131–140 of 156 posts
At my previous startup we tried this with engineering and actually saw a productivity _increase_ from 4-day work-week.
The arguments against 4-day work weeks are slowly eroding, and I'm here for it.
why would a company agree to pay the same salary for fewer hours of custody? it reminds me of the macchiavelli quote: > “How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.” productivity study is interesting but that's not how the real world incentives are aligned.
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Because burn-out is the main driving factor behind the productivity changes, not the hypotheticals you are talking about. In engineering, people are burned out by friday, and even outside of engineering, people tend to phone it in by that point in the week because they are just done. They are operating at less than 50% mental or physical capacity. If you instead just give them that time to recharge, they'll get that…
My anecdotal experience doesn't support this. I worked in an org that shifted to a 9/80 schedule with a three day weekend every other week. Prior to this, Fridays always seemed to be the days where people coasted...they would come in kinda late, have a coffee break, then have a breakfast break, then an extended bathroom break, maybe get an hour of stuff done before an extended lunch. And of course, Friday afternoon m…
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My pace of work is burn myself out in the first 1-2 hours of every day and then procrastinate / go to meetings. I'm so happy to be out of the office. Being able to work whenever works for me (and my ADHD brain) has probably given me at least 50% more output on average. Hours don't mean anything to me and nobody has ever complained about my work pace (rather the opposite). Pretending to be busy in an office was tortur…
Ugh. I do the opposite, as I am VERY much not a morning person, so I spend the first hour or two each day just fighting to appear awake. But then get enough done in my peak couple hours after lunch that I run out of work to do. Wish the promise of "Salaried means we pay for the job to be done" ideal was more of a reality.
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This is a bit different from a 32 hour week. But yes you will see productivity go UP with 4 10s. That's a full days worth of break and lunch interruptions that isn't there. I switched to 4 10s a couple years back and it's nice, but the days are quite long so anything else you plan to do probably isn't happening. Like gym time, which is going to cost long term.
To be fair this was heavy construction, so a baseline of physical activity was there. Out-of-town work as well, so longer days were a bonus since off-duty time would be sent sitting in your trailer or at the bar. An extra day to travel and spend with the family at home was huge for the guys. > That's a full days worth of break and lunch interruptions that isn't there. A constant battle I've seen between superintenden…
When things get busy having a additional 10 hour day in the week can really get things moving too. They do pay overtime for that though.
I think I personally know many people that will simply use the extra time to work another job, thus erasing the intended benefit to the generous company. They work you less so that you will have better morale and energy and loyalty while you are there. But you use the time to collect a 2nd paycheck, and the gets the same tired employee they would have had if they just worked you fully the old way. I don't know what c…
pro 4-day workweek = upvote
skeptical of 4-day workweek = downvote
I guess it is human nature to dismiss skepticism of an outcome when the outcome is strongly desired
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My anecdotal experience doesn't support this. I worked in an org that shifted to a 9/80 schedule with a three day weekend every other week. Prior to this, Fridays always seemed to be the days where people coasted...they would come in kinda late, have a coffee break, then have a breakfast break, then an extended bathroom break, maybe get an hour of stuff done before an extended lunch. And of course, Friday afternoon m…
Imagine the flipside though. Imagine you work every day of the week. Surely this would have lower productivity than having one day or two days of weekend unless we are to believe weekends don't have a rejuvinating effect. If you have a problem where a segment of your workforce is slacking off on the last day (whatever that may be), that is its own problem that will exist unless you have no days off (which would obvio…
This seems to land in the area of untested hypothesis. Sure, we can speculate on all kinds of mechanisms. I could speculate that by going to 3 day weekends would lead to a bigger "rejuvination effect" and more productivity. But the data gathered from my org showed the opposite. Productivity went down. And now management had a lot of pushback to just get back to their baseline (more productive) schedule.
Now I'm willing to concede that it's going to be different industry to industry. It may very well work well in SWE and I think we see a lot of that bias in tech-centric circles. I also think it’s an error to assume it holds for most industries. My example was from an R&D area and not strictly software engineering. Do you, for example, think your doctors office would have more patient throughput if they went down to 4 eight-hour days? Or manufacturing? I'd be skeptical until I see the data. And I concede that a lot of work cultural differences also matter. And leadership matters. My original post was not claiming some definitive answer, just giving some pause to the sentiment that reduced hours is a generalizable rule to increase productivity*. I think a lot of people let their cognitive biases get the best of them and run with the idea.
* I also think "productivity" is the wrong way to frame the problem. Some things, like work-life balance, are a net good and worth a hit on productivity. The economy should serve society and not the other way around.
At my previous startup we tried this with engineering and actually saw a productivity _increase_ from 4-day work-week.
For me the real productivity benefit would be the 5th day when nobody is “working” but I log in and have an entire full day to focus without interruption.