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Comment by microtonal | Hacker News Reader

This is a bit disingenuous. A 4-day work week usually means that a work week is reduced from 40 to 32 hours without a loss of compensation. Like previous reductions in work time, the theory is that while someone puts in fewer hours, it’s worth it because people can’t be fully productive for 40 hours.

Your linked offer is a part-time position. It even states that you only get a cut of FTE and that there is the possibility to change to a full-time employment.

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> A 4-day work week usually means that a work week is reduced from 40 to 32 hours without a loss of compensation.

Is that what's being discussed here? My mind immediately went to a 4 10s situation (which, while not the norm, is fairly common in the US).

Why would someone pay (or take) the same between a 4-day week vs a 5-day worker ceteris paribus?

While I agree that someone working a 4-day week is more than 80% as productive as someone working 25% more hours, I don’t agree that a “4 day workweek usually means…without loss of compensation”. In many cases, you can’t possibly know what would have happened (if an entire company is 4-day schedule) or a company transitions to a 4-day workweek instead of paying raises or while paying smaller raises.

I can’t think of any place where the expected schedule for one employee is 32 hours and another, otherwise identical, employee is 40 hours and those two are paid the same.

To me, a 4-day workweek just means you have scheduled/expected work on 4 days and none scheduled/expected on the other 3.

That's a fair criticism! I didn't consider that 4-day usually implies the same compensation as a full workweek.

A pay cut seems OK, as long as benefits stay the same, and any equity deals stay (proportionally) the same.

To me as a Dutch person, that's not disingenious at all, that is exactly what you want.

You go from a 5 day workweek to 4 days, and take a 20% paycut. Sometimes it's possible to work 4 days of 9 hours, but it always comes with a paycut.

I am Dutch too and it is common to work part-time for four days at a 20% cut [1]. However the four-day work week movement/experiments usually mean that people would work four days without a pay cut. The idea is (like going from the 6 day to 5 day work week at the beginning of the 20th century) that the extra leisure makes people more productive during work time. So, the same amount of work is done in less time, hence no pay cuts.

See e.g.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-day_workweek#Active_trial...

https://www.4dayweek.com

[1] In fact, if you work >= 6 months for a Dutch employer, you can request moving to a part-time schedule and they can only reject this request unless they have very good reasons:

https://www.intermediair.nl/werk-privebalans/rolverdeling/we...

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