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Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

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Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#141

Post by wrigglingworm »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #24
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #7

Young people don't want to work hard because there's little incentive. No matter how hard you work, unless you're in the top 5%, you're far priced out of most places most people want to live. You can afford everything comfortably beside housing & health care (which you don't need much of when you're young) on a relatively low wage in the US. So you've pretty much given up on housing. What's the point in working hard?

So you're not going to be able to live where most people want to live . That's far different from having no house. "Giving up on housing" is not the right answer. "Start small and work your way up", like most of us did. See, when you hit 20, you're looking at your parents, and you're seeing them when they're 45 or 50. You're not seeing them when they were 20. You expect that you're going to be able to live like they…

The median price of a home in the United States is currently $412,020.

Median weekly earnings of the nation's 122.1 million full-time wage and salary workers were $1,118 in the third quarter of 2023 (1118x52=58136)

412,020/58136=7.09 years wages to pay off a home

Median house price 1980: $64,600

The 1980 median family income was $21,020

64600/21020=3.07 years wages to pay off a home

https://www.redfin.com/us-housing-market

https://www.gobankingrates.com/investing/real-estate/how-muc...

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf

https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1982/demo/p60-13...

edit

more detail

2023:

412020 30 year loan at 6.5% =

Total principal paid $412,020

Total interest paid $525,508.80

Monthly payments $2,604.25

58136/12=monthly salary of 4844.6

53.7% of monthly pay going to home loan (at 0 down)

1980:

64600 30 year loan at 14% =

Total principal paid $64,600

Total interest paid $210,953.77

Monthly payments $765.43

21020/12=monthly salary of 1751.6

43% of monthly pay going to home loan (at 0 down)

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#142

Post by Clubber »

tommoor wrote: post #45
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're not going to be able to live where most people want to live . That's far different from having no house. "Giving up on housing" is not the right answer. "Start small and work your way up", like most of us did. See, when you hit 20, you're looking at your parents, and you're seeing them when they're 45 or 50. You're not seeing them when they were 20. You expect that you're going to be able to live like they…

My dads first house cost less than his first car, bought around the same time.

I find that hard to believe.

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#143

Post by jollofricepeas »

yardie wrote: post #12

Moving back to the US after living abroad I was used to month long holidays. I applied to a few companies and tried to negotiate 5 weeks PTO. They wouldn't budge. Then 4 weeks. Still no. I offered to drop my salary in exchange for vacation. Still no. I asked HR why everything else was negotiable except PTO and they told me I would have more time off then people who've been there for 7+ years. This was my first clue t…

This is interesting.

In the US, I have found that what HR will tell you is different than what your hiring manager will enforce.

My hiring managers were often much more permissive and allowed 4 day work weeks and “unlimited” time off provided it was not detrimental to the team. This also meant that when there was a legitimate emergency; they expected you to assist.

I have heard many horror stories but have been luck not to experience most of them at this point in my career.

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#144

Post by The_Colonel »

onion2k wrote: post #32
yodsanklai wrote: post #27

I negociated a 4-day workweek for my first job when I was 23. 25 years later, I wouldn't do it. I'm worried for my retirement, I don't think I'll have enough saving to live in a safe and convenient place, and have access to good healthcare. This is the type of things you don't think of when you just graduate and are used to the student worklife.

A 4 day work week is not '4 days work for 80% of the money'. A 4 day work week today means working 4 days a week for the same money as a person working 5 days a week. Depending on the company that's either 10 hours a day for 4 days a week, or more commonly it's an 8 hour day for 4 days a week with an assumption (proven in many studies) than people work harder with less downtime for that 8 hours so consequently get th…

> more commonly it's an 8 hour day for 4 days a week with an assumption (proven in many studies)

When I looked at these studies, the productivity was measured by company's revenue, so it was pretty much useless.

> people work harder with less downtime for that 8 hours so consequently get the same amount of work done as their 10-hour-4-days and 5-day-week counterparts.

Maybe it works that way for some people, but I doubt for all.

Personal anecdote - I don't work full 40 with full intensity, I do slack a lot. But it's not like I work hard for the first 32 hours and then slack all Friday. It's more like I work hard for 2 hours and then slack for the next hour, because the mental load is just too intense. Rinse, repeat. Another day off won't do much for me in terms of productivity. On the opposite, I believe I'm less productive on Mondays and even less after longer holidays (I believe it's basically loss of context and "work mood").

I personally also do programming in my free time (usually at least an hour a day), so it's not like the overall load is too much.

Having said that, I would love to have a 4-day week, especially without lost compensation. But to me this idea that there's no productivity loss looks to me very much like wishful thinking.

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#145

Post by u-silly-commie »

tspike wrote: post #89
slashdev wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not for everybody, but if you can find a way to not play the rigged game, you can get ahead. I moved from a high cost of living city in North America to Latin America. I bought a two floor penthouse overlooking the ocean for less than the price of a two bedroom apartment back where I came from. My mortgage is -$2000 / month. That's right, negative $2000 because I save the full mortgage payment plus an extra $200…

Sure, and now you’re inflicting the same problems on the local population who don’t have the option of geographic arbitrage.

[flagged]

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#146

Post by [deleted] »

anovikov wrote: post #104
jonahrd wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. This article compares GDP vs housing prices, which isn't a surprise that US fares very well because the US is stellar at GDP growth. But GDP is _absolutely irrelevant_ to the average citizen's purchasing power / income.

The particular chart i posted a separate link for, uses inflation adjustment, not GDP adjustment. And sure, every country has a growing segregation between attractive, expensive areas and unattractive, cheap ones. That's normal. Fitting into attractive ones is a matter of competition and only the best few will - there can't be a place for everyone there no matter how the economy is doing and how high/low are the taxe…

[deleted]

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#147

Post by footy »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #21
jt2190 wrote: post #2

Source for the article: “Younger workers want a 4-day workweek — and some would give up remote work or higher pay for it” https://www.bankrate.com/personal-finance/younger-workers-wa... > Close to 8 in 10 Gen X and baby boomer workers (or 78 percent for those between the ages of 43 and 77 combined) support a four-day workweek. > But younger workers indicate they’re willing to go to greater lengths for the schedule, a…

If they (or you, or anyone) want a 4 day work week, then why not pick a profession that allows it? Most healthcare related fields work in 12 hour shifts, so working 3-4 days a week is the normal standard. Not every professional job is an office job 9-5.

why would you think software doesn't allow it? I know plenty of people who work 4 day workweeks, including myself.

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#148

Post by kelseyfrog »

sghiassy wrote: post #101
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #7

Young people don't want to work hard because there's little incentive. No matter how hard you work, unless you're in the top 5%, you're far priced out of most places most people want to live. You can afford everything comfortably beside housing & health care (which you don't need much of when you're young) on a relatively low wage in the US. So you've pretty much given up on housing. What's the point in working hard?

Peasants under Feudalism had zero hope progressing. Upward mobility is probably something every generation has complained about throughout history. Economic nihilism isn’t the answer. Our future generations count on us to improve whatever cards we’re dealt

Upward mobility is a very recent phenomenon. Pesants weren't told that if they worked hard they could be nobility. There were born peasants and were very aware they would die peasants.

We're at a unique point in that there was a brief period in recent history where upward mobility was true, and now it's becoming untrue again and those for whom it was true don't believe its becoming untrue again.

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#149

Post by Clubber »

kyubey wrote: post #138
trident5000 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a lifestyle choice. Stop packing into cities like a can of sardines and it wont be an issue. Being inflexible to literal physics and reality is a personal issue.

If you want to work and have a life, stop living where jobs are! Simply don't make adequate money to survive! Simply die! Being unaware of reality is also a personal issue too, bud.

There are a lot of mid sized cities with reasonable housing and decent job prospects with a reasonable commute (< 30m). I know, I live in one of them.

Re: Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

#150

Post by QuarterReptile »

JeremyNT wrote: post #97
yardie wrote: post #12

Moving back to the US after living abroad I was used to month long holidays. I applied to a few companies and tried to negotiate 5 weeks PTO. They wouldn't budge. Then 4 weeks. Still no. I offered to drop my salary in exchange for vacation. Still no. I asked HR why everything else was negotiable except PTO and they told me I would have more time off then people who've been there for 7+ years. This was my first clue t…

> Moving back to the US after living abroad I was used to month long holidays. I applied to a few companies and tried to negotiate 5 weeks PTO. They wouldn't budge. Then 4 weeks. Still no. I offered to drop my salary in exchange for vacation. Still no. I asked HR why everything else was negotiable except PTO and they told me I would have more time off then people who've been there for 7+ years. One of the reasons I w…

In my experience, it's really hard to deal with 4 day weeks in education, but maybe just because I was trying to schedule week-long courses. I was at a job that observed 4 day weekends for every single federal holiday which, in practice, meant that you had 2 4-day weeks and 2 5-day weeks each month. It felt very hard to get stuff done generally, but that may have been a characteristic of the native speed of the bureaucracy in that particular org (4 day weekends were relatively new) or the fact that face-to-face work was prioritized due to nearly-nonfunctioning computers.
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