Ask HN: 100% salary and 5-day week or 80% salary and 4-day week? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: 100% salary and 5-day week or 80% salary and 4-day week?

13 pointsalando4620 comments

Which would you prefer? (Assume office is closed on 5th day if 4-day week)

I prefer three 10-12 hour days for 100% pay.

Purely answering the question... The pay, unless you bill by the hour. If you bill hourly and you can comfortably live on 80%, then you can aim for 4 days and flex if needed. It will give you time to work on side projects or just relax.

If you're salary, then the 4 day 'deal' is a Faustian bargain. You will be expected to be available for free on the fifth day, and you will rarely ever get it off. That's just the nature of business.

If you're salary, then the 4 day 'deal' is a Faustian bargain. You will be expected to be available for free on the fifth day

How do you expect that would happen? Does your company expect you to be available on Saturdays or at four in the morning? If not, why would they expect you to work during your other off times?

For me, switching to four eights was simply a matter of letting the right people know, then no longer showing up on Mondays. If you sent me an email on Monday, you'd get a reply on Tuesday. If you scheduled me into a meeting on Monday, I'd politely remind you of my schedule. It was never an issue.

Incidentally, I strongly recommend this schedule over five day weeks. The extra day makes way more difference to your quality of life than you would reasonably expect.

> How do you expect that would happen? Does your company expect you to be available on Saturdays or at four in the morning? If not, why would they expect you to work during your other off times?

The chief difference is that on Saturday or 4am there aren't people sitting in an office wanting your "urgent" feedback on something they're working on, and possibly not even aware you're officially unavailable when they call your mobile. Obviously it applies more to people who are directly answerable to demanding clients or have unique abilities to fix/decide things than your average employee. And colleagues are definitely better at allocating things to other people when you're definitely away for a week or three.

I worked a four day week for several months due to accumulated holiday to use up, and seemed to field more direct sales enquiries on my Fridays off than the rest of the week. This wasn't entirely uncompensated, but it didn't feel like a three day weekend either.

I'd go with 4 days. My last two jobs have been less than full time (originally 3.5 days a week, right now it's more like 4.5 days/week), and it's pretty great.

If anyone wants to do this the key is:

1. Have some money in the bank so you're nor desperate for a job.

2. Have in-demand skills.

3. Get some practice negotiating.

4. Ideally do this at place you already work, or with consulting client: much easier than negotiating shorter workweek with people who don't know you.

(If anyone is interested I'm writing a book on how programmers can get to a sane workweek: reasonable hours, remote work, or even a shorter workweek, though that's harder. Initial email course is at https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/ until the book is done.)

Depends what kind of progressive income tax system you work in. At the end of the day for me, 80% salary wouldn't mean much less net income, but that extra free time would be amazing.

I had a job where I worked 4 days a week. Was indeed amazing. Also I found I was more productive on average during those 4 days of work vs 5 days before.

And don't discount that people usually spend one of their two weekend days doing chores, business, and shopping. When you can push your personal business day from Saturday to Friday or Monday that gives you two full days off back to back.

80% salary assuming my significant other is working either in the same schedule or a 5-day a week now. If not, I'd still do it but I'll probably need to do some budgeting :-)

4 days of work and 3 days of rest is, IMO, the perfect balance. You get enough time to rest that you actually look forward to going back to work (if you enjoy it).

Most of us do a lot of chores on the weekend that we can't do in the weekday because they're only open 9-5. A 3 day weekend would give us more time to ourselves.

I Always go for a paycut and 80% salary. At 26, have never worked a full 5 day job. But I just prefer to have the extra day to actually do things I enjoy, or trying new things(i'm a learning new things addict) everything from language classes to yoga, to dance, to making it easier to go on longer holidays Friday-Monday, no hassle!

Depends on the salary and whether it's truly a 4-day week or if it's really the same workload as a 5-day week.

4-day week, no contest. I'd probably do it for 67% salary, tbh.

I changed to 90% work with 100% salary instead of a pay raise.

Definitely the latter.

However, I'd also take 50% and a 5-day week, if the team was guaranteed to be as pleasant to work on as the best team I've worked with.

It's much easier to determine / agree on days of the week as opposed to "being the best team" - the latter is not under the control of the employer and people change/move.

Then I quit, and find another company that offers imaginary benefits for half the salary.

90% the salay, five days a week, six hours a day.

80% salary for 4 days work easily. The value I could find by having one day to do work that makes me feel 100% fulfilled trumps all.

What do you value more right now? Time or money?

I recently changed from 5 to 4 and took the pay cut. It's awesome and humane. Especially with young children keeping me busy at weekends. The assumption you stated doesn't apply to me though.

It really depends on if I believed that my fifth day would be mine or would the demands of the work bleed into that day? Similar to 20% time at Google - it's easy for your "real" work to take over that time if you don't defend it actively and it's unlikely that you'll be vigilant the whole time.

I think in knowledge work - trading off time for salary is generally not a great move because we're almost always "on the clock."

I'm assuming office is closed.

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