Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 165 posts

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#81

Post by PhillyG »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #15
jen729w wrote: post #3

Some time last year I stopped working Mondays. I’m a contractor and I know my boss well, so I just said that I didn’t want to work Mondays any more. The difference is remarkable. You go from spending three quarters of your days at work to just over half. The weekend is actually relaxing. You can do chores, relax, and really unwind before the work week starts again. We use Mondays to work on our side projects. You can…

I personally find my weekends a bit exhausting because of my 5 year old, and get to relax at just doing my professional job on Monday when he is back to school. I fear that 3 day weekends every week (since we shouldn’t leave day care workers and teachers out of this) would be the end of me. I’m sure my perspective will change after we are out of the needy kid stage, but even before my son was born, I liked working (I…

Day care centres near me already have their staff on shifts, or at least some people working part time and starting later than others, so that they can cover the extra couple of hours that parents doing a 9-5 would need to be able to do those hours + the journey from day care to their work and back. If they gave their staff less hours each, that would simply mean they'd need to employ more staff to give the same service.

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#82

Post by kwhitefoot »

kule wrote: post #70
jen729w wrote: post #3

Some time last year I stopped working Mondays. I’m a contractor and I know my boss well, so I just said that I didn’t want to work Mondays any more. The difference is remarkable. You go from spending three quarters of your days at work to just over half. The weekend is actually relaxing. You can do chores, relax, and really unwind before the work week starts again. We use Mondays to work on our side projects. You can…

I see a lot of people go for Monday or Friday when going down to 4 days a week. There's definitely some advantages to that, however as an alternative suggestion I prefer Wednesdays off. I find even in the best jobs, there's a general level of stress that builds up at work over consecutive days. There's a great feeling being a bit stressed on Tuesday and thinking "ah it's ok I've got tomorrow off". It's like that "Fri…

Shops in the UK used to have a half day on Wednesdays.

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#83

Post by pnut »

systemvoltage wrote: post #28
sn0w_crash wrote: post #2

If you’re working 20% less than your competitor, you will fall behind. There’s no amount of mental gymnastics one can do to reconcile that fact. And if true, then the market should resolve this.

The beauty is that I want this experiment to run and see how it performs. The pessimism I have (based on last 10-15 years of decline and anti-capitalist motifs today) is that we're going to shy away from looking at the performance of this project anyways and prevent anyone from talking about it. 4-day workweeks will become the de-facto standard. By force. My prediction is that we will see shaming of companies that ev…

Global policy makers are bracing for the economy no longer needing human labor at scale, it's coming within our lifetimes.

Additionally, I'll go hungry before I give 50% of my scarce free time to my employer.

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#85

Post by netsharc »

buzzy_hacker wrote: post #21
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally find my weekends a bit exhausting because of my 5 year old, and get to relax at just doing my professional job on Monday when he is back to school. I fear that 3 day weekends every week (since we shouldn’t leave day care workers and teachers out of this) would be the end of me. I’m sure my perspective will change after we are out of the needy kid stage, but even before my son was born, I liked working (I…

> I fear that 3 day weekends every week (since we shouldn’t leave day care workers and teachers out of this) would be the end of me. We could have different groups of people take off different third days. My preference would be to have Wednesdays off.

There's a short story "Chronopolis" by J.G. Ballard, about a future where society was separated by watches with different colors, and each color had a different time slot for things like commute, lunches, and when they could go to the bank...

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#86

Post by Claude_Shannon »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #29
sn0w_crash wrote: post #2

If you’re working 20% less than your competitor, you will fall behind. There’s no amount of mental gymnastics one can do to reconcile that fact. And if true, then the market should resolve this.

Not everyone chooses that his life be dedicated to keeping up with or beating the competition.

But then they should be not surprised when they find themselves unable to find a well-paying job.

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#87

Post by r_c_a_d »

kule wrote: post #70
jen729w wrote: post #3

Some time last year I stopped working Mondays. I’m a contractor and I know my boss well, so I just said that I didn’t want to work Mondays any more. The difference is remarkable. You go from spending three quarters of your days at work to just over half. The weekend is actually relaxing. You can do chores, relax, and really unwind before the work week starts again. We use Mondays to work on our side projects. You can…

I see a lot of people go for Monday or Friday when going down to 4 days a week. There's definitely some advantages to that, however as an alternative suggestion I prefer Wednesdays off. I find even in the best jobs, there's a general level of stress that builds up at work over consecutive days. There's a great feeling being a bit stressed on Tuesday and thinking "ah it's ok I've got tomorrow off". It's like that "Fri…

I thought the same, but tried it for a month and it didn't work for me. Just as you get two Fridays a week (Tuesday and Friday) it also felt like I had two Mondays (Monday and Thursday). I just ended up hating Thursdays as much or more than Mondays, maybe because I was the only one doing it.

Also, sometimes I need a few days momentum to get something over the line and two days is often not enough. Anyway, just my 2p, more to the point I would totally jump at the chance to have a 4 day week permanently.

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#88

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

concordDance wrote: post #77
sofixa wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is all while the elementary school children were at no risk from the disease First, that's untrue: https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-survival/covid-19/ Of course it's not even close to the death rate in adults, especially older ones, thankfully, but it isn't "no risk". Second, the main reason for school closures was that the kids, even if there's very little risk for them, can transmit the disease to family…

That link is a very complicated one that could mislead people due to the first numbers they see. The number of direct deaths of under 10s in developed countries who did not suffer from a serious congenital condition is essentially 0 (e.g. in the UK about 1 in 20k deaths were of a child under 10 and as far as I know they all had serious health conditions).

There's been an outbreak of hepatitis recently which has resulted in a number of deaths and is very probably Covid-related.

There's also a significant risk of Long Covid, although the details are still being debated.

Covid attacks the immune system and also hugely increases the risk of complications from micro-clotting. It's certainly not a disease to be casual about, in either kids or adults.

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#89

Post by LightG »

I would take hybrid-time over a shorter work week ...

I'm honestly unsure why we're not keeping things flexible as each worker is different, their role and preferences are different, etc.

I'll take a 4 day week and I could make it work - but why give up the flexibility we've learned over the last couple of years?

I don't get it ... people talk a good game when it comes to Capitalism and capital allocation, but when it comes down it, pfft ... why not leave the capital allocation of time and location to the employee (with obvious guard rails and results expectation from the manager/boss).

This feels like it all boils down to one thing ... very few people know what actual management is.

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#90

Post by olau »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #41
rektide wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really just want escape from life, then maybe more personal time is bad & lots of work time is good. But I'd hope that for many parents, having a day with neither work nor childcare might be an opportunity, might be appreciated, might be a time, finally, where you can rediscover & do some you.

Plenty of people, me included, (males and/or high performance in particular) care more about things than people and will find extremely tiring to talk to people or take care or their kids. Coding doesn't tire me, dealing with kids does. There are people who have the opposite experience and people who feel ok with both. This idea that parents should uniquely and equally be caretaker for their kids is absolutely agains…

This is besides the point you're making, but I personally feel that being a parent is mostly a ghost job. You need to figure out how to put the children in positions where they'll find things to play with themselves, and then let them do it.

For me, I just bring a package of crackers, some water, then go out in the streets with my kids, visiting nearby playgrounds or lots with trees. They'll then start playing, perhaps needing a little help getting started, and my involvement is mostly coming up with a plan for where to go next, and watching out for signs of exhaustion. So most of the time, I'm actually not active.

I also enjoy having limited help with say cooking or cleaning, but yeah, that's exhausting, because you need to multitask and both do the job and monitor their state and the job they are doing.

Post reply on HN