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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

#241

Post by adamsmith143 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #239
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.

You might ask yourself - if Europeans are willing to do the work that Americans are doing, but for half (sometimes even a third, or quarter!) the price - Are European workers underpriced, or American workers overpriced?

With global corporations it's hard to imagine they would be willing to lose this badly on Labor Costs if there isn't a clear benefit to paying more in the US. Especially with the rise of remote.

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

#242

Post by ag56 »

So if this becomes the new ‘standard’ work week, which day becomes part of the weekend? Friday?

I see these stories all the time. I’m pro the idea. But it’s not going to work if one industry works Tue-Fri and another Mon-Thu and their customers are taking off Wednesday. That standard work week being _standard_ is a feature.

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

#243

Post by eweise »

dnndev wrote: post #218
eweise wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem I see is that without defined boundaries, employees tend to overwork instead of underwork. I see managers praising engineers that work nights or weekends and Managers not encouraging their reports to take enough vacation under 'unlimited vacation' policies. Mgmt is still going to rate you based on your performance but at least having a time off policy prevents a complete race to bottom in the name of productivity.

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

#244

Post by bombcar »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #226
rootusrootus wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Faster can mean less clock time (Zoom will almost always win) or less “involved” time - each person reads the thread and responds when they have time, which uses less of their time but more clock time.

It can work either way, depends on the type of discussion. Often the best is to hash as much out in chat as you can and then meet to finalize.

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

#245

Post by toomuchtodo »

jelling wrote: post #186
coldcode wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was working before my retirement I routinely had to work 60 hr weeks since I was lead (went to every meeting) and wrote code full time along with my team. Most of our projects started with a hard deadline (estimates were only used for budgeting, the time was predetermined) and constant change was endemic during every project. No way this would fit in 32 hr weeks. Yet we still had sprints (which assumed 40 hrs…

The only thing I support more than WFH is my competitors working 20% less. If they're doing this to compete for talent, go ahead by all means. I suspect they need to do something like this also because they're a UK SaaS company (so lower wages to start) serving the low-end of the non-profit market (price sensitive buyers). And they don't have the enterprise features to compete with Salesforce and CRM for the high-end…

The goal is to keep expanding these trials until labor law ratchets the work week down for everyone to 4 days. It will take time, but it will happen.

If you as a freelancer want to work five days a week (or more), by all means, spend your life in such a manner. The rest of us work to live, not live to work.

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

#246

Post by bombcar »

apexalpha wrote: post #123
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.

In the Netherlands you're legally allowed to work parttime for the same hourly pay. This has resulted in a lot of people working 32 hours (or less). This, however, is not the same as an entire company working 4 day weeks.

A company could even be staffed 24/7 and yet nobody work more than 32 hrs a week.

What we really should be trying to normalize is most everything shutting down an extra day where possible.

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

#247

Post by lolinder »

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…

> You assume everyone is self-oriented and wants to be autonomous and have a great work ethics and care about their privacy.

No, they assume that people who are self-oriented and want to be autonomous and have a great work ethic are the people that you want to have working for you. You don't need to employ "everyone", you just need enough for your workload, and you will need fewer people if you optimize your company's structure for high performers rather than deadweights.

Your employee surveillance policies are beyond the pale (screenshots every ten minutes... really?!) and treat all your employees are completely inept, lazy, or both. With policies like that, you shouldn't be surprised when the only employees you manage to hire and retain are that way.

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

#248

Post by corrral »

lkxijlewlf wrote: post #154
rootusrootus wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ... and better documented in email. This, so much. Let's just jump on a quick Teams meeting almost always can be taken care of in an email. And then it's documented and can be referenced and sent to all parties who may need to know that were not included in the "quick" Teams meeting.

I hate—hate—when I'm trying to find something in Slack and right where I'm pretty sure it should be I see a marker indicating that a call took place there, often without any surrounding indication of WTF it was about. Fucking hate it.

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

#249

Post by SkyPuncher »

bombcar wrote: post #244
SkyPuncher wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Faster can mean less clock time (Zoom will almost always win) or less “involved” time - each person reads the thread and responds when they have time, which uses less of their time but more clock time. It can work either way, depends on the type of discussion. Often the best is to hash as much out in chat as you can and then meet to finalize.

The problem is it still requires mental load to switch in and out of that conversation.

You also create inequality on the team since threads rewards the fastest to reply. This is a lot easier to manage on a Zoom call.

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

#250

Post by greedo »

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.

My company's retention policy deletes emails after 6 months, as well as Teams chat logs. So unless we create docs in Sharepoint (who has time to add another layer of documentation?), everything becomes ephemeral at some point. Like tears in rain...
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