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World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

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Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#161

Post by impalallama »

I have a pet theory that it’s not that people are more productive when they work less but that there is less work needs doing but few are willing to say it. You go back in time and a lot of great technological innovations have the inventors talking about how great it will be when we only have to work one day a week thanks to it. All this crazy tech we have nowadays means a lot can be done in less time so more of peoples jobs is just pretending to work or inventing work that needs doing.

It’s about time we reap the fruits of technological progress.

Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#162

Post by hnews_account_1 »

idopmstuff wrote: post #57
vouaobrasil wrote: post #13

When was a mathematician, I worked as hard as I could until I was mentally exhausted. I actually calculated how much I worked per week over a period of two years. On actual "hard thinking", like working through logic, I spent about 7 hours. There was another 7 hours writing and clarifying topics, and another 6 hours or so on classes, seminars (sort of like meetings, but productive). That gives a total of 20 hours per…

I'm a PM and I work from home - far and away the biggest advantage IMHO isn't the lack of commute (though that's great), but rather the flexibility in schedule. My most productive hours are 6-9am - I can crank through what would take me most of 9am-5pm in that time period. That's wasted when I have to get ready and commute during that time period. When optimizing for most efficient working times, 40 hours a week is r…

What are you accomplishing daily at 6-9 am when most people aren't logged in? I know there's like a lot of individual work but when do you work with other people? Do you just work less efficiently during the day you mean?

Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#163

Post by Insanity »

lettergram wrote: post #85

Good, you all work 4 days and I’ll work my standard 6x10 6 days, 10hrs a day. When people get fired presumably I’ll still be standing. When promotion time comes around, the person who does the most will get the promotion. When bonus time comes, I’ll have the most done. You can try to regulate day(s), but if there’s people willing to work more they’ll set the standard.

As someone managing a team of engineers, I would see this as a red flag and not something to praise. Promotions are not based on working such hours anywhere I have seen either. And similarly, that alone will not protect you from being laid off.

Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#164

Post by hnews_account_1 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #139
vouaobrasil wrote: post #13

When was a mathematician, I worked as hard as I could until I was mentally exhausted. I actually calculated how much I worked per week over a period of two years. On actual "hard thinking", like working through logic, I spent about 7 hours. There was another 7 hours writing and clarifying topics, and another 6 hours or so on classes, seminars (sort of like meetings, but productive). That gives a total of 20 hours per…

Personally, I have been observing my own technical work habits a lot recently. What I have noticed agrees with your narrative but disagrees with your point. Here's the rundown: * I can sustain hard mental labor (including but not limited to work) for about 50 hours per week total * I don't know when I'm going to be in the best state to do that work, and it depends on a lot of factors * Some of those factors are exter…

The productivity in office suits certain work styles that are people heavy. The argument for and against remote work isn't as dependent on the productivity time as people think. Sure, some people are unproductive for periods between 9am - 5pm. Most people are not. That's why those times work. I am myself very productive during those times but only for analytical work. When I need to code, I have to be home with ANC earphones and get lost in the iterations (assuming I'm not stuck somewhere).

The whole idiocy around 5 days a week 9-5 is because people think you have to be in office all that time. People can and do take random half days, hours off to go to the dentist or the doctor or to the post office or whatever the fuck. That's how it has always been. There are very few jobs that require you to literally never fuck off if there's nothing going on. Work adjusts around you if you're a productive person. Some of us can get stuck with shitty bosses and everyone empathizes with that, but for the vast majority of folks, the boss absolutely does not give a flying fuck about when you come in as long as he knows you're disciplined.

Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#165

Post by escape_goat »

blitz_skull wrote: post #148
HEmanZ wrote: post #125

In America I would really like to see people balance work and life better, and normalizing a 4 day workweek would go a long way to help that. We have a business culture and set of laws that I think results most people sacrificing too much life to get stuff that doesn’t make them happy. BUT I disagree strongly with this idea that anyone who works more than 30 hours per week is just unproductive. That’s just factually…

I think most folks, especially the ones I’ve spoken to on the issue—specifically object to the idea that more than 40 hours nets any real gain for KNOWLEDGE work. Results may vary. I don’t think anyone is arguing for example that our paramedics aren’t doing anything useful after 40 hours. That’s the key distinction and as someone who has worked a distinctly bullshit job his entire career; I’m not rushing to spend any…

Honestly if knowledge workers are sort of dialing it in unhappily with minimal productivity after X hours and labor/service/on-call workers can keep plugging away for Y>X hours then there might be some win-win there in terms of quality of life and wage inflation.

Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#167

Post by escape_goat »

HEmanZ wrote: post #157
blitz_skull wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most folks, especially the ones I’ve spoken to on the issue—specifically object to the idea that more than 40 hours nets any real gain for KNOWLEDGE work. Results may vary. I don’t think anyone is arguing for example that our paramedics aren’t doing anything useful after 40 hours. That’s the key distinction and as someone who has worked a distinctly bullshit job his entire career; I’m not rushing to spend any…

I still argue against this for all knowledge work. I keep seeing this term “bullshit jobs” and need to probably look more into it, but it seems to refer to office jobs where huge amounts of time are wasted on unproductive work. I’ve had this kind of work in the past. But not all knowledge work is like this. I’m a software engineer, and on some of the big projects I’ve been on I have squeezed massive amounts of real p…

But maybe you guys are 1.25 developers. I mean if most people are staring at their screens and done for the week on Friday and you're still getting things done then in terms of ideals — because okay I know this needs hashing out in practice— I don't think anybody is going to resent you taking home a premium based on what you put in every week.

Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#168

Post by Retric »

bavila wrote: post #118
vouaobrasil wrote: post #13

When was a mathematician, I worked as hard as I could until I was mentally exhausted. I actually calculated how much I worked per week over a period of two years. On actual "hard thinking", like working through logic, I spent about 7 hours. There was another 7 hours writing and clarifying topics, and another 6 hours or so on classes, seminars (sort of like meetings, but productive). That gives a total of 20 hours per…

> My conclusions after observing a ton of people in technical and nontechnical jobs is that beyond working 20-25 hours a week, having people do more is useless... I'm not so sure about this. I was working in a remote "full-stack" (but really 90% front-end role) for 14 months from the start of January 2021 to the end of February 2022. I tracked my hours religiously the entire time I was employed there (not required, b…

Where these discussions trip up is different kinds of programming tasks vary in how mentality draining they are.

Some days I can spend 10 long hours working through straightforward problems and come home energized. Other days I mentally check out after spending 3-4 hours beating my head against a really difficult problem then go home and have little desire to do anything but zone out and recover.

Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#169

Post by therealdrag0 »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #13

When was a mathematician, I worked as hard as I could until I was mentally exhausted. I actually calculated how much I worked per week over a period of two years. On actual "hard thinking", like working through logic, I spent about 7 hours. There was another 7 hours writing and clarifying topics, and another 6 hours or so on classes, seminars (sort of like meetings, but productive). That gives a total of 20 hours per…

Your conclusions don’t follow. Most people are not doing exclusively mentally demanding technical work, which you admit, so why would you limit the work week based on that? And non strenuous work takes a nontrivial amount of time? I’m regularly solidly productive for 30-40 hours a week (tracked with RescueTime app).

Today I did around a dozen PRs (among other things like design reviews) that were tiny changes (cleanup, or migration config flags over various repos). It wasn’t hard work, but it’s important work that has to get done. Shortening the week doesn’t magically get this done faster.

Re: World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back

#170

Post by wonderwonder »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #13

When was a mathematician, I worked as hard as I could until I was mentally exhausted. I actually calculated how much I worked per week over a period of two years. On actual "hard thinking", like working through logic, I spent about 7 hours. There was another 7 hours writing and clarifying topics, and another 6 hours or so on classes, seminars (sort of like meetings, but productive). That gives a total of 20 hours per…

I agree with the 20 - 25 hours of productive mental work per week. So much of my day is wasted with meetings that could be an email. The worst are recurring weekly meetings. Why?

Tomorrow I have meeting starting from 9am. From 9-5 I only have 1.5 hours that are not meetings and they are not concurrent, they are 3 30 minute blocks between meetings. I have an insane deadline I am trying to make in 2 weeks. How am I supposed to get any work done if I am constantly in meetings? I feel like companies should designate at most 2 hours a day as meeting hours, after that let tech workers build tech, its not right to fill days with meetings and then expect us to produce at night.

My last job had almost no meetings it was awesome. I really only worked maybe 20 hours a week but it was solid deep work. Its been a year and the company CTO still reaches out occasionally to see if I want a position for various projects they have coming up.

If you let developers just work when they are in work mode you will get solid results.

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