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Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

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

#211

Post by AnotherGoodName »

jerrygoyal wrote: post #205
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the exact same thing. It was amazing and well worth the 4/5ths pay. My mental health was improved and the only thing that made me eventually leave was that i was offered 3x the pay to work at a FAANG. Startups trying to compete for talent should probably take note of the fact that it took 3x more pay for them to poach staff, not 20% more. I'm not saying you'll get away with paying 3x less but you also won't hav…

where can one find such 4-day work week jobs? Jobs listed on most portals are either full-time or part-time (contract basis)

It was a startup and they were flexible when i asked to work for 4/5ths pay for 4/5ths workload.

It should probably be a norm but right now it's ad-hoc for companies to support it in order to retain staff.

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

#212

Post by irrational »

My company typically gives everyone half days on Fridays from Memorial Day to Labor Day (and most people only put in a token amount of work - if that - on those Fridays - no meetings are allowed to be scheduled on any Friday of the year). This year, in addition to that, they gave everyone every Friday off for the month of July. And... the company still functioned just fine. We run on sprints and we finished just as many story points during those sprints as during sprints when we work full Fridays. I'm pretty sure we could all stop working every Friday and things would go perfectly well.

Also, we aren't allowed to make any code changes from Thanksgiving to New Years. So nothing really happens from Thanksgiving to mid-December and then the entire company stops working the last two weeks of December - we don't even submit time off for it, you just don't show up. That is essentially 10-20 business days where no real work happens. That is almost the equivalent of a year's worth of Fridays.

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

#214

Post by ByteJockey »

tsimionescu wrote: post #59
stackedinserter wrote: post #33

The whole idea that our lives should be divided into seven days chunks always seemed strange to me. If I'm "in a flow", 5 days is too little for me – I almost force myself to switch to "weekend mode". And two days of weekend is too short – I can't travel to anywhere, I can't switch so something else that requires another "flow". Basically, 5-2 cycle gives you sense of having some personal time without giving you any…

10 continuous days of work would be horrible for me, as a programmer, and would probably jeopardize the health and even lives of many blue collar workers. While I think flexible schedules are a good thing, the default for most people is already too many working days in a row.

Fair, but I think the idea that everyone has to have the same schedule regardless of field of work (or even within the same field) isn't necessarily the best idea.

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

#215

Post by mlyle »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #181
mlyle wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The biggest problem is the minimum wage for salaried exempt workers needs to be a few hundred thousand dollars. Otherwise, businesses will continue to label employees managers with no actual management responsibilities with the sole goal of paying someone a lower hourly rate in exchange for a more certain periodic payment. Once you remove this loophole, hourly pay will naturally rise as businesses will opt to hire mo…

This is an interesting idea, but it seems really impractical to me. As you point out, people enjoy some benefits from certainty in compensation. Outlawing a compensation arrangement far in excess of minimum wage seems questionable.

And how far does this extend? Can I not pay a contractor a fixed rate for a project? Or a fixed rate to handle _____ for me for a week? It would seem to encourage arm's-length contracting arrangement for services and coverage, which isn't ideal.

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

#216

Post by p_j_w »

jacksonkmarley wrote: post #149
dboreham wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The true killer feature for the remote tech stack would be to attend more than one meeting concurrently.

Tried that with Teams just the other day, sadly no go.

Am I misunderstanding something here? This just seems like a bad suggestion from the get go. I have a hard enough time paying attention to a single meeting sometimes and forgetting some of the information. If there were two going simultaneously, I feel that my absorption of the relevant info would be close to 0.

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

#217

Post by mywittyname »

fastball wrote: post #206
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.

How does that work? If you sleep 8 hours a day and work for 8 hours Mon-Fri, that's: - work: 40hrs - personal: 72hrs - sleep: 56hrs Switching to a four day work week would thus result in a 20% reduction in work hours but only a 10% increase in personal time. I'm going to assume you weren't including non-work hours if they were on "work days", but that seems silly if you have a 9-5 job.

I don't know about everyone else, but my evenings are far from entirely "personal time." Chores take up most of my evenings, so really I get maybe 1-2hr of personal time on work nights. People with kids who do sports probably get next to zero personal time, beyond maybe vegging out on YT/FB for an hour before bed.

Weekends are the only days where I generally "plan" to do things, and even then, Sundays are half reserved for chores like mowing/shopping. Having an additional weekend day that I can plan for hobbies would be amazing. For me, it's honestly akin to doubling my free time.

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

#218

Post by mlyle »

pessimizer wrote: post #176
trcarney wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am all for unions as long as they aren't mandated. In some areas an Amazon warehouse job is an exceptionally good job. I grew up in a place where one of the best job you could get was working at a Walmart distribution center. Basically like an Amazon warehouse but the whole this is a freezer. Also the government can't and shouldn't try to govern bad choices away from people. This would lead to a very authoritarian…

Unions are not allowed to negotiate benefits and wages exclusively for their members. Non-union employees are forced by this to become free riders. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/em...

> > I am all for unions as long as they aren't mandated.

> Unions are not allowed to negotiate benefits and wages exclusively for their members.

Parent is talking about "closed shops" where a union uses its bargaining power to ensure the employer will only employ people represented by the union. On the one hand this prevents the free-rider problem you mention. On the other, this is coercive and can erode employees' ability to negotiate about things important to them.

It can also be inefficient-- I've been in workplaces where I got in trouble for moving a desk in my office a few feet, because moving furniture was a closed-shop union job, and I wasn't a member.

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

#219

Post by mywittyname »

jerrygoyal wrote: post #205
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the exact same thing. It was amazing and well worth the 4/5ths pay. My mental health was improved and the only thing that made me eventually leave was that i was offered 3x the pay to work at a FAANG. Startups trying to compete for talent should probably take note of the fact that it took 3x more pay for them to poach staff, not 20% more. I'm not saying you'll get away with paying 3x less but you also won't hav…

where can one find such 4-day work week jobs? Jobs listed on most portals are either full-time or part-time (contract basis)

A lot of smaller companies are open to it once you've worked there and proven yourself.

My current and prior jobs have people in 3-4 day a week roles. But the people in those roles are senior contributors whose value to the company is as much knowledge as it is contributions.

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

#220

Post by adolph »

vkou wrote: post #184
mlyle wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't the whole point of the minimum wage that the federal / state / local governments are the negotiator of last resort? Yes. And it's a necessary thing to have. On the other hand... if someone is doing work that returns $15.50/hour on average to the business, and is employed at $10/hour, raising the minimum wage to $15/hour doesn't get that person a raise: it gets them laid off. The things that IMO really help th…

> On the other hand... if someone is doing work that returns $15.50/hour on average to the business, and is employed at $10/hour, raising the minimum wage to $15/hour doesn't get that person a raise: it gets them laid off. No, what it does is it causes prices to go up, which are amortized across all of society - between both people who are paid $15/hour, and people who are paid $150/hour. On average, it is a small we…

> No, what it does is it causes prices to go up, which are amortized across all of society - between both people who are paid $15/hour, and people who are paid $150/hour.

Do people who are paid 10x necessarily consume 10x over a person paid minimum wage? If raising the minimum wage causes across the board price increases (aka inflation), then those whose income is lower are affected more since a higher percentage of their income is spent on essential consumption (food, water, shelter).

If the operational concept is "small wealth transfer" to the folks earning the lowest income using inflation as a stealth tax then it is a highly regressive tax.

Using polling data for 31,869 households in thirty-eight countries and allowing for country effects, we show that the poor are more likely than the rich to mention inflation as a top national concern.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2673879

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