put it somewhere in my 7 day schedule, see if this schedule works and go ahead with the learnings each week.

Post reply on HN