I’m starting to believe the obfuscation and lack of information regarding “four days but actually working longer” or “four days with reduced hours” models is deliberate.
The “studies” surrounding this topic are laughably bad.
The authors almost always have conflicts of interest. The studies are often funded and/or staffed by proponents of the 4 day work week.
The outcomes are mostly subjective and self reported, which is problematic because employees clearly have a vested interest in claiming they are more productive than they really might be.
They’re also short term, and dont address the doubt every executive has which is whether employees eventually mean revert back to their historical hourly productivity levels.
Then there is the fact that they don’t bother controlling for how much work the employees were previously doing. Many white collar workers are underworked. If you cut their hours it won’t impact output, because they were bottlenecking on work availability not time. What employers want to know is not what happens in over resourced offices, but rather what happens in well managed offices where employee workload was already optimised.
These studies are entirely irrelevant. No one will ever convince any corporation or private owner that they can get more work out of people working less, even if it were true (which I personally highly doubt).
And that is also entirely irrelevant. The relevant question is whether our society can maintain similar levels of good fortune if we all worked less. And the historical evidence is clear: there are many times more workers today, using tools that are monumentally more advanced, than in the 1930s or even 1950s. And yet, we are all required to work just as much as we used to 100+ years ago, while being paid less in real terms.
"What employers want to know is not what happens in poorly managed offices, but what happens in well managed offices where employee workload was already optimised."
What I want to know is, whether we can manage a society, where one part is not always overworked and the other part bored to death. But rather a healthy balance. 4 days workweek might help as a step in that direction, but I agree that there is way too much wishful thinking involved in those studies proposing them.
In France in 1851, a new law limited child labour to 10 hours per day between 8 and 14 years old. Then max 12hrs until 16 (Then you are conscripted at 18).
Maybe people can't produce more than 4 days of work per week or 5 hours per day; in that case the productivity would be the same and people working more are essentially wasting time.
My empirical evidence say otherwise (sample_size=1) I can be quite productive up to ~70hrs doing knowledge work (I've been on it for 8 months, hours are tracked and connected to tasks, no idling is counted), but that's pushing it and it might not be sustainable for longer period of time. My will to live is certainly at historical lows.
Lawyers in big law can also do 60-80 hours (while ruining their life) so I think it's reasonable.
I've heard people in other professions (eg. nurses) pushing 90-100hrs but they are not actively thinking all their working time.
If 4-day workers are 25% more productive than 5-day workers, or 5-day workers are 20% less productive than 4-day workers, then no.
While it's hard to increase productivity by 25%, it's not a problem for workers to drop productivity by 20%. Owners can work as much as they want, of course.
Do these companies close on a week day, like they just don’t open on a Monday. Or do the staff just do 4 out of the 5 days, but the company operates all week and the team need coordinating so they have coverage all week? I’d love to do this at my place, but would want to close the whole business and I don’t think our clients would be happy.
My company works 24/7. I don’t. Nobody does. Vast majority work “office hours”. Those working shifts tend to do 3 or 4x 12 hour days, those working flexible hours work when required. I might work on a Saturday morning to deliver a specific part of a project, or get a fault escalated at 11pm after the runbooks have run out, but then I will obviously be off for a day or two in the week in exchange.
The company I work for, Wonde, allows staff to choose the day. There's negotiation with the manager to ensure appropriate coverage across the week, and a fair bit of flexibility around swapping days around as and when necessary too.
I am co-founder of a 5 year old tech startup with 50 staff that introduced a 4dww / 32hr work week a little over 2 years ago.
Since are a lot of questions surrounding 4dww - Thought I might be able to offer some insights.
1. “four days but actually working longer” or “four days with reduced hours”.
-- We offer 32hrs work week, rather than the standard 40hrs in our home country. This is generally taken as 4 days, but some work 5 days with less ours (especially those with school aged children).
2. "What employers want to know is not what happens in poorly managed offices, but what happens in well managed offices where employee workload was already optimised."
-- I am going to be biased but we spent 3 year with standard work week, and I think we were highly productive as an organisation, our internal metrics, output and surveys agreed with this assessment. After 2 years, we haven't seen any noticeable / measurable decrease in output or performance compared to 5dww, or since we started.
3. "Do these companies close on a week day, like they just don’t open on a Monday."
-- We generally allow people to choose any day off they want, put have them put it in ~4 weeks before hand. Most people take either Monday or Friday, which means we always have some staff covering the days others have off. In smaller teams that speak with customers (sales/cs) they agree among the team who takes what days, and can trade, as long as we always have coverage.
4. "4 days week sounds great, if you hate your job and you already earn less than you deserve."
-- We pay top percentile as other startup/tech companies in our country's HQ. Anyone joining us shouldn't feel they are being paid any less than someone on 5dww -- and that is because we expect their output to match those of others working 5dww.
Overall we've found the move to be extremely successful at attracting and retaining talent with I believe helps us be significantly more productive than other startups I know doing 5dww.
We have a few things that I think help with our 4dww, include remote async with very flexible hours, hiring worldwide, transparent salaries and virtually no meetings in engineering.
One thing this flexibility allows us to do is ask our staff to be 'switched on' when they are working -- if for any reason they aren't being productive, we encourage them stop working, do something else, and come back later. We expect our staff aren't reading reddit, posting on hacker news, etc during work-time -- in return for the 32hrs we want to see it (almost) all productive.
I believe this, along with staff dropped the least important work gives us a similar/same output as 40hrs. With the benefit that we've been able to attract talent that otherwise may have gone elsewhere, with a turnover of virtually 0%.
Happy to answer any specifics about how we've implemented thing, or what I've seen as a co-founder leading a small (16 people) engineering team.
Retaining those 2-10x engineers because they can’t even imagine leaving your company gives you far higher productivity gains than 1 extra work day a week.
It's worked well with pretty role. However, for our Customer Success / Support team hours = hours out is more true than other roles. So for these roles its more about being able to attract people who are really good at their roles.
We don't track hours at all -- staff are expected to track their own hours and keep them to 32hrs. Occasionally something happens and people work longer hours in a week, however we then give them time off the following week.
Just like remote work, this turns into a culture war issue every time (and the comments turn into a cesspit). I really wish people would stop arguing and let the market show us what's actually more effective.
The market is strongly influenced by the culture though. For example nothing now is actually different to before covid. The only thing that has changed is the culture - people like working from home and are less willing to give it up.
Working hours is simply a negotiation between employers (who obviously want more hours for the same price), and workers (who want the opposite). Again culture has a large influence on that - it's very difficult to persuade people to work 6 days a week (in the West) because culturally we no longer do that.
You can't ignore culture and just say "let the market decide" because culture is part of the market.
Sure, but the point I'm making is that figuring out whether this stuff works is easy - you let companies decide, you let them fairly pay employees, and you see which companies turn out on top.
> "let the market show us what's actually more effective"
I am not sure what are the mechanisms for that. Would that simply be what maximizes short term profits?
It sort of sounds like a suggestion to remove all restrictions on the work week so that the free market can choose the winning system.
Why not decide instead to take a more human approach where people can work productively and still have enough workless time to rest and be healthy and also have time and energy for hobbies, family, exercise, etc.?
It wasn't clear as to whether this also included companies that allow you to work 'compressed hours' - ie a normal 37.5 hour week but in 4 days (start earlier, finish later), which is increasingly common.
Just give me five days of remote work—that’s all I ask. My job doesn’t require me to add to the traffic, yet there are middle managers rallying for RTO to maintain their relevance.
Unless your strictly monitored, 5 day work from home can become work when you feel like but respond quickly during office hours as long as you get things done, which is fine by me and my employer as long as the get things done and respond during office hours actually happens
Since 2003, my companies have always been structured to support a 5-day, 30-hour workweek, and most employees follow this model. I was fortunate to implement this approach long before it became a widely discussed topic. The reasoning was straightforward: many employees were also studying, and the complexity, and intense focus of our work, such as reverse engineering, made adding two extra artificial hours unnecessary. However, shifting to a four-day workweek would be challenging in our context due to synchronization issues.
That said, some employees do work full-time, particularly those in operations and other roles that require broader availability to communicate with external parties. There are also situations where someone needs to stay longer to complete a critical task, these exceptions are inevitable, but having clear guidelines helps ensure they remain just that: exceptions.
A related challenge, as highlighted by @rsavage, is the use of social media during work hours, especially in a remote setting. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to fully control, but what matters is cultivating a company culture that balances flexibility with accountability. The key is staying aware and making adjustments before things get out of hand.
Readit News
The authors almost always have conflicts of interest. The studies are often funded and/or staffed by proponents of the 4 day work week.
The outcomes are mostly subjective and self reported, which is problematic because employees clearly have a vested interest in claiming they are more productive than they really might be.
They’re also short term, and dont address the doubt every executive has which is whether employees eventually mean revert back to their historical hourly productivity levels.
Then there is the fact that they don’t bother controlling for how much work the employees were previously doing. Many white collar workers are underworked. If you cut their hours it won’t impact output, because they were bottlenecking on work availability not time. What employers want to know is not what happens in over resourced offices, but rather what happens in well managed offices where employee workload was already optimised.
And that is also entirely irrelevant. The relevant question is whether our society can maintain similar levels of good fortune if we all worked less. And the historical evidence is clear: there are many times more workers today, using tools that are monumentally more advanced, than in the 1930s or even 1950s. And yet, we are all required to work just as much as we used to 100+ years ago, while being paid less in real terms.
What I want to know is, whether we can manage a society, where one part is not always overworked and the other part bored to death. But rather a healthy balance. 4 days workweek might help as a step in that direction, but I agree that there is way too much wishful thinking involved in those studies proposing them.
(Not that I’m against a 4-day week. My company moved to compressed hours and it’s been fantastic.)
Maybe people can't produce more than 4 days of work per week or 5 hours per day; in that case the productivity would be the same and people working more are essentially wasting time.
My empirical evidence say otherwise (sample_size=1) I can be quite productive up to ~70hrs doing knowledge work (I've been on it for 8 months, hours are tracked and connected to tasks, no idling is counted), but that's pushing it and it might not be sustainable for longer period of time. My will to live is certainly at historical lows.
Lawyers in big law can also do 60-80 hours (while ruining their life) so I think it's reasonable.
I've heard people in other professions (eg. nurses) pushing 90-100hrs but they are not actively thinking all their working time.
surely there's diminishing returns, and it doesn't seem obvious that 40 is the sweet spot.
While it's hard to increase productivity by 25%, it's not a problem for workers to drop productivity by 20%. Owners can work as much as they want, of course.
Since are a lot of questions surrounding 4dww - Thought I might be able to offer some insights.
1. “four days but actually working longer” or “four days with reduced hours”.
-- We offer 32hrs work week, rather than the standard 40hrs in our home country. This is generally taken as 4 days, but some work 5 days with less ours (especially those with school aged children).
2. "What employers want to know is not what happens in poorly managed offices, but what happens in well managed offices where employee workload was already optimised."
-- I am going to be biased but we spent 3 year with standard work week, and I think we were highly productive as an organisation, our internal metrics, output and surveys agreed with this assessment. After 2 years, we haven't seen any noticeable / measurable decrease in output or performance compared to 5dww, or since we started.
3. "Do these companies close on a week day, like they just don’t open on a Monday." -- We generally allow people to choose any day off they want, put have them put it in ~4 weeks before hand. Most people take either Monday or Friday, which means we always have some staff covering the days others have off. In smaller teams that speak with customers (sales/cs) they agree among the team who takes what days, and can trade, as long as we always have coverage.
4. "4 days week sounds great, if you hate your job and you already earn less than you deserve." -- We pay top percentile as other startup/tech companies in our country's HQ. Anyone joining us shouldn't feel they are being paid any less than someone on 5dww -- and that is because we expect their output to match those of others working 5dww.
Overall we've found the move to be extremely successful at attracting and retaining talent with I believe helps us be significantly more productive than other startups I know doing 5dww.
We have a few things that I think help with our 4dww, include remote async with very flexible hours, hiring worldwide, transparent salaries and virtually no meetings in engineering.
One thing this flexibility allows us to do is ask our staff to be 'switched on' when they are working -- if for any reason they aren't being productive, we encourage them stop working, do something else, and come back later. We expect our staff aren't reading reddit, posting on hacker news, etc during work-time -- in return for the 32hrs we want to see it (almost) all productive.
I believe this, along with staff dropped the least important work gives us a similar/same output as 40hrs. With the benefit that we've been able to attract talent that otherwise may have gone elsewhere, with a turnover of virtually 0%.
Happy to answer any specifics about how we've implemented thing, or what I've seen as a co-founder leading a small (16 people) engineering team.
I can see how this makes sense, if this perk is enough to stop your low cost labor from chasing greenbacks instead.
Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40563325
Do you track engineering hours worked?
We don't track hours at all -- staff are expected to track their own hours and keep them to 32hrs. Occasionally something happens and people work longer hours in a week, however we then give them time off the following week.
Working hours is simply a negotiation between employers (who obviously want more hours for the same price), and workers (who want the opposite). Again culture has a large influence on that - it's very difficult to persuade people to work 6 days a week (in the West) because culturally we no longer do that.
You can't ignore culture and just say "let the market decide" because culture is part of the market.
I am not sure what are the mechanisms for that. Would that simply be what maximizes short term profits?
It sort of sounds like a suggestion to remove all restrictions on the work week so that the free market can choose the winning system.
Why not decide instead to take a more human approach where people can work productively and still have enough workless time to rest and be healthy and also have time and energy for hobbies, family, exercise, etc.?
Dead Comment
That said, some employees do work full-time, particularly those in operations and other roles that require broader availability to communicate with external parties. There are also situations where someone needs to stay longer to complete a critical task, these exceptions are inevitable, but having clear guidelines helps ensure they remain just that: exceptions.
A related challenge, as highlighted by @rsavage, is the use of social media during work hours, especially in a remote setting. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to fully control, but what matters is cultivating a company culture that balances flexibility with accountability. The key is staying aware and making adjustments before things get out of hand.