Australia also has a 60 year productivity low and a government that is boosting taxes on capital gains on shares/business to basically a worldwide high. So take our experiments with a grain of salt!
The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100
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Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100
#12
Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100
#13But how will a consulting company bill for the 20%?
You increase prices by 20%
Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100
#14Basically every study shows a four day week works best. The issue is why we never go with what the study shows.
"study"... The replication crises in science has shown that most studies are total bs. So we probably don't want to go with them.
Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100
#15Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100
#16Papers like this should be called opinion surveys. Calling it a study is a disservice to science. As Feynman said, anything where they have to put science as a suffix is usually not science.
Edit: It’s becoming ever more increasingly common on HN to get downvotes for innocuous respectful posts. If you’re downvoting, I’d genuinely appreciate if you explained what is it that you find offensive about this post. You’re not going to hurt my feelings, I sincerely want to understand what it is that you see as transgressive so I can learn from it. Thank you. Another example which baffled me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48222383#48227701
> As Feynman said, anything where they have to put science as a suffix is usually not science.
I appreciate Feynman’s contributions—and in fact have been recently revisiting the Messenger lectures—but that seems like an unnecessary jab. The use of “usually” is also a convenient cop-out which makes the remark meaningless because the speaker can pick and choose in any conversation so they always win.¹
I thought about it and picked the first thing which came to mind: Natural science. From Wikipedia²:
> Natural science or empirical science is a branch of science concerned with the description, understanding, and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and reproducibility of findings are used to try to ensure the validity of scientific advances.
Seems pretty scientific to me. But alright, let’s check the article to give it a fair shot in context. The only time the word “science” comes up is “Social Sciences”. Again from Wikipedia³:
> Social science (or the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 18th century. It now encompasses a wide array of additional academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, linguistics, management, communication studies, psychology, sociology, culturology, and political science.
That’s a wide range. Are all of those “not science”?
¹ Assuming your rephrasing is accurate and not missing important context.
Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100
#17Papers like this should be called opinion surveys. Calling it a study is a disservice to science. As Feynman said, anything where they have to put science as a suffix is usually not science.
What a hollow dismissal of based on acrobatic leaps of semantics.
The word 'study' is no sacred possession exclusive to the natural sciences, and there is nothing wrong with properly conducted surveys as a method in sociology, economics or psychology.
If surveys targeting the very people responsible for optimising their businesses' productivity, with no incentive to falsify their conclusions, is good evidence. Without any other way to systematically measure the change in productivity across a plethora of different businesses implementing a four-day workweek, it is as good as it gets — much better than purely theoretical assumptions that productivity must have dropped.
You can find the study here if you wish to critique its methods: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-026-07536-x
Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100
#18Basically every study shows a four day week works best. The issue is why we never go with what the study shows.
Because if we did we’d have universal healthcare, 4 day work weeks, WFH where possible, walkable cities, and a lot more housing, and every single one of those things makes it harder for abusive jobs to control their employees.
Progress is a functioning of effort, time, and luck. It’s a marathon. Keep grinding. Success is proven possible.
Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100
#19Basically every study shows a four day week works best. The issue is why we never go with what the study shows.
Naive question but if it works best wouldn't companies that have a four day work week outperform theirs peers and because of that grow faster, and become more common?
I see the opposite in most startups that have a 6 day work week to get ahead of the "slowly moving" 5 day work week competition.
Re: The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100
#20Speaking as an American, I don’t give a shit if it increases productivity or not. Productivity has gone up exponentially with technological advancement since the advent of the 5 day work week. We, as a species, should be minimizing work to 3 or 4 days a week with equal overall pay. Corporations should be fined heavily for contacting an employee after working hours. On call should require corporations to pay hefty overtime. This is a compromise because really and truly corporations should be illegal. Employee owned co-ops are more humane.