Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO
Standard work hours here is 9am-6pm, so 9 hours and I used to stay 10+ hours in the office often. before covid was another hour commute daily which meant pretty much not having any sun. New girl at work has a kid and told me she thought it was crazy staying past 3-4pm, and it dawned on me how right she is. pretty much everyone finished working by 7pm - many stores, restaurants are already closed before I even had a chance. Also after 6 hours the effectiveness or quality of work declines.
I got nothing against 4 day workweeks - I myself work part time, but I rather work 2-4 hours for even 6 days a week and I'd like to see this approach more popularized. Anyone else feels like this?
Can we agree that different people have different optimal working styles?
Some people get everything done first thing in the morning and are useless in the afternoons.
Some people can't get started until noon whatever their local time is.
Some people can commit to 10 or 12 hour days, and if so, it's not fair to ask them to work 5 days a week at that rate.
Some people work best in private offices, some at separated workstations, some at big collaborative tables, and some at home. Some do best standing, some walking, and some lying down -- all different from the ones who do best in a nice supportive chair or on a stool with no backrest. Some need an ergonomic keyboard, some need macros, some need a giant screen or 2 screens, or six. Some need screenreader software and some need speech-to-text.
The relevant questions:
* are they productive in some arrangement? I have seen a very very few people who seem to be always rearranging things and changing equipment and hours in a constant pursuit of distraction. The vast majority of people figure things out and settle into a steady state of productivity...
* is the nature of the work conducive to the desired arrangement? If the position requires customer or vendor contact or operations response, the coverage needs to be maintained (and handoffs need to occur smoothly).
* is the company culture amenable to alteration or accomodation? At one workplace, most of the people I worked with didn't come in until 11am and liked to schedule meetings at 6pm. I liked to leave around 5:30, having been there since 8 or so.
We see the same issues in education with kids learning in different ways, and those who learn better in X way might learn less because they're being taught in Y way.
It comes down to the overhead in time and complexity (usually money as well) being too high to justify accommodating everyone. We just sorta jam everyone into the same thing and figure we'll get enough out of them. As the culture shifts more toward worker's work/life balance being important (if it ever does here in the US) I think this will change, but I don't think we'll see ever enough flexibility to accommodate everyone. We'll settle on another standard and stick to it till enough people complain.
Different learning styles are actually disputed [0], but I agree that 1. it's easier for employer to fit everyone in one box. 2. If people had more individual approaches, they would work better
[0]https://www.educationnext.org/stubborn-myth-learning-styles-...
I read that article but it doesn't seem to actually say much, other than "leaning styles == bad." My best guess is that the author has built a strawman and his definition of "different learning styles" is markedly different (or narrower) than the common understanding of the phase.
I consider myself a pretty open-minded individual and a strong adherent to the idea that (properly conducted!) science furthers human progress, health, and happiness. But there's no way anyone can convince me that, given the exceptionally wide variability in the way human brains process information, that there is "one true way" to teach somebody something. Or even "one true way" for a specific individual that applies to all subjects.
For instance, there is an entire generation who seem to learn faster and/or better by watching well-produced videos on a topic. For them, reading a textbook or other forms of documentation takes too long or just plain doesn't work. This is basically what all of those modern online course sites and coding bootcamps are doing.
I'm the complete opposite. I'd rather sift through book-sized volumes of written documentation and tutorials (or in a pinch, a textbook) to quickly gain an overall big-picture view of a topic and then dive into specific details as necessary. For me, watching videos takes too long, and I get bored and sleepy watching them. Give me something to read, reflect on, and play with.
Another example: my son, unlike most of his peers, can't sit still in a classroom. Nor can he watch educational videos for any particular length of time. He is not (yet?) a self-directed learner because if you put him in front of an electronic device of any kind, he will tinker with all of the settings on the device instead of using it for its intended purpose. However, he absolutely excels at one-on-one tutoring because I have managed to teach him some fairly advanced (for his age) math, computer, and electronics concepts just by sitting down and talking about these things with him as if it was just casual conversation. The problem, of course, is that the way schools are structured, this cannot possibly scale even to just the kids that need it the most.
There is a sizeable contingent in education that ascribes to the theory that learning styles is mostly bunk. The differences in outcomes for students taught with a preferred learning style vs students taught with their least preferred learning style is consistently quite small. There is also the practical consideration that teaching each student in their preferred of n teaching styles requires n times the instruction time. A large number of educators believe you get best results by just letting the teacher pick the approach to teaching they are most comfortable with.
Your link doesn't demonstrate that all people learn in the same way, merely tries to debunk a specific/narrow set of learning styles (that seem bizarre in the first place)
Here are a few better sources. "Learning styles" are not established science, by any means.
https://career.ucsf.edu/sites/g/files/tkssra2771/f/Article%2...
https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA628405045&sid=googleS...
https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/LearningStylesMyth
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/the-myth...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-...
I don't think you're disproving the parent commenter with these links. Again, it appears that the VARK learning styles are likely nonsense but that doesn't mean people don't have different learning preferences that work better for them.
The idea is that many people will learn best when a combination of teaching methods are present, rather than one person always being taught in style X vs style Y. But most schools and teaching institutions are setup as farms that make students believe that if they don't find success in this narrow little box, then they must be dumb or doing something wrong.
Surely the idea that people learn in the same way is as bizarre as the idea that people learn in one of 4 ways.
I have at least one counter example.
Graduate level Math/Physics.
There are people who cannot understand unless they see the algebra.
There also people that will not understand until they see the geometrical interpretation of the problem.
Clearly we can't accomodate everyone but it seems achievable to work toward a culture where (for example) meetings are discouraged at 6pm where some employees start at 8am or 9am.
One of the very minor customs that has developed (spontaneously) in my organisation (and I assume elsewhere) during the pandemic is (internally) people are quite likely to ask if it's OK to call you. This isn't a rule and obviously doesn't apply with anything urgent but it's starting to feel almost approaching rude now to call someone about a routine matter without checking whether they've got a minute for a call. Personally, I like that.
A lot of emphasis is understandably given to statutory/regulatory intervention to protect workers but there are small cultural things we can do to make work a bit less awful (like not scheduling your team meeting at a time when you know multiple people are taking their kids to school or right at the end of the day where you know people have trains to catch or whatever). These don't need to be documented corporate policies (because then it becomes something else) but just customs that quietly evolve over time.
To further complicate matters, different fields of work have different optimal working styles/cycles as well.
I did some very physical seasonal work for about a decade where most of us would work about 3 months of the year, very intensely. After years of experimentation, the boss of the finest company in this industry figured out that a 3 day on, 1 day off cycle worked best for productivity and morale. This cycle gave everyone a chance to rest and recover from the athletic level of physical labour.
It was really interesting to step out of a 7 day week and into this 4 day cycle every year.
This also depends on age, i.e., it sounds like I'd need 1 day on, 2 days off for this type of work ;)
I probably would too, at this point!
Ultimately though we need to pick an arrangement. It's going to be very difficult to have part of society on reduced five day work weeks and part of society on four day work weeks. It creates unusual demand patterns on schools and daycare which you need to decide whether to run on a four or five day pattern. It's hard for the schools or daycares if the teachers/ECEs opt for four day work weeks but a substantial portion of their market requires five day services.
The push for a four day work week is inclusive and allows most people to shift to a four day work week. The push to people working in accordance with their optimal work patterns unfairly targets the service sector and restricts how their choice in how they work based on demands for their services.
A substantial portion of the service sector runs with a seven day schedule, we don't push schools to offer seven day service in response? Perhaps having more mixed working arrangements will improve societal flexibility and better serve all people.
I think it's a legitimate problem though that schools and daycares operate predominantly on a five day schedule now that works for a large number of workers. If we go to a model where we have something resembling a 50/50 split between longer 4-day work weeks and shorter 5-day work weeks we end up with a huge problem in how to schedule services so that they work for the majority of people.
There will be overwhelming pressure on schools to have days that match the shorter length of day in the five-day workweek so that parents who opt for five days can spend time with their kids. There will be overwhelming pressure to have four slightly longer school days so that parents who opt for the four-day work week can spend time with the kids on the three days off. It's very difficult for schools to opt for both solutions as it would require doubling the number of class types being offered which makes it harder for smaller schools to have sufficient students in every class to be financially viable. Even if we solve financial viability schools would need the ability to tell teachers which schedule they had to take rather than letting the teachers freely choose.
I can't stress how much this choice of working approach would be bad for the school system.
I can't help but feel that you are arguing that it would be hard on everyone if the current standard was not maintained, while ignoring that the current standard is not maintained.
Here are occupations that generally don't have a M-F 9-5 work cycle right now:
police, firefighters, the vast majority of people who work in healthcare including nurses and doctors, restaurants, hospitality, janitorial, retail sales, plumbers, HVAC techs, construction workers, taxi/lyft/uber/whatever drivers, truck drivers, and customer service.
I actually prefer a four day school week and four day work week as a standard I just don’t think it’s easy to have multiple simultaneous standards.
I get that not all jobs are M-F 9-5 workloads. But I also know a number of people report substantial hardships of not having that schedule in those jobs. I don’t think we want to make school no longer correspond to the default work week by having two default work weeks unless we want all people on the wrong default to add those problems to their jobs.
> It creates unusual demand patterns on schools and daycare which you need to decide whether to run on a four or five day pattern.
Schools can run a 5-day pattern even if some of their employees are on a 4-day pattern (as long as they are not the same four-day pattern). In fact, it's not unknown for various workplaces to run a 5-day every week pattern with employees on a mix of 9-8-80 two-week and 4-10-40 1-week cycles with different cycle days off.
Faculty (especially in pre-K through primary grades; scheduling can be more creative without disruption at the secondary level) probably need to be on every open day, generally, but other than that,..
It's difficult and disruptive for students to be on a 5-day pattern of education with a homeroom teacher on a 4-day pattern. This basically necessitates scheduling entirely non-core subjects on the fifth day, potentially even resulting in multiple sessions of gym in a single day. It's also not clear to me you can viably do this without increasing costs unless the school is free to choose which of the four days the teacher's work instead of the teacher doing so. For example, if the standard 4-day work week is Monday-Thursday then there is ridiculous demand for non-core subject teachers on Friday and those non-core subject teachers may even be working Monday-Thursday themselves resulting in reduced supply.
> It's difficult and disruptive for students to be on a 5-day pattern of education with a homeroom teacher on a 4-day pattern.
Is it? In most secondary environments I’ve seen “homeroom”, if it exists at all (which tends to only be early secondary, like middle school, and not consistently even there), is simply a regular class to which added time for administrivia like daily announcements is added.
Agree 100% with this take. But my question is: how do you mesh all these types together and run an effective team/company? Or is that even possible?
In a large enough group, all things are possible, and a good manager can make them happen.
In a small group, start by asking what the company needs, and hire or move people to fit. It might not be possible to get a good fit for everyone.
Honesty and flexibility is the best policy: one dev who misses every morning meeting has a problem, but if half the team misses it fairly regularly, or everyone is yawning, move the meeting. Ask people about their working styles up front, and be clear during the hiring process if you have core hours, or inflexible shifts, or need everyone to be in person on the first Wednesday of the month, or whatever.
By having agreed core hours.
Hire based on working style.
This is a really great way to introduce systemic neurodivergency filters and expose a greater surface area for unfair hiring practice lawsuits.
Not sure if I'm just missing the sarcasm but almost all companies have been hiring based on the same working style of 5 days a week, 8+ hours, in office, open workspace for quite a while. What's the problem with choosing a different set of strongly opinionated defaults?
Normal working conditions are a neurodivergence filter.
I produce as much as my teammates working about 1-2 hours 5-days per week. It would be a massive social problem for most employers to let me get paid what I make and have everyone see me only working 1-2 hours per day. That's why I had to switch to consulting. My case is extreme, but that's why you won't see employers letting people have visibly different work arrangements.
Have you ever considered that your teammates may be working 1-2 hours each day too ?
Some aren't working at all.
Saving to copy/paste on every [X workstyle] is best thread…
How do you maximize opportunities for collaboration?
Maybe I trust people too much, but I feel people will find and make their own opportunities to collaborate if they feel like collaboration is required to complete their tasks.
If you're maximizing "opportunities to collaborate" you're probably taking their attention from their work unnecessarily.
> Maybe I trust people too much, but I feel people will find and make their own opportunities to collaborate if they feel like collaboration is required to complete their tasks.
I find this breaks down at larger companies. The problem is that people often do not understand when collaboration is required. This is usually not their fault. Someone up failed to communicate up or down the chain (either on the receiving or sending end).
I've watched groups reproduce each other's works, bungle rollouts, etc. based on this lack of communication. The cost of these miscommunications was sometimes greater than everyone's salary put together. A truly excellent culture of communication and collaboration reduces the frequency and severity of these events but there's no silver bullet.
Set 2 half days as office hours where people self organize and collaborate on whatever they need to solve. Poll the team to find what those 2 chunks of time are. 2 half days is arbitrary, the core idea would be that builders/makers have uninterrupted time to focus and build for the rest of the week.
I disagree. I have 6-7 hour workdays. That's nice but no nearly as nice as another free day. I still feel like I have no time for my own life/projects. I still feel exhausted after working even 6-7-hours (because I'm not a morning person naturally yet have to go work in the morning) and the evening time (nor even an evening nap) never actually feels nice if I worked that day. I go out on Saturday, sleep until evening (the only way I can actually get pleasurable and physically regenerative sleep) on Sunday, get up and immediately start feeling bad about the fact I had no productive time for my side projects/home as another workweek starts in just some hours.
I'd rather work full 8 hours a day but have 4-day workweek. Ideally I'd prefer Wednesdays to be non-working days - this way I wouldn't have to spend more than 2 days in a row working in the office. For me this would feel even better than just 3-day weekends with 4-day contiguous workweeks. 5-vs-2 feels like you live in the office and go to visit home. 4-vs-3 feels the same although notably better. 2-1-2-2 (office-home-office-home) would actually feel you live at home and go to the office to get the job done. I even feel almost sure this would boost my actual office-time productivity.
My wife and I just started slowing down to ramp into retirement, so we're both working 4-day weeks.
We had the idea to stagger the days, alternating between Fridays and Mondays off. That works out so that weekends alternate between 2 days and 4 days. And a 4-day weekend is enough that you can really do something - an actual trip or something. Having that every other week is really nice.
When I'm not on site I work 4x10 hour days, usually 0900-1900, with 1h25 break.
When I'm out and about I'll work as long as I need to, 12 hours is a typical day, but any hours I do over 35 per week get paid time-and-a-half. If I'm out on an event and say staying in a hotel in rural Norfolk, I'd far rather work from 10 or 11 to 2300 than do 1500-2300, it's not like I'm going to make use of the extra 4 hours in the morning.
A 6 hour day sounds awful, I barely get into top gear until about 5 hours into the day on a typical desk day.
What are you doing for the first 5 hours? I typically find that if I'm actually working and not in too many meetings I'm basically checked out after 5 straight hours if I haven't wandered off already.
Generally firefighting, dealing with emails and various minor requests that all take less than half an hour but involve a lot of task switching.
I do a lot of this too. The worst is when the company I work for tries to prevent this from happening. I seem to -need- that time to "gear up" as you say. I also find it very rewarding to help my colleagues with these types of quick issues, as it often prevents issues from ballooning, encourages collaboration and builds trust.
When they force me into "developer timeout" and effectively isolate me, I just sit there struggling for the first half of the day anyway.
Change job dude, you are going to have a burn out
My job is easy, crisis-proof and generally fun, not to mention 6-7-hour workdays which many can only dream about (not a common thing to find at my location). I just hate getting up in mornings, having fixed time schedule and spending many days in a row working this way. But that's the standard almost everybody has to deal with. So I don't feel like changing the job. Perhaps I'm going to return to flexible-schedule gigs someday, that felt better except too insecure. I just hope the society is going to move to 4-day workweek. It's been so long since it last decreased the workweek length.
In fact I only share details about my sub-optimal perceived well-being because people tend to come up with useful suggestions of relevant supplements and practices. E.g. from my own experience I can say homemade kombucha can boost after-work evening well-being significantly (feels like some batches boost serotonin or something like that).
I know you're not to supposed to listen to advice on the Internet, but perhaps improving/changing your sleeping habits if you want to stay in your job?
If Saturday is the one day you are getting good sleep, then there is some improvement to be done. Perhaps reading a book before bed, and trying to go to bed early, can create a new sleep routing for your sleep hygiene? Worth a try! Hope you feel less tired!
> I know you're not to supposed to listen to advice on the Internet
Perhaps that's the conventional wisdom yet advices on the Internet are exactly what I hunt for by writing this kind of comments here :-) For a reasonably rationally minded person this is a great input of things to explore. Many such advices already changed my life for good.
Another thing to look into is whether you have snoring / sleep apnea. Most people who do, it seems, are not aware of it. 2 easy, objective tests:
1) Ask your sleeping partner, if you have one, if you snore.
2) Record yourself sleeping. I used an app called SnoreLab which does audio analysis to give you a numerical rating and pulls clips of likely snoring moments so you don't have to scrub through the entire night's recording. The app also gives a pretty exhaustive list of recommendations for fixing snoring.
Many people have snoring / apnea and don't know it / are in denial. Poor sleep quality / being tired is a symptom. Fixing this can add quality years to your life, so worth looking into.
I often snore when I sleep on my back. So I always sleep on my belly and don't snore. This developed before I even finished high school. I have never been (and am not) even slightly overweight.
Sleep apnea often develops during puberty when the voice box changes, which lines up with the high-school timeframe. Being overweight can certainly make it worse, but apparently an above-average number of firefighters have sleep apnea, and they're not exactly an overweight group.
Not saying you have sleep apnea or that sleeping on your side/belly isn't enough to deal with it, simply some information.
(It's certainly possible that the reason an above-average number of fire-fighters have sleep apnea is that 1) they're more likely to have people hear them snoring, and 2) the people screened out of the military for sleep apnea often respond by becoming firefighters.)
Weight is often a cause but is not necessary to produce apnea. The human breathing apparatus is just weird.
I'm glad you have a way to prevent snoring. But I wonder if sleeping on your belly isn't also bad for your sleep. Everything I've read recommends side sleeping for back-snorers. I've seen some sources say belly sleeping is bad for you as well.
In any case, good luck on your health journey
Move to the Netherlands. Our workweeks are 28hr on average (that includes part time work, but I think that’s still like 50% of all people).
Ok. Thank you. I'm studying Dutch already (seriously).
Dude, change job. You can absolutely find a software job where they let you work later in the day.
I used to have a software job but am not sure I want to return to that. I prefer communicating to people. Writing code gets me severe ADHD attacks :-]
Meanwhile in China...
Excerpts below taken from the website https://996.icu/#/en_US
What is "996"? 996 working, ICU waiting.
A "996" work schedule refers to an unofficial work schedule (9a.m. ~ 9p.m., 6 days a week) that has been gaining in popularity. Serving a company that encourages the "996" work schedule usually means working for at least 60 hours a week.
In early September 2016, it was said that 58.com (58同城, a classified advertisements company) introduced the "996" work schedule, without paying employees overtime who worked on weekends. The company later claimed that the schedule was only practiced managing extra workflow during peak season - September and October, and that the schedule was not compulsory.
In early 2019, Youzan (有赞, a Hangzhou-based E-commerce company) announced the company would adopt "996" work schedule in the annual convention. Bai Ya, the CEO of Youzan, responded: "This will definitely be a right decision when we look back in a few years."
In mid-March 2019, it was reported that JD.com (京东, a major E-commerce company) started adopting "996" or "995" work schedules in some departments. The PR posted that (Our culture is) to devote ourselves wholeheartedly (to achieve the business objectives) via Maimai (脉脉, a Chinese real-name business social network platform).
Gaining more publicity only recently, this work schedule, however, has long been a known "secret" practiced in a lot of companies in China.
Former "large China FAANG" employee here so I can speak authoritatively on this.
These things above fail to take in the culture aspect. Generally, "being present" is considered "work", so the idea is to be present in the office for all of these hours.
When "we" (Americans) showed up at 8a-9a, busted out an enormous of amount of code, email, meetings, etc then left at 4p-5p was quite a shock to our native compadres. One of the managers actually asked us to slow down as they weren't able to keep up and were causing problems.
A snooty person would claim "oh look how much better the American system is", but it's much more complex than that. First, the Chinese have a very interesting total life integration. You still get married at late biblical ages (15-19), your parents move in with you and take care of the kids, you generally don't own many things (including a house), and your job and coworkers are friends and very much part of your life; you'll eat three meals a day with them and talk long walks. Your job pace is much slower and therefore, hours much longer.
Americans tend to live these absurd double identities, where we have coworkers our spouses will never meet, and we rarely interact with said coworkers outside of work, which is quite a culture shock to the Chinese. There was just another thread on HN about "fundatory activities", and how badly they can go over, which simply wouldn't exist in China.
In the end, just a different system, based on completely different national ideals. It's hard to understand until you're there living and breathing it.
As a Pakistani-American, I can confirm, this is exactly how many people from my culture also work, though not as extreme as 9-9. We may take long lunches, go for multiple coffee breaks, walks, etc. May even watch some Bollywood movies while working.
But as a father, this is horrible work schedule. Culturally, it is totally acceptable for fathers to just provide but not really interact with their kids. Also there is an aspect of heroism of fathers working long hours to provide. And then, unfortunately, for some there is no option but to work long hours because they need extra money.
But some men would rather stay away from their children and let moms or grandparents raise the them. And I do know some such men. They stay late at work to avoid their families, they even bring their gaming laptops to work, so they can game after 5 and avoid their families. Honestly, work is a walk in a park compared to being a good father.
But it is hard to tell who is avoiding their families, who is staying late because of cultural pressures, and who really need to work late hours to provide for their families.
Even so, what's the point of "being present" at work and not actually working? I'd rather spend that time with my family or friends.
I think they just explained it in their comment… your coworkers are your friends.
I think the flip side of what you’re saying is, why would you not want to be friends with the people you spend 8+ hours a day with during the workweek?
And if you get fired, you get fired from being friends with them too?
I certainly want to be able to get along with my coworkers, but it's not quite the same thing as being friends. There are few former coworkers that I keep in touch with after I leave a job. I tend to have my friends outside work. And my family too.
I mean I am an American, and I live my life in accordance with American norms.
I just am pointing out how cultural differences lead to different perspectives. I would imagine that Chinese corporate culture around layoffs is also very different from how it is in America.
It’s really difficult to comprehend all of the small details that go into living within a different culture, and isolated components end up seeming bizarre, while they are perfectly logical when you live within the system itself.
Are you certain the concept of "Getting fired" exists in the way you perceive it over there?
Is this question more than rhetorical? Because the answer is non-obvious to a Westerner like me.
Surely there exists a scenario where the company tells an employee "we no longer want you to do anything for us, we will no longer pay you, and you will no longer have access to the building", in that scenario it does sound like they're losing a large part of the people in their life?
I think at this point in the thread, most of us are just outsiders speculating.
To add my bit: given the growth rate of the Chinese economy over the last several decades, it’s highly likely that American style layoffs are exceedingly uncommon in China, to the point where the fear that you may lose your job and thus your whole social life is much less of a fear, at least to the extent that it is perceived as beyond your own control.
Perhaps its to maintain the perception of being of a higher social class than the peasantry (baseless speculation)
Let’s be honest, if you ever worked in East Asian countries with these work ethic culture, you’d know they just sit around the office doing absolutely nothing. It’s bullshit.
Even on this very forum you people will consistently brag that they only work a couple hours a week at their 500k job.
Not even just this forum, there have been plenty of articles about data of varying quality showing that vanishingly few people actually work a full 8 hour day and/or are capable of actually sustaining heavy thought for that long anyway!
If you can generate enough value in 2 hours to justify 500k a year then that's fine.
Do you really think a factory worker doing 996 isn't constantly moving/making something? Because if so, then you've clearly never done any factory work, in the US or otherwise, those jobs are nonstop work, even if it is menial work.
Working factory is mind numbing in some ways but a lot of things that burn you out just don't exist: Politics, context switching, firefighting, changing priorities, working irregular hours to get project out of the door, meetings, Slack chats or phonecalls...
I love nonstop work, the problem is that a lot of times I have to unblock problems, stop to talk to other people, there are dependencies or things are on fire so a lot of time is spent busy waiting. It is work but it is not rewarding and you don't actually get much done.
100% agree, I personally would probably have the same weekly productivity in 965 vs 996. Brain resting is pretty important.
I think a significant point in the 996 is also to ensure people are available, not only productive. Most probably are extremely productive few hours per day (let's assume 4) and few days per week (let's also assume 4). We could all be performing almost all our weekly tasks in about 16 - extremely targeted and focused - hours. SO it might be easy to think we should only be working 16 hours per week and that would be enough.
Yet, if people were only working 16 hour per week, the company would stop to a crawl. Because during my extremely productive, I might need a few non productive hours from you. Maybe it's answering a quick question, maybe is giving me a pointer to something, on inviting me to a document, enough that I can keep progressing without being blocked and getting those golden 16 hours interrupted and wasted.
The point is that, even tho these are not productive hours for you, they are creating a massive value for the company because you can be supporting other people productive hours. And maybe those are happening on a Saturday from 6 to 9 PM. In fact it might even be OK for the company to tire you a bit, to get that availability, even if that means you won't have 16 hours of quality work anymore.
This is not in defense on the 996, but it is to balance the whole point that people should only be working when they really are productive/focused/.... Availability, even non productive does matter as well.
This is terrible, unfair, and morally wrong, but we can understand what it comes from: this is a difference between the so-called "developed" and "developing" countries.
Because why do we work? To have money so that we can live comfortably. Work is not meant to fill in 40 or more hours of our life, it's just a means to and end. If we can have enough money by working less, many people chose this way. In the meantime, in most countries of the world it's not an option: you might need to work much more just to survive. A sad reality and something that I hope changes one day, once the old generations (thinking in terms of nations and wars and not realizing all human beings are mutually interdependent) pass away.
That's the difference between suppressing/co-opting grass roots worker movements versus negotiating with them and incorporating some leverage through rights and regulations. The 40h 5d workweek was a radical demand not so long ago.
China is a modern country. I don't think Jack Ma's 996 makes any sense.
If you apply it to manual labour, you will get sick people. If you apply it to intellectual work, people will just pretend to work.
I think he is just plain greedy.
Japan is similar. You're expected to be at the office for long periods of time, but people often aren't working while they're there.
> If you apply it to manual labour, you will get sick people. If you apply it to intellectual work, people will just pretend to work.
I've always been for the reduction of work hours, but this is a really good concise point that I'll put in my pocket. Thanks.
Actually, intellectual work - that in most cases is done by sitting in front of a computer - also causes illnesses, just different from those caused by manual labor.
For me this is the largest boon of the pandemic revolution: I can take as many exercise breaks as I want without anyone judging me, I can do some parts of my work while cycling,* and I can adjust my work position they way I like. None of these is possible without disturbing my colleagues in the office.
*) Especially meetings! Man, so many of these are such a terrible waste of time! But not mine: I burn calories and become more fit. If only we could have been reasonable and implemented such policies without the need for a pandemic to erupt.
For the first year, I'd always take meetings (that weren't like 1-1 where I was expecting both to read closely and then talk about it, but the big group meetings with 5 or 10 people and not much usefulness) either walking around the block or else pacing around the house. Actually, even for the 1-1 meetings the pacing is very helpful.
For some reason I stopped that as the Covid wore on.
Maybe that is true for you, but not everyone. Some people actually like their work and find it fun and meaningful.
C'mon, they're obviously speaking for the majority but yes, as you've stated there is a minority that finds their work fun and meaningful. That is incredibly lucky and great for you!
Actually, I do like my work but I prefer to have a choice whether to work, say, 30 hours and earn slightly less or work "full time" (what a terrible choice of words) and earn the same as my colleagues. Most employers don't give me that choice and force me to work 40 hours.
There are some rich people in the US who endorse 996. Calacanis being one.
Imagine trying to be a bigger piece of shit.
Japan isn’t even 996 & they’re going to have to start forcing people to have kids at gunpoint or kinda implode as a nation. Near purely because of their abysmal work culture.
I recall when Cards Against Humanity paid for their overseas factory workers a day off by paying for a full factory day with a quota of zero or something like that. All they asked was that the workers spend time with family & send a picture if they do anything special.
A ton of heartwarming but also incredibly sad to think about pictures came in, like a family celebrating their very young child’s birthday in a closet of an apartment. Tiny little home baked cupcake with a singular candle.
They wouldn’t have even gotten to celebrate that in the slightest without their day off, paid by foreigners indescribably richer than them that they’ve never met nor likely will meet.
Continue that line of through - whats the gameplan?
Then those foreigners are forced into the same work culture that makes having a family impossible?
What's next?
Contunue leaching off countries that actually support sustainable survival of the human species?
This is an overly flip answer, but this seems to be America's game plan.
Japans xenophobia is a problem in that they can’t bandaid their birth rate issues with immigration the way other countries have been able to, but that doesn’t make it not a problem. Immigrants arrive and then have similar birth rates within a generation or so.
Wow! I did not realize this was the case. So this must be a result of domestic policy even beyond the job culture.
That's an alternative way to implode as a nation.
Its not racist. I would support it if you are personally willing to take the punishment for any heinous crimes committed by immigrants.
It’s not racist!!
> makes it even more racist
If you take actions that you know for a fact will lead to negative consequences for the people you are responsible for you should share the punishment.
Don't you know that two racisms in opposite direction cancell out and you have no racism left
One of my all-time-favourite Onion stories, which is so stinging because of its kernel of truth:
Chinese Employers To Grant 15-Minute Maternity Break
https://www.theonion.com/chinese-employers-to-grant-15-minut...
That does exist in _some_ companies but it's not "the norm".
Exactly, but people just love to parrot it. It'd be like taking banking hours as the norm here.
> Bob Diamond on brutal working hours for junior bankers: ‘I’d do it again in a nanosecond’ [1]
[1] https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/bob-diamond-on-brutal-work...
Jack Ma said 996 was a blessing.
Then he said other things that pissed off the wrong people and has not been seen since then.
He has been very rarely, but not never, seen since then.
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3177452/jack-ma-m...
Guys like Jack Ma consider being awake to be working. It's how a former CEO of mine justified his 10 week a year vacation schedule with 2.5 day work weeks. The man would walk into the office after a weekend at around 11:30am on a Tuesday to select a few employees to eat lunch with, and then make up for his missed work by staying until 7:30 on Thursdays.
I thought the Chinese government was pushing back on 996.
This is the great thing about remote working. When I worked in the office I felt like I needed to be seen working, even if I really wasn’t because, let’s face it, programming often requires time not working to allow your subconscious to figure out the solution to the problem you are working on. So I would have my butt in the seat, but wasn’t actually doing anything. Now with remote work I can go for a walk, do the dishes, etc. while my mind is working through things. I get just as much actual work done (if not more), but I no longer need to pretend to be doing something for appearance sake.
Yes! And it's more than just the need to appear to be working—in the office I don't get much choice what I do with the breaks that I do take.
At work, many of my "breaks" are involuntary distractions that yank me out of flow, and during the others I can't do anything productive for my home life, so I end up reading HN or something similar.
At home, I can go out and play with my kids, take care of something that's been bugging me around the house, start dinner, or walk the dog. Those breaks not only give me the subconscious processing time I need, they also check things off my to-do list that have been distracting my subconscious, allowing me more focus for my work. I end each day having done more at work and more at home, so when Saturday rolls around I don't feel like I'm playing catch-up.
I believe that's an open secret few, if any, people are talking about and is the largest reason why WFH has increased productivity so much. Not to mention your mental health is far improved because you don't have to keep up the BS of appearing to work to people who don't understand the nature of our work. They're still scratching their heads as to why we became so much more productive while WFH.
yes. people don't realize this, but IT'S OKAY to take a break... in my last office, besides dragging feet to get coffee it seemed people wouldn't even go stretch for 10 seconds. they even bought a brand new PS5 and NEVER even played for months and months (and it probably still accumulates dust over there...)
it seemed inhumane - and crazy nobody told them it wasn't okay or anything... I like getting some sun, let the blood flow, things like that. it's not only okay, it's highly recommended - even necessary.
This is one of the reasons diversity (in this case neural diversity) is important in the office. I've worked in a number of startup where theoretically take breaks, playing video game, going for a walk, whatever was supported, but in practice nobody did it. But all it takes (when the management is supportive) is 1 or 2 outgoing people that make a point to prod their colleagues to do something. Working with a few people that say, "hey, who wants to go play drisbee in 15 minutes" or "pinball tournament after lunch" makes the work environment much more enjoyable. On the other side, the company driven "mandatory fun" is a drag. It needs to be opt-in, often spontaneous, and supported by culture.
>"hey, who wants to go play drisbee in 15 minutes" or "pinball tournament after lunch" makes the work environment much more enjoyable
Oh hell no. I need a break, but the last thing I want to do is take a break with other people. I'd rather sit at my desk pretending to work that go play games with other people. That is literally hell on earth.
But now I can't go for a walk on my own because then I'll get questions about where I am going and why didn't I go and play their stupid game with them instead of going on a walk on my own.
one size doesn’t fit all is the takeaway of almost every post here.
there's an unspoken rule to appear productive and "committed" while in the office, especially when everyone else - including your engineering manager - is doing it, you feel a pressure to do the same!
same thing for not leaving home at 5pm sharp and waiting 15-30 mins before you allow yourself to leave
it has to start from the top
And yet if you have to use or rely on code by other people, you for sure don't want the code from a grinder, work hard and get something out by hook or by crook, rather than the code from a brilliant thinker who goofs around and then does an elegant and complete solution. There's good intentioned and capable people that are a net negative to a code base. It's like yes, this solves the problem of the minute, but couldn't you have taken two hours to think a little?
If the weather is nice, you should leave at 3. To stay happy and motivated.
The weather is almost always nice in california
Then you need to create the special occasion on your own :)
Absolutely. I never understood why taking mid-day breaks and relaxing wasn't encouraged when I was a full-time employee. Coworkers even mentioned it regularly during conversations that their problems always seemed to be solved while on a walk, in the shower, etc.
When I started my own business I made it absolutely clear to the people I hired that the workday is just when you start and when you finish, but everything in between (including breaks, walks, lunch, etc.) are all part of "work". It's not like when you go to lunch you just stop thinking about the hard problem you were working on, and even if you do stop thinking about it, that's an important part of the mental digestion process.
In my last on-site programming job I spent at least half of the time either talking with colleague about not (directly) work related stuff or I spent it in the break room. Nobody cared, we got our work done, everybody was happy.
Why not both? 4 days, 6 hours each.
Hey employers reading this. Having a hard time finding software engineers? Offer me this and I will come running. I’ll be banging on your door with my resume. Think about it.
Yeah “trouble finding talent” and yet it is the tired old 2010s Google perks being offered. Cheap/free food, couches and pingpong.
Offer low tech debt and good hours and get a queue form!
> Offer low tech debt
A company that actually takes tech debt seriously is worth it's weight in gold.
Low tech debt would be ideal but even allocating sprint time to addressing tech debt would be a huge step ahead of many organizations, who just accumulate it until the house comes crashing down.
Yeah, a serious commitment (without fighting) to reserve 10% capacity every sprint/planning cycle to long term vision would be gold.
Yeah, a serious commitment (without fighting) to reserve 10% capacity every sprint/planning cycle to long term vision would be gold.
Are you willing to get paid 24/37 = 64% of a fulltime positions salary? If so, I think plenty of smaller employers would be happy to do this.
Your calculation assumes that all working hours create equal value. I can say for me that on most jobs I had, I got like 80% done in the first 4 hours and 20% in the other half of the day. I regularly stop working when I can’t concentrate anymore and do some hours on weekend mornings instead.
At my old job we used to get Friday’s off if we worked 9 hrs the first 4 days.
People just worked 8 hours and didn’t come in Friday’s.
Over here commute is part of work by law, so I assume it would count as 9 for most people?
Which country is this? I would love to have commute as part of work in my country. Fom the point of law employees materialize at work in the morning and than teleports to home in the evening (the creator of work code here must have been fan of star trek). I believe this kind of change in workers law would motivate employers to implement more sane WFH policies.
> Which country is this? I would love to have commute as part of work in my country.
Usually countries with laws about commuting being part of the daily wage are more about people who work across different locations rather than their fixed daily commute (i.e. you have a single fixed 'location' where you work, and then if you travel to another location then you are paid for that travel, for instance a salesperson that travels 4 hours each way to give a 2-hour presentation cannot be argued to have only worked 2 hours from a minimum-wage perspective, however if they are travelling to their usual office, even if that is 2 hours away, this would not need to be paid).
Paid daily commutes aren't a part of any countries laws I am aware of, as otherwise you would need to pay people differently depending on where they were living and rasies lots of practical considerations (What if I hire someone who is working next to the office and they move 2 hours away? Am I forced to pay them 50% extra or let them only work a 4 hour day? Presumably I can't fire/make them redundant just for moving home, as I'm assuming this is in a country with good workers-rights anwyay!), but I may be wrong and there may be a country which does do this!
>>Usually countries with laws about commuting being part of the daily wage are more about people who work across different locations rather than their fixed daily commute (i.e. you have a single fixed 'location' where you work,
Oh, I see, than You are not talking about commuting. This has different name - in my country we use something that can be translated literally as "delegation" - but it rather means business trip, I am not sure what is the international english term for this (I have been part of project creating web apps that did accounting for people that major part of work was traveling to clients).
So basically the people who choose to live far away get subsidized? They work fewer hours for the same pay.
>>So basically the people who choose to live far away get subsidized?
Sure, You can put it this way - if workers living close have problem with that they can move or select another employer (if they prefer commuting to actually working)
>> They work fewer hours for the same pay.
I would argue that You are using definition of work time that is beneficial for employers. For me every minute of commute to work is due to employers order (You have to be where I tell You). And thus is not owned by the employee.
This is entirely a non-workable solution. It’s basically a race to the bottom.
If I live 500 km away can I just take a train ride in, stay 30 min then get back on the train ride home and collect a full paycheck?
If so, please let me know how to apply.
>> It’s basically a race to the bottom.
It only is if You ignore constraints that exist in real live (as opposed to thought models of economic systems).
>>If I live 500 km away can I just take a train ride in, stay 30 min then get back on the train ride home and collect a full paycheck?
Yes, you can try, but first You have to find employer that is charitable enough to pay You for doing nothing (I have said nothing in my post about forcing employers to take on grifters, just asked to recognize that commute is hidden cost for employees and should be normalized).
In this case no, they just took the option to work less without making up the hours.
Hilariously, I have literally asked companies to give me a 4 day week and take away the salary for the last day. I don't care. I just want a free day, but nope, no-one bit .. even the "smaller" employers.
strangely I had encountered mostly resistance to this idea, but after staying persistent on this condition I finally got what I was looking for. before (and still) I would've imagined this would make sense to employers. even startups have this old fashioned mentality ingrained...
I am not paid per hour (I have availability roughly between 08-15, of course I am not paid anything for availability, I am paid only per finished task), but I would still prefer to lose 1/3 of my income to have 3 day weekend, because whether I have 100% or 66% of my income makes no difference to me, it's just money (same as now losing like 10% (maybe 20K EUR?) of my current savings in stock, some people would go crazy here to lose that amount of money, but I don't care), but extra free day each week is priceless.
Nope. I will do more than 24/37 of the work. Probably in terms of value, just as much. (Just let me also choose what to work on and which meetings to attend)
Yes. In a heartbeat. Don't even have to think about it.
And by the standards of HN users I make a poverty wage already. Cutting my salary to 64% would put me well under the median household income for the my state and the nation as a whole.
And I promise I won't be less productive, because I'd be surprised if I did that amount of actual work as it is.
That's the irony. Output doesn't scale linearly with time for human workers.
Despite having fewer hours on the clock, I will still deliver the same software on the same timeframe. It’s the software I create that they are buying, therefore I should be paid the same.
That being said, yes. As long as the salary is enough to maintain my standard of living, I will accept a lower salary to work fewer hours.
fair enough. I wonder if there's a job board for this kind of jobs..?
you'd think so, but on every job site i check, part-time jobs are extremely rare. and trying to impress in the interview before asking for part time is not an option.
I like how these proposals never get raised when it's the companies that suppress wages or hoard more wealth generated by their employees.
Let's go a step further: https://archive.iww.org/history/library/misc/Bekken2000/
Thank you for this amazing link!
4-day-workweek arguments from 1986 !!!
Too bad companies don't know how to hire, and will disqualify you when the first micro-flaw is found. So people running in with their resume makes no difference.
You can already find this. It’s called a “part -time job”. :)
Few of these offered for skilled workers.
"part time" is still 9/10 hours in the office, usually for 3 or even 4 days and not 2 days.
I like the 4 day week, but that is because I have kids who are teenagers. Giving them some extra time each night with their parents is not important to them. But having an extra day to do something big, explore a new place, go to new museums, take small road trips, go camping, etc. - that makes a difference in their life.
When they get older and go off on their own, though, I would agree with you - a short daily working routine sounds good for me personally.
That sounds awesome! If you don't mind sharing, how do you manage school obligations?
I guess 4 day school days wouldn't be a bad idea either... of course the other day should be filled with something productive, which may or may not include "schooling" (learning) or "working" (as in creating, not paid/unpaid labor) or other form of activity.
The college I graduated from for the most part didn't offer classes on Friday and I can attest that it was wonderful as a student. It meant that I could get homework done and/or work a side job on Friday and still have a proper weekend to re-coup for the next week.
Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t think a four day work week is radical enough. A web developer today is easily 5x more productive than a web developer 30 years ago: we have off the shelf databases, frameworks, and a huge ecosystem of open source libraries. If I can produce the same output as a web developer 30 years ago, but at 1/5th the time, then why am I not working 1 day a week for the same pay? What’s the point of modern technology if it can’t free us up to enjoy life? Same goes for workers in every industry that have benefited from technology.
For real. Let's start at 6 hour, 1 day work weeks, and Capital can negotiate to 8 hours/2 days from there if they don't feel like the cogs are busy enough. Because you know if we start at proposing a 4 day week, it's gonna be "well how about half days every other Friday?" Let's earn some real keep here.
I don't understand why you deserve a huge raise in pay because someone else developed an off-the-shelf database. Investments into capital and tech go to the investor, not to you. That would be a complete mis-alignment of incentives. Why would anyone invent, develop, pay for, or work on improvements if all the benefits went to you? Should accountants have gotten massive raises across the board when Microsoft Excel was invented and they didn't have to use paper any longer?
You're not more productive than a web developer in 1995, your tools are.
> Investments into capital and tech go to the investor, not to you.
I hear what you're saying about investors needing a return on their investment, but investors only exist because modern human society runs on money and the people doing the real work don't have enough of it. Human beings will naturally develop tools and technology with or without money or investors because doing so improves our lives. The problem with our modern world is we are no longer building tools to improve our life, but rather turn a profit. Any "improvements" we've had are merely a side effect of the unnatural need for money rather than a better life. I'd argue we'd see more innovation if people had more free time to innovate rather than waste their lives in corporate slavery.
you don't think something like Microsoft Excel improves people's lives?
If I worked in an office 9-5 making 5 paper spreadsheets for $100 a day and with Microsoft Excel I sit in the same office 9-5 making 50 spreadsheets at $100 a day, then no it did not make my life better. Excel may have allowed me to churn out more spreadsheets, but my paycheck hasn't increased and I'm still working the same hours. The only one reaping the benefits of my extra productivity are the fat cats.
probably because you're making 5x what a web developer made 30 years ago.
unionize!
The thing about the 5 days a week is that at the weekends you end up doing personal stuff you neglected during the workdays.
I'm not sure that having two more hours a day will free up your weekend, I'm kind of leaning to 4 days a week because you can actually have useful time.
Personally, I wouldn't object to 3 days of non-stop working till the midnight to have 4 free days a week. Things won't pile up and instead of having just evenings, I will be able to leverage full days which will give me better freedom of movement away from where I live.
The 5 days a week schedule is my primary reason that I'm not in a full time job since a while. I was at home at 18:20 max, yet I never had time to do anything for myself.
As you can probably see from the diversity of comments, this is a very subjective topic. I've seen (just in this thread) everything from "I'm fine with my 6x7" to "I'd love 3x10".
Some people would find that having two extra hours a day is great; others wouldn't.
For this among other reasons, I'm against a "one size fits all" policy. Give people more than one option, where it's reasonable to do so.
those 2 hours (actually 3+ since it's normal for 9+ hours over here) include everything from shops, sun, avoiding traffic and other things I didn't mention or think about. also allows you to plan your day differently, like working 12-6 instead of 9-3 for example. imagine waking up at 6am and only starting work at 12pm...
In that case being done with work at 12pm sounds like a much better deal.
Here's an idea: "roller coaster week"
How it works:- Monday: The second half of your day is work. Your morning is open to sleep in, get chores done, run errands, eat brunch with friends. Second half of the day should be meetings to plan the work for the week, and catch up from the previous week.
- Tuesday: Very few meetings, planning and gathering items to work on for Wednesday.
- Wednesday: Heads-down work, no meetings allowed, period. Turn off all communcation; this is "productivity day". You've had 2 days to get your "mise en place", and now you have 10 hours uninterrupted to churn away.
- Thursday: Shorter day than wednesday, wrapping up what you didn't finish.
- Friday: The first half of the day is work. Meetings to recap the week, complete any last minute details, documentation. Second half of the day enables you to get more errands done or get an early start to your weekend.
The time you save allows you to rest your brain, ruminate, get more sleep, exercise, pursue a hobby. This rest time recharges your brain to enable it to do more work when you are working. The roller-coaster nature makes you think the week is pretty easy most of the time, but you know you've prepared for the hard part and can tackle it in one go. Because of the forced planning and dedicated work time, you'll be more productive than if you only got drips and drabs of interrupted work done for 5 days.
Looks like hell for trying to schedule anything kid-related.
What? How? It's the exact same day & time as the 5-day/8-hour that's been standard for decades. But you get more free time to play with your kids, drive them to school, bring them to BJJ, cook for them.
Wednesday is "no communication day" so you could break the 10 hours up and it won't affect anyone.
4/5 days in this proposal are better than most people's existing 9-5 schedule.
My experience with a < 3 year old is that I go "I need to do this today, this is fine," and my boss is cool with it and somehow the world doesn't burn down.
I was thinking:
1) School (transportation to and from, parent home to see kid off to the bus and be there when it gets back, at least)
2) Child care (10-hour days, which are more like 11 when you factor in travel, would be... very expensive, if you could get anyone to do it)
3) Any scheduled after-school/after-normal-workday kids' activities whatsoever.
1-2-12-6-1 and I’m in.
I love it.
So I am seeing more and more of ideas like this; but I feel the need to challenge them a bit.
Not the ideal; work less, have more fulfilling lives - I am all in.
But all of these initiatives are focused on the wealthier office workers and sometimes factory/shift workers who are non-customer facing. But it totally ignores the service industry which is a huge part of our society (and arguably even more so if we end up working less!).
You will still want an Uber after 5pm, or a shop or restaurant to be open on a public holiday. 4 Day work weeks, shorter hours - all great ideas but all ideas that either negatively impact the poorest portion of our society. Even universal basic income, which ostensibly would have a positive impact there would still not allow those individuals to work less.
Which is why my challenge is always; first we need to automate out the poorest roles in society (and then give them UBI obviously) before we solve our own lengthy work weeks.
> You will still want an Uber after 5pm, or a shop or restaurant to be open on a public holiday.
No one says this change doesn't apply to people in those industries or in shift work. You have to remember that the idea is more to reduce work from 40 hours per week to something like 32 hours per week (30 in OP's case).
In this case, you can still have restaurants open late, it would just mean the schedule would be shorter for all staff.
> But all of these initiatives are focused on the wealthier office workers and sometimes factory/shift workers who are non-customer facing. But it totally ignores the service industry which is a huge part of our society (and arguably even more so if we end up working less!).
The service industry could make up for the lack of coverage by hiring another person. Giving jobs to more people.
I do believe that the question of having a livable wage (supplemented or not by UBI) is a separate issue that should not impede giving people their time back.
I still don't buy that. In an office job you can find cost neutral ways to cut hours: a lot of people in this thread have said they would work harder in less time to achieve the same outcome, as a really simple example.
That's patently not an option in the service industry. You help people cut hours but now a restraunt, say, needs a percentage more staff (each of whom comes with a salary overhead) at a higher hourly wage.
This is before you consider the scale of it. About 85% of UK jobs are in the service sector. There is a massive labour shortage in key service areas anyway. At the same time, highly leveraged office workers cut their hours and have more leisure time, so service industry demands go up.
It's just not an easy pitch to make in my book. If I wanted to cut my hours I absolutely could come up with some automation and investment to help me do that, and my employer might agree to invest in that because I have high value and strong individual leverage.
That is just untrue for the vast majority of the service industry.
> ideas that either negatively impact the poorest portion of our society
I don't see the connection here, why would it affect the poorest?
I don't think people mean that all shops close earlier, just that they'd need to hire more people to cover a reduced shift.
> we need to automate out the poorest roles in society
I think we've done that many times in history but it has never led to a reduced workload, usually the company will take the increased profits and the ones that lost their job need to find something else
No matter how much currency you give the poor in society, there won't be an incentive to reward people which provide zero value.
Prices will just go up.
How much free time you have could very well be a function of how valuable / hard to automate your work is.
I fundamentally disagree; the smartest and wealthiest of our society should also be working hard to make the lives of the poorest better.
You are sort of making my point; proposals like this assume that those who contribute "less" are less valuable - but of course that is only true on one scale.
As a though exercise; if someone is physically disabled to the extent they cannot work and need regular care should they a) live hand to mouth and unable to afford non-essentials? Or b) should they be comfortable and capable of indulging in luxuries.
Currently our society says they have zero value so (a). I argue that it should be (b)
> there won't be an incentive to reward people which provide zero value.
I am assuming you mean "who don't work" when you say provide zero value. The poor encompass more than just people living in a cardboard box in some alley. There are poor people living paycheck to paycheck who are barely able to afford food AND a roof over their head. A poor person can be a single parent with two kids who works two minimum wage jobs just to be able to provide for their family.
Really telling when a person equates low wage with providing no value in society. So much for "essential workers" being forced to work in-person during the pandemic
Indeed. I have a top 1% salary but my pleasant life is provided largely by those earning under 30K GBP. This is probably true of the majority here...
It wears heavily on me daily.
Thanks for this. There is a bit of tone deafness in this thread with everyone calling for fewer days of work so they can relax and then go to the cafe or linger over dinner while also wanting all those businesses to be open for them at all times. If we want to change the societal norms around working hours it has to include everyone, not just software developers or else it isn't going to stick.
Though honestly this thread is making me think that we need to basically reinvent the Sabbath. I'm old enough (mid 30s) to remember when most everything was closed on Sundays and now it's just another day for errands and brunch. Even holidays that were considered sacrosanct like Christmas and Thanksgiving you can now go to the store or they have absurd opening hours the day after (black friday) so that retail workers can't even enjoy the Holiday because they have a 4am shift the next day. We're seriously out of whack here in the US.
Service folks almost always work in shifts already, many are part time. One of the benefits of moving up the ladder is to get holidays off. I think this is the only way it could possibly work.
Agree that most people should have say, Sunday off, but there are many import things that must have 24/7 or close to it coverage. Groceries (every day), medical personnel, firefighters, etc. Lot's of nurses work 3*12hr shifts per week for example.
Yes and it is interesting that the response to my comment is "oh we meant them too". Which I know is said in good faith but it fundamentally shows a disconnect from how a huge portion of our society lives.
How many of us would forgo a Starbucks on Friday in order to have that 4 day week?
> You will still want an Uber after 5pm,
No, I don't.
I want a way to get where I want to go after 5pm, sure, but reduced working hours means, necessarily, that for a greater portion of the population than is currently the case, that will not be an individual, human-driven conveyance per party seeking transportation, and that's fine.
> 4 Day work weeks, shorter hours - all great ideas but all ideas that either negatively impact the poorest portion of our society.
No, they don't. Your argument that they do is based on the assumption that they are not applied to that group, which is odd because they are exactly the group (unlike elite workers who are generally exempt) to whom wage and hour laws apply.
> or a shop or restaurant to be open on a public holiday.
Actually, I want far fewer shops and restaurants open on public holidays, of which I would like to see more than currently exist.
> Even universal basic income, which ostensibly would have a positive impact there would still not allow those individuals to work less.
Yes, it will. It would drive up the costs for the wealthier people that would like the things provided by them working as much as they currently do, which would lead to a mix of reductions I working hours and downward movement of wealth, both of which benefit the poorer workers.
> Which is why my challenge is always; first we need to automate out the poorest roles in society (and then give them UBI obviously) before we solve our own lengthy work weeks.
That's backwards. We change the general workweek standards (which aren't, after all, hard limits but when, for non-exempt workers, extra costs for the employer and extra pay for the worker in the form of mandatory overtime compensation kick in), and establish UBI funded by taxes on capital income, and then the resulting pressure on labor costs drives automation, with the increasing pre-tax aggregate returns to capital as labor is minimized in production increasing the UBI funding bucket.
> Your argument that they do is based on the assumption that they are not applied to that group
I'd qualify it more as; I don't believe these ideas are easy to implement for that group vs. non-service roles.
Now, I am based in the UK so things may vary around the world but I disagree with your assertion about the wage & hours laws.
For example; here we have a maximum working week of 48 hours. This was supposed to help people in the service industry but actually it mostly helps office workers. We have leverage to kill off the crazy hours expected in creative roles. However, service workers have wage pressure to sign waivers to let them work more than the 48 hours (because minimum wage is not a living wage).
These things have to work in tandem to drive up lower-income wealth but they just don't - so I object to other initiatives which don't directly address the problem.
Anything that says "just hire more people" is an unsustainable plan which ignores the economics (most people work in service industry, and mostly in part time roles). The outcome of increasing demand on that industry OR forcing the full time workers to work less is that the part-time workers would need to work more.
> No, I don't.
Great! We all need this attitude.
But I assert the vast majority will still want their 10pm Starbucks, Friday restaurants and Sunday shopping trips (also, it's not a high-wage sacrifice - the majority are also service workers and they also want these things, it's a circular economy!).
Oddly we are probably largely in agreement; I just think we need to be more radical in how we fix this otherwise we will just have another cycle that depresses the lower-income workers opportunities.
> However, service workers have wage pressure to sign waivers to let them work more than the 48 hours
US wage and hour laws are not generally individually waivable, as the entire point of wage and hour laws is to address power imbalance between workers and their employers. When talking about the length of the legal workweek in the US, the discussion is of laws as to when overtime compensation for non-exempt employees is required, the added cost creates pressure on employers to limit excess working hours of non-exempt employees.
If UK wage and hour laws are waivable the way you suggest, that suggests a fundamental problem with the structure of the law which renders any discussion of fine tuning their coverage irrelevant.
Interesting point; but I think the US laws have similar effect in different ways.
For example; the overtime laws just create incentive to work more than 40 hours a week. On average US workers work much more than other OECD countries.
> For example; the overtime laws just create incentive to work more than 40 hours a week.
They create incentive not to allow workers to work more than 40 hour weeks.
> On average US workers work much more than other OECD countries
That's because the US has low minimum wage / cost of living compared to other OECD countries and relatively week social support systems.
>and then give them UBI obviously
This has to happen first. Automation will put them out of work way faster than the UBI system will come online - and that is assuming the UBI system is not completely stonewalled to begin with.
As soon as we know the work is definitely automatable, we should start pushing for UBI. Once people who do not want to work leave the workforce, everything will get better.
I think people get so wrapped up in the concept of "free loaders" that they overlook how sandbagged our economy is by forcing those same people to engage with it.
We dont cull the weak anymore, which is fantastic, but they are still weak. We need to care for them and get them out of the way of people trying to accomplish things.
No one thinks they should be that same hours removed. Shift work could handle 32 hour weeks instead of 40 hour weeks by just having more employees
My hairdresser[0] in Germany pays all employees 5 days salary for 4 days of work. So, it's possible in the service industry.
[0] https://www.haar-werk.net/friseur-in/
UBI first then automate? or Automate first, then UBI? Massively different options for millions of people.
I'm fully in favor of shorter work days regardless of how many days one works. However, when forced to pick between the two options, I strongly prefer working 4 full days, which I have been doing for more than a decade.
It could be just me, but I find the value of stopping around 3-4pm versus 5-6pm to be pretty limited. You still have this feeling that the main part of the day is almost over and you can't do any substantial personal tasks or serious relaxing before the dinner ritual.
Also, when you're the exception in your team to leave early, you're effectively "disappointing" your team every single day that you work. Where others might have 4PM meetings, you're never available. This invites a feeling of guilt, where you start to make exceptions, and incidentally stay longer. Others are learning that your 4-6pm unavailability is quite soft. Further, every single morning you're behind in email and chat, needing to go through what happened late in the previous day whilst others are already up to speed.
With a real day off (4 day workweek), you have a full day to do something really substantial. Time feels plentiful rather than scarce.
A full day off is a barrier that is much easier to defend. You're just not available at all on that day, and work and expectations easily adapt to that.
Overall, I think the problem with modern office work is that it's far too collaborative. We've normalized being in meetings for half of the day and having hundreds of emails and chat messages to wade through, whilst the actual work takes a back seat.
If you'd have a clean and clear work package, you could do the work in that package at your convenience in whatever way fits best in your life. But we don't have that. We start the morning fresh with an idea of goals for the day in mind, and at the end of the day we did almost none of it. Everything changed throughout the day. Too many dependencies, too many moving parts. That's the real problem.
Funnily enough Im more the opposite. Give me 10 hour days for 3 days a week and I'd jump at the chance. An extra 2 hours at the end of the day isnt much to get used to, but being able to spend more full days not working than working would mean a lot to me.
That vs the proposed 6-hour 4-day week some people mentioned in this thread, it'd be very happy with either obviously, but I still think I'd go for 3 days if I had to choose.
Your brain and body recharges every night. Memory function actually improves over night. Doing more hours doesn't make you more productive, the amount of meaningful work you can do in a day is pretty much constant.
I'm definitely in the shorter days camp. In my experience there's a 2 to 4 hour peak performance window and a long tail of diminishing brain power.
> Doing more hours doesn't make you more productive
Agreed, but nobody is gonna offer me 4 hours a day for 3 days a week. Being extremely optimistic, the best I can expect is 10 hour days for 3 days a week (though I dont thats gonna happen anytime soon either, so Im happy with 4 days).
Shorter hours but more/same days do little to nothing for me. I mean it'd be nice, but that or less days is a very easy choice for me.
Fair enough. My point was that 5h over 6 days yields better output and happiness than 10h over 3 days. The average person would really hate those additional 2 or 3 hours, it's not fun consistently going over one's physical limits, even if you rest for the remainder of the week, but YMMV.
>Doing more hours doesn't make you more productive, the amount of meaningful work you can do in a day is pretty much constant.
Although that may be the case for most people, I doubt there's no exceptions to this.
The amount is constant for each person, but one person might have a 2 hour performance window while a 100x engineer might have a 9 hour performance peak.
You can increase or sidestep it a little with performance-enhancing drugs or a healthier lifestyle, but with their downsides, changes in your environment and other aging-related issues you'll see over a long enough period that it doesn't change much.
I worked in the Netherlands. They had a 36 work week and asked me how I preferred to arrange those hours. I said: divide it by five please. Apparently I was the first person in their history (3k people work there! 100 years old institution) who asked for that! Everyone took either a day every two weeks off or worked 4x9hrs. A day every week or two is nice, of course, but I generally really like short days better! Doesn't leave me that exhausted and leaves a bit of time for things every day.
Do you know how people usually place their free day? Is it adjacent to weekend or middle of the week?
Wednesday was significantly more quiet at work.
I've been working 32-hour weeks for the last year. I initially thought that I'd work 4 8-hour days a week, but quickly fell into a pattern of just working however long felt right. That ended up being 7 hours a day most days. On Thursdays I tally up how many hours I have left and work the remainder on Friday to finish out the week. I suspect I'm as productive as I would be at 40-hours a week.
That makes the most sense. With the sort of jobs I have, there's no way I could only work up to 6 hours per day without leaving something important undone.
I tried 10 hour days *once* for a project crunch, and that was a bad decision in every regard.
If your office hours are officially 09-18, but you’re working lunchtime and until 19:00, I don’t expect that officially reducing hours is going to help, because I expect you to unofficially keep with the longer hours anyway. On that basis, I think you personally would be better off with fewer days than shorter days.
On the other hand, if you keep to the shorter hours, I think either shorter or fewer days would both be an improvement, though I don’t know which is the better quality of life.
I think people with 1 hour commutes would definitely prefer 4 day weeks
On the other hand,
- support remote working
- have better housing closer to where people work
- if people want to commute an hour each way, that's on them
The issue with commuting is people have partners who work elsewhere so commuting is a compromise.
WFH solves this and allows commutes of up to 12000 miles.
Eh, I have a 90 minute commute and I don't mind because I go by train. Three hours a day to read! I love it.
Granted I wfh 2/3 days a week; if I had this commute every day I'd probably feel differently.
Very good point.
(Excuse the smugness here, but I've wanglee a four day week WFH and my life is amazing)
for me it was 30 minutes commute for only 2 days a week, usually at least one direction was carpooling with a coworker so beyond tolerable, even enjoyable at times. but more than 1 hour while driving x5 days would be a no-no for me.
I like working long hours, but 6 hours is the absolute max for the majority of people for intense intellectual or creative work for a sustained period of time.
Most super prolific creatives (painters/composers) do a routine of between 1.5 and 3 hour sessions, one or two sessions per day. Depending on the person, but very consistent once the person figures out their routine.
That means 1.5 - 6 hours total. But this doesn’t include meetings and correspondence and all that jazz.
I like to wake early, work a bunch, then take time in the afternoon to do non work stuff.
Then I can come back at the end of the day and do another few hours. This lets me experience the world when things are less crowded, make time for family etc, while still having plenty of time for work.
Well, I'd love to have 6 hours or more of intellectual/creative work per day but in reality I get only 2-3, the rest is meetings and distractions.
me too, but instead of meetings it's about energy. I can sit 18 hours on the computer if I have to, but rarely can I code for 18 hours. (sometimes I can but usually it's something very exciting and non-work related)
Why settle for either when you could have both?
A four day week, six hours a day sounds like bliss to me!
I do get the feeling of wanting way more flexibility but I also think that maybe contracting is the way to get that?
Flexible hours in general should be encouraged and fought for. 4x6hrs would be ideal for me, but you have to have leverage to convince most places to agree to that.
Been practicing 6-hour 4-day work week schedule for a while now and I'm the happiest I've ever been. No real noticeable difference in productivity long-term, and a significant improvement in the amount and quality of personal (non-work) time.
Technically 4 days would be better because of the commute and extended weekends for the employee. But as an employer 6 hours workdays would be the best, you get basically the same value of your employees, since mostly office workers don't really work the 8 and also would make then free to study.
You could also go crazy and get a second or third job.
Why not both? Or, alternatively, 3 8-hour days? I'd take a pay cut to 60% of my current salary for a 3 day work week, absolutely.
I do my very best when I'm at work. But, it's dead time to me. I have a lot of ambitions, projects, I write music, I'm trying to learn to draw, I have kids, and I yet have to give 8 hours of my day to just keep the lights on. Life is too short for that!
It's employee evaluation time at work right now. I always wonder: what would happen if I sat my wife down and had her write a document defending her performance as my spouse? And then I ranked her and told her whether it was satisfactory. And I had her record what she was doing with her time every day. I wonder what her reaction would be. That's pretty much how I feel about employee evaluations.
It really depends. If you live in a condo and you free time is sports, meetings friends, etc. a six hours work day is more important.
If you build your house on your own, cultivate green land etc. the four day workweek is more important as these kinds of work require a lot of preparation time.
Opt in models?
> Opt in models?
Inflamatory post but this would actually mean managers would have to manage. You can't go to a seminar and cocktail party and come back with the insights to properly manage a team where people opt in to the model that works best for them.
Managers would need to trust the team members
One can give all the trust in the world, but a good manager must also align incentives towards business goals and create a structure for tracking progress.
Adding on top of that care and integration for the personal preferences of the team members… that would truly be a sight to behold.
I agree with that.
I agree especially with kids. I got kids, I close shop at 4pm.
I get kids, go to park, pool, etc. Bring sandwiches or pick up junk food. One kid is baby, so usually drop him at home with mom.
Sadly most parents especially dads work late. So I am not able to make plans with moms for after school playdates. And my wife is not very social and she doesn't like Texas afternoon heat.
But there are a few dads who leave work early and we try to arrange pladates after school.
Not sure if one whole day off would create as many opportunities for play as shorter work days.
I prefer the opposite. I would rather work dawn to bedtime for three or four days then have a block of time off.
It minimizes context switching. I could get my head fully into work then fully out of work.
Exactly - context switching will make you less productive trying to fit in three different "modes" every day all week.
I think it depends on the job quite a bit. For creative work, I often find it impossible to force myself to work past 4 hours in a stretch; in other cases, I can easily work 11 hours before noticing that it's been that long and I haven't even had lunch yet.
My company does a version of summer Fridays, where it's very easy to take 3-day weekends every week and I very much appreciate the "extra" day and would strongly not like to go in the other direction.
I think this is the argument of whether to graze like a cow (working 2-4 hours 6 days a week) or work like a lion (working 9-10 hours 4 days a week). Neither is better in every case so it largely depends on what kind of work you're doing.
If you're answering emails and having meetings where everyone has to sync up during the day - I'd opt for the first one. If you're developing or coding where the time of day is irrelevant - I'd go for the second.
> graze like a cow (working 2-4 hours 6 days a week) or work like a lion (working 9-10 hours 4 days a week).
I would dislike both of those.
I live in europe but work for a US company, so I do ~ 3pm - 11pm, and I absolutely love it.
Instead of sitting inside all day while its sunny and then having free time just as its getting dark and everything is closing, I can enjoy (most) of my day, hang out with the kids for a bit while working, and then get some solid quiet work time in the evening.
I ski, hike, bike, do admin etc during the week, then have my weekends completely free for family.
I think it's better, at least for me, to have 4-day workweeks. I feel that much more of my productive energy is wasted during work hours. Even with 6 hours in the morning, I won't be able to focus with the same intensity for a full day for me after work.
I think this is because I mostly use my leisure time for studying or coding. I reckon that a parent would prefer 6-hour workdays to spend more time with their kids.
Based on everything we've learned about productivity over the past few years, I would say just do 6-hours a day as part of a 4-day week.
I currently work 32 hours per week. When I was in the the office it was a 4 day week; now that I'm remote I prefer working about 6.5 hrs per day. I negotiated this with my employer as 20% less working hours for 20% less salary. I love it. The big win for me is having ~8 hrs per week where I don't need to work AND have childcare, so if I want to sip coffee and read a book in peace & quiet, I have time to do that. Also gives time to be involved in my neighborhood, church and school, which I find satisfying. The biggest concern my companies had with this is that co-workers would hear about it, get jealous, and ask for it too. Companies also had this concern about remote-work pre-pandemic, and I think both have found these concerns to be unfounded. Especially with my current schedule, I'm available at all the times when anybody would want to talk to me anyway, so most people don't even know about this unique arrangement.
Working from home has immensely increased the value of the lunch hour and my afternoon productivity. Spending an hour in my home, whether in the kitchen or just relaxing, recharges me in ways that sitting in the company cafeteria or in my cube never could. Even when I worked at jobs that had a nice park nearby, it simply didn't compare to the decompression and mind clearing that I get from a midday hour at home. Six hours in an office would easily collide with my point of declining productivity but at home I'm still going good at the end of the day.
This is of course dependent on each individual's needs and circumstances. My manager has three kids that need feeding at lunchtime for several weeks at the end of and beginning of the school year because his wife is an assistant principal so the kids get a longer summer break than she does. He seems a bit frazzled after lunch during those periods.
If I give up the free day for less hours I sell more valuable hours of my time.
However it's also nice to work with more energy and never have any dreading late hours where you'd rather rest a bit some days.
I have a 4 day week but flexible enough so I can move hours over, but I only move 1-2h to my free day on average.
I do not think that there is a one-size fits solution. People with kids might want to opt for six hour day, to better arrange life around them, some others might enjoy more the three day weekends.
Some people work on ships and work six months in twelve hour rotation and then be on vacation for six months.
Ugh no, I would hate that. Rather fewer long days than many short ones.
Having said that, I live in Spain where restaurants don't even open until 8:30pm or so. So it suits not only myself but my environment. When you describe restaurants closed at 7pm, that sounds a bit like the Nordic countries. They're really 'early birds' in my experience, which I find very odd because of the long sun hours there in Summer. When I visited a small town in Sweden, it was deserted in full daylight. I can't wrap my head aorund that.
Also for my my best work is done after hours when things quiet down and I can actually concentrate... My worst hours are the mornings when I struggle to wake up.
There are different kinds of "work" and generalizing to one set schedule isn't going to work for everyone.
A retail clerk can likely do a 10 hour shift with little to no loss of productivity in the later hours - and some jobs basically just need a human there to monitor the process - those likely would do well on 4/10 shifts.
But other kinds of work can't get much beyond six hours a day anyway, in which case spreading it out may make sense.
But there's also a weird "fairness" aspect - even if everyone would be better off with varying schedules, people would think it "unfair" - and it's visible. If Sally gets paid half what you do, you never know. But if she leaves after 4 hours each day, you start to feel annoyed.
I think it depends on the total number of hours per week. If we assume 40 hours regardless, I’d rather spread it out over 5x8 than work 4x10. Ten hours is just too long - even after 8, I’m mentally cooked.
If we’re shortening the work week by 4 hours, I’d rather take that as a single afternoon off. 4x8, then Friday is a half day (vs shortening 5 days by a fraction of an hour).
If we were to go to a 32 hour week, I’d probably want to just do 4x8 and have a 3 day weekend. That allows so many options for short trips, major home projects, camping, going downtown, etc. With the current 2-day weekend, I always feel torn between doing things that are fun vs doing chores. It’s never quite enough time.
Everyone is different if I lead and required to be at my job 9-5 and I worked more of an engineering schedule I would do something like 20 hours days to try and maximize the days off you have.
Would the work days suck? yes. But in my opinion working 8 hours a day already makes the rest of the day useless. I think in the end a schedule where you work to get it out of the way and then enjoy the time off would feel like I am taking more time off than I am working. I know every industry couldn't do this, but for some it's possible. If you get do it by pay month you could work 4 on the front and 4 on the back and get 21-ish days off for 8 days of work.
I disagree. The worst part of my day is getting up and forcing myself to get ready to go to a job I absolutely hate. Having to only do that 4 times a week versus 5 is far more important to me than getting home at 4pm instead of 6pm.
Do your best to not feel trapped. If you do, try to figure out how to escape. If you’re miserable everyday at work, plan an exit.
I think there's a lot of folks who want thiis! I have personally felt burnt-out when working long hours without my proper weekend - which has happened many times in my long tenure. However, I now feel - agreeing with you - that a shorter day with appropriate breaks leads to more productivity!
Would be curious to see if any HN companies have gone ahead and implemented this, and if so, why!
And I am also curious to know people's strategy when feeling burnt out and not getting ample time to rejuvenate/rechArge between bursts of being vErry productive!
I can't remember an office in my past 15 years, where anything got done after 2 or 3pm. When I started WFH I optimized for my "peak times" and mostly blew off trying to do anything off-peak. MUCH happier now.
Same here. I get a lot done from 9-11 and 1-3. I’ll do little things outside those windows, but I won’t push myself if I’m not feeling it. Still plenty productive.
I rather work 2-4 hours for even 6 days a week
I wouldn't. The problem with that schedule is that you never get a break. Every day is a work day. You're always thinking about work. You always have to spend time getting ready for work, spend time commuting, spend time (or money) getting lunch. You can't just chuck some stuff in a bad and disappear to a different country for a 3 day long weekend break.
The beauty of a 4 day week is that you don't have to think about work for 3 days a week. That gives you far more freedom than shorter work days.
I would take 3 day weekend. Needs to be a clear delineation between work and weekend or some companies will take the p*ss.
If you have 6 hour days you might find yourself still working more. For me its no contest.
I am in the same situation. I tend to get messages on Slack after hours on work days due to the different work hours, but almost never on weekends and holidays. I assume that an extra long weekend would be more beneficial.
It all comes down to productivity. Who can be productive 8 hours, day after day, for years?
I know people (in IT) that work 6x6hours. And both they and employers are satisfied with this arrangement.
Fight for what you think you want, but don't assume everyone wants what you think you want.
> Standard work hours here
The fact you assume we know where 'here' is implies you're in North America, but that's not a foolproof heuristic. Where are you where that's standard?
> stay 10+ hours
If standard hours 'there' were 9, why were you spending > 10?
For context -- I am in Australia, it's a week away from winter, I would prefer a 4-day work-week be legislated as default rather than a 6-hour workday.
You do not say how.
If you mean in terms of productivity, I agree with you. Having a clear boundary between workday and free-time is a clear productivity multiplier for me. This is much better than one more extra day-off.
I can also maintain peace of mind throughtout the week if I do not do any work at all agter designated boundary.
This is true, when you want to do what you do. But when you work mostly for a paycheck, I will disagree with you. Then an extra day-off is so much better than a shorter work day.
I'm all in for both. Having an extra day to spend with my family, or doing "other things" (gardening, sport, etc.) and working less everyday. I find myself being way more productive when I know my work day is short. Having too much time on my hands makes me procrastinate! Also, after ~6h of uninterrupted work, I am usually exhausted and need to do something else.
8h/day sitting in front of a computer is a lie and a bad way to measure productivity.
I actually work 4 days a week from 3 years and a half circa, and to be honest, I simply cannot get back to the classical 5 days/40 hours jobs. I'm simply more productive, more motivated, and I finally have free time to make something else (for example: I just completed a Bachelor's degree in CS). In regards to 996, I have no gentle words for China and their work (slavery) culture: life is too short to work so much.
I prefer shorter work weeks.
My company's return to office policy is a hybrid deal. I am very productive when I'm in the office and I use the remote days to refresh myself. On those days I generally only "work" by replying to messages and listening in on remote meetings. I've never been more productive. I get more done in my in-office days now than I did during a full week either during the pandemic or before it.
Agreed, largely because I find I'm able to efficiently use small amounts of extra time, but struggle to make productive use of an entire free day. Even working 30m or an hour less is enough to squeeze in a workout and some Anki reviews. I'm also hourly, so I can't help but assess whether the things I chose to do during that time were "worth it" compared to the compensation I missed out on.
It might just be that you don't like certain hours. I actually prefer 7 AM to 3 PM, with the lunch break at 3, with family. Then I spend time with family, go for a walk, etc.
Early day lets me get stuff done uninterrupted. It also means I get stuff done by 3 PM, instead of 6, so there's more time to toss it to someone to look at.
At my last workplace I had to work number of working days in that month * 8. So Op could have worked Monday to Saturday 6 hours and 4 hours on Sunday if he was a colleague of mine.
I'm all in for either shorter working days or fewer working days, provided that stuff is still done. I think I can do what I do in 4 hours at most. At least 4 hours are lost.
In a month or two my project gets transferred to new ownership and I will find myself re-negotiating for my current job. I'm 8ish hours per day 5 days per week right now. I would love to work 8x4 or 6x5 instead, but new company is full of go-getters and try-hards so I don't think my needs are a great match for their culture.
Given that we have a limited number of productive hours per day, say 3-4, the overall performance is better with 5-day workweek. Add 2-3 hours of tuning your mind, meetings, emails, etc. Which gives 5-7 hours. In line with what you said.
So, next time you negotiate a raise with you manager, ask for less hours instead of more $$$.
There just is so much work that I don’t get how working 4 days will workout. The work isn’t going to scale down. The deadlines I don’t think will change.
At my company which is a very typical big sv company, no one is watching how long you work but the work needs to get done.
The amount of work that can be done at any business is actually infinite.
If companies allow people to take the weekend off, it's not such a stretch to extend it to 3 days.
That said, I run a startup and even taking the weekend off feels generous to me because I see all the things not getting done.
I think most people would prefer focused work instead of more office idle time. think less days (hopefully) lead to less meetings (hopefully) lead to better time management.
I personally can’t focus in the mornings and have to clear up small jobs and I use 4 hours to focus. That’s probably down to the amount of emails / small jobs we deal with and my weak point is I always tend to prioritise the interesting work :)
Agree. I have ~30h work week and free working hours and i am aiming to do ~4 hours/day, 7 days a week. I cannot imagine how people in mentally demanding jobs like software development can keep focus on 8-hour shifts.
I would much rather work longer hours (even 10) and get an extra day off each week. However, shorter work days with no productivity loss are likely possible for many companies simply by cancelling unneeded meetings.
I'm the complete opposite, I'd rather work the fewest possible days, no many hours per day, in order to have a block of time off to travel and make plans to do extended non-work related things.
As a lead this won't help me. I have to be able to meet people from overseas and my job would be harder if my work hours dictated that I could not.
Shrinking the window of days I can meet with them is very effective though.
I hear you. I am self employed but try to mimic the standard 37-hour work-week of my country. Most weeks I do it 6x6 instead of 5x7,5ish...
6 hours feels more productive and 6x6 feels less hard than the normal 37 over 5 days...
As I've read in other reddit thread, it depends on your lifestyle.
Have activities after work, near work place, especially with work colleagues? 5-6 days with low hour daily.
More time to do chores and rest at weekend? 4 days work weeks
I have done both and IMHO a Wednesday off where you can totally disconnect is worth more for mental well-being than shaving some time off everyday but otherwise doing 5 days a week.
What country is this? I just moved to India from the US and was surprised that it was 9-6 here instead of the 9-5 I was used to. And everyone here is used to overworking.
Just be sure you don't acquire bad habits of the country your are living in ;)
Sadly I am from India, lol
I just realized I misread your first message. Sorry!
No worries.
Personally I prefer 4 days workweeks, especially if I need to commute. Just having one less day of commute per week really makes a difference.
“so 9 hours and I used to stay 10+ hours in the office often. “
There is the main problem already. Stick to your working hours. Don’t do free overtime.
I think the new trend should be #asynchronous work so everyone can fit work in their lifestyle in the optimal way
I'd personally much rather an extra day off. But I do see the appeal of just having a shorter working day.
n-hour workdays must include commute time, encouraging for remote work where possible.
Even 3 hour days should be enough - to interact with your peers. Other than that, performance is a measure of work planned vs work done. Time to sit on your ass should not even be a thing.
Depends. I want a free day to go do something outdoors, I prefer having Wednesdays free
Iww has been asking for a 4 hour day, 4 day week for a long time now.
It's all depending on the time lost in commute per days...
When you work 4 days, do you take Wednesday or Mo/Fr?
3 days is long enough to go somewhere
Why not both?
There's no free lunch
Well, in my industrial suburb an entire food service industry arose to provide overtime meals to workers at the many 24/7 facilities where they were sometimes needed to work more hours than originally planned, entitling them to a top-dollar complimentary feast.
Some popular restaurants, and others were kitchens not open to the public but the key was the rapid delivery of one-off orders not long after the employee accepted the overtime.
But this was decades before DoorDash or Uber Eats, there weren't even any cellphones, you had to look at the paper menu and order over a land line, it was so primitive it took 20 seconds.
¿Por qué no los dos?
Why not both?
Honestly if we had Both a six hour work day and a four day work week that would be really ideal for a good work life balance.
And that generally seems like the amount of Time we can be productive.
Strongly agree
Damn the tech bubble is bigger than I thought.
how so.?
Everyone I know in non-tech jobs work minimum 40 hours a week. I know a bunch of people doing minimum wage jobs doing 80+ hours a week. I remember tech in the early days (and still at many jobs) working dawn to dusk. Now it seems developers are choosing between 4 day weeks and 6 hours/day? the job market is going to get a rude awakening.
This is our failure.
I got into tech in the 90s specifically to avoid the 9-5 dead-end job and ended up working mostly exactly that. But hey, we have billionaires now.
If we want a 30 hour workweek, we need to deliver it to everyone in the world with real tech. No more phantom tech distraction BS.
Solar. Permaculture. Robotic hydroponics. Real recycling. Personal digital assistants (and I don't mean tablet computers). Independent income streams beyond mining crypto and donating plasma. This stuff is so incredibly obvious but the entire weight of the global economy keeps us running the rat race instead of solving the real problems. Now work is just another form of escapism to distract us from stepping into our power and taking agency over our lives.
The ultimate expression of tech is the 0 hour workweek and self-actualization for the entire human race.
Software engineers are hardly minimum wage jobs! And the human brain can’t sustain constant thought intensive tasks for long period of times continually… The dawn to dusk (if ever happened… I guess it depends on the country) it’s just a waste of time. Anyway I live on France and here the official working week is 35h!
Agreed they're skilled jobs and you can't write code 50 hours a week. You can write code 30 hours a week then talk with users, have design meetings, do paperwork, do first level support etc.
France is a nice place to live. Everyone working 35 hrs and being on holiday so often is a good reason its economy is slowly dying.
Better dead and happy than overworked and depressed trying to feel the void caused by not having a life with work!