Absolutely but only if those were eight hour days, not ten hour days. Of course like any salaried job, there will be times when extra effort is required, including extended hours, but it couldn't be a regular thing for the employer to claw back that extra day off.
Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?
51–60 of 123 posts
Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?
#52From an employers perspective, I believe there are many advantages: - 4 day week job listings get 15% more applications [1] - Staff will be more productive. Microsoft experimented with a 4-day work week and productivity jumped by 40% [2] - Staff will be happier and healthier [3] - Staff retention will improve (e.g. "Now that I'm working a 4 day week, I could never go back to work 5 days") - Some developers would comp…
Whether it's an environmental improvement depends on what your employees do on the day off. Less will be attributable to the company, but it's a giant leap to say this means it's better for the planet.
I like the references for 1-3, even if they might be cherry-picked it's still more likely to be signal than noise, but the rest seems like leaps and assumptions. There are very few companies where everyone wants to work 4 days, let alone have that day not be flexible, so closing the office for a day seems out of reach for all but the smallest businesses. Retention I'm also not so sure about, virtually every company in our line of work supports 36 or 32 hours per week and they virtually all pay proportional to hours so that's all same same.
Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?
#53I don't think startups really care about saving 20% on salaries - I think if we're going to get 4-day workweeks the argument needs to be around attracting candidates, and pointing to improved productivity. It's mind-boggling to me how companies are like "there's no qualified candidates", and at least superficially they trip over themselves for "diversity" candidates to make their numbers look better, but they're unwi…
As someone who is actively hiring, can you elaborate a bit? What are the worst aspects of this monoculture that a company that is just now establishing its culture can focus on avoiding?
Leet code challenges - you are not Google. Offices in super expensive locations (get out of cities and provide WFH for those who wish to stay!). Uber cosmopolitan politics shoved down everyone's throats. Many things
Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?
#54I would definitely do so.
I'm a single person who isn't looking to start a family, so I don't really use most of the money I make. It'd give me time to work on my more esoteric/mathy/experimental programming projects that I enjoy. At this point in my career getting job offers is pretty easy, so I wouldn't take a pay cut for no reason...but trading back time sounds super fair.
Of course, I'd have to talk to the company to make sure we agree on what the boundaries and expectations are. Just like with the current 5 day set up, ambiguity can easily be taken advantage of or lead to unexpected outcomes for both parties. That's not a reason to be hesitant, it's just a reason to be explicit and make sure everyone is upfront about discussing it maturely from the outset.
Like others, I've worked at a company who had fridays off in the summer and it really didn't hinder productivity at all. We just planned accordingly.
Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?
#55I currently do this except I work 6 days a week and get paid 80% of what I should be.
Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?
#56This probably would mainly work well with A) highly talented software engineers who want to make much less than they could make for easier lifestyle or B) low productivity companies.
The reason is that companies that employ software engineers are engines for transforming labor to value. They get a multiple in dollars in revenue out of their labor cost to you. Suppose this multiple is 3x. Then if an software engineer works 80% time, the indifference point for the company isn't paying 80%, but actually paying 40%. I don't think that number is acceptable to most employees.
Of course, this is politically popular with the HN crowd because many people are software employees. But you need to look at it from the other side too.
How could you make it work then? Well if you were a superstar before that made $200, you probably can get away with 4 days as week and $80. Or if the company is a low productivity company (e.g. their multiple of EV on the employees time is really low like 1.1), then they can probably 80% time for 75% pay.
With matching markets (employee/employer) you need to solve both sides' problems. (It's easy to solve just one side's problem: just advocate for doubling/halving employee pay. Employees/employers will love that.)
Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?
#57Let's say you hire two engineers, both at 50% salary. They will be strictly worse than a single engineer on 100% salary. To make it worthwhile for a small company you're looking at more like a 50% discount for 4 days work. Not a good deal imo.
> They will be strictly worse than a single engineer on 100% salary
Citation needed.
I don't think this is an obvious conclusion. There is certainly some threshold where it becomes less efficient (40 engineers, 1hr/week each??), but I'm not sure 20hr/week is a clear threshold.
Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?
#58I was offered to do this at my current job and I didn't take the offer. I feel I wouldn't really disconnect on the additional day off, so it'd be a full 20% pay cut without it really being a full 20% work cut.
This is common. You do a FT job for 80% pay IME
Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?
#59I can and have done so for a period of 7 years. The problem is that developers want to work for fancy big box companies with big salaries and it's exactly those type of companies that aren't going to allow you to do this. You have to find a small to medium sized business if you want flexible hours. If you do get an interview with such a business make sure it's clear as part of your contract you only plan on working 32 hours a week. After a while they may try to cajole you into working more hours and you will need to stand your ground.
Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?
#60As an employee, I would only take a 32-hour/week job if I was paid by the hour. It wouldn't take long for extra hours to be the norm if the roll was salaried.
I'd also want to understand how benefits are handled: - Insurance: what plan is offered and how much does the company pay? - 401(k) and matching? - PTO: how much is earned and how can it be used. - Holidays: what if Christmas falls on a Friday? Do I get a different day off?