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Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?
121–130 of 271 posts
Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?
#122Yes. I’m a contractor at a large IT integrator in Australia. It helps that my boss was (see below) a good friend. I think it was mid-last-year, I just realised I’d be mentally healthier if I worked 4 days a week. So I said, I’m going to start working 4 days a week. And he said, okay. Because he’s great. And it is glorious . You go from spending almost three-quarters of your life at work (71.4%) to just over half (57.…
> There’s so much wasted time in the typical day
This is the most important thing to understand, at least in IT as a whole and in the integrator/MSP wrold specifically.
There were the times were the actual work didn't clocked more than two hours a day for months. Not because there was no work, but because there were meetings, red tape, e-mail chains with a dozens addresses in CC...
Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?
#123I did not negotiate this but we get some Fridays off and I use unlimited PTO for the others to make it a 4 day workweek (except when oncall).
When there’s a deadline or shits broken Ill put in the effort but for the most part its a 4 day workweek and its great.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?
#124I eork a "9/80" schedule, which ammounts to working 9 hours M-Th and alternating between an 8 hour day on Friday and having a Friday off. So I have a 3 day weekend every other weekend.
In my company, it's something that every "creative" employee has the option to do. It's based on the idea that we're billed out to clients hourly and all of our work should be scheduled a bit in advance. Fridays are staggered though, so there should always be some availability.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?
#125My company switched to 4x8 and it's been great. I personally feel like I'm getting more work done.
I believe one of the reasons they did this was to prevent people from leaving the company and it's certainly worked for me. I don't see myself wanting to change companies as long as I stay in my current country (Canada). Even for double my salary I think I wouldn't move.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Eventually a place made an offer I couldn’t refuse. Well... it's better than sleeping with the fishes :) JK JK Thanks for the write up!
Well, I do now feel like I owe my employer a huge favor XD.
That’s the secret. More employers would benefit from recognizing it.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?
#127I just recently started a 32 hour a week salaried job. Here’s my story. I was at a very good job. My ultimate goal is to just go to the beach and not work at all. I realized that’s too big of a leap, so I set a shorter term more realistic goal of working 4 days a week. My employer at the time rejected the idea, so instead of ignoring recruiters like usual, I answered them. If a job wasn’t immoral, the interview proce…
You wouldn’t get tired of the beach if you went every day?
Unlike the two people who replied to you, I would 100% get tired of the beach within... 2 hours.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is amazing, good for you! Do you mind sharing your job, how long the process took/how many different companies you interviewed?
I'm a software engineer. I'm working at a startup now after basically refusing to work at start-ups, or any kind of tech company, my entire career prior. I always worked at normal stable trustworthy non-tech companies that happened to need software engineers. I would still prefer to go back to the non-tech non-startup industry, but the offer was too good. The process took less than a year. I entertained pitches from…
> Most of them I rejected immediately because the jobs were beneath my high moral standard.
Earlier you mentioned
> Eventually a place made an offer I couldn’t refuse.
Did you need to sacrifice morals for this offer? Or is there some other reason you took the offer?
Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?
#129I've worked formal 3 and 4 day week arrangements. Net experience: it's pointless, if you're working 4 day weeks and you're feeling behind, you may well end up working that 5th day without anyone asking. Similarly in a 5 day week arrangement, I've never felt compelled to actually work the full week especially when I'm ahead. Ignoring any formality, I think most folk work a 2-3 week if they were honest about it. I woul…
>>Similarly in a 5 day week arrangement, I've never felt compelled to actually work the full week especially when I'm ahead.
Ignoring any formality, I think most folk work a 2-3 week if they were honest about it.
While I agree with you, ya gotta admit that most don’t have the luxury to just say “I got my work done already im just gonna take Friday off.”
Most of us are expected to be available at the least from M-F, 9-5.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
You wouldn’t get tired of the beach if you went every day?
Absolutely not. I would live in a beach house, and I would indeed spend many hours laying in the sand, swimming in the ocean, etc. But I wouldn't literally spend the entire rest of my life doing nothing else at all. There would be socializing with friends and family, traveling, and taking care of my affairs. I would also spend plenty of time on hobbies of all sorts. The key is that I would be living a life of complet…
> The key is that I would be living a life of complete and total leisure. Wake up whenever I want. Sleep whenever I want. Eat whenever I want. And each day, each moment, I would do whatever in particular I happened to feel like doing.
I ended up in essentially this state for several years. It was about as blissful as you would imagine. The problem is, what got me in to that state was an intense drive (among other things) that becomes increasingly hard to sate without a meaningful purpose.
So I've voluntarily made my way back into "capitalist systems" and have to consciously remind myself that it is optional and a choice I've made. It's hard to find lasting contentment.