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World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

independent.co.uk

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Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#71

Post by SilverRed »

akersten wrote: post #31

Take a minute to think, on this Sunday night, about how much personal time you've had this week. You've most likely spent 5 of the last 7 days making someone else richer, at the expense of an incredible toll on your body and mind: an artificially early wake-up to an alarm, a late-night frozen pizza dinner because there's no time to cook and clean up for yourself, and you're finally sitting down getting ready to relax…

The anti work subreddit misses the point imo. There is nothing wrong with working, its the amount people are working and how little they are paid.

Personally I found the best way to win back your life is to eliminate driving. Work from home, live within walking distance of the supermarket and maybe even work. Not only does this save you time, the walking acts as a relaxation time so you feel better by the time you arrive at home.

Driving, traffic, and public transport are all sources of stress that make your life worse daily.

Personally I find the weekend long enough but work days to be too long. I'd rather shorten each day and stick to 5 days as it means I have plenty of time to cook and go out for exercise daily.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#72

Post by stephen_g »

sandworm101 wrote: post #7

I work in a field (military) where "overtime" isn't a thing. We can and do work 24+hour shifts without any extra pay. Even during peacetime, if we need to work 16-hour days every day for a month we can do that without any financial cost. We can also be sent home at noon every day without diminishing our wages a penny. That absolute flexibility does not reduce stress. With no standard office hours we face constant neg…

Interestingly enough I've been in exactly the opposite position. The management wanted really rigid working hours but me and a colleague managed to negotiate almost full flexibility because I have a chronic sleep condition and he was dealing with family issues including having to take a child to medical appointments at all hours of the day.

Weirdly, we seemed to do almost all the work despite our weird schedules - in fact, I found it incredible just how unproductive developers and engineers with 20 years experience could be despite putting a very solid 9am to 5:30pm, five days a week.

The one constant is that supervisors and some co-workers were often annoyed because we weren't on hand to talk to people interrupting our work with questions that 9/10 times could have been easily answered in a quick email or message (and often that we would have been able to answer even when we weren't in the office). Either that, or technicians would be annoyed how long they'd waited for me to come in so I could fix a "software problem" for them in a system being built in the factory - which I would usually end up tracking down to being a faulty cable or a problem with a manufacturing process - all things that was their job to find and fix and that they were qualified to diagnose!

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#73

Post by fy20 »

irrational wrote: post #19

> four nine hour days How many of you are salaried, yet your hours are tracked? My job is such that I roll in whenever I want, leave whenever I want. As long as I get my work done, nobody cares how long I actually work each day. A few decades ago, my first job out of college did track hours. That was pure hell.

I officially work 9-5, however I'm in a remote team and I'm the only one in my timezone (1 hour offset to the rest of my team). Usually I start around 9:30, and finish around 5:30, but it really depends. Sometimes I wake up earlier, sometimes I wake up later. Sometimes it gets to 4pm and there is no point starting the next task, other times I'm working until 7pm because of meetings (part of our company is 9 hours different from me). Most members of our team has kids, so sometimes we need to take time off for appointments or such, in that case we will work late or sometimes Saturdays to make up for it.

We don't track hours, we just trust everyone to put their effort in. We are a small team who have been working together for a few years, so you know when someone is slacking. I expect if we did track hours we'd all end up working much longer than the 9-5 we are paid for.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#74

Post by tobr »

manmal wrote: post #59

As a parent, I’m wondering whether a four day work week will carry over to the school week, too. When I was at school (this has stopped since) we had school on Saturday even, for two years. This was not great! Nearly all the arguments I’ve seen pro four hour work week, would also apply to students.

Unfortunately the purpose of school is for parents to have somewhere to store their children when they’re at work, so you can’t have a four-day school week until a four-day workweek is norm.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#75

Post by paxys »

justshowpost wrote: post #14

I don't get it. Hours cut by 20% and no wage cut means 25% man-hour production gain for «success». Did they achieve this? ---- Okay, okay, I stand corrected, 10% hours cut requires only +11% to production to stay on par. Still quite much, but not impossible (I think).

You are making the assumption that 1 unit of time spent on the clock maps exactly to 1 unit of productive output, which I'm willing to bet is very far from the case.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#76

Post by legulere »

cecilpl2 wrote: post #38
SilverRed wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also you have some days where you feel super productive and get loads done and some where things are difficult or you are tired and not a lot gets done. If you leave early on the productive days, would you stay back longer on the days you aren't doing so well? And how do you know if you were actually very productive one day and not that the task was overestimated and actually very easy? Would you want to be on the ho…

> If you leave early on the productive days, would you stay back longer on the days you aren't doing so well? No, I do exactly the opposite. I work longer when I'm super productive, and I cut out early when I'm not having a good day. It seems obvious that you'd try to optimize for working the hours when you are most effective. > And how do you know if you were actually very productive one day and not that the task wa…

But why? What benefit do you get from giving your best days to the company and not use them for yourself? Usually you don’t get anything in exchange for working hard.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#77

Post by paxys »

tobr wrote: post #74
manmal wrote: post #59

As a parent, I’m wondering whether a four day work week will carry over to the school week, too. When I was at school (this has stopped since) we had school on Saturday even, for two years. This was not great! Nearly all the arguments I’ve seen pro four hour work week, would also apply to students.

Unfortunately the purpose of school is for parents to have somewhere to store their children when they’re at work, so you can’t have a four-day school week until a four-day workweek is norm.

I'm also willing to bet that most parents who get the extra day off would actually prefer that their kids stayed at school.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#78

Post by jasonkester »

koch wrote: post #54

It's so weird to me to see people argue against a shorter work week. > I enjoy working 5 days a week, it gives me more time to ... Ok, by all means, keep doing that? If you have this position you are probably already working on the weekend anyway. You can live (thrive, even!) in a society that has a 4 day week and still work 5 days. Go for it. > It'll never happen / It's a pipe dream So was women's rights, civil righ…

Yeah, this is an infuriating bit of human nature that I notice quite often. People would rather destroy the New Good Thing than take advantage of it.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#79

Post by kevinventullo »

toast0 wrote: post #67
bostondavidvc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no limit where one can say, "My work is done" I'm a couple years into my first software job, at Google. We don't do performance evaluations relative to whether you're doing as much work as you're capable of in 40 hours. You're evaluated against a fixed rubric corresponding to the job level. In other words, if you're capable of doing a Software Engineer N's worth of work in 40 hours and your title is Softwa…

I don't know about Google, but Facebook and I presume some other big companies has an up or out policy. If you come in at Software Engineer N, they expect you to get promoted to SE N+1 in X years, and if you don't, they'll start evaluating you at that level anyway, and assuming you continue to put in level N work, you'll get a performance improvement plan, and then probably fired. There's some level which is consider…

At Facebook the first terminal level is L5. At Google it is L4.

Re: World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

#80

Post by alephnan »

It will be hard to extrapolate the findings to other countries.

Iceland has a very different import/export structure by virtue of the the geography, farming and natural resources. This in turn significantly affects the price of certain goods and services, such as restaurants and dining out culture, for example. Ultimately people will have a drastically different basket of consumer goods /desires than in other developed countries, and it will require different involvement in the labor market.

I’m not saying a 5 day work week in America is necessary, I’m saying we have more than enough, just our consumer culture keeps us busy. We have food, shelter, heat, but Americans want that nicer car, that name brand clothing, to keep up with the Joneses

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