Is the four-day workweek finally within our grasp? • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by GordonS » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

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)

I started with a regular 5-day week, but here in the UK (and I think the rest of Europe), companies have to give proper consideration to requests for flexible working. So all I did was ask HR, and they said it was fine.

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

#352

Post by philmcp » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

gingerlime wrote: post #342

philmcp wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is awesome, congrats on making the leap! I'll be adding any of your jobs to https://4dayweek.io :)

thank you! checked out your site, but it says software jobs? and we hire primarily for content-related tasks (medical writing, video production etc)

Ah damn, ye it's mostly software jobs atm - but I've got plans to extend this. Will get in touch when this goes live :)

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

#353

Post by vkou » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 11:08 PM UTC

adolph wrote: post #340

vkou wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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.)

A change in real dollars still affects lower income folks more because a higher percentage of income is devoted towards basics. Inflation reduces purchasing power for all, but some categories of spending cannot be substituted or eliminated. U.S. households with higher incomes spend more money on food, but the amount spent represents a smaller overall portion of their budgets. In 2020, households in the lowest income…

So, you're saying that for every dollar taken from the poor (to be redistributed to the working poor), we'd be taking three dollars from the rich (to again, be redistributed to the working poor)?

That seems to support my point that raising the minimum wage disproportionately helps the working poor.

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

#354

Post by seoulmetro » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 11:11 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #294

seoulmetro wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just sounds like your company has too many employees. But also if they haven't discovered this themselves, good on them for paying for extra, unneeded jobs.

Well, the company does have tens of thousands of employees. I'm not sure how anyone would determine if there are too many. Of course some of the salaried employees are the lifeguards at the pool, the rock climbing wall people, etc. You would probably consider those to be extra, unneeded jobs.

More employees is irrelevant. I determined you have too many simply based on the information you gave.

That's not a bad thing, it's probably a good thing. But they're definitely unneeded.

>Of course some of the salaried employees are the lifeguards at the pool, the rock climbing wall people, etc.

???

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

#355

Post by irrational » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 2:32 AM UTC

Rexxar wrote: post #304

irrational wrote: post #212

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 m…

No code change at all or nothing pushed to production environment ?

Nothing pushed to prod, but for all practical purposes all code changes stop. We use the holiday season to learn stuff, write documentation, brainstorm, clean stuff up, etc.

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

#356

Post by irrational » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 2:32 AM UTC

lyjackal wrote: post #298

irrational wrote: post #212

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 m…

Any chance you’re hiring?

My department is not.

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

#357

Post by lukas099 » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 12:32 PM UTC

beerandt wrote: post #177

chiefalchemist wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on a 40 hrs one week, 32 hrs the next. That yields every other Friday off. If I get a pronotion / pay increase I'm gonba try to opt for 32 hrs every week. > Everyone's quality of life goes up Ideally, yes. But for those who struggle in various ways the extra free time could be dangerous. I'm definitely in favor of a shorter work week. But there are always unintended consequences. For example I live in NJ. As the…

Yea- if you're not making money, you're usually spending it. Idle time costs more than the $0/hr you make while not working.

Unless you use part of your free time to do things that you previously had to pay someone to do because you didn't have time.

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

#358

Post by EricE » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #165

trcarney wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how people hold your view. Would you except a $1/hr job? No, then why do you think other people would. If you can make more money walking through a parking lot picking up change, why would you work. Plus companies wouldn't want to hire at $1/hr because what kind of employee are you getting? Your competitor down the street paying more money would then get the better employees and drive you out of bu…

People work and sleep in factory floors during periods of overtime in some places in China. In the most competitive tech companies, they worked 996 until the government stepped in. All of this bullshit free market fundamentalism relies on many nice assumptions - one being that there is plenty of good, high-paying work to go around. The actual fact spelled out in a hundred different ways, from wages to market conditio…

>People work and sleep in factory floors during periods of overtime in some places in China.

lol - then you go on to complain about free markets? China is NOT a free market!

I don't care how many fast food joints colluded, no one is going to work for $1 an hour. Heck with all the COVID bucks floating around I see fast food joints advertising $15 an hour jobs and STILL not getting any takers.

Your position is utterly nonsensical. This isn't the turn of the century. Workers have never had more mobility or information. If anyone tried to set up a "Company town" in todays economy it would be empty from day one.

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

#359

Post by EricE » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

medvezhenok wrote: post #194

mlyle wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the mentally challenged, the old, the handicapped We have disability safety nets (that could be better). And FLSA and state regs all allow paying these groups under minimum wage (and this is a good thing). My wife's brother is severely mentally handicapped. He lives in a nice, well-run group home (I'm aware this is not universal). He also has the option of going to "dayhab" where there's educational content and the…

As I noted above, if we had UBI to cover bare essentials, we wouldn't need a minimum wage. That's basically what Walmart abuses anyways via the welfare system; it's almost a subsidy to make their model kind of glue-together in the end. Let's just make it explicit. Pass UBI, repeal minimum wage laws.

Just look at the chaos being cause by COVID bucks right now - fast food joints offering $15 an hour and $500 signing bonuses and still having no takers.

That anyone has the guts to still be pushing UBI when we can see how a limited UBI with the current government handouts are utterly destroying the current labor market is beyond reprehensible.

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

#360

Post by iggldiggl » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #350

iggldiggl wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that ten hours including lunch break (and if yes, how much?), or not? Based on the stereotypical 9-to-5 office job in the UK or elsewhere, a "40" hour work week in those countries must obviously include some amount of paid lunch break (at a guess at least half an hour, maybe even one hour, giving somewhere between 35 and at worst 37.5 actually worked hours) In Germany on the other hand lunch breaks are typically u…

I believe that LM is closer to Germany on this; I don't think the lunches are paid, so you're potentially at the office for ~11 hours a day.

Okay – a four-day week sounds tempting on the one hand, but on the other hand the place I'm working has a smaller-scale version of that arrangement whereby 8.75 hours Monday thru Thursday instead of 8 hours (lunch break not included) gives six additional days off per year plus a slightly earlier finish on Fridays, and personally that already often felt long enough, nevermind 10 hours plus x days. At least this autumn the working week has been reduced by two hours, so now it's only 8.25 hours + x. Because our working hours are somewhat flexible within reason, I might possibly get away with unofficially implementing that 4x10 model on my own, but 10 + x hour days really don't sound that tempting to me.