The rigid 5-day expectation is just as odd as the old commute-to-the-office expectation
Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?
311–320 of 364 posts
Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?
#312The next 6 months will be really telling. I know many people who are being groomed by their employers to feel good about a January return.
“We’re asking you to come in three days a week if you are within committing distance of the office, oh by the way, enjoy a half day on Friday!” is the common theme of the message right now.
I’m usually hesitant to make predictions but I really think this is going to be a losing POV if we look two years out. The cat is out of the bag - good talent is going to gravitate toward employers who give their folks autonomy and optionality. This is the moment when the corporate world finally realizes that having a reputation for treating people well actually matters.
Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?
#313My 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 m…
No code changes from Nov to Jan seems crazy to me. But if it works good for you guys.
No code changes pushed to production is what I've experienced in such places as a risk mitigation strategy, not that everyone is sitting around twiddling thumbs. Every hour of downtime between Black Friday and Christmas will cost a lot of revenue, and sometimes the company will be working with a skeleton crew for a huge chunk of that time,which makes fixes take longer as a bonus. So why risk it?
Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
My ADHD was screaming reading this but my everything else was clapping and wishing you posted a video link.
Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?
#315If you got no raise this year, working roughly two and a half hours less per week would bring your compensation back in line with inflation. If firms can't stomach wage increases this may be a valid alternative.
This is the secret reason some Oklahoma public schools switched to a 4-day week a few years back: as a retention bonus for underpaid teachers.
Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the GP just hasn't discovered the magic of the "minimum billable increment" yet. Lawyers love this trick! Customer wants you to itemize the bill? No problem - it comes with a 15 minute minimum billable increment. The more demanding/PITA the client is, the longer the minimum. Send me a text a minute after I've finished working for the day to check on the status and it takes me a minute to read and reply? No pr…
> Called me for a two minute chat while I'm in the zone on their project? Gotta itemize it! 15 minutes billed and I restart the work (out of the zone) at the top of the next interval. That's double billing and afaik illegal, you can not (and rightly so) bill your customer twice for the same time.
I’m very fair with how I bill my clients, and I do bill distinct tasks on separate timers. This means I’ll sometimes have a dangling 5min to be attached later to a 15min increment when I resume it. But yes, if my task is interrupted for another billable thing, that is a new clock that’s started, because it’s another task that’s tracked separately.
Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we already offer unlimited vacation (lol), I offered unlimited vacation in every business I started or ran since 1989. But the abusive bullshit many companies have pulled while claiming “unlimited vacation” has justifiably made people cynical. This stated policy has become a warning sign instead of a benefit. So in my new company we have a written policy four weeks but there is no way to track it (where the law per…
I have worked 3 places with unlimited vacation, and there was zero pressure to not take vacation. One company specifically said they we needed to get our asses out of the office because they saw people not taking at least 3 weeks a year.
That’s how it’s supposed to be.
Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?
#318[dead]
Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 minim…
The stealth taxation of inflation affects the lowest 30 in the 100 the most in order to pay the lowest 10. The change in purchase power is not like taxing everyone $1. Whether it’s like taxing on a sliding scale from low to high income that is $1 to $.5 or $1 to $0, I don’t know, just $1 across the board isn’t right. There are probably second order confounders as well, for example since federal gas ax is not inflatio…
$1 across the board is, indeed, not right. In reality, people higher up on the wealth scale would pay more (as they consume more goods and services - just not 1:1 proportionately more.)
Re: Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp?
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the GP just hasn't discovered the magic of the "minimum billable increment" yet. Lawyers love this trick! Customer wants you to itemize the bill? No problem - it comes with a 15 minute minimum billable increment. The more demanding/PITA the client is, the longer the minimum. Send me a text a minute after I've finished working for the day to check on the status and it takes me a minute to read and reply? No pr…
> Called me for a two minute chat while I'm in the zone on their project? Gotta itemize it! 15 minutes billed and I restart the work (out of the zone) at the top of the next interval. That's double billing and afaik illegal, you can not (and rightly so) bill your customer twice for the same time.
Okay, so then just take a 13 minute break after the call and then start working again