Hacker News Reader

Comment by MHordecki | Hacker News Reader

> There has been no drop in productivity.

As in, your output is the same as with a 5 day work week? So essentially a 20% pay cut per unit of work performed?

"Unit of work performed" is one of those concepts that sounds great in business books or when dealing with repetitive mass-production tasks, but doesn't translate well to creative work like software development or engineering.

From the management side, it's common for teams to get into routines where Fridays are basically lost. It starts with getting into the habit of leaving a little bit early on Fridays. Then people realize that they only have a few hours between lunch and leaving early, so they start checking out right after lunch. Then people realize that if they get in after 9AM on Friday, they don't have many hours to get anything done before lunch, so they don't want to get started on anything that requires focus. Eventually, Fridays are a short, laid-back day at the office where they catch up on stray e-mails before going home.

For those teams, going to a 4x8 workweek has no productivity drop because they weren't doing much on Friday anyway. However, for teams that actually get things done on Friday, going to 4x8 or even 4x10 can start to decrease productivity.

Productivity and hours spent working aren't the only things that matter, though. Going to a 4-day workweek is an easy way to keep employees happy, which is valuable in itself.

Also keep in mind that we aren't great at judging our own productivity. We tend to perceive percentage of busy time as productivity, and a 4-day workweek will naturally have a higher percentage of time occupied by work than a 5-day workweek. This increase in percentage of busy time can mislead people into thinking they're being even more productive on more time-compressed schedules, even if they're putting out less work on an absolute scale.

Frankly, a lot of companies switch to 4-day workweeks because they can get 80-90% of the productivity while offering employees a perk they can't usually get at big companies that pay higher salaries.

And, in the current situation in particular, I'm seeing a lot of groups adopting "no meeting Fridays." Though my experience is that many people sort of hesitate to schedule Friday afternoon meetings in any case. So, yeah, as you say Fridays tend to turn mostly into a clean up any little tasks for this week, come up with a plan for next week, and call it a day. If I'm honest, this tends to describe what I do a lot of the time.

Out of interest, do you have permanent employment and get paid based on unit of work performed?

Realistically, all full time employees are paid per work unit. Those who don't deliver the required work units in that time period are eventually managed out.

And those who deliver more work units are paid more, exactly in line with the number of work units performed?

Well, I work 7.5h per day, so if one "unit" is 1 hour, yes.

One unit of work independent of time taken. When you say "no drop in productivity", do you mean you do the same amount of work in 4 days now instead of 5, or that you do 80% of the work you used to do?

I mean I get the same amount of work done in 4 days that I used to get done in 5.

Perhaps Parkinson's law in action: 'work expands to fill available time'.

This confuses me... If I get paid less to work less hours, I expect that I need to complete proportionately less.

Working 4/5 of a standard week and getting paid 4/5 of standard salary would not be a win for me unless I only needed to complete 4/5 as much work.

This does not sound like winning.

If I have an extra-productive day, where I accomplish more in 8 hours than I normally do, I don't expect to get paid more. I'm paid a salary, not per line of code.

The Thread Parent has cut down the hours that they are working, and cut their pay accordingly. But they also happen to be consistently more productive in those hours than they used to be. It wasn't a condition of their cut hours that they are required to work more productively, they just happen to be.

(Yes, ideally a good organization would reward this with a higher monthly pay. But that's a separate issue. I get paid the same as another developer in my position, even if one of us tends to be slightly more productive.)

If your goal to provide as little value to your employer as possible without getting fired?

If you're getting paid the same hourly rate it's still a win to work less.

I agree with you that getting paid the same hourly rate, working less and still maintaining job stability is a win.

It just didn't initially sit right with me when I heard Look at me I'm winning! I used to do five days of work and get paid for five, now I do five days of work and get paid for four.

They were doing four days of work and getting paid for five, now they do four and get paid to do four :)

I also went from 8 hour day to 6 hour day with a cut in pay and no loss in productivity and I feel it was a win. I've enough money either way and a lot more time.

Well, it's obviously a baked in assumption that the employer wants to provide as little remuneration for value as possible without alienating the employee. In theory our compensation is based on some combination of the value we deliver and our negotiating strength. If we deliver the same value in 80% time and take home 80% of the compensation, we've fully left negotiating strength on the table.

Your assumption is that they were doing 5 days worth of work in 5 days, and now they're doing 5 days worth of work in 4. But they're just more productive, they're not busier. So it sounds like before they were doing 4 days worth of work in 5.

I think it really depends on what the work entails. When I’ve worked on some particularly complex problems it’s often the case that I get “zero” days’ work done for four days, then “dozens” of days’ work done in one. My assumption is that a person has a fairly fixed productivity capacity over a given stretch of time, that we as a society tend to organize that as a week of seven days, and that it’s highly likely most people (again depending on the work and the person) reach that capacity in less than five days.

It depends on how much your time is worth to you. If you’ve got nothing better to do than hang out at the office and take it easy on casual Fridays, then you might as well get paid for it.

If, on the other hand, you’d rather go home and put your 3 day weekends to better use taking care of your household, spending time with family, engaging in a hobby, travelling, or relaxing at the cottage (if you don’t own one, you might try renting one), then your Friday is more valuable to you than the money you lose from taking the day off.

Do you really think you're working all day every day?

Shame you couldn't just do 4 days worth of work and play hooky on the 5th day?

Hooky isn't ironclad though; you can be called out of slacking at any time if you're supposed to be on the clock, so it's not quite the same.

This is why I cut out all the political BS and just became a consultant a decade ago. Then you can cut hours and increase your hourly rate to accommodate. Funny enough companies are just fine with paying it.

At a minimum, you need to be reachable and possibly attend meetings. Even if I'm taking a day somewhat easy and running some errands, I'm not going to head off for some 4 hour hike.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com