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What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

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Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#51

Post by miguelrochefort »

andai wrote: post #2

The author had a lot of vacation days left, and instead of taking them all at once, decided to give himself a bunch of 4-day work weeks. I wondered recently about the feasibility of doing this, does anyone know how open the average employer is to this sort of thing?

I've been doing this every summer for the past few years:

  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
  | S | M | T | W | T | F | S | 4-day work weeks:
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
  | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4-day weekend
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
  | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2-day weekend
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
  | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4-day weekend
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
  | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2-day weekend
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+

Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#52

Post by lubonay »

Programmer here. I worked on a 4-day week for about a year between 2017 and 2018 for a small consultancy company.

The company needed the help of a senior developer but could not afford a competitive salary, so I offered to take a pay cut along with an extra day off each week. Of course, I was flexible in case my day off needed to be moved around for something important, but that almost never happened.

Thursdays were my off days, and I think this actually boosted my productivity. Aside from what other comments already mentioned about making better use of your time, this setup allowed me to return every Friday recharged and with some fresh perspective and ideas about my current tasks.

The quality of life improvement was great, and my work did not suffer at all. This makes me wonder: if working 32 hours/week can make you more productive than working 40, why the hell do people often put in way more than that?

Sounds like working 80 hours/week would create almost as many problems as it would solve, leaving you with some very questionable "progress". The only way I can imagine doing this is if you do two or three separate jobs, e.g. coding, design and marketing, so you don't get tunnel vision.

Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#53

Post by zuminator »

chrisseaton wrote: post #6
sokoloff wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never minded when my employees do this (and can't imagine why I would). I've also done it myself fairly often because of the PTO rollover limits. You've earned the vacation days. If your vacations happen to be every Friday for 8 Fridays in a row because that's what you prefer, that's none of my business.

Some employers ask you to take holiday in longer blocks because they want people to be able to properly relax and recharge and they think you can't do that in just blocks of one day. (Not saying I agree, but that's what they say.)

There's also the theory that if you are doing something illegal, improper, or incompetent, having your assignment covered by another individual for a bloc of time increases the likelihood of revealing any problematic issues.

Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#54

Post by IMTDb »

adetrest wrote: post #40
YayamiOmate wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what i notced with my friend in the managerial position. He can spend most of the time in Work From Home mode, has really good pay grade, and can't rest. He's looks like he's on a wrist band leash getting mails every 2-3 minutes and needs to somehow react on 10%. He doesnt do much other than be available 12-16h 6-7days a week. It's taking more toll than one would expect.

I could never understand why would someone accept these jobs. What's so great about becoming a manager and work 60h/week? How's that better than 40 a week as a subordinate and letting someone else worry about all the office drama?

It's just a different set of skills and you create value/feel rewarded in a different manner. It's not better or worse, it's just different and appeals to different kind of people. Take some other example from video games:

- Why would anyone pick a healer in an MMO group ? What's so great about becoming a healer ? How's that better than playing a DPS, actually contributing to killing the boss and letting someone else worry about your health bar ?

- What is fun about plying support in DOTA ? I mean the fun is being the carry and killing everyone on the other team to win games ? How can anyone willingly waste his gold to buy visibility wards, that is really not fun at all.

The healer/support/manager (="helper") position appeals to people who like to focus less on the pure "productive" task at hand. They like to focus on getting a full picture of everything that is happening, anticipating potential issues, fixing them, and allowing the DPS/carry/engineer (="producers") to be in the best possible position so they can perform their job. This can be fun for some people even if you don't see it that way. This often is really not an easy task. This often is critical for the success of the team.

And just like there are good and bad "producers" there are good and bad "helpers". The skillset is different, the measure of value creation is different, and the fun is different.

Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#55

Post by nedwin »

andai wrote: post #2

The author had a lot of vacation days left, and instead of taking them all at once, decided to give himself a bunch of 4-day work weeks. I wondered recently about the feasibility of doing this, does anyone know how open the average employer is to this sort of thing?

Two scenarios but both related to having kids.

My brother in law works at Deloitte in Australia and is taking Fridays off for most of the rest of the year using his paternity leave. Sounded like they were pretty supportive but may have to keep an eye on email during that day...

My sister is at a big bank and does 4 days a week but as she describes it "instead of doing 5 days a week and 60 hours, I do 4 days a week and 40 hours". She's still on calls and definitely on email on that "day off".

Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#56

Post by ggurgone »

guitarbill wrote: post #50
ggurgone wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a valid point, managers and clients value availability and that's mainly the reason why they want you full time. In fact IMHO many prefer availability to productivity. Being available 40-50h a week is rather tiring though and it can affect productivity. For example I found that I perform better on a 32h/week. The availability problem can be solved by having the team cover the full week (different shifts with…

I think "the reason why they want you full time" is usually because they can (very few people push back) and/or they are in roles where more time put in equals more work done. For example, as a manager doing 1:1 is still tiring, but if you aren't paying 100% attention, that doesn't cost money unlike bugs in code. Almost nobody can do more than 3 hours of heavy concentration/flow work regularly. Add another two or thr…

> they are in roles where more time put in equals more work done

This is partially true if:

1) you only hire young folks 2) you don't care about long term health of your team

Based on this philosophy I could work 90h/week and get even more done i.e. there is always work to be done but IMHO this way of working is unhealthy and not sustainable.

Personally for me it takes more time than the average to recharge so having a shorter working week helps with recharging and do well next week and be productive. And by that I mean being equally productive to a "full time".

> if you aren't paying 100% attention, that doesn't cost money

I'd argue it can cost you money, in different ways.

Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#57

Post by alkonaut »

wojcikstefan wrote: post #22
aasasd wrote: post #16

I keep lowkey looking for studies on how much actual free time a person has in a day— really free, subtracting all chores and commuting. I've heard that some people have timed that and the results were rather surprising compared to the ‘common knowledge,’ but I'd like to have a source to cite.

To build on top of that, I'd want to see how much of that truly free time is in a "high energy state". What I mean by that is a free time where you're awake/energetic enough to do something meaningful – read a challenging book and take notes, write a thoughtful email to a friend, host a party, try to build a new friendship, etc. On most workdays I find myself so spent that a) I don't want to see people, b) I don't ha…

This. My free time at least in winter months is a slow collapse. A day off would give hobby time, home improvement time etc, and do so in a way that doesn’t affect the kids who are in school anyway.

Re: What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week

#58

Post by catacombs »

lubonay wrote: post #52

Programmer here. I worked on a 4-day week for about a year between 2017 and 2018 for a small consultancy company. The company needed the help of a senior developer but could not afford a competitive salary, so I offered to take a pay cut along with an extra day off each week. Of course, I was flexible in case my day off needed to be moved around for something important, but that almost never happened. Thursdays were…

> This makes me wonder: if working 32 hours/week can make you more productive than working 40, why the hell do people often put in way more than that?

I work in a very competitive field, and there are times where I must put in 12- to 16-hour days to ship a project out on time. We get compensation days in lieu of ovetime pay, which has its pros and cons.

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