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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

#221

Post by bongodongobob »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #123
hananova wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of us only work 5 days a week officially , there's many of us that deliberately and knowingly slack off one day a week. Others will just slow down a little to fill the five days. Yet others will use WFH as an opportunity to do a 4 day work week.

> there's many of us that deliberately and knowingly slack off one day a week Many? I doubt it. Maybe many very privileged tech/big-corp workers in developed rich western countries, but globally that's not that many. Your argument is exactly the argument companies use to justify not going 4 days a week. If workers already have it so good that they have free time to slack off one day out of 5 days per week what's to s…

You have a choice. Work at 100%, 60% of the time, or work at 60% 100% of the time. It's not slacking off, it's managing mental health and endurance. You're not at 100% all the time. You're lying to yourself if you think you are. You may be spinning the tires, but the car isn't going as fast as you think it is.

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

#222

Post by ghaff »

bombcar wrote: post #218
ghaff wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because more money is what most candidates prioritize when job hopping, because when buying a house they can pay it with that money but can't pay it with more time off. Although you could argue that's already the case in a lot of Europe vs. parts of the US. Of course, it's an imperfect comparison because of the barriers to moving countries or even acquiring a remote job in a different country.

And money is money, it's a known quantity. Time is more ephemeral and for many "knowledge jobs" people work off the clock anyway; so having every Friday off may sound great but you may be (correctly) afraid it's going to turn into a half-day's work anyway. And there are things you can do to turn money into time, it's possible but not as easy to go the other way around when you're salaried.

Conversion is difficult without e.g. working at at a company that lets you take a week or two or two of leave a year (or just looking the other way). You can have a side business but that's harder to turn into something that's actually financially competitive with a professional-level salary and isn't ethically questionable.

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

#223

Post by p1esk »

duckmysick wrote: post #183
nilamo wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In practice, you have one or two IT guys in office, and the rest remote (could be in India if the work is not classified).

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

#224

Post by matchbok »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #47
codegeek wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not though. If you are getting $x for 5 days, why should you not get $x * 0.8 for 4 days ?

Because you're just as productive in those 4 days. Same pay for same results. 5 days doesn't make you any more productive.

Then why not 2 days?

There is a massive hole in your logic.

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

#225

Post by p1esk »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #215
burningChrome wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the mid aughts, I worked at a company that put ROWE (results oriented work environment) into practice. This approach basically meant you could work whenever you wanted, as long as you were meeting goals and metrics. There was a list of metrics you had to meet before being eligible for it. They kept it in place for two years and nothing really changed. Devs were still meeting their metrics and the company was still…

I'm really curious as to how ROWE works in practice for software developers, because the I'm extremely dubious. In software development, there is usually an "infinite amount of work" to be done, so the important thing is to prioritize well as a lot of that work will never get done. But what does it mean to say "you've met all your objectives"? If you say "great, I finished all my objectives in 20 hours this week, see…

What do you do during sprint planning meetings if you don’t know your objectives?

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

#226

Post by tr3ntg »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #179

I think future generations will look back and find unfathomable that we spent the best part of 5 days a week (if not more) working. At least I hope so.

Agreed. For all the talk about “AI can make you more efficient,” which it has, in my personal experience, there should be no excuse for worldwide standardization of 4 days over 5 days.

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

#227

Post by spacemark »

ghaff wrote: post #206
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 horribl…

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with people looking after themselves. A lot of of the people committed to a mission are going to end up getting screwed. (Not everyone, but probably most.)

Screwed in a monetary sense, perhaps. But this is just one thing people gain from work. For some it's not even that important.

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

#228

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

p1esk wrote: post #225
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really curious as to how ROWE works in practice for software developers, because the I'm extremely dubious. In software development, there is usually an "infinite amount of work" to be done, so the important thing is to prioritize well as a lot of that work will never get done. But what does it mean to say "you've met all your objectives"? If you say "great, I finished all my objectives in 20 hours this week, see…

What do you do during sprint planning meetings if you don’t know your objectives?

But it's not like you complete your objectives and then you say "great, we're all done, let's go home." Every company I've ever worked for had a backlog a mile long, and we knew we'd probably only ever get to 20% of it or so. The whole purpose of sprint planning is to just prioritize the most important stuff to work on for the next sprint, but if the teams capacity increases you'd pull more stuff in.

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

#229

Post by fnordpiglet »

sandworm101 wrote: post #135
burningChrome wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the mid aughts, I worked at a company that put ROWE (results oriented work environment) into practice. This approach basically meant you could work whenever you wanted, as long as you were meeting goals and metrics. There was a list of metrics you had to meet before being eligible for it. They kept it in place for two years and nothing really changed. Devs were still meeting their metrics and the company was still…

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…

Anyone who doesn’t have power on after cycle and a network attached power cycle shouldn’t be allowed to employ people.

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

#230

Post by sincerely »

spacemark wrote: post #227
ghaff wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with people looking after themselves. A lot of of the people committed to a mission are going to end up getting screwed. (Not everyone, but probably most.)

Screwed in a monetary sense, perhaps. But this is just one thing people gain from work. For some it's not even that important.

Ok, so just consider a world where jobs paid no money. How many people do you think would have a job? 10% of the amount now? 1%?

Even if there are some very rare individuals that go to work primarily for companionship or for personal fulfillment that doesn't mean it's even worth bringing up in a discussion like this

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