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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

#221

Post by rpep »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #217
nasmorn wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 you…

The child benefit threshold makes it pretty bad for most mid to high household incomes too, effectively a 60% marginal tax rate between £50k and £60k if you have a student loan

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

#222

Post by jll29 »

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.

So true.

Annual tax return? Expense reclaim forms? Administrative faculty meetings? - All so bad that the most productive folks can turn into procrastinators.

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

#224

Post by vore »

charcircuit wrote: post #187

Meanwhile China is going to make us irrelevant with their 996 work week. I would prefer to stay ahead and build great products than lounging around for half the week.

This is workable if you’re in your early 20s and dedicated to the grind, but not sustainable if you’re going on 40 with two kids.

Owing my employer almost all of my waking hours is not worth it for me personally. In the end I’d rather look back on the personal relationships I’ve built outside of work than the shareholder value I’ve increased.

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

#225

Post by DoingIsLearning »

bayindirh wrote: post #219
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #215

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. 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.

My point is this would be an unfair clause, no private business would sign terms that would force them to work for free. Yet, somehow it's enforced and acceptable for private individuals.

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

#226

Post by Retric »

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.

I don’t think we are talking about the same kind of difficult vs straightforward problems.

Think professional chess players. While prepping they can spend very long hours playing/studding high level chess but tournaments are another level. Challenging is fun, the limits of human ability are always stressful. People can run for 11 hours in an ultra marathon but they can’t do it at 13+ mph pace of a half marathon.

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

#227

Post by boltzmann-brain »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #11
kennywinker wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on most of the studies i’ve seen, at least for office/information jobs, that pay cut is unjustified. People mostly get as much done in 4 days as 5.

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.

The usual counterpoint to that is that for highly skilled work 95% of what you do can be done by someone else who takes 1/2 to 2/3 your salary and it's the last 5% that you're actually being paid the big bucks for. This is stuff that you have to do rarely but it brings a lot of value; whether you have 5 days every week or 4 days every week to get that out of the way doesn't matter, because you do it for a couple hours a week at most.

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

#229

Post by jamesadevine »

Im all for a four day working week. Has any one thought about the impact on schooling and education? Education is centred around a 5 day working week (at least in the U.K.). Presumably teachers would not be eligible to work a four day week? This seems a little unfair.

If workers move to a four day week, should schools do too?

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

#230

Post by bayindirh »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #225
bayindirh wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My point is this would be an unfair clause, no private business would sign terms that would force them to work for free. Yet, somehow it's enforced and acceptable for private individuals.

In our case it's not enforced, and we're not under any 5 nines obligation.

On the other hand, we're a bunch of lazy sysadmins and don't prefer to work if it's not necessary. As a result, we design our systems for resilience, so any problem both doesn't get big, and can wait the next morning, or next Monday 99% of the time.

Also, we definitely love what we do, hence we sometimes choose to take some work off of our colleagues' hand on a slow night. So, I personally prefer to read a tech doc, learn something and apply to on our systems if I have nothing better to do instead of watching TV.

IOW, we're not losing sleep doing our job.

TL;DR: It's acceptability depends on the circumstances a lot. If the employer is abusing you with that stick, that's bad. Otherwise, I see no problem.

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