Switching to a four-day workweek (2021)
bolt.com
bolt.com
At Lockheed, they let you pick if you wanted to work the standard 5x8 days 40 hour week, 4x10 days 40 hour week, or the 9x9 80 hour two-weeks with every other Friday off. This worked great. Everyone was aware that not everyone on the team could be counted as being available on Fridays depending on their schedule. Unfortunately for me when I left there, I realized how unusual this working arrangement is.
The only issue is that I would try to pack too much into the 5 day 'weekend' and be exhausted when I start back up.
I think it's easier to do 9 hour days when you start that early. It's nice to end your day at 3 and still feel like you have some daylight hours in the winter.
Now, I have a 9x4+4 schedule where Fridays are half days. The reduction of the commute isn't as valuable when its "put on pants and down the stairs" and the full day to "do things" is reduced.
The trick with the 9-80 schedule is to define the week starting at Friday at noon.
Week 1: F: 0h; M: 9h; T: 9h; W: 9h; R: 9h; F: 4h (8-noon) = 40h
Week 2: F: 4h (noon - 4); M: 9h; T: 9h; W: 9h; R: 9h; F: 0h = 40h
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/80-w...
Afaik the non-union folks were all switched to 4x10 without choice when working from home over pandemic.
I have to drive to the office and put on pants so prefer 9x80.
And it was never 9x9,but that's close. It was 9-80, the Friday in between were 8hours. (2x40 hour weeks, week just shifted early to split the first Friday).
Its a nice option, but harder to make up hours, if you have to shift them.
Hr suggested we could get our non-work things done on every other Friday off, but my dentist doesn't work Fridays.
10x4 are tough for me, when I have to make up hours, hard to concentrate.
And no one else other than my dentist has (every other) Fridays off, and he doesn't invite me on his boat. So no extra socializing.
Been there, got the t-shirt, had it signed.
Over the years it has been a bitter pill to swallow to discover that the majority of my first ten years was spent working at places that were exceptionally forward thinking in ways that matter to me but it turns out don't matter as much to loads of other people. I've spent a lot of time butting heads with people who are 5, 10, 15 years behind where I empirically observed 'standard practices' are at.
The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed.
All of the Agile Manifesto signatories had been doing their own thing for at least 5-10 years before they tried to compare notes in 2001, and it was another 10 before most of us accepted half of XP as de rigeur. 15 years is a long, long time to wait for 'rain'.
> At Lockheed, they let you pick if you wanted to work the standard 5x8 days 40 hour week
Boeing was also once that way, and that survived the MD merger, though I don't know if that's still true.
It is very difficult to argue for hiring someone that is not 40 hours. HR and management thinks in terms of full time (40) or part time (<30). The 30-39 hour schedules seem to be used to keep someone they really don't want to lose and not offered to new people. I have seen it with people getting close to retirement and people caring for someone sick or small.
Now I work for a typical software company, and I realize I took the flexibility of the 9-80 for granted. I got so much personal stuff done during that extra day off. And, for the rest of the days, I didn’t really feel like going from 8 to 9 hours a day that difficult.
I was skeptical at first (I'm the CEO), but my co-founder showed me the data and we've been doing it since the start with no regrets. Happy to answer any practical questions; we're about 10 full time folks right now, work monday-thursday, all remote.
We don't _yet_ do support on-call on the weekends.
As long as they're up front with us when hiring it seems fine to me. If you don't want to be on call, that's something you need to factor into your job search. I've always factored it in for my searches!
Not a comment out of the side of my mouth, I am legit curious. at any rate, an occasional 5 day week is better than an occasional 6 day week
Do employees take into account the reduced hours when comparing salaries or is it disregarded similar to benefits like pensions?
Does the company rely on a sneeky bit of work done on an off-day, or is it a true, tools-down, have fun, day?
Employees do take the extra free time into consideration when comparing offers, since we make offers that are competitive to a 40-hour offer.
Re: sneaky bit of work on the off day. We don't rely on it, or ask for it. We do have an on-call rotation that covers support and site issues on Fridays, but you're in that rotation once every 5 weeks or so.
Warning though, forced on call can be hell as an employee. We are an group of five and can handle on call every five weeks if there is more we would start to get attrition.
Ugh. Just say "I'm out of the office today and will respond on Monday" no need to tout your experimental company philosophy.
> I want to know what’s going on
Why are you restricted to interact ONLY on Fridays? What's going on with you?
(I work a four day week personally, and I never set an out-of-office response.)
Not required, but useful.
All that is a long way of saying that that group feeling now exists a whole day before and it's important to communicate that.
For example, if I need X done by Friday, and I know Y company doesn't work on Fridays, I have a better idea of how much workload there is per day. It saves me from sending another email asking "hey, I know you weren't here on Friday, but is that every Friday or a one-time thing? And does that affect Joe from marketing and Sally from DevOps, or is it just you?"
> I tried him last Friday, and the one before that, and the one before that. He's never available.
I genuinely don't understand how HR/higher handle these things. Are they just extremely out of touch or something?
- Name
- Company
- Department
- Mon-Wed-Thur
Or something like that, to signal when a person is working...
"When hiring a new person, wait until their official start date to onboard them, which includes granting access to email and internal documents. Avoid letting a new hire start early because:
[...]
Information in Slack or Google drive could tip them away from your company"
I mean not giving them access to e-mail and internal documents until their formal start date is pretty normal, unless they sign an NDA that kicks in earlier.
Here's a bit more on our operating philosophy from our CEO: https://www.fastcompany.com/90501241/my-companys-always-had-...
Neither should be required to achieve the end goal, but then there is reality.
Anyway that's a long-winded way of saying, flexibility in contracts isn't too challenging. It's maintaining decent pay at the same time that the US seems to have trouble with, with some people having to balance multiple different jobs simultaneously because none is offering a stable 40ish hour contract or decent pay.
32 hours / week at 40 hour pay would be interesting.
Specifically I was thinking about how hard it is for me to get going on Monday mornings, and how often my weekend plans were curtailed by trying to make sure that I was absolutely back in town by 8pm at the latest on Sunday night.
It doesn't take many experiences getting bumped from -or to- the last flight on Sunday to grow wary of trying to take a quick jaunt out of town. Not being expected until noon on Monday would have opened up a whole lot of options.
The shorter work week has the chance to be a major differentiator between employers.
I'll let employers in on a little secret. A lot of us will take more than a 20% pay cut in return for that day.
Can't agree with you on this one, losing that money would meaningfully limit what I could do with my new-found free time. While I totally agree that a 4-day week would make a lot of folks respond to a recruiter's email, I think the vast majority would balk at the pay cut.
Who are you speaking for when you say "we"?
Absolutely. Really wish the industry would move in that direction.
Total comp has gone up up up in the last decade, but truth is free time is a lot more valuable than money. Reward me with time, not more money.
I'd very happily work half the hours (say, 2x 10hr days per week) for half the salary.
<meta property="article:published_time" content="2021-09-27T16:29:51+00:00" />I'm basically outputting the same amount of work at the same quality as before. As the article hints at, the consequence of working one day less is that it forces you to more aggressively reject distractions. Which not only was much easier than I expected, it's in fact enjoyable.
The deal is simple. We have sprints where it's clear what needs to be delivered every two weeks. Output-based work, not presence-based work. I generously reject or ignore anything else.
The way to do this is to dismiss meetings that do not contribute to your core tasks. Meetings are the true productivity killer. They cut up your day into useless snippets where you can't get anything done.
The trick to get rid of them is stupidly simple: flip the script. Right now, it's common culture that people can start as many meetings as they want and it's common courtesy for the invitees to attend, and if not, explain why.
I simply stopped complying with the expectation. I may not at all respond to the invite or give it a decline without reason. The default is no, and it's on you to convince me how the meeting is needed for me to deliver. Because my job is to deliver, not to sit in meetings. My time belongs to me and my manager, and nobody else. If you want a piece of it, have a good story.
I'm serious when I say this: not once in my decade of making this change have I ever been frowned upon, got into issues, had negative feedback or reviews due to clearing crap from my agenda. In fact, it earns respect. That is the key lesson: don't be afraid to defend your time and do not forget what you're at work for. I'm effectively only helping my employer by being more productive in the time that I work, how can anybody complain about that?
Same for overtime culture and managers sending emails at night or in the weekend. Their problem. Send a million, I won't read any of them.
Has this ever gotten me into trouble? No. Have they ever asked why I don't respond to weekend emails? No. But if they would, I'd tell them I couldn't read them because I was fucking my wife, and recommend they do the same.
Get this: work is making your manager look good, and never bad. That's the job. When you do this, you're already a top performer, as the standard is really very low. You can do all of this by rejecting nonsense, which is in your interest as well as your manager's interest.
Second to that, the number of software developers doubles approximately every 5 years, meaning that developers 40 years and older make up only about 20% of the workforce [1] [2]. The end result is that it's not unusual that older developers are not well represented at smaller tech companies and one should not jump to the conclusion that there is age discrimination on that basis alone.
Check it out and let me know if you have any questions!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/27/four-day...
The weird thing I run into is I try to schedule things like dental cleanings or tax work etc on Fridays (when I'm off) and I run into all the other people that also take Fridays off.
4 Day work weeks aren't that uncommon.
Now most families have both parents working 40 hours a week. Which means they're working for 8 hours, coming home and doing a bunch of chores, then going to sleep. Leisure activities are often done at the expense of sleep.
A 32 hour work week would give people back some of the leisure time they lost.
-----
Edit
Since some of the replies seem to have missed what I was alluding to, I want to put here what I replied below:
Sprint goals are based on capacity, which is loosely defined by how much your team works. Defining how much you need to work by basing it on how much you should achieve, which is based on a number defined by how much you roughly work, is circular reasoning.
Look at what your peers with a similar level of experience are doing.
Look at what you're committing to do during sprint planning or 1:1s with your manager. (Assuming you're in a reasonable organization with a healthy workload.)
Anything above that is deserving of a raise or promotion.
Some jobs are process oriented in which the value contributed is in volume and efficiency.
>> achieve what I'm supposed to achieve
Other jobs are development oriented in which value contributed in defining the process or the end result of the process.
It seems like the former is more amenable to "regular hours" and the latter to great swings in hours spent in effort directly related to a specific purpose.
If the boss keeps sending emails on Friday there is no way that other people will really feel secure disconnecting.
Plenty of places with unlimited vacation cue or even pressure employees to take a minimum amount of vacation.
Edit: u/babycake's comment says it better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29879742
But companies know full well what they're doing. They know that if they replace guaranteed PTO with unlimited, not only does the employee take less vacation (more bang for the company's buck), but they also get to skirt around state laws on paying for unused PTO when the employee quits.
Plus, without any guaranteed PTO, companies can just decline your request for vacation any time. They can say they're in busy season, or they need office coverage, whatever. Whereas with guaranteed vacation, the manager would have a harder time declining those hours you earned due to bad optics.
Unlimited vacation without a guaranteed PTO base is a scam.
Yes i know some orgs can async everything. Some people prefer it. You could argue many cases on why async makes for a more mature interaction process, more efficient, etc. However we have not managed it. I'd say largely 50->80% of our communication is sync, and i don't see anyone advocating for changing that with us, despite having basically fully flexible hours and a global team.
On the semi-async stuff: If I am stuck with a task I probably can grab a coffee and eat a snack or check mails, but I would like to get some feedback soon, while I'm in the state of mind of that task. Else I switch completely to a different task, which has effort to come back on speed on the initial task on e the feedback is there. And if there is some clarification needed, it is good if all parties focus on that topic for a while, till key questions are cleared and everybody is unblocked.
Of course it is a balance.
Specifically, Peter Drucker advocated for autonomy in knowledge work. However, this often leads to a lot of creep around meetings, Slack pings, and other context-switching activities. Cal, in the book, talks about the need to have good, organization level policies AND org-level processes to actively align to the work traits that the org needs.
But when I am in "the office" for 7 hours every day for a month doing chore shit or nothing, I get absolutely bored and my efficiency drops to perhaps 5% of the optimal. The only way to get past that is a vacation where I do not think about work (in the office sense) for 1-2 weeks.
4 day work week might postpone how fast that getting bored happens, but it does not fix this.
So, what I need and I suspect perhaps some other people need also is a society where one can say "hey people, it seems like I'm in the 5% zone. I'm gonna go away for two weeks, see you then." and everyone will think "he's a good worker/person/human because he knows how to keep himself in optimal working condition".
And likewise, to trust the team to make decisions as to how they approach work, so long as they fulfill their commitments and remain sustainably ambitious.
That is, I personally have always enjoyed a lot of autonomy. I work harder when I have flexibility. I feel happier and healthier when I don’t try to construct huge brick walls between personal and work, but rather accept the two ebb and flow.
But to each their own, and I certainly support companies sending more time back to people. Heavens know software has given us plenty of productivity gains in the last 30 years.
I shouldn't be limited to banker's hours for doing things, especially if that now means a 3 day weekend. What really should happen is that some of us should be working on Saturday but not Monday, or at 8 am versus 8 pm.
Otherwise 4 day work weeks just become 32 hours + permanent on-call, which is worse than nothing.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/01/10/two-major-...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-10/japan-s-p...
Let's make 2022 the year Four-Day Workweek spread like wildfire ;) Talk to your coworkers -- I suspect many of them would love for this to happen.
link: https://employernews.co.uk/news/brits-to-quit-jobs-if-not-of...
On one hand, that is fewer Mondays or Wednesdays that you could take off, but it seems a more than fair trade, given that you don't ever have to take a Friday off.
Indeed, if the employer said "now that we have 4 day weeks, we're taking away 10 days of PTO, leaving you with 15 (150 hours instead of 200)", I'd then view that as something taken away.
* It's possible that it's actually 24 days, not 25, and I'm too lazy to chase it down in the employee handbook. For this post, it's 25. :)
One thing I wonder is if everyone's getting a pay cut, or if they just got a net 25% raise on their hourly rates.
I guess if 94% of employees liked it[1], there was no pay cut involved...
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/05/the-4-day-workweek-becomes-p...
My answer to op, assuming they're not being facetious:
- We need time to recharge and let our brains work asynchronously on problems.
- We need more coordination and integration points with colleagues. If we're steamrolling ahead, there's little chance to coordinate.
- Quality of work begins to suffer after a certain point and reaches diminishing returns.
- Expending that much effort at once, repeatedly, likely leads to incredible burnout.
- Personally, the will to do Herculean tasks isn't a renewable resource you can tap into week over week. It happens, but it depletes. There have to be breaks.
Working 4 days for 10 hours is going to result in reduced output for the company, but better for the individual who wants to work on their side project with a fresh mind 3 days per week. I'd love it as an employee.
Other obvious issue is that the rest of the world is pretty much working 5 days, so you risk losing deals and delaying all sorts of stuff over weekends and things like that
If you imagine this being applied to everything in the corporate/services world (and work is not "divisible"), would you be happy to have businesses closed 1 additional day per week? The DMV closed on Mondays -- but the fees and pay of employees remain the same? How about if prices go up by 20% to pay for the cost of having a 4 day week? Your plumber or car mechanic or doctor having 20% fewer available times to see you?
The idea of the 4 day work week where people can do all that they do now, but be more efficient about it in 4 days instead, is something exclusively a privilege that white collar workers can even consider.
What I mean to say is that it is doable. Most of us are doing work that serves no real need other than contrived needs.
It's absurd to think that given no one dies if I don't do my job, that we can't go to 4-10s. I could die tomorrow myself, and nothing changes. That's how inconsequential many employees and thus businesses are today.
Part of the 4 day workweek idea is that we're not actually realizing the benefits of technological advances, instead of having the same output but working less were working more and outputting more.
Self employed contractors like plumbers are free to do what ever they want