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Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?

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Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?

#81

Post by louwrentius »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #80
louwrentius wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In NL the concept of ‘sick days’ doesn’t exist. If you are ill, you are ill. You can get the flu and be out for a week or so and nobody bats an eye. Some use more than others and some may game the system. But overall we in NL are not familiar with the stress of losing our days off because of illness. This should be the norm for every decent country that cares about human well-being.

>In NL the concept of ‘sick days’ doesn’t exist. If you are ill, you are ill Isn't that illness called a sick day? Like I said, everyone calls it unlimited sick days, but in Austria, and I think in Poland, Germany too it's limited to 90 days per year. Sick longer than 90 days gets your cased evaluated by a doctor's committee and probably moved to disability pay. But I doubt there is such a thing as unlimited sick day…

I have not seen anything about 90 sick-days in any contract with an employer ever, even when I was still a regular 'waged' employee.

Even if you get serious ill your employer has to pay, so from what I know, employers need to insure themselves against this. Only after 2 years are they off the hook and will people be transferred to disability pay if required.

In some sense, discussing about 90 days vs. 'unlimited' sick days is not really relevant. 90 days would feel like unlimited to me as a regular healthy employee anyway.

But to be very clear, in NL we don't have these 90 days of sick leave. We don't have a budget as an employee for sick leave.

Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?

#82

Post by Simon_M »

I'm founder of Meetupcall, a startup working to help care organisations reduce loneliness and isolation for those most in need. We're currently looking for a senior Rails engineer on these terms.

If that sounds like something you might be interested in, let's have a conversation, my e-mail address is in my profile.

Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?

#83

Post by kuschku »

vkazanov wrote: post #14
thomasahle wrote: post #6

I like 4-day weeks, but what I would like even more is a month consecutive vacation a year. (Which is just 20-23 days off, rather than the ~50 Fridays every year.) This is pretty common places in Europe like France or Denmark (where you must take at least three weeks consecutive vacation.) Is this something any US companies are advertising?

At Bumble we have: - an unlimited PTO (you'd have to explain going beyond, say, 4 weeks, but otherwise working) - mandatory 2 payed weeks off (1 in December and 1 in Jun) - mostly remote using the "office-hub" model, only requiring presence when necessary - every 2 weeks there something we call a Focus Friday, when nobody can contact you and you are free to concentrate on things you want to work on. This covers all o…

The legal minimum (!) in Germany is already 5 weeks of vacation. It’s clearly not unlimited if 4 weeks requires justification.

In fact, this doesn’t really sound attractive at all. At my current employer I work 32h/week, get 6½ weeks off (+ bank holidays), am entirely remote, and every Wednesday is entirely free of meetings.

Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?

#84

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

louwrentius wrote: post #81
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In NL the concept of ‘sick days’ doesn’t exist. If you are ill, you are ill Isn't that illness called a sick day? Like I said, everyone calls it unlimited sick days, but in Austria, and I think in Poland, Germany too it's limited to 90 days per year. Sick longer than 90 days gets your cased evaluated by a doctor's committee and probably moved to disability pay. But I doubt there is such a thing as unlimited sick day…

I have not seen anything about 90 sick-days in any contract with an employer ever, even when I was still a regular 'waged' employee. Even if you get serious ill your employer has to pay, so from what I know, employers need to insure themselves against this. Only after 2 years are they off the hook and will people be transferred to disability pay if required. In some sense, discussing about 90 days vs. 'unlimited' sic…

> I have not seen anything about 90 sick-days in any contract with an employer ever, even when I was still a regular 'waged' employee

Have you checked your national insurance conditions? In Austria this also isn't in any employment contract because it's ratified in the national health insurance agreement everyone working here must have, which limits everyone to 90 days sick leave but many people don't know this and think they have "unlimited" sick leave. IIRC, Poland and Germany also have 90 days of sick leave by law.

Maybe you're not fully aware of it but I'd assume your national health insurance will specify a similar threshold by law that's obviously not in your employment contract.

Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?

#85

Post by c-fe »

apexalpha wrote: post #58

Here in the Netherlands it's your legal right to work less hours for the same pay (per hour). In my company, the largest ISP, lots of people work either 32 hours, 36 (4x9) or something else. A standard contract at our company is 36 hours. Meaning every other Friday off by default. So I think finding a job in the Netherlands would be a good start.

I am a MSc student about to graduate in Amsterdam - domain is Data science (but i have a BSc in CS) - how would I approach a company about part-time work? Most positions are advertised as full-time, do I just apply for them and then if they chose me, mention that I only would like to work part-time? I feel like if i mention it too early in the hiring process they may actually chose a candidate that is able to work full-time.

Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?

#86

Post by giancarlostoro »

ivanhoe wrote: post #78

I stroke such a deal by accident, clients informed me that due to budget cuts they can't afford my full-time services anymore, so rather than lowering my fees (never do that) or loosing the client, I offered them to hire me for 32h a week instead. My initial plan was to take another part-time project to fill the gap, and I did that for a while, but in the end now I really enjoy having 3-days weekends. You come on Mon…

> so rather than lowering my fees (never do that)

Seriously underrated advise. If they magically find funding for you to go back to full time again they will not be so quick to return you to your original rate not because they don't like you or anything but because accounting witchcraft. Always make sure they never degrade your pay. If they want to pay you for less hours fine.

Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?

#87

Post by golergka »

My company has a 4-day workweek, and personally, this is the best place I've ever worked at. It's an American startup, but about half of us (including) me are from Europe, and communication is very async-friendly.

Here's our post from this April's who's hiring thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30879344

Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?

#88

Post by dtech »

osener wrote: post #41
bartvk wrote: post #31

Almost all Dutch companies will honor such a request. Of course, it comes with a 20% salary decrease if you simply go from 5 to 4 days of 8 hours.

It is the norm to work fewer hours in many sectors, especially if you're a government worker, but in tech it hasn't been my experience (as an expat in NL). If you don't have kids it seems to be 40+ hrs or nothing and requesting anything below full time is "unfair to other colleagues" or "signals a lack of commitment".

Not my experience in NL, having worked 4x9 at 3 companies for the past years, only some minor pushback easily set aside.

Might be different at Booking or fintech companies.

Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?

#89

Post by c-fe »

pistoriusp wrote: post #3

Plug: www.snaplet.dev is such a company. We're building tools for developers. Our idea is that if our own company doesn't have the happiest, creative, and engaged developer's that we won't be able to build a product that's meant to help other developers. Our internal state should reflect the way we want developer's to feel about our products.

This sounds very nice. Im a MSc student about to graduate (linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charel-felten/, CV: https://cfx.lu/cv). My main areas are data science, but I also have a bachelors in computer science so I am flexible.

I see that there is only a vacancy as Full-stack React developer. I dont have the necessary experience for that probably. Do you think there are any positions closer to my area of expertise?

Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?

#90

Post by andrewcross »

My startup Goosechase switched to a 4 day week last summer and it's awesome.

The two easiest ways to find companies already doing a 4 day week would likely be: 1. Dedicated 4 day week job boards, such as 4 Day Week (https://4dayweek.io/). 2. Looking for articles highlighting companies with 4 day weeks, such as this piece from Angel (https://angel.co/job-collections/20-startups-with-4-day-work...).

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