Just because that is true for you doesn't mean it is true in general. Like, imagine a surgeon -- would he/she spend 8 hours a week slacking? Or a radiologoist -- can he/she read the same number of slides in 32 than 40? Or a barrista at starbucks?
Also, if you worked 32 hours, would you still slack off? Is there a reason to expect that your slack/work ratio would change? You claim you'd be "in a better mood" -- but as humans we tend to adjust to the circumstances we are in. So I'm not sure that would be the case long term.
https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/3-day-work-week-wit...
I suspect you’ve pulled “surgeon” from you-know-where on account of it being a high-status, high-value role. But don’t bring that baggage into the conversation.
In many ways it's a good analogy to writing code 40 hours a week. It takes high concentration and the quality of output drops heavily when you're tired or need a break or rest.
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/how-many-hours-do-doctors-....
Your second point is definitely valid. Changing habits is really hard, and some of us are able to get by while spending very little time doing work because we work so much more quickly than the average drone.
In development at least, most of the times I hear this, the "availability" is only needed for random unplanned meetings from useless managers that can't actually plan or work asynchronously.
The organization as a whole or individual managers can't do their jobs well and they make the people that actually get shit done pay for it by "standing by" for no good reason.
Ironically, they also completely ruin productivity with these interruptions.
Really? Because it's pretty routine for me to get pinged on IRC/slack/whatever by another engineer who's looking for help with something. Obviously I set the expectation that I'm not going to be able to instantly reply to every ping so some things are going to have to be async, but there's definitely a lot more than just managers that could ping me.
The vast majority of time in my career, if you have a minimum amount of decent planning, you won't get blocked because you can't talk to another person immediately. And on healthy organizations, even if you do get blocked, you can simply work on something else while that particular task is blocked.
If you really scrutinize all these availability claims, they pretty much all come down to lack of planning.
Planning for blockers, planning for communication gaps, planning for maximizing asynchronous work, planning for decisions that require specific people, etc.
So many people are horrified by the word "blocked" when it's most times an artificial block created by their own systems. If I can't move forward on something, I'll start on something else and come back to the other one later.
We are all intentional about _over communicating_ what we are working on and where we will need support from from each other. Everything else pretty much just flows naturally from that. There are (rare) times were I cannot progress on something that day because I need feedback from someone who will not be online for 10 more hours, but it is just a built-in assumption that this will happen and I always have other work queued up that I can do if I get stuck....
>> you can simply work on something else while that particular task is blocked.
This attitude is a recipe for massive amounts of parallel WIP, not to mention knock-on effects and blocking dependent work. "Planning for blockers"? You're either being intentionally simplistic or not really concerned with anything beyond your own work. Enter "useless managers" like myself who need to "needlessly interrupt everybody" to try and get things coordinated...
That's why when we were all colocated in one building, I was logged out. I made it clear they were welcome to drop by my cube whenever they wanted, but I would not be available by IM. It cut the interrupts by half, easily. People use you as a crutch. When you raise the cost even minimally, they are suddenly willing to solve their own problems.
That's the one aspect that COVID destroyed. Now I have to be online as people can't just walk to my cube.
Logging out of IM when busy is a simpler skill :-)
History has shown that it's not easy at all to replace someone. It's difficult to find good people and convince them to join you and it can take a long time. If you can write code, you should always have the upper hand on your employer especially if your co-workers also realize that.
And, of course, you're ignoring training costs which are usually a big factor in companies that aren't incompetent. That Senior Dev that's 15% above marketing asking rate but who knows your system inside and out... do you really want to spend six years training a (potentially highly proficient) newbies on all your systems and the subtle intricacies. And how long will it be until you, the manager, trust that new Senior Dev like you did the old? How many fires will you both need to walk through until you see an availability alert and just trust the Senior Dev either is dealing with it or would be ringing your phone if they need extra resources?
It can take quite a while to get a new employee (again, even a highly proficient one) to that place where in a meet your product team can be going over a proposal and your Senior Dev raises there hand and proceeds to calmly explain the incompatibility with the current system and how much it will cost to overcome those incompatibilities - and if they remain silent then you know they've done those calculations and consider it in hand.
Hiring a replacement is an extremely complicated calculations that most companies just punt on - for good reason.
>but I bet you're not as irreplaceable as you might believe.
Given all the tech layoffs, maybe. But I think that has more to do with lacking either the money or interest to invest in certain products given economic forecasts.
The fact that your typical tech interview is a month+ and at least 3 (usually 5 or more) rounds of interviews suggest that it's not trivial to replace a dev. Tech is probably middle of the road to train, which is why they'd rather grab interns from college instead of setting up apprenticeships that can fine tailor towards the exact business needs.
You should rest easy because all of those things lead to more relaxed and happy employees which leads to less turnover, better output and higher quality software. Software development is a creative field and companies that treat it at as such are rewarded.
That's populism. Software development can be some moments very creative and fun, but it is mostly a hard work. Specially as full stack dev/devops, doing scrum, you have to do everything.. filling bug, tracking problems, looking at telemetry, deploying, discuss new features, improving pipeline..
My primary care doc has an assistant whose only job is to follow her around and input data into the electronic medical records system.
There are countless blog posts from doctors complaining that a 1/3rd of their time is spent on redundant paperwork.
For a related humorous take on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFGLDcTKFIY
Don't many surgeons only work a handful of weeks per year?
They're essentially already on a much better model.
My perfect 4-day workweek is having the Wednesday off so I have a 'mini-weekend' in my week. I only ever have to work 1 more day until I have some time to clear my head, make some music, etc. It feels like a more healthy work/life balance. And I feel sharper after a day off.
That said, I wish we could go to MT and ThF schedule. Only ever have 2 days in a row with out a break would seem pretty magical to me. I'd either had yesterday off, or tomorrow - always. Fridays are such a slower day though that I feel like I miss out on less than I would on Wednesdays.
Ideally though the 4-day program shouldn't be a thing only for specific teams because the "that team isn't here" side-eye quickly promotes resentment of the "lobsters pulling other lobsters back into the pot" variety.
Teams that need coverage during the full work-week (such as B2B support) should normalize having two schedules which overlap, just as B2C companies have weekend shifts (they don't just force people to work 7 days to achieve this).
A three day weekend is great for a trip. Hump day off is great for a break. Either could be good for an extra day of big exercise/recovery or deep cleaning my house.
And then if working on either day, I get a full day of heads-down time.
Work hours in a 5-day work week: 40
Difference: 32 hours
Leisure hours in a 4-day work week: 80
Work hours in a 4-day work week: 32
Difference: 48 hours
You - "That’s the diffence."
No matter what kind of math you do, working one day less doesn’t give you two extra days off.
https://youtu.be/hvk_XylEmLo?si=uOTc3ndf87enwrZK
TL;DR we work a LOT more hours now than substance farmers did. They worked 4-6 hours a day and only worked about half of the days out of the year.
> I already spend an embarrassing amount of time slacking off daily
Maybe you could spend this time, improving the doc, refactoring some specs or learning something new. I'm pretty sure there is something that you could automate or improve.
> One thing I feel like a lot of people don't realize is just how big a difference it is to go from a 5-day week to a 4-day week.
Na, when you are there, you will think: "actually I can do the same work in 3-day week". But actually you can't! You are probably slacking off instead of work your 40 hours/week, not preparing yourself for the meetings, not excelling at all.. People just forgot how to work.
The big question is, will people continue to slack off during work hours and lose productivity? I do spend a lot of time in between tasks decompressing from one and gearing up for the next. I'm not sure how that would translate if I just tried to collect all that "slack" time up into a separate day.
At the beginning of the Covid shutdowns, my company did go to a 4-day work week. It was great (although our pay was adjusted). I don't think our productivity suffered, but it's kind of hard to estimate because there were a lot of other unusual variables, like the supply chain issues and variable work schedules of people in other companies.
But that is just true if you are underperforming right now, or are too Conformable in a shitty job. There is always some doc too improve, some stack to update, a new issue to be fixed, a meeting that could be better prepared, a backlog to be improved.. People are just "if nobody says me what to do, then I can just slack off"
> The big question is, will people continue to slack off during work hours and lose productivity?
You will. No skin in the game, deliver or not deliver, there is mostly no consequence, boring work, company needs you.. I did the same. I was working 36 hours/week (friday free) until I realized, that there was a lot of things to do and to be done, but the team was just "naah, personal life FIRST".
I think if anything you're stealing from yourself, robbing yourself of the opportunity to take on more responsibility, grow faster, etc.
If your boss is happy with your output, then it doesn't matter how many hours you work to make that happen.
You are paid to produce a result, not to warm a seat for 40 hours a week. I'm sure you will have all sorts of mental justifications for why that's unreasonable or why others should be working themselves to death for nobody's benefit but their boss's, but that's how it is.
>You are stealing from your employer.
Lol, no. I get paid $X to do Y work. I'm not about to do free labor for Z when I complete Y. If you want Z done, I need to be paid for it.
Because I'm salaried and paid for my work not my time. No other justification is needed.
Sounds like someone needs some more tasks for their to do list. I have to abandon about half of the tasks I am meant to do, for lack of time. I can send you some of them to fill that eight hours.
Who here actually works a 40-hour week? HN isn't a bunch of union factory workers punching timecards each day. I'd bet 60 is more common than 40.
Sure, if there is a corresponding pay increase for those tasks.
I would consider whether your employer is trying to normalize 60 hours to exploit you, rather than it actually reflecting reality.
[0] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#work-hours-wo...
https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#work-hours-wo...
> Old Life: Attorney
All the lawyers I know are basically married to their jobs. I think workaholism is just part of law culture
Tech, not as much. There are certainly unicorns that probably became billionaires after burning years of midnight oil, but many tech ventures fail, regardless of the experience involved. There is always a need for a lawyer, meanwhile.
I wouldn't do all that overtime on a gamble, and I argue you don't even need to do overtime to win such a gamble in tech.
Uhh, I did? First job I had a total of 5 weeks of OT. 2nd job never had to work above 8 hours a day, de facto nor de jure. I even had a 4 day experiment for 4 months there and it was lovely. Third job, no overtime.
Did I do some extra hours here and there off the clock? Sure. Especially with wfh I can get fixated and want to spend a bit of time getting something compileable. But outside of that one OT period listed above, I never worked above 50 hours.
A store isn't a baby, one employee isn't needed 24/7 to keep the lights on.
Picking all the oranges from a grove takes eight hours today. Maybe I can do it in six hours if...
Turning an inbox worth of papers takes eight hours today. Maybe I can do it in six hours if...
Keeping the store open for eight hours takes eight hours today. It will always take eight hours. Because the hours are part of the output.
It's not about output, it's about quality of life and not making people work their lives away for corporate billionaires. If you need more manpower than a full time working hours, said billionaire corporations pay more for it in overtime or reduce hours.
To go off your metaphors, you (the corporation) can pick oranges, in the grove in 6 hours if you hire more skilled labor. If that's not possible (or if said labor is too expensive), you hire more people to make it possible. If a store needs to stay open for 8 hours with 6 hour workers, you pay 2 hours overtime or pay for two employees with overlapping shifts. Pay for your labor.
mkaic
I am a firm believer that I would get more work done with a 3-day workweek than I currently do with my 4-day workweek. I already spend an embarrassing amount of time slacking off daily, it's not like I'm pressed for time to get stuff done in the office. I could easily meet my weekly objectives in 24 hours rather than 32, and having 4-day weekends every weekend I think would be incredible for my mental health and mood. And when I'm in a better mood, I get more work done!
One thing I feel like a lot of people don't realize is just how big a difference it is to go from a 4-day week to a 3-day week. Sure, it's "just one day" but when you think about the ratio between time-on and time-off, the shift becomes a lot more dramatic. 4-on, 3-off means you spend over twice as many days working as not working. 3-on, 4-off means you spend a nearly equal number of days on each. It's just one day of difference, but it feels like a major, major shift.
But you didn't edit this sentence:
> 4-on, 3-off means you spend over twice as many days working as not working.
Which now doesn't make sense. Proving that it's _not_ as simple as a slippery slope.
That "should" is a government creature; to the market, on the other hand, advances in technology "should" only increase productivity when (preferably now less) people are working the same amount of time (and maybe how about even more time?).
Sadly, management mostly worked us 4-and-1s because, despite the fact that each day we were less productive, over 3 months more trees would get planted in less time.
4-and-1s of gruelling manual labour inevitably leads to burn out. It did every season without fail, and we all expected it. Burnout was a built-in condition. The key here is that labour tolerated it only because the work was seasonal. There was always an end in sight. And most folks spent the off-season on a beach somewhere it was cheap enough to live off the earnings, surfing and eating tacos all day (or the equivalent activity).
The salaryperson should not accept burn out as a built-in; we are labourers for life and we need to learn how to find dignity in such a reality. When I first transitioned to a salaried worker, I brought the burn out mentality to my work and had a lot of pride in that. And though full of bride, the burnt out husk that I as had little dignity.
Ratios that allow for more life and less labour is that dignity.
They aren't stupid but companies are inherently risk averse. And short of a global pandemic companies won't want to change what they don't see as broken.
It seems more likely that people would retain a similar ratio of slacking to working.
As an aside, how does "I finish my work in 32 hours" even work? What does that mean? Are most developers out there getting paint-by-numbers printouts they need to color in and then they're all done for the week? Almost all of my roles in a professional capacity have required self-starting, and the project life cycles are much longer than a day/week such that there is literally always work to do.
If you're building a house and you're done nailing in shingles by noon you don't go home and come back tomorrow, you go put up sheetrock or install bathroom tiles. The "I finish my work in a few hours" that I see on HN and Twitter must be extremely poorly managed teams or people that are leaving a lot of work on the rest of their teammates.
I've managed work in software, marketing, robotics and construction. In every field I have had to send people home to rest who were doing more harm than good with their tired decision-making. Doing the work that was set for the day and going home to rest is a great productivity and morale boost, in my opinion.
Individual work capacity varies, but in my experience most people overestimate theirs by a lot.
There are many counter examples against this statement. Stephen King writes every day with no breaks, not even on Sundays.
Personal work capacity will vary. Who knows, maybe he'd write better books if he wrote less? We'll likely never know.
Second, creatives have to consider the long term as well. Burnout and writer's block are real phenomenon.
Lastly, yes. Some people are just built different. Maybe you min max exercise and diet and can operate longer than an equally skilled peer. Maybe you have less family responsibilities and truly enjoy your work. These factors tend to target the average, not the top.
My concern is that the ratio of productive work time to idle time is invariant over the long time, and once my team gets used to 4 day work weeks (say in 12 months time) then they will return to this same otters.
The other concern I have with these studies, is that these companies appeared to be overstaffed in the first place. While we all have some amount of slack during our days, I doubt anyone in my team has enough slack available to get the same work done in 4 days.
I’d want to see a long term study that involves lean companies and people in non-creative roles before buying into the hype.
Got it in one. Humans are creatures of habit. You (yes you, oh 10x HN reader) reading this may actually be hyperaware enough to analyse your weeks work and stuff it into 4 days, but I strongly suspect the vast majority of workers would coast the same amount (whatever that number may be) regardless of days worked.
Either way, no one is expecting 100% productivity. Or at least, they shouldn't. The question is more on a long range than week by week. Does an employee with a 4 day work week require less days off? Will the motivated ones spend more time on growth with added free time? Will retention increase? These are less opaque factors that should be considered, even if modern corporate culture doesn't value them.
Also if youre a business that is basically a team for hire to a client who works 5 days a week, what do you tell them when they come up with some valid but urgent request during "normal" business time and that key person isn't there because they've already done their 40 hours. "Sorry we'll have to pick that up next week" very often doesn't fly with them ("what do you mean that person only does 4 days a week, we need that thing done today" is not a conversation I want to have). I cannot always afford to hire more people to cover that unicorn 10x team member who wants to work 4 days.
On bad codebases, it's simply not physically possible to work 40 hrs/wk and not burn out, so people find all kinds of ways to cut down on hours working, either by goofing off, or going for long coffee breaks, or playing ping pong or whatever.
A 4 day week would be way more effective in these cases. The problem, as usual, is management. They just cannot get over the hurdle that their job is to maximise company performance, not to crack whips.
I used to work 4 days a week but there was absolutely no reduction in workload compared to a 5 day role and plenty of meetings scheduled on my day off.
It was great working 4 days; Wednesdays were my day off and every Tuesday afternoon would have a bit of a "Friday feeling" and I was never more than two days away from a day off. Plus I could go to the psychologist and doctor and so on.
When I went back to 5 days a week, my workload was identical and my output was identical. Stress levels were not hugely different because I just slacked off more with the 5 days.
The impact of moving from 5 days to 4 days for a knowledge worker is probably a bit less than you would expect in every respect. Stress was not drastically reduced (I did school run and pickup on the Wednesday so it was only about 4.5 hours extra), and there was no huge change to my performance, probably just an increase in quality and efficiency.
One thing I feel like a lot of people don't realize is just how big a difference it is to go from a 5-day week to a 4-day week. Sure, it's "just one day" but when you think about the ratio between time-on and time-off, the shift becomes a lot more dramatic. 5-on, 2-off means you spend over twice as many days working as not working. 4-on, 3-off means you spend a nearly equal number of days on each. It's just one day of difference, but it feels like a major, major shift.