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Comment by dgs_sgd | Hacker News Reader

I find the 9x9 80 hour two-weeks option very interesting. How common was this choice among employees?

I'm in the public sector, and a number of my coworkers do it. I had that schedule in the before times too - the entire day being off was advantageous for going out and doing things and eliminated an entire pair of commutes.

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

And thus, for the defined 7 day period, the work doesn't exceed 40h. Additionally, no day is more than 9h (some places have requirements when 10h is worked within one 24h period).

https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/80-w...

https://gusto.com/blog/people-management/9-80-work-schedule

https://www.zoomshift.com/blog/9-80-work-schedule/

As was mentioned in the public sector I feel like it was the norm. People liked having their every other Friday off (or other day they chose). When we were always in the office I chose to come in because fridays were quiet and I could work uninterrupted. Now almost all of my employees work a flexible schedule. They send me their schedule prior to the pay period starting. They have the ability to flex and violate the “core hours” one every two weeks (working less than 6 hours and can be outside the 10-2pm period). So for instance my one employee works about 2-4 hours every other Friday and has the other one off, just picks up the slack on some other day. And if they want to adjust their schedule more they just need supervisor approval (haven’t had a time yet where I had to deny a request). I personally stick to a mostly 8-4:30p schedule but if I have a big project coming up I shorten a day and put in extra time another day.

Now that my kids are grown I would absolutely love this. You can stay in the pocket, get a quieter few days over the working weekend and it would help enforce good comms/docs when you wrap up your week.

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 may be mistaken, but for this 9x9 they may mean five 9 hour days, the weekend, four 9 hour days, three day weekend.

Could be. My step-dad was just telling me about his night shift at AT&T in the 70's doing operations for switching sytems. They would to 10 8's in a row b/c it was hard for them to stay on the night shift schedule over the weekends, so this just let them stretch the weekend. He really liked it.

That's right. Often called '9-80' and was pretty popular in aerospace.

It seemed useful at first..

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.

9-80 used to be extremely common in the oil and gas world. It's started to go away now that it's not just a "good ol boy" industry but plenty of supermajors still offer it.

I used to work with different Oil&Gas companies in Houston, and one of the things that enabled this was that they started work at 6AM and ended at 3PM. Part of the reason was to have time overlap with other Oil producing countries (e.g. the Middle East), and part of this was to avoid Houston rush hour traffic.

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.

That was one thing I hated about my regular job in the winter: driving to work usually in the dark and driving home always in the dark.

The 9-80 as we called seemed like the most popular option in my building. Ten hour days was too long for some. It was nice getting every other Friday off.

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