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More bosses give four-day workweek a try

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Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#151

Post by firstplacelast »

chadlavi wrote: post #142
amyjess wrote: post #27

Going down to a 32-hour workweek would be lovely, but I'm simply not interested in doing 4×10. I'd rather get home at a decent hour than have an extra day off.

As knowledge workers (I'm assuming), I feel strongly that the number of hours we spend at work has little correlation to the amount of value we deliver. I could easily get the same amount of value delivered in 4 7-hour days that I currently do in 5 8-ish hour ones. I'm only forced to hang out at work for a certain set of hours because of... tradition I guess?

I work for a start-up that is non-VC funded, I work 5 days a week, but I’m only in the office 5-6 hours a day (there are some weeks where things are very busy and it’s not the case) and I occasionally work a few hours on the weekend.

They’re only concerned with results and it’s a slow growing business, I am however extremely underpaid.

Getting ready to take the jump to a new job with a 70% pay increase, but the last few years my life has been sweet (besides living in a very shitty apartment).

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#152

Post by KoftaBob »

As another thing to try, how about making the “standard” workday 9-4 instead of 9-5? This way, it ends up being 3 hours of work, 1 hour of lunch, then another 3 hours of work.

It’s more balanced, people get an extra hour in their day to spend on themselves, and it seems that for many people, the extra hour from 4-5 is relatively low productivity compared to the rest of the day anyway.

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#153

Post by monknomo »

kody wrote: post #13

I worked 4x10s when I worked for the Army and it was awesome. 3 day weekends take off so much pressure, and come Sunday night I was starting to feel the itch to get back into work rather than the dreadful feeling that I 'wasted' my weekend. The only work experience that was better than this was 100% flexibility to work remotely and/or flex hours. So there's my anecdata for you :)

4x10s are tough for me, but the 5-4-9 plan (5 9 hour days one week, 3 nine hour days the next week followed by one 8 hour day - basically alternating 3 day weekends) are pretty nice in my book

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#154

Post by Wowfunhappy »

alistairSH wrote: post #105
jonny_eh wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe people could take different "3rd" days off?

How do we decide who gets Friday or Monday (ie, a three day weekend)? I have a friend who once had M-W off, and worked the four remaining days. He hated it because his time off was completely misaligned with his peers, so he had no social life. Edit - I don't have any fundamental problem with working fewer hours or fewer days. But, I think I'd prefer 5x7 hour days instead of 4x8.

> How do we decide who gets Friday or Monday

Rotate who gets which days off each week.

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#155

Post by bumby »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #8

It seems a lot of these experiments are a success. But after a while somebody gets greedy and thinks “we get good productivity at 32 hours. I wonder how much more we could get at 40 hours?” And soon you are back at the old schedule. Something similar happened at my company. For once a project was ahead of schedule. So instead of thinking that the system worked well and keep working in relaxed manner management decide…

Anecdotal, but I’ve experienced the opposite where the greed seemed to come more from fellow employees rather than managers. Five day weeks meant breakfast breaks as soon as the group came in on Friday, long lunches, and people mentally checking out early. When we switched to shorter weeks this just shifted to Thursday. After productivity was hurting management was met with a near mutiny attitude at the thought of going back to 5 day weeks.

Point being, I think there’s something to be said for company culture in making this work

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#156

Post by tasuki »

fjp wrote: post #146
volkk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know not everyone is as sapped for energy as I am after work, but I leave work and sit in an hour of traffic. My energy is just sapped from me by the time I make it home. I have enough energy to feed myself and sometimes work out to maintain my health.. I know that some people just dont have the privilege of living close to their jobs, but after spending one internship getting up at 5;45am to drive with my dad to…

Agreed, the one thing I have promised myself is to never have a commute over 35 minutes. I even found a 35 minute commute to an internship in the suburbs disheartening when it was mostly spent sitting in traffic. It's insane to waste that much of your daily life shuttling to your job (if you have an option, which I hope to remain lucky enough to have).

The commute is not the problem, the car is. In Amsterdam I commuted 45 minutes by bike and it was great. I really miss it now that I work from home.

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#157

Post by jacquesm »

nagyf wrote: post #64
jacquesm wrote: post #40

It's interesting to note that in Europe that 32 hour workweek is fairly standard and nobody would even bat an eye or think this is special in any way. https://smallbiztrends.com/2018/11/working-hours.html

Source for this? I'm from Europe and I have friends working in 2-3 different countries in Europe, but 32 hour workweek is not standard anywhere. Never even heard of such a thing being standard in Europe.

It depends on the country. Sweden, Denmark, Norway, NL, Germany, Switzerland, France.

Others probably less so, depending on how well the economy is and general attitude towards workers rights. Eastern Europe much less so, in some cases (Romania, Bulgaria) conditions are still terrible.

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#158

Post by joegahona »

tombert wrote: post #37
volkk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know not everyone is as sapped for energy as I am after work, but I leave work and sit in an hour of traffic. My energy is just sapped from me by the time I make it home. I have enough energy to feed myself and sometimes work out to maintain my health.. I know that some people just dont have the privilege of living close to their jobs, but after spending one internship getting up at 5;45am to drive with my dad to…

I live in NYC, and I have a roughly 1 hour commute each way, but I just take the train everywhere. Of course I can't speak for anyone else, but I find that taking a train to work is a lot less stressful than driving every day. At least on the train, I can read, or pull out my laptop, or just play a video game.

I lived in NYC from 2001-2012 and much prefer my 20-minute car commute now to any amount of time in a jam-packed rush-hour subway. Nothing like being 5mm from a stranger's face while both of you pretend you're not 5mm from a stranger's face. The LIRR is more comfy obv but at $250/month still not worth the aggravation, and unless you happen to work at Penn Station, you still have to walk through rain/snow/95-degree humidity or buy _another_ pass for a subway/bus.

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#159

Post by tayo42 »

sloppycee wrote: post #124
Darkphibre wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nap time adds to productivity Amen to this! I pushed for, and saw implemented, a dual nap room for our studio. It was used around the clock by people stretching, meditating, and napping. I found a huge productivity spike taking out 20 minutes a day. Then, we hired a bunch more people for the upcoming launch, and it was re-purposed into a storage room for old rack hardware (I pushed against this, but was told it was…

Most children stop napping around four years old. Maybe there's a deeper problem at your job if people need a nap room. Just get more sleep at home, you're not being paid to sleep. btw, a 'dedicated lego room' sounds like another symptom of a toxic infantilizing culture that eats confidence and breeds reliance.

Napping as an adult is normal. There's plenty of research and info about this. No need to be judgmental.

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#160

Post by amyjess »

gpanders wrote: post #134
amyjess wrote: post #27

Going down to a 32-hour workweek would be lovely, but I'm simply not interested in doing 4×10. I'd rather get home at a decent hour than have an extra day off.

I work from 7-5 each day, so even when I go to the gym or run a quick errand after work I can be home by 6, which strikes me as a "decent hour", although I suppose that's subjective. Waking up at 6am takes getting used to but isn't unreasonable in my opinion.

It's pretty much impossible for me to go to sleep any earlier than 2am, so getting to work at 7 would require me to only get a couple of hours of sleep at night, which isn't nearly enough for me to function on.
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