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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

#221

Post by dymk »

matsemann wrote: post #137
yrgulation wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal observation is that most pro office folks are seeking to substitute gaps in their personal lives with onsite work. A drain on their coworkers to be frank. Lack of friends, proper housing, lack of exercise you name it. A tiring hindrance on those whom understand that most of these issues are caused by being farmed in offices 8 hours a day and clustered in crowded, poorly planned cities. Of course there are…

Wow, what an uncharitable view you have on people with a different opinion than your own. Quite stunning, actually.

Wow! Stunning!

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

#222

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.

You assume everyone is self-oriented and wants to be autonomous and have a great work ethics and care about their privacy. There are people like that. There are also people that want a lot of guidance. There are also people that just wants to be paid and don't really care much about the current job goals. There are also people that will do the bare-minumum they can to keep the job. Understanding who is who requires good management and a good number of managers. How big is your company? What's the ratio of managers vs doers?

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

#223

Post by MockObject »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #162
jihadjihad wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always weird to watch Office Space and see the guys all wearing ties. I can't imagine having to do that for a typical software job.

I worked in a Wall St. firm in the 90's and wore suit and tie every day, even though my job was neither customer facing nor even in New York. I quickly realized I didn't mind it at all once I found correctly fitting shirts. If you consider a tie to be too constricting, you have the wrong shirt. Even as borderline OCD (self diagnosed, so likely wrong), I never found particular clothes to be a hinderance to me typing (…

Agreed. For someone whose experience of suits is the ill-fitting obligation for the occasional wedding or funeral, it will be shocking and unbelievable to read that a custom cut dress shirt is more comfortable than a t-shirt, and suit pants, soft and silk lined, more comfortable than jeans.

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

#224

Post by anon2020dot00 »

giorgioz wrote: post #222
reneherse wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You assume everyone is self-oriented and wants to be autonomous and have a great work ethics and care about their privacy. There are people like that. There are also people that want a lot of guidance. There are also people that just wants to be paid and don't really care much about the current job goals. There are also people that will do the bare-minumum they can to keep the job. Understanding who is who requires g…

Taking ten minute screenshots is not a good practice. Why not just measure on output or have regular meetings?

What kind of job requires ten minute screenshots? Definitely not a software development job.

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

#225

Post by torvald »

dsr_ wrote: post #169
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.

Yesterday I had a 1 hour meeting where 3 of the 7 participants needed to attend another meeting after 30 minutes. We reorganized the agenda to hit the issues that they were especially concerned about while they were available, and then did the other things in the next 20 minutes, finishing a little early. It's not impossible, it just requires a culture of consideration, communication, and prioritization.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law

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

#226

Post by SkyPuncher »

rootusrootus wrote: post #144
fleddr wrote: post #130

I've been working 4 day workweeks for well over a decade now, took the pay cut myself. As for the goal to maintain 100% productivity whilst cutting back on hours, I'm confident that they will succeed. In fact, they'll succeed in this without requiring some kind of brilliant plan, as this recalibration happens automatically. When you start working one day less, nobody will reduce your workload by 20%. You'll have the…

I'm starting to get more militant about zoom calls. Trying to avoid angering people explicitly, but still pushing back as best I can to protect to the team from incessant zoom calls to have conversations that would be faster on slack, and better documented in email. Zoom calls just invite conversation that has to repeated again because 80% of everyone on the call forgot some amount of detail.

> conversations that would be faster on slack

I'm still searching for the golden goose "conversation" that's actually faster on Slack. Sure, a quick back and forth or check in is actually faster.

I have yet to find a meaningful discussion that's actually faster on Slack. It seems like they always drag out as sparsely filled, 45 minute threads. Nearly everyone of these would have been better served by a 10 minute call.

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

#227

Post by Arcanum-XIII »

isodev wrote: post #140
belter wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Which country and city governments have a four-day work week?": https://buildremote.co/four-day-week/4-day-work-week-countri... I am surprised the lack of mention of Denmark, Sweden or the Netherlands. Most business persons I contact, normally only work 4 days a week.

Belgium is missing as well, by law you are allowed to choose a 4d work-week and many, many people do it, including myself :-).

Except the latest is working 120% the day you’re working - so, not a true 4 days/week.

Or you can have a true 4 days/week. With the pay cut. As for half time and so on… taxes though start to rise, because why not.

I hate so very much my government for this kind of shit.

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

#229

Post by pizzachan »

heretogetout wrote: post #147
fleddr wrote: post #130

I've been working 4 day workweeks for well over a decade now, took the pay cut myself. As for the goal to maintain 100% productivity whilst cutting back on hours, I'm confident that they will succeed. In fact, they'll succeed in this without requiring some kind of brilliant plan, as this recalibration happens automatically. When you start working one day less, nobody will reduce your workload by 20%. You'll have the…

> 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.

It also heavily favors the loud and self important who will force their way to the front and dominate the conversation. In an hour long meeting there is much more opportunity to give everyone several minutes to speak and have group discussion and deliberation. Now if your meeting can actually get done in 20 minutes, it probably should have been a phone call.

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

#230

Post by BlargMcLarg »

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.

Almost every company outside the US pays at most half of what the US offers for similar positions. Only a few unicorns and a few countries are exceptions to this.
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