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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

#211

Post by jacquesm »

rebeccaskinner wrote: post #205
Retric wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Funnily enough, I find myself the exact opposite. Give me a really hard engaging problem and I can work 16 hours and barely realize any time has passed, but spending even 1-2 hours on something rote saps my energy for the entire day. My tolerant is even lower for the particularly challenging combination of tasks that are both uninteresting but also tedious.

The payback of such stints can be brutal though, and it won't necessarily happen the next day either.

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

#212

Post by vidarh »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #184
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I feel the only reason why we have 9-5, Monday to Friday jobs is because of infantile narcissists who have no other purpose in life than to go to work and push people like machines. Hanlon's razor applies here. As does Chesterton's Fence for that matter The 40 hour work week was won in actual blood from labor activists long before any of us were conceptions. The fact that we still live within it, is simply a proof o…

>We should continue to demand the value that efficiency has brought us go where it rightfully sits, with labor. Labor lost most power with the rise in globalization. It was much easier to strike and affect businesses when they had a limited hiring pool restricted to one country. Now they can just move to another country where labor is less demanding.

While that is true to a limited extent, labour is doing much better in plenty of countries where people have demanded - and gotten - far more than in the US also post-globalisation. Labour has lost power mainly in those countries where people bought into the employers narrative and stopped or scaled back the fighting.

Much of it correlates with media ownership support or hostility - e.g. in Norway the second largest media group was founded by the unions and remains owned by a charitable foundation, and so there has consistently been a strongly pro-union voice in media.

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

#213

Post by nasmorn »

lukevp wrote: post #180
mettamage wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands I also take a 20% gross pay cut. So net, that's more like a 10% pay cut. It doesn't pay to work 5 days in NL.

This doesn’t make sense to me unless it moves you into a lower tax bracket or something. Eg. If you made $100k and were taxed at 30%, you’d get paid net $70k. If you took a 20% gross pay cut, you’d get paid $80k gross and $56k net. 56k is 20% less than 70k.

In the Austrian tax system you are not taxed in one bracket. The first 15k are free next 5k at 15%, next 10k at 25% and so on. So your average tax rate will always be lower than your marginal rate, thus removing 20% gross will never remove 20% net. Actual values depend on your income of course.

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

#214

Post by lmm »

mysterydip wrote: post #36
TeMPOraL wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usual counterpoint is that you're not being paid just for the things you get done, but also for availability - for being there when there's a need to handle something unexpected. This has real value to a business, so you being available for 80% of the time justifies some degree of pay cut.

If only I was paid for all those "on call" hours when I was a sysadmin :)

What kind of fucked up country lets you be on call without getting paid for it?

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

#215

Post by DoingIsLearning »

bayindirh wrote: post #39
mysterydip wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only I was paid for all those "on call" hours when I was a sysadmin :)

Our team is paid no overtime, because we're considered "able to tend any emergencies and organize themselves if required" at off-hours too. Well, our system almost never creates that kind of emergency, but we think this is a fair assumption.

> Our team is paid no overtime, because we're considered "able to tend any emergencies and organize themselves if required" at off-hours too.

Imagine a private business accepting these terms from a client.

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

#216

Post by lmm »

ghiculescu wrote: post #176
Frost1x wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We all know this "40 hours" nonsense is just historical happenstance, not some ideal or even well-reasoned number, let alone balanced in the interest of the overwhelming majority (working people). The more and more I see cases like this that exist, the more I feel it's yet more supporting evidence that the US is a failing democracy. We can point fingers and play responsibility games, we can claim its minority protec…

To make this claim about the US is to overlook that basically all western countries have 40 hour work weeks. Are they all failing democracies too? Its a shame how many Americans are too busy hating America to look outside the border and see how good they have it, but also how most of their “uniquely American” problems are not unique at all. (My perspective is as an Australian living in America. And my comment doesn’t…

US working hours are legitimately higher than most of the developed world.

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

#217

Post by benjaminwootton »

nasmorn wrote: post #213
lukevp wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t make sense to me unless it moves you into a lower tax bracket or something. Eg. If you made $100k and were taxed at 30%, you’d get paid net $70k. If you took a 20% gross pay cut, you’d get paid $80k gross and $56k net. 56k is 20% less than 70k.

In the Austrian tax system you are not taxed in one bracket. The first 15k are free next 5k at 15%, next 10k at 25% and so on. So your average tax rate will always be lower than your marginal rate, thus removing 20% gross will never remove 20% net. Actual values depend on your income of course.

In the UK we have the tax free allowances, but we start to lose them as we earn more. For instance, around £100k in earnings they start to tax your personal allowance so you are effectively taxed at 60%. You then move into 45% tax and then start to lose pension allowances at £250k.

First world problems, but these are all cliffs where it makes sense to keep your income down. Losing 20% off the top line will reduce your income by closer to 10% if my math is correct.

We have a problem in the UK with higher earners dropping out of the workforce partly because of the tax incentives. I personally choose not to work as an employee in the UK because I would be paying more than 50% in tax.

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

#218

Post by dheera »

ambrose2 wrote: post #201
dheera wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also that we once had a society where one person in a household worked 8 hours a day and one did house chores (including raising kids) for 8 hours a day. In a modern, fair society, that should translate into both people working 4 hours a day and house chores 4 hours a day. Unfortunately the reality right now is we're pushing both people to each work 12 hours a day AND do 4 hours of chores on top of that.

There’s also the argument that you could live off of one salary and downsize / live frugally (two-income trap), but things are more expensive (e.g. the world is more safe now, but that also makes it more expensive).

> you could live off of one salary and downsize / live frugally

I mean, sure, I do now, but I'm single and have no kids, and I make a tech industry salary.

Just some back of the envelope calculations suggests it's pretty damn impossible to raise kids on one salary now.

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

#219

Post by bayindirh »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #215
bayindirh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our team is paid no overtime, because we're considered "able to tend any emergencies and organize themselves if required" at off-hours too. Well, our system almost never creates that kind of emergency, but we think this is a fair assumption.

> Our team is paid no overtime, because we're considered "able to tend any emergencies and organize themselves if required" at off-hours too. Imagine a private business accepting these terms from a client.

The private business in question will suddenly find enough time to fix the repeating problems, in that case, eliminating the need for overtime.

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

#220

Post by iamacyborg »

incrudible wrote: post #133
iamacyborg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a strange way to think about health care. Can you explain what you mean when you say you only work for 4? In the UK where this trial was run both the employer and the employee pay for National Insurance which covers nationalised healthcare. Whether you work 1 day or 7 a week, you still get covered.

In other words, you get the full package while contributing less, if you choose to work less.

You’re not contributing less, you’re contributing exactly the same amount of money.
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