Live data from Hacker News

We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

beaconcrm.org

121–130 of 351 posts

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think work is just like everything else in this regard. Providing you have standard white collar job, as things continue to improve and get better, we just find new things to complain about. e.g. parent poster complaining about 'business casual' when it wasn't that long ago business casual was a nice step down from having to wear a suit. The workplace continuously adjusts but so do our expectations.

It's always weird to watch Office Space and see the guys all wearing ties. I can't imagine having to do that for a typical software job.

I did that for the greater part of my early career.

I think that banks in Manhattan may still have shirt-and-tie for engineers.

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#122
post #79
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that comic really makes me question how much of todays complaning about work and life struggles has been a multi decade persistent thing - not just hardships facing this particular generation. (As someone who was 5 in 1996 and didn't see this first hand.)

Dilbert had his own desk, with his own stuff, he had a modicum of privacy from his colleagues The cube farm was hated at the time, but things only ever get worse if you work in an office.

“After your boss has taken away your door, your walls, and your storage areas, there aren't many options left for the next revolution in office design. One of the following things is likely to go next: the floor; the ceiling; your happiness."

Scott Adams was blasting open concept offices before it was cool to blast them.

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#123
post #75

This is part of a wider scheme in the UK whereby 60 firms and 3000 employees are piloting 4 day weeks. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/04/thousands-o... From the article: Employees from a wide range of businesses and charities are expected to take part in the scheme, which will run initially from June to December, including the Royal Society of Biology, the London-based brewing company Pressure Drop, a…

"Which country and city governments have a four-day work week?": https://buildremote.co/four-day-week/4-day-work-week-countri... I am surprised the lack of mention of Denmark, Sweden or the Netherlands. Most business persons I contact, normally only work 4 days a week.

In the Netherlands you're legally allowed to work parttime for the same hourly pay. This has resulted in a lot of people working 32 hours (or less).

This, however, is not the same as an entire company working 4 day weeks.

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#124

I really can't wrap my head around this four-day week trend. If the organization is focused on KPI's so why does it matter if people work one day or four-days? If the organization is focused on time spend no work (either in office or remotely) how can work be done in 80% of the time? Really don't understand how it works in day-to-day. It resembles the unlimited vacation days policy which was later found out to be unh…

We work 4 days of 10 hours each. It's a good trade-off and I love the schedule.

I had a 4 tens option at a previous job. We could have Monday or Friday off. I especially liked it late in the day when the 5 eights people left and it was quiet and there weren't any meetings.

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#125
post #75

This is part of a wider scheme in the UK whereby 60 firms and 3000 employees are piloting 4 day weeks. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/04/thousands-o... From the article: Employees from a wide range of businesses and charities are expected to take part in the scheme, which will run initially from June to December, including the Royal Society of Biology, the London-based brewing company Pressure Drop, a…

"Which country and city governments have a four-day work week?": https://buildremote.co/four-day-week/4-day-work-week-countri... I am surprised the lack of mention of Denmark, Sweden or the Netherlands. Most business persons I contact, normally only work 4 days a week.

But do they get paid for 5 days? Are their pension contributions the same as for someone who worked 5 days? What about their holiday allowance(s)? Their bonuses?

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always weird to watch Office Space and see the guys all wearing ties. I can't imagine having to do that for a typical software job.

> It's always weird to watch Office Space and see the guys all wearing ties. I can't imagine having to do that for a typical software job I believe this changed in the early 2000s. The dot-com crash reset Silicon Valley. And the Enron scandal reduced corporate America's pull on it. (Steve Jobs wasn't an icon when business casual began taking its hold.) [1] https://high-tech-guide.com/article/how-did-steve-jobs-help-.…

In my case, it ended in 1994. The company where I worked at the time already had casual Fridays. Business casual, mind you; it was quite some years later before I got to see the whole jeans-and-sneakers casual Friday thing. During the summer of 1994, they went to business-casual-every-day. Then, as a morale booster (probably, as I look at it now, because the execs knew a 40% layoff was months away), the management decided at the end of summer to let us stick with that. The only time I wore a tie to work after that was on a day when I was going to have to leave early to go to a funeral.

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in a company often collaborate so having them work at the same place/time is useful. Companies often collaborate or use each others services so having all companies and all people work at the time is useful. Parents need their kids taken care of while they work, so school hours mirror (to an extent) working hours and vice versa. All very explainable I think.

"People in a company often collaborate so having them work at the same place/time is useful." the funny thing is that the same people who talk about collaboration at the office are often the decision makers that set up open offices where everybody wears headphones and nobody ever talks to each other.

I meant more historically why things are this way. Open offices/cubicles have been around longer than people have been wearing headphones in the office. I certainly don't agree with it for modern tech work.

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the organization is focused on KPI's so why does it matter if people work one day or four-days? Arguably it matters in how you KPIs are set. I think it's reasonable to expect a full time employee to work more than one day a week. If you can meet all your KPIs with everyone working one day a week, then maybe you're aiming too low. Of course, if you require everyone to work 60 hour weeks to hit KPIs, that's an eve…

KPIs can be change continuously so that's why I'm baffled by this trend. Companies can just say - we measure only by KPIs, work whenever you want. Something like this signals a much better workspace than four-days workweek, since the latter still measures time instead of output.

I'm not sure which trend are you referring to. In any case, I'm not suggesting employees should be measured solely by time worked. Only that I think setting performance targets based on a reasonable number of hours worked seems to make sense to me. Otherwise, I'm not really sure what benchmark you would use.

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#129
post #120
post #118

Is this better than a results oriented work week? And figure out your own schedule as individual or team.

What is a results oriented work week? How do you measure? If its "I said I would get X done" then yes, a four day work week is much better.

Sounds to me like someone does not trust employees to manage themselves and meet deadlines, and thats ok. I was coming into this thread from a highly skilled, well paid workers perspective.

Completely agree, if you need to micro-manage then workday oriented results are easier.

Re: We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon

#130
I've been working 4 day workweeks for well over a decade now, took the pay cut myself.

As for the goal to maintain 100% productivity whilst cutting back on hours, I'm confident that they will succeed. In fact, they'll succeed in this without requiring some kind of brilliant plan, as this recalibration happens automatically.

When you start working one day less, nobody will reduce your workload by 20%. You'll have the exact same workload as before and now need to achieve it in less time.

There's many ways to cross this gap. An obvious one is that a typical 5 day work week has moments of slack, depending on the culture. Friday after lunch is where productivity sinks in many offices. Wednesdays are also slower as it's typically the first moment in the week where things are running (planned, prepared, on track). In a 4 day work week you sacrifice this breathing room, the 4 days become more compressed.

Another natural change is to take a more aggressive stand in rejecting non-sense. Excess meetings, unimportant emails, etc. This works very well and is extremely effective for the simple reason that you MUST. As such this time compression is a blessing, a cleansing mechanism for yourself and the organization.

You'll be amazed at how much time you can win back. Let's say you do need to attend a meeting. It's a 1 hour meeting. You're needed in the meeting. Go in and say you only have 20 mins. As if by sheer magic, what needed to be discussed gets done in 20 mins. Without this forced "budgeting", people would just fill the hour with bullshit.

Counter intuitive, but by being rigid instead of elastic, you maximize value.

Post reply on HN