[askonomm]

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.

I swear it's like a sci-fi film plot.

[khazhoux]

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...?

[askonomm]

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.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/21/four-day-...

[khazhoux]

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.

[lm28469]

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

[khazhoux]

> 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."

[lm28469]

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

[whstl]

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.

[psunavy03]

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.

[lm28469]

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

https://economicsfromthetopdown.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/...

[toomuchtodo]

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

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/companies-around-the-wo...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/21/four-day-...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/uk-employers-4-day-workwe...

https://www.thestar.com/business/could-a-4-day-work-week-wor...

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632901/schools-across-the...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/school-districts-4-day-week-tea...

[lotsofpulp]

> 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.