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

beaconcrm.org

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

#211

Post by eweise »

digitallyfree wrote: post #189
eweise wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In theory it's like how a school project is scheduled - you have milestones and a deadline but you can work flexibly as long as you hit your targets. So if you want to get it all done on the first day, crunch on the last, or spread it out, it's up to you and no one cares as long as it's complete with sufficient quality. Likely this doesn't work well on a team, or for more open-ended work. Never seen any organisation…

Right. I used to fix bid contracts and assumed the risk, so I would charge more than contracting by the hour. I imagine employees would give longer estimates to reduce their risk of working overtime.

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

#212

Post by standardUser »

My employer has been fully remote with half-day Fridays for 2 years. In practice, those half-days are worth maybe 20% of a regular work day, not 50%. I feel like we've already proven a 4-day work week can be effective and the only thing holding us back is an adherence to convention and expectations (by managers, execs and investors).

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

#213

Post by reneherse »

giorgioz wrote: post #209

At https://www.waiterio.com we are fully remote and we introduced 32 hours work weeks except for customer support which still does 40 hours a week. We track hours with hubstaff.com which takes a random screenshot every 10 minutes. It's been a mixed bag. Half of the team kept productivity up and logged those 32 hours stably. Another half of the team, when left unchecked went down to 14 hours a week and very low output…

You'll probably do better once you can retain people who reject employer surveillance.

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

#214

Post by pc86 »

They say it's 100% of the full-time salary, but the one open position they have is a full-stack JS engineer for the equivalent of about $66k USD. Is the market really that bad in the UK? That's not even a good new grad offer in the US.

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

#215

Post by gadflyinyoureye »

pc86 wrote: post #214

They say it's 100% of the full-time salary, but the one open position they have is a full-stack JS engineer for the equivalent of about $66k USD. Is the market really that bad in the UK? That's not even a good new grad offer in the US.

Yes, yes it is that bad. https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/london-software-engineer-.... 60k Pounds is about 75k USD. Seems like Beacon might be on the low side.

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

#216

Post by pc86 »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #195
heretogetout wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Every time I've tried this or seen it tried the meeting gets rescheduled and everyone's time is wasted. I wish it worked this way.

I wonder what percentage of meetings occur because someone in leadership is disorganized and / or unable to properly communicate with staff while they're performing their jobs on a daily basis. Gonna say that, excluding standup, this has to be at least 50%.

I've heard this class of meetings described as "organizing your thoughts with witnesses" and that's a brilliant explanation in my experience.

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

#217

Post by giorgioz »

anuraj wrote: post #104

What I don't understand about Europe is 1. They are facing a huge negative demographic dividend. 2. They are facing steep inflation, low energy and food security and lower economic growth. 3. High social security costs may not be sustainable in the long term. 4. Finance is crumbling and real economy is taking over. Monetary expansion had its run and is no longer the panacea. How will they handle this and still emerge…

I'm from Rome, Italy and I feel like I'm on a sinking boat where everyone is enthusiastically carving holes in the bottom.

My grand-parents bought a house to my parents when they were 27. My parents had it easy and never learned personal finance. They refused to lend me 30k to start a mortgage for the house in Budapest, Hungary despite having 2 young kids because they didn't trust Hungary stability and wanted me to go back to Italy.

They have been keeping 60k in their checking account for the past 10 years. I've tried to convince them to invest a part of it in ETF but my father wrote me that: "They have invested in the Italian social security system and they have no need for other investments other than their government pensions and the house they own". Real estate value in Rome has declined 30% since 2012.

I have been telling them about the population decline and how the pension system is gonna go belly up in the future. Then Elon Musk also tweeted about Italy grim population collapse future last month. I told my father in great distress that I was sadly right. He told me I'm working too much and I need to relax and essentially he won't be taking advice from me because I'm not thinking straight, implying I need medical attention.

Try to save Italy and you will be called crazy.

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

#218

Post by dnndev »

eweise wrote: post #180
dnndev wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, if you ever get the chance to work with highly skilled, well paid workers I think you'll be surprised to find that even we have a hard time estimating the effort needed to complete tasks since we are usually doing unique and complex things that have unknowns. I also suggest studying agile methodologies which assume workers are working at 100% and instead of guaranteeing work gets completed according to estimate…

estimate and result oriented work are two different things.

Result oriented work is: Here is how much I did this week. I either met, exceeded or fell short of some expectation. The person then decides if this is the place they want to be and the employer decides if they are a good fit.

Agile in most places is a managers whip. I will go so far to say I have never seen it implemented in a way that is beneficial to devs. (possibly by design)

Estimates are even worse... you cant estimate software at scale. spending dollars to pickup dimes as the saying goes.

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

#219

Post by giorgioz »

reneherse wrote: post #213
giorgioz wrote: post #209

At https://www.waiterio.com we are fully remote and we introduced 32 hours work weeks except for customer support which still does 40 hours a week. We track hours with hubstaff.com which takes a random screenshot every 10 minutes. It's been a mixed bag. Half of the team kept productivity up and logged those 32 hours stably. Another half of the team, when left unchecked went down to 14 hours a week and very low output…

You'll probably do better once you can retain people who reject employer surveillance.

No-one ever quit from our company so that's not it.

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

#220

Post by omginternets »

nicoburns wrote: post #62
howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #20

Quick refresher on productivity in economic terms: decreasing inputs = decreasing outputs UNLESS tech or technique improves. During supply and/or debt driven inflationary periods (eg. now), increased productivity = increased supply and/or decreased debt. What do these maxims of economics mean for a 4 day work week? At Beacon, nothing*. But implement this at Tyson Foods, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Waste Management, the…

> 2-6% productivity declines That seems pretty good for a 20% decline in working hours! Unless I'm missing something?

It also seems likely that at least some of that 2-6% will be recovered as supporting processes and infrastructure emerges.
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