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Comment by jinushaun | Hacker News Reader

6 hrs? Man, that sounds horrible. I'd never get anything done. I'd rather have 4-10s. And extra two hours of maker time to offset all the bullshit meetings, plus a real weekend.

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While I like the idea of a three day weekend, aren't you addressing a difference problem? The swedish experiment is seeking to increase productivity and decrease the time employees spend being sick. You're trying to compensate for a distruptive work environment by moving a large part of your workday. It would make more sense to address the things that keep you from doing your job effectively. If you're correct, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that you could work 8 hour days, four days a week and be just a productive and allowing a three day weekend.

The issue is of cause that in many large companies some people jobs are more or less defined as keeping you from doing yours. The owner of a Danish consulting company once postulated that: "Many larger (Danish) companies could fire all of their CUSTOMERS, and 40 - 60% of the employees would still have a job to do." - His point being that a large part of the workforce isn't in anyway related to providing services or products to the customers. Having worked for a large telco, I wouldn't be surprised if he's right. The point is that a portion of these people, which doesn't really produce anything will eventually do something that distrupt the "makers", because they need to make their presents known.

Wouldn't it be 4 8's? Why are we constrained to requiring 40 hours/week when productivity has skyrocketed over the last 30 years?

Hours/week should be indexed to a productivity index, just as entitlements are indexed to inflation/CPI.

A lot of people like the feeling of progression. If, whenever I improve somewhere, I have to cut back elsewhere to keep myself at the same overall level of productivity, that just feels bad. I'd rather just get more work done and get a raise.

I don't think the your parent was talking on an individual level, but a more macroeconomic level where this appears to not be happening[1].

[1] http://www.winningwordsproject.com/assets/pages/340/producti...

Correct. Thank you.

If it doesn't happen at the individual level, why should it happen at the systemic level?

For a good bit, I worked 4 hour days (plus probably an hour of planning time): but I didn't go to work till after 5, and I spent all 4 hours on the machine, coding and testing. It was one of the most productive periods of my career.

I believe I've seen quite a few studies that shows that the longer workdays the fewer work produced per unit of time. I can't seem to find them right now so take it with a grain of salt, but it sounds like longer and fewer workdays would not be desirable from your company's point of view in that case.

What I personally would like to see it how applicable these results are between jobs. The jobs in question here are quite unskilled such as caring for the elderly, and are physically demanding. What works for them might not work for a programmer for example.

To your first point, I think a common misconception with this as developers and skilled knowledge workers is that we only look at our personal productivity. Yes, an individual programmer's productivity may be decreased by working 50 hours in a week, but if the company's productivity overall is increased, you'd be hard-pressed to make an argument against it. This is assuming that extended periods of 50 hours weekly (including all planning and meetings, not just programming) is below the level that would induce burnout in most, or that that's factored into whether it's "better" for the company or not.

The point here is that if you have 50 hours of developer time, you will get the most output if you spread it over more days than one long stretch. Therefore the 4 day workweek may be a tougher sell than the 6 hour workday.

I hope to find a job that will let me work this schedule some day. As long as those extra two hours were as if everyone else in the office had already left so I wouldn't be interrupted.

Look for remote (telecommute) jobs. Our (tiny) company is 100% remote, and people work whatever schedules they want (as long as they're around for an hour on Monday afternoons for a weekly meeting). The tradeoff is we have to try to be available to help out in our off hours if something urgent comes up, but that doesn't tend to happen often.

Yea--4-10's. My day's union had a opportunity to work 4 days; and the membership refused? I still think the votes were rigged. These were San Francisco Electricians in the seventies.

Probably because they preferred 8 hour days plus OT :-) for non professional jobs often its the OT/Spanish Practices where you make bank.

I have a mate (who's now in hr/ir) who started as an erector in heavy engineering some of the story's he tells abut the 70's even the tea boy got £900 as a bung .

Yeah, I did construction for a while, and everyone was kind of happy when we had 6/12s during crunch time. Sure, it sucked while you were doing it, but man that overtime.

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