Hacker News Reader

Comment by osipov | Hacker News Reader

4 day workweek is a wild goose chase. There is no consensus about which of 5 workdays to drop to get there, which means that people will lose the precious time slots that can be used by individuals to get together at the same time as a group.

The alternative route of reducing the duration of each workday with the 5 workday week isn't much different from what we have today: some end up working longer hours, some work the bare minimum number of hours they are required. Enforcing shorter days means that the gap between the hard workers and those who are just showing up for the hours will increase even further, increasing performance gaps in the workplace and unfairly punishing dedication and productivity.

View on HN

I think you're making this sound harder to implement than this really is.

> There is no consensus about which of 5 workdays to drop to get there

As a company (or better yet as a society), just redefine the weekend as Friday – Sunday, or Saturday – Monday. I don't think anyone is proposing a free-for-all approach where people get to pick and choose which day they take off.

> Enforcing shorter days means that the gap between the hard workers and those who are just showing up for the hours

I have a hard time understanding this mentality. The law and your labor contract only requires you to work 40 hours. Some people may choose to work more than that, but to what end? So you get to feel superior to your coworkers? If the law reduced the work week to 30 hours, would you seriously hold it against people to spend more time at home with their families?

> If the law reduced the work week to 30 hours, would you seriously hold it against people to spend more time at home with their families?

Some people would unfortunately, but it should still be done.

By in large in the UK medium to large size companies work 35 work weeks and holding it against people for family seems to not be a thing. It's a cultural accountability thing.

Balanced time at home/away from work. More time with kids, more nurtured kids, more successful kids. Same thing goes for the individual. More time to yourself, less burn out, better long quality work output, less stressful work environment.

Definitely agree it's a cultural issue which needs to be solved. You need leaders who can enforce work/life balance from the top down, and employees willing to rapidly move when a company doesn't have the will to support sane work/life balance.

This argument doesn't really seem to hold much merit, as you can use this exact same logic to say that we shouldn't have any sort of enforcement around working hours. We already had this fight. The argument ended in favor of enforcing shorter shifts than the ones we used to have. The only argument now is, should the limit be even lower?

It also falls apart in the inverse. Who is to say that 5 day workweeks are best? Wouldn't the above argument for 5 day over 4 day apply to 6 day over 5 day?

There is likely a good middle ground between butt in chair hours and productivity. This discussion is merely debating what that number is. The GP comment doesn't contribute to the discussion in any meaningful way, imo.

edit: but -> butt

The Soviets experimented with five and six-day weeks... I don’t think it worked out for them, but it’s been tried at least.

In any case there are other methods to distribute workers over four days while keeping 24x7 or just 9x5 or any other business hours arrangement.

Six day work weeks were standard in China up until the early 00s.

Sure, but the base week still consisted of seven days, no? In the USSR they messed with how many days a week’s period had. They were not followed by most industry and most of the countryside never implemented these ideas at all.

Ah, I misread 6 day week as 6 day work week. The Babylonians chose 7 days because they could see 7 planets (sun day, moon day, mars day, ..., Saturn day). Really hard to shake off our Babylonian heritage (Eg very non metric 24 hour days, 60 minute hours).

I would work extra hours for 4 days if it meant not working on the 5th. The commute alone means a net gain in free hours.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com