Tech CEO: 4-day work week didn't hurt or help productivity | Hacker News Reader

Tech CEO: 4-day work week didn't hurt or help productivity

theregister.com

26 pointsrntn12 comments

The elephant in the room is that if moving to a 4-day week from a 5-day week is neutral then it shows the amount of slack people have in their 5-day week...

More accurate conclusion is that the upper limit for efficient working hours is far less than the standard 40. This underlines how ridiculous the people who claim to work for even more than that already too high amount.

That's your opinion, not a "more accurate" conclusion.

I think the upper limit, really is consecutive hours before you need a good rest to be able to start over. If you can do that over 4 days, you can do it over 5. A standard 7-8 hours a day allows both for breaks during the day, and good rest overnight so I don't believe that it is "ridiculous" to think that it is sustainable over 5 days. (Happy to be proved wrong).

As an anecdote or personal experience, I think we've all been in offices (all/most offices?) where people were not exactly flat out all day long...

> people were not exactly flat out all day long...

Which is kind of the point

Give people some of their free time back. If they can get the same productivity in less time, why keep them slack at the office

We should not be trying to optimize to get people to go flat out all day long for 40 hour weeks

Obviously the point from the company's perspective is that they are leaving 20% productivity on the table because people slack off instead of doing actual work.

There must be a balance. You can't just say, as you do, that employees might as well go home since they aren't working.

> You can't just say, as you do, that employees might as well go home since they aren't working.

Why not?

As long as you are satisfied with the productivity of that employee, what does it really matter if they produce their output in 10 hours or 40?

I get that the idea is that "if they can do this in 10 hours, then in 40 hours they should produce 4x as much!" But that's clearly not reality. All that happens is that once a worker's capacity is tapped out, they find workplace-acceptable ways to sandbag

Employers can seethe about it all they want but that's the reality

> As long as you are satisfied with the productivity of that employee, what does it really matter if they produce their output in 10 hours or 40?

I have different expectations depending on whether you worked 10 or 40 hours. The _reality_ is that you and your employer need to come to an agreement on expectations.

> I have different expectations depending on whether you worked 10 or 40 hours

If I can meet your 40 hours expectations in 10 hours, then what?

You adjust your expectations upwards

You want my maximum efficiency for what you think you're paying me for, which is 40 hours

But if I know I'm going to do 40 hours minimum either way, what is my incentive to work harder and get more done?

"That's your job, it's what I pay you for, it is your contract" you say.

But you pay me either way and as long as you're happy with my output then it doesn't matter if I actually worked 10 hours or 80

Yes, that's exactly the wrong perspective to take. The right one is that you shouldn't try to squeeze the last bits from a lemon. The only get is bitterness.

I agree with the daily upper limit (though coffee/tea can extend it...)

But don't discount the amount of creative problem-solving that happens in the back of your head after-hours. This roughly stays constant in a 4-day week.

Not merely my opinion, rather my interpretation of the results in the article.

This is an opinion: everyone who tries to squeeze more out of their knowledge workers is a moron and/or malevolent and should be demoted or fired.

I thought we learned from Covid that a supply chain with no slack breaks as soon as you put a little extra tension on it. Same thing with a workforce.

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