Agree. I have ~30h work week and free working hours and i am aiming to do ~4 hours/day, 7 days a week. I cannot imagine how people in mentally demanding jobs like software development can keep focus on 8-hour shifts.
Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO
201–210 of 312 posts
Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO
#202Can 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 wo…
Agree 100% with this take. But my question is: how do you mesh all these types together and run an effective team/company? Or is that even possible?
Hire based on working style.
Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone I know in non-tech jobs work minimum 40 hours a week. I know a bunch of people doing minimum wage jobs doing 80+ hours a week. I remember tech in the early days (and still at many jobs) working dawn to dusk. Now it seems developers are choosing between 4 day weeks and 6 hours/day? the job market is going to get a rude awakening.
Software engineers are hardly minimum wage jobs! And the human brain can’t sustain constant thought intensive tasks for long period of times continually… The dawn to dusk (if ever happened… I guess it depends on the country) it’s just a waste of time. Anyway I live on France and here the official working week is 35h!
Agreed they're skilled jobs and you can't write code 50 hours a week. You can write code 30 hours a week then talk with users, have design meetings, do paperwork, do first level support etc.
France is a nice place to live. Everyone working 35 hrs and being on holiday so often is a good reason its economy is slowly dying.
Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO
#204Here's an idea: "roller coaster week" Monday: 4 hours Tuesday: 6 hours Wednesday: 10 hours Thursday: 6 hours Friday: 4 hours total: 30 hours How it works: - Monday: The second half of your day is work. Your morning is open to sleep in, get chores done, run errands, eat brunch with friends. Second half of the day should be meetings to plan the work for the week, and catch up from the previous week. - Tuesday: Very few…
Looks like hell for trying to schedule anything kid-related.
Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO
#205Here's an idea: "roller coaster week" Monday: 4 hours Tuesday: 6 hours Wednesday: 10 hours Thursday: 6 hours Friday: 4 hours total: 30 hours How it works: - Monday: The second half of your day is work. Your morning is open to sleep in, get chores done, run errands, eat brunch with friends. Second half of the day should be meetings to plan the work for the week, and catch up from the previous week. - Tuesday: Very few…
Looks like hell for trying to schedule anything kid-related.
My experience with a < 3 year old is that I go "I need to do this today, this is fine," and my boss is cool with it and somehow the world doesn't burn down.
Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO
#206I currently work 32 hours per week. When I was in the the office it was a 4 day week; now that I'm remote I prefer working about 6.5 hrs per day. I negotiated this with my employer as 20% less working hours for 20% less salary. I love it. The big win for me is having ~8 hrs per week where I don't need to work AND have childcare, so if I want to sip coffee and read a book in peace & quiet, I have time to do that. Also gives time to be involved in my neighborhood, church and school, which I find satisfying.
The biggest concern my companies had with this is that co-workers would hear about it, get jealous, and ask for it too. Companies also had this concern about remote-work pre-pandemic, and I think both have found these concerns to be unfounded. Especially with my current schedule, I'm available at all the times when anybody would want to talk to me anyway, so most people don't even know about this unique arrangement.
Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know you're not to supposed to listen to advice on the Internet, but perhaps improving/changing your sleeping habits if you want to stay in your job? If Saturday is the one day you are getting good sleep, then there is some improvement to be done. Perhaps reading a book before bed, and trying to go to bed early, can create a new sleep routing for your sleep hygiene? Worth a try! Hope you feel less tired!
> I know you're not to supposed to listen to advice on the Internet Perhaps that's the conventional wisdom yet advices on the Internet are exactly what I hunt for by writing this kind of comments here :-) For a reasonably rationally minded person this is a great input of things to explore. Many such advices already changed my life for good.
Another thing to look into is whether you have snoring / sleep apnea. Most people who do, it seems, are not aware of it. 2 easy, objective tests:
1) Ask your sleeping partner, if you have one, if you snore.
2) Record yourself sleeping. I used an app called SnoreLab which does audio analysis to give you a numerical rating and pulls clips of likely snoring moments so you don't have to scrub through the entire night's recording. The app also gives a pretty exhaustive list of recommendations for fixing snoring.
Many people have snoring / apnea and don't know it / are in denial. Poor sleep quality / being tired is a symptom. Fixing this can add quality years to your life, so worth looking into.
Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one of the reasons diversity (in this case neural diversity) is important in the office. I've worked in a number of startup where theoretically take breaks, playing video game, going for a walk, whatever was supported, but in practice nobody did it. But all it takes (when the management is supportive) is 1 or 2 outgoing people that make a point to prod their colleagues to do something. Working with a few peop…
>"hey, who wants to go play drisbee in 15 minutes" or "pinball tournament after lunch" makes the work environment much more enjoyable Oh hell no. I need a break, but the last thing I want to do is take a break with other people. I'd rather sit at my desk pretending to work that go play games with other people. That is literally hell on earth. But now I can't go for a walk on my own because then I'll get questions abo…
one size doesn’t fit all is the takeaway of almost every post here.
Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO
#209Here's an idea: "roller coaster week" Monday: 4 hours Tuesday: 6 hours Wednesday: 10 hours Thursday: 6 hours Friday: 4 hours total: 30 hours How it works: - Monday: The second half of your day is work. Your morning is open to sleep in, get chores done, run errands, eat brunch with friends. Second half of the day should be meetings to plan the work for the week, and catch up from the previous week. - Tuesday: Very few…
Looks like hell for trying to schedule anything kid-related.
What? How? It's the exact same day & time as the 5-day/8-hour that's been standard for decades. But you get more free time to play with your kids, drive them to school, bring them to BJJ, cook for them.
Wednesday is "no communication day" so you could break the 10 hours up and it won't affect anyone.
Re: Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO
#210Everyone is different if I lead and required to be at my job 9-5 and I worked more of an engineering schedule I would do something like 20 hours days to try and maximize the days off you have.
Would the work days suck? yes. But in my opinion working 8 hours a day already makes the rest of the day useless. I think in the end a schedule where you work to get it out of the way and then enjoy the time off would feel like I am taking more time off than I am working. I know every industry couldn't do this, but for some it's possible. If you get do it by pay month you could work 4 on the front and 4 on the back and get 21-ish days off for 8 days of work.