Comment by dmurray | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmurray | Hacker News Reader

> Academics studied the trial before, during and after its implementation, collecting qualitative and quantitative data

All the quantitative measurements given in the article are about the employees' happiness. Of course they felt they had a better work/life balance! Of course they felt less stressed! Of course they said they had more time to spend with their family!

They'd probably feel even better getting paid for five days and working three - and why stop there? Why not two, or one, or zero?

I don't doubt that most people in white collar jobs can be just as productive in four days, with the right incentives, as they currently are in five. But it would be nice, if only to justify the headline, to see metrics from the company's side rather than the parenthetical mention of "employees performing better in their jobs". Did they set up more trusts? Did they draft more legally rigorous wills? Did their customers report higher satisfaction and bring more repeat or referral business? If the "studies" aren't complete nonsense, the numbers were measured for these things. But then why aren't they reported with the same breathlessness as "overall life satisfaction increased by 5%"?

> They'd probably feel even better getting paid for five days and working three - and why stop there? Why not two, or one, or zero?

As someone who went from working a 5-day week to a 4-day week, I feel like a 4-day week is a 'sweet spot' - I'm just as productive as I was working a 5-day week, but when I work any less than 30 hours a week (e.g. when I take a day off), my productivity always goes down.

I agree. Three days is too little (the "weekend" is too long), but four days is just right. I've worked four days for years, now I'm temporarily working five, and I am looking forward to going back. Two days aren't long enough to unwind from the other five, I keep feeling that the week is too long and the weekend too short.

Working four day weeks, every week I'd think "damn, is it the Thursday already?" and on Sunday I'd be looking forward to going to work on Monday

It sounds like every week there's a holiday. Weeks with a holiday are awesome.

Yeah, it's exactly like that. Every Friday is a holiday.

But without the holiday traffic.

I always feel like I need at least one day to unwind and recover from working hard all week. But then it's Sunday and I need to get ready for the next week already. Would be great to have one day to not be recovering or preparing for the next work week.

> The data is bad

Let me support with an anecdote!

> As someone who went from working a 5-day week to a 4-day week, I feel like a 4-day week is a 'sweet spot' - I'm just as productive as I was working a 5-day week, but when I work any less than 30 hours a week (e.g. when I take a day off), my productivity always goes down.

Perhaps - but I suspect it depends on the person and the details of both job and workplace.

I spent about 6 years working a 3-day, and it went really well. However, it was more vulnerable to constant-cost outside factors like "unneeded meetings".

These studies always seem to make an implicit assumption of memorylessness which I don't think is well justified. It's the same with things like the Laffer curve - why would we assume that any specific days-per-week (or tax rate) has a specific output?

It seems much more likely to me that the act of changing it has a positive affect on productivity - but this is obviously a more short term gain.

The Laffer curve is actually based on sound economics though. A reduced tax rate keeps money invested in the market, as well as increasing investment incentives. I don't see the similar underlying logic here. The employee has less resources (hours in the week), and their incentives remain mostly unchanged.

Based on the reported outcomes it seems like it may have tapped into some discretionary effort, but doing that over a short period isn't especially remarkable, and I'd say there are easier and more sustainable ways to achieve that.

Because most people reading it are employees, and as such, really are not going to care about the business side of things. Especially given the last 30 years of business gobbling up all the gains of increased productivity, and leaving workers the scraps.

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