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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

#281

Post by wizofaus »

lettergram wrote: post #172
mobiledev2014 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s baffling. Nobody should have to work 60 hours a week and be happy about it, doesn’t matter when the hours are

Lol for almost all human history working all a day was the norm. I don’t necessarily have to do that much work, but I want to get ahead. Most people I grew up with work 40-70hrs a week, often two to three jobs. It’s natural for me to work that much. I don’t even blink at it. What else would you do? Play video games, watch tv, “party”? I can accomplish and build things and spend the rest of the time with family and fr…

> for almost all human history working all a day was the norm.

References for that? Didn't they do studies showing that e.g. hunter-gather type tribes such as Kalahari bushmen had about the same amount of downtime as modern Westerners? At any rate, the sort of work you're doing makes a huge difference as to how sustainable doing it 60 hours a week is.

(Quote from article linked below:

“Our hunter-gatherer ancestors almost certainly did not endure ‘nasty, brutish, and short‘ lives,” he writes of seminal studies of the Ju/’hoansi, a hunter-gatherer group living in southern Africa. “The Ju/’hoansi were revealed to be well fed, content, and longer-lived than people in many agricultural societies, and by rarely having to work more than 15 hours per week had plenty of time and energy to devote to leisure.”)

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

#282

Post by cableshaft »

sokoloff wrote: post #146
Tiktaalik wrote: post #102

I think a four day, 32h work week is a good idea, though I'd be concerned if companies were so restrictive around their contracts that they banned people from working elsewhere with their free time and extra day off. That should not be allowed to happen. Older employees that are established and have met various life goals (eg. owning a home) may be very satisfied to only work four days and to use their time for hobbi…

One argument in favor of a 32-hour week is that better rested employees will be approximately as productive as if they worked 40 hours. (I believe that for creative work.) Take that away by having them juggle a second job and employers might be better off to just leave the workweek at 40 hours.

There are already people who work two jobs and well over 40 hour weeks, with a 40 hour workweek standard. I don't see what the difference is there.

If anything it should still let them work a few less hours, on average, than the previous status quo, i.e. instead of one 40 hour job and one 20 hour part-time job, it could be one 32 hour and one 20 hour job, thus still seeing an increase in well-being for that employee.

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

#283

Post by withinboredom »

renewiltord wrote: post #239
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…

The US is a fully functioning representative democracy. People in small groups always overestimate the popularity of their cause. Quite simply there are other people. And those people often have other opinions.

As someone who moved out of the US and goes back to visit family every year ... I'd say it is barely functioning. Functioning, but barely.

I had to go to the US consulate a few weeks ago. I was literally facepalming at the inefficiencies of it. It was laughable.

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

#284

Post by yourusername »

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.

Top tax bracket at €69k is 49,5% so someone could very well cut 20% of their hours and only lose 10% salary.

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

#285

Post by sh4rks »

cinntaile wrote: post #254
sjtgraham wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > 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... If there are people who can't run a mile and those who can run over 100, what makes you think everyone universally can sustain 20-25 hours of focussed work per week?

Are you suggesting the number of focused hours per week can be trained just like running a mile?

Yes. Most people are lazy. Make sure you get 8-9 hours of sleep, prep your meals for the day, and slowly increase the number of focused hours over time (progressive overload). "Burnout" is a myth if you focus on good recovery. (of course this doesn't apply to everyone, as some people may have certain medical conditions or other important commitments)

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

#286

Post by yasinaydin »

wizofaus wrote: post #279
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.

There's very few countries in the world with tax systems like that - even Estonia I believe has some tax free threshold, such that the first $x of your income is not taxed (then a flat rate of 20%). Sure, if your income was massively above that threshold then a 20% cut is pre-tax income would be pretty close to a 20% cut in take-home income, but I'd think for most here on HN it wouldn't be anything like that much (th…

As a resident in Estonia, I believe you're talking about the basic exemption of 6000 euros [0]. The rest is as you said.

Also if you're married, this amount is combined between spouses. And for some things like 3rd pillar unemployment funds, tuition fees and donations, we get paid 20% back regardless of our income previous year. Some years I got around 500-1000 euros as a tax return, but when I checked this month (for 2022), it was 0, as I didn't have any of these exceptions last year.

[0]: https://www.emta.ee/en/private-client/calculation-2022-basic...

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

#287

Post by rizach8 »

askvictor wrote: post #134

Where do people feel the extra day should fall? While Monday or Friday is convenient, I can definitely see a point to making it Wednesday, so you can re-charge and be more productive for the second half of the week; in a normal 5 day week, I definitely see tiredness creeping in by Thursday and Friday.

Friday or Monday allow us to plan better for longer activities. 3 days makes a weekend trip super smooth and easy to pull off.

Having Wednesday off, I would find it harder to disconnect.

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

#288

Post by kitd »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #235
mrmincent wrote: post #3

I’ve gone down to 4 days, taking Fridays off to look after my son, and I certainly won’t be going back to 5 days until he’s in school. Looking after a toddler all day isn’t exactly a day off, but it is extremely rewarding, and something I’d recommend to any parent thinking about dropping down a day. It definitely has some downsides however, I’m the only one in the team that’s off that day, so there’s usually meetings…

You will remember the moments you spend with your son - and kids grow up fast. The days at work - those no one will remember.

Yes! When you lie on your deathbed, will you say "I wish I'd spent more time at the office"?

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

#289

Post by piva00 »

incrudible wrote: post #136
warkdarrior wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should also restrict food and housing access to the days you work.

We already do. If you work less, you get paid less, thus can afford less food and shelter. You get lower unemployment benefits. For healthcare however, you get the whole package, regardless.

Your only value as a human is based on the compensation you get from your worldview, I'm not sure many would agree with you.

If you are poor you are undeserving of care, regardless of why, your value as a human is directly attributed to how much a capitalist system values your labour.

Don't you see the disconnection and how morally wrong this is?

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

#290

Post by vidarh »

zdragnar wrote: post #238
vidarh wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stand-ups aren't really for devs, but for the team leads and PMs trying to track work. If they take more than ~5 min or so, people aren't prepared and that should be a red flag for team leads. That said, every day is often overkill, and most of the value can be gotten by keeping tickets up to date. But "ceremony" is often a tool to get people to keep things up to date by formalizing the expectation that it'll get pic…

We have JIRA etc for tracking work. That should always be the single source of truth; verbal communication isn't useful in the long run (someone might have missed standup, people forget, etc). Even so, I've had daily stand-ups at the last several companies for years now. It is a consistently pointless exercise. To make it worse, several companies have also required posting our daily statuses in slack channels, just s…

"Should be" being the operative term. I've yet to work anywhere where tickets consistently up to date, and often ceremony like standup is where we find out that something was left out. If you consistently manage to do so across your team without it, then, hey, that's amazing.
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