Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#141

Post by jrockway » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:43 PM UTC

prolikewh0a wrote: post #84

adrianN wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered what would happen if we added meth to the drinking water? People wouldn't sleep and could work twice as long!

I wouldn't doubt this idea has come up at least once in some shareholder meeting.

It does. I think apenwarr has a good outlook on this:

"maybe we can just have the engineers work weekends or something? Well, I think most of us know that's a losing battle. First of all, even if we could get engineers to work, say, on Saturdays without any other losses (eg. burnout), that would only be a 20% improvement. 20%? Give me a break. If I said I was going to do a talk about how to improve your team's efficiency by 20%, you wouldn't even come. You can produce 20% more by hiring one more person for your 5-person team, and nobody even has to work overtime. Forget it.

https://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201712

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#142

Post by chaostheory » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #93

2sk21 wrote: post #48

What I really need is a weekly study day: Spend a whole day just studying and reading something (which may be completely unrelated to my work). Some of my most productive ideas have come from such study.

What I need is a weekly work day :). My workplace is so distracting that I barely ever get to do focused work. The background noise drives me crazy and then always somebody wants to have another meeting about something that has been discussed dozens of times before.

I think this is why a lot of companies in the SF Bay Area have regular work from home days, 2-3 days a week, allowing you to either just focus work or study on those days; leaving meetings for the remaining days

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#143

Post by jrockway » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:46 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #28

Treegarden wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why cant things be more flexible, eg. you have a 7 day workweek but personally you only work 4 days? This seems like a good idea especially given more automation and more higher level jobs.

Because most jobs require correlation of schedules between roles, or suppliers and vendors, a minimum viable number of staff, or deadlines which need to be met. A cashier, for instance, can't simply decide not to come in to work for half the week, or to only work overnight when it's easier. Everyone would do that, and the business would lose money. >This seems like a good idea especially given more automation and mor…

But many don't. Many things are planned on the scale of quarters, not hours. In that case, it doesn't actually matter what hours people work, as long as things are done by the deadline.

I've certainly worked for companies where other companies contracted out their software development tasks to us. They did not care what hours we worked; they spent their money and expected a result X months later. Whether we worked on their project from 9-5 was something they would not even know, much less care about.

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#144

Post by itamarst » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

knodi123 wrote: post #102

I just got a 20% raise to go with a promotion. I wished I had an opportunity to negotiate a 20% reduction in working hours instead- perhaps even along with a slight reduction in pay.

You can! I've done it, it's great.

Here's someone who has been working 4 days a week for the past 15 years: https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer...

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#145

Post by coreyrab » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:52 PM UTC

2sk21 wrote: post #48

What I really need is a weekly study day: Spend a whole day just studying and reading something (which may be completely unrelated to my work). Some of my most productive ideas have come from such study.

I've worked at few places that instituted a weekly 'meetingless day' and I can't recommend it enough. It is amazing how much work you can get done when do know you have 8 hours of consecutive focus and can look forward to it weekly.

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#146

Post by ghaff » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #122

AlwaysRock wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I require what I call a, "clean up" day once every few weeks. I wish I had one every week. It's a day when I can sit on my computer or around my apartment and do all those little things that pile up. Re-potting the plants? Never urgent enough to be top of mind but will become an issue later. Those 15 opened and unread tabs? Let me at em. Painting that spot on the wall? A tad too inconvenient for a normal Tuesday but…

I think life becomes less stressful when you just bang those things out on demand. How long is it really going to take to glance through those 15 unread tabs? Chances are you'll do a legit sweep of them in 45 seconds and then maybe 1 or 2 things will be worth reading. Before you know it, you just knocked it off your list in 5-10 minutes. The same can be said for painting that spot on the wall, 10 real minutes end to…

I'm not much for time management systems in general but one of David Allen's GTD tips I always liked was the advice that, if something will just take you five minutes, just do it.

Sometimes easier said than done I know and I always dread whatever yak-shaving is going to result from easy task. But it's good advice in general.

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#147

Post by logfromblammo » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

honkycat wrote: post #134

strictnein wrote: post #95

I'm surprised we haven't seen more of the mixed compromise: Monday - Thursday: 10 hour days Friday - Monday: 4 day weekend Tuesday - Friday: 10 hour days Saturday - Sunday: 2 day weekend and then it repeats. Same hours worked overall. Work longer days, but get 4 day weekends every other week. The people I've known who've had this setup would generally work 6am-4pm.

Personally, I do not have 10 hours of work in me per-day. Honestly: I don't have 8 hours of work in me per-day, but my employer demands it. If they want to pay me to browse hacker news for an hour a day, so be it.

I can usually do a solid 4-hour block of real work. Then, after a short break, I can do another 2-hour block of real work. Then my brain is just toasted for any serious stuff until after a good sleep. For an 8-hour workday, that means I'm spending 2 hours on fluff tasks and clock-watching.

The current job I'm in doesn't even use up my entire 6 daily hours of real-work capacity, but they still need my butt in my seat for 8 hours for contract billing purposes.

A 10-hour workday, 4 days per week, would be a 20% cut in my real work capacity, unless that extra 4 hours in the day were filled with mindless menial labor or some other form of brain-on-autopilot work.

The model is broken. The company divides my revenue generated by the number of hours my butt was in my seat to get some value-generated-per-hour metric. But it's not constant over time. In a work block, my productivity ramps up until I'm in "the zone", plateaus, and then rapidly tapers off at the mental fatigue limit. So my productivity in a day looks like this:

  | .::::::.       .                      | 100%
  | :::::::::.    .::.                    |  80%
  |.::::::::::    ::::                    |  60%
  |::::::::::::  .::::.   .               |  40%
  |::::::::::::  ::::::  ::. ..  ..  .  . |  20%
  +---------------------------------------+   0%
   0h 1h 2h 3h 4h 5h 6h 7h 8h 9h 10h11h12h

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#148

Post by AlwaysRock » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 5:30 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #146

nickjj wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think life becomes less stressful when you just bang those things out on demand. How long is it really going to take to glance through those 15 unread tabs? Chances are you'll do a legit sweep of them in 45 seconds and then maybe 1 or 2 things will be worth reading. Before you know it, you just knocked it off your list in 5-10 minutes. The same can be said for painting that spot on the wall, 10 real minutes end to…

I'm not much for time management systems in general but one of David Allen's GTD tips I always liked was the advice that, if something will just take you five minutes, just do it. Sometimes easier said than done I know and I always dread whatever yak-shaving is going to result from easy task. But it's good advice in general.

Yes - I, like many, never actually finished GTD. But I still use the general approach. The sticky things tend to be the non critical more than 7 minutes but less than 20 minute tasks. But I will credit GTD with helping me get over the, "this thing is going to take so long" mindset and more often than not the, "this will only take a minute or two" mindset.

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#149

Post by itamarst » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

skizm wrote: post #75

KineticLensman wrote: post #26

I’m in the fourth decade of my career and I switched to a three day week almost a year ago, taking a proportional pay cut. I work Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to get the largest contiguous block of time (Thursdays and Fridays) where the places I want to go to are family/child free. If work needs me to swap a day (e.g. to go to a Thursday meeting) I’ll often do that and occasionally I'll work longer one week and then…

i think everyone would choose this for the most part. The problem is heath insurance (in the us). Even at full pay, if you’re not on your company’s policy it’s almost unaffordable. And most companies will not allow you to be on their plan if you classify as “part time”.

The cut-off for part-time (legally) is 30 hours. 30 hours or more and they have to provide you with health insurance (assuming company is big enough): https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/employers/identifyin...

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#150

Post by toasterlovin » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

gnfisher wrote: post #131

toasterlovin wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Health insurane is expensive, but eminently doable for most technical salaries. Ours is about $950/mo for a family of 5.

What kind of health plan is that, if you don't mind my asking (Context: I've been living abroad 10 years, had a family while down here, we are thinking of moving back but the cost of healthcare and its quality is a big issue for us).

That is the highest deductible plan (bronze in Obamacare parlance). Yearly visits are covered, as are milestone visits for children. Other than that we pay out of pocket. Our total amount per year that we are responsible for beyond premiums is capped at $6k per person and $13k for the entire family (I believe; the actual numbers might be a little different, but these are in the ballpark).

My take is that if your family is relatively healthy, then you should go for the lowest tier plan. Then you count on paying the premiums, plus some more for whatever doctor visits normally take place. Then, in the worst case scenario (something expensive happens to 2 family members), you would pay a (roughly) additional 100% of the cost of your premiums in a given year in medical costs. If you have pre-existing conditions or go to the doctor a lot, then a higher tier plan might make more sense for you.

Oh, forgot to mention, $950/mo for our family is the unsubsidized cost. Depending on your family's income, you could qualify for a subsidy from the government, which can be pretty significant. We qualified for a $400/mo subsidy this year (so total monthly cost is $550).

My big picture take on the U.S. vs. the rest of the world is that if you're a high earner, the U.S. is usually better, economically. The pay tends to be way higher here than in Canada or Europe (especially in the tech industry) and a social safety net can be purchased (in addition to health insurance, you can also buy yourself unemployment and life insurance, for example). I've done the math on moving to Canada (my wife is Canadian) and it ain't pretty. It would represent a huge reduction in our effective income.