Just make a mandatory 5 weeks a year.
"Unlimited" PTO is a gimmick.
Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output
191–200 of 236 posts
Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output
#192We work a 4 Day, 32 hour week, and have done so since 2015. During that time, our team grew from a small office of ~20 in Edinburgh to where we are today (3 offices in Edinburgh Scotland, Bozeman USA, and Beirut Lebanon) with about 80 people. We have consistently been one of the fastest growing tech companies in Scotland (and in the UK). When we implemented the 4 day policy, we didn’t change our financial targets, or…
How much do people work on average?
Would your CEO take a phone call from a client/lawyer/bank on the fifth day?
Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, Tim Ferris wrote a book called "The 4-Hour Workweek" with the goal of more people achieving the title. It is more oriented at breaking free of normal work habits than a scientific study of optimal productivity though.
Something tells me Tim Ferris works a lot more than 4 hours a week himself.
His podcasts had him on for about six hours weekly iirc.
Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plus your brain will crunch things in the background. How many time as a developer have you "solved" a problem you've been stuck on for hours or days while showering or traveling to work. Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees.
For me that one happens very often when I'm falling asleep, in my dreams, after waking in the middle of the night, or in the early hours before I get up. Many of my more annoying problems have been solved that way. I knew an old Vietnamese refugee who was an electrical engineer working on maintaining and repairing portable stage lighting ballasts. He used to tell me how he would dream about the circuits and debug the…
My experience echoes that of the Vietnamese electrical engineer.
Maybe I think much differently than others, but sometimes on difficult problems I will think forever and do nothing. In the interim, people will think I'm an idiot ("don't you have work to do", "shouldn't you know this"). Then suddenly, whoosh, everything comes at once. I'll work for a comparatively short amount of time, code/work will just fly from my fingers, and whatever I'm working on will be excellent quality. One of my finest moments was in the process of one of these outbursts I was able to write a "one shot wonder" class that worked essentially exactly as expected without rewrites (no compilation errors or defects).
This is just kind of how I operate, and it really held me back in college (decent exam scores would bail out awful homework scores) though now it's nicer in a professional/adult environment where people give you a little more leeway, freedom, and respect. Though the drawback is that it ruins metrics like burndown charts and managements' expectation of a proportional work-to-output ratio.
Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output
#195Talk of lower work hours doesn’t always come with clear expectations around pay. Ignoring the large fixed cost of providing healthcare, I bet companies would be more willing to drop hours from a schedule if compensation also dropped.
"Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand financial services company, switched its 240 staff from a five-day week to a four-day week last November and maintained their pay."
That’s nice for perpetual guardian but I don’t see it happening as a mainstream movement without an incentive.
Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why wouldn’t it work for call centers? Just pay them for 4 days of work and hire More people.
Because work that call centre workers do can't be compressed. That means each person is working 32 hours each week (no gain in productivity), but still getting paid for 40. Whereas a computer programmer might still be able to complete 40 hours-worth of work in 32 hours by increasing productivity.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to hypothesize that while the quantity of work wouldn’t change, the quality would increase. I presume to pay for 32 hours if they work 32 hours.
Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would hate that environment. I don't want to have to guess if I'm doing enough. I don't want to guess if I'm working 20 days more a year than another employee or 10 days less. I just want a negotiated amount of time off. If it's 10 days a year or 50 days a year at least know I can take them off 100% guilt free. If it's "take as much as you want" there will always be those who abuse the policy and those who under ut…
What if 'enough' is not time-based? What if you just have to make sure that new versions are deployed and the service stays up and isn't being hacked? If you can do that with 2 days/week, more power to you. Or maybe you put 6 days/week in at the outset, as an investment so that in a few months you'll be able to work a lot less?
> Or maybe you put 6 days/week in at the outset, as an investment so that in a few months you'll be able to work a lot less?
There are two outcomes in that situation.
1. Great, so you've gotten Service Foo stable! It now needs minimal dev attention. Since there's no shortage of work that needs to be done, and you've got 3 days/week free, it sounds like you're free to work on Service Bar, in addition to Service Foo.
2. Great, so you've gotten Service Foo stable. Now that it needs half the development attention that it used to, we no longer need a full-time person on it. Since we don't have any more work, we're laying you off (Or, in a fairy tale, where, for whatever reason, your manager values your contributions for what they were, laying one of your co-workers off.)
Personally, I prefer outcome #1. I'm paid to be at work, and do things, and if I get my work done faster then estimated, I'll get more work. And that's fine. The alternative is much worse.
Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output
#198We work a 4 Day, 32 hour week, and have done so since 2015. During that time, our team grew from a small office of ~20 in Edinburgh to where we are today (3 offices in Edinburgh Scotland, Bozeman USA, and Beirut Lebanon) with about 80 people. We have consistently been one of the fastest growing tech companies in Scotland (and in the UK). When we implemented the 4 day policy, we didn’t change our financial targets, or…
How much do people work on average? Would your CEO take a phone call from a client/lawyer/bank on the fifth day?
We try to keep it to 32 but the problem with good people who are high performers is they love to work! We try to emphasise that sure, at times you may need to burst a bit, and we do, but overtime is generally a failure of management. Either the managing team or managing ones workload. A lot of times when our managers notice overtime or more than 32 they look into the whys behind it.
Our CEO (me) does take phone calls and work a bit on the 5th day. I’m not the best example, but I don’t go into the office, and I try to limit it to important stuff that literally can’t wait. My travel schedule means I burn weekend days quite a bit but I do enjoy being on long haul flights where my phone doesn’t work. I’m a recovering workaholic and I do feel like it’s helped me personally put the brakes on a bit.
The funny thing is, when I’m off on my 5th day and enjoying a hobby or something I often get very creative ideas about the business popping into my thoughts. And I think that shouldn’t be surprising bc that’s how our minds work - we can’t be slaves to a hustle porn mentality and do our best work.
Anyway. We and myself aren’t perfect, but we do try to adhere to the spirit of the idea as best we can.
Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output
#199The hawthorne effect should be factored in here. I am a proponent of 4 day weeks but depends on the situation industry etc.
Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is actually the downside of these "you decide" plans and why I absolutely hate "unlimited PTO" policies. Whenever it's up to me I end up taking less vacation than if I just had an allotted amount. People shortchange themselves because they don't want to inconvenience their team. And as an added insult, the company gets out of paying you for unused vacation when you finally burn out.
I've just started my first job with unlimited PTO, and I've never understood complaints like these. I can see how it isn't as amazing as a naive what's-on-the-tin reading would imply, but it seems to me that you can just set your bar at what a normal amount of vacation would be, plus a little bit if you feel like, since they're marketing it as "unlimited PTO". Eg, decide that three weeks is an appropriate, comparable…
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