What does "give you one of them back" mean, if it doesn't mean I can do what I want with that time?
They pay you for not working during that day. Without any requirement to be in the office to not work. To be honest, it seems a bit disingenuous to me. A day off should be a day off. What I do with that time is nobodies business.
It is the business' business if you work hours 33-40 anyway. The whole point of the 32 hour workweek is the idea that those extra 8 hours decreases your productivity in the first 32.
Yes, it's still possible you'll work on a side gig / for someone else in the weekend, but that's much less likely than if you have business hours available for that.
If there's a trend that's affecting the industry as whole, and if most places are abusing that trend, then it's worth looking at the trend to see what's going not. It's not very helpful to say what you're saying when statistics speak otherwise. It's very lazy to say "it's an implementation problem" and is not giving the question enough thought.
So where are these statistics? All I've seen in this thread, and others on the topic, are anecdotes. If people are going to complain about how it didn't work for them then it's only fair to mention how well it worked for the company I was at. I also disagree that my comments haven't been helpful. There's a difference between the concept of "unlimited PTO" and any particular implementation of it, and it's important to…
>All I've seen in this thread, and others on the topic, are anecdotes.
Great observation! Statistically, there are more anecdotes in this thread with employees with negative experiences with good ones. I think that's a great starting point.
So where are these statistics? All I've seen in this thread, and others on the topic, are anecdotes. If people are going to complain about how it didn't work for them then it's only fair to mention how well it worked for the company I was at. I also disagree that my comments haven't been helpful. There's a difference between the concept of "unlimited PTO" and any particular implementation of it, and it's important to…
>All I've seen in this thread, and others on the topic, are anecdotes. Great observation! Statistically, there are more anecdotes in this thread with employees with negative experiences with good ones. I think that's a great starting point.
And, as usual with self-reporting, accept that folks with experiences on the extreme are more likely to be motivated to speak up.
"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. Productivity increased in the four days they worked so there was no drop in the total amount of work done" And soon some genius will come in and think "How about we worked a few hours more? This would give us even more output" and soon we are back to normal.
This is so true. Over years I have realised that my productivity is pretty much similar if I worked 7/8/9 hours. Over time the longer I work the less productive I am. There was a nice quote I once read on HN - everyone have fixed budget for quality thinking. working longer does not increase that.
You can refresh the fixed budget via a siesta power nap
"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.
Sure, it will be a tough sell, but the incentive should be less stressed, healthy, happy employees that deliver the same productive output as their 5 day week counterparts. It's a competetve advantage on the job market for employers.
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…
I think there's a happy medium. I have a personal target of 4 days/week (or equivalent), and so I don't mind optimizing existing work, and then taking on additional work, as long as it averages out to this healthy balance. I have found that the best motivator for me is a manager who is able to say "you've done great work, you can relax for a bit, take some time off". I'll work hard for them, knowing they have my back and I don't have to fight and scrape for well-deserved rest. If they won't say that, and will just let me work as much as I can, then I start making clear boundaries around my work; and overall I am less motivated to make things better.
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.
Then they will go work for someone else. If the quality of work goes up, then the price should go up, too.
Treehouse used to do 4/10s and from what I remember listening to Ryan Carson's podcast with Jason Calacanis, it didn't work out for them. So I don't think this should apply to every workplace. For more mature companies, it makes sense. For startups, I don't think so.
Treehouse’s abandonmnent of the 4-day work week suspiciously coincided with their taking on a Series B round of funding. I’m implying they were pressured to drop it by investors. This was followed by significant layoffs.
Furthermore, no formal analysis was done of the Treehouse experience.
Nothing conclusive can be inferred from the Treehouse experience until/unless they release data and a rigid analysis is done.
As others have mentioned, having a company minimum is a good idea. But you can also just give it to yourself: pick a number and make sure you take that many days off. Current place I work has unlimited PTO, and I really like it. You do need to be careful not to fall into the trap of not using it, though.
I don’t understand this. Why would you not use it? There would be so many days where I just wake up and go: ‘No... not today.’ and stay in bed. Then there’s still normal vacation trips to consider. I can easily see myself using 40 days of PTO in a year.
They pay you for not working during that day. Without any requirement to be in the office to not work. To be honest, it seems a bit disingenuous to me. A day off should be a day off. What I do with that time is nobodies business.
It is the business' business if you work hours 33-40 anyway. The whole point of the 32 hour workweek is the idea that those extra 8 hours decreases your productivity in the first 32. Yes, it's still possible you'll work on a side gig / for someone else in the weekend, but that's much less likely than if you have business hours available for that.
I’d argue that outside of the time I’m being paid for, the business has zero influence over what I do with my life.
If I can spend my whole Monday night playing WoW, coming in completely destroyed the next morning, why couldn’t I do some personal work during the day on a Thursday and come in refreshed and happy on Friday.