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Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

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141–150 of 312 posts

Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

#141
Can we agree that different people have different optimal working styles?

Some people get everything done first thing in the morning and are useless in the afternoons.

Some people can't get started until noon whatever their local time is.

Some people can commit to 10 or 12 hour days, and if so, it's not fair to ask them to work 5 days a week at that rate.

Some people work best in private offices, some at separated workstations, some at big collaborative tables, and some at home. Some do best standing, some walking, and some lying down -- all different from the ones who do best in a nice supportive chair or on a stool with no backrest. Some need an ergonomic keyboard, some need macros, some need a giant screen or 2 screens, or six. Some need screenreader software and some need speech-to-text.

The relevant questions:

* are they productive in some arrangement? I have seen a very very few people who seem to be always rearranging things and changing equipment and hours in a constant pursuit of distraction. The vast majority of people figure things out and settle into a steady state of productivity...

* is the nature of the work conducive to the desired arrangement? If the position requires customer or vendor contact or operations response, the coverage needs to be maintained (and handoffs need to occur smoothly).

* is the company culture amenable to alteration or accomodation? At one workplace, most of the people I worked with didn't come in until 11am and liked to schedule meetings at 6pm. I liked to leave around 5:30, having been there since 8 or so.

Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

#142
post #24

Why not both? 4 days, 6 hours each. Hey employers reading this. Having a hard time finding software engineers? Offer me this and I will come running. I’ll be banging on your door with my resume. Think about it.

Let's go a step further: https://archive.iww.org/history/library/misc/Bekken2000/

Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

#143
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my old job we used to get Friday’s off if we worked 9 hrs the first 4 days. People just worked 8 hours and didn’t come in Friday’s.

Over here commute is part of work by law, so I assume it would count as 9 for most people?

In this case no, they just took the option to work less without making up the hours.

Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

#144
Agreed, largely because I find I'm able to efficiently use small amounts of extra time, but struggle to make productive use of an entire free day. Even working 30m or an hour less is enough to squeeze in a workout and some Anki reviews. I'm also hourly, so I can't help but assess whether the things I chose to do during that time were "worth it" compared to the compensation I missed out on.

Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

#145
I rather work 2-4 hours for even 6 days a week

I wouldn't. The problem with that schedule is that you never get a break. Every day is a work day. You're always thinking about work. You always have to spend time getting ready for work, spend time commuting, spend time (or money) getting lunch. You can't just chuck some stuff in a bad and disappear to a different country for a 3 day long weekend break.

The beauty of a 4 day week is that you don't have to think about work for 3 days a week. That gives you far more freedom than shorter work days.

Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

#146
I live in europe but work for a US company, so I do ~ 3pm - 11pm, and I absolutely love it.

Instead of sitting inside all day while its sunny and then having free time just as its getting dark and everything is closing, I can enjoy (most) of my day, hang out with the kids for a bit while working, and then get some solid quiet work time in the evening.

I ski, hike, bike, do admin etc during the week, then have my weekends completely free for family.

Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

#147
post #125

Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t think a four day work week is radical enough. A web developer today is easily 5x more productive than a web developer 30 years ago: we have off the shelf databases, frameworks, and a huge ecosystem of open source libraries. If I can produce the same output as a web developer 30 years ago, but at 1/5th the time, then why am I not working 1 day a week for the same pay? What’s the point of m…

unionize!

Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

#148

Meanwhile in China... Excerpts below taken from the website https://996.icu/#/en_US What is "996"? 996 working, ICU waiting. A "996" work schedule refers to an unofficial work schedule (9a.m. ~ 9p.m., 6 days a week) that has been gaining in popularity. Serving a company that encourages the "996" work schedule usually means working for at least 60 hours a week. In early September 2016, it was said that 58.com (58同城, a…

I thought the Chinese government was pushing back on 996.

Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

#149
post #55

So I am seeing more and more of ideas like this; but I feel the need to challenge them a bit. Not the ideal; work less, have more fulfilling lives - I am all in. But all of these initiatives are focused on the wealthier office workers and sometimes factory/shift workers who are non-customer facing. But it totally ignores the service industry which is a huge part of our society (and arguably even more so if we end up…

No one thinks they should be that same hours removed. Shift work could handle 32 hour weeks instead of 40 hour weeks by just having more employees

Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO

#150
post #21

The thing about the 5 days a week is that at the weekends you end up doing personal stuff you neglected during the workdays. I'm not sure that having two more hours a day will free up your weekend, I'm kind of leaning to 4 days a week because you can actually have useful time. Personally, I wouldn't object to 3 days of non-stop working till the midnight to have 4 free days a week. Things won't pile up and instead of…

As you can probably see from the diversity of comments, this is a very subjective topic. I've seen (just in this thread) everything from "I'm fine with my 6x7" to "I'd love 3x10".

Some people would find that having two extra hours a day is great; others wouldn't.

For this among other reasons, I'm against a "one size fits all" policy. Give people more than one option, where it's reasonable to do so.

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