Parts of US Department of Defense and their contractors do what they refer to as Compressed Work Schedule (CWS) wherein employees work 9-hour days and get every other Friday off. Some people opt to split their off day and make every Friday a half-day so that they can be on the links or at the riverside bar and grill by lunchtime. While in college I worked 10 hours a day Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Saturday was fairly productive on account of nobody being in the office to bother me.
Ever since I've taken remote jobs that have unlimited PTO I haven't missed these arrangements at all. No commute and the ability to take time off with reasonable constraints means that I'm able to catch up on chores and personal obligations much more easily.
Being able to step away for a couple of minutes to start a load of laundry, empty the dishwasher, carry out the trash, or perform some other bit of household maintenance is a seriously underrated benefit of working from home! Baking bread, for example, is an hours-long process consisting of quick tasks separated by long waits; I used to bake several times a week, last time I was working from home, but I haven't done it once since I resumed the office commute.
IMO: I have never worked in a job where I would have been like "heck yeah, four day work week lets do it". Part of that is, there's kinda two distinct and separate camps, and sometimes its unclear which camp people are in and what we're fighting for. Is it "I work ~40 hours in four days" or "I work ~32 hours in four days"?
And my take is, I don't like either of these solutions.
I've never worked in a role where I feel like working 32 hours a week would deliver meaningfully similar results to working 40 hours. You're just gonna deliver less. That doesn't mean I'm coding for 40 hours a week, not even close, but there's so much admin and meetings (and even just finding availability for meetings!) that reducing net hours worked by 20% isn't going to have market success.
Increasing the hours worked on each day by 20%, but getting an extra day off, also sucks. There's more "things I gotta do every day" than "things I gotta do every week". I need every hour I've got most nights. Cooking, working out, reading, entertainment to keep the sad away, some types of shopping, these aren't by and large things that I can just say "lets wait and do them all on my extra Friday off!", they need to be done ~every day.
What you say is 100% my feeling as well: I am comfortable working 38-42 hours a week, and I want to by-and-large choose the hours and days I work to hit that. That is the best solution. If I need to schedule a dentist appointment for 1pm two weeks out, I want to do that without thinking even for a second that I need to check with "work", file PTO, etc. In exchange, I'll make up that hour by working until 6pm, or going to a coffee shop for a couple hours over the weekend, whatever feels like it makes the most sense for where I'm at and where the business is at. And, sure, there's core hours, there's meetings, we work around those; I'm talking policy, not the day to day.
This pattern of handling time off is so important to me that I have quit a job within the first month because they misrepresented how they handled PTO. I was told "oh yeah you can take off for a doctors, whatever bro no big deal", which turned into "oh no you've gotta file PTO, any time off throughout the day costs a full day and needs to be approved". I quit on the spot. Policies like that, four day work weeks, limited PTO, attract cogs, not high performers.
> I've never worked in a role where I feel like working 32 hours a week would deliver meaningfully similar results to working 40 hours.
It may be my neurodivergency, but I'm the exact opposite. There's rarely a job where I'm *actually, butts-in-seats working* for 40 hours a week where I would deliver, over a study period of months, more good, correct and helpful work than if I spend less time at work.
I could probably technically vomit out more code; but it would be more buggy and have more design decisions that would bite me later (and more possibly sink the company).
Of course 20 hours is better than 10 hours; and for most people, 20 hours is better than 30; but is 40 hours better than 30? For a lot of people, I __don't think so__, but I also think those same people have been tricked into a system where they're forced to go beyond their own comfort and maximum operating efficiency just to show their presence and willingness to work.
And I think they're harmed in the long term for it.
I've rarely met anyone who can get more than four useful hours a day. Sure, there's lots more time when you are thinking about work, writing code in your head, prioritizing, and planning. That stuff can and does happen when you sit at your desk, or while you are biking, running, doing laundry, or watching tv.
> there's so much admin and meetings (and even just finding availability for meetings!)
So I moved to a four day week just over a year ago. It's been crucial to get really strict about reducing the amount of time spent in meetings. It's not easy always being the awkward person that's often telling people to take tangential discussions offline, demanding agendas, or challenging whether a call is required.
> Policies like that, four day work weeks, limited PTO, attract cogs, not high performers.
Or high performers who've recently become parents, or whose own parents are nearing end of life, or who have some other reason to want to spend more time with family.
"reducing net hours worked by 20% isn't going to have market success."
The forty hour week also wouldn't "have market success" (i.e. allow many individual firms to move to it unilaterally). But it happened because organized workers compelled a few employers to adopt it through labor stoppages. This in turn created political momentum for the standard forty hour week in the legal form of collective bargaining agreements and/or working hour legislation.
Aldous Huxley imagined in the '20s we would automate most things and work less in the future. Today we work more than ever together with increased automation, and women work as well instad of being home to take care of the household.
On paper it looks like progress, but I'm not so sure about the quality of life.
It's not progress. Every organization has "load bearing" employees that do the brunt of the real work, and everyone else just creates a cloud of confusion about what they actually do and why it's important. Most people are doing fake work. But unfortunately "fake work" jobs are the only way to fight back about the ever-optimizing, ever-extracting process of the free market. My job is needed because fuck you, I'm not going to be homeless. It's all a big game.
And with women, employers still haven't figured out how to afford women time for traditional responsibilities, like caring for their children, while still providing them with "equitable" workplace opportunities, while not being unfair to everyone else. Likely because it's just not possible. If I don't have kids and grind harder than women who take time to raise kids, why should we have equal opportunities? Makes you wonder if traditional gender roles were onto something. Yes we can do the same things, but no it is not wise to do so on a societal level.
It's all well and good to pretend that this is the case, but it isn't. Most jobs involve some obvious measure of progress. Especially under the umbrella of "service." Women disproportionately choose these jobs: nurses, servers, etc. Women are more educated, hell the last time I went to the doctor there was a resident, a nurse, and a doctor, all three where women.
There could be some jobs where it's hard to measure progress, like quality assurance, but these jobs have been looked at with ire by management for so long it's an old wives tale at this point.
What is likely more true, is that productivity varies between employees somewhat, and perhaps there are 2x employees. But, measuring relative productivity is much, much harder.
As someone who has done fake work knowingly, what do you say to me? That I was actually providing real progress, just that it was difficult to measure, and I am fooling myself? No, it was fake work, and I've seen many peers do the same over the years.
I would say your experience is your own but I am unable to judge the "usefulness" of it without specifics, and that is a subjective thing. What you might have decided is useless I might decide otherwise. What can be said for sure is the person paying you either thought it was useful or didn't care
I'm not sure I'd say the QoL for the ultra-rich has been improved that much. They have a lot more money, but end up spending it mostly on updated versions of the same stuff rich people have always spent money on. There is a serious diminishing returns on how much money can improve your Quality of Life. It can even become a burden as a level of extreme wealth can start to become its own obligation.
That's it's not about how much money they use for their lifestyles, it's about how much of the economy you control. The more, the more interesting projects you can do - see Elon Musk. Of course he could live just as well with a fraction of what he owns now, but his control over so much is what allows him to do "cool stuff".
Being ultra-rich is more about controlling society's destiny, not about how one lives.
Whether that's hood or bad is hard to say without checking what a specific person does with all that control, and what would the others do if the control was not so centralized in so few.
At least part of it is that we put the gains into increased complexity.
For example, it used to be that you had a printed schedule on each tram, train and bus stop, changed twice a year (summer/winter schedules).
Now we have electronic displays that display the time until the next tram or bus arrives in minutes.
Just imagine the gigantic difference in infrastructure to support either of those options. My dad (East Germany, 1970s/80s) used to hand-write train schedules for one or two stations twice a year - and that was all. Now you need an entire server infrastructure, massive electronics, daily maintenance, software, etc. etc.
Of course we gain something, but I think the difference in effort far outstrips the gains. Especially when trams and busses are mostly on time.
We have also massively increased our human and business networks, both global and local. Speed and throughput requirements are up for almost everything, from just-in-time deliveries to communication.
It seems either us humans ourselves, or our systems, immediately swallow all gains and put them back into increased complexity of the system(s).
I venture to guess that, in addition to most people's fascination with some form of "progress", another part of that is our capitalist financial and work system: Everybody has to do something that makes money. You just can't simplify away your own job. Well you can, but you would be stupid to do so. Competition is supposed to be the counter-force, but that does not seem to work all that well overall.
Few people want to sit idle and just do nothing. We have, in fact, automated almost everything. Dishwashers, laundry machines, Amazon delivering to your door. People have a natural instinct to fill in the gaps and so they take on more activities, responsibilities, and work.
Agree. In my observation people have a natural tendency to float towards a self determined 'busy'. Which is generally not that busy. As in there is a plenty of time to watch shows, indulge in frivolous pet household projects, go to wine tastings, etc. Note that some of these indulgences are what leads to the self determined 'busy'. But the point is they are discretionary.
I’ve worked a 4 day week for a few years now. Best decision I’ve had the chance to make. I feel more productive on those 4 days, and my time away from work is more fulfilled too.
I always recommend it to people who may be lucky enough to afford and choose it.
I work four eight-hour days (with a concomitant 20% pay cut), and I'm never going back. I did try a five-day year, after six or so years of a four-day week, but that just made me cement my decision to not work five days.
A two-day weekend is too short, a five-day workweek is too long. 4/3 is the perfect split.
A 4-day work week at 80% pay is the dream for me. I had the chance to work a 3x12 week for a year and it was the best year of my entire life. There’s nothing more valuable than time.
This is true in my opinion. But if you worked the fifth day and invested all your fifth-day earnings, you could retire/become financially independent a decade earlier.
I'm not sure it's so clear cut which of these is the better option.
To be honest, it probably depends on (a) how much you value your sixties over your twenties-thirties and (b) how much you trust the market to not take a barrel roll
imo life is filled with too much these days to handle in 2 days. the rest, administrative and maintenance required to keep things moving takes 2 full days.
I agree. I feel like I need at least a full day to just decompress from work and work on anything I want to, then another day to manage chores, house maintenance, etc. I end up feeling like I work 5 days for 1 day off.
"Employers saw benefits, too: 70% reported that recruiting workers was easier once they went to a four-day schedule—a boon in a country where many industries complain that intense competition for talent drives up costs. A dozen participants reported details of their financial performance, showing revenue and profit were stable overall."
The exact same things have been shown for WFH as well, but that data is being overridden by the emotions and gut feelings of CEOs. When investors are pressuring you to make more money, doing RTO is a big, highly visible thing that feels good and is much simpler than analyzing and improving a business's fundamentals.
It's not about productivity, profitability, or anything measurable like that. It's about control, about keeping "us" different from "them". "Us" being the better, more worthy people, who deserve to enjoy life, and "them" being dirty lowly workers, who should be happy they have jobs, keep their heads down and not grumble.
I mean, just about every trend encounters an equivalent amount of pushback, but there does seem to be a (very gradual) shift towards WFH happening. My guess is it'll follow demographic lines, with younger people working half- or even full-time remote and older people sticking to mostly in person work.
I think the point being made is it's hard to go back for the organization as well, considering that 35 out of 45 of the companies participating chose not to go back to a 5-day workweek.
So this is fewer hours as well, right? Not just the same 40 hours but compressed into 4 days?
It doesn't seem unreasonable it could work for some jobs and people. Too many hours and people tend to get stressed, tired, worried about home matters they can't attend to, etc - and their performance suffers as a result.
For me, I work 4x 10hr days, and it's the best work situation I've ever had. Having every single weekend be a 3-day weekend is something it would be very hard to move away from unless I was doubling my salary or something.
I think that should be an option everywhere it's feasible for those who want it - but damn I will never take a 4x10 schedule. My performance drops quite a bit past the 6 hour mark if it's been a strong day - I'd definitely get nothing done in the remaining 2 hours of a 10 hour day.
I did a schedule of four 10 hour days for a few years in the military (with every fourth week being an extra three six hour days because someone had to be there at all times).
It was absolutely amazing for actually being able to get things done. I hated going back to the regular five day week after that.
I used to work 4x10 hour days, Sun-Wed, 2nd shift. It was OK, but I was ecstatic when I was finally able to move to a normal 9-5 Mon-Fri schedule. It's so much nicer to have society's expectations of when you are meant to be working to match when you are actually working.
One of the aspects that has never been discussed in those studies is the competitor's offset, which wouldn't adopt the 4-day work week.
Local companies in Germany have a very defensive business due to the nature of the market (not so internationalized, highly consolidated, a lot of small businesses that no big corporation would try to enter, and low competition in mid-sized businesses due to bureaucracy).
For local SaaS companies or local companies for sure, it can work since no big competitor can rise. Still, the real test would be Germany placing that in their industrial base (e.g. cars, industrial instruments, chemical industry, logistics), or in some other businesses where the entry barrier is low.
Yes. Those are the specific conventions that the betriebsrat (Workers Concil) decides, but this varies from company to company and state.
My point is, considering this specific arrangement of 7 hours a day/workday (35h), what would be the offset comparing this same company with 28h/week (4D) with another company not in that arrangement in scenarios where throughput per hour matters?
> Employers saw benefits, too: 70% reported that recruiting workers was easier once they went to a four-day schedule—a boon in a country where many industries complain that intense competition for talent drives up costs.
I mean, that's definitely going away if all other employers also move to four-day workweeks, so it seems like you shouldn't factor that in as one of the benefits of this schedule.
I mean, that's definitely going away if all other employers also move to five-day workweeks, so it seems like you shouldn't factor that in as one of the benefits of this schedule.
This sort of snarky response fails to consider the actual benefits - for both the employer and the employee.
Often by the end of the week, people in complex positions are well past the point of diminishing returns - pushing them harder may work in the short-term, but it's a recipe for burnout.
It's better to have someone operating closer to their peek performance for longer - even if you sacrifice a day overall.
As I've been working for myself, this is exactly what I've noticed. The exhaustion and stress of pushing myself "another day" for "just another feature" is absolutely not worth the burnout that comes immediately after.
2 days off for the weekend just isn't enough to fully recuperate once you're in the burnout zone.
I think if I were to be fired I would like to take 2-3 months off to build up before I started looking for a new job, but that's only possible due to having some savings I could tap into.
Back of the napkin calculations say I would need about $4,000/month liquid cash to not be in danger. Add another 1 month barrier in and I would need $16,000 on hand to take 3 months off assuming that I got another equally paying job almost immediately.
I know this is HN and most people here heavily support WFH. But as this article shows, people will support whatever benefits they can get, even if it is very likely come at the cost of productivity. With WFH, it is a mixed bag of whether that would affect productivity or not but from a risk averse management perspective, it is understandable that they don't want to risk it and go back to the traditional mode.
In my (likely very controversial to HN) opinion, software devs are already heavily compensated compared to other professions and adding more benefits on top of that in the form of WFH just make it even more unfair. What is fair? It is what the employers are willing to pay and if most are demanding RTO then that is just what the market is willing to bear.
Most jobs do not have the luxury of WFH. Not for a doctor, a biologist, a chemist, a civil engineer, a lawyer, etc. They are required to come to office to work and they are often paid less than a software dev.
I don't see what fairness has to do with WFH. Its in the company's best interest to maximize employee productivity. If an employee has to travel three hours per day to sit on zoom meetings, they might not be motivated to perform as well as they would for a company that treats them better.
I guess by using the word "fair" I may have caused the discussion to focus on the wrong idea.
It is about what is acceptable to both the employer and the employee. The employee would like the freedom to WFH but the employer consider it a benefit that come at their cost and thus do not want to grant it. As shown by other professions, the idea of WFH is entirely new and rarely if ever granted or expected to most professionals. Software devs are in a unique position to demand and potentially getting it does not make it any less exceptional and a huge ask for the other side of the negotiation.
Whether it is really good or bad is not the point I am making.
You define "fair" as "whatever the market for a particular sort of job will support," but then throw in a comparison to other, very different lines of work and note some differences. What's the connection?
The comparisons are to show how other professions have a common level of benefit. On the overall market, RTO is not exceptional and it is understandable why employers for a particular field would be hesitant to grant WFH as an added benefit on top of already provided ones. As it turns out, even for the software field, this is not something easily granted.
One could also say that your opinion is very American centric. Only US devs get "heavily" or extra compensated, the salaries in Europe or India are comparable with other professionals, specially when you are getting started. What's more, if you stay in the IC role the salary will hit a ceiling after some years and management salaries are again comparable with other positions.
> people will support whatever benefits they can get
Not true.
There are many people who fought against the choice of WFH despite the flexibility being generally good for everyone. There are many reasons for this e.g. they are extroverts and need the social interaction, have a poor home life etc.
It seems like you're comparing jobs to other jobs. If you reverse your logic, "Software jobs should have to go to the workplace, not because they need to, are more productive, but just so that other people feel like it's fair."
You stated correctly when you said "most jobs do not have the luxury", and some people have specifically chosen these jobs for this luxury.
Fairness related to other professions seems to be a very odd metric. I fail to see why software engineers should feel guilty about WFH because others can't.
I mean I'd love to be able to enjoy a nice sky or a beautiful view of the sea while I'm working but alas, my work tool is neither a plane nor a boat.
Any comments like this seem disingenuous when even 1 billionaire exists.
It reminds me of people complaining of why are train drivers striking, when they're already paid more than nurses, thus how dare they.
Wealthy inequality isn't between us common folk, it's between them (the ultra wealthy) and us.
If there truly was fair compensation, there wouldn't be anyone with that much money. We're already doubtful of the 10x engineer, let alone the 1,000,000,000,000x engineer.
Parts of US Department of Defense and their contractors do what they refer to as Compressed Work Schedule (CWS) wherein employees work 9-hour days and get every other Friday off. Some people opt to split their off day and make every Friday a half-day so that they can be on the links or at the riverside bar and grill by lunchtime. While in college I worked 10 hours a day Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Saturday was fairly productive on account of nobody being in the office to bother me.
Ever since I've taken remote jobs that have unlimited PTO I haven't missed these arrangements at all. No commute and the ability to take time off with reasonable constraints means that I'm able to catch up on chores and personal obligations much more easily.
Being able to step away for a couple of minutes to start a load of laundry, empty the dishwasher, carry out the trash, or perform some other bit of household maintenance is a seriously underrated benefit of working from home! Baking bread, for example, is an hours-long process consisting of quick tasks separated by long waits; I used to bake several times a week, last time I was working from home, but I haven't done it once since I resumed the office commute.
I am working from home and this reminded me to check the laundry
Do not disturb my deep work phases with your HN comments!
IMO: I have never worked in a job where I would have been like "heck yeah, four day work week lets do it". Part of that is, there's kinda two distinct and separate camps, and sometimes its unclear which camp people are in and what we're fighting for. Is it "I work ~40 hours in four days" or "I work ~32 hours in four days"?
And my take is, I don't like either of these solutions.
I've never worked in a role where I feel like working 32 hours a week would deliver meaningfully similar results to working 40 hours. You're just gonna deliver less. That doesn't mean I'm coding for 40 hours a week, not even close, but there's so much admin and meetings (and even just finding availability for meetings!) that reducing net hours worked by 20% isn't going to have market success.
Increasing the hours worked on each day by 20%, but getting an extra day off, also sucks. There's more "things I gotta do every day" than "things I gotta do every week". I need every hour I've got most nights. Cooking, working out, reading, entertainment to keep the sad away, some types of shopping, these aren't by and large things that I can just say "lets wait and do them all on my extra Friday off!", they need to be done ~every day.
What you say is 100% my feeling as well: I am comfortable working 38-42 hours a week, and I want to by-and-large choose the hours and days I work to hit that. That is the best solution. If I need to schedule a dentist appointment for 1pm two weeks out, I want to do that without thinking even for a second that I need to check with "work", file PTO, etc. In exchange, I'll make up that hour by working until 6pm, or going to a coffee shop for a couple hours over the weekend, whatever feels like it makes the most sense for where I'm at and where the business is at. And, sure, there's core hours, there's meetings, we work around those; I'm talking policy, not the day to day.
This pattern of handling time off is so important to me that I have quit a job within the first month because they misrepresented how they handled PTO. I was told "oh yeah you can take off for a doctors, whatever bro no big deal", which turned into "oh no you've gotta file PTO, any time off throughout the day costs a full day and needs to be approved". I quit on the spot. Policies like that, four day work weeks, limited PTO, attract cogs, not high performers.
> I've never worked in a role where I feel like working 32 hours a week would deliver meaningfully similar results to working 40 hours.
It may be my neurodivergency, but I'm the exact opposite. There's rarely a job where I'm *actually, butts-in-seats working* for 40 hours a week where I would deliver, over a study period of months, more good, correct and helpful work than if I spend less time at work.
I could probably technically vomit out more code; but it would be more buggy and have more design decisions that would bite me later (and more possibly sink the company).
Of course 20 hours is better than 10 hours; and for most people, 20 hours is better than 30; but is 40 hours better than 30? For a lot of people, I __don't think so__, but I also think those same people have been tricked into a system where they're forced to go beyond their own comfort and maximum operating efficiency just to show their presence and willingness to work.
And I think they're harmed in the long term for it.
I've rarely met anyone who can get more than four useful hours a day. Sure, there's lots more time when you are thinking about work, writing code in your head, prioritizing, and planning. That stuff can and does happen when you sit at your desk, or while you are biking, running, doing laundry, or watching tv.
> there's so much admin and meetings (and even just finding availability for meetings!)
So I moved to a four day week just over a year ago. It's been crucial to get really strict about reducing the amount of time spent in meetings. It's not easy always being the awkward person that's often telling people to take tangential discussions offline, demanding agendas, or challenging whether a call is required.
> Policies like that, four day work weeks, limited PTO, attract cogs, not high performers.
Or high performers who've recently become parents, or whose own parents are nearing end of life, or who have some other reason to want to spend more time with family.
"reducing net hours worked by 20% isn't going to have market success."
The forty hour week also wouldn't "have market success" (i.e. allow many individual firms to move to it unilaterally). But it happened because organized workers compelled a few employers to adopt it through labor stoppages. This in turn created political momentum for the standard forty hour week in the legal form of collective bargaining agreements and/or working hour legislation.
Aldous Huxley imagined in the '20s we would automate most things and work less in the future. Today we work more than ever together with increased automation, and women work as well instad of being home to take care of the household.
On paper it looks like progress, but I'm not so sure about the quality of life.
It's not progress. Every organization has "load bearing" employees that do the brunt of the real work, and everyone else just creates a cloud of confusion about what they actually do and why it's important. Most people are doing fake work. But unfortunately "fake work" jobs are the only way to fight back about the ever-optimizing, ever-extracting process of the free market. My job is needed because fuck you, I'm not going to be homeless. It's all a big game.
And with women, employers still haven't figured out how to afford women time for traditional responsibilities, like caring for their children, while still providing them with "equitable" workplace opportunities, while not being unfair to everyone else. Likely because it's just not possible. If I don't have kids and grind harder than women who take time to raise kids, why should we have equal opportunities? Makes you wonder if traditional gender roles were onto something. Yes we can do the same things, but no it is not wise to do so on a societal level.
It's all well and good to pretend that this is the case, but it isn't. Most jobs involve some obvious measure of progress. Especially under the umbrella of "service." Women disproportionately choose these jobs: nurses, servers, etc. Women are more educated, hell the last time I went to the doctor there was a resident, a nurse, and a doctor, all three where women.
There could be some jobs where it's hard to measure progress, like quality assurance, but these jobs have been looked at with ire by management for so long it's an old wives tale at this point.
What is likely more true, is that productivity varies between employees somewhat, and perhaps there are 2x employees. But, measuring relative productivity is much, much harder.
As someone who has done fake work knowingly, what do you say to me? That I was actually providing real progress, just that it was difficult to measure, and I am fooling myself? No, it was fake work, and I've seen many peers do the same over the years.
I would say your experience is your own but I am unable to judge the "usefulness" of it without specifics, and that is a subjective thing. What you might have decided is useless I might decide otherwise. What can be said for sure is the person paying you either thought it was useful or didn't care
> didn't care
ding ding. Managers are paid roughly based on the number of employees they manage, so they will hire as many people as possible.
Maybe all the gains went to the top? Quality of life for the ultra-high net worth set has never been better.
I'm not sure I'd say the QoL for the ultra-rich has been improved that much. They have a lot more money, but end up spending it mostly on updated versions of the same stuff rich people have always spent money on. There is a serious diminishing returns on how much money can improve your Quality of Life. It can even become a burden as a level of extreme wealth can start to become its own obligation.
That's it's not about how much money they use for their lifestyles, it's about how much of the economy you control. The more, the more interesting projects you can do - see Elon Musk. Of course he could live just as well with a fraction of what he owns now, but his control over so much is what allows him to do "cool stuff".
Being ultra-rich is more about controlling society's destiny, not about how one lives.
Whether that's hood or bad is hard to say without checking what a specific person does with all that control, and what would the others do if the control was not so centralized in so few.
> I'm not sure I'd say the QoL for the ultra-rich has been improved that much.
It has. What you’re missing is that everybody on this forum is part of the top one percent: it all depends on the scale.
On a global scale, if you live in the west, most likely you’re in the top 1%.
> What you’re missing is that everybody on this forum is part of the top one percent
Hardly. People here have a higher-than-one-percent chance of being in the top 1%, but it's a long way from "everyone here".
> On a global scale, if you live in the west, most likely you’re in the top 1%.
Obviously wrong. The global population is 8 billion; the US plus the EU is about 700 million.
At least part of it is that we put the gains into increased complexity.
For example, it used to be that you had a printed schedule on each tram, train and bus stop, changed twice a year (summer/winter schedules).
Now we have electronic displays that display the time until the next tram or bus arrives in minutes.
Just imagine the gigantic difference in infrastructure to support either of those options. My dad (East Germany, 1970s/80s) used to hand-write train schedules for one or two stations twice a year - and that was all. Now you need an entire server infrastructure, massive electronics, daily maintenance, software, etc. etc.
Of course we gain something, but I think the difference in effort far outstrips the gains. Especially when trams and busses are mostly on time.
We have also massively increased our human and business networks, both global and local. Speed and throughput requirements are up for almost everything, from just-in-time deliveries to communication.
It seems either us humans ourselves, or our systems, immediately swallow all gains and put them back into increased complexity of the system(s).
Related, this study headline from a few years ago: "Humans solve problems by adding complexity, even when it’s against our best interests" -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/04/16/bias-prob...
I venture to guess that, in addition to most people's fascination with some form of "progress", another part of that is our capitalist financial and work system: Everybody has to do something that makes money. You just can't simplify away your own job. Well you can, but you would be stupid to do so. Competition is supposed to be the counter-force, but that does not seem to work all that well overall.
Few people want to sit idle and just do nothing. We have, in fact, automated almost everything. Dishwashers, laundry machines, Amazon delivering to your door. People have a natural instinct to fill in the gaps and so they take on more activities, responsibilities, and work.
Agree. In my observation people have a natural tendency to float towards a self determined 'busy'. Which is generally not that busy. As in there is a plenty of time to watch shows, indulge in frivolous pet household projects, go to wine tastings, etc. Note that some of these indulgences are what leads to the self determined 'busy'. But the point is they are discretionary.
“Self-determined busy” otherwise known as a sustainable level of busy, if we’re steel manning. AKA on a PIP if you are an Amazon manager.
If I didn't have to work I wouldn't sit idly and do nothing. I'd create things, have hobbies etc. Maybe do some volunteering.
> Amazon delivering to your door.
Uhhh last time i checked amazon truck drivers were still humans, and drone delivery is still a catchy marketing stunt at least for now.
https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever
I’ve worked a 4 day week for a few years now. Best decision I’ve had the chance to make. I feel more productive on those 4 days, and my time away from work is more fulfilled too.
I always recommend it to people who may be lucky enough to afford and choose it.
I work four eight-hour days (with a concomitant 20% pay cut), and I'm never going back. I did try a five-day year, after six or so years of a four-day week, but that just made me cement my decision to not work five days.
A two-day weekend is too short, a five-day workweek is too long. 4/3 is the perfect split.
A 4-day work week at 80% pay is the dream for me. I had the chance to work a 3x12 week for a year and it was the best year of my entire life. There’s nothing more valuable than time.
This is true in my opinion. But if you worked the fifth day and invested all your fifth-day earnings, you could retire/become financially independent a decade earlier.
I'm not sure it's so clear cut which of these is the better option.
To be honest, it probably depends on (a) how much you value your sixties over your twenties-thirties and (b) how much you trust the market to not take a barrel roll
Sure, but a 20% more twenties and thirties is much more valuable to me than 100% more sixties.
imo life is filled with too much these days to handle in 2 days. the rest, administrative and maintenance required to keep things moving takes 2 full days.
I agree. I feel like I need at least a full day to just decompress from work and work on anything I want to, then another day to manage chores, house maintenance, etc. I end up feeling like I work 5 days for 1 day off.
For workers, sure. We said the same thing about WFH, and well, employers disagreed as soon as they were able to.
Apparently for employers as well:
"Employers saw benefits, too: 70% reported that recruiting workers was easier once they went to a four-day schedule—a boon in a country where many industries complain that intense competition for talent drives up costs. A dozen participants reported details of their financial performance, showing revenue and profit were stable overall."
The exact same things have been shown for WFH as well, but that data is being overridden by the emotions and gut feelings of CEOs. When investors are pressuring you to make more money, doing RTO is a big, highly visible thing that feels good and is much simpler than analyzing and improving a business's fundamentals.
It's not about productivity, profitability, or anything measurable like that. It's about control, about keeping "us" different from "them". "Us" being the better, more worthy people, who deserve to enjoy life, and "them" being dirty lowly workers, who should be happy they have jobs, keep their heads down and not grumble.
I mean, just about every trend encounters an equivalent amount of pushback, but there does seem to be a (very gradual) shift towards WFH happening. My guess is it'll follow demographic lines, with younger people working half- or even full-time remote and older people sticking to mostly in person work.
Don't all life's comforts work this way?
I think the point being made is it's hard to go back for the organization as well, considering that 35 out of 45 of the companies participating chose not to go back to a 5-day workweek.
For folks who work to live, yes. Folks who live to work generally are more divided.
Archive: https://archive.ph/6EtcE
So this is fewer hours as well, right? Not just the same 40 hours but compressed into 4 days?
It doesn't seem unreasonable it could work for some jobs and people. Too many hours and people tend to get stressed, tired, worried about home matters they can't attend to, etc - and their performance suffers as a result.
Depends a lot on the job and person, though.
For me, I work 4x 10hr days, and it's the best work situation I've ever had. Having every single weekend be a 3-day weekend is something it would be very hard to move away from unless I was doubling my salary or something.
I think that should be an option everywhere it's feasible for those who want it - but damn I will never take a 4x10 schedule. My performance drops quite a bit past the 6 hour mark if it's been a strong day - I'd definitely get nothing done in the remaining 2 hours of a 10 hour day.
I did a schedule of four 10 hour days for a few years in the military (with every fourth week being an extra three six hour days because someone had to be there at all times).
It was absolutely amazing for actually being able to get things done. I hated going back to the regular five day week after that.
I used to work 4x10 hour days, Sun-Wed, 2nd shift. It was OK, but I was ecstatic when I was finally able to move to a normal 9-5 Mon-Fri schedule. It's so much nicer to have society's expectations of when you are meant to be working to match when you are actually working.
What was it like, by the way, out of curiosity?
One of the aspects that has never been discussed in those studies is the competitor's offset, which wouldn't adopt the 4-day work week.
Local companies in Germany have a very defensive business due to the nature of the market (not so internationalized, highly consolidated, a lot of small businesses that no big corporation would try to enter, and low competition in mid-sized businesses due to bureaucracy).
For local SaaS companies or local companies for sure, it can work since no big competitor can rise. Still, the real test would be Germany placing that in their industrial base (e.g. cars, industrial instruments, chemical industry, logistics), or in some other businesses where the entry barrier is low.
Friend of mine worked for BMW in Germany. The 35 hour work week was strictly enforced.
It's the law, it's the system, so of course that is what they are going to do.
Yes. Those are the specific conventions that the betriebsrat (Workers Concil) decides, but this varies from company to company and state.
My point is, considering this specific arrangement of 7 hours a day/workday (35h), what would be the offset comparing this same company with 28h/week (4D) with another company not in that arrangement in scenarios where throughput per hour matters?
I think a three day weekend is more important than a four day work week. We should move to an 8 day week :)
When a worker RTOs with a one hour commute each way, 5 days a week, they have already worked for 5 days that week.
Personally, I'm really a fan of the 0 day workweek!
But I'm conflicted about all the work I have to do to get there...
I work only a few hours a week. best time of my life!
everything else is modern slavery.
Doing what ?
> Employers saw benefits, too: 70% reported that recruiting workers was easier once they went to a four-day schedule—a boon in a country where many industries complain that intense competition for talent drives up costs.
I mean, that's definitely going away if all other employers also move to four-day workweeks, so it seems like you shouldn't factor that in as one of the benefits of this schedule.
It won't be every employer - but it will come to cover large swaths of companies in industries where performance takes precedence over presence.
And you're right, it would eventually go away - but only if and when late adopters find themselves being punished by the market.
I mean, that's definitely going away if all other employers also move to five-day workweeks, so it seems like you shouldn't factor that in as one of the benefits of this schedule.
1920 probably
I had a 4-10s shift when I worked for a local college during the summers.
Mon-thurs sucked about 20% more.
Fridays were 1,000% better.
It was a good trade and I miss it.
Wait til you try a one day workweek
Step into my office.
That's the best!
Once You Try a Three-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back
This sort of snarky response fails to consider the actual benefits - for both the employer and the employee.
Often by the end of the week, people in complex positions are well past the point of diminishing returns - pushing them harder may work in the short-term, but it's a recipe for burnout.
It's better to have someone operating closer to their peek performance for longer - even if you sacrifice a day overall.
As I've been working for myself, this is exactly what I've noticed. The exhaustion and stress of pushing myself "another day" for "just another feature" is absolutely not worth the burnout that comes immediately after.
Oh no man - that's just regular exhaustion.
Burnout's more insidious and pernicious than that - and it takes far more than a few days of rest to get over it.
2 days off for the weekend just isn't enough to fully recuperate once you're in the burnout zone.
I think if I were to be fired I would like to take 2-3 months off to build up before I started looking for a new job, but that's only possible due to having some savings I could tap into.
Back of the napkin calculations say I would need about $4,000/month liquid cash to not be in danger. Add another 1 month barrier in and I would need $16,000 on hand to take 3 months off assuming that I got another equally paying job almost immediately.
Yes, and when we're productive enough to do it, it'll probably happen.
I, for one, am okay with sliding down a slippery slope towards a world without labor, if such a thing can exist.
More like "once you try an 8-hour workday, it's hard to go back."
That was decades ago. Now aim for 6!
I know this is HN and most people here heavily support WFH. But as this article shows, people will support whatever benefits they can get, even if it is very likely come at the cost of productivity. With WFH, it is a mixed bag of whether that would affect productivity or not but from a risk averse management perspective, it is understandable that they don't want to risk it and go back to the traditional mode.
In my (likely very controversial to HN) opinion, software devs are already heavily compensated compared to other professions and adding more benefits on top of that in the form of WFH just make it even more unfair. What is fair? It is what the employers are willing to pay and if most are demanding RTO then that is just what the market is willing to bear.
Most jobs do not have the luxury of WFH. Not for a doctor, a biologist, a chemist, a civil engineer, a lawyer, etc. They are required to come to office to work and they are often paid less than a software dev.
I don't see what fairness has to do with WFH. Its in the company's best interest to maximize employee productivity. If an employee has to travel three hours per day to sit on zoom meetings, they might not be motivated to perform as well as they would for a company that treats them better.
I guess by using the word "fair" I may have caused the discussion to focus on the wrong idea.
It is about what is acceptable to both the employer and the employee. The employee would like the freedom to WFH but the employer consider it a benefit that come at their cost and thus do not want to grant it. As shown by other professions, the idea of WFH is entirely new and rarely if ever granted or expected to most professionals. Software devs are in a unique position to demand and potentially getting it does not make it any less exceptional and a huge ask for the other side of the negotiation.
Whether it is really good or bad is not the point I am making.
You define "fair" as "whatever the market for a particular sort of job will support," but then throw in a comparison to other, very different lines of work and note some differences. What's the connection?
The comparisons are to show how other professions have a common level of benefit. On the overall market, RTO is not exceptional and it is understandable why employers for a particular field would be hesitant to grant WFH as an added benefit on top of already provided ones. As it turns out, even for the software field, this is not something easily granted.
One could also say that your opinion is very American centric. Only US devs get "heavily" or extra compensated, the salaries in Europe or India are comparable with other professionals, specially when you are getting started. What's more, if you stay in the IC role the salary will hit a ceiling after some years and management salaries are again comparable with other positions.
> people will support whatever benefits they can get
Not true.
There are many people who fought against the choice of WFH despite the flexibility being generally good for everyone. There are many reasons for this e.g. they are extroverts and need the social interaction, have a poor home life etc.
Which is why now the trend is now forced hybrid.
It seems like you're comparing jobs to other jobs. If you reverse your logic, "Software jobs should have to go to the workplace, not because they need to, are more productive, but just so that other people feel like it's fair."
You stated correctly when you said "most jobs do not have the luxury", and some people have specifically chosen these jobs for this luxury.
If we are talking fairness, I will take the doctor salary, thx.
Fairness related to other professions seems to be a very odd metric. I fail to see why software engineers should feel guilty about WFH because others can't.
I mean I'd love to be able to enjoy a nice sky or a beautiful view of the sea while I'm working but alas, my work tool is neither a plane nor a boat.
It's a great way to start a war among the lower classes.
Any comments like this seem disingenuous when even 1 billionaire exists.
It reminds me of people complaining of why are train drivers striking, when they're already paid more than nurses, thus how dare they.
Wealthy inequality isn't between us common folk, it's between them (the ultra wealthy) and us.
If there truly was fair compensation, there wouldn't be anyone with that much money. We're already doubtful of the 10x engineer, let alone the 1,000,000,000,000x engineer.
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