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Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#131

Post by [deleted] »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #95
RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you or your dependents have a medical condition, and your health insurance is provided by your employer. Your most powerful tool in negotiating with your employer is to threaten to resign. Even with COBRA, paying for your own health insurance can be a substantial burden for many people in the US. If resigning from your job poses substantial risks to your health and life, your employer holds all the cards. A workf…

> Even with COBRA Why are COBRA prices as crazy as they are? I pay $200/mo for medical insurance, yet COBRA quoted me $800/mo+ I believe.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#132

Post by [deleted] »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #5
pgt wrote: post #3

Duplicate? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21433710 The aha comment that made me realise why this probably won't take off by @claudeganon [^1]: > "The whole arrangement is about control, preventing workers from having the time or energy to build competing enterprises, develop skills beyond a certain level, or organize against their employers. It’s the same reason why most big corps oppose a national healthcare s…

> It’s the same reason why most big corps oppose a national healthcare system in the US: it keeps people locked in to their current positions and has the knock-on effect of putting downward pressure on wages and turnover expenses. Is this... true?

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#133

Post by tstrimple »

abledon wrote: post #21

Anyone working at MSFT know if the work hours vary according to your country? e.g. If you are in the US, do you punch in at 9 and go home at 5? how about Europe? If you transfer offices from Seattle USA, to say, London UK, do you suddenly get more vacation days due to EU standards? I hear Japan has cultural practices where workers are supposed to remain in the office until the boss goes home. Was it like this at MSFT…

> If you transfer offices from Seattle USA, to say, London UK, do you suddenly get more vacation days due to EU standards?

Yes, this is how it works. When I moved from California to the Midwest while working at Microsoft, I had to be paid out accrued vacation because California requires employers to keep accruing vacation time, while other states allow companies to put a cap on it.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#134

Post by not_a_cop75 »

pgt wrote: post #3

Duplicate? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21433710 The aha comment that made me realise why this probably won't take off by @claudeganon [^1]: > "The whole arrangement is about control, preventing workers from having the time or energy to build competing enterprises, develop skills beyond a certain level, or organize against their employers. It’s the same reason why most big corps oppose a national healthcare s…

"It’s the same reason why most big corps oppose a national healthcare system in the US"

Why would any company oppose a healthcare system in the US? It effectively moves the blame for healthcare from company to government.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#135

Post by deathhand »

ryanmercer wrote: post #115
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am overwhelmingly more productive and valuable now as a specialized, highly educated, experienced engineer than I would have been as a subsistence farmer. As a result of my efforts and the efforts of the rest of society, I have a much higher standard of living. However, I can't truly pick when I want to work. There are no jobs in my area that pay 80% of my current rate for the same task done 4 days a week. If a job…

>I am overwhelmingly more productive and valuable now as a specialized, highly educated, experienced engineer than I would have been as a subsistence farmer. I've got some news for you, many manual labor jobs aren't just picking up a shovel and digging a hole or picking up a box and setting it back down. Your first sentence, to me, reads "I'm more valuable than you because I know thing, so I want more resources for l…

>"I'm more valuable than you because I know thing, so I want more resources for less effort"

Congratulations you just described capitalism.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#136

Post by Bhilai »

I'd rather have a concept where some hours of the day or some day(s) of the week are considered "no meeting hours/day." I feel we waste a huge of amount of time meeting with "stakeholders" trying to get consensus and establish "sync" and deliver "status." I purposefully blow some meetings off and ask for meeting notes instead of sitting 30mins/hour long meetings. May be its just me but I strongly feel there needs to be less meetings. I have started to block my calendar two-three hours everyday that I use to auto reject meetings, turn of slack and focus on deep work.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#137

Post by driverdan »

throwawayforme1 wrote: post #50
izolate wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why do you feel it necessary to use a throwaway? I echo your thoughts entirely and feel strongly enough about them to attribute them to my name. I think we (as a society/industry) need to start publicly having this discussion.

ADHD is considered a mental illness. That's why.

So? There's nothing wrong with mental illness. For the record I also have ADHD.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#138

Post by methehack »

dillonmckay wrote: post #79
ponsin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful starting a startup. It will be hard to find an investor willing to invest in a company whose founder only works 4/7 days a week

Sounds more like a lifestyle business strategy.

I understand this thinking. I think, though, that the more we understand about cognition (and sleep and health in general and its impact on thinking), the more we'll tend toward somewhat lighter hours (more like 30-40 hours a week even in a startup situation). Not because we can get away with it, but because the output is actually superior.

From a business strategy standpoint, my experience has been that sometimes companies try to compensate for poor strategy by piling on the hours. To me, it's like trying to do push ups to solve math problems faster.

Similarly, I have noticed that strategic structural soundness is vastly more important than hours worked. When the structure is there, all your efforts are leveraged many times over such that, effectively, 30 hours a week becomes more like 300.

Hard work is important and satisfying but duration is not the real measure we should look at, imo.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#139

Post by hindsightbias »

higeyuki wrote: post #89
realbarack wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiment regarding benefits in the U.S. Couldn't companies provide the important benefits (healthcare, 401k matching) to employees who worked a 4-day week as well? One potential issue is that I think there are fewer legal requirements, but competitive employers already provide benefits that exceed the legal minima.

My only question is why do employers have to be responsible for healthcare? Retirement makes sense as this is your source of income. I feel that company resources would be better spent elsewhere than on healthcare. This would, of course, require universal healthcare or direct market healthcare. This would help new businesses thrive, especially the "mom and pop" types. I guess I am jaded on this as my parents lost the…

Well, Henry’s Ford and Kaiser were there before the govt was, and Sen. Edward Kennedy didn’t want to help Nixon with health care reform so Edgar Kaiser’s HMOs won out.

I doubt most Fortune 500 employees would support turning their company plans into some medicare-for-all. Next step would be turning Social Security over to Goldman Sachs.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#140

Post by raphaelj »

I've been working 4d/week for the past 2 years as a software engineer, and it would be very hard for me to go back to a full time position.

I'm pretty sure I'm making more right now compared to how much I was when working full time.

I explain this by having had more time to become a better engineer, as I've been able to spend time on side projects (learning new things), distancing myself from my professional duties (thus avoiding unnecessary/inefficient work), and recovering better during the weekends. Exercising more probably helped a lot too.

Overall, I deeply think that more small tech companies should start offering 4d/week positions, as it will make them able to compete against bigger companies that can offer bigger compensations. Most of the best programmers I know would happily trade a 15% net income reduction for an additional day off. This is also reflected by how popular such articles get on Hacker News or Reddit.

As a side note, part time work for white-collar positions is already very common in the Netherlands[1], and the country if one of the richest in the world.

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[1] https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2015/05/11/...

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