Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

independent.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 128 posts

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#21

Post by ashtonkem »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #13
ashtonkem wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t be silly, if customers were unhappy about the lack of service on Friday, they will let you know between Monday and Thursday.

This assumes customers would want to return three days later just to tell you that a problem happened last week. Most people do not do this, especially if they can make it work on Monday. Nearly every time that I experience a problem on a website, I try to report the bug / customer experience. And nearly every single time, if it's even possible for me to report it at all, it takes me 30+ minutes just to figure out ho…

Have you ever worked with customers? They will go way out of their way to let you know they’re unhappy.

The idea that literally no customers would give you negative feedback about being closed one day purely because they could not be bothered to call in another day simply does not pass the sniff test.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#22

Post by ashtonkem »

ncallaway wrote: post #20
bpodgursky wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm suggesting we have 0 data, and this study is nothing more than an opportunity for people to advocate for the policies they wanted anyway. Which is fine, you can say that 4-day weeks is better b/c it's nicer! That's ok! Just don't try to dress this fluff up as science.

> I'm suggesting we have 0 data But you’d be wrong, because we now have some data. You can argue the quality of the data is insufficient to draw a conclusion, but it seems… extreme to argue that the data that was collected has 0 value.

One gets the feeling that the issue is less “we don’t have any data” and more “I disagree with what the data is saying”.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#23

Post by _benj »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #18
hellbannedguy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only met one person who wasen't for a four day 10 hr/day work week. He was a Electrician acquaintance of my father. He was beyond a odd duck. His idea of a fun weekend was painting his house. I'm not kidding. I used to talk to my father a lot over a four day work week. His union almost got it, but they backed out at the last moment. I still think it was a payola thing from the contractors! It just makes so much…

What brings you to Hacker News, if I may ask?

I’m also quite interested in what brings you to HN. Don’t get me wrong, welcome! But it’s quite interesting seeing somebody here that is not the stereotypical tech/business/startup type

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#24

Post by PragmaticPulp »

sandworm101 wrote: post #7

I work in a field (military) where "overtime" isn't a thing. We can and do work 24+hour shifts without any extra pay. Even during peacetime, if we need to work 16-hour days every day for a month we can do that without any financial cost. We can also be sent home at noon every day without diminishing our wages a penny. That absolute flexibility does not reduce stress. With no standard office hours we face constant neg…

> And somehow the entropy always flows up to supervisors. At 0400 (4am) Sunday morning I took over a watch from my boss. All the junior people are at home enjoying their flexible work schedules while the two senior people on the team end up covering the long shifts nobody else wants.

This hits home for me. I briefly worked at a company that tried to allow infinite flexibility in working hours. The flexibility quickly became a tool to avoid meetings and be conveniently unavailable whenever work needed to be done.

Like you said, it falls on a few people to get the work done after everyone else has flex scheduled their way into only being available at odd hours. Managers were afraid to drag people back into work or force specific working hours because the employees could complain that their managers weren't allowing flexible schedules.

It eventually turned into a mix of some people who were working all of the time to get things done and other people who were almost never working. Then it was abandoned.

It's much better to have some core, overlapping work hours that everyone is required to attend unless they have special circumstances (doctor's appointment, for example). Then let everyone choose flexible working hours before or after that time. Infinite freedom is too ripe for abuse at scale.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#25

Post by brian_cunnie »

paulcole wrote: post #16
hellbannedguy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only met one person who wasen't for a four day 10 hr/day work week. He was a Electrician acquaintance of my father. He was beyond a odd duck. His idea of a fun weekend was painting his house. I'm not kidding. I used to talk to my father a lot over a four day work week. His union almost got it, but they backed out at the last moment. I still think it was a payola thing from the contractors! It just makes so much…

> I've only met one person who wasen't for a four day 10 hr/day work week. Now you’ve met 2! I hate working 8 hours a day. 0% chance I’ll ever work a schedule of 10-hour days. Who downvotes this lol?

ten hour days are hard for me—I start fading at the 7th hour

I do love a four-day work week, but with 8-hour days, and I've been lucky enough to pull that off for the last 15 years. There's a downside though: it makes switching jobs much more difficult because few companies want to hire someone who only works 4 days/week.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#26

Post by PragmaticPulp »

irrational wrote: post #19

> four nine hour days How many of you are salaried, yet your hours are tracked? My job is such that I roll in whenever I want, leave whenever I want. As long as I get my work done, nobody cares how long I actually work each day. A few decades ago, my first job out of college did track hours. That was pure hell.

> My job is such that I roll in whenever I want, leave whenever I want. As long as I get my work done, nobody cares how long I actually work each day

Most of my tech jobs have been flexible hours.

However, it helps to have core working hours. For example, one of my favorite companies didn't care when or where you worked most of the time, but we all had to be present for an 11AM meeting every day and available for a few hours after that. Some people worked early and left early. Others showed up right at 11AM and then worked into the evening. We could always schedule necessary meetings around lunch, or just go to lunch together because we were already together.

Companies that get too flexible with schedules turn into a communication mess, unless they really do have units of work that can be done asynchronously and in isolation.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#27

Post by [deleted] »

bpodgursky wrote: post #10
ashtonkem wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument was used against a lot of things that turned out to be a good thing, like the 40 hour work week. What’s your suggesting other than naysaying this trial?

I'm suggesting we have 0 data, and this study is nothing more than an opportunity for people to advocate for the policies they wanted anyway. Which is fine, you can say that 4-day weeks is better b/c it's nicer! That's ok! Just don't try to dress this fluff up as science.

[deleted]

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#28

Post by jackson1442 »

irrational wrote: post #19

> four nine hour days How many of you are salaried, yet your hours are tracked? My job is such that I roll in whenever I want, leave whenever I want. As long as I get my work done, nobody cares how long I actually work each day. A few decades ago, my first job out of college did track hours. That was pure hell.

We track hours at my job but it’s not anything super granular. We have to bill clients for hours, so we track them ourselves but it basically comes down to getting 40 hours-worth of work done each week. I basically just figure out what percent of each day I spent on each project and apportion my timecard appropriately.

While it’d be nice to not track, it works well enough. I make hourly but can work as much (or as little) as I want each week as long as most is spent on billable work.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#29

Post by nameoda »

irrational wrote: post #19

> four nine hour days How many of you are salaried, yet your hours are tracked? My job is such that I roll in whenever I want, leave whenever I want. As long as I get my work done, nobody cares how long I actually work each day. A few decades ago, my first job out of college did track hours. That was pure hell.

What I have observed in software development companies is that there is no limit where one can say, "My work is done". When one task is complete, there is another one ready to pick up. So, the only way to stop working for a day is to track your hours and say, "I have worked for 8 hours today and I will pause the work until tomorrow".

What field and role are you working in, where you can roll in whenever you want and leave whenever you want and yet complete your work in fewer than the total assigned work hours per day?

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#30

Post by SilverRed »

nameoda wrote: post #29
irrational wrote: post #19

> four nine hour days How many of you are salaried, yet your hours are tracked? My job is such that I roll in whenever I want, leave whenever I want. As long as I get my work done, nobody cares how long I actually work each day. A few decades ago, my first job out of college did track hours. That was pure hell.

What I have observed in software development companies is that there is no limit where one can say, "My work is done". When one task is complete, there is another one ready to pick up. So, the only way to stop working for a day is to track your hours and say, "I have worked for 8 hours today and I will pause the work until tomorrow". What field and role are you working in, where you can roll in whenever you want and…

Also you have some days where you feel super productive and get loads done and some where things are difficult or you are tired and not a lot gets done. If you leave early on the productive days, would you stay back longer on the days you aren't doing so well?

And how do you know if you were actually very productive one day and not that the task was overestimated and actually very easy? Would you want to be on the hook for underestimated tasks? For me its easier to just say "I tried my best for x hours" and leave at the same time every day except in times of urgency.

Post reply on HN