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Comment by Moissanite | Hacker News Reader

The key to this in my view is having it be an officially "approved" option. Working at a FAANG company in the UK, I could already afford to take a 20% pay cut and work a 4 day week. I would love to do so in fact - but since that working pattern is relatively uncommon, I don't have the confidence that colleagues would respect or acknowledge it - basically I see myself spending an excessive amount of time telling people that I am not available on Friday for that meeting, and no I won't make an exception just for this week. Or, I would make an exception and get sucked into work - and now the company is getting 20% of my time for free.

If a 4-day week was more widespread, I would have more confidence in maintaining it - and on the odd occasion I have to work the extra day, I wouldn't feel so bad given the 100% pay model described here.

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I work 90% - every other Friday not working, taking the pay cut. The majority work 100%, about 2% work 60%. The confidence to maintain it is not that hard. I think my productivity is as good as I can be more focuses on the shorter week. Some colleagues need reminding I will not be in on the Friday - I take this as validation that it works.

Have the confidence.

In the past, I worked at a small company that allowed people to work 4-day weeks with a 20% drop in their salary. Because it was part of the company culture, people respected the additional constraints of working with their 4-day-week colleagues.

Anecdata: I worked at a large non-FAANG tech company, and went down to 60%. There were many fewer issues like that than I expected.

There were downsides (A project failed because I didn’t have time to fill in the shortcomings of a teammate, which I’d been quietly doing), but on the balance it was very positive.

Interesting, thanks. With hindsight, would you have chosen 60% again, or gone with 80% instead?

My tentative plan is to get promoted first, then step down to 80% - that way the pay cut is even smaller relative to now and with a bigger tax saving.

Aside from the other concerns mentioned, I'm currently working on "what would I do with an extra day per week" - which is a deeper lifestyle question and not at all related to work, but still very important for getting the most out of this change.

I suspect it depends strongly on what you will do with the extra time. I started consulting, which would have been impossible at just one day per week, but it is totally legitimate to use it for non-revenue pursuits and going “one step at a time“ (going 80 -> 60 would likely be much easier) could make sense in that case.

Another consideration is whether you would lose benefits under a certain threshold. I almost guarantee that HR will not know off the top of their heads, so before spinning your wheels, on fuzzy lifestyle questions you should start the process of getting official documentation on how things like healthcare and vacation days will be handled, it might make the decision a no-brainer.

I worked a 4 day week (although technically 33h in 4 days for a 4/37 reduction in base salary) for ~10 years. All for work/life balance due to having a young kid. Two days in the office, two days from home.

Generally it worked ok but not being around one day a week did cause some annoying situations - but that's partly because I moved into a different role that had more responsibility (and that was their doing). I think I made an exception for a meeting on my day off once or twice in all that time, and that was just to make my life easier, everything else was batted back with a flat "no" which was understood after an initial period of grumbling.

Now that child is older I don't need as much flexibility and so I moved company to go full time again. Work life balance is still good thanks to it being a fully remote role.

Do people ask you to make an exception and attend meetings when you have a Friday booked off from your holiday allowance? What would be different if you have it booked off for working pattern?

Not unheard of, but also I do think it would be different - everyone knows holiday time is limited, which feels different to having an unusually long weekend every week. It shouldn't, and maybe I am overly concerned by the impact this would have - but I would still be much more comfortable with the idea if it is at least available org-wide rather than by exception only.

> I do think it would be different

Q: If a cow-orker isn't at work on a given day, for whatever reason (sickness, holiday, part-timer), why would one expect to be able to contact them?

This sends us off on a tangent about communication techniques, and specifically the down-sides of Slack. I personally try to use it like a richer email system (i.e. asynchronously as much as possible) but you always get the odd person who insists on "hello are you there" as their opening message.

I guess the key question is whether or not you can produce 80% of as much in 80% of the time. For me the answer is maybe.

I do more than twice as much in 40 hours as I could in 20. I do far more than 40x in 40 hours as I could in 1 hour since there’s some overhead in task shifting. But four days a week is probably okay.

I haven’t seen a single large company that doesn’t offer some sort of a flexible working arrangement including a 4 day work week.

And you know it’s quite easy to block your calendar don’t let FOMO hold you back.

Offering it on paper versus accepting it culturally is the gap we need to close.

This is reminiscent of my suspicions about hybrid on-site/remote working environments: unless a critical mass is remote, those employees are generally at a serious disadvantage. Left out of impromptu face to face conversations, etc.

One of the few benefits of giant faceless corporations is most of my direct coworkers were 1000 miles apart anyway under normal conditions, so an extra 20 miles away sitting in his house never mattered vs sitting in an office.

Why do you need to make the effort to tell people individually or repeatedly?

Setup your calendar to auto-reject meeting invitations with a polite message that you no longer work Friday and if your attendance is required for the meeting then please schedule for Mon-Thurs during your working hours.

I do this with my non working hours, I book a block of 'out of office' time which auto rejects meetings and notes my normal working hours for the inviters future reference.

I’ve worked a 4-day work week at three companies now, ranging from tens to thousands of employees. You just block the time on your calendar and remind people when they try to schedule something there anyway.

I would recommend you try it. It’s always going to be easy to go back to full time if it isn’t working out for you.

> and on the odd occasion I have to work the extra day, I wouldn't feel so bad given the 100% pay model described here.

Something tells me you don't feel that way if you have to work the occasional Saturday today, so I doubt this would be the case after this change after a very short amount of time.

The difference is whether the overtime is driven by my own conscientiousness, or external expectations. The former is OK in small doses, the latter rapidly causes resentment. The problem with being an "early adopter" of a shortened week is that other people don't necessarily adjust their expectations accordingly.

sounds like you just need more confidence in yourself. This doesn't need to be "norm" worldwide or even company wide for you to start doing it. All it takes is for you to have the will to decide that this is something you want and are going to do.

> This doesn't need to be "norm" worldwide or even company wide for you to start doing it. All it takes is for you to have the will to decide that this is something you want and are going to do.

If the (overwhelming?) majority of staff in the company are at work on Friday, every Friday, and they can't ever reach you on a Friday, isn't that pretty much guaranteed to be a [potential] source of friction?

I had collegues working 4 days a week, including a team leader of adjacent team.

People get used to it and it becomes nothingburger.

> If the (overwhelming?) majority of staff in the company are

you could replace the end of that sentence, with any number of other options:

If the (overwhelming?) majority of staff in the company are [race]

If the (overwhelming?) majority of staff in the company are [gender]

If the (overwhelming?) majority of staff in the company are [age]

If the (overwhelming?) majority of staff in the company are [non-disabled]

Its only a source of friction, if the majority makes it one. And just like the other options, it could be seen as a form of discrimination. Someone can work four days, and still be a valuable member of the team, maybe even more than "five day" workers.

A few people at my IT company don’t work Fridays, but at least from the cases I know it seems to be Product people.

Just create recurring OOO meeting on Friday for the whole day and you're done, no?

No...there's always a pushy person asking you to make an exception, or a deadline, or "this time works for the CEO and we need you there." Never that simple without widespread buy-in.

> there's always a pushy person asking you to make an exception, or a deadline, or "this time works for the CEO and we need you there." Never that simple without widespread buy-in

My OH has been on official sick leave and has been contacted by team members demanding input because "something was urgent" :(

Unless you actually go completely offline, it's rarely simple.

I think people just need to learn how to pushback. “Sorry I have plans” has always worked for me with an handful of exceptions over 17 years of working.

I've been trying this on and off for a couple of years, blocking out time in my day to do "actual work" and avoiding meetings. All that happens is the sales people (inevitably it is sales people) book a meeting with a customer without checking my calendar first.

Why don't you decline?

Or set up a rotation with a few other coworkers so that _someone_ can always take a sales call and pass it off to them if it’s during your off/focus day and vice versa for theirs.

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