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World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

independent.co.uk

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Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#61

Post by RHSeeger »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #15
bpodgursky wrote: post #3

One of the lessons of trying to optimize worker productivity, health and happiness during the industrial revolution is that almost any change was an "overwhelming success" during the trial period, because of some combination of (1) a change of routine, (2) placebo effect -- people like the idea that someone is trying to help them and their mood improves accordingly. Might even be true here (it would be nice!), but in…

I've only met one person who wasen't for a four day 10 hr/day work week. He was a Electrician acquaintance of my father. He was beyond a odd duck. His idea of a fun weekend was painting his house. I'm not kidding. I used to talk to my father a lot over a four day work week. His union almost got it, but they backed out at the last moment. I still think it was a payola thing from the contractors! It just makes so much…

10 hour days can be complicated for people with families. Dropping the kid(s) off for school, picking up, getting dinner ready, helping with homework. Heck, even just spending family time together. All of those things are more difficult with 2 less hours of personal time each day.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#62

Post by peakaboo »

koch wrote: post #54

It's so weird to me to see people argue against a shorter work week. > I enjoy working 5 days a week, it gives me more time to ... Ok, by all means, keep doing that? If you have this position you are probably already working on the weekend anyway. You can live (thrive, even!) in a society that has a 4 day week and still work 5 days. Go for it. > It'll never happen / It's a pipe dream So was women's rights, civil righ…

I agree with you but some peoples identity are very much integrated with their work. Make them work less and their life becomes less meaningful.

For people like you and me, we work to live, not live to work. So we want to work less. It makes us feel happier and more free.

I think the salaries are also an issue. We can't cut salaries with 20% so this becomes an extra cost for the companies or the government, depending on who should pay for it.

Overall though, I think most people would agree that it's considered progress if humans work less so we can actually do more things than work with our lives.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#63

Post by cycomanic »

bpodgursky wrote: post #3

One of the lessons of trying to optimize worker productivity, health and happiness during the industrial revolution is that almost any change was an "overwhelming success" during the trial period, because of some combination of (1) a change of routine, (2) placebo effect -- people like the idea that someone is trying to help them and their mood improves accordingly. Might even be true here (it would be nice!), but in…

Actually the lesson of optimizing productivity over the last 100 years is that the benifits have almost exclusively gone to the "capitalists" (in the sense of the people financing work with their capital) and not benifited workers. With the productivity gains that we saw over the last century we should be working 1-2 day weeks for the same standard of living (fun fact many economists of the 1900s were worrying about people not having enough to work in the future). What happened is that people work more for the same standard of living instead, the middle class is disappearing and the gap between rich and poor is widening.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#64

Post by peakaboo »

insert_coin wrote: post #58
koch wrote: post #54

It's so weird to me to see people argue against a shorter work week. > I enjoy working 5 days a week, it gives me more time to ... Ok, by all means, keep doing that? If you have this position you are probably already working on the weekend anyway. You can live (thrive, even!) in a society that has a 4 day week and still work 5 days. Go for it. > It'll never happen / It's a pipe dream So was women's rights, civil righ…

> It's so weird to me to see people argue against a shorter work week. No one is arguing against a shorter work week, that's just misrepresenting the position. Furthermore, you've been able to offer 4 day work weeks to your employees since forever, no one is stopping you. In fact you can offer them 3 days work week right now since you are so benevolent. Why don't you offer them 1 day work weeks while you are at it? Y…

You can turn the same argument around. If 4 day work week is standard, you can work 5 days if you want. You can even work 6 days or 7 days right now, nobody is stopping you.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#65

Post by ZephyrBlu »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #51
conanbatt wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the hell that is the modern salaried work week. Salaried work is by far the most lenient way to make money. Any other venture: a small business, a startup, an executive position, etc is way harder and more demanding. In any case, what would be great is for the market to offer 4 day work weeks to those who wish it at the best market price, and give 5 days to the ones that want 5 days.

>> Salaried work is by far the most lenient way to make money. Any other venture: a small business, a startup, an executive position, etc is way harder and more demanding. I've done both and I don't believe I'd agree with making it a generalization. At best, there may be some averages and medians, but it is not a universal statement that "all salaried work is more lenient than all small business / startup work". I've…

> I've done a successful small photography business. It was way way way less stressful, more satisfying than office work

Ok, but did it generate more income? How many hours did you tend to work?

Averages and medians are quite useful tools when you're analyzing something like a population.

I don't think saying that a salaried job tends to be "the most lenient way to make money" is that controversial.

Maybe you had a good run with your photography business, for many other people it is far more difficult to get a venture off the ground than to work a normal job.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#66

Post by kqr »

peakaboo wrote: post #62
koch wrote: post #54

It's so weird to me to see people argue against a shorter work week. > I enjoy working 5 days a week, it gives me more time to ... Ok, by all means, keep doing that? If you have this position you are probably already working on the weekend anyway. You can live (thrive, even!) in a society that has a 4 day week and still work 5 days. Go for it. > It'll never happen / It's a pipe dream So was women's rights, civil righ…

I agree with you but some peoples identity are very much integrated with their work. Make them work less and their life becomes less meaningful. For people like you and me, we work to live, not live to work. So we want to work less. It makes us feel happier and more free. I think the salaries are also an issue. We can't cut salaries with 20% so this becomes an extra cost for the companies or the government, depending…

This is not about making people work less, it's about giving people the option to work less without paying dearly for it. (A 20 % pay cut should be the absolute maximum cost for a 20 % shorter work week, but as it stands today it's not. In practise, people who'd get about the same amount of actual work done in less time should have no pay cut. These are the problems we need to fix.)

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#67

Post by toast0 »

bostondavidvc wrote: post #33
nameoda wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I have observed in software development companies is that there is no limit where one can say, "My work is done". When one task is complete, there is another one ready to pick up. So, the only way to stop working for a day is to track your hours and say, "I have worked for 8 hours today and I will pause the work until tomorrow". What field and role are you working in, where you can roll in whenever you want and…

> there is no limit where one can say, "My work is done" I'm a couple years into my first software job, at Google. We don't do performance evaluations relative to whether you're doing as much work as you're capable of in 40 hours. You're evaluated against a fixed rubric corresponding to the job level. In other words, if you're capable of doing a Software Engineer N's worth of work in 40 hours and your title is Softwa…

I don't know about Google, but Facebook and I presume some other big companies has an up or out policy. If you come in at Software Engineer N, they expect you to get promoted to SE N+1 in X years, and if you don't, they'll start evaluating you at that level anyway, and assuming you continue to put in level N work, you'll get a performance improvement plan, and then probably fired. There's some level which is considered ok to be 'terminal', you can be promoted above it, but they're also ok with you sitting at that level forever.

Just trying to say be sure to sniff around and make sure you understand the actual expectations.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#68

Post by insert_coin »

peakaboo wrote: post #64
insert_coin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's so weird to me to see people argue against a shorter work week. No one is arguing against a shorter work week, that's just misrepresenting the position. Furthermore, you've been able to offer 4 day work weeks to your employees since forever, no one is stopping you. In fact you can offer them 3 days work week right now since you are so benevolent. Why don't you offer them 1 day work weeks while you are at it? Y…

You can turn the same argument around. If 4 day work week is standard, you can work 5 days if you want. You can even work 6 days or 7 days right now, nobody is stopping you.

No you cannot. Government is stopping you by preventing companies from hiring workers for more than they allow. That is the reason people get two or even three jobs.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#69

Post by bArray »

I remain heavily sceptical and would not rush into such an idea.

> And as a result, researchers say, productivity and service provision remained the same or improved across the majority of workplaces included in the trial.

Any change leads to increased productivity - painting the walls or changing the colour of the lights increases productivity. We need to see long-term effects.

What I suspect will really happen is this artificial increase in income per hour will be used to circumvent the open problem of wage increase. Then cost of living will also increase and you'll barely be able to live on a normal 'well paying' career. But don't worry, you'll be forced to rent everything anyway as X-as-a-service becomes more popular.

> The idea of a four day week has some support in the UK, with 45 MPs from parties including Labour, SNP, Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the Green Party signing an early day motion calling on the government to set up a commission to examine the proposal.

These are all left-wing parties. I would also add that these parties are also more likely to contain socialists (some MPs just openly declaring they are communists even).

> A poll published in July last year conducted by Survation found that 63 per cent of the public support the idea of a four-day week with no loss of pay, while only 12 per cent oppose.

You would likely find the same numbers for a zero hour work week. What people believe is good for them is not always what is actually good for them, hence the need for studies.

Also these surveys tend to be self-selecting, especially regarding people who don't work. When they were phoning during 9-5 office hours, most of the working population were at work.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#70

Post by [deleted] »

toast0 wrote: post #67
bostondavidvc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no limit where one can say, "My work is done" I'm a couple years into my first software job, at Google. We don't do performance evaluations relative to whether you're doing as much work as you're capable of in 40 hours. You're evaluated against a fixed rubric corresponding to the job level. In other words, if you're capable of doing a Software Engineer N's worth of work in 40 hours and your title is Softwa…

I don't know about Google, but Facebook and I presume some other big companies has an up or out policy. If you come in at Software Engineer N, they expect you to get promoted to SE N+1 in X years, and if you don't, they'll start evaluating you at that level anyway, and assuming you continue to put in level N work, you'll get a performance improvement plan, and then probably fired. There's some level which is consider…

[deleted]
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