Absolute numbers are kind of meaningless but I for sure would take a 10% lower pay at a company that did 100% WFH. Thow in another couple percentage points for a 4 day work week.

I feel for all the folks that work at a place that implemented a hybrid model because I don't see that working ever if some people are in the office and some are permanently remote. I bet collaboration and feeling of togetherness suffers. When everyone's remote, you have to adjust your processes and ceremonies to account for that.

I can’t imagine a firm offering “a couple” of percentage points of comp for 20% less paid hours. Would you take a 20% pay cut for 4 day/32 hour workweek?

Just curious about your mindset on this. I would love to find myself at a spot where I’m working 4 days a week, but not interested in doing 10 hour days.

By the way, I do understand that most people, including myself, would probably have a greater fraction of productive hours of work working 4/32 than 5/40. Not sure if many employees would recognize that though.

I took a 20% pay cut for a 4 day/32 hour work week a few years ago and it was great. One additional day off is much more free time than you'd think. It's 50% more days off compared to the weekend. I'd recommend it to anyone whose circumstances permit it.

I would argue that an extra day off is effectively much more than 50% more "days off" for someone who typically only gets weekends off. Weekends are a miserable day to be off if you need to run errands, or just want to go anywhere in public where crowds can diminish your enjoyment or even keep you out entirely.

I take time off during the week for "appointments" at the park for precisely that reason - it's almost impossible to get a relaxing hike at some of my favorite trails on a saturday or sunday.

The flipside is that it's much easier to hang out with your friends on weekends, because most of them are also probably off. So having a little of both is best.

"Would you take a 20% pay cut for 4 day/32 hour workweek?"

I would take an 80% pay cut for a 1 day/8 hr workweek in a heartbeat (the industry is remarkably inflexible and I ended up having to do a 100% paycut for 0 workdays and I'm happy with that too).

Yeah you're obviously right, 20% would be more of a starting point for a negotiation. I'm still thinking about it but right now I feel like with WFH and PTO I get enough time with my family that I don't need a full day yet. If that changes, I'm planning on taking a day a week off to spend with my kid before he's at school age, I'll do it. 20% less comp (in reality it'll be less due to tax brackets)for 50% more time is a no-brainer for me.

Why would it have to be less paid hours? Lots of people do 4/10 instead of 5/8.

That is just a preference for myself, I bet it's much easier to negotiate 4/10 than 4/32 - I just hate working extended hours even if it means a day off.

Knowledge work isn’t time based. Your brain doesn’t turn off.

We have a 4-day workweek, but still do 40 hours. We work 4 10-hour days. I love it.

I'm sure there are some forms of carefully crafted hybrid that works well - but in our case it's become a weird case of "whoever happens to live near an office comes in". End result is you have folks with no team overlap across the company hanging out. You get the social bits, which is nice, but none of the collaborative parts. Net/net feels like the worst possible option from a company productivity perspective.

WFH and 4 day workweek should just be standard, and you're saving the company massive amounts of money from doing WFH, so there's no way you should be taking a paycut for it.

You could easily spend 10k on commuting. That's only about $40/day. Between fuel, maint, tolls, and maybe food, you can easily bust $40/day in the Bay Area. That's not even considering the _time_ spent commuting.

And the morbidity/mortality risk. Driving is the most risky thing most Americans do.

I already hated cars, but since I began WFH I've become really averse to driving unnecessarily. Getting killed by a car is one of the absolute stupidest ways to go. My dad smoked all his life and still made it past 60; my brain could hit pavement tonight if I run out of milk.

And the worst part is that it wouldn't have to be my fault at all, and it wouldn't even require somebody to do something extraordinarily reckless. Driving too fast through my neighborhood is typical, because it happens to offer the shortest path from A to B for many people, and the road is wide thanks to bike lanes that I have never seen bikes in (because: cars drive too fast). I'll cut myself off here before this becomes an overly long screed.

My car conveniently started having reliability problems about the same time I started working remotely. We're not talking "oops need an oil change today" but "car won't start for weeks on end and is in the shop more than it's on the road". When I had to commute to the office, this would have been a pants-on-fire career-ending emergency, but now it's just a minor inconvenience. I might just sell the damn lemon and get a bicycle for those rare times I need to go anywhere. Would not have had that option with my previous 50 mile (each way) commute.

I so rarely see this pointed out in the WFH threads, but it is one of the biggest ones to me. I don't want to get killed by some idiot driver for the sake of the company I'm working for.

If you spend an hour in traffic each direction, that $10k is about $20/hour, before you start talking about costs like wear and tear, gas, parking, etc.

I'm saving money that would normally be used for office space; if anything I expect a pay raise. A cut would cause me to seek other opportunities.

Depends on how much 10k represents to you, many have explicitely chosen to be paid less to get a better life balance.

No thanks. How about a 10k pay raise you would otherwise spend on office space?

Offices cost businesses more than wfh. Petty tyrant bosses will try this, but the rest of the market will continue valuing those workers the same.

We should theoretically expect WFH compensation to asymptotically approach getting paid (prorated per head cost of office space) more.

You can change jobs, become a virtual worker at new company, and increase your salary. I did this at the end of 2021 and made a 45% increase.

Screw a pay cut the company should be increasing my salary so they can reduce spending on office space. Except they likely get tax benefits on a lease so that’s not happening.

Then you just do $20k worth of work less.

Why not $10K pay increase?

I think management somehow think they are getting less ( and I am not convinced that is the case ) and want to price "it" accordingly. What is missing from the story is what they are getting less of.

I want to say I am participating in less gossip, less pointless meetings and less ass-kissing rituals. To me, personally, this counts as a major win. What I certainly do not generate is more 'spontaneous collaboration" that various executives are quick to trot out, but.. I never have beforehand either.

For most of the people on this site that is probably not very significant in percentage terms, and even in absolute terms is probably easily outweighed by the cost savings associated with WFH.