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Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?

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Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?

#81

Post by disambiguation »

saltybytes wrote: post #79

I think it's very common in Europe to adapt your working hours to your situation in life. Many of my European friends decrease their hours for a small pay cut since they have children now or have to take care of elderly. Just call HR and discuss the deal. Done. I recently worked for a Belgium startup in the NY office. Many of my coworkers in the old world had an agreement to work less for less pay. When I asked my HR…

> it's not possible in US ... if you decrease your hours by one hour you will count as half-time employee and lose all benefits

/thread for US employees

really surprised 80 other comments ITT and no one else mentioning this

Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?

#83

Post by DoomHotel »

I negotiated a deal at a former employer where I worked 4 x 9.5 hour days with Wednesdays off. I took a 5% pay cut and lost a proportional amount of vacation time. I kept my benefits but had to pay a slightly higher share for my contribution to the health care plan. It worked out very well—I especially liked having Wednesdays to run errands when government offices and banks etc. were open.

Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?

#84

Post by danaris »

saltybytes wrote: post #79

I think it's very common in Europe to adapt your working hours to your situation in life. Many of my European friends decrease their hours for a small pay cut since they have children now or have to take care of elderly. Just call HR and discuss the deal. Done. I recently worked for a Belgium startup in the NY office. Many of my coworkers in the old world had an agreement to work less for less pay. When I asked my HR…

The thing is, as I understand it (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong—with citations if possible!), there is no law that mandates that non-full-time employees get no benefits. Indeed, I know of some part-time employees (though still fixed-time, like half- or three-quarter-time, not variable hours like retail or food service generally is) who get prorated or full benefits.

If they are saying their hands are tied, it is because there is an institutional policy of not providing benefits to those who are less than full time, not because they are not allowed to do so.

In other words, if they implied that they can't do this because of US law, they were lying to you.

Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?

#85

Post by cybwraith »

disambiguation wrote: post #81
saltybytes wrote: post #79

I think it's very common in Europe to adapt your working hours to your situation in life. Many of my European friends decrease their hours for a small pay cut since they have children now or have to take care of elderly. Just call HR and discuss the deal. Done. I recently worked for a Belgium startup in the NY office. Many of my coworkers in the old world had an agreement to work less for less pay. When I asked my HR…

> it's not possible in US ... if you decrease your hours by one hour you will count as half-time employee and lose all benefits /thread for US employees really surprised 80 other comments ITT and no one else mentioning this

This isn't actually a law though, in the US. Its just the most prevalent corporate/insurance/hr policy. I have worked several places where "full time" employment counted as 30 hours or more, with access to benefits, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?

#86

Post by Mountain_Skies »

disambiguation wrote: post #81
saltybytes wrote: post #79

I think it's very common in Europe to adapt your working hours to your situation in life. Many of my European friends decrease their hours for a small pay cut since they have children now or have to take care of elderly. Just call HR and discuss the deal. Done. I recently worked for a Belgium startup in the NY office. Many of my coworkers in the old world had an agreement to work less for less pay. When I asked my HR…

> it's not possible in US ... if you decrease your hours by one hour you will count as half-time employee and lose all benefits /thread for US employees really surprised 80 other comments ITT and no one else mentioning this

Is it always true? When I worked for a grocery chain, I was part time but because I averaged over a certain threshold of hours per week that was less then 40, I received full time benefits. This might have been a union requirement rather then a legal one but it worked out the same for me regardless of whose requirement it was.

Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?

#88

Post by vasper »

philmcp wrote: post #16

From an employers perspective, I believe there are many advantages: - 4 day week job listings get 15% more applications [1] - Staff will be more productive. Microsoft experimented with a 4-day work week and productivity jumped by 40% [2] - Staff will be happier and healthier [3] - Staff retention will improve (e.g. "Now that I'm working a 4 day week, I could never go back to work 5 days") - Some developers would comp…

It is doable and in some countries like Switzerland even a common practice to offer an 80% - 100% workload (if you look at https://swissdevjobs.ch/ or any other tech job board you will notice it occurs quite often)

The problem is that an 80% workload for companies also means 80% of the salary which makes sense if someone wants to work part-time, but it's not the implementation of a 4-day work week idea.

Personally, I believe a 4-day work week will sooner or later be a standard, simply because Developers (including myself) waste a lot of their daily time and by having a constrained time-frame they will also be more efficient. In the same time (hopefully) management might reduce the number of meetings forced onto the Dev team.

Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?

#89

Post by [deleted] »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #86
disambiguation wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not possible in US ... if you decrease your hours by one hour you will count as half-time employee and lose all benefits /thread for US employees really surprised 80 other comments ITT and no one else mentioning this

Is it always true? When I worked for a grocery chain, I was part time but because I averaged over a certain threshold of hours per week that was less then 40, I received full time benefits. This might have been a union requirement rather then a legal one but it worked out the same for me regardless of whose requirement it was.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work 4 days per week for 80% salary?

#90

Post by leipert »

The thing that really changed my perspective was a comment on HN:

20% reduction in work days means 50% increase in off days.

Personally I have the feeling that I need like a day to disconnect from work topics and focus on other things, so the extra day would help.

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