World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’ | Hacker News Reader

World’s largest ever four day week trial in Iceland ‘overwhelming success’

independent.co.uk

207 pointstoomuchtodo120 comments

I work in a field (military) where "overtime" isn't a thing. We can and do work 24+hour shifts without any extra pay. Even during peacetime, if we need to work 16-hour days every day for a month we can do that without any financial cost. We can also be sent home at noon every day without diminishing our wages a penny.

That absolute flexibility does not reduce stress. With no standard office hours we face constant negotiation over timings for basic events. It can take weeks to plan the simplest meeting. Bill doesn't work Saturdays. Alice is on leave. Ken is on a home-study course. Hank's kid is sick so he is working from home without a secure computer. I miss my civilian days back pre-2000 when everyone came to work five days a week.

And somehow the entropy always flows up to supervisors. At 0400 (4am) Sunday morning I took over a watch from my boss. All the junior people are at home enjoying their flexible work schedules while the two senior people on the team end up covering the long shifts nobody else wants. Set saturday-sunday weekends are a privilege. Don't give up on them so easily.

> And somehow the entropy always flows up to supervisors. At 0400 (4am) Sunday morning I took over a watch from my boss. All the junior people are at home enjoying their flexible work schedules while the two senior people on the team end up covering the long shifts nobody else wants.

This hits home for me. I briefly worked at a company that tried to allow infinite flexibility in working hours. The flexibility quickly became a tool to avoid meetings and be conveniently unavailable whenever work needed to be done.

Like you said, it falls on a few people to get the work done after everyone else has flex scheduled their way into only being available at odd hours. Managers were afraid to drag people back into work or force specific working hours because the employees could complain that their managers weren't allowing flexible schedules.

It eventually turned into a mix of some people who were working all of the time to get things done and other people who were almost never working. Then it was abandoned.

It's much better to have some core, overlapping work hours that everyone is required to attend unless they have special circumstances (doctor's appointment, for example). Then let everyone choose flexible working hours before or after that time. Infinite freedom is too ripe for abuse at scale.

With the meeting issue a good mid-way a company I worked for had in the contract hours were flexible but we expect you to be available 10-2. This mean late risers and early leavers were both covered + in a way limits the day of meetings larger companies tend to progress to.

Also we need to recognise flexibility relies on good work ethics. Its great when your in a well hired and motivated company, but you know some companies it going to be a tool to slack off. I've seen both sides on that one where it was a great vs if someone was marked 'remote' you knew everything was going to take significantly longer.

I think a good middle ground might be recognising most white collar work more than contracted office hours, so going back to 4 days might actually take us back to a 40 hour week. I think an alternate is govt to set rules and enforce the 40hr week. Make the 40hr week responsibility of the business and overtime much be paid or they need to get you about the door or return time in lieu. Maybe an exception for salary over $400k type thing or whatever fairly high amount as you want senior managers getting out the door too for the example it sets.

My concern about the 4 day week is many people are financially struggling so does this just encourage 2 jobs to be more common and the 4 day week ends up leading many people to 7 day work weeks? So in a way I wonder if better enforcement on the 40hr week is the better option in practicality as much as I like the idea of a 4 day work week for society.

You're in the military and you can't call "Bill" in for a meeting? This is not how I picture the military. I was under the impression push comes to shove, if your superior says you have to be somewhere, you _will_ be there, regardless of what its for.

Yeah, odd idea.. do they also stop shooting at the enemy at 17:00:01, because "Sorry boss, I'm off the clock?"

I dont know how deeply sarcastic this is, but peacetime military does not function like in war, with the disparity being proportional to how far away a unit's peacetime routine diverges from war.

Sometimes...

[1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/multimedia/no-more-9-to-5_swiss...

;->

Yes, I had that impression too. If my memory is right, that's how Reagan broke the Air Traffic Controllers' strike: many of them were military reserve members, and so Reagan fired them as civilians and then recalled them to active military service where they were subject to the UMCJ.

Looking at Wikipedia, I don't think that's right. Even civilian ATC had no right to strike. Reagan highlighted their oath not to strike, threatened to fire anyone who continued to strike, and then did so, dismissing over 11,000 controllers and banning them from future ATC work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...

In reality there are far fewer "orders" given in the military than in the civilian world. That ability is held in reserve. When people are stationed in places they might not want to be, often away from family, they dont want to hear direct orders on a daily basis. And remember too that everyone has multiple bosses. If everyone throws around direct orders then soon order A will conflicts with order B and the system starts to break down. They best way to keep everyone's respect is to issue as few direct orders as possible, and then only after extensive consultation with impacted parties.

Interestingly enough I've been in exactly the opposite position. The management wanted really rigid working hours but me and a colleague managed to negotiate almost full flexibility because I have a chronic sleep condition and he was dealing with family issues including having to take a child to medical appointments at all hours of the day.

Weirdly, we seemed to do almost all the work despite our weird schedules - in fact, I found it incredible just how unproductive developers and engineers with 20 years experience could be despite putting a very solid 9am to 5:30pm, five days a week.

The one constant is that supervisors and some co-workers were often annoyed because we weren't on hand to talk to people interrupting our work with questions that 9/10 times could have been easily answered in a quick email or message (and often that we would have been able to answer even when we weren't in the office). Either that, or technicians would be annoyed how long they'd waited for me to come in so I could fix a "software problem" for them in a system being built in the factory - which I would usually end up tracking down to being a faulty cable or a problem with a manufacturing process - all things that was their job to find and fix and that they were qualified to diagnose!

Ironically the military is one of the worse places for usage and wastage of time.

There is tons of accountability for some stuff ("How much diesel did you put in that jeep?") but very little for people's time ("Let's have 300 infantry here an hour earlier than necessary before an event, even though it costs X per hour per person for them to be standing around doing nothing.)

It's also the same around some safety stuff ("Everyone wear a reflective belt going on a run") vs time base safety stuff ("That platoon has just been on exercise and barely slept for 72 hours and everyone is now driving home.")

Don't get me started on the overall wastage the military spends on talent management. Doing an extremely expensive and complex course that takes a year+ to complete? Cool, you might often be actually fullfilling that role for one/two years max afterwards before your moved on to next role doing something different elsewhere.

The key here is that military members are salaried; the situation where they are told to stand around for x hours doing nothing changes nothing financially. It might make the people upset, but what can they realistically do? No show is punishable more strictly than a civilian speeding ticket, AWOL is potentially akin to a DUI or murder charge. And it's rare! Why is that? Because the vast majority are indoctrinated? Or because they truly believe? Somewhere in between? What makes it work (because it does work, usually)?

Without getting too political the underlying answer, in my experienced opinion, is not "I have no choice" but rather "this gives me something to do that matters" even when it isn't "what I want to be doing right now."

The fact that they’re salaried doesn’t matter. It’s still costing the government x dollars an hour for people to stand around doing nothing when that time could be better spent.

In fact I’d say if you were actually paid by the hour, you’d probably see less of this type of waste.

> four nine hour days

How many of you are salaried, yet your hours are tracked? My job is such that I roll in whenever I want, leave whenever I want. As long as I get my work done, nobody cares how long I actually work each day. A few decades ago, my first job out of college did track hours. That was pure hell.

> My job is such that I roll in whenever I want, leave whenever I want. As long as I get my work done, nobody cares how long I actually work each day

Most of my tech jobs have been flexible hours.

However, it helps to have core working hours. For example, one of my favorite companies didn't care when or where you worked most of the time, but we all had to be present for an 11AM meeting every day and available for a few hours after that. Some people worked early and left early. Others showed up right at 11AM and then worked into the evening. We could always schedule necessary meetings around lunch, or just go to lunch together because we were already together.

Companies that get too flexible with schedules turn into a communication mess, unless they really do have units of work that can be done asynchronously and in isolation.

We track hours at my job but it’s not anything super granular. We have to bill clients for hours, so we track them ourselves but it basically comes down to getting 40 hours-worth of work done each week. I basically just figure out what percent of each day I spent on each project and apportion my timecard appropriately.

While it’d be nice to not track, it works well enough. I make hourly but can work as much (or as little) as I want each week as long as most is spent on billable work.

> We have to bill clients for hours, so we track them ourselves

You do not need to track hours to bill clients for their hours. This myth is awfully demotivating for so many people I hate that it still is the default.

> I basically just figure out what percent of each day I spent on each project and apportion my timecard appropriately.

And you've basically figured out the better way on your own.

As Tippett figured out and published in 1934, if you want to know how much time is spent on something, you don't record every hour for every person. That's insanely expensive and demeaning. Not to mention that self-reported hours are very biased toward what's perceived as important work.

Instead, you do work sampling/snap counting. Have a person show up at random times and record what's going on at that time. The portion of times an activity was recorded corresponds to the portion of time spent on that activity.

(The more tech friendly version might be an email or instant message asking what you just worked on, sent at a random time and meant to be answered just as you finish up something and move onto the next thing.)

I don’t find it demeaning at all- in fact it gives me more flexibility than I’d have most other companies. I’m still a college student, so I’m not full-time all year, but my position doesn’t change at all. All I have to do to go “part time” is bill fewer hours since I am allowed to work as few or as many hours as I want.

And it’s not like I have to clock in/out or anything. It’s just a simple form I fill out at the end of my day that lists out hours per task on each project (and each “task” corresponds to a role, so it’s only one line-item per project).

The alternatives you proposed sound awfully like micromanagement though.

What I have observed in software development companies is that there is no limit where one can say, "My work is done". When one task is complete, there is another one ready to pick up. So, the only way to stop working for a day is to track your hours and say, "I have worked for 8 hours today and I will pause the work until tomorrow".

What field and role are you working in, where you can roll in whenever you want and leave whenever you want and yet complete your work in fewer than the total assigned work hours per day?

Also you have some days where you feel super productive and get loads done and some where things are difficult or you are tired and not a lot gets done. If you leave early on the productive days, would you stay back longer on the days you aren't doing so well?

And how do you know if you were actually very productive one day and not that the task was overestimated and actually very easy? Would you want to be on the hook for underestimated tasks? For me its easier to just say "I tried my best for x hours" and leave at the same time every day except in times of urgency.

> If you leave early on the productive days, would you stay back longer on the days you aren't doing so well?

No, I do exactly the opposite. I work longer when I'm super productive, and I cut out early when I'm not having a good day. It seems obvious that you'd try to optimize for working the hours when you are most effective.

> And how do you know if you were actually very productive one day and not that the task was overestimated and actually very easy?

I think that comes with experience - sometimes you just know when the ideas are flowing and the code seems to write itself, and then other times you recognize that you've spent hours banging your head against something only to realise you overlooked something trivial.

But why? What benefit do you get from giving your best days to the company and not use them for yourself? Usually you don’t get anything in exchange for working hard.

> Usually you don’t get anything in exchange for working hard.

A nice paycheck at the end of the month?

But pay does not depend on how hard you actually work.

Sure it does. My employer notices when I work hard. Since they want to retain me as an employee, they compensate me accordingly. Similarly, I were to _not_ work hard my employer would certainly notice and want to reduce my compensation.

Working hard is not the same thing as working long hours or giving extra of myself. Working hard simply means working intelligently, thoughtfully, and to the best of my abilities.

Sometimes I have days where I'm just really focused on work problems.

Sometimes I have days where I'm killing it in the gym or on the track.

Sometimes I have days where I just want to work on my garden, or sit and read, or spend 4 hours on an awesome dinner.

I assume most people have rhythms or cycles like this.

Thankfully I have a job that doesn't measure daily output, but instead looks at productivity over a longer period of time, so I can work towards a life where I'm always doing the thing I'm best at, at that moment.

A day where the work I've been doing just comes together like magic isn't transferable to a personal project.

> there is no limit where one can say, "My work is done"

I'm a couple years into my first software job, at Google. We don't do performance evaluations relative to whether you're doing as much work as you're capable of in 40 hours. You're evaluated against a fixed rubric corresponding to the job level. In other words, if you're capable of doing a Software Engineer N's worth of work in 40 hours and your title is Software Engineer N-1, you can either put in the 40 hours and get promoted to Software Engineer N eventually, or you can work less and still be perfectly productive relative to your current role's expectations. Plenty of people make that latter choice and work well under 40 hours.

This is my impression at where I work as well. If you work at a company like this you can effectively already work 4 (or less) days a week. If you currently work at a company that you feel tracks your time then if you do somehow “win” a 4 day work week you’ll probably still be expected to put in 40 hours OR take a 20% pay cut. Either way it doesn’t seem like being told you now only work 4 days a week is materially changing anything.

I don't know about Google, but Facebook and I presume some other big companies has an up or out policy. If you come in at Software Engineer N, they expect you to get promoted to SE N+1 in X years, and if you don't, they'll start evaluating you at that level anyway, and assuming you continue to put in level N work, you'll get a performance improvement plan, and then probably fired. There's some level which is considered ok to be 'terminal', you can be promoted above it, but they're also ok with you sitting at that level forever.

Just trying to say be sure to sniff around and make sure you understand the actual expectations.

At Facebook the first terminal level is L5. At Google it is L4.

We have tasks assigned for a two week period. If I finish roughly as many of my tasks as my coworkers finish of theirs I count it as "My work is done".

I officially work 9-5, however I'm in a remote team and I'm the only one in my timezone (1 hour offset to the rest of my team). Usually I start around 9:30, and finish around 5:30, but it really depends. Sometimes I wake up earlier, sometimes I wake up later. Sometimes it gets to 4pm and there is no point starting the next task, other times I'm working until 7pm because of meetings (part of our company is 9 hours different from me). Most members of our team has kids, so sometimes we need to take time off for appointments or such, in that case we will work late or sometimes Saturdays to make up for it.

We don't track hours, we just trust everyone to put their effort in. We are a small team who have been working together for a few years, so you know when someone is slacking. I expect if we did track hours we'd all end up working much longer than the 9-5 we are paid for.

Right, this looks like horsecrap.

* No randomization. The treatment groups were selected on the basis of existing "high levels of stress". The control groups weren't. So, just regression to the mean could explain any results.

* Everyone wanted in. "The trial grew almost thirty times in size over the next five years, to around 2,500 participating staff in response to early positive results." Sure, who wouldn't demand a shorter week for the same pay? But now you've lost control of your experiment.

* Hello, Hawthorne effect. "Hey, we're testing low hours and if you hit all these KPIs we'll make them permanent!" Solve for the equilibrium.

This isn't science. It's marketing bullshit. Honestly, you can tell that just from the elegantly selected fonts.

Suckers everywhere are going to lap it up. Of course! They want to believe.

As people get richer they want more leisure. That's fine. Any nation can choose to be lotus-eaters. Just don't pretend to have scientifically proved you won't get poorer.

I really think 2022 will be the year where a 4 day week goes mainstream

I believe it in so much I launched https://4dayweek.io/ this year - Software jobs with a better work / life balance

I've been working 4 days a week for the last 10 yrs, at 3 different workplaces, for a proportionate drop in salary. To be allowed this, I asked at interview time, though I have, and have had, colleagues who started 5 days then dropped to 4. Seems to me if both employer and employee are any good at what they do, its a win-win. The only thing is I guess many people don't want to lose 10-20% (depending what final hours end up as) salary. Which I would understand, if it were not the case that software jobs pay well above the average wage (in the UK this is... of course in the US its even more above the average). I suppose you also have to have a robust skillset to feel confident to ask for less hours in the first place, and not worry about not being there 1 day a week while things move on. And , perhaps not seek seniority as much.. which I suppose makes the salary hit higher... but even then.. we only live once, kids are only small once, friends, family people you wanna see instead of always being at work don't live for ever either, you can't take the £/$ with you when you die etc. sometimes as a couple it makes sense for both to do 3 or 4 days then you see more of each other, sometimes the 2cnd parent works a bit more than they would have if the 1st was 5-day full time, which is tax advantageous

I don't get it. Hours cut by 20% and no wage cut means 25% man-hour production gain for «success». Did they achieve this?

----

Okay, okay, I stand corrected, 10% hours cut requires only +11% to production to stay on par. Still quite much, but not impossible (I think).

Hours were cut by 10%, four nine hour days, and "success" was productivity stayed the same or improved. I haven't seen the full study, but the article claims it succeeded.

You are making the assumption that 1 unit of time spent on the clock maps exactly to 1 unit of productive output, which I'm willing to bet is very far from the case.

Very likely. Chances what this whole experiment was initiated by the studies confirming what employees are slacking at Fridays anyway.

I'm an Icelander, and am not so sure that is the case.

Though I was not part of the test in question, my union (which thankfully are still strong in Iceland) did negotiate a reduction in working hours so as to allow every member to take a half a day off once a month without a pay cut. The catch being that this half a day has to be used inside each month and does not get transfered over to the next (use it or loose it).

This option has been on the table for a little more than a year now.

What I have observed (n=1) (in my team in a software department) is that at months end most of us have this half a day off and then scramble to figure out how we can use it.

This is in part since the work place is already very flexible when it comes to the employees live's. Need to leave at 15:00 to pick up the kids? Go for it. Have a dentist appointment at 9:00 and will miss standup? No worries. If you get the tasks done, it wont be an issue. And as such, most of the time, there isn't this longing for the weekend which I'd think causes productivity to drop on fridays.

There sure is to be slacking in our culture, and as a teenager I sure did experience work that dulled the brain. But overall I don't think there is a whole working class that is just playing with their thumbs after lunch on fridays.

It would just seem "off" to an Icelander (n=1).

It will be hard to extrapolate the findings to other countries.

Iceland has a very different import/export structure by virtue of the the geography, farming and natural resources. This in turn significantly affects the price of certain goods and services, such as restaurants and dining out culture, for example. Ultimately people will have a drastically different basket of consumer goods /desires than in other developed countries, and it will require different involvement in the labor market.

I’m not saying a 5 day work week in America is necessary, I’m saying we have more than enough, just our consumer culture keeps us busy. We have food, shelter, heat, but Americans want that nicer car, that name brand clothing, to keep up with the Joneses

This is always the issue with these small pilots around very important issues (UBI being another that comes to mind).

It’s difficult to convey to people just how big the US is in terms of population and geography, and within those two groups how heterogenous it is.

Iceland has the population of a small US city. And 1% of Icelanders participated. This means a few thousand people. You cannot extrapolate any of this to a 350m+ population.

And yet, this was still the largest ever test. Perhaps it paves way for bigger ones in the future?

One of the lessons of trying to optimize worker productivity, health and happiness during the industrial revolution is that almost any change was an "overwhelming success" during the trial period, because of some combination of (1) a change of routine, (2) placebo effect -- people like the idea that someone is trying to help them and their mood improves accordingly.

Might even be true here (it would be nice!), but in a national experiment with high importance given to the outcome and a highly desirable result (fewer hours same pay) I cannot imagine that the productivity in this trial period will be the same as the steady-state outcome.

That argument was used against a lot of things that turned out to be a good thing, like the 40 hour work week. What’s your suggesting other than naysaying this trial?

I'm suggesting we have 0 data, and this study is nothing more than an opportunity for people to advocate for the policies they wanted anyway.

Which is fine, you can say that 4-day weeks is better b/c it's nicer! That's ok! Just don't try to dress this fluff up as science.

That just seems like moving the goal post. Without a trial to explore efficacy, it is a pie-in-the-sky idea that shouldn't be taken seriously. When a trial happens...well this trial isn't really indicative of how people will truly behave when not in trial... we should just discount the results.

I guess there really are no true Scotsman in Iceland.

This was a four year study involving 2500 participants. You may feel the evidence is insufficient to make the policy changes they did as a result, but if you feel this is fluff dressed up as science it might be nice to understand what you found problematic about this study's methods for it to not qualify as adding to the body of scientific evidence we have on this topic.

> I'm suggesting we have 0 data

But you’d be wrong, because we now have some data. You can argue the quality of the data is insufficient to draw a conclusion, but it seems… extreme to argue that the data that was collected has 0 value.

One gets the feeling that the issue is less “we don’t have any data” and more “I disagree with what the data is saying”.

They raise a good point. I would expect a huge boost in productivity during a trial period as workers are hyped about the change and want to prove it works. But that they may eventually wear out and return to normal but with less hours now.

I don't think OP is suggesting that the findings are outright wrong, but that long term studies are required to know exactly how things play out. We have so many short term trial results but none that I have seen which show the effects after multiple years.

I can attest to a pattern of management introducing a change and realizing substantial benefits that don’t hold up over time. For whatever reason, the initial boost isn’t sustained and some other change is introduced in order to boost numbers and the process repeats.

Now I personally would love a shorter work week. I actually think much of the 8-hour workday is chock full of non productive time that can be cut safely. But I see what the other user is getting at. Just because this study produced great results it doesn’t mean that this change produces sustainable effects.

The trial ran for years. That’s well outside the range of “finicky management trialed something and we got a short term boost” effects.

Why would you expect a huge productivity boost when reducing working hours? Isn’t this setting the bar unreasonably high? Heck, isn’t cutting hours and maintaining output actually a net increase in per hour productivity?

Also, why is productivity even the golden standard here? Why can’t we consider the well being of actual people in this discussion?

I've only met one person who wasen't for a four day 10 hr/day work week.

He was a Electrician acquaintance of my father.

He was beyond a odd duck. His idea of a fun weekend was painting his house. I'm not kidding.

I used to talk to my father a lot over a four day work week. His union almost got it, but they backed out at the last moment. I still think it was a payola thing from the contractors!

It just makes so much sence in certain fields.

Most of my work life has been construction in San Francisco. Just getting to, and back, from the job site is a hassle.

A four day work week would be grand.

Even though the work is back breaking, working ten, or eight hours did not affect productivity, or at least with me.

I would still be an union electrician making twice what I do now if they offered a four day work week.

(This mainly goes for union construction, and office jobs. Non-union jobs work their employees to hard. I don't know how most of those guys even last 8 hours. If you happen to read this, and are in construction try to get into a union. Just trust me.)

> I've only met one person who wasen't for a four day 10 hr/day work week.

Now you’ve met 2! I hate working 8 hours a day. 0% chance I’ll ever work a schedule of 10-hour days.

Who downvotes this lol?

ten hour days are hard for me—I start fading at the 7th hour

I do love a four-day work week, but with 8-hour days, and I've been lucky enough to pull that off for the last 15 years. There's a downside though: it makes switching jobs much more difficult because few companies want to hire someone who only works 4 days/week.

Yeah I’ve told employers who’ve asked about 4-10s that I’d just phone it in (at best) the last 2 hours of the day. My thing is that I’m an early riser and have a chronic illness that means my most productive hours are 6AM to 2PM. Works great at my current job — about one week a month I shift things a bit for more meetings between 2 and 4, but I don’t know how easy it’d be to find another similar situation.

I've done light-to-moderate physical work and would prefer 4 10-hour days for that. Office work in front of a computer, including programming, I can't realistically manage 5 five-hour days of actual, productive work. Not week after week, consistently. With more rest and an interesting task, yeah, I can do 8-10 hours in a day, for-real. Every now and then if I just happen to have a great day, yeah, maybe. Otherwise, god, it's draining as hell, in a way "boring" or repetitive non-back-breaking physical work just isn't (for me, anyway).

Story may be different for the really body-destroying physical labor, but the lighter stuff is less tiring than office work, to this particular worker, and cutting it from five days a week to four with the same number of hours would be my preference if I were back in jobs like that. Meanwhile I'd love a 4-day 6-hour schedule for programming. Maybe I'd actually manage to do focused work all the scheduled hours, that way.

What brings you to Hacker News, if I may ask?

I’m also quite interested in what brings you to HN. Don’t get me wrong, welcome! But it’s quite interesting seeing somebody here that is not the stereotypical tech/business/startup type

I've been here forever.

I'm glad some of you put up with me. I'm pretty lonely, and this is my only social outlet.

I have had many careers.

I've gone to Chiropractic School until I realized it was basically Placebo.

I've been a Electrician. I've been a telecommunications guy. I've been a state security guard. I've been a Mechanic whom specialized in electrical problems. I had a used car lot. I was even a Realator for three days. I've been a General Contractor. I sold nuts, and candy to convince stores. I also worked in a rare book shop, as a partner. I am now a Watchmaker. I have never employed more than two people though.

I have always been interested in Electronics, and Computing, and have a Bachelor's degree in Businees Administration.(which was a joke.) I bought my Atari 1040st in college, but told no one because I felt like I was cheating. (I used it for word processing basically.)

I also had a nervous breakdown in the late 80's, and if not getting lucky with Amazon stock; I would be homeless right now.

I am not a developer. I have a few websites, and use ROR, and Javascript a fair amount.

To the the question is what can I add? Not much--

I have had a lot of jobs, and many were terrible low wage jobs. I know what it feels like to be poor, and overworked with no future.

I have had older (40-50 ish) friends who were Programmers, and if they were offered the luxury of learning a new language/platform, they would have been all over it.

I can't imagine anyone turning down a four day work week. My goodness that extra day of learning/relaxing, or planning for a new career, or same one seems like it would be great?

putting up with you? nah, I'm glad you are here! HN can sometimes sound like an echo chamber.

I hear you, I've been through a few careers myself before landing on software engineering, but at the end of the day I've come to realize that there's no heaven in this earth and software engineering is certainly not one.

For me is more like what I do for a living, but definitively not my life (although some employers would like it to be)

About adding, come on, having a different and varied perspective in invaluable to the community.

Again, glad you are here sir and if there's something you think a software engineer can help you with shot me a message, email on the profile.

Your unique perspective alone is something you add. Thanks for sticking around!

10 hour days can be complicated for people with families. Dropping the kid(s) off for school, picking up, getting dinner ready, helping with homework. Heck, even just spending family time together. All of those things are more difficult with 2 less hours of personal time each day.

Actually the lesson of optimizing productivity over the last 100 years is that the benifits have almost exclusively gone to the "capitalists" (in the sense of the people financing work with their capital) and not benifited workers. With the productivity gains that we saw over the last century we should be working 1-2 day weeks for the same standard of living (fun fact many economists of the 1900s were worrying about people not having enough to work in the future). What happened is that people work more for the same standard of living instead, the middle class is disappearing and the gap between rich and poor is widening.

We've been arguing about the "Hawthorne Effect" since the term was coined.

I don’t think a 4-5 hour reduction in “work time” would have any effect on my productivity, whereas a 3 day weekend would make me more motivated. I don’t understand why this isn’t the norm

As a parent, I’m wondering whether a four day work week will carry over to the school week, too. When I was at school (this has stopped since) we had school on Saturday even, for two years. This was not great! Nearly all the arguments I’ve seen pro four hour work week, would also apply to students.

Unfortunately the purpose of school is for parents to have somewhere to store their children when they’re at work, so you can’t have a four-day school week until a four-day workweek is norm.

I'm also willing to bet that most parents who get the extra day off would actually prefer that their kids stayed at school.

I'm not so sure about that, but yeah, maybe. Where I live, teacher unions are very strong, so I don't think teachers would get left out of the four day work week for a long time.

You can't have a four-day school week until a normalized four-day workweek (everyone off on the same day).

You could maybe have a flex four-day school week and a flex four-day workweek though.

If the kids are off school, you have three-day weekends every week to do small trips. If the kids are still at school, parents have an extra day to go out to lunch, run errands, work on side hustles, clean the house, etc. Both are good options.

It doesnt work for people who want to get things done, a key colleague will be away or unavailable when you need them so everything gets slowed down, sometime its like trying to solve the three body problem making sure everyone is on on the sameday to get it done.

Perhaps it can be a forcing function for improved context-sharing and reduced key-person dependency.

As long as the government doesn't make it mandatory, don't see any problems with this.

In Iceland, these kinds of things are negotiated between employeers and unions. Unions in Iceland still stand strong and are not tied to certain workplaces like in the US (which gives them greater negotiating power).

It's so weird to me to see people argue against a shorter work week.

> I enjoy working 5 days a week, it gives me more time to ...

Ok, by all means, keep doing that? If you have this position you are probably already working on the weekend anyway. You can live (thrive, even!) in a society that has a 4 day week and still work 5 days. Go for it.

> It'll never happen / It's a pipe dream

So was women's rights, civil rights, the current 40 hour week, etc. etc. Idk why the idea needs to be dismissed just because it isn't the norm now.

> Seems like a slippery slope, what's next, a 3 day week??

Don't we want to be on such a slope!?! Do we think we'll be working 5 days a week 100 years from now? Is a 5 day week the best we can do??

99% of us are working for someone else, it boggles my mind how much opposition there is from workers to working less and getting more of our own time back.

If I'm ever in the fortunate position of being able to hire people, we'll have a four day week.

I'm keeping track of the companies that have a four day week here: https://thelistofcompanies.com

> It's so weird to me to see people argue against a shorter work week.

No one is arguing against a shorter work week, that's just misrepresenting the position. Furthermore, you've been able to offer 4 day work weeks to your employees since forever, no one is stopping you. In fact you can offer them 3 days work week right now since you are so benevolent. Why don't you offer them 1 day work weeks while you are at it? You should make a list for that.

The pushback is against the idea of government decreeing the number of days you are allowed to work.

You can turn the same argument around. If 4 day work week is standard, you can work 5 days if you want. You can even work 6 days or 7 days right now, nobody is stopping you.

No you cannot. Government is stopping you by preventing companies from hiring workers for more than they allow. That is the reason people get two or even three jobs.

I agree with you but some peoples identity are very much integrated with their work. Make them work less and their life becomes less meaningful.

For people like you and me, we work to live, not live to work. So we want to work less. It makes us feel happier and more free.

I think the salaries are also an issue. We can't cut salaries with 20% so this becomes an extra cost for the companies or the government, depending on who should pay for it.

Overall though, I think most people would agree that it's considered progress if humans work less so we can actually do more things than work with our lives.

This is not about making people work less, it's about giving people the option to work less without paying dearly for it. (A 20 % pay cut should be the absolute maximum cost for a 20 % shorter work week, but as it stands today it's not. In practise, people who'd get about the same amount of actual work done in less time should have no pay cut. These are the problems we need to fix.)

Yeah, this is an infuriating bit of human nature that I notice quite often. People would rather destroy the New Good Thing than take advantage of it.

> Seems like a slippery slope, what's next, a 3 day week??

I think there is something worth digging in to on this point. These trials are showing that after lowering hours, productivity went up to at least match or exceed previous values.

So the question is raised, what is the optimal amount of time to produce maximum results? If -1 day was an improvement, is -2 days even more of an improvement? Is -0.5 days less of an improvement? What if we rearange this, are less week days but longer days better? Or are shorter days with more week days better?

As well as how long can this be sustained? Workers must be working more and using their time better than before. Is this entirely due to having more free time or is it partially due to the novelty of lower times which will wear off?

I'm all for investigating lower work weeks but I don't think we have really collected all of the info yet. Let the trials continue!

IMO there is an equilibrium problem.

I really have no problem working 45 hours a week.

I am not changing to 36 hours a week while a co-worker works 45 and then the co-worker is the one who ends up getting promoted.

I am not working in a coal mine or digging ditches that my body is breaking down after 35 hours. I am perfectly capable of 45 high quality hours a week of mental work a week that I enjoy doing. That is what I am looking to trade in the market place and be compensated for.

Most people I know don't do much besides play on their phone when off anyway. What you need an additional day a week to get in more social media?

Just wow...

Sounds like you need better employers and more interesting friends. And perhaps some realization that not everyone has the same demands on their time.

I'm truly sorry that your reality has imposed that view on you.

In my reality, someone who works less is able to relax more, leading to potentially better throught out work (be it code, design, writing, teaching etc).

In the end, the individual with the higher quality work will receive extra benefits. Not the one who produces the most.

I'm from Germany and this (together with home office based working) sounds almost alien. There is basically no relevant discussion here about that at all. We'll be working 5x8 forever and companies will do anything to get people back to an on site office. I'm so fed up with this ... same story about speed limits on Autobahn or decriminalization of drug use ... how can we be that ignorant?

Take a minute to think, on this Sunday night, about how much personal time you've had this week. You've most likely spent 5 of the last 7 days making someone else richer, at the expense of an incredible toll on your body and mind: an artificially early wake-up to an alarm, a late-night frozen pizza dinner because there's no time to cook and clean up for yourself, and you're finally sitting down getting ready to relax when you remember you get to start the whole week over again tomorrow morning.

2 days is not enough time to recover from the hell that is the modern salaried work week. Let's use some of the amazing surplus we've generated to make life easier for ourselves for once. The 4 day workweek is just the beginning.

https://reddit.com/r/antiwork for more inspiration.

If you are tired of making someone else rich, you could start your own business. But that’s a lot of work, and as someone who is anti-work, I don’t think that’s possible for you and your comrades. But the option is there!

Like all movements, there's more to it than just the name - don't take it too literally: working for myself is the ultimate goal! And if I ever do find success enough to require employees, I could never imagine asking them to spend 71% of their week thinking about me and my problems. Maybe it's easy to daydream egalitarian - but I think we as a society can do better for each other.

A perusal of that subreddit is full of a lot of anti-capitalist propaganda and some obvious logical fallacies. I don’t think consuming that subreddit is very healthy or productive.

Many of us work 40 hours in 5 days. There are 168 hours in a week. That's 24% of the week, not 71%.

I assume they're excluding sleep, which isn't unreasonable in this discussion.

Still no. 8 hours of sleep a day leaves you 16 hours a day, so 112 hours a week. 40 hours is 36% of 112. And, yeah, you could throw in commute time and get a higher percentage. It still wouldn't get you 71%, though.

What skersten did is 5/7 = 71%, as if any day you work on is totally lost to you for any other purpose.

It’s not just hard, it’s unlikely to be successful because of how rare successful businesses happen.

Working 4 days a week at a stable successful company isn’t the same as starting a new business so that eventually you can work 4 days a week.

Then maybe the bosses & investors for those few successful companies deserve their profits after all.

Agree with your point well enough. I think a 4 day work week where bosses get the same amount of profit is the dream conclusion to this experiment.

They are so unlikely, everyone else that didn't make it feels entitled to tell them how to be successful.

> the hell that is the modern salaried work week.

Salaried work is by far the most lenient way to make money. Any other venture: a small business, a startup, an executive position, etc is way harder and more demanding.

In any case, what would be great is for the market to offer 4 day work weeks to those who wish it at the best market price, and give 5 days to the ones that want 5 days.

>> Salaried work is by far the most lenient way to make money. Any other venture: a small business, a startup, an executive position, etc is way harder and more demanding.

I've done both and I don't believe I'd agree with making it a generalization. At best, there may be some averages and medians, but it is not a universal statement that "all salaried work is more lenient than all small business / startup work".

I've done a successful small photography business. It was way way way less stressful, more satisfying than office work, and I can only imagine how much better than e.g. Amazon warehouse work.

If you replace salaried with hourly, a change that is purely administrative, you increase your risk because your income is not pooled.

Salary is mainly a way to pool lots of resources and insure them for sickness, rotation, leaves, etc. It is literally the risk-averse option.

You want to compare salaried with its not-salaried version, not any salaried position vs any other non-salaried position.

> I've done a successful small photography business. It was way way way less stressful, more satisfying than office work

Ok, but did it generate more income? How many hours did you tend to work?

Averages and medians are quite useful tools when you're analyzing something like a population.

I don't think saying that a salaried job tends to be "the most lenient way to make money" is that controversial.

Maybe you had a good run with your photography business, for many other people it is far more difficult to get a venture off the ground than to work a normal job.

Not to mention sick leave. Paid holidays.

Obviously you charge more to cover those, but the uncertainty/risk is on your side as a freelancer.

The anti work subreddit misses the point imo. There is nothing wrong with working, its the amount people are working and how little they are paid.

Personally I found the best way to win back your life is to eliminate driving. Work from home, live within walking distance of the supermarket and maybe even work. Not only does this save you time, the walking acts as a relaxation time so you feel better by the time you arrive at home.

Driving, traffic, and public transport are all sources of stress that make your life worse daily.

Personally I find the weekend long enough but work days to be too long. I'd rather shorten each day and stick to 5 days as it means I have plenty of time to cook and go out for exercise daily.

The average American spends 2 hours and 3 minutes a day on social media.

Is that not enough? Would 3 or 4 hours be better?

Maybe the problem is you need to get the distracting nonsense out of your life?

I remain heavily sceptical and would not rush into such an idea.

> And as a result, researchers say, productivity and service provision remained the same or improved across the majority of workplaces included in the trial.

Any change leads to increased productivity - painting the walls or changing the colour of the lights increases productivity. We need to see long-term effects.

What I suspect will really happen is this artificial increase in income per hour will be used to circumvent the open problem of wage increase. Then cost of living will also increase and you'll barely be able to live on a normal 'well paying' career. But don't worry, you'll be forced to rent everything anyway as X-as-a-service becomes more popular.

> The idea of a four day week has some support in the UK, with 45 MPs from parties including Labour, SNP, Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the Green Party signing an early day motion calling on the government to set up a commission to examine the proposal.

These are all left-wing parties. I would also add that these parties are also more likely to contain socialists (some MPs just openly declaring they are communists even).

> A poll published in July last year conducted by Survation found that 63 per cent of the public support the idea of a four-day week with no loss of pay, while only 12 per cent oppose.

You would likely find the same numbers for a zero hour work week. What people believe is good for them is not always what is actually good for them, hence the need for studies.

Also these surveys tend to be self-selecting, especially regarding people who don't work. When they were phoning during 9-5 office hours, most of the working population were at work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com