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Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?

nytimes.com

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

#241

Post by quesera »

gumby wrote: post #229
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as "elsewhere" is SV or some other big city, that grass will never be green enough for me.

SV is a big suburbs, not a city. SF (and Oakland) are medium sized cities.

San Jose is over a million people. That counts as "big" in the US, I think? 10th most populous.

The "suburbs" between SJ-SF-Oakland range from very dense urban areas, to very sparse (and expensive) bedroom communities, to uninhabited (protected land) areas.

I think it's fair to loosely characterize SV as a big city, from almost all US perspectives.

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

#242

Post by welshwelsh »

throwaway803453 wrote: post #27

FWH has exposed how many white-collar jobs were only full-time in the ass-in-seat sense and how many employees should have Professional Meeting Attender as their job title. I used to be the guy who would champion efficient meeting practices. Now it's the last thing I want given that I can now work-out, make breakfast, do manual labor, etc., while listening to meeting. 4 day work week in grasp you ask ? For many I'd b…

>I'd never hire a full time employee who can work remotely. I'd employ a contractor who has to itemize their invoice.

That's not going to save you any money though.

A FT developer who makes $75 an hour only accepts that pay because it's closer to $300/hr in practice (if you only count the hours they are actually productive, which maxes out at 2-3 per day for knowledge work).

A freelance developer of similar skill, who accurately bills per hour worked, will simply charge $300 per hour.

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

#243

Post by rhexs »

tombert wrote: post #110

My dad, my sister, and sister in law all work for Lockheed Martin and they do the 4-10 schedule: 4 days a week, ten hours a day, and they get every Friday off. I'm a little jealous of it, honestly; it's pretty rare that I work less than ten hours a day anyway, so I think economically it would be better for me.

The downside here is that LM pays about 30 to 50% of top tier tech companies with mostly worse benefits.

But otherwise, I agree. That’s a wonderful schedule along with usually great WLB in defense.

The other risk is that defense has been overfunded and high flying for years and years now. Usually goes in cycles with massive layoffs, and we haven’t had one in a long, long time.

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

#245

Post by CountDrewku »

welshwelsh wrote: post #242
throwaway803453 wrote: post #27

FWH has exposed how many white-collar jobs were only full-time in the ass-in-seat sense and how many employees should have Professional Meeting Attender as their job title. I used to be the guy who would champion efficient meeting practices. Now it's the last thing I want given that I can now work-out, make breakfast, do manual labor, etc., while listening to meeting. 4 day work week in grasp you ask ? For many I'd b…

>I'd never hire a full time employee who can work remotely. I'd employ a contractor who has to itemize their invoice. That's not going to save you any money though. A FT developer who makes $75 an hour only accepts that pay because it's closer to $300/hr in practice (if you only count the hours they are actually productive, which maxes out at 2-3 per day for knowledge work). A freelance developer of similar skill, wh…

Yeah I don't understand this mentality. You're paying for finished work not hours. People cannot seem to separate themselves from the hourly concept. If you want finished work faster then who cares about the hours?

All you're doing by requiring a certain amount of hours is ensuring the employee stretches out the time it takes to get things done.

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

#246

Post by Manouchehri »

dukeyukey wrote: post #171
skeeter2020 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the significantly higher direct and indirect taxes are definitely related though

You'd be surprised. Like, if we take taxes as a percentage of GDP as a figure, the US scores pretty well at about 27%. But Australia is at 28%, Canada at 32%, and even the UK at 33%. The differences aren't massive here. He'll, Ireland comes in at 23%.

My average personal income tax rate was well over 40% during my last year in Canada. (The marginal rate is/was 53.53%.)

Even a high tax state like California would have a five figure amount less owed in taxes than Ontario at certain income levels.

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

#247

Post by vkou »

adolph wrote: post #220
vkou wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Do people who are paid 10x necessarily consume 10x over a person paid minimum wage?

Even if their consumption was 1x, my point would still stand. Most people aren't earning minimum wage, nor are their salaries affected by minimum wage increases. This means that the cost of most products does not increase as minimum wages increase.

Minimum wage increase money comes from somewhere, and since ~everyone relies on minimum wage workers, that means that ~everyone pays for that wage increase.

If you take a dollar away from 100 people, and split half the resulting money between the 10 poorest in that group, and the other half between the next 20, it's a regressive tax, with a progressive benefit that has a net benefit for the poorest. Minimum wage increases work the same way. The rich lose very little, the middle class lose some, the poor win.

Are there better ways of structuring this sort of thing? Theretically yes, but practically, the rich are really, really good at protecting themselves from wealth redistribution. If you're going to hold the poor hostage to them, you're never going to get anything done.

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

#248

Post by FormerBandmate »

p_j_w wrote: post #216
jacksonkmarley wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I feel that my absorption of the relevant info would be close to 0.

That's the point lol

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

#249

Post by CountDrewku »

flipbrad wrote: post #7

I started working a 4 day work week a few years ago and would not go back. The benefits to the employee are obvious, but consider those for the company: it gets a motivated, energised employee, and if like me they're a parent or for some other reason the employee has appointments (school, Dr etc), the employee often schedules them during the day off (or moves the day off to accomodate them), meaning the employee isn'…

Are you on a 32 hour or 40 hour week? I would not go back either but 10 hour days are exhausting. I go work out and eat when I get off work and then I pretty much have to go to bed.

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

#250

Post by mensetmanusman »

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.

Once when I was triple booked I logged into three Teams meetings simultaneously (laptop, iPad, iPhone) and turned up the volume to create a cacophony of chaos in my home office while I laughed maniacally to myself. Then I took a picture of the setup with my second iPad for my pandemic scrapbook.

I could only listen to two simultaneously… so I would modulate the volume.

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