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Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

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Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#181

Post by IshKebab »

harikb wrote: post #116
zooq_ai wrote: post #69

This study is a perfect fit the HN crowd who won't question the methodology and incentive systems because it fits their narrative. Of course employee are going to report happy. What next? a study saying "Employees love more money for the same work?"

Just curios, why single-out HN crowd though???. In a typical 'HN crowd' comment, it is usually about a persona that think 'tech is great' or 'tech can solve all problems', not this particular characterization of 'worker vs management'.

The HN crowd tends to have unrealistic views of money and employment, probably partly because software development is an unusual job - extremely well paid for relatively little work and responsibility - and partly because the kinds of people on HN are surprisingly naïve when it comes to economics (and also people; but that's not surprising).

Some examples:

* Never-ending optimism about UBI, despite the maths clearly not working. Kind of similar to this really.

* Expecting salary to exactly match value - i.e. to get the same pay remote working no matter where you live. The number of people here that fundamentally don't understand that salary is a supply/demand negotiation is weird. And they really don't think it through to the obvious conclusion if it did happen - they'd get paid the same as people in Eastern Europe or India.

I think a 4-day work week could eventually happen, but HN types like to pretend it will make people more productive which it absolutely won't. It probably won't reduce productivity to 80%. More like 90%. But it will happen as a cultural shift; not because it increases productivity.

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#182

Post by IshKebab »

ausbah wrote: post #159
sokoloff wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems reasonable. Take two equivalent companies, one that has a 4-day workweek and an otherwise identical one that has a 5-day workweek. Which one would you rather work for? Which one do you think will have a relative abundance of applicants (read: supply of labor)? Which other one do you think will have a lower supply of labor and might need to pay more to attract candidates? It seems logical that a company off…

if productivity is the same why should i be paid less just because # of hours is lower? which isn’t even always the case as these companies will do 9-10 hour days

Because productivity is not the same.

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#183

Post by duckmysick »

nilamo wrote: post #146
sandworm101 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with a large organization (government, military) that also implemented a hybrid model under covid and decided to keep it going. But not a day goes by that someone doesn't scream for it to end. We have too many people "working from home" all the time and never getting done the stuff that cannot be done from home. Is the server not responding after the recent power outage? Too bad. The guy to turn it back on only c…

Your IT should always be remote. A laptop in the office is not any different from a laptop out of the office. It definitely feels like most people complaining about wfh have no friends and work is their entire life. I honestly do not understand how anyone can pretend they get anything done, while also being constantly interrupted or having conversations about what they're doing this weekend, or such and such sports t…

I was always curious - in fully remote IT (especially one located in another state/country), who does the actual on-site visits? Say, a PC part has to be replaced or a new laptop has to be deployed.

For the deployment I guess you can use something like ImmyBot or Intune, but at some point someone has to be there and connect a new machine to the internet/intranet. How does that work in practice?

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#185

Post by IshKebab »

CapeTheory wrote: post #61
nly wrote: post #48

Tech salaries aren't good enough in the UK to make this feasible for most of us.

Once you get into the top tax band, the 20% cut in base pay only corresponds to an ~8% cut in take-home pay - a pretty good deal as far as I'm concerned. The problem is that employers who pay this much tend to be large US companies and therefore not well equipped to deal with requests for flexible working. Fortunately the law here means that such requests can't be dismissed out of hand, but unfortunately that doesn't…

Yes, though you could also put that money into your pension.

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#186

Post by ysofunny »

whycombagator wrote: post #80
ysofunny wrote: post #42

I prefer a 6 hour workday 5 days a week but I'll take a 4 day workweek (I assume 8 hours a day)

Why not both?

it's from 40 hours a week, down to 32, then to 30. doing both means a 24 hour work week...

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#187

Post by op00to »

statquontrarian wrote: post #101
op00to wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does your full time coworker say about that? Are you concerned at backlash or retaliation?

I didn't mean to give the impression that I was boasting or that I bring this up with him or my management, but just that there's a somewhat objective relative measurement that shows that it's possible to keep up high output for some jobs. I was surprised that my _total_ output stayed so high after transitioning from 40 to 20 hours. No backlash or retaliation so far after more than 2 years.

I didn’t mean to insinuate you were boasting! I apologize if that was the case.

I do my required work in 20 hours most weeks. I spend the rest of the 40 hour work week resting, learning, and working on myself. I am careful not to publicize this because I am concerned at backlash from colleagues who find they have to spend more time than me.

People work at different paces and provide different value to the company for many reasons. I may be efficient and effective, but I tend to burn out faster, hence the rest time.

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#188

Post by FirmwareBurner »

lolinder wrote: post #166
sandworm101 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> A reasonable company would have some rotating in-office IT Ya. We had that. We had 10+ people doing trouble tickets 8am to 4pm across more than a dozen buildings. They worked hard, but were never actually done. There was always a priority list. Now they work half the week from home. Stuff is piling up and we are begging for more non-at-home IT staff to be hired.

I think you missed the point—your organization is completely dysfunctional at this point and hiring won't change that. Based on your description you don't have a WFH policy, you have a policy that incentivizes not working at all. What makes you think that these hypothetical new hires are going to actually work while the rest of their department doesn't? What sane person would put up with that treatment?

>I think you missed the point—your organization is completely dysfunctional at this point

Would you be surprised to hear that most companies in the world are just like that?

HN readers are in a bubble where they can afford to be picky on where they work choosing companies that fit in their belief system in terms of organizational efficiency and work culture, instead of just choosing the least horrible job they can find with the best pay, like the other 99% of the people in the world.

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#189

Post by toomuchtodo »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #175
esafak wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And while productivity has steadily risen since then, we still work five days/week.

Shareholder returns have also never been higher. Coincidence?

Why should shareholder returns be so high when we could all work less? That is where the productivity wage delta is going: shareholder returns.

Re: Study: 61 UK firms tried a 4-day workweek and after a year, they still love it

#190

Post by FirmwareBurner »

belval wrote: post #150
sandworm101 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with a large organization (government, military) that also implemented a hybrid model under covid and decided to keep it going. But not a day goes by that someone doesn't scream for it to end. We have too many people "working from home" all the time and never getting done the stuff that cannot be done from home. Is the server not responding after the recent power outage? Too bad. The guy to turn it back on only c…

That sounds mostly dysfunctional and not really a WFH issue. > Is the server not responding after the recent power outage? Too bad. The guy to turn it back on only comes in Monday-Tuesday. A reasonable company would have some rotating in-office IT or at the very least an oncall that goes to wherever the server is to fix it. > The plumbers and electricians still "work from home" half the week. Pretty much the same thi…

> If your employees are so disfranchised that their install scripts to wiggle their mouse while they watch Netflix the battle is already lost.

That would be a lot of companies and workers out there, dare I say the vast majority even.

Believe it or not, many workers don't actually enjoy their work, their company, their boss or their job, but they put up with it because housing in expensive and it was the least horrible job they could find with the highest pay they could land, enabling them a lifestyle upgrade, even if they don't care for the work itself, so of course they'll take every opportunity they get to slack off and watch Netflix if they can.

Expecting all your workers to be fully invested and committed on work while on the clock is an exercise in futility and something no company past a certain size will ever accomplish because everyone just looks after themselves and their own self interest first, screw the company and their shareholders. And the companies know this, hence the culture of micromanagement, spyware, RTO, etc.

That's why start-ups and small companies can accomplish things the likes of Google can't, because they're formed mostly of motivated people who care about the product and the mission first and foremost, while the likes of Google are full of coasters who are there just to make as much money as possible with as little work as possible while the gravy train lasts.

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