Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?

#141

Post by JambalayaJim » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 12:56 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #139

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonder how many software devs would be able to do this. When I have a long weekend, a lot of times, its 'finally, no interruptions so I can get some work done', and end up working. Guess, if you have an itch, could fill it with open source projects instead.

> Guess, if you have an itch, could fill it with open source projects instead. Somewhat related, but I do wonder what this community will look like once humans enter a post scarce (or mostly) world. Which a 4 day weekend seems like a step in that direction. Along with the other aspects of what humans will do with their new found free time. Which seems especially interesting in a consumer based economy.

We seem to be going in the opposite direction of a “post scarce” world where everything is getting more expensive and most people I know are working longer hours or multiple jobs to survive.

Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?

#142

Post by JambalayaJim » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 1:04 AM UTC

bloopernova wrote: post #9

Considering the opposition to working from home from some parts of (USA) society, I have trouble seeing this get widely adopted. At least in the short to medium term. The anti-WFH people appear to fall into 3 camps: landlords and property owners, middle management who believe people are not as productive or efficient at home. And, as pointed out in a reply, there's also the group who believe that face to face communi…

I am very much in the “anti-WFH” camp, in the sense that I would never work for a company that is primarily remote.

I would gladly sign up for a 4 day work week. In fact, a 4 day in-office hybrid model would be perfect. As long as the work place policy involves no meetings or messages on that single remote day.

Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?

#143

Post by wharvle » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 1:30 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #132

wharvle wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recent increase in the number of schools going 4-day is mostly a teacher attraction and retention strategy. There’s an ongoing severe teacher shortage, and poor rural districts in states with low average teacher pay are catching the worst of it (for obvious reasons). The alternative is the school district basically collapses from lack of staffing, or else has to come up with a bunch more money. It may or may not…

Weird to frame it as a "teacher shortage" especially when the rest of your [great] comment correctly calls out insufficient pay as the real problem.

Well, yeah, to some extent most (not all) “shortages” are just things becoming more expensive than one wishes to pay. Unfortunately, teacher pay’s being stagnant (plus it took a huge hit, in relative terms, over the pandemic) and working conditions declining have been trends for long enough that a bunch of teachers have left with no plans to return, and the “pipeline” has finally caught on that the career—even if you really, really want to teach kids—kinda sucks a whole bunch now, such that teacher training programs have seen a large drop in enrollment. Higher pay will indeed go a long way toward fixing the problem, but only at a significant lag—this is on track to continue for years even with big pay bumps now.

I definitely didn’t mean to, like, blame teachers for this situation, though, so I apologize if I gave that impression. It’s definitely a matter of pay and work conditions. But, it’s gonna take a while to fix even if we throw money at it immediately, and I’m not seeing much of that yet :-/

Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?

#144

Post by iteratethis » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 1:39 AM UTC

I think the discussion should be reframed into household hours worked. It fundamentally changes the discussion.

A couple working 4 day work weeks amounts to 1.6 FTE, which is considerably more compared to the traditional breadwinner model. Now if you add that life got a whole lot more demanding/complex outside of work, the sum work load of a family is rather high instead of low.

Another interesting aspect we see in the Netherlands, where we work part-time a lot. Perhaps a little too much. There's a kind of defeatism regarding working more hours. People feel it doesn't really change their life for the better.

When you're already settled, can pay the bills and have reasonable disposable income, working more doesn't really improve your quality of life in a very tangible way.

Young people are even more apathetic. They figure they can't ever afford a home anyway, and with a pension age heading towards 70, they conclude they can't ever retire. In light of this, might as well maximize free time here and now.

Society wants you to work more to combat the population ageing or to compete with China, but on the ground people don't care about this call to arms. The societal contract is broken.

Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?

#145

Post by godelski » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 2:36 AM UTC

JambalayaJim wrote: post #141

godelski wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Guess, if you have an itch, could fill it with open source projects instead. Somewhat related, but I do wonder what this community will look like once humans enter a post scarce (or mostly) world. Which a 4 day weekend seems like a step in that direction. Along with the other aspects of what humans will do with their new found free time. Which seems especially interesting in a consumer based economy.

We seem to be going in the opposite direction of a “post scarce” world where everything is getting more expensive and most people I know are working longer hours or multiple jobs to survive.

Yeah and I don't understand why. Like we even have the old saying "9 to 5" but who works a 9 to 5 job? That used to be literally the hours which included the lunch break. I only know 8-5 or 9-6 jobs being the norm. And it's weird that we have this codified in our language but no longer in reality without any clear justification. I feel like a fast one was pulled on us here.

Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?

#146

Post by quacked » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 2:45 AM UTC

supertrope wrote: post #140

quacked wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people think school is like pokemon training, where X minutes = Y XP, and more minutes in class = more XP, thus leading to higher-level students. I remember when I was in school we missed a few extra days from snowstorms, so they added several minutes onto the school day to "make up for the missed time". It was so obviously stupid then, but no school administrator listened to me, because what does a high…

It’s hard to measure education service quality at the scale of an entire province or state. We use proxies like standardized testing to avoid each school self-assessing as excellent. But tests can be gamed through cheating. States distribute funding on a literal per capita per day formula. It’s much harder to commit time tracking fraud. Incentives that encourage butts in seats of course can be gamed. Snow days are av…

> States distribute funding on a literal per capita per day formula.

I am not a libertarian, but it is startling to me how many offensive facets of modern life came about due to perverse funding incentives from the state. I've been reading "Deschooling Society" by Ivan Ilich, which I think only thinly supports its own premise, but the pattern he describes in which formerly citizen-led components of society are institutionalized by the government and then experience a massive decades-long degradation of quality seems to ring true for everything.

Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?

#147

Post by myaccountonhn » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 3:28 AM UTC

ketzo wrote: post #29

Syonyk wrote: post #13

I've "corrupted" (from the point of view of GDP productivity and such) a lot of people into asking for (and mostly getting...) a 32h/week work schedule. I've been doing it for almost 8 years now, and at this point, it's simply a non-negotiable in any sort of employment discussions (that, and not carrying a pager). I work Mon-Thu, 8h/day, and I'm generally unreachable Fri/Sat/Sun (doesn't mean I won't put in a long we…

What do you do for work? Where are you in your career?

Senior fullstack/backend engineer, work fully remote 32hr/week.

Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?

#148

Post by perryizgr8 » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 5:14 AM UTC

If we are going to have another day off, I'd rather it be Monday than Friday. I'm the least productive on Mondays.

Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?

#149

Post by CalRobert » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 4:16 PM UTC

JambalayaJim wrote: post #141

godelski wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Guess, if you have an itch, could fill it with open source projects instead. Somewhat related, but I do wonder what this community will look like once humans enter a post scarce (or mostly) world. Which a 4 day weekend seems like a step in that direction. Along with the other aspects of what humans will do with their new found free time. Which seems especially interesting in a consumer based economy.

We seem to be going in the opposite direction of a “post scarce” world where everything is getting more expensive and most people I know are working longer hours or multiple jobs to survive.

Any world that includes a scarcity of a necessity will have people trying to outcompete their peers for said necessities. Right now that's housing, for the most part, and sometimes health care. Sure you could ask for a 4 day week, but someone else will work 5 so they can outbid you on a house.

Re: Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?

#150

Post by Syonyk » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 4:52 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #133

Syonyk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overtly advertising it? No. Hasn't stopped me (and quite a few others) from getting 4 day weeks out of them. The trick is being senior enough (or in demand enough) that you can get one company to agree to a 32h week for you (and be willing to walk - I've interviewed with very interesting companies who weren't willing to consider it, and so we ended the discussions). Once you have it in some form or another, you're go…

I'd love to learn the secret incantation from "senior enough" employees who have managed to negotiate these kinds of things. I've been at it for 25+ years and only managed to negotiate pay (never large increases, and not from many companies). When it comes to your terms of employment like hours, vacation, benefits, sick time, and so on, it's always "The boilerplate employment agreement is written by god and cannot be…

> Sign it unmodified or GTFO!

That's the secret. Being willing to GTFO if they don't meet your terms. And being good enough at what you do that they're willing to meet your terms.

My current employer, on initial contact, wasn't willing to consider fully remote and 32h/wk. Then a year later, they came back and were willing to talk because they'd been trying to find someone with my skillset locally.