[ghaff]

And that CEO is not necessarily wrong. Even if you posit that certain types of creative problem solving might be as productive with a 32 hour work week as a 40 hour one, I'd also posit that there are a lot of jobs within companies that really do mostly map to hours in seats. And granting, say, engineering only a special privilege like that seems like it would be terrible for morale--especially given that there are doubtless other jobs at a company that could in principle also be equally productive with 4-day weeks.

And it probably goes without saying that most people would not be OK with a pay cut--which might have to actually be more than 20% given the cost of benefits is fairly fixed.

[pwinnski]

To add insult to injury in this case, all departments were completely on board other than sales, and this was an engineering-driven SaaS company. Sales people at that company are paid commission, and most of them outearn all software developers at the company, and even the C-suite. Still, it was in deference to them that the initiative was squashed.

On paper, it may have seemed like the right move, but it was huge demoralizing to the engineering org to be told, essentially: we will neither pay enough to be competitive, nor offer any other compensatory advantages, primarily in deference to this other department that we do pay well.

The morale question was apparently only considered in one direction.

[ghaff]

I actually find that a bit surprising. I would assume a lot of sales comp was commission driven so presumably reps could just have kept on working however many days they wanted to. Of course, they presumably wouldn't have had the support they wanted for one day a week so there's that.