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> probably because most people don't want variation?

I suspect this claim is not borne out by the evidence. There might be cohorts that enjoy this routine. Here are folks that might enjoy substantial variation, but often get "squashed" by institutional momentum:

- parents (especially moms)

- athletes (professional or amateur)

- community-minded/service-oriented persons

- caretakers of aging parents (this group happens to be the currently 30-50 year old crowd, who theoretically are the most appropriate for a 40-hr-week schedule.)

I have available to my mind many instances of persons who would _vastly prefer_ 80% pay for 80% work, myself included. (er, feels like I should mention I'm a business/customer-oriented software developer who loves RoR and growing teams, open to work arrangements)

Heck, I could provide a list of a dozen very strong engineers that would drop almost everything to investigate a 4-day work-week.

Are you a company who wants to hire the best of the best? Give your employees some of their time back, treat them with respect, and advertise that you work four days a week.

You've now solved your hiring problems. You're welcome.

you're right, I totally pulled that claim out of my ass. I think it's a reasonable assumption though, if only because most people can't actually afford to take a 20% paycut, unless it somehow offsets another significant expense (eg, childcare).

The idea is to work less than 40 hours a week, not to spread those 40 hours into various off-hours.

People are proven to be more productive when they work less than 40 hours a week, so I'm not sure why they'd take a pay cut. If anything, they should get paid more for producing more value.

Also not mentioned: when you work less, you burn out less and are less likely to quit your job. Yet another argument for a < 40 hour work week.

A lot of offices solve this issue with “core hours” where everyone is available. I recall doing 10-3pm and beyond that everyone decided when they wanted to work.

You could certainly do core days too.

Spend some time working a variable schedule and see how far you get before you long for the 9-5 again. Yeah, traffic a sucks, and grocery stores & restaurants are slammed on the weekends. But it is really, really nice to be able to schedule time with friends and family without needing to sync schedules.

> But it is really, really nice to be able to schedule time with friends and family without needing to sync schedules.

For those with friends and family not in the service sector.

> For those with friends and family not in the service sector.

Most people in the service sector have mid-day availability a few days a week.

I spent a few years working weekends, so the only time I could hang out with friends outside of work was monday-tuesdays.

Yes, that’s my point. The person I was responding to wrote that Mon to Fri schedules for everyone are nice since they don’t have to sync schedules with friends and family, but that luxury of not syncing obviously doesn’t apply to people who have to work Fri afternoon to Sun night (and holidays).

oh, right! I'm sorry, I somehow read it backwards. I'll see myself out!

I'm actually pretty early in my career as a 9-5 employee after years of working in restaurants, where the hours are both unpredictable and very likely to fall on the nights when your friends want to hang out. I wished I worked a 9-5 for a long time, and now that I'm here, I'm a little surprised to see people complaining about it. still, it's good to ask why things are the way they are and if they could be improved further once in a while.

You've gone from one environment in which you have little to no control over your hours to another environment in which you have little to no control over your hours. That one is sporadic and the other is static is true, but both are still outside of your control.

Some people want to do things in the afternoon. Maybe they like surfing. Tough to do when you get out at 5pm.. or you’re restricted to weekends.

    I'm sure most people would happily work eight hours 
    less for the same pay, but I'm not sure how much 
    interest there is in 80% time for 80% pay.

I would gladly work 3 days a week for 60% of my "full time" pay. And plenty of leisure activities I'm interested in do not depend on my friends/family/others having free time in exactly the same time I do (reading book, playing computer games, watching movies, going on a bike ride, hiking).

I’d expect something on the order of half of people are probably down for 80% pay for a four day work week (I’d guess the majority of folks making at least 125% of their area median income plus a smattering of others). At that point it’s trading 20% of pay that will leave you still comfortable in return for an extra 50% of free days. That’s a huge amount of extra life in your own terms.

Given that productivity has skyrocketed in the past few decades it should be totally unacceptable to need to accept a 20% pay cut for only working 32 hours.

If we ever figured out a system where prices like rent weren’t set by the most that people are willing to do, maybe we could finally get more leisure time from our productivity increases. In the meantime, everything is an auction :(

actually it's a little (tiny) bit offset by paying less taxes proportionally. So your net income would be like 84% instead of 80%. Doesn't change your overall point, though ;)

> I'm not sure how much interest there is in 80% time for 80% pay

I would take it immediately!

The last time I kept asking about this possibility at job interviews, the best offer I got was 80% time for cca 50% of my market salary. Even then the company felt like they were doing me a huge favor.

> the value of that extra free day is diminished somewhat if it doesn't align with activities you want to participate in or availability of people you want to spend time with

On the other hand, the value is increased if you want to avoid people. For example, shopping is better when there are fewer people in the shop. Generally, less standing in the line anywhere.

Looking from the company perspective, it would likely be 20% of the fully loaded cost for an employee (of which pay is just a part) - I think fully loaded cost can be closer to 1.5x pay in some cases, so maybe 80% time for 70% pay makes more sense.

I'd say there's two types of "variation" here that should be discussed separately. One is not working an average of 40 hours a week, and the other is being able to vary the times one works while still working full-time. The latter doesn't violate the concerns you list.

There are people who want or need the full pay but need flexibility. An example is parents, like wonder_er mentioned. At my work, there is a flexible work schedule option where you have to hit 80 hours biweekly and need to work the core hours of 10-2 at least eight days during that period, but other than that you are free to work whenever. This option is super popular with parents because random things come up with kids all the time where you need time in the morning or afternoon but can easily make it up on the other side or another day. It's also popular with younger folks because they can work a bunch at one side of the two-week period and take a three or four day weekend (or even longer if you plan back to back biweekly periods right) without burning any vacation time. They like lots of time off but want full-time pay and are fine with longer hours some days to make up for it. That's variation in schedule even though it's still 40 hours a week on average. All these examples are people still aligned with their connections. In fact, the variation produces more opportunity to shuttle kids to school, participate socially, etc.

To your point, the type of variation where you work less and aren't aligned with the schedules of others in your life is definitely not desirable for anyone with others in your life. I was in the military and worked these schedules for about five years on a 24/7-staffed watch floor. The schedule format changed every time someone new came in and took over, so we probably changed structures every year or so during that time. I can say with surety it wasn't a particular shift schedule but just the off-normal-schedule part of them that made it hard. One that stands out as particularly bad was 12 hours on, 12 hours off (midnight-noon or noon-midnight), three days on, three days off. That was brutal for everyone. Your first day off was a recovery day where you tried to back on normal schedule, and your first day back to work was about trying to not fall asleep as you adjusted back. It switched later to 12 on/12 off, three on four off, but having more time off a week still didn't help. Everyone spent their first day trying to recover so they could do stuff with people in their lives. Later we went to three shifts a day, and workers on the midnight to 8am shift kept that up, but the number of days off til the next shift were fewer, making it worse. The best I figure out to do working that for a few years was stay up when the shift was done and try to sleep at like 4-6pm, but that only was successful because she wasn't working.