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Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?
91–100 of 191 posts
Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?
#92Almost all Dutch companies will honor such a request. Of course, it comes with a 20% salary decrease if you simply go from 5 to 4 days of 8 hours.
It is the norm to work fewer hours in many sectors, especially if you're a government worker, but in tech it hasn't been my experience (as an expat in NL). If you don't have kids it seems to be 40+ hrs or nothing and requesting anything below full time is "unfair to other colleagues" or "signals a lack of commitment".
I recently tried and got exactly this, wouldn't be fair for the others to have to work more to compensate for me, and they wanted some committed to working. I will keep trying, maybe is the moment to shame these companies back to see if they change their behaviour.
Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?
#93I have an open position with a 4 working days week for a full stack developer.
The post is for junior but i need a medium/senior developer https://menelabs.com/Careers
Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Sweden we have - 25 days off every year for every one (5 days minimum can carry over). Most tech companies have 30 days off. - No extra days for COVID - Unlimited sick days - 240 days of parental leave (so per parent. Increase if you have more than one child (twins, triplets). Plus 10 days for the non-birthing parent to be together the first weeks. 96 days per parent can be saved beyond the 4th year. - 17 holidays…
Nice! (To be clear, the 18 days are paid sick leave - after 18 days you get social security meaning the government pays for your sick leave and not Microsoft - you still get paid but it's capped at ±100K USD a year which is significantly less). 240 days of parental leave sounds amazing and very generous!
When I look at my tax statement nothing about what's mentioned by parent(gp) looks generous anymore. 50% of what my employer pays for me is conveniently put into the governments pockets rather than mine. Add 25% VAT, petrol that costs 2$ per litre, alcohol that's taxed through the roof, another 20% tax if you make more than 44KSEK/mo.
I don't like the deal, to me it feels like a ripoff. But the government has conveniently put half our income tax on the employer as an "employer tax" that many people don't even know exists, so people think our tax is 30-ish percent since they don't see it on their payslip.
Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?
#95In most tech companies you can negotiate a lower number of days per week for lesser pay. In the last two decades I've been in the industry, I knew very junior people (early in their career) and very senior people doing 3-4 day workweek due to personal reasons in pretty much every company I worked in. It wasn't a big deal. Ability to take 3-6 month long unpaid breaks (sabbaticals), 4 weeks of PTOs, plus sick/carer leaves are quite standard in most good tech companies.
During Covid, many companies started doing rest/reset days every quarter that is basically a forced holiday for everyone together (no FOMO, no pressure to check emails, attend calls etc). Some companies have started to do rest/reset week every quarter! (because they think its necessary given their higher stress level work).
Getting time off isn't that hard. What is actually hard is getting high-quality work (where you get back as much as you give), satisfying work and a great team to do it with. Without great work and team, but have lot of PTO/perks etc it becomes very unsatisfying and not able to sustain interest.
I also see many companies screwing up by not investing in talent/skill development activities (not the typical corp L&D where they organise a workshop with some random person who seems very preachy and doesn't really practice). I wish they did this better and enabled people to manage their personal time better on their own.
Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
>you'd have to explain going beyond, say, 4 weeks This is less than the PTO mandated by law in many European countries. Hardly unlimited.
Important to know Europe doesn't calculate time offs like the US does. In the US, if you take 4 weeks off, it's 20 days PTO. In Europe it's 28-30.
I’ve managed team members in many European countries; we only count days you’d otherwise work. (We do have one every 5 year sabbatical program that is “4 weeks, and if there was a company holiday in that stretch, you don’t get an extra day”, but otherwise, taking 4 M-F stretches is 4x5 = 20 days of PTO.
Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?
#97At Automattic, you can do 4 days à 10 hours with 100% pay, 4 days à 8 hours with 80% pay, or 3 days à 8 hours with 60% pay. https://automattic.com/work-with-us/
Kinda random, but I'm curious: what's your native language? The "à" looks different in use here from my native language (Portuguese).
Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?
#98I like 4-day weeks, but what I would like even more is a month consecutive vacation a year. (Which is just 20-23 days off, rather than the ~50 Fridays every year.) This is pretty common places in Europe like France or Denmark (where you must take at least three weeks consecutive vacation.) Is this something any US companies are advertising?
At Bumble we have: - an unlimited PTO (you'd have to explain going beyond, say, 4 weeks, but otherwise working) - mandatory 2 payed weeks off (1 in December and 1 in Jun) - mostly remote using the "office-hub" model, only requiring presence when necessary - every 2 weeks there something we call a Focus Friday, when nobody can contact you and you are free to concentrate on things you want to work on. This covers all o…
“Unlimited PTO” is a scam. If it’s truly unlimited why not take 52 weeks off per year?
Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
At Bumble we have: - an unlimited PTO (you'd have to explain going beyond, say, 4 weeks, but otherwise working) - mandatory 2 payed weeks off (1 in December and 1 in Jun) - mostly remote using the "office-hub" model, only requiring presence when necessary - every 2 weeks there something we call a Focus Friday, when nobody can contact you and you are free to concentrate on things you want to work on. This covers all o…
I'm glad that you're happy with the system, but I'm not satisfied with your comment. In my personal experience, people with "unlimited vacation" tend to take less overall vacation than I do, on a mandatory vacation time per year. > (you'd have to explain going beyond, say, 4 weeks, but otherwise working) Unless "I'd like to take a 5-week vacation" isn't enough explanation in itself, it clearly isn't working. An emplo…
I've been at only one company where "unlimited PTO" was really treated close to that way. There were offices in San Francisco and Paris, and the CEO was French (and based in the US).
The US office had untracked PTO, and from the get-go he would let the Americans know that the French office had around 7 weeks time off, and that they'd use it, so they should as well.
He took essentially the month of August off, which did help establish that 4 week vacations were "normal".
Re: Ask HN: Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?
#100Here in the Netherlands it's your legal right to work less hours for the same pay (per hour). In my company, the largest ISP, lots of people work either 32 hours, 36 (4x9) or something else. A standard contract at our company is 36 hours. Meaning every other Friday off by default. So I think finding a job in the Netherlands would be a good start.
I am a MSc student about to graduate in Amsterdam - domain is Data science (but i have a BSc in CS) - how would I approach a company about part-time work? Most positions are advertised as full-time, do I just apply for them and then if they chose me, mention that I only would like to work part-time? I feel like if i mention it too early in the hiring process they may actually chose a candidate that is able to work fu…
Get hired and then reduce your hours is the legal fool-proof way.
But honestly ask about their policies regarding this and you'll get a sense of the possibilities.