Live data from Hacker News

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

beaconcrm.org

301–310 of 351 posts

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

#301

Strange how many orgs discover that working less hours or remote increases productivity for most people. It’s almost as if unstressed “workers” produce better quality work. There was an experiment whereby cows were shown to give more milk if not stressed. Certainly the same applies to humans. When will companies learn that milking their “workforce” of their energy doesnt yield the expected results but quite the oppos…

> Strange how many orgs discover that working less hours or remote increases productivity for most people.

I've worked remote and managed remote teams for many years.

Working remote definitely doesn't not make "most people" more productive. Some people are more productive remote, but the average person gets less done even if they work more hours when remote. It takes a lot of training, mentoring, and performance management to get them back to in-office baseline.

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

#302
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.

That’s fairly normal outside SF/Silicon Valley - my friends and I all fell around the 60-80 range fresh out of school with CS degrees, working in the southeast (Raleigh, NC)

65k (General Motors) was the lowest offer I saw as a new grad in 2019. Everything else was above 75k. I took a job for 90k. I work in Texas.

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

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s fairly normal outside SF/Silicon Valley - my friends and I all fell around the 60-80 range fresh out of school with CS degrees, working in the southeast (Raleigh, NC)

65k (General Motors) was the lowest offer I saw as a new grad in 2019. Everything else was above 75k. I took a job for 90k. I work in Texas.

Then you’re lucky.

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

#304
I believe that a company that does 6-day work week for 25% higher pay would completely put competitors out of business... and considering the world economy, NOW is the time to do THAT.

Changing to 4-day work week at this time just shows how out of touch some people are. It's only a matter of time before reality catches up to them.

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

#305
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder if that's the key -- maybe it's acceptable to shorten one meeting on your behalf (or at least your participation in that meeting) if the reason you'll miss this meeting is that you'll be in a different meeting. As long as you're in some time-wasting activity, they're satisfied. I say mostly tongue in cheek...

That's funny if it wasn't true.

"I have to get out of the meeting as I need to work on a task."

A task? Ok, so you can stay?

It fits right into "wow, jealous of your agenda"...when it has some blank spots. The spots you actually do work, but somehow are regarded as slack.

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

#306
post #291
post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that the majority of office settings don't have moments of slack, but rather moments of productivity. This same productivity can be achieved in wayy less time than the standard 40 hours/week.

I can only agree, depending on what you include in "productivity". I'd say it's incredibly common for a modern office worker to be engaged in email, meetings and chat for some 4-6 hours per day. Not only does this leave little time to do actual tasks, that little time is also highly fragmented across the day. It's a point I've made repeatedly on similar threads: the problem with modern office work is too much collabo…

> Pretty much we spent the vast majority of the day figuring out what to do when, instead of actually doing it.

One could argue that we virtually never do actual work. Machines or remote workers do. All we are doing is defining, communicating and controlling others' work.

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

#307

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…

Measuring exact hours and performing surveillance is unbelievably immature.

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

#308
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…

>How will they handle this and still emerge unscathed while competing with China and India and Indonesia and the likes.

This isn't even accurate. What is EU competing with China and India on? It should the reverse if anything, how will India and China compete in High Tech and Precision Manufacturing with the West when they are suffering massive brain drain?

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

#309

I work a four-day week (80% time, not imagining 4-10s) as a software engineer at a non-profit academic organization. For a paycut basically, I make 80% of what I think of as my "actual" salary. I have managed to do this at a succession of several jobs now. When I briefly tried to go back to 5 days, it was really hard. It seems insane to me now that anyone works 5 days a week. (And I do know plenty of people work even…

What is 4-10s?

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

#310
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company in my town still requires suit and tie for men, dresses or long skirts for women. If you leave your chair, you need to put your suit jacket on. You can take it off when sitting. The amount of money it would take for me to put up with such ancient, sexist and conformist bullshit is hard to imagine.

Basically every low-wage service worker puts up with it. Not suits, but often-ugly required work uniforms. At least suits and dresses look good.

Yup! I remember wearing nylon shirts and pants at McDonalds in the early 80's. Those were so much fun...
Post reply on HN