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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

#301

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

vidarh wrote: post #290
zdragnar wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What's stopping PMs to remind people on slack to update their tickets? In my previous job we had a task blocked in our calendar every Tuesday 10AM to 12 PM just for updating Jira and Gitlab tickets.

Having people gather in circles physically or jumping on calls every single day just for this bullshit that can be done async is absolutely insane.

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

#302

Post by lr4444lr »

komali2 wrote: post #232
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> 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. I find this argument often used in defense of nationalism or protectionism, which is why it's interesting when the nationalists will turn around and argue against this same argu…

Is that a bad thing? To raise one nation after another into the middle class?

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

#303

Post by robertlagrant »

MathMonkeyMan wrote: post #209
lumost wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s Curious, I wonder if as the portion of time people spend on hard problems increases the rate of burnout increases. 10 years ago a much larger percentage of my day was spent on non-taxing activities that have since been automated.

This speaks to the "labor" argument made above. More efficiency means harder work, but it must also be less work, unless we are trying to extract more from workers. OTOH, it might not be so bad to extract more from workers. More money and all.

Exactly - if you can do more, you can get paid more.

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

#304

Post by pm3003 »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #31
Vinnl wrote: post #28

It's the one thing I miss most from working for Dutch companies: being able to take a 20% pay cut and work 20% less. Theoretically, that should be a great deal for my employer: the extra rest, and just the way productive work is usually spread out across the week, means that my productivity definitely was not down 20% compared to now, so I was cheaper per hour. Yet even that culturally seems to be a hard sell in a ma…

In the 90s my girlfriend worked for the American office of a Danish industrial design company that closed at noon on Fridays. They claimed it was how everyone in Denmark worked, but I had no way to confirm it at the time.

I worked in various places in Northern Germany a few years ago, close to the Danish border. Some businesses and most federal and state-related institutions would stop working at noon on Fridays. I was told it was to alleviate the pressure on the trains and Autobahn. This would make sense, especially given the fact that a very important military population was stationed there during the cold war and the railways and roads were a mess (and probably still are).

I don't know if it's true, nobody concerned would ever come to the stupid idea of questioning this nice practice.

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

#305

Post by mclightning »

This, and remote working. People need to understand how capitalism works. Value extraction always comes back around in your final bill.

None will give you that extra day without eventually adjusting the salary. This is not a predatory action, but how markets work.

You can already observe this by comparing salaries offered by fully-remote jobs and on-site jobs.

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

#306

Post by mlrtime »

kitd wrote: post #288
andrei_says_ wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

I personally find it much more rewarding figuring out a technical problem than watching a crying baby.

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

#307

Post by tarl0s »

jamesadevine wrote: post #229

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?

France has been experimenting a 4-day week for primary school since the 80s [1], generally with a day-off on Wednesdays. The impacts are certainly there, e.g. "before September 2013, more than 40% of mothers whose youngest child was of elementary school age did not work on Wednesdays".

It sounds like a 4-day school week would be the natural consequence of a global 4-day working week.

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rythmes_scolaires_en_France

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

#308

Post by 1602 »

I went to four days a week, by using holiday allowance during covid to look after newborn. It was a huge game-changer for me, so I never looked back and eventually switched to working part-time (3 days a week). I still feel productive and useful at work, but less mentally drained and have more of life to live, recently I started sketching, I enjoy time with my toddler, feel much happier despite being poorer. I know not everyone can afford taking pay cut, but I also know that lots people in tech earn more money they can spend, for these people I would strongly recommend - do not take more money, take more of your time back, no matter how in love with your profession you are.

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

#309

Post by ramraj07 »

ravenstine wrote: post #25
NKosmatos wrote: post #17

Why would they want to return? One you do an “upgrade” in your life, i.e. like remote work, quality family time, it’s difficult/impossible to go back. The same is true for many other life “upgrades” like fiber internet connection, smart devices, smartphones, color TVs and so on

Some people might actually like working for its own sake, just as some truly prefer going into the office despite the tradeoffs. I am not one of those people. lol Not that I don't have a constant drive to do something , of course. I just wouldn't engage in surrogate work in order to feel like I'm worth something.

I love working for works sake. I severely miss working in an office and bumping into people and getting great ideas. I believe highly skilled software engineers in a product focused startup should not work remote if they want innovation.

Pretty much as “I love work” as it gets, and I can’t wait for the move to 4 day weeks. Work for works sake gets better when it’s highly focused when you’re in the zone and lets your mind be free for all the rest of the time.

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

#310

Post by peoplefromibiza »

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…

what about useful jobs which are not productive (in terms of monetization of the time units worked) nor physically demanding?

I guess 4 days work for a librarian doesn't mean anything meaningful and the said librarian productivity doesn't plummet like in a "writing math papers" scenario.

Or for an emergency doctor, a fireman, a shop owner, a sportsman etc. etc.

A friend of mine is an air traffic controller, they work 8 hours straight in 3 8 hours shifts during the 24h they need to cover constantly (meaning they don't even stop for a lunch break, only a few short 10 minutes breaks to stretch or to go to the bathroom) for 5 days straight and then they stay 3 days and 1/2 home, so they work 17-18 days a month.

Anyway 9-5 (which is more like 8-~16 in my Country on average, with an hour long lunch break, so ~36 hours/week in total) was won by workers with actual real social battles and 9-5 is the time of the day where the presence of natural light is more probable.

We could switch to working 23:00-6:00 but I guess it wouldn't be so good for the morale.

Also, I generally really work no more than 1-2 hours per day, the rest is spent thinking about the problem, reading documentation, watching a tutorial, participating in a meeting when I do not have to talk an I can keep the camera turned off and the mic on mute, but mostly is doing something else entirely, completely disconnected from my duties, to enable my brain to absorb the problem and have a fresh view on it sometimes later.

Best ideas happen when you're not actively thinking about them.

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