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Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?

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Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?

#121
post #88
post #16

From 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…

It is doable and in some countries like Switzerland even a common practice to offer an 80% - 100% workload (if you look at https://swissdevjobs.ch/ or any other tech job board you will notice it occurs quite often) The problem is that an 80% workload for companies also means 80% of the salary which makes sense if someone wants to work part-time, but it's not the implementation of a 4-day work week idea. Personally, I…

The reason I get burned out working 40 hours a week is because I don’t waste time when I’m working / in the office. I can’t seem to “take a break” because I’m getting paid for my time and feel guilty if I do.

I’ve occasionally seen co-workers on YouTube throughout the day, and I’m like, “wtf”.

I don’t see it penalized and I’m not their manager and I’m not tracking their output. I guess if it works for them then it works for them, and no one’s complaining, except my own pride or righteousness.

Maybe that’s what they need to handle a full time work load. But in that case it’s not really full time? It doesn’t feel right to me so at my current place I work significantly reduced amount of hours for a proportional paycut. And I only work when I’m working.

Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?

#123
I did this once fore awhile, and it was worth it for the period of time. But at times, having extra cash (or the expected salary based on your lifestyle) can also go a long way!

In the end, it's about managing priorities (at the time) and stress. Working less that increase focus and avoid burn out by giving you freedom to do "other" personal things.

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