Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#151

Post by efa » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

hellllllllooo wrote: post #103

ryanmercer wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't want to spend most of my life working. I feel like a slave I've never understood this line of thinking. Providing for yourself is being a contributing member of the species, work is a means of providing for yourself. For all of human history you've either had to get up every day and go be productive bringing resources in or you had to depend upon someone else to do it for you. I see this "working is slavery"…

Really, you can't understand it? You've never had to work long hours at an unfulfilling, repetitive job you hate just to pay the bills and survive without being able to save anything? You're lucky, a lot of people in the US are not so lucky.

Saying "just to pay the bills and survive" implies you are barely scraping by. We're still talking about 6 figure IT incomes correct? I think that's a little dramatic.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#152

Post by stjohnswarts » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 4:44 PM UTC

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…

Then go dig holes and make less money and he can continue on with his life. No one said an engineer was worth more than a ditch digger, just that an engineer is going to be economically better off. I'm an engineer who dug ditches in his youth but also took the time to go to school and put off having a family until it became economically viable to have one. Communism doesn't work it, it kills passion and leads to authoritarianism. Capitalism isn't going anywhere.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#153

Post by staticassertion » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

ryanmercer wrote: post #92

_hn_throw_away wrote: post #12

(This is a duplicate of a story posted this past weekend. I want to copy my comment from it for greater visibility.) Fuck everything about 5 day work weeks. I'll gladly switch to any job that offers a 4 day work week. It's one of the best perks. As someone with ADHD, work days are entirely spent getting work done. There isn't any extra slack or allotment for personal tasks. They're 100% owned by the employer. Weekend…

>I don't want to spend most of my life working. I feel like a slave I've never understood this line of thinking. Providing for yourself is being a contributing member of the species, work is a means of providing for yourself. For all of human history you've either had to get up every day and go be productive bringing resources in or you had to depend upon someone else to do it for you. I see this "working is slavery"…

Your entire post feels like a boomer meme. You're just telling people to be happy with their job, ignore feeling miserable, and how much worse they could have had it.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#154

Post by C1sc0cat » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

FillardMillmore wrote: post #96

Somewhat tangential, but I've been waiting for one of the Democratic candidates for President to bring up the 4-day work week as an campaign issue and extol the benefits of such a proposal. Labor unions and Democrats have achieved rights for workers in the past similar to the '4-day work week', so why not push for it? I legitimately don't know - is it because corporate lobbyists would frown upon it? Assuredly though,…

A minimum statutory holiday allowance might be easier to sell than a 4 day week.

It would also boost internal tourism so would have that advantage as well

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#155

Post by armagon » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

jackcosgrove wrote: post #85

We should switch everyone to rolling weekends. It makes no sense that everyone gets the same two days off. It is such a hassle scheduling doctors appointments, receiving repairmen, going to the DMV, etc. on a weekday. The only reason we have the same two days off is for historical religious reasons. And a rolling schedule could still accommodate that for those who care. For everyone else, just put them on a rolling s…

Russia tried this 90 years ago. It was awful.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_calendar#Five-day_weeks :

"Eighty per cent of each factory's workforce was at work every day (except holidays) in an attempt to increase production while 20% were resting. But if a husband and wife, and their relatives and friends, were assigned different colors or numbers, they would not have a common rest day for their family and social life. Furthermore, machines broke down more frequently both because they were used by workers not familiar with them, and because no maintenance could be performed on machines that were never idle in factories with continuous schedules (24 hours/day every day). Five-day weeks (and later six-day weeks) "made it impossible to observe Sunday as a day of rest. This measure was deliberately introduced 'to facilitate the struggle to eliminate religion'".[25]"

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#156

Post by moeamaya » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

_hn_throw_away wrote: post #12

(This is a duplicate of a story posted this past weekend. I want to copy my comment from it for greater visibility.) Fuck everything about 5 day work weeks. I'll gladly switch to any job that offers a 4 day work week. It's one of the best perks. As someone with ADHD, work days are entirely spent getting work done. There isn't any extra slack or allotment for personal tasks. They're 100% owned by the employer. Weekend…

We do 4-day (32 hour) work weeks at Monograph, and we've been doing it for 3 years now. I believe we're one of the only companies in SF that are advocates for working less, but more productively.

Similar to Microsoft, we only have one 45-min meeting each week and then everything else is heads down work.

To maintain efficiency, we also have strict Slack protocols in place to keep everyone in deep work throughout the day. (No @ or DMs, everyone checks Slack at 11am and 4pm).

The major downside so far has been customer support, which the founders still manage to maintain our response rate.

Oh and we're hiring! If you're frontend engineer and like 4-day weeks + side projects, reach out directly moe@monograph.io

https://monograph.io/jobs/frontend/

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#157

Post by treyfitty » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

metalliqaz wrote: post #142

_hn_throw_away wrote: post #12

(This is a duplicate of a story posted this past weekend. I want to copy my comment from it for greater visibility.) Fuck everything about 5 day work weeks. I'll gladly switch to any job that offers a 4 day work week. It's one of the best perks. As someone with ADHD, work days are entirely spent getting work done. There isn't any extra slack or allotment for personal tasks. They're 100% owned by the employer. Weekend…

You're going to have a startup that doesn't demand life-consuming overtime? I find that hard to believe.

I know plenty of non unicorn startup founders that don’t work overtime, and they net about $1Mm per year. Sure, not a path to billionaire status, but not too shabby either.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#158

Post by bsanr2 » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

_hn_throw_away wrote: post #12

(This is a duplicate of a story posted this past weekend. I want to copy my comment from it for greater visibility.) Fuck everything about 5 day work weeks. I'll gladly switch to any job that offers a 4 day work week. It's one of the best perks. As someone with ADHD, work days are entirely spent getting work done. There isn't any extra slack or allotment for personal tasks. They're 100% owned by the employer. Weekend…

Don't sell yourself short. The economy could support everyone working four 8-hour days or five 6-hour days at the same pay (or, rather, with the same median pay, better distributed) as now. Our productivity gains over the past 4 decades prove it.

People who want to work more should be able to, but we generally need a massive reevaluation of what work in America is worth, in favor of labor. We're giving up way too much because we're afraid.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#159

Post by faceplanted » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

ryanmercer wrote: post #92

_hn_throw_away wrote: post #12

(This is a duplicate of a story posted this past weekend. I want to copy my comment from it for greater visibility.) Fuck everything about 5 day work weeks. I'll gladly switch to any job that offers a 4 day work week. It's one of the best perks. As someone with ADHD, work days are entirely spent getting work done. There isn't any extra slack or allotment for personal tasks. They're 100% owned by the employer. Weekend…

>I don't want to spend most of my life working. I feel like a slave I've never understood this line of thinking. Providing for yourself is being a contributing member of the species, work is a means of providing for yourself. For all of human history you've either had to get up every day and go be productive bringing resources in or you had to depend upon someone else to do it for you. I see this "working is slavery"…

I want to hone in on the part about "all of human history".

I don't know if you've met tribes people or those living in agrarian societies, but while they do tend to have excellent work ethics and do a lot, they also tend to have _more_ down time and family time than someone working a 40 hour week, tilling fields is hard fucking work, maintaining all your own equipment and making things by hand is slow and laborious, but you do get to finish. Sometimes there's weeks that you're working every single day, but there's also seasons where you aren't.

Re: Microsoft 4-day week boosts productivity and sales

#160

Post by zozbot234 » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #111

ryanmercer wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't want to spend most of my life working. I feel like a slave I've never understood this line of thinking. Providing for yourself is being a contributing member of the species, work is a means of providing for yourself. For all of human history you've either had to get up every day and go be productive bringing resources in or you had to depend upon someone else to do it for you. I see this "working is slavery"…

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…

> There are no jobs in my area that pay 80% of my current rate for the same task done 4 days a week.

You can totally get this kind of flexibility as a self-employed contractor. The fact that you aren't just as easily allowed it as an employee is ultimately due to excess red tape in the paid-employment sector, nothing else. Every bit of red tape in the employment arrangement is an extra fixed cost that has to be paid-for somehow, meaning that the employee has to work that much more just to break even.