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Comment by jaymzcampbell | Hacker News Reader

I swapped to a 4 day week (with relevant pay cut, which certainly made it easier to justify with my employer) in order to finish my MSc without burnout and it's changed my life. The entire balance of the working week has changed - 4 days is almost a 50-50 split which makes an enormous difference to your psychology (0.57:0.71).

My employer has stated they've not noticed any change in productivity either, including on the day I'm off (I do a video handover and notes every Thursday for the rest of the team) - which I partly credit with the fact I no longer can justify "oh I'll just leave that to tomorrow" + feeling energised come Monday after 3 days of my own time.

I really would struggle to entertain changing back to 5 days now.

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So your employer is getting the same work out of you with less pay? Sounds like you should push for your old pay back.

Kind of amazing that they just admitted that freely.

It’s only leverage if somebody else offers higher pay for 4d week, which isn’t too different than the standard “other companies pay better” leverage

I see the 4-day week as a desirable perk that may be available within high-performing organizations. Modifying pay is probably more a bargaining chip for ICs who are working 4 days when others are not.

Outside of knowledge work, the 4-day week appears where demand outstrips supply. It's pretty common for dental offices, an one example, to work 4 days _just because they can_. The bos can pay themselves several hundred thousand dollars a year and pay their staff competitive salaries without giving up their long weekend plans.

tbh I was surprised to hear it myself. I work in an agency for a client 100% of my billable time. I don't work on Fridays where I certainly would've continued my day-to-day tasks. I'm kind of a tech lead on things (it's a little fuzzy) so as long as I've got things stacked up enough for the rest of the team and people are unblocked, work continues. I think they meant it in a "we haven't had to slow down or get blocked" sort of way.

I think it mainly speaks to the fact that "most stuff is not actually critical". So people have adapted accordingly and the work that needs to be done, is done, and that which isn't so pressing can wait.

I did the same as you and it felt so good. I did a break on the Wednesdays and it was perfect. I really felt way better just because of this break every 2 days. Don't know about the productivity though.

I had part of my team covertly swap to 4 day work weeks, while the rest of us were working our butts off. They kept their original pay.

There's a few ways to roll out 4 day work weeks. This was probably the worst.

> 4 days is almost a 50-50 split

If you're off from (say) Thursday 5pm until Monday 9am, that's 88 consecutive hours away from work, out of a week of 168 hours. Winning!

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