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More bosses give four-day workweek a try

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Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#61

Post by kody »

clSTophEjUdRanu wrote: post #49
kody wrote: post #13

I worked 4x10s when I worked for the Army and it was awesome. 3 day weekends take off so much pressure, and come Sunday night I was starting to feel the itch to get back into work rather than the dreadful feeling that I 'wasted' my weekend. The only work experience that was better than this was 100% flexibility to work remotely and/or flex hours. So there's my anecdata for you :)

I worked 9 hour days with every other Friday off and hated it.

Yeah that sounds way too inconsistent on a weekly basis for me

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#62

Post by chrisweekly »

mjayhn wrote: post #39
volkk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know not everyone is as sapped for energy as I am after work, but I leave work and sit in an hour of traffic. My energy is just sapped from me by the time I make it home. I have enough energy to feed myself and sometimes work out to maintain my health.. I know that some people just dont have the privilege of living close to their jobs, but after spending one internship getting up at 5;45am to drive with my dad to…

Yeah that definitely helps! Unfortunately I think I'd still need a few hours to unwind and get out of "work mode." I've worked jobs where I could actually walk to work and I still went home just drained. TBH, I'm an introvert and I'm not sure going in to the office will ever be really conducive to my personality. I've worked jobs where I had an office to go to when I needed/wanted to be there but could work from home…

Remote work is increasingly available. Good luck!

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#63

Post by cortesoft »

mjayhn wrote: post #18

I can't begin to explain how much less stress I encounter in day to day life having just one week day to stay home. Just having a day to be able to easily knock out chores between Jira issues; drop the car off at the dealer, sell something on craigslist, complete a house project, go to the dentist, meet the handyman, go to the bank, etc is so nice. All of these things wind up on the back burner when I'm in the middle…

It is an especially big deal for working parents... having a day when kids are at school/daycare to do chores and errands is huge... so many things are impossible to do when you are chasing kids around. I get way more done on a weekday home than a weekend.

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#64

Post by nagyf »

jacquesm wrote: post #40

It's interesting to note that in Europe that 32 hour workweek is fairly standard and nobody would even bat an eye or think this is special in any way. https://smallbiztrends.com/2018/11/working-hours.html

Source for this? I'm from Europe and I have friends working in 2-3 different countries in Europe, but 32 hour workweek is not standard anywhere. Never even heard of such a thing being standard in Europe.

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#65

Post by tombert »

clSTophEjUdRanu wrote: post #52
tombert wrote: post #33

I remember when I interned at Lockheed Martin forever ago, they had a system where you normally work 9-hour days (8 on Fridays), and as a result had every other Friday off. It equated to a 80 hours for every two weeks, and it was really nice if you ever had to go to the bank or DMV (which are typically only open during weekdays). I always wondered why this wasn't more popular.

Why is this so common in defense?

What? I was just saying that I liked that system, I wasn't trying to engage in any kind of real apologia.

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#66

Post by cft »

Karl Marx saw it as of vital importance to the workers' health, writing in Das Kapital (1867): "By extending the working day, therefore, capitalist production...not only produces a deterioration of human labour power by robbing it of its normal moral and physical conditions of development and activity, but also produces the premature exhaustion and death of this labour power itself."

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#67

Post by Ididntdothis »

fogetti wrote: post #50
k__ wrote: post #36

I'm from Germany and none of my friends works 40h anymore. They're all down to 50-80% This is even regulated by the law, your employer has to allow you to reduce your work time, only in some extreme cases they can deny it. Works like a charm.

I am curious. Where do they work? What do they do?

My family is in Germany and a lot of them also work shorter hours. This works for all kind of jobs including upper management and specialist jobs . It’s a misconception that some jobs require 40+ hour work weeks. When the 40 hour workweek was introduced a lot of people also thought that the economy would crash and it worked out just fine.

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#68

Post by standardUser »

frockington1 wrote: post #48
k__ wrote: post #36

I'm from Germany and none of my friends works 40h anymore. They're all down to 50-80% This is even regulated by the law, your employer has to allow you to reduce your work time, only in some extreme cases they can deny it. Works like a charm.

I like the idea of working less, but it's going to be hard to use Germany as a poster child. The German economy hasn't been doing to great recently. In my opinion it's largely due to carrying lagging EU economies, but it will be hard to use a struggling economy as a positive indicator Germany: https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/gdp-growth US: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth

The German standard of living is exceptional. Abstract worries about "the economy not doing too well" don't really matter until the standard of living declines in some meaningful way for a lot of people.

Owners demand perpetual growth. People demand comfortable lives and occasional vacations. Most achieve that in Germany. There probably isn't a single better "poster child" of a prosperous society with anywhere near the same population.

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#69

Post by om42 »

tombert wrote: post #33

I remember when I interned at Lockheed Martin forever ago, they had a system where you normally work 9-hour days (8 on Fridays), and as a result had every other Friday off. It equated to a 80 hours for every two weeks, and it was really nice if you ever had to go to the bank or DMV (which are typically only open during weekdays). I always wondered why this wasn't more popular.

9/80 schedules are more popular in defense, at least from what I've seen. There's some unintended consequences (to me) of it. PTO/holidays can get weird, do you get 9 hours of paid time? Do you get 8 and shift your hours? Its mostly a problem when teams have a mix systems and there isn't a standard.

When I was at LM a few years ago, some teams were on a different 9/80 pattern (different Fridays off), and some still on the regular 10/80 schedule. So on Fridays you basically had significantly less people in the office and it was never the person you needed to get work done. Basically made Monday to Thursday the regular working week with Friday being there if you really needed to get work done.

Think the different schedules was a combination of LM employees, employees that were in the union, and external contractors having different contract requirements.

Re: More bosses give four-day workweek a try

#70

Post by jhomedall »

tombert wrote: post #65
clSTophEjUdRanu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this so common in defense?

What? I was just saying that I liked that system, I wasn't trying to engage in any kind of real apologia.

I think he meant that as 'why is this so common in the defense industry'.
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