Can someone change the misleading title to part of the subtitle? It is "Less work, same money, more happiness and productivity. As of February 1, 45 companies in Germany are testing a 4-day workweek.", which is much more meaningful.
Title makes it sound like there is anything like a concerted effort, whereas these are just 45 random companies. No details on size of those companies, no data on number of employees or fields. I would expect that in particular the traditonal German "backbone" of the economy is not the kind of company amenable to this work week model or even participating in such a study. Example, classic automative supplier with more "blue collar" style work.
Overall a weird article with not a lot of original research.
To not have this comment only be a rant, here is some data [1]: There are 3.4 Million companies (definition at link, they need to have employees and taxable turnover) in Germany, with 35 Million employees. That includes small 1-person shops as well as Fortune 500 companies.
Anyone seems to be able to sign up for that study, and without any further details this seems hardly representative. I am very much interested in the outcome of these studies and would probably for myself assume that I can be productive in 4 days as well, but I'm not sure how this gives us usable data.
The title is misleading because it says Germany is exploring - suggesting there is anything like a cultural shift/push on a society-wide scale to explore. That unfortunately is not the case.
German work culture as a whole is very much still "butts in seats", working for the predefined number of hours per week with a fixed quota each day, and the Stempeluhr [1] is very much alive even in white collar jobs.
If you interpret Germany to mean German government mandate then I can see how it would seem misleading, but if you interpret Germany as the people who live there, then 45 random companies (that the journalist could find, there will be more) is actually pretty good evidence of a society wide exploration.
I spent the summer in Berlin and, as an American, was a bit culture shocked by how little time people worked, and how so many people I met bragged about collecting paid time off for reasons they admitted to making up, which the government enforced all employers must allow. As an employer, I'd be afraid of hiring in countries like Germany for an international workforce if that meant I have to have a patchwork of special policies to treat those workers differently, and I would not be excited about the unambitious "antiwork" ethos
Interestingly, as a German who lives in a bubble where people take their jobs very seriously, I was equally surprised when I experienced pretty much what you described while visiting the US.
I guess there are “proud to be lazy” kind of people in any country. It’s definitely not a widespread German cultural thing, though, from my experience.
I think it's that when you're a tourist visiting somewhere you're far more likely to encounter people without jobs wherever you go, as the people with jobs are at work working, then go home to their families or friends or chores then go to bed, not hang around all day in the city center cafes chatting up tourists.
My educated guess would be that there are some stark cultural differences that lead to a misunderstanding here. First off, there’s a general and fundamental difference in the way Germans and Americans understand work.
In Germany, you do have a right to at least 20 days of fully paid leave every year; most companies actually even grant 26-30 days off. And you’ll even have to take a mandatory leave of at least 12 consecutive days once per year. As this affects everyone, you don’t have any career disadvantages by going on a vacation- in fact, it’s normal and expected.
Additionally, being on sick leave is very much normal and expected, and (other than in toxic company cultures, exceptions do exist) neither do cause you any disadvantages.
And finally, you cannot be fired without a very good reason, and even then, you have at least a month of notice (the period increases depending on how long you’ve been employed by a company, up to four months for 10 year contracts).
So I think it’s safe to say that Germans do take being on a fully paid leave - either on vacation or sick (and I didn’t even talk about parental leave) - as something granted and natural.
And while the distribution of people trying to avoid work as much as possible is probably the same as in the USA, our baseline is very different. So while it may look like people here take pride in not working, that is definitely a flawed assumption. We just have a different legal system.
That's a pretty bad way to get an impression of a whole country. That's like those American tourists visiting only the instagramable parts of Paris and Rome and then say they "saw Europe" lol.
Especially that Berlin is basically an American/Expat enclave in Germany where the native Germans are a minority to the point they're annoyed that nobody at cafes, bars and restaurants can take their orders in German.
Try vising smaller cities in Germany where the locals are a majority to get an actual feel of the country's culture and people. Berlin is too far from representative, it's just the place most foreigners feel comfortable because they're surrounded by other foreigners.
> Especially that Berlin is basically an American/Expat enclave in Germany where the native Germans are a minority to the point they're annoyed that nobody at cafes, bars and restaurants can take their orders in German.
This is a pretty tired trope. As an immigrant living in Berlin since 2020, first in Prenzlauer Berg and now in Schöneweide, I still haven't found those enclaves that even speak English, let alone don't speak German. I'm sure they exist, but generalising from them to the whole 4 million+ city seems as misguided as generalising from your Berlin experience to the rest of the country.
I have eaten in Restaurants and and shopped in shops in Berlin where at least some of the staff were unable to speak even the very basic German needed to take an order or inform the customer of the price. This seemingly wasn't considered a reason not to employ them. As another example, there are plenty, perhaps even the majority of Yoga studios that work in English only.
It's probably going too far to call it an "enclave", but I don't think any of this would happen in any other German city.
What are some expat neighborhoods in Berlin? I was just trying to find American expat enclaves like Chinatown in NY - couldn't really, outside of Antigua in Guatemala
Take note, that in some countries the employer is reimbursed for prolonged employee absence due to illness or similar. Germans are also often paid less, which in many cases is a result of employer taking into account PTO and other absences.
On the other hand working as an independent consultant (contractor, B2B model in EU) - you may get paid similar or even more than what you'd make in the US.
I'd say this attitude is while not exclusively found in Berlin but certainly more frequent there. Berlin is kind of a failed state on multiple levels and this fosters and attitude of "why should I work more than I absolutely have to if I don't gain anything from doing more and still will have to struggle with paying my rent?". the ridiculous influx of immigrants primarily interested in welfare isn't helping either. Places like Munich, Frankfurt, Leipzig etc will give a different picture.
Working in germany is just not worth it.
For example in this reddit thread(1) someone asked how much you would earn if you work for an us company paying 100 000 dollar per year while living in germany.
At the time the thread was written 100 000 dollar were about 91100 euro.
After taxes and other things like statutory health insurance you would only have 42.276 euro left (and you still need to put money into your securities account for your retirement as the state based pension isn't sufficient anymore due to the aging population).
This is not the norm, as the employment modalities in that thread are super strange. If you’re employed by a German entity and your salary is 91.1k€, your take-home income would be around 53.8k€. Put another way - the $100k / 91.1k€ are the Arbeitgeberbrutto, they correspond to 75.5k€ Arbeitnehmerbrutto (the number you’d normally see on your contract). The difference exists because there are employer deductions and employee deductions, but the employer deductions don’t show up on the pay slip. Only in this constellation the employee has to pay both. It’s very much the exception, not the norm.
> If you’re employed by a German entity and your salary is 91.1k€, your take-home income would be around 53.8k€.
> Put another way - the $100k / 91.1k€ are the Arbeitgeberbrutto, they correspond to 75.5k€ Arbeitnehmerbrutto
I fully disagree. I'm talking about the Arbeitgeberbrutto as it does not make any difference for the employer if he sends the money to you or to the state/health insurance/.... He is already paying it so he would be willing to also pay it to you if he would not have to pay it to the state/health insurance/... So in my opinion it is part of the salary and I think the split into employer deductions and employee deductions just exists to make the contributions appear to be smaller than they actually are.
The post I linked just made it clear to me that salaries aren't that bad in germany compared to other states it is just that we have to pay most of it to the state/health insurance/...
As an employee, the Arbeitgeberbrutto is a number you never see. You’re not saying that employing people isn’t worth it, you’re saying that working in Germany isn’t worth it. Then you have to take the employee’s perspective, not the employer’s. Nobody advertises the true cost to the employer in other countries either. How much do all those benefits to US employees cost? Do you include that when you list US salaries, or do those get magically excluded because health insurance isn’t mandatory?
> you’re saying that working in Germany isn’t worth it.
Yes, that's my first sentence in my first comment.
My comment was not about reasoning if it is worth to employ people in germany but to state why people may prefer to work less.
> How much do all those benefits to US employees cost? Do you include that when you list US salaries, or do those get magically excluded because health insurance isn’t mandatory?
Yes, if the employer pays it it is part of the loan and should be considered if you compare the loans between different countries.
> Your premise just seems fundamentally flawed.
Okay, to be honest I just don't see how it is flawed. Also I don't have anything left to say. I just don't see why I shouldn't consider it as part of the salary as it would not make a difference to the employer to pay it to the employee instead if the employee deductions wouldn't exist.
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Edit:
I can't answer anymore. So I'm editing this post.
> Making an argument about how people may want to work less based on a number most have never seen [...] is a flawed argument no matter how you approach it.
Yes, that makes sense. Most employees likely won't think about how much of the Arbeitgeberbrutto is taken away.
Still I think if you know it then it reduces ones motivation and
it also has the indirect effect of reducing the Arbeitnehmerbrutto an employer is willing to pay and therefore employees may be less motivated due to a low salary.
One issue is the way taxes work in Germany that disincentives entering the middle rungs of a career ladder. Like if you’re a software engineer and want to become an engineering manager, you might end up earning less after tax as a manager than you did as an engineer as your salary increase puts you in a new tax bracket.
Otherwise Germanys economy is optimized to support medium to large German companies with export businesses. Little attention has been given to support new business ventures, so for young people becoming an entrepreneur makes little sense when you can earn more and have less stress with a normal job.
full disclosure: this is based on personal experience and observation as a Brit that worked in Germany for a while and ended up in Switzerland
< you might end up earning less after tax as a manager than you did as an engineer as your salary increase puts you in a new tax bracket
That's not how progressive taxation and the tax brackets work. In reality you pay higher tax rate only on the amount above the threshold. So if, say, the tax rate is 20% on the income up to $10000 and 30% above it then if you earn $30000 you pay 20% on the $10000 and 30% only on the remaining $20000. You don't pay 30% on the whole $30000. Why is this misconception is so common?
> you might end up earning less after tax as a manager than you did as an engineer as your salary increase puts you in a new tax bracket.
This is impossible, even with the very high German taxes :-)
You will keep less of each (EDIT: additional) Euro you earn, but the tax progression is not that broken that getting paid more results in less money for you. There are diminishing returns on hours worked, if that is what you meant, but otherwise it's untrue.
The question I think needs answering is why we wouldn't do it. Obviously most people would love to have an extra 52 days a year to themselves to spend with family, do hobbies, handle personal business. Outside of greed or operational commitments, why aren't we doing this?
because cultural inertia (see also why USA still uses imperial units instead of metric)
but agree that we should have more poeple working less instead of a few people working a lot (or making all the money)
6 hour workdays would also be cool, instead of 3 shifts to cover a 24 hour period companies would be forced to have 4 shifts a day (for 24/7 operations)
For the US it's simply because with free time employees can look for better opportunities.
This is famously why shitty minimum wage jobs have endlessly changing schedules. Many companies have actual rules against setting regularly scheduled shifts.
Was interesting watching the shift happen, regular schedules used to be the norm and it was far easier to work several jobs. Especially once everything became part-time in the 90's.
politicians don't want the plebs to have too much time for anything other than working ... that's just asking for trouble. the less people work, the more they think, come up with ideas and even start to realize that working is for most people in most situations a mere waste of their life time. personally I do believe that work in some way is essential for human life and well being - but I write "some way" because it would be difficult to describe how that would look like but the present state of what working is like for most people is a pathogenic perversion in my opinion.
If you don't grind yourself to a nub on the wheel of the economic machine then our country will be overrun by those OTHER people! Play the national anthem!
I always thought that in a highly automated world, reducing the mandated working hours would be the solution to bring prosperity and peace, but there are some obvious problems with that. For example, in a global economy, nations compete with each other, and for developing nations, an average german producing for fewer hours, but consuming the same or even more resources, would be a great competitive advantage. For something like this to truly work I think it would have to be rolled out globally, or certain tariffs would have to be in place against nations that don’t follow the practice - and let’s be honest, certain nations do much worse things today to gain competitive advantage, and really nobody cares, most people love cheap stuff, however morally questionable the source is.
Feel like the real question is what is the purpose of work, if not to feed the all powerful need to consume. Perhaps we need to look at the consumption end of things. Consume less. Work less.
The entire system we built during the last 200 years revolves around consuming more and working more, the inertia makes it nearly impossible to even imagine something else at that point (as we can see by reading the comments on this very thread)
I wish someone would investigate what a 6 day week would look like(4 work, 2 off). This article was always a fun exercise what if scenario and if world wide agreement could come to be, would be an innovation on par with the 40 hour work week.
https://calendars.fandom.com/wiki/6-Day_Week_Solar_Calendar_...
This is one of those things that would not work as soon as there's a significant number of people not doing it. It's just not practical. Doing something in the existing 7 day structure is much easier.
They still get Sunday though. With a 6-day week period, the Christian holy day (along with Muslim and Jewish holy days) would often clash with a work day.
All employees in Germany(except in very small companies) have the right to request a reduction in their working hours, and the employer must allow it. The employee does not need to provide any justification for the request, and the employer must accept it unless they can show it would cause significant disruption to the business. That said, I can imagine in some companies there might be informal and social consequences to doing so.
Instead of a 4-day workweek how about setting reasonable hiring standards so that hundreds of thousands of people out of work, especially non-native German speakers, have a chance of getting past the job application screen.
Most jobs, even in tech, in DE currently require good knowledge of German, and "good" is being interpreted as near-native.
As someone in an English-speaking country, I expect my colleagues to have good English.
We operate a helpdesk where clear communication is essential. Internally, we need to be able to quickly coordinate with each other on highly technical problems. If someone from another country came in with a bad attitude about "why do I need good English?" we would be more than a little hesitant about hiring them. It doesn't matter how good you are in tech, English literacy and fluency are foundational to everything else.
It would surprise me if Germans see this very differently.
It IS different in non-English speaking countries. I live in Japan and work in an English workplace. The harsh reality is, if you want to hire talented in-demand people from outside your country, and your country's language isn't English, then you have to accommodate English in your workplace.
If you insist on using your local language only, then you will only have applicants from your own country: very few qualified candidates living outside Germany(/Austria) or Japan can speak those languages at a highly proficient level. If you have no need of importing professionals from abroad, that's OK; obviously it's easier to recruit people in your own country if you stick to your country's native language. But if you have a big talent shortage (as is typically the case for the tech sector), then not accommodating English will mean you can't compete against companies that are more international (i.e., they use English).
Like it or not, English is the most commonly-spoken 2nd language in the world; it's the international language of business and trade. College-educated professionals mostly all speak it these days. So if you want an international company, English it is.
Flawless communication between team members is important when developing complex products. If my team was primarily comprised of people who only fluently speak German, and we are located in Germany, is it not reasonable for me to set a requirement that new candidates must speak fluent German?
Why are you entitled to have people speak your language, when you are the immigrant?
I have experienced breakdown in communications due to English not being good enough many, many times.
There's plenty of stories in comments here, about how bad offshore teams are. In most cases it's just a result of poor communications(due to lack of English proficiency). I've had to switch to other languages to explain some basic things about "what the client actually wanted", because of breakdown in communications.
Because it's equally hard to find good workforce here in Germany. Besides, I expect every IT worker to be able to at least understand, if not speak English in a way that two foreigners can understand each other pretty well. How else did you acquire your knowledge? By only falling back to literature in your language? That seems kind of limiting if you are working in IT.
Your "entitlement" argument sounds a bit harsh for me, to be honest.
>Because it's equally hard to find good workforce here in Germany.
1) There's no shortage of developers just a shortage of pay.
2) It's also hard to find doctors, that doesn't mean hospitals should compromise and let everyone practice who doesn't speak the language practice medicine just because there's a shortage.
Similarly, a lot of companies don't want to compromise on the language skillset, especially if most of their products are only for the local market that will be used mainly by other German speakers. So having devs not fluent in the local language and not understand the little details and semantics in requirements written in German, means a lot of time wasted with translations and clarifications.
It's the first argument HN brings against offshoring, saying it doesn't work because foreign devs don't understand the business and semantics of a foreign language or culture. Why do you think it suddenly doesn't also apply with foreign workers on-shore?
>How else did you acquire your knowledge? By only falling back to literature in your language? That seems kind of limiting if you are working in IT.
The limiting factor is not other developers, although it could be sometimes. It's the managers who don't use English on a regular basis like IT workers do, especially if like I said before, their company mostly caters to the German speaking market, and they wish to address developers directly for questions and feedback in meetings without only reaching out to the German speakers in the team to have to transalte further.
If you have a company meeting in the US or UK, is it not in the local language ? Why would any other country be different?
>If you have a company meeting in the US or UK, is it not in the local language ? Why would any other country be different?
It's really simple: English is the international language of business. So a German IT professional can easily get a job in the US or UK, because every college-educated German speaks English fluently. Same goes for every such person in China, India, Russia, France, everywhere really. So US and UK companies routinely hire professionals from outside those countries.
The reverse isn't true: how many Brits or Americans can speak German well enough to relocate to Germany and get an IT/software job there? Almost none. So German companies are limited to candidates from Germany, Austria, and part of Switzerland and maybe a few people from some other nearby countries maybe. American and UK companies, OTOH, have all the best candidates from around the world available to them.
>1) There's no shortage of developers just a shortage of pay.
Sure, offering more money than any other company in Germany would probably get a company their pick of candidates. But it'll also increase their costs a lot and make them less competitive internationally. Don't forget though: German companies aren't just competing with other German companies for candidates: they're competing with companies in other countries, especially English-speaking countries. German candidates aren't stuck in Germany: they can easily move to English countries and work there too. Can German companies really afford FAANG-level salaries?
>2) It's also hard to find doctors, that doesn't mean hospitals should compromise and let everyone practice who doesn't speak the language practice medicine just because there's a shortage.
If you have people dying left and right because there's no medical treatment due to a doctor shortage, then yes. At some point, there really is a such thing as a labor shortage and you have to adapt.
As a native speaker my experience isn't that you require near native skills, I've worked with plenty of expats/immigrants who speak 'just' good German, but I'd rather increase language learning opportunities if necessary mandatory rather than lower standards.
This is still a country, not a back office for multinationals, people who talk to a German business should be able to have a conversation in German. This can be expected from immigrants. I've lived abroad myself and made sure I was proficient enough to be able to integrate. It's culturally vital as well.
My wife has a master's degree in engineering from a TU9(top 9 universities in Germany).And a B2 language certificate. She has not found a job so far. Been more than a year and half since she started actively applying. At times she ticks all the requirements in the job description, and still no luck.
She is planning to go to a bakery starting next week. The guy at the bakery was so surprised to see someone with master's degree in engineering ready to work at a bakery. So the perception and reality is different.
Unless you are in IT/software development, it is hard to get a job. Traditional engineering disciplines are hard to break into.
So she's got a degree in engineering from here in Germany, knows the language pretty well, but can't land a job here? I don't know where you are in Germany, but that sounds pretty much unbelievable. I live in Bavaria in a mid-sized town with 140.000 residents. I know companies here where almost half the staff is Indian/other nationality and it does not matter at all how good your German is (I know multiple Indians working there).
I personally have a friend who is from Iran, she is going to be a chemistry professor soon here in Germany, so there ARE definitely opportunities for people who are not born here.
Well I have acquaintances employed here too. And my wife's case is not a single one.
I have a friend who migrated from India and his wife used to work for a pharma/biotech firm back in India and had some temporary work here in Germany, when peak COVID happened, when pharma companies were hiring a lot.
She already has a master's degree from India and she has been undergoing further trainings supported by Job center, and still no luck.
TU means Institute of Technology. Says nothing about being a good university. Your wife is likely bound to your location what limits her options and like has a degree that is not very in demand, at least not where she lives.
Engineering could be everything. And if she has a degree in, let's say food technology and is willing to work somewhere deep in east Germany for a very low amount of money then she would find a job.
As a German, my personal experience does not correspond with this. I know a lot of companies here where people from India or Eastern European countries work and their knowledge of the German language varies widely. But as long as you speak English you get along very well here. And they work at large companies, mid sized companies or startups. Most people in Tech/Engineering speak English nowadays.
Surprisingly the CEO of Bayer, one of Germany's biggest companies, does not speak German despite living and working near Cologne. Apparently the board meetings are conducted in German... No idea how he manages to participate.
I always assumed that if I moved to a different country and took a job there, I'd need to learn the language. It's part of what makes emigrating seem difficult actually.
That is not true. Not in germany, not from my experience. If you speak english you are good. Your colleagues will be happy to pratice their english too.
Big Berlin start-ups probably are fine in English, but from most of the browsing on LinkedIn, I'd say if you venture out of the big start-up scene, you won't find English there, and that's the vast majority of tech jobs.
> Most jobs, even in tech, in DE currently require good knowledge of German
I mean of course, d'oh!? You say "even" in tech, I'd say especially in tech (or really any job that requires communication in high performing fields) should have high standards for the native language, because good communication is key.
Call me old fashioned, but the jobs for people who don't speak the native language (well) are reserved to be: cleaners, putting tins into shelves, scrubbing toilets, warehouse work, sorting foul carrots from good carrots on a production line, etc.
I'd say you need a decent level of being able to communicate with your colleagues and stakeholders. If someone struggles then they can drive an Uber and practice until they are better.
Except that in the nascent EU single market, the native language is English. Of course you should be fluent in the language of the country in which you work/live, but increasingly this will be less important - assuming that the EU wants any chance of competing with US/China that is.
There are plenty of companies in Germany that have English as a working language, but even then local teams are better served by people with good local language proficiency.
> assuming that the EU wants any chance of competing with US/China that is
Germany can import/export and trade with everyone outside of Germany without dumbing down their population to people with a vocabulary of 100 words. Cross border trade language may be English, but domestic business language is German.
My understanding is that trade in goods within the Single Market has worked very well, but trade in services not so much - not least due to language barriers. This becomes an issue because service based businesses (which includes law, finance, and creative industries, as well as hairdressing) also benefit from economies of scale - witness the relative success of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, with an immediate market of ~350MM people.
Except that in the nascent EU single market, the native language is English. Of course you should be fluent in the language of the country in which you work/live, but increasingly this will be less important - assuming that the EU wants any chance of the economies of scale necessary to compete with US/China
Wait... There's a shortage of labor so the solution is to restrict the supply of labor? Simply from a math perspective (not political) wouldn't going to a 6 day workweek do more to solve the problem?
If it works I guess that's good for Germany but isn't that ultimately musical chairs? You're only poaching labor from other markets, not increasing the supply of it.
Apparently it's already a labor shortage when HR departments can keep themselves busy running openings for mr and mrs perfect while rejecting everybody who is less than a 99.9% match.
From gut feeling, this effect is especially pronounced in Germany. You don’t have exactly those 4 years of experience in Java Spring Poop? Into the trash your CV goes.
They cannot conceive people learning new skills quickly, being dynamic, or their two years worth of experience weighing much heavier than your average, mentally checked out 4 YoE developer.
Screening hundreds of people quickly is tough, I get it, but either be actually open minded or quit crying about labour shortage.
Please no, because then the draconian 3 months notice period kicks in. Truly an artefact of a time past.
Take today’s date: if you quit February 1st, you can only start at a new place June 1st! At least 3, but up to 4 months of a continued work relationship is unattractive for both parties I’d say.
(At least that’s the widely used rule; the law only specifies a minimum notice period of 1 month)
I don't get this, what has probation to do with the notice period? I don't know of anyone in the industry who has a contract with less than 3 (maybe 2) months of notice.
Your work is not serious if your employee can risk you leaving within 1 month (counting in unused holidays, 1-2 weeks even?)
Notice periods are much shorter during probation periods. It might kick up from 2 weeks (within probation) to the 3-4 months the day probation ends.
There’s no progression in between.
Of course, for serious work, notice periods of 3 months or even longer make sense. But those levels should only kick in after several years. If you’ve been with a company for only a year, there’s no point in a 3 month period.
I once brought up the idea of a 4-day work week to a PM I worked with, and her immediate reaction was very defensive, as she could not understand why would anyone want to work less, and who then would get all the work done. It made me realize that not all people actually want more freedom, some are most likely stockholm syndrom-ed to their job, and these are the people the rest of us are up against trying make positive change happen.
Explain to me how we haven't had a significant change in the amount of days per week or hours per week we work in about 100 years, and yet the amount of things we can get done now in that same amount of time is orders of magnitude more? Tell me we're not part of an ant colony with a injected idea of freedom to strive for, that we'll never really get, but that serves as a motivator so that we keep on grinding, oiling that capitalistic system for the benefactors of the few.
You seem to infer an emotional or psychological reaction to what is a rather straightforward question: today people typically work 5 days/week to get some amount of work done, so the most-simple assessment is that working 80% of that time would result in 80% of the work being done.
Rather than saying people are stockholm-syndrome'd ants who dislike freedom and positive changes, by what reasoning does 100% of work get done in 80% of the time?
Potential ideas would include:
* Maybe people today spend 20% or more of their week slacking off. If they can eliminate that slack-off time, they could have every Friday off.
* People could "work faster/harder" and get the same amount of work done in less time?
* Maybe we don't need all this work to get done anyway? But then what are the side effects? 20% fewer medical services, restaurants, groceries, deliveries, plumbing, construction, government operations...?
Or maybe if people had more time to enjoy life with their hobbies and loved ones, they'd be more motivated to do good work, and actually more would get done with 4 days than 5 days. From the few experiments[0] done on this topic, that seems to actually be the case.
So then some combination of my points (1) and (2), with the theory that there would be less wasted time during "work hours" and increased focus due to better work/life balance?
The counterargument to that theory, of course, would be that neither would happen, and there would be the same amount of time not getting work done, and people would work at same rate without any increase in focus or motivation. As you said, experiments may help answer this.
There's also another angle of why this is a contentious issue. The idea that people pushing for 4dww are already in cushy jobs with low accountability. Maybe of us here are software engineers being paid $$$$ meanwhile we're spending time writing long comments on HN instead of, say, working on that bugfix that people are waiting for. By contrast, a very large part of the workforce might be less affected by "motivation" than the kind of people pushing for 4dww.
The problem is that we treat the baseline/status quo as something which is beneficial and anything "less productive" would be where the tradeoffs are.
When you say 20% less medical service you might also get 20% more time with your kids/friends/family, 20% more sleep, 20% more reading, &c.
People lived with 99% less of all we have not so long ago, surely there is a middle ground. My mom got oranges for christmas, now anything short of a new smartphone is borderline a war declaration on your offspring
> My mom got oranges for christmas, now anything short of a new smartphone is borderline a war declaration on your offspring
And not only that, but we're outraged if the super-computer in our pocket costs more than a few hundred bucks, so we expect our goods to be cheap and therefore workers get very little (putting aside "corporate greed" and other buzzy words for a moment).
Does the 4DWW crowd acknowledge the point you are making? Because to me it seems their premise is "We can do the same in 80% of the time."
I think most don't, but I'm very frugal so it's an easy point to make for me. If we consumed less, bought less useless gadgets, we'd mechanically need to work less
I'm already working 4 days a week, with a 20% pay cut, and not even a great salary to begin with, but I could get by with 2 days with my current lifestyle (if my company allowed it)
People who want to work less and keep everything the same are delusional imho, something's got to give
I find it kinda ironic that this is coming from a PM.
Software is an area where you can get absurd productivity gains just from having different task definitions, by simplifying things where they can be simplified, or by simply planning better. I've seen plenty of bad PMs making a team work 2x, 3x, 4x more to accomplish something, purely because of unimportant details that ended up being too much trouble.
Not to mention I've seen countless times teams growing from say, 2 to 10 developers and not having even close to 2x difference. Heck, half of Mythical Man Month is about that.
So yeah, amount of time doesn't correlate to amount of work. And especially doesn't correlate to amount of value delivered.
People confusing outputs with outcomes. Being busy is not the same thing as being productive. You can be busy as hell working on things that are not valuable.
Productivity per employee definitely increased, and profit of companies definitely increased, the only thing that didn't follow both of these trends is the average wage
If you want to prove all the excess productivity of the last 50 years is useless busywork you have to bring some proofs. The money is moving from pockets to pockets so surely some value is created, it just happens that all these pockets are at the top, and not much trickles down
Measuring output is hard, so people are emotionally and behaviorally married to the performance art (appearing busy) vs objective measures of output.
The only way to show it's possible is through experiments, which have been very successful showing limited reduction in productivity moving to a 4 day work week (which benefits workers by allowing them to live more full lives vs toiling at work an extra unnecessary day per week).
Another example is the 900+ school districts in the US that have moved to a four day week, as it is the only way they can retain talent.
As with everything, it will come as the population turns over, older workers aging out of power and relevance (either through retirement or death), and younger workers aging in with different ideas of work arrangements. Progress occurs one funeral at a time - Planck
> Tell me we're not part of an ant colony with injected idea of freedom to strive for, that we'll never really get, but that keeps us motivated workers striving towards that something.
Once the population pyramid is upside down, the ant colony model does not work anymore.
Title makes it sound like there is anything like a concerted effort, whereas these are just 45 random companies. No details on size of those companies, no data on number of employees or fields. I would expect that in particular the traditonal German "backbone" of the economy is not the kind of company amenable to this work week model or even participating in such a study. Example, classic automative supplier with more "blue collar" style work.
The source seems to be https://www.intraprenoer.de/4tagewoche but this is equally opaque.
Overall a weird article with not a lot of original research.
To not have this comment only be a rant, here is some data [1]: There are 3.4 Million companies (definition at link, they need to have employees and taxable turnover) in Germany, with 35 Million employees. That includes small 1-person shops as well as Fortune 500 companies.
Anyone seems to be able to sign up for that study, and without any further details this seems hardly representative. I am very much interested in the outcome of these studies and would probably for myself assume that I can be productive in 4 days as well, but I'm not sure how this gives us usable data.
1: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris...