[akersten]

In the spirit of always starting your negotiation high and working toward a palatable middle, I'd like to propose a 2-day work week and 5 days off.

You may think that sounds crazy, but how many hours of dedicated, actual work do you do in a week? If you work a "9-5" and are reading this comment at work right now, I can give you a hint: it's not 40 ;)

I think we'd all be less distracted and more focused if we forced the "week's work" to happen in 2 , 8-hour days, and we could feel less guilty about not being perfectly-oiled constantly productive machines for the remaining 5/7 days of the week.

[jstx1]

You can only compress things so much though. You can't just tell people to show up and do only the productive n% of the hours. You can't force 2 days of perfect productivity out of people. That's not how any of this works. When you cut hours, you're cutting productive and unproductive hours at the same time, you don't get to cherry pick.

Or if you can cherry pick, go into management consulting - you'll be able to squeeze so much more out of everyone who still works full time by telling them to only do productive things at work.

While we're at it, we can tell people who gamble to only go to the casino on the days when they win.

[akersten]

My hypothesis is that most of our "unproductive time" in the 40h workweek is just filler time spent warming seats, a direct result of there actually not being all that much work that a human can consistently accomplish in a week.

So, by removing the expectation that you have your butt in a chair 8 hours a day 5 days a week, the new model is "get everything you were already painfully stretching across 5 days done in only the time it actually takes (2 days), and let's all go home and enjoy the free time we otherwise would have spent scrolling on our phones under florescent lights and quickly tabbing back to Excel when the boss walks by."

I truly do believe 95% of office-based business would get the same "amount" of work done in this system.

[breuleux]

The main issue, at least for me, is that I simply cannot focus for 8 hours in a single day. If I was to work 2 hours a day for four days, I would likely get more done than if I "worked" 8 hours one day.

[jabbany]

Well that sounds like something management would be more than willing to accommodate... That is, only paying you for those 2h a day instead of 8...

I think the more important thing is that the remaining "buffering" time is still necessary to extract that amount of productivity.

[heurisko]

> That is, only paying you for those 2h a day instead of 8...

In the context of tech-based work, If pay is based on productivity, then those two hours should be paid the same as 8.

I think tech companies are realising that it's paying for performance that matters; not paying by time. In many cases paying by time doesn't make sense. If you have an idea in the shower, does that count as working? If you going for a walk prompts a better idea, does that count as working?

[lmm]

I would gladly take a 20% pay cut to switch to a 4 day work week. Not many companies are offering that though.

[philmcp]

Some companies are offering a 4 day week with 0% drop in salary https://4dayweek.io/

[haliskerbas]

I do 1 hour chunks of work 8 times a day, between 8am and 11pm. Some work Gets blocked by other work, or other people being busy, pr some infra needing to be fixed.

[oarabbus_]

Humans are not robots. If most people do 2 "work days" of work in 5 a 5-day week, it doesn't logically follow that people would accomplish 2 "work days" of work in a 2-day week.

If we could find a VC with too much money and a gambling problem, I'd be happy to simultaneously start competing companies in the same sector; my employees can work 4 days/week and yours can work 2 days and we'll see how each business does ;)

[AussieWog93]

>a VC with too much money and a gambling problem

Isn't that a bit of a tautology? :P

(I kid, please don't kill me VCs)

[OneTimePetes]

As someday it may happen, that a victim must be found, i got a little list, of proprietary offenders who might as well be underground..

[johnchristopher]

If my employer could compensate me or pay me for the hours he forces me to warm a train and a bus seat that'd be great. /rant

[nxmnxm99]

It's a nice thought. I hope businesses that compete with mine do that, so I can produce twice as much as they do and win the market.

[vkk8]

Depends on why those unproductive hours are unproductive. My hypothesis is that human brain is just incapable of doing the sort of forced, focused work that modern work requires for more than a small number of hours. I.e. the hours worked are just not randomly productive or unproductive (like your casino analogue suggests), but you spend the productive hours and then you move into less productive mode, which could just as well be skipped completely.

A related question is does the working capacity "charge" over the course of one evening + sleeping or does it require more time? If the answer is "more time", as I suspect from the fact that most productive days of the week usually are after the weekend, a good strategy indeed would be to just do all the work we can do (which is maybe 10-20 hours) in two days and then recharge for five days.

[rtpg]

"You're cutting productive and unproductive hours at the same time" is perhaps true, but it's about the ratio. Obviously at the extremes (cutting the last day of work vs going from a 7-day to a 6-day) there's going to be differences.

Acting like unproductive hours are some random result goes against loads of companies who have been doing actual trials of 5 => 4 day weeks. Having time off is actually helpful, and the sort of procrastination from dissatisfaction/exhaustion/whatever that leads to this can be helped by this kind of stuff!

"Why is it 4 and not 3 or 2 or whatever" I mean it probably depends on people but TGIF is a saying for a reason

[breuleux]

I don't think unproductive hours are random, but I suspect that for mental work the productivity ratio decreases more dramatically in the last hour of each day than the last day of a week. Basically, from a pure productivity standpoint, it may be more efficient to go from 5x8 to 5x6 (or even 5x4) than to go from 5x8 to 4x8. Most people might prefer 4x8 because a full day off is more flexible, however.

[ProZsolt]

You need to calculate the productivity boost on Mondays after an extra day of rest.

[BitwiseFool]

In the 9-5's defense, a good chunk of my "downtime" at work is due to waiting on other people and/or not having something I can make progress on.

I would love less than a 40 hour work week where the effort is more concentrated, but after a certain point you just can't expect full productivity in a shorter space of time.

[packetlost]

This. If I'm chest deep in code (or other deep technical stuff) I can get about 6 hours of real work a day before my productivity nosedives. But that's maybe a once a week occurrence. The rest of the week is shorter bursts of productivity sprinkled between coordinating with teammates, other teams, etc.. I don't think actually shortening my work week would allow me to meaningfully be as productive with what I currently do. That being said, I WFH some of the time and I took like 30-40 min to vacuum my apartment and it had basically zero effect on my productivity.

[vkk8]

I guess the answer to these problems depends a lot on the job. I don't know why we would expect all sorts of different jobs to nicely fit into the same 9-to-5 5-days-a-week model anyway? For sure there are jobs where that works just fine (manual labour, etc.), but also jobs that would benefit for less working hours and more rest time (many cognitively heavy jobs) or jobs where the best model would be 24/7 readiness to work, but only small number of hours doing the actual work.

[dont__panic]

I wonder if the increasing shift toward remote work (often in disparate timezones) will end up pushing teams to eventually adopt 1-3 "core hours" 2-3 days per week with team meetings and collaboration sessions and a more laissez-faire attitude toward working the rest of the usual 9-5 day; I would love to just focus on getting my work done any time I feel like it, attend meetings during core hours, and have the ability to get out of the house and go do things during the normal workweek.

[UnpossibleJim]

Except for meetings and deadlines, why is anything measured in hours. Why aren't things measured in amount produced? (I hope it's obvious I'm speaking in terms of coders and manager's teams - I have no idea how this would work for directors or above.) The majority of coders are employed on salary (so far as I know), so just pay their salary and expect tasks to be completed. This mandatory 40 hours in a seat ritualistic adherence seems dated and unproductive. Different people will work better in different situations, and it is one of management's tasks to see that their team's potential isn't impeded when trying to complete their tasks as a unit, even when that means working as a coordinator between separate individuals on the same team, working towards the same goal. The work should be what's valued and not some myopic adherence to a past life of offices and collared shirts.

[heavyset_go]

It's because workers in general don't have much leverage when it comes to being compensated for the value of the fruits of their labor instead of just their time. Owners want to capture that value instead.

[JanisL]

I think in part its because hours are extremely easy to measure compared to productivity in many complex work environments.

[zeroq]

I appreciate the irony, and to some degree I agree with the argument but you have to keep in mind that in the real world employers like to see their cogs working.

I'm a night owl and I really hate getting up early. Early in my career when I was working in digital advertising I had a job where I tried to argue with my employer that while I'm coming late to work I never refuse to stay late hours or work through weekends when jobs needs it. Unpaid overtime mind you. They didn't understood. Instead they preferred - at least they thought they preferred - seeing me at my desk from 10 to 6, because that's what they were paying for. After 18 they were leaving the office and not knowing what I was doing they just assumed no work was done. Probably. Actually couple of jobs like that. Those were small shops. Recently I worked for bigger corps and (un)surprisingly the patter repeated. Instead of agreeing on me showing late to the office but willing to stay late if there was actual work to do without getting any compensation my managers preferred me to get to my desk by 9 and sit there till 5 even if there was nothing to be done. Another recent situation was when I was responsible for architecture and setting up a team for a fairly complicated project. I like to think on my feet so I was spending a lot of my time in quiet corridors of the office or in cafeteria trying to figure out how to make things going. My managers were furious at me for not sitting in front of my desk and I repeatedly failed to convinced them that neither my job description, nor my current position requires me to sit in front of my keyboard at all time to complete the tasks I'm facing.

I agree it's stupid, but we can't deny that it's sad reality for many people out there.

[legostormtroopr]

> If you work a "9-5" and are reading this comment at work right now, I can give you a hint: it's not 40 ;)

I don't like this attitude as it implies "reading" isn't work. The role of a "knowledge worker" is to find and generate new ideas and implement them. Hacker News is regularly filled with good articles and commentary about the tech space - and is something I encourage my team to follow.

Its not uncommon for there to be articles directly related to our tech stack. So yeah, even if you aren't pushing code for 40hours, doesn't mean you aren't "working" that whole time.

[Waterluvian]

Personally I don’t want compression. I want five days a week of 3-8 hours of work each day. I fill the rest with family stuff, piano, hobbies when they pique my interest, chores, etc.

That is, I think the flexibility is more valuable than concentrated time off. It enables me to follow the flow of life.

[echelon]

How can you enjoy life after work? I have ADHD, and all the time before and after work is dead.

I'd be happier working 40 hours in 3 days.

[kharak]

How does ADHD causes this and what do you mean with dead? I'm curious, as certain appointments also cause me to "lose" a day. I'm also seemingly incapable to do much else with my time, if there is something I should be doing. (I really like to learn about x, but my job requires me to get better as y, which I don't care for. I end up learning neither x nor y).

[Waterluvian]

I’m not sure I understand the question. I have pretty nasty ADHD and do not struggle to shut off from work.

I’m not working for free so when I hit 35 hours I stop paying attention to it.

[simonh]

An awful lot of jobs are about being available to do that 2 days fo work as and when it has to be done, and that work is split up into random chunks of a few minutes to a few hours throughout the week and aren't compactable. Any job that provides an available service to others is like that.

There may be some jobs that are slugging away at a big block of work and you could do it any time during the week. Part of some of my jobs have been like that, in fact that was software development which was part of the role, but not all of the job.

[wastedhours]

Was coming here to say exactly this - you're not really being paid for the work itself, but to have access to you for a certain amount of time. Sometimes there's as much value to the company in your 2 minute Slack response to a query at 17:58 on a Friday evening as there is for a 6 hour coding block.

Not saying it's valuable in a world sense, but for the objectives of the machine you're working in, it often is.

[ladyattis]

I think over-asking for that sort of work week isn't productive to be honest. And I'm an anti-work kind of person. The real problem is that modern work doesn't reflect the actual labor involved. I don't know how many hours I've wasted on meetings where a simple email and a 15 minute follow-up for questions would've been sufficient to get any issues out of the way. I'll grant that some labor is just meetings to debate the course of a business but beyond that as a software developer my job really should be about what is getting priority and then doing that priority queue. The meeting schedule for me should be 1 or 2 meetings a week total (not exceeding 45 minutes total) to set the work queue for said products then the rest should be me doing the work with some time to get help from other developers who have expertise in something I'm unfamiliar with. The total hours for that? Probably 30-40 a week tops. Anything past 40 is just screaming for contractors.

[endisneigh]

that's an interesting idea, but wouldn't work.

my personal theory is that all uncertainty ultimately is derived from the weather and cascades down. that is, even if you eliminated inattention, carelessness, tardiness, and laziness and what not, the weather would inevitably cause accidents and other unpredictable things.

as a result much of the time people spend is actually just waiting around for other people.

[poetaster]

I have a frame. 28 hours. M/W/F I do 8 hours, am available. T/T I do 2, alone. Sometimes I do more. I have the good fortune to say when and where, but this gives me modalities and no one has to wait too long and I get quality work time in both parts. Pay is not that good, perks are.

[janandonly]

All my working life I've worked 24 hours/3 days per week.

Once or twice a year there is an "all hands on deck" emergency, and I will work a day or two extra. But those are the very rare exceptions.

My take is: I see colleagues do almost [1] the same amount of work, but because they are in the office all week round they are far more visible. I on the other hand am much more awake and energetic, and cost the company less € too...

Also I'm personally happy to work less. More time for side projects, hobby's, my family and people in general. I'm less stressed.

[1] (hard to compare myself with others in any case)

[eloff]

I work 40%, so I do this, just spread over 5 days. I've also tried one week on, one off. It's heaven. I hope I don't have to go back to working full time ever again. I'm currently working and travelling without a permanent address.

[bserge]

Coming soon, the 0 day work week. No one needs lazy meatbags when 10 robots can work 24/7.

[throwaway889900]

Not until the robots can build themselves. Hah!