61–70 of 128 posts
I’d prefer we completely get rid of work hours. Just tell me what we need to get done, I’ll do it, remotely of course. I’ve had various companies expect me to work extra hours for no additional pay , while never offering an extra day off. Hell , I’d be down to do a 80 hour week if I know my average week is only 20 hours
It's not possible or practical for managers to monitor how much their reports spend time thinking. Also, most managers understand how much secondary work takes up people's time and gets in the way of the primary work. I.e. Managers aren't really in a position to question how much time it takes someone to complete their work.
Shifting to a 4 day work week is simply codifying a practice that has been routine for some time now.
In the spirit of always starting your negotiation high and working toward a palatable middle, I'd like to propose a 2-day work week and 5 days off. You may think that sounds crazy, but how many hours of dedicated, actual work do you do in a week? If you work a "9-5" and are reading this comment at work right now, I can give you a hint: it's not 40 ;) I think we'd all be less distracted and more focused if we forced t…
Personally I don’t want compression. I want five days a week of 3-8 hours of work each day. I fill the rest with family stuff, piano, hobbies when they pique my interest, chores, etc. That is, I think the flexibility is more valuable than concentrated time off. It enables me to follow the flow of life.
I'd be happier working 40 hours in 3 days.
Even as a conservative, I strongly support the normalization of 4 day work weeks, if for no other reason than to create more competition for domestic lower skill labor (which will over time result in rising wages). A job is the best social program. This will create more jobs while at the same time allowing people to live better lives. 40 hour work weeks have outlived their usefulness long time ago. It's ridiculous th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can only compress things so much though. You can't just tell people to show up and do only the productive n% of the hours. You can't force 2 days of perfect productivity out of people. That's not how any of this works. When you cut hours, you're cutting productive and unproductive hours at the same time, you don't get to cherry pick. Or if you can cherry pick, go into management consulting - you'll be able to squ…
My hypothesis is that most of our "unproductive time" in the 40h workweek is just filler time spent warming seats, a direct result of there actually not being all that much work that a human can consistently accomplish in a week. So, by removing the expectation that you have your butt in a chair 8 hours a day 5 days a week, the new model is "get everything you were already painfully stretching across 5 days done in o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They’re likely earning ~40-70k so the shift isn’t very significant Exactly. I don't work in the video-game industry, but the local (Québec) programmer scene is pretty small and information travels fast. I've been told by people that work there that the employer already pays the equivalent of a 4 day week and that many employees are quitting now that WFH has opened up the market. My personal understanding is that in…
> My personal understanding is that instead of increasing the pay, they are betting that by cutting a day, people will stay and keep the same level of crunch time. How's the option package? A credible company will have most employees in the core business getting the majority of their revenue from the stock performance. Switching to 4 days a week should lower the number of release they can have per year...
In my time in that industry the only bonus/non-salary compensation I ever saw was a $20 Starbucks gift card for pulling a 90hr week before a major demo deadline.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They’re likely earning ~40-70k so the shift isn’t very significant On an annual basis some internships are better paid. Where do these folks hire?
There’s a huge gap between the game industry and the rest People do it out of passion, I guess. It’s funny too because the work is usually significantly harder than the much better paid start-up/SaaS jobs. Everyone has college degrees, there’s no C++ bootcamp grads I went to a school which was well-known for its game dev degree so I know dozens of people in the industry (mostly everyone works at Ubisoft) but opted ou…
Tons of fun problems and passionate people but the industry is an absolute meat grinder. Last I looked at the statistics median industry career length was ~3 years.
My hypothesis is that most people doing knowledge work already work 4 days/week, if not less. Call it "the shadow hours". It's not possible or practical for managers to monitor how much their reports spend time thinking. Also, most managers understand how much secondary work takes up people's time and gets in the way of the primary work. I.e. Managers aren't really in a position to question how much time it takes som…
In the spirit of always starting your negotiation high and working toward a palatable middle, I'd like to propose a 2-day work week and 5 days off. You may think that sounds crazy, but how many hours of dedicated, actual work do you do in a week? If you work a "9-5" and are reading this comment at work right now, I can give you a hint: it's not 40 ;) I think we'd all be less distracted and more focused if we forced t…
You can only compress things so much though. You can't just tell people to show up and do only the productive n% of the hours. You can't force 2 days of perfect productivity out of people. That's not how any of this works. When you cut hours, you're cutting productive and unproductive hours at the same time, you don't get to cherry pick. Or if you can cherry pick, go into management consulting - you'll be able to squ…
Acting like unproductive hours are some random result goes against loads of companies who have been doing actual trials of 5 => 4 day weeks. Having time off is actually helpful, and the sort of procrastination from dissatisfaction/exhaustion/whatever that leads to this can be helped by this kind of stuff!
"Why is it 4 and not 3 or 2 or whatever" I mean it probably depends on people but TGIF is a saying for a reason