Germany tests 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

I'm from Vienna - CoL compared to salaries here is pretty high but managable with social housing.

It's just that my friend working for a subsidiary of my employer in Zürich makes 3x as much, gets to keep a lot more of that money due to the significantly lower tax burden and then after that her CoL is ~2-2.5x what it is here.

Additionally, her salary is paid in CHF which is deflationary while I get my money in Eurozone Funbucks. As you might know, Austria has been a European inflation leader in the last 1-2 years (~10%).

Compared to the Swiss we are completely and utterly underpaid. For equivalent work and similar living conditions she's left with almost double the money at the end of the year. Note: We both do not live lavishly by any means.

Yeah well, that's the cost of the Austrian welfare state and the "m'uh most livable city in the world" which is only so livable if you're on cheap social housing instead of paying private market rates.

And now the people expect even more handouts from the state to combat the insane inflation and the higher consumer prices than in Germany and even higher corporate and "high-icome" taxes to fund it all because that's what people vote for, whichever party promises more handouts and getting rid of foreigners, so say goodbye to all the skilled workers ever thinking about moving there to pay taxes.

The country is going down the drain and the rats are leaving the sinking ship. Last one to leave please turn off the lights.

Yes people get tired but I don't see that significantly affecting the amount of work done in general, for 8-9 hour work days. Do you?

Sure, but nobody in Austria wants to change that in order to improve the situation and make it attractive to skilled workers, high earners and investors both local and from abroad.

Ask on Austria subreddit and everyone thinks Austrian SW devs are overpaid and should be taxed even higher eve though a developer from Poland or even Romania or Bulgaria makes more than them, or unionized bus driver for the local public transport company makes as much as a SW dev while having better benefits and job security to boot.

Ask them if there should be any tax breaks for skilled foreigners to come here like in the NL and everyone will think you're crazy. People vote for worse conditions for foreigners and high earners out of spite and for as much welfare as possible for the idle and lazy who know how to work the system.

Given this, is it any surprise that no skilled foreigner with high earning potential wants to work in Austria? You reap what you saw. If you wage a pitches and forks which-hunt against skilled workers and high earners, but of course not on those with massive untaxed inherited wealth who pay zero taxes, that's what you get, an unsustainable Ponzi welfare and pension scheme that will collapse in the future.

You're quite right that there's quite a difference when it comes to physical work, especially not too physically demanding work without a large "brain work" component (or done by young, reasonably fit people).

Since we are on hacker news, a forum seemingly overrun by silicon valley devs, I didn't expect your comment to focus on that kind of work. But when we look at physically demanding work with a decent amount of brain work, for example some kinds of woodworking, you can still see that effect. People can work longer hours and more days to a certain extent, but then the rate of accidents goes up (and I'd expect it to behave in a non-linear fashion). And if that effect is true in that direction, why should it not work for less than 40 hours?

> I doubt many people can sustain their work output over 16 hours for most jobs. But that's not really what we're talking about here.

Apparently, I'm no good at making myself clear. It's probably the language barrier, I'm decent enough at understanding English, but I lack any sort of conciseness, I believe. This was meant to be an extreme example, to make the point more obvious, but let's use a similar, more normal one.

Let's say instead of moving to a 4 day workweek, we move back to a 6 day workweek. Daniel you believe that you get 20% more output than before? Even with physical jobs that don't involve too much brainwork, I believe that this is not the case, as there are diminishing returns when the time for recreation is cut too short.

That depends on the individual of course, younger people need less than older people in general, and things like children, disabilities, a long commute and a host of other factors can change the equation, too.

> I don't understand the argument that working less doesn't mean you get less work done in general.

The argument is basically that for brain work, if you spend 20% more time per week at work, you might only produce less than 5% more output, since your brain will otherwise produce too many errors, which cost time to correct.

That is seen as an inefficient use of an employee's time. Also, his implies that maybe we could get almost the same output from people who work a 4-day-workweek. Now the question is, where is the sweet spot, as it is unlikely to be the status quo (that's what I clumsily tried to imply with the remark about the 40-hour-workweek not being"god-given")? This can't scale forever, of course, or we'd all be working 1 hour a week and be extremely productive in that hour :D

But maybe the 4-day-workweek is that sweet spot. And since wages haven't kept up with corporate profits for a while, a lot of people - myself included - are eager to find out.