Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 364 posts

Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

#41

Post by kbenson »

mlyle wrote: post #26
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #6

I'm currently working for a company that forces office staff to work a half day on christmas eve with the additional stipulation, of course, that you must burn a full day of vacation to skip it. This despite the fact that no one in the company can ever remember a customer calling on christmas eve. So I'm very skeptical that this trend will grow. It took the IWW to get us the concepts of The Weekend and Sick Days, and…

I personally believe that the government should focus on a shorter workweek rather than minimum wage increases in the near term. If we shorten the nominal workweek to 36 hours before overtime is required (and encourage this to be in the form of 4x9 or 9/2 * 8): * Supply of labor will fall, increasing equilibrium pay for everyone * Everyone's quality of life goes up * Traffic and environmental impacts from commuting s…

I'm a little worried about how that would affect the lower class in the short term. It's easy to say that they'll get more money as they'll get a day of overtime, but I think it's more likely that a lot of people will find that businesses just staffed up more for low skilled positions (and eventually for skilled positions), and then people have more time but are only making 80% of what they were previously, and can't afford both rent and food together in a given month anymore.

I think the instability this would cause i the lower class would be devastating. The very people that don't have savings and that can't easily weather large financial events would have once forced on them all at the same time.

Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

#42

Post by ghaff »

seiferteric wrote: post #5
BitwiseFool wrote: post #2

I would actually love a 4.5 day workweek, where the half-day is up to the employee to take.

We had something like that at my work. From June-Aug we had "Summer Hours" where we would not have any meetings after 2pm and could stop working if then if there was nothing vital. Not exactly half day but still nice, though not sure why it's just for summer time...

The thinking is probably that more people are likely to be heading somewhere for the weekend in the summer or at least doing some Friday evening activity.

In general though I observe that I'm seeing a lot fewer scheduled Friday meetings than on other days and, while things sometimes need to get handled on Friday afternoon, people are often pretty apologetic is they schedule a Friday PM meeting.

Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

#43

Post by city41 »

vitno wrote: post #16

4 day work weeks as a concept real clicked for me when put into ratios. It's a 50% increase in personal time and only a 20% reduction in work hours.

I recently did a contract where I negotiated a 4 day week. Hard to measure, but my hunch is I still produced about the same level of output. But I was happier, and I also think I was able to make better decisions with the added brain rest.

Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

#44

Post by rectang »

icedchai wrote: post #30
wayoutthere wrote: post #11

I work a 4 day week; just don’t tell my boss.

You and everyone else "working from home."

No, that's not true, and it's that fantasy which gets us the "butts-in-seats" management style.

This is correlated first to workplace morale and second to the individual worker. The workers who would do this from home are the same workers who would do it in the office. And employers who make their workers' lives miserable will have endemic problems with people not putting in effort.

Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

#46

Post by seniorsassycat »

I've been working 4 days a week, 32 hours, for 4 years and I will never go back. It has made me hesitant to look for other work, I'm not sure if get the same deal, but so far I'm happy where I am.

As others have said the ratios are awesome. I have 15 days off every 20 days instead of 8. For a 20% pay cut, while getting full benefits.

Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

#50

Post by giantg2 »

willheis wrote: post #21
azinman2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup… because their jobs may then go abroad as has been the trend for the past 20 years…

This happened to everything it could at least 10 years ago. It turns out that if you want software that works (at all), you need to pay people well, regardless of where they are in the world. Stop reenforcing this notion that leads to massive overwork and burnout in the US (+ Canada). Germany, the UK, Sweden, etc all have much, much better working conditions for software devs and their jobs aren't going away

I hear that many of the European countries have lower dev salaries than the US. So maybe better conditions, but possibly lower pay.

Our company just started outsourcing IT 5 years ago. It's still expanding that policy.

Post reply on HN