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

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

#221

Post by ericd »

daniel_iversen wrote: post #208
Fr3dd1 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, and potentially the 3-5 other people who interviewed them as well! That would get me a bit fired up if they didn't ask me that until the end of the process.. as bad as when people tell me they want a remote role when it's clearly advertised as an in-city office-first role!

Do you tell them the salary and % of the company they’ll get up front?

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

#222

Post by zimpenfish »

Helmut10001 wrote: post #165
Aperocky wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have 30 hours workweek and work 5x6, for the last 7 years. I also negotiated that I can leave at noon, and work the remaining hours, from where ever I am, when there is need (e.g. when I need to answer crucial things at evenings, weekends etc., which happens maybe once in a month). It is very good, I can spend more time with my son. I can go running when there is still sunlight outside. The problem is I could not g…

> I don't abuse this deal: When I really want to get things finished, or when there's something critical, of course it happens

That's the thing - if you respect your employees, they'll respect you.

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

#223

Post by mrlucax »

kvirani wrote: post #114
mrlucax wrote: post #108

I'm working for a company that was originally a 40h workplace, but since last month and until the end of January will test a 32h week, with preferably the Fridays off (preferably because there are some departments that must have at least one person every day). After this test period the management will evaluate the productivity, basically some OKRs set before the change and if objectives were met we will keep this be…

Nice! How big in size of FTEs is this company and what industry is it in?

I'm sorry, I don't know what FTE is, but the company has abou 300 employees about half of it in engineering. The industry is financial services.

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

#224

Post by s8s8discourse »

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…

In the last two years I've been committing just 16-24 hours/week of actual sit-down-at-desk work to the projects/contracts I've worked on. Despite not working 40 hours, I hit all my deliverables and leave my clients very happy. No secret sauce - I just focus on getting deliverables done and religiously avoid "stuff-and-fluff".

That to say; recruiters, team leads et al have little idea of how workload converts to time. If you're measuring hours you've already lost. The only thing that matters is output value.

> Michael Scott: Jim Halpert: Not a hard worker. I can spend all day on a project, and he will finish the same project in a half an hour.

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

#225

Post by anrei0000 »

okumurahata wrote: post #182
mostertoaster wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this life of total leisure is the thing we all want, and it is for that reason the capitalist system seems to work. Someone has to provide the labor that allows you to continue in a life of leisure.

Society doesn't require many people to work to sustain itself (we have the recent example of the pandemic). If we could enjoy for a while what we have built until this current moment, without inventing or creating anything new, how much time will it take for society to collapse? Animals live a life of leisure without much work, and they don't have the infrastructure that we as humans have. They don't collapse. How mu…

> Animals live a life of leisure without much work, and they don't have the infrastructure that we as humans have. They don't collapse.

^ This claim doesn't really sound like it has a lot of evidence to back it up.

As i see this problem I can break it down in 2 parts: - systems (including animals & humans) evolve or decline - our species doesn't have a central decision system

So, as I see it, animals live a life of constant pressure where the strong survive and the weak are culled out. No judgement here on the implications of striving for strength.

Suppose humans stop advancing our way to creating supporting tools that enable our weak to live. In my view this means those tools will decline and tend to disappear. Thus as a species we would be heading to the type of life animals live - I described above.

So, I argue that all work is essential work because when the outskirts of the bell curve of essential work are cut off, then the height of the bell curve drops as well.

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

#226

Post by boffinAudio »

By 'here' do you mean in the USA?

Here in Europe (Austria) - it is very common to simply state during employment interviews that you wish to work 30-hour weeks. Its just a part of the negotiation stage and the company can take it or leave it - no questions asked.

If you're already signed up for a 40-hour week, well then this is a renegotiation - and you also have to be prepared to take it, or leave it.

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

#227

Post by tytho »

My input probably isn’t as valuable except as a data point, but the company I work for (around 100 employees) moved all employees over to a 32 hour/4 day work week without a change in salary. No negotiation involved technically, though there were a few employees who have been talking about 4-day work weeks for a long time.

They made this change with a 6-month trial period where we would determine if we would keep it at a later time based on some sort of productivity measurements. Everyone, including the CEO, seemed to agree that trying to measure productivity would yield few meaningful metrics. The consensus at the end was that productivity was either the same or a little less, but we ended up keeping it anyway.

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

#228

Post by nconrad »

I work for a small fulfillment business. When I found out I was pregnant with my second baby I told them I was either giving 8 months notice or I could work remote 4 days a week. After they hired someone to cover my maternity leave, they offered me full salary to stay on because I was that valuable to them. Even after training someone else for 6 months, she still couldn't keep up with the work I was pushing out.

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

#230

Post by sriram_malhar »

I worked a 4-day week for years, but that only means you get the same shit done in 4 days, not 7. I was due to get a promotion as an engineering manager, but I refused the promotion and the increased salary in lieu of fewer days at work. Over time, lesser quantum of work gets thrown your way because you are away from people's faces for a larger fraction of the time. That particular equation has changed because of WFH.

It was fantastic to have a long weekend every week. I also miraculously became more disciplined, because I promised and delivered by Thu evening. For some reason Friday evening used to always spill into Saturday, then Sunday, into the interstitial spaces between home and social life.

The downside was that people would more often than not hold meetings without me, and get to work on more juicy projects, and I would feel hurt at the beginning. I had to continually remind myself of the increased free time. At the peak frenetic pace of the early 2000's and the dot com boom, this was seen as career suicide. I knew that it wasn't any such thing, that you can always get work when you show quality, but the social pressure still made me doubt myself sometimes.

As edith piaf sang, je ne regrette rien. I regret nothing.

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