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

Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 271 posts

Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?

#191

Post by m_eiman »

In Sweden we're allowed by law to work 75% while we have kids under 8. I started doing that when the kids were small, and continued even though my youngest is now 9.

I work 7 hours per day Monday to Thursday, and Fridays I alternate between 8 hours and having the day off. Over two weeks, this equals 80%. If needed I do some work on my "free" Fridays as well, but it's usually not needed.

If you ask me, I'd say I'm as productive on this schedule as I would have been on 8 hours per day - if not more. So it's win-win: my employer gets the output of 100% but only pays 80%, and I get time off to do other things.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?

#192

Post by nazavo »

ronyfadel wrote: post #148

I’m a contractor working 4 days per week for a well known YC startup. I indie hack on Fridays and weekends. I found the job on Twitter, almost by mistake. The 4-day workweek was a non-negotiable for me because the indie hacking part is so much fun, and it’s making me around $60-70k/year, and I’d very much like to keep on developing the business.

Dream life! How did you go about negotiating 4-day week at a startup? From experience sturtups have been a "6 days in a 5-day week grind". Seeing a 4-day week is refreshing!

Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?

#193

Post by d4rti »

Fr3dd1 wrote: post #180
Apreche wrote: post #19

I 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…

Context: I do recruiting as a team lead. I am happy you found what you were looking for. But from my pov, if you want to work less than fulltime and thats a non negotiable thing for you, please be open up front with the people who interview you. Typically when a full time position is offered, the workload of a full person is needed (lets not discuss if 8h of work a day results in better or more output than less hours…

I don't see what GP did as much different than how most recruitment processes work from the hiring side. You usually don't find out:

  - salary
  - stock options
  - contractual terms, like non-competes 
  - etc
until you have cleared their hiring bars first.

I'd love to see full transparency on both sides, but until we do I don't think they did anything wrong, and in fact just applied the same approach used by many companies, waiting until they were committed before making their big ask.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?

#194

Post by Lutger »

Dutch here. Haven't worked more than 32 hours a week in 20 years. I did downgrade to 24 a week for a while, convinced my boss I wanted to do a masters and he let me. Salary was just enough to pay for everything.

Its mostly normal to work 32 hours in my country. I feel 32 should be the norm actually. In my line of work - software development, 32, 36 and 40 hours are all very common. Less than 32 is really uncommon though, as a salaried employee.

I consider 32 hours to be a full-time job these days and noticed a lot of people around me are starting to do the same.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?

#195

Post by nopehnnope »

Fr3dd1 wrote: post #180
Apreche wrote: post #19

I 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…

Context: I do recruiting as a team lead. I am happy you found what you were looking for. But from my pov, if you want to work less than fulltime and thats a non negotiable thing for you, please be open up front with the people who interview you. Typically when a full time position is offered, the workload of a full person is needed (lets not discuss if 8h of work a day results in better or more output than less hours…

Absolutely not. There are certain questions you can’t ask until after you have an offer because they will otherwise unfairly shade people’s perception of you. This is no different than waiting a few dates before disclosing medical issues and such to a potential mate. Convince people of your value first, then hit them with the conditions.

This isn’t a flaw to be fixed. It’s just how human interactions work. It has always been this way and always will be, no matter what you try to do about it.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?

#196

Post by hum3hum3 »

>Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee? I do, working at Atom bank in the UK. We switched to a a 4 day week 4 8.5 hours at the end of Covid. It works great - I am also working from home. It is noticiably more focused during the 4 days. Eg not doing meetings unless you need to.

I was lucky and I started on a 37.5 5 7.5 hours a day in the office.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?

#197

Post by OJFord »

nazavo wrote: post #190

I did a 4 day week experiment couple years back. I used the leave time to book every Friday through upcoming four months. I loved the experiment a lot. It's not only an extra day you get (50% increase in free time) but also an extra night (100% increase!). Saturdays sometimes felt like "Sundays" and it was good to remind myself there's a whole extra day to live life. When I asked to make 4-day week a thing, at least…

> When I asked to make 4-day week a thing, at least for me, the request was rejected. The reasoning had to do with "synergy" in a team and lack of much overlap in a remote team. Example I was given: if everyone started taking 4-day weeks it might be that Bob has Mondays off, Kate is off on Wednesday, and I would be out on Friday. Fair enough.

Alternative framing: encourages good communication and high bus factor.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?

#198

Post by nly »

Fr3dd1 wrote: post #180
Apreche wrote: post #19

I 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…

Context: I do recruiting as a team lead. I am happy you found what you were looking for. But from my pov, if you want to work less than fulltime and thats a non negotiable thing for you, please be open up front with the people who interview you. Typically when a full time position is offered, the workload of a full person is needed (lets not discuss if 8h of work a day results in better or more output than less hours…

If he had been up front his his ambition to work 4 days a week then he wouldn't have made it to interview at most of the places he did, let alone to offer stage.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?

#199

Post by Rossimac »

Aperocky wrote: post #117
koolba wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 x 10 hours or 4 x 8?

This is an important distinction, but personally I think I prefer 4x10 over 5x8. Productivity will probably be better too.

Member of my team moved recently to 4x9.375 instead of 5x7.5. My company wouldn't allow an hours reduction at the same or similar salary, so he took the offered option above. He takes Wednesday off and seems to enjoy it. I'm considering the same now, too.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?

#200

Post by krageon »

Fr3dd1 wrote: post #180
Apreche wrote: post #19

I 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…

Context: I do recruiting as a team lead. I am happy you found what you were looking for. But from my pov, if you want to work less than fulltime and thats a non negotiable thing for you, please be open up front with the people who interview you. Typically when a full time position is offered, the workload of a full person is needed (lets not discuss if 8h of work a day results in better or more output than less hours…

Telling a recruiter things you'd like usually leads to them telling you to fuck off, so this advice is very good for getting zero jobs. If you get through a whole interview process (i.e. you like them) and the fact that they don't want to sit in your (virtual) office for five days a week is still a complete deal breaker you have a poor process. If you feel like that realisation wastes your time, I think you have some growth to do as a team lead.
Post reply on HN