Hacker News Reader

Comment by mjayhn | Hacker News Reader

I can't begin to explain how much less stress I encounter in day to day life having just one week day to stay home. Just having a day to be able to easily knock out chores between Jira issues; drop the car off at the dealer, sell something on craigslist, complete a house project, go to the dentist, meet the handyman, go to the bank, etc is so nice.

All of these things wind up on the back burner when I'm in the middle of high stress projects and forced to sit at a desk for 8-10 hours a day.

All that does is lead to more stress because now I'm falling behind on my life tasks and have to burn a weekend catching up when I should be able to spend that weekend de-stressing.

I know not everyone is as sapped for energy as I am after work, I hate that I'm this way. But after leaving work and siting in an hour of traffic my energy is just sapped from me by the time I make it home. I have enough energy to feed myself and sometimes work out to maintain my health..

View on HN

> I know not everyone is as sapped for energy as I am after work, but I leave work and sit in an hour of traffic. My energy is just sapped from me by the time I make it home. I have enough energy to feed myself and sometimes work out to maintain my health..

I know that some people just dont have the privilege of living close to their jobs, but after spending one internship getting up at 5;45am to drive with my dad to work to beat the traffic for 1hr, and then spending 1.5-2 hours driving back in heavy traffic in NYC, I vowed to never ever live in a place where I have to drive that far to get to work. 2 months of that and I was already losing my will to live. My dad did it for 15 years and I can see why towards the last leg of that job, he was bitter and angry on a daily basis. That is not a way to live.

I live in NYC, and I have a roughly 1 hour commute each way, but I just take the train everywhere.

Of course I can't speak for anyone else, but I find that taking a train to work is a lot less stressful than driving every day. At least on the train, I can read, or pull out my laptop, or just play a video game.

I’m born and raised in NYC and took subways and trains to work everyday for over a decade in NYC.

I mostly agree with you...but...I found the past several years of subway outages worse and started driving/ridesharing more and more. I’ve had times where subways constantly get rerouted, suddenly go express, skip stops, run on different lines, etc. it became so maddening.

Not sure what GP meant but in NYC I find NJ Transit, Metro North, LIRR style to be much more relaxing and reliable. Subway is just a different beast

I take the Subway virtually every day. On weekdays it's not perfect, but generally good-enough.

To some extent it likely depends on which subway you're on. Some lines are rough, especially at the outskirts.

But I agree. For all that New Yorkers complain about the subway, it's my favorite thing about New York.

Bad Subway is better than no subway; I wish we had that or any public transport in Northern California.

It depends a lot on your origin and destination. In my 6 years, I’ve found the optimal corridor to be Downtown Brooklyn to Midtown, with a slight bias for west manhattan over east. Anything outside that corridor has a high potential to be the Wild West (the G, L, JZM, etc) with kafkaesque reroutes and delays and express running local and no trains after 9pm on random 5 days every 9 weeks.

All it takes is one time being stuck in the tunnel for 1.5 hrs in crowded train car and you have pretty much permanent PTSD. I have a panic attack every time the train comes to a premature stop even for a minute.

> All it takes is one time being stuck in the tunnel for 1.5 hrs in crowded train car and you have pretty much permanent PTSD. I have a panic attack every time the train comes to a premature stop even for a minute.

I used to take the Path trail from Jersey City and then transfer to the F trail to Queens. I let my boss think I love my job so much that I arrive at work pretty early on most days when in fact, I was just trying to account for the inevitable delays on some days.

I understand worker safety is important. Even if we didn't care about the workers, accidents can get very expensive and budget is tight. However, there has to be a better way than slowing ALL tracks to a crawl every time there is track work on ANY of the tracks.

That really sucks, but I don't think this applies to a lot of people.

Yup. Being on a train is only a location not an activity. Like any other location it can be made more or less comfortable, I've been on a train where the heating failed; and one that was so crowded you could hardly breathe (last train home for the night so nobody was willing to miss out) but I've also been comfortably asleep in bed; eaten a decent (not award winning, but certainly reasonable even for a restaurant that wasn't hurtling though the countryside at a hundred miles per hour) meal; and watched some good movies on Netflix.

I lived in NYC from 2001-2012 and much prefer my 20-minute car commute now to any amount of time in a jam-packed rush-hour subway. Nothing like being 5mm from a stranger's face while both of you pretend you're not 5mm from a stranger's face. The LIRR is more comfy obv but at $250/month still not worth the aggravation, and unless you happen to work at Penn Station, you still have to walk through rain/snow/95-degree humidity or buy _another_ pass for a subway/bus.

I agree the average American 20 min house to office drive is much less stressful than rush hour subway (and god help us if we get coronavirus going around). Driving to work in NYC or SF doesn’t even make sense unless there was parking.

I had the same experience when I lived in NYC. A 45 minute commute on the subway was a lot less stressful than the 45 minute bumper-to-bumper driving commute I do now (in Seattle). I would usually play mindless puzzle games and listen to music on my commute. Other people mention the train delays being stressful, but my company had a standing "subway delays ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" attitude about showing up late. People would show up between 9:30 and 10:30

I don't ever recall feeling comfortable pulling out a laptop on the train though. Not even for fear of someone stealing it. I'd be worried about a subway monkey doing some spinning dance move and destroying the screen, or some hipster spilling coffee on it when the train slows down. Fond memories...

Well, as someone who pulls out their laptop pretty frequently on the train, I can say I've never had anyone spill coffee or kick it, though granted I don't pull it out if the train is at-all crowded.

I recently got a GPD Win 2 as well though, so I've been able to do more computerey stuff lately, even when it is crowded.

The GPD Win 2 looks interesting. Can you tell us more about it.

I had the original GPD Win (second revision) and its a quite capable travel computer. I loved the using the two thumb typing grip (which I had perfected from the iPad mini and iPhone 3S ~ 5s landscape) even though the keyboard wasn't so great. My main other gripe was the low screen resolution. The keyboard has been improved in the GPD Win 2 but the resolution stayed the same (I understand why given the target audience but 720p limits it to gamers). I stopped using my GPD Win after the battery swelled up (and Chinese 'warranty' as my third complaint) but despite its flaws I miss it dearly and I'm considering getting a GPD MicroPC soon

I can’t speak for the Win 2, but the Micro PC’s keyboard is miles ahead of the Win’s. I would never use the original Win for terminal work if I had a choice; I have used the Micro PC for it.

DisplayPort output via USB-C is another plus (monitor/mouse/keyboard/charging with one cable!) though the Win 2 may have had that as well, I’m not sure. The original Win did not.

The GPD Win 2 is pretty sweet; I have Ubuntu installed on mine, and it makes a more-than-capable coding machine, even while standing up.

I’ve never pulled a laptop out on the subway but the LIRR or MNR is a different story.

I have occasionally used a laptop on an NJT train. Usually I don't have space (when I even get a seat).

Now I take the bus, and I never have space at least not for my work laptop. I should have gotten the 13" instead of the 15".

I sometimes hardly ever have room to pull out my phone during rush hour on the train. Packed like sardines. And they say everyone drives in LA...

I commute about 45 mins on the subway in NYC and I don’t really feel comfortable taking my laptop out. Which sucks because it’s a lot of time and I’ve got stuff I could work on.

What I’m experimenting with now is taking Uber Pool most mornings. It’s usually about $20 but you can pay for it with tax free commuter benefits, and I’m saving $2.75 in subway fare, so it’s like ~$10 for almost an hour of time to catch up on administrative junk for my side biz. Seems worth it so far, although still a little frustrating.

Same, Crown Heights to Midtown. Would time my commute so I could get a seat and pull out my laptop to just code with no emails or other stuff coming in. Probably some of the most productive time. You just have to be good with heading in early and living far enough away to get on subways when they are relatively empty further out from Manhattan.

An interesting lifehack I hypothesized earlier this week and confirmed today is to work from home for the first hour or so of the day and then head into work after the morning rush has substantially subsided.

Until today, I've typically gotten on the subway between 9:45am and 10am for my 30 minute commute to work (that's bed to desk travel time). The train usually wasn't packed, but I was certainly squeezed up against people. Perfectly tolerable, but certainly not comfortable.

Today I did an hour's worth of work from 9:30am to 10:30am and then I commuted to my office arriving just before my 11am standup. The 10:30am train was wonderfully empty in comparison to the 9:45am train. I got a seat for the first time in months! Furthermore, that hour of work was wonderfully productive since my apt is dead silent and no one was around to disturb me. I got most of my "heads-down, high-concentration" work done for the day in that hour.

I've done this in London where the tube can get impossible in peak hours, and it worked pretty well, although I ended up moving 30 minutes walk from the office to get 1 hour walk every day. The downside was a bit of back pain for carring the laptop on my backpack for one hour every day.

I had a similar problem with back pain. Invest in a good backpack that fits properly and try to minimize any other weight, including the backpack itself. I found a timbuk2 bag that worked for me, but go into a store and try one one with your laptop in it. You’ll feel the difference right away if it’s right.

I live in Japan and have done this last year to great effect.

My work place is about an hour and a half commute and the trains are incredibly packed starting from around 7am all the way till 9.15am.

What I've done was wake up and started working from home sometime between 7-8am till around 9.15am, then leave for the 9.30am train and I'll be in the office by 11.

Work gets done and I don't get stressed from silly crowds. I also do the reverse and leave work around 4pm to avoid the return rush.

It's a small change but it's an incredible quality of live improvement. This is literal pareto, 20% effort with 80% effect. Do it.

Doing the same in Paris. 1-2 hours at home and then go in. Leave work later though 7-7:30 pm to available for US west coast people

I used to live in Renton (by Boeing) and commute into downtown Seattle (5th and Union) and found the light rail in was a good way to deal with it. Over time I found myself using my motorcycle more because I could use the HOV lanes and adjusting my work schedule to get in around 6 and leave by 3:30 (in theory) which went from a guaranteed hour each way to as little as 25min in the morning and about 40 in the afternoon.

Spent a lot of money on REALLY good rain gear and averaged almost 8K mi a year for the four of the five years we were up there. As long as I wasn’t stopped in traffic I felt even more relaxed getting a good motorcycle ride in every morning and being actively zoned out (focused on now instead of life) vs taking the train and being passively zones out with media.

Now that I’m 4mi from my office, come home a few times a week and say hi to the wife at lunch, etc. I will also never go back to anything resembling a commute.

I always think about the distance from my house to my work place in terms of kilometres. It only now occurs to me it’s pretty much exactly 1 mile, and only one set of traffic lights.

Living in a city with approximately 100,000 people has its advantages!

My previous job was a 1:20 commute by bike and train up to SF. I got really excited about a new job opportunity only a 20-30 minute drive from my house, but now that I've been at this job for almost a year I often miss the train commute. Commuting by car really is much more stressful.

Caltrain is great as long as it shows up. But it is a single point of failure for many commutes and it does fail a lot.

Yeah that definitely helps!

Unfortunately I think I'd still need a few hours to unwind and get out of "work mode." I've worked jobs where I could actually walk to work and I still went home just drained. TBH, I'm an introvert and I'm not sure going in to the office will ever be really conducive to my personality.

I've worked jobs where I had an office to go to when I needed/wanted to be there but could work from home or at a clients office. That was wonderful. I actually showed up to it much, much more often than I expected - by pure choice. If I was having an off day or felt especially introverted and just needed a break from people I could just knock things out at home!

Remote work is increasingly available. Good luck!

I'm still pretty sapped after 8-9 hours, even if I work from home. And yes, it does build up stress from all the errands that would be easiest to schedule during office hours on a weekday with no work.

There are ways to work around the system around metro hubs that tries to push you towards the standard of commuting 2 hours or more each day to get to a higher paying job, but you have to search for them and be flexible yourself in your search for a job that's flexible.

These days, it's likely semi-remote work, where you commute 1-3 days a week or in off hours (part of day at home, part at work). For me, I've been lucky enough to always find something that I found interesting and that pays well enough while not having to commute more than 10-20 minutes in the local area, and that's having been born, raised, and lived my entire life 45 minutes North of SF.

There's not guaranteed to be something good in the borderlands, but I think people might be surprised what they could find if they can resist the call of the behemoths (and those that congregate in the same area) while being within throwing range of them.

> push you towards the standard of commuting 2 hours or more each day to get to a higher paying job

Crazy question but why not invest some of that higher salary into quality of life improvements like moving closer to work?

I think you misread some of my comment.

But as for why people don't do that, I think it's often because "quality of life" means different things to different people at different times in their lives.

For a single 20-something, moving closer to work, and the much higher cost of living that usually entails can be worthwhile.

For a 30-something or 40-something with a family, what kind of worth the spouse does (and whether it benefits from that move monetarily or in quality of live) and what it entails for the children can be much more important.

For a single (or mostly single) income household, shaving 2 hours off your commute in exchange for double the cost of living is very hard to justify. There's often a reason they live far enough away to need to commute.

For me, as I said, I've never had that commute. I've been very happy working in the tech industry an hour or so away from SF and its surrounding area. What I advocated is not moving closer to work, but working closer to where you moved. If you move to a suburb of SF, if you start looking for work in that area instead of focusing on SF, you might be surprised what's there. It won't pay as much, but theoretically cost of living is already drastically reduced by moving to the suburb, so maybe re-examining what's a good job to look is called for if that commute isn't to your liking.

Because homes are often miserable in the city. You can't renovate your apartment building or clean up all the litter on your block or get rid of the cars driving by.

Driving is the price you pay for a nice home.

School zones often play a part in the decision. With massive disparities in funding between even relatively close school zones where you live can have a large impact on your children. So often parents are forced to commute so that their kids can attend a good school. This is very unfortunate and likely a direct result of the way we fund schools in the US, but its reality for many.

One could of course argue that more time with their parents is crucial for the child as well and that is absolutely correct. My main concern though is that my kids are safe and well looked after during the time they are away from me though.

Now if I was a young single person, I would absolutely choose living in a studio a block from work over commuting an hour each way to a larger house in the suburbs. With kids other factors take precedence.

Now I am lucky enough to work remotely and it is indeed the 'bees knees'.

I changed my life so my work is 6 blocks from home. I will never go back. No realistic amount of money will ever be worth a commute. I consider commuting a form of incarceration.

I'm lucky to have a drive that takes me down the ocean for the bulk of it and I use my commute time for phone calls after the best part so even though it's nearly 40 minutes it doesn't bother me at all. But yeah if your commute is just boring traffic it can get to you day in day out.

I have to disagree. Realistically my only job opportunities for good pay are in cities, you couldn't pay me to live in one of those.

I'll take the commute for the luxury of living in the countryside away from the noise, overpopulation and dirt.

For every person I've met from a small town, half say they'd never want to live there again, half are like you. There has been a 10,000 year trend toward urbanization so far. I'm glad for you, even though I suspect your future is going to get harder as the hinterland continues to empty out.

I think there is a happy medium too, and you don't need to live across the street from your job. I really like my job - which is located in the suburbs outside of DC but I wanted to live closer to the city so I have metro access and can easily bike around the city.

I could easily get a nice place walking distance from work but my 30 minute commute (pretty much against traffic so not stressful) allows me to enjoy my time after work and the weekends much more than I would from the extra time from a short commute. I also enjoy driving and listening to music in my car so maybe thats part of it too

Exactly. Work someplace else cheaper/less dense, remotely or get the tiniest, rathole, walkup closet where there's only a refrigerator and a tub, and you can't open the frig to open the door (but at least you can drink OJ from the carton while in the tub;). The people who commute by plane, 1-2 hours each way, or 100-200 miles daily are phreak'n outside of their skulls looking in.

Hey, I commute by train to work (about an hour each way once you factor in trotting to the station, waiting for commuter shuttles, etc.), and I'm happy as a clam because I can draw on my iPad or play on my Switch for much of that time.

Now, if you're DRIVING that same hour, then yeah, you're nuts.

What about all the time that takes? If you have kids you need/want to get home as soon as possible to provide help as well as actually see them. Doesn't matter how many games im playing during that time

I wish that I could find a tiny rathole. Unfortunately, regulations around here with the minimum square footage requirements make that almost impossible.

I quit my last job because of the commute, gave up driving completely this year, and got a job in walking distance of my home. That part alone has made me a significantly happier person, I was able to stop taking anti anxiety medication, I have time for social activities, I have time for my friends and family again. I could never go back to driving to the office

Agreed, the one thing I have promised myself is to never have a commute over 35 minutes. I even found a 35 minute commute to an internship in the suburbs disheartening when it was mostly spent sitting in traffic.

It's insane to waste that much of your daily life shuttling to your job (if you have an option, which I hope to remain lucky enough to have).

The commute is not the problem, the car is. In Amsterdam I commuted 45 minutes by bike and it was great. I really miss it now that I work from home.

This. I used to have a longish commute (about 1h door to door) but I took Caltrain, and that time was never wasted. I could work, connect with friends, or just unwind. The few times when I did that by car I ended exhausted. Throw in a weekly 3h bike ride to work to stay fit and it was quite excellent.

That's better but some days are bad for biking and more than seven hours per week spent on a bike is still a bit much.

Or.. maybe people just have different outlooks?

I used to ebike for an hour each way, and it was torture. Now it's a ~20min drive and 30mins of the commuter train. Still pretty miserable, but at least it's not raining directly into my eyes anymore.

Truthfully, though, the weather in Amsterdam isn't so bad. And wow, there is some infrastructure for biking! These two things combined would make biking so much better, but then you add in the average style of bicycle you see there: Comfortable seats with some space for traveling with stuff.

I have some of the infrastructure where I live in Norway, but I'm not brave enough to bike on the snow and ice in the winter. Walking is perilous enough.

When I lived in the states, biking was often dangerous and the fastest routes weren't always available to me. I lived in the countryside for years, close enough to bike by main roads, but it not only wasn't allowed on the best path, but it would have been dangerous. No shoulder, curvy road, and cars going over 55mph (over 80kph). It was illegal to ride on sidewalks, where there were sidewalks, and few cities had bike lanes outside of downtown areas (if that).

One job literally had no entrance other than off of a 4-lane divided highway: No biking or walking to that job.

Even if I got over those hurdles, there was often no where to safely put my bike while I was at work. Heck, some of these places didn't have anywhere to store cold things for lunch.

If I happened to have a job in Amsterdam, Copenhagen or similarly cyclable city, I'd totally find a place with 1 hour bike commute from the office, to both save money on rent and get free cardio exercise.

I work in NYC. My commute from Brooklyn in now about 30 minutes, 20 of them on a train, the rest is walking and waiting on a station. It's the shortest and least stressful commute I ever had among several cities I lived. Dense cities have upsides when you live inside them.

What's crazy is that you see regulation on minimum number of parking spaces for nearly any kind of building type and yet for working buildings, there's absolutely 0 regulations on minimum number of places to live. So, what happens is there's a huge imbalance between number of jobs offered vs places to live, thus driving up the cost of housing unnecessarily.

It's almost as if they designed cities to only be driven too without any thought given on how to place living spaces closer to working spaces.

I've always prioritized living close to work and making my commute a 10mn walk. It's such a quality of life improvement, but I understand it can't be done by everyone.

Since I lived and NYC and London, living near work often meant living in busy and noisy city areas, but it's a compromise I've generally been happy with.

Even if your commute is only 30 minutes, that is 5 hours lost a week roundtrip. An hour commute? Say goodbye to 10 hours a week. Yuck. Thankfully I have never had a long commute, my current commute is a 10-minute bike ride.

Additionally, every company should provide at least one work from home day. Having a day at home where you can do laundry while working and other minor chores are such a huge win. Not to mention sleep-in to 830 if I want. Even while doing these mini chores I am WAY more productive at home. It also breaks up your week. My WFH day is Tuesday. So I deal with Monday, then have that cushy WFH day, then when I come back on Wednesday it feels like just a 3 day work week. Friday is casual and most employees take Friday to WFH. Its a ghost town and I love it.

I need to begin looking for one of these dank jobs that are truly a four-day work week though.

I think it also highly depends on how you commute.

I had a ~1h commute for years, which meant 10 hours gone a week, but I commuted via public transport (train+metro/subway/underground) which meant I had 10 hours a week for reading or conversation with friends on the same route. I worked from home for 10 years after, and I swear I read less!

If I had been driving those would have felt like completely wasted time.

Or, a friend of mine in Sweden had an even longer commute by train, but his company counted the time as office time, since he'd just work on the train, which meant no loss of free time.

(I still agree all companies should encourage WFH as much as possible)

Long commutes are pretty terrible. Often times though parents are forced to choose between a long commute to their place of work but sending their kids to a good school zone vs the alternative. Unfortunately funding school zones based on property taxes leads to vast disparity in their quality and their ability to provide for students. The result for many is having to choose a long commute.

With that said I commuted for just over an hour+ each way in a sports car pre kids for 3 years and I never want a low car again. Give me a comfortable SUV / sedan any day now.

Renting in a 5-minute walk distance from the office have been, by far, best investment I've made in my life.

Even though it's a small studio apartment, saving two hours of stress per day is heaven-sent for someone with low energy and chronic depression like me. It's like life switched to easy mode all of a sudden. The only downside is, I can't manage to schedule a time to read books – subways and trains were ideal for it.

Around 5 years back, I went from 5 days a week to 4, taking a 20% paycut in the process.

It was one of the best decisions I've ever made - it feels like I have so much more time for family, side projects and hobbies than I ever did before. And for reference, I work around 90% from home.

TBH, the company I work for has got a pretty good deal out of this, as I'm sure my productivity hasn't dropped at all. (it's a mega corp, so there is zero chance of negotiating back to equivalent of a 5-day salary)

It's a 20% paycut, but a 50% increase in free time! I'm doing the same thing btw, taking every Wednesday off and I love it - it breaks up the week and having the whole extra day for fun projects is totally worth the money to me.

Well put – 50% increase in free time. That's a very positive take on it. Depending on who you are that'll matter more or less, but to me that phrase is heart warming. 50% more time for the family, self care, catching up around the house. That sounds peaceful.

And you pay less taxes, so the pay cut is not as high as the full sticker.

Actually, I remained in the same tax bracket.

Even in the same tax bracket, your effective tax rate will go down (because less of your income is in that bracket.)

A few years ago I seriously contemplated changing professions, so my boss allowed me to switch from full-time to 20 hours/week spread across 2-3 days. One immediate upside was that I only took a ~35% paycut due to being in a different tax bracket. As I dove deeper into my new career, I realized it wasn't for me, so I stayed at my old job... and now I can't imagine ever going back to full-time, as my quality of life has risen exponentially and I finally have enough time and energy for my never-ending list of hobbies and side-projects.

>One immediate upside was that I only took a ~35% paycut due to being in a different tax bracket.

Are you in the US? If so, you can't save money on taxes by making less; it's a progressive system.

I guess that's another quality of life perk of working outside the US :)

Well, I'd say the opposite... Here you'd be making more money.

I admit to being blissfully ignorant regarding financial matters but isn't 50% less work while earning 33% less (as opposed to 50%) a good thing?

Sorry, was only talking about the tax situation. In a progressive system each dollar is taxed at the rate of its bracket. For example (hypothetical), dollars 1-25,000 are taxed at 5%, 25,001-50,000 at 6%, 50,001-75,000 at 7%, etc. You can never gain by making less.

If you actually paid less in taxes on _every_ dollar by dropping a bracket, then you'd have been making more all along in a progressive system. Are you certain that was the case? Just curious.

You're misunderstanding what he's saying. He got a 50% cut in salary, but because all of that comes from the higher brackets, his take home is only 35% less.

I do the same thing (Australia). Worked 9 months last year and made about ~82-85% of what I would have working the full year, rather than 75%.

Incidentally this is why progressive tax is so important for a good startup culture (and thus overall tech scene). It's a negative tax on risk. The steeper your progressive ramp, the less of your geniuses are working in shit jobs creating UI form widgets with 40 managers telling them to redo it every other day.

Yes... I believe I did :)

He didn't say he saved money by working less. He said he worked 50% less but only got 35% less money.

How did you find a part time seng job? I’ve never seen one in my life. It’s all full time and contract work

I didn't, not exactly - it was a full time job for years, then I asked to reduce my hours.

In the UK, employers have to give consideration to reasonable requests for flexible working. But it also helped a lot that I work for a huge corporation, so they are better setup to deal with and permit such requests.

It is an especially big deal for working parents... having a day when kids are at school/daycare to do chores and errands is huge... so many things are impossible to do when you are chasing kids around. I get way more done on a weekday home than a weekend.

how about single working adults? I have to literally take off of work to go to the DMV.

Isn’t that the case for everyone working a standard 5 day week, single, kids, or not?

No. A good amount of reasonable/compassionate companies like mine don't care if you take 2 hours to go to the DMV during work hours. I'm very fortunate

But that still doesn’t have anything to do with having kids or not.

This. I literally cannot get anything done on the weekends unless the inlaws stay over to look after our 2 toddlers. As the kids get older I'm sure it'll get easier.

But doesn't this rely on everyone else working 5 days?

If everyone had a 4-week, it would be just like the current weekend. You can't go to the bank or dentist, because they would also be off.

Perhaps you could get the same effect and quality of life by taking Sunday and Monday as your days off and working Saturday.

Maybe people could take different "3rd" days off?

How do we decide who gets Friday or Monday (ie, a three day weekend)?

I have a friend who once had M-W off, and worked the four remaining days. He hated it because his time off was completely misaligned with his peers, so he had no social life.

Edit - I don't have any fundamental problem with working fewer hours or fewer days. But, I think I'd prefer 5x7 hour days instead of 4x8.

> How do we decide who gets Friday or Monday

Rotate who gets which days off each week.

I prefer mid week days off (Wednesday, but I'd settle for Tue/Thu). I love to have work weeks of two days.

I can imagine there are plenty of other people that prefer the same thing.

I'm with you completely, but from talking to others I think we're in a small minority. Most people want a long weekend.

You have some sort of rota - half the office gets Mondays off on January, then in February, they're off on Fridays.

Having tried both, 4x8 is far better. I don't do much during 5x7 evenings anyway because I'm drained after 7 hours at work, so I'd much rather just cram that into 4 days and have an extra day of rest.

Maybe different employees could have a different day off so that the business can still run unless there is only one individual that can do that particular job. I think that would work for at least 95%

That’s the approach you see in The Netherlands where a lot of people have 4-day workweeks.

Another example:

My dad is a letter carrier. He's off Sunday and then has a floating day off that changes each week. (Scheduled far in advance.)

Exactly right. The best alternative I've seen implemented at companies is 9/80 where employees get every other Friday or Monday off, and half the employees get one week while half get the next. That way you still get an extra 2 useful days a month to get stuff done at home, but companies themselves are able to continue working 5 days a week.

I did it a bit different. For 2020, working four days gives me 204 workable days per year. Working five days gives me 255 workable days per year.

What I do is that I work five days a week and around June-July I take ten weeks off. I have the same amount of working days per year with the same income but it feels like a godsend to have a yearly sabbatical of over 2 months during the best weather of the year. It reminds me of being in school again with the long summer holidays.

If I ever have children that means being with them for six weeks fully dedicated to them.

I do this too, but split between 5 weeks in the summer for PNW alpine climbing and 5 weeks in the winter for desert stuff in the SW, plus normal vacation for long weekend climbing trips and the obligatory holidays.

If I had children, taking the summer off with them seems great - it's a shame their vacation policy isn't flexible...

Do you actually like your job? I don't mean any disrespect, but I've had jobs I don't really like and I get where you are coming from. Right now, though and at other times, since I've had my own companies, 6 day work weeks and 10-12 hrs a day was not even an issue. I feel like if people go to 4 day work weeks, people that love their jobs and are willing to work 1.5times as much or more will have a huge advantage over the long haul.

At my team, we recently established a rule that during Friday you can work on anything work-related you want (e.g. it doesn't have to be something from the actual sprint etc). Similar to the old Google "20% for your projects" kind of a thing.

I expected that lots of useful or interesting things will be made during that time, which is true. But for me, the most beneficial effect is that my enjoyment of my work (which previously wasn't bad - I really liked my work) increased a lot.

So this can be another way how to boost your job enjoyment.

> Just having a day to be able to easily knock out chores between Jira issues

This seems to conflate working from home with having time off. Is your employer paying you to work on that day or not?

I work four days a week (30 hours). On my days off, I do not work at all. On my days on, I do not do random house chores during office hours. That's what my employer and I agreed to, and I think it describes what most people understand as a four day workweek.

You can do chores during your workday if your workday extends by a similar amount of time. That’s basically the definition of flextime, and I’ve never heard of work from home without flex (how would you check).

I feel exactly the same when it comes to energy, even though I live ~10 mins from work...

As far as work schedule goes, my company/team is fairly flexible when it comes to WFH. However, I still operate in "work mode" while at home, which makes it difficult to take of chores, etc.

Honestly, it just sounds like your job is too stressful. I work 5 days a week, sometimes more, but nobody bats an eye if I need to go somewhere 2 or 3 hours in the middle of the day. I much prefer this to 4 full time days. 5 days of less stress gives you more availability and more flexibility at the same time. I feel it's what we should really be striving for.

Seconding this, but particularly and especially for tasks that have to be done during normal business hours. If there's some issue I have that requires calling some customer service number, it often gets put off for days or even weeks before I manage to fit it in.

This is why I recently started doing remote work. I just can't justify commuting/time it takes to go somewhere 30+ minutes away.

It's interesting how many of those things rely on certain businesses being open 5 days a week at least.

Obligatory link to solution that would let working less be something that would not deserve a news story: https://i.imgur.com/ia2s7AM.png

Reply on news.ycombinator.com