Eidos-Montréal Offices shifting to the 4 day work week • Hacker News Board

Re: Eidos-Montréal Offices shifting to the 4 day work week

#71

Post by UnpossibleJim » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 2:39 AM UTC

dont__panic wrote: post #11

akersten wrote: post #8

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…

I wonder if the increasing shift toward remote work (often in disparate timezones) will end up pushing teams to eventually adopt 1-3 "core hours" 2-3 days per week with team meetings and collaboration sessions and a more laissez-faire attitude toward working the rest of the usual 9-5 day; I would love to just focus on getting my work done any time I feel like it, attend meetings during core hours, and have the abilit…

Except for meetings and deadlines, why is anything measured in hours. Why aren't things measured in amount produced? (I hope it's obvious I'm speaking in terms of coders and manager's teams - I have no idea how this would work for directors or above.) The majority of coders are employed on salary (so far as I know), so just pay their salary and expect tasks to be completed. This mandatory 40 hours in a seat ritualistic adherence seems dated and unproductive. Different people will work better in different situations, and it is one of management's tasks to see that their team's potential isn't impeded when trying to complete their tasks as a unit, even when that means working as a coordinator between separate individuals on the same team, working towards the same goal. The work should be what's valued and not some myopic adherence to a past life of offices and collared shirts.

Re: Eidos-Montréal Offices shifting to the 4 day work week

#72

Post by breuleux » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 2:52 AM UTC

akersten wrote: post #35

jstx1 wrote: post #27

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…

The main issue, at least for me, is that I simply cannot focus for 8 hours in a single day. If I was to work 2 hours a day for four days, I would likely get more done than if I "worked" 8 hours one day.

Re: Eidos-Montréal Offices shifting to the 4 day work week

#73

Post by nick__m » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 2:58 AM UTC

tharkun__ wrote: post #56

nick__m wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Montreal I have no idea but in Sherbrooke the salaries are generally low, I make ~90k (plus a solid, well managed, pension plan) and work for one of the best employer in the city. I could look into remote work but I am quite confortable where I am. I love the 35 hours workweek, the 21 days of paid time off, the week and a half around Christmas, my private office with a marble window sills (that I will use only 2 d…

Just out of curiosity, is that ~90k CAD or did you convert to USD for the majority of the audience here?

CAD, the boss of my boss is making 90k in USD !

Re: Eidos-Montréal Offices shifting to the 4 day work week

#74

Post by legostormtroopr » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 2:58 AM UTC

akersten wrote: post #8

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…

> 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 don't like this attitude as it implies "reading" isn't work. The role of a "knowledge worker" is to find and generate new ideas and implement them. Hacker News is regularly filled with good articles and commentary about the tech space - and is something I encourage my team to follow.

Its not uncommon for there to be articles directly related to our tech stack. So yeah, even if you aren't pushing code for 40hours, doesn't mean you aren't "working" that whole time.

Re: Eidos-Montréal Offices shifting to the 4 day work week

#75

Post by breuleux » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 3:02 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #70

jstx1 wrote: post #27

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…

"You're cutting productive and unproductive hours at the same time" is perhaps true, but it's about the ratio. Obviously at the extremes (cutting the last day of work vs going from a 7-day to a 6-day) there's going to be differences. 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…

I don't think unproductive hours are random, but I suspect that for mental work the productivity ratio decreases more dramatically in the last hour of each day than the last day of a week. Basically, from a pure productivity standpoint, it may be more efficient to go from 5x8 to 5x6 (or even 5x4) than to go from 5x8 to 4x8. Most people might prefer 4x8 because a full day off is more flexible, however.

Re: Eidos-Montréal Offices shifting to the 4 day work week

#76

Post by zeroq » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 3:05 AM UTC

akersten wrote: post #8

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…

I appreciate the irony, and to some degree I agree with the argument but you have to keep in mind that in the real world employers like to see their cogs working.

I'm a night owl and I really hate getting up early. Early in my career when I was working in digital advertising I had a job where I tried to argue with my employer that while I'm coming late to work I never refuse to stay late hours or work through weekends when jobs needs it. Unpaid overtime mind you. They didn't understood. Instead they preferred - at least they thought they preferred - seeing me at my desk from 10 to 6, because that's what they were paying for. After 18 they were leaving the office and not knowing what I was doing they just assumed no work was done. Probably. Actually couple of jobs like that. Those were small shops. Recently I worked for bigger corps and (un)surprisingly the patter repeated. Instead of agreeing on me showing late to the office but willing to stay late if there was actual work to do without getting any compensation my managers preferred me to get to my desk by 9 and sit there till 5 even if there was nothing to be done. Another recent situation was when I was responsible for architecture and setting up a team for a fairly complicated project. I like to think on my feet so I was spending a lot of my time in quiet corridors of the office or in cafeteria trying to figure out how to make things going. My managers were furious at me for not sitting in front of my desk and I repeatedly failed to convinced them that neither my job description, nor my current position requires me to sit in front of my keyboard at all time to complete the tasks I'm facing.

I agree it's stupid, but we can't deny that it's sad reality for many people out there.

Re: Eidos-Montréal Offices shifting to the 4 day work week

#77

Post by breuleux » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 3:15 AM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #42

satvikpendem wrote: post #39

Rather than a 4 day work week, I always thought that a 4 hour work day was far superior (or at least, a 4 day work week of 5 hour work days; 20 hours a week total). You're not truly doing 8 hours of full work a week, so why not focus the time down to only productive hours? Here's an interesting article about it [0]. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2021/05/28/the-future...

You're assuming that by working fewer hours you'd magically eliminate only the unproductive hours . That seems extremely unlikely. I read an article years ago from someone that tried it, expecting exactly what you're expecting, but they found that proportional of their working time that was productive was about the same.

It might depend on how you organize your time. I could see how working for 4 consecutive hours might have proportionally the same amount of unproductivity, but maybe splitting it in two blocks of two hours with a two hour pause in-between would work better?

Re: Eidos-Montréal Offices shifting to the 4 day work week

#78

Post by whichdan » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 3:22 AM UTC

glonq wrote: post #36

Age 49 here. I'm seriously considering that my next job should be 3 or 4 days per week, even if that means a somewhat proportionately reduced paycheck. Would fight for 4+ weeks vacation too. I need quality of life more than I need cash right now.

Oh I would easily take a 20% paycut to have Fridays off forever.

Re: Eidos-Montréal Offices shifting to the 4 day work week

#79

Post by oarabbus_ » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 3:30 AM UTC

akersten wrote: post #35

jstx1 wrote: post #27

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…

Humans are not robots. If most people do 2 "work days" of work in 5 a 5-day week, it doesn't logically follow that people would accomplish 2 "work days" of work in a 2-day week.

If we could find a VC with too much money and a gambling problem, I'd be happy to simultaneously start competing companies in the same sector; my employees can work 4 days/week and yours can work 2 days and we'll see how each business does ;)

Re: Eidos-Montréal Offices shifting to the 4 day work week

#80

Post by strken » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 3:32 AM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #20

Instead of mandating that everyone should work a fixed work week why not just let people decide how much they want to work? The 40 hour work week is just a "social construct". Let the unit of labor be half a work day (4 hours) instead of a whole person. If people want to work 24 or 32 or 44 hours let them. The labor market isn't much of a market if you can't even do something as basic as decide how much you want to w…

It's a gigantic pain in the buttocks when you need someone to give you AWS credentials and you have to wait three days for them to be back in the office. Add in a few other people with multiple days off and you can spend an entire week waiting for a combined 10 minutes of labour to be done.

If there was some kind of common arrangement where employees could go to the beach or attend piano lessons or whatever, but check their phone once an hour and unblock everyone else, and always be in the office for the official meeting day, it would be a lot more palatable.