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Comment by sam0x17 | Hacker News Reader

At my previous startup we tried this with engineering and actually saw a productivity _increase_ from 4-day work-week.

I will say the morale improvement on my team when we switched to 4/10s was worth it alone. We couldn't swing the reduction in hours unfortunately.

This is a bit different from a 32 hour week.

But yes you will see productivity go UP with 4 10s. That's a full days worth of break and lunch interruptions that isn't there.

I switched to 4 10s a couple years back and it's nice, but the days are quite long so anything else you plan to do probably isn't happening. Like gym time, which is going to cost long term.

To be fair this was heavy construction, so a baseline of physical activity was there. Out-of-town work as well, so longer days were a bonus since off-duty time would be sent sitting in your trailer or at the bar. An extra day to travel and spend with the family at home was huge for the guys.

> That's a full days worth of break and lunch interruptions that isn't there.

A constant battle I've seen between superintendents and schedulers/penny pincher types. "oh no we can't pay any over time!" without realizing the productivity gains the superintendent is chasing from the extra working time unencumbered by extra breaks.

I'm also in a construction related trade and we get compensated for travel time to/from work sites. Eliminating a day of travel time alone is a big deal for the employer.

When things get busy having a additional 10 hour day in the week can really get things moving too. They do pay overtime for that though.

Curious, was this increased productivity sustained? If so, for how long?

How did you measure this? I'm convinced that I will be a multi-millionaire if I could just measure end productivity across a wide range of contexts.

Did everybody take the same day off or could everybody choose?

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