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Comment by mkaic | Hacker News Reader

I am a firm believer that I would get more work done with a 4-day workweek than I currently do with my 5-day workweek. I already spend an embarrassing amount of time slacking off daily, it's not like I'm pressed for time to get stuff done in the office. I could easily meet my weekly objectives in 32 hours rather than 40, and having 3-day weekends every weekend I think would be incredible for my mental health and mood. And when I'm in a better mood, I get more work done!

One thing I feel like a lot of people don't realize is just how big a difference it is to go from a 5-day week to a 4-day week. Sure, it's "just one day" but when you think about the ratio between time-on and time-off, the shift becomes a lot more dramatic. 5-on, 2-off means you spend over twice as many days working as not working. 4-on, 3-off means you spend a nearly equal number of days on each. It's just one day of difference, but it feels like a major, major shift.

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If you spend only ~75% of your time working (i.e. you can finish your work in 32 hours instead of 40), does this imply that in the event your company switched to a 4 day workweek you would be busy 100% of the time?

It seems more likely that people would retain a similar ratio of slacking to working.

As an aside, how does "I finish my work in 32 hours" even work? What does that mean? Are most developers out there getting paint-by-numbers printouts they need to color in and then they're all done for the week? Almost all of my roles in a professional capacity have required self-starting, and the project life cycles are much longer than a day/week such that there is literally always work to do.

If you're building a house and you're done nailing in shingles by noon you don't go home and come back tomorrow, you go put up sheetrock or install bathroom tiles. The "I finish my work in a few hours" that I see on HN and Twitter must be extremely poorly managed teams or people that are leaving a lot of work on the rest of their teammates.

A lot of work, maybe more than any creative work, requires long breaks for the best output to be created. When you're well rested, the work often comes easily and you're hungry from it. When you're tired, it's a slog to get going and you'll procrastinate your time away. The next day is even worse.

I've managed work in software, marketing, robotics and construction. In every field I have had to send people home to rest who were doing more harm than good with their tired decision-making. Doing the work that was set for the day and going home to rest is a great productivity and morale boost, in my opinion.

Individual work capacity varies, but in my experience most people overestimate theirs by a lot.

> A lot of work, maybe more than any creative work, requires long breaks for the best output to be created.

There are many counter examples against this statement. Stephen King writes every day with no breaks, not even on Sundays.

From a recent interview he seems to write 2 to 4 hours per day, every day. That adds up to anywhere between 15 and 30 hours per week.

Personal work capacity will vary. Who knows, maybe he'd write better books if he wrote less? We'll likely never know.

First, best work =/= more work. There are middling returns but you will do more work with more time, at least if you are in execution mode.

Second, creatives have to consider the long term as well. Burnout and writer's block are real phenomenon.

Lastly, yes. Some people are just built different. Maybe you min max exercise and diet and can operate longer than an equally skilled peer. Maybe you have less family responsibilities and truly enjoy your work. These factors tend to target the average, not the top.

> It seems more likely that people would retain a similar ratio of slacking to working.

Got it in one. Humans are creatures of habit. You (yes you, oh 10x HN reader) reading this may actually be hyperaware enough to analyse your weeks work and stuff it into 4 days, but I strongly suspect the vast majority of workers would coast the same amount (whatever that number may be) regardless of days worked.

Really depends on your lens here. You calling it "slacking" implies that you see this as purposefully avoiding work. A more optimistic lens suggests that it is mental burnout and general loss of productivity.

Either way, no one is expecting 100% productivity. Or at least, they shouldn't. The question is more on a long range than week by week. Does an employee with a 4 day work week require less days off? Will the motivated ones spend more time on growth with added free time? Will retention increase? These are less opaque factors that should be considered, even if modern corporate culture doesn't value them.

The argument is that if people work fewer hours per week, then they will spend less time slacking off. And the numbers so far show that to be true.

Over the short term.

My concern is that people are consciously avoiding slacking off during the trial period but will later return to their long-run productivity once they grow accustomed to 32 hour weeks.

The other concern I have with these studies, is that these companies appear to be overstaffed in the first place. While we all have some amount of slack during our days, I doubt anyone in my team has enough slack available to get the same amount of work done in 4 days.

I’d want to see a long term study that involves lean companies and people in leas-creative roles before buying into the hype.

Well in order to study it companies need to implement it so I’m fine with that lol

I feel the same. If I work 5 days I'd feel like I'm wasting so much time, when realistically I can do the same amount of work in 4 days. I'm working as a developer so it's also about retaining my attention span. I just can't do it for 5 days straight anymore.

My perfect 4-day workweek is having the Wednesday off so I have a 'mini-weekend' in my week. I only ever have to work 1 more day until I have some time to clear my head, make some music, etc. It feels like a more healthy work/life balance. And I feel sharper after a day off.

This was true for me, I was more productive at 4-days/week, Mon-Thu. I tried having Wed off for the reason you described, but it was hard to get into the flow, both at work and in my home life. Turns out 4 days in a row for work and 3 days in a row for home was actually better for both work productivity and personal satisfaction.

I would love to have Wed/Fri as no meeting days, so I could choose which one to take off depending on how I’m feeling, what the current work streams look like, and personal plans.

A three day weekend is great for a trip. Hump day off is great for a break. Either could be good for an extra day of big exercise/recovery or deep cleaning my house.

And then if working on either day, I get a full day of heads-down time.

Yes. I have tried both Friday off and Wednesday off and the latter is better. Fridays at work are more relaxed anyway, so there is less value in skipping them.

Same for me. With Mon-Tues work, traffic, meetings, kids' drop off and pickup gets me drained. If there were wednesday break it'd be great. Mon-Tues hustle, a mid week break and then wrap up things on Thu-Fri.

So you're working 3.5 days a week? This seems to go against the entire point of 4 solid days > 5 marginal days, which is how you're describing Fridays.

So?

My team currently does Monday through Thursday, although we've done Tuesday through Friday before too. M-Th has aligned much better with other teams in the company. It was never great when someone discovered something late of Friday or over the weekend and our team was the only one there not on Monday to help address it.

That said, I wish we could go to MT and ThF schedule. Only ever have 2 days in a row with out a break would seem pretty magical to me. I'd either had yesterday off, or tomorrow - always. Fridays are such a slower day though that I feel like I miss out on less than I would on Wednesdays.

Same on both counts. MT_TF would be cool, but MTWT has big 'economies of scale' benefits and also reduces unexpected "asynchronous" PTO that we get every time someone wants to take a long weekend. Essentially, almost all of our "working days" should then be working days when we're all here.

Ideally though the 4-day program shouldn't be a thing only for specific teams because the "that team isn't here" side-eye quickly promotes resentment of the "lobsters pulling other lobsters back into the pot" variety.

Teams that need coverage during the full work-week (such as B2B support) should normalize having two schedules which overlap, just as B2C companies have weekend shifts (they don't just force people to work 7 days to achieve this).

Being fully remote gives me 6-8 hours back each week because I don't have to commute. It has been huge for my mental health, mostly because I'm able to get more sleep.

10-12 hours back a week here. Life is so much better.

Same, it has always blown my mind how I'm consistently one of the most productive members on any team I've been on yet I know how much time I spend just idling. It's the spurts of activity where I get my work done and time off 100% correlates with the intensity and length of those spurts/flow states.

I used to work manual labour in the reforestation industry and there were two main schedules we would work: 4-and-1s (criminal) and 3-and-1s (manageable). That change in ratio really adds up.

Sadly, management mostly worked us 4-and-1s because, despite the fact that each day we were less productive, over 3 months more trees would get planted in less time.

4-and-1s of gruelling manual labour inevitably leads to burn out. It did every season without fail, and we all expected it. Burnout was a built-in condition. The key here is that labour tolerated it only because the work was seasonal. There was always an end in sight. And most folks spent the off-season on a beach somewhere it was cheap enough to live off the earnings, surfing and eating tacos all day (or the equivalent activity).

The salaryperson should not accept burn out as a built-in; we are labourers for life and we need to learn how to find dignity in such a reality. When I first transitioned to a salaried worker, I brought the burn out mentality to my work and had a lot of pride in that. And though full of bride, the burnt out husk that I as had little dignity.

Ratios that allow for more life and less labour is that dignity.

> I already spend an embarrassing amount of time slacking off daily, it's not like I'm pressed for time to get stuff done in the office.

Just because that is true for you doesn't mean it is true in general. Like, imagine a surgeon -- would he/she spend 8 hours a week slacking? Or a radiologoist -- can he/she read the same number of slides in 32 than 40? Or a barrista at starbucks?

Also, if you worked 32 hours, would you still slack off? Is there a reason to expect that your slack/work ratio would change? You claim you'd be "in a better mood" -- but as humans we tend to adjust to the circumstances we are in. So I'm not sure that would be the case long term.

Do you have any idea how much break time surgeons take? Tons of them work 3day weeks because it’s more efficient. The rest of their time is either at home or “in clinic” doing busywork.

https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/3-day-work-week-wit...

I suspect you’ve pulled “surgeon” from you-know-where on account of it being a high-status, high-value role. But don’t bring that baggage into the conversation.

I think you were a little harsher than necessary, but this is a good point. Surgeons aren't doing surgery 40 hours a week. They'd be making tons of mistakes if they did that and they'd be getting burned out. The last surgery I had the doc only did ops on Tuesdays and Fridays.

In many ways it's a good analogy to writing code 40 hours a week. It takes high concentration and the quality of output drops heavily when you're tired or need a break or rest.

What I see here that they completely exhaust thenselves with working in several hospitals parallel, consiliums etc, then they go do surgeries in between

Also my radiologist neighbor works 3 day workweeks in 12 hour shifts I think. Or used to. I forget the details. So that example from GP doesn't make sense to me either.

3x12 doesn't seem too bad to me. You are zonked after but 4 days off is pretty sweet.

"Residents can work up to an average of 80 hours per week. The aforementioned general surgeons work an average of 60.78 hours. Meanwhile, orthopedic surgeons work an average of 54.17 hours per week, and plastic surgeons operate just under 50 hours per week."

https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/how-many-hours-do-doctors-....

and yet you describe in-clinic work as "busywork". Pre/post op is super important, actually having to deal with human beings... this actually sounds a lot like software developers who could use a little more practice with the non-coding aspects of their jobs.

Busy work when compared to literally manually cutting and sewing someone’s organs to make sure they stay alive, yes.

If you've spent any time in the corporate world, I think you know that the majority of people slack off for part of the day. The medical profession has its own set of time problems that I don't think should be conflated with the time problems in the corporate world.

Your second point is definitely valid. Changing habits is really hard, and some of us are able to get by while spending very little time doing work because we work so much more quickly than the average drone.

"Slacking off" doesn't enter into the equation. Is your output worth more to the company than it costs to pay you to produce it? If yes, then great there is no problem to be solved.

One way to think of it is that you're not always being paid to be doing something specific, but rather to be available on short (e.g. 15 minutes or less) notice.

Sure, some roles require that, but most definitely not the majority.

In development at least, most of the times I hear this, the "availability" is only needed for random unplanned meetings from useless managers that can't actually plan or work asynchronously.

The organization as a whole or individual managers can't do their jobs well and they make the people that actually get shit done pay for it by "standing by" for no good reason.

Ironically, they also completely ruin productivity with these interruptions.

> In development at least, most of the times I hear this, the "availability" is only needed for random unplanned meetings from useless managers that can't actually plan or work asynchronously.

Really? Because it's pretty routine for me to get pinged on IRC/slack/whatever by another engineer who's looking for help with something. Obviously I set the expectation that I'm not going to be able to instantly reply to every ping so some things are going to have to be async, but there's definitely a lot more than just managers that could ping me.

Are those pings that require immediate attention? In my experience, no.

The vast majority of time in my career, if you have a minimum amount of decent planning, you won't get blocked because you can't talk to another person immediately. And on healthy organizations, even if you do get blocked, you can simply work on something else while that particular task is blocked.

If you really scrutinize all these availability claims, they pretty much all come down to lack of planning.

Planning for blockers, planning for communication gaps, planning for maximizing asynchronous work, planning for decisions that require specific people, etc.

So many people are horrified by the word "blocked" when it's most times an artificial block created by their own systems. If I can't move forward on something, I'll start on something else and come back to the other one later.

This. If you have a high-functioning team with good async culture/habits, in my experience "blockers" are not a big deal. I work closely with 5 other people and we are in 6 different time zones and I can honestly say that we are more productive than teams I have worked with in a traditional office setting. Sure, I cannot just walk over to a teammate's desk and ask a question, but I also don't have anyone walking over to my desk to interrupt me with a question.

We are all intentional about _over communicating_ what we are working on and where we will need support from from each other. Everything else pretty much just flows naturally from that. There are (rare) times were I cannot progress on something that day because I need feedback from someone who will not be online for 10 more hours, but it is just a built-in assumption that this will happen and I always have other work queued up that I can do if I get stuck....

> Because it's pretty routine for me to get pinged on IRC/slack/whatever by another engineer who's looking for help with something.

That's why when we were all colocated in one building, I was logged out. I made it clear they were welcome to drop by my cube whenever they wanted, but I would not be available by IM. It cut the interrupts by half, easily. People use you as a crutch. When you raise the cost even minimally, they are suddenly willing to solve their own problems.

That's the one aspect that COVID destroyed. Now I have to be online as people can't just walk to my cube.

What I have started to do is to block an hour every other day, and when someone sends me a Slack message that feels like I am just their crutch, I snooze it until that scheduled block of time. It works like a charm. I still keep an eye on the urgent questions that I have to answer quickly, and many questions have evaporated by the time I come back to them.

This is another skill that like knowing when to say no, seems counterintuitive when first entering the working world. Sometimes the correct answer is not to drop everything and slowly explain something for the third time that would have been trivial to Google in the first place. You are not doing yourself or them any favors by being overly available for every little question. The kind of person that does this often has a kind of learned helplessness that they need to be shaken out of from time to time.

> This is another skill that like knowing when to say no

Logging out of IM when busy is a simpler skill :-)

It's not about who can ping you. It's about the expectation of urgency behind that ping. A "ping" from a manager calling an unexpected meeting demands a lot more attention than a ping from a colleague looking for help most of the time.

There's an opportunity cost question. If your output is worth more to the company than your costs, but it would be easy for them to hire someone at the same cost who has more output, then you're at risk.

People are not replaceable parts. HR would absolutely love it if all developer 3s were the same - and it should be the case that one developer 3 is more like another developer 3 than a developer 2 - but people are different and have their own quirks and strengths.

And, of course, you're ignoring training costs which are usually a big factor in companies that aren't incompetent. That Senior Dev that's 15% above marketing asking rate but who knows your system inside and out... do you really want to spend six years training a (potentially highly proficient) newbies on all your systems and the subtle intricacies. And how long will it be until you, the manager, trust that new Senior Dev like you did the old? How many fires will you both need to walk through until you see an availability alert and just trust the Senior Dev either is dealing with it or would be ringing your phone if they need extra resources?

It can take quite a while to get a new employee (again, even a highly proficient one) to that place where in a meet your product team can be going over a proposal and your Senior Dev raises there hand and proceeds to calmly explain the incompatibility with the current system and how much it will cost to overcome those incompatibilities - and if they remain silent then you know they've done those calculations and consider it in hand.

Hiring a replacement is an extremely complicated calculations that most companies just punt on - for good reason.

The vast majority of people have been replaceable parts since the days of Henry Ford. If you're not one of those people, congratulations on your privilege, but I bet you're not as irreplaceable as you might believe.

It's a spectrum. You can replace someone to operate a cash register in a week. You can't replace a surgeon in a year, depending on how specialized and renowned. But sure, the majority of lower income work is more replaceable.

>but I bet you're not as irreplaceable as you might believe.

Given all the tech layoffs, maybe. But I think that has more to do with lacking either the money or interest to invest in certain products given economic forecasts.

The fact that your typical tech interview is a month+ and at least 3 (usually 5 or more) rounds of interviews suggest that it's not trivial to replace a dev. Tech is probably middle of the road to train, which is why they'd rather grab interns from college instead of setting up apprenticeships that can fine tailor towards the exact business needs.

> but it would be easy for them to hire someone at the same cost who has more output

History has shown that it's not easy at all to replace someone. It's difficult to find good people and convince them to join you and it can take a long time. If you can write code, you should always have the upper hand on your employer especially if your co-workers also realize that.

It does enter the equation, because idle time «working» or slacking off at work could be better spent pursuing other interests that improve quality of life and most likely increase productivity over time.

I don't think this time should be labeled as "slacking off". It's just not working and there's nothing wrong with that if you've already met your obligations.

> Just because that is true for you doesn't mean it is true in general. Like, imagine a surgeon -- would he/she spend 8 hours a week slacking? Or a radiologoist -- can he/she read the same number of slides in 32 than 40? Or a barrista at starbucks?

My primary care doc has an assistant whose only job is to follow her around and input data into the electronic medical records system.

There are countless blog posts from doctors complaining that a 1/3rd of their time is spent on redundant paperwork.

For a related humorous take on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFGLDcTKFIY

My best friend is a radiologist and I guarantee he’s not working 32 out of his 40 reading slides - there could definitely be a way to organise them to have 32 maximum hours with the same output

FWIW, my brother-in-law is too. I and do guarantee that he is reading slides every working hour.

mkaic isn't saying definitely they would be in a better mood, just that they -think- 3-day weekends would be good for their mental health and mood.

> Just because that is true for you doesn't mean it is true in general. Like, imagine a surgeon -- would he/she spend 8 hours a week slacking?

Don't many surgeons only work a handful of weeks per year?

They're essentially already on a much better model.

Not to my knowledge. Source: I know a neuro and ortho.

Yup, another way to think about it is that it’s a difference of 16h, not 8h. You work 8h less and gain 8h of free time.

Or you work 8h less and gain 24 of "contiguous hours that you control" per week.

Yes, the disproportionately huge increase in contiguous time off is the big win in my book.

We could just work Monday and Tuesday with a 40 hour marathon each week fueled by coffee, donuts and an occasional pizza.

Well... :D You can't add the gained time twice. It is like saying, instead of spending 20 USD on coffee, you spend 15 USD. You didn't gain 10 bucks, you are still left with only five more than you would have otherwise.

Leisure hours in a 5-day work week: 72 (8 hours per day and 16 on weekends)

Work hours in a 5-day work week: 40

Difference: 32 hours

Leisure hours in a 4-day work week: 80

Work hours in a 4-day work week: 32

Difference: 48 hours

That’s the diffence. You had 72 hours before, now you have 80 hours of leisure time. It’s 8 hours more of leisure time.

GP - "another way to think about it is that it’s a difference of 16h"

You - "That’s the diffence."

In my reply I said the effective gain is 8 hours.

No matter what kind of math you do, working one day less doesn’t give you two extra days off.

I don't work on Fridays, I'm never going back.

If you're off from 5pm thursday to 9am monday, that's 88 hours, which is 52 percent of a 168-hour week. Goood.

It's like I could've written this comment. I'm working on 4 days per week, and I agree with everything you just said. I've worked on both 5 and 4 days per week. The issue in my case with 5 is: I get insomnia issues for a multitude of reasons. I also have them with 4 days per week, but it's easier to build in fallbacks and so on. My 3rd free day is on the Wednesday for this reason.

>> I could easily meet my weekly objectives in 32 hours rather than 40...

Sounds like someone needs some more tasks for their to do list. I have to abandon about half of the tasks I am meant to do, for lack of time. I can send you some of them to fill that eight hours.

Who here actually works a 40-hour week? HN isn't a bunch of union factory workers punching timecards each day. I'd bet 60 is more common than 40.

>Sounds like someone needs some more tasks for their to do list.

Sure, if there is a corresponding pay increase for those tasks.

60 hours? What the fuck?

5x12 is 60. Many people in tech regularly do 12-hour days.

Some people in certain parts of tech. In the Stack Overflow Developer Survey, the average number of hours worked per week in the US was 42 [0]. 2020 may have been a weird year, but not weird enough to make 60 normal.

I would consider whether your employer is trying to normalize 60 hours to exploit you, rather than it actually reflecting reality.

[0] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#work-hours-wo...

I have never worked with anyone doing 12 hours a day 5 days a week as usual. Then again I’m in Europe .

I wonder if this has to do with your

> Old Life: Attorney

All the lawyers I know are basically married to their jobs. I think workaholism is just part of law culture

Lawyers have some pretty decent progression and it's very common to open your own firm later in life. It makes sense for those with aspirations to work that hard for that payoff.

Tech, not as much. There are certainly unicorns that probably became billionaires after burning years of midnight oil, but many tech ventures fail, regardless of the experience involved. There is always a need for a lawyer, meanwhile.

I wouldn't do all that overtime on a gamble, and I argue you don't even need to do overtime to win such a gamble in tech.

>Who here actually works a 40-hour week?

Uhh, I did? First job I had a total of 5 weeks of OT. 2nd job never had to work above 8 hours a day, de facto nor de jure. I even had a 4 day experiment for 4 months there and it was lovely. Third job, no overtime.

Did I do some extra hours here and there off the clock? Sure. Especially with wfh I can get fixated and want to spend a bit of time getting something compileable. But outside of that one OT period listed above, I never worked above 50 hours.

For your sake, I hope you're being paid with an assumption of a 60-hour week.

My productivity actually tends to scale negatively with the number of tasks on my to-do list :P. The more there is on it, the fewer items I'm likely to complete!

Anyone in European Union most likely only works 40, because we have actual employee protection laws here.

You're almost definitely right and I have an experiment with a sample size of one that confirms your hypothesis.

I used to work 4 days a week but there was absolutely no reduction in workload compared to a 5 day role and plenty of meetings scheduled on my day off.

It was great working 4 days; Wednesdays were my day off and every Tuesday afternoon would have a bit of a "Friday feeling" and I was never more than two days away from a day off. Plus I could go to the psychologist and doctor and so on.

When I went back to 5 days a week, my workload was identical and my output was identical. Stress levels were not hugely different because I just slacked off more with the 5 days.

The impact of moving from 5 days to 4 days for a knowledge worker is probably a bit less than you would expect in every respect. Stress was not drastically reduced (I did school run and pickup on the Wednesday so it was only about 4.5 hours extra), and there was no huge change to my performance, probably just an increase in quality and efficiency.

10 years later...

mkaic

I am a firm believer that I would get more work done with a 3-day workweek than I currently do with my 4-day workweek. I already spend an embarrassing amount of time slacking off daily, it's not like I'm pressed for time to get stuff done in the office. I could easily meet my weekly objectives in 24 hours rather than 32, and having 4-day weekends every weekend I think would be incredible for my mental health and mood. And when I'm in a better mood, I get more work done!

One thing I feel like a lot of people don't realize is just how big a difference it is to go from a 4-day week to a 3-day week. Sure, it's "just one day" but when you think about the ratio between time-on and time-off, the shift becomes a lot more dramatic. 4-on, 3-off means you spend over twice as many days working as not working. 3-on, 4-off means you spend a nearly equal number of days on each. It's just one day of difference, but it feels like a major, major shift.

You copied and pasted, and edited 5->4 and 4->3 in an attempt to make a point about a slippery slope.

But you didn't edit this sentence:

> 4-on, 3-off means you spend over twice as many days working as not working.

Which now doesn't make sense. Proving that it's _not_ as simple as a slippery slope.

Yes. I was quite productive and happy at 4 days/week, and felt a strong part of the team that was still working 5 days/week. But when I tried a more "part-time" schedule of 3 days/week, I was less satisfied and less productive and felt less a part of the team. 4 days/week is still full-time, 3 days/week is part-time.

Continual advances in technology can and should result in people working less for the same productive output.

Vote for it!

That "should" is a government creature; to the market, on the other hand, advances in technology "should" only increase productivity when (preferably now less) people are working the same amount of time (and maybe how about even more time?).

As a boss of quite a large team, I think it's ok to not have everyone be hyper productive 5 days a week and I don't want people cramming 5 days of work in to 4. I want a little slack and room to pivot for my team during the week. I need people to have a spare few hours in the week that they maybe feel is unproductive in order for them to be able to pick up a couple new things that crop up. I'm not able to schedule 40 perfect hours of tasks for people to start on from 9am Monday. Where are as a team Friday 3pm looks very different to where we'd be Thursday 8pm if everyone was nose to the grindstone the whole time.

Also if youre a business that is basically a team for hire to a client who works 5 days a week, what do you tell them when they come up with some valid but urgent request during "normal" business time and that key person isn't there because they've already done their 40 hours. "Sorry we'll have to pick that up next week" very often doesn't fly with them ("what do you mean that person only does 4 days a week, we need that thing done today" is not a conversation I want to have). I cannot always afford to hire more people to cover that unicorn 10x team member who wants to work 4 days.

I'm pretty certain a bus driver couldn't do eight hours worth of driving in six hours.

No, but two bus drivers could.

No. Neither can two clerks keep a store open for eight hours in six hours. Much like nine women can't give birth to a baby in one month.

Uhh, we call them "shifts". 2 clerks can keep one store open (assuming we only need one clerk) anywhere from 6-12 hours if we do 6 hour shifts.

A store isn't a baby, one employee isn't needed 24/7 to keep the lights on.

Right. That still takes as many man-hours as the opening hours of the store. Which is much different from the jobs where time isn't part of the output. Which is the whole point I'm making.

Picking all the oranges from a grove takes eight hours today. Maybe I can do it in six hours if...

Turning an inbox worth of papers takes eight hours today. Maybe I can do it in six hours if...

Keeping the store open for eight hours takes eight hours today. It will always take eight hours. Because the hours are part of the output.

>That still takes as many man-hours as the opening hours of the store. Which is much different from the jobs where time isn't part of the output

It's not about output, it's about quality of life and not making people work their lives away for corporate billionaires. If you need more manpower than a full time working hours, said billionaire corporations pay more for it in overtime or reduce hours.

To go off your metaphors, you (the corporation) can pick oranges, in the grove in 6 hours if you hire more skilled labor. If that's not possible (or if said labor is too expensive), you hire more people to make it possible. If a store needs to stay open for 8 hours with 6 hour workers, you pay 2 hours overtime or pay for two employees with overlapping shifts. Pay for your labor.

Not too hard to do if you drive a lot faster ;)

This would apply to a lot of tech workers I think, especially those working on big tangled mess codebases (which is most companies).

On bad codebases, it's simply not physically possible to work 40 hrs/wk and not burn out, so people find all kinds of ways to cut down on hours working, either by goofing off, or going for long coffee breaks, or playing ping pong or whatever.

A 4 day week would be way more effective in these cases. The problem, as usual, is management. They just cannot get over the hurdle that their job is to maximise company performance, not to crack whips.

I've been on 4/32 for a couple years now and I definitely feel I've been more productive than ever. The main difference is a bunch of idle time in between things has largely gone away.

The simple fact that more or less every company in the entire world does not do 4 day work weeks, when apparently all they have to do is switch their workers to a 4 day work week in order to magically gain more productive workers, as you claim, means either 1) every person running every company in the world is stupid and you're smarter than them about worker productivity, or 2) there's more downsides that make a 4 day work week not worth it, such as in reality only a small fraction of workers actually being more productive

Except there's no rationale to the 5-day work week either. Not too log ago, the proletariat class worked 7 days, then 6 due to religious coercion, then 5 due to unions. The owner class would have no problem asking labor to work 7 days a week again if it weren't for pesky labor laws.

Social and institutional inertia is a powerful, *powerful* thing. The longer something's been around, the longer it takes to change. But just because the status quo is the status quo doesn't mean it's the optimal solution!

You assume the 5 day work week was made with logic and kept due to logic. That's your first mistake. Look at all the forced RTOs happening to show that business logic isn't entirely rooted in hard numbers.

They aren't stupid but companies are inherently risk averse. And short of a global pandemic companies won't want to change what they don't see as broken.

Just watched this interesting video comparing how much we work today to medieval times.

https://youtu.be/hvk_XylEmLo?si=uOTc3ndf87enwrZK

TL;DR we work a LOT more hours now than substance farmers did. They worked 4-6 hours a day and only worked about half of the days out of the year.

I think you mean sustenance... But maybe not. :-)

Subsistence farmers, most likely.

There we go!

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