Trial claimed to show a 4 and 5-day work week are equally productive. It didn’t

https://medium.com/@robertwiblin/a-widely-publicised-trial-claimed-to-show-a-4-and-5-day-work-week-are-equally-productive-655dac3aee94

by cocoflunchy • 7 years ago

35 10 7 years ago

medium.com

robertwiblin• 7 years ago

Would be good if the title could be edited so the word 'This' isn't missing at the start:

"This trial claimed to show a 4 and 5-day work week are equally productive. It didn’t."

kd5bjo2• 7 years ago

The article here boils down to arguing that the answers to these three questions aren’t representative of productivity:

1. Meets formal performance requirements of the job

2. Fulfills responsibilities specified in job description

3. Performs tasks that are expected of him or her

As an employee, those should cover everything I’m evaluated on; any company that claims this isn’t enough is either horribly mismanaged or trying to exploit its workers by requiring them to do things they didn’t sign up for.

close04• 7 years ago

The article actually boils down to (quote):

I think not.

Another note the author makes:

a productivity drive without shorter work hours might increase output, so there would still be a trade-off.

This could also be interpreted as an incentive to go to a 6 day work week. The article is obviously written mostly from an employer's point of view. But in all reality productivity has gone up in the past 4 decades with no meaningful increase in pay [0]. Given the current productivity levels maybe it no longer makes sense to look at the work week only as a measure of employer happiness but also think of employee happiness. The current work week is designed almost exclusively around maximizing the employer's benefit in the quest for ever increasing profits. Something that's often overlooked because employers have far greater bargaining power than employees.

Any decrease in productivity could be easily offset by increasing the workforce with benefits across the board (unemployment/economy/etc.). Except for the employer. Which is why nobody touches the work week and pay is linked to time worked instead of productivity.

Also another relevant discussion on HN [1].

[0] https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19253364

duado• 7 years ago

That’s a view that works if you want a static job, like a passport inspector. No one expects or wants them to go “above and beyond.” But in a company like Google, the work that needs to be done is far harder to define, and change frequently. You cannot expect to be promoted or even stay employed if you are just planning on doing what was specifically enumerated in the job description when you applied. for the job.

kd5bjo2• 7 years ago

I imagine the google job description for a software engineer is something like:

* Write and maintain software in accordance with business strategy

* Assist other technical staff when their duties overlap your area of responsibility

* May be required to be available 24/7 up to 15 days per quarter

* Periodically provide feedback to management about coworkers' performance

* Interview and evaluate candidates for technical positions

mruts2• 7 years ago

The less number of days people are expected to work, the more advantage motivated and ambitious employees have. If everyone has to work everyday, the only thing a person can do is to work longer hours, which have a decreasing marginal gains every extra hour worked. But with a weekend, an employee now can use 2 extra days to get ahead, theoretically doing 40% more work.

With a 3 day weekend, this goes up to an eye popping 75% more work, or even just a 25% increase for one extra day.

Because of this, I contend that a 4-day work week is highly unstable and that employees are going to naturally fall into a 5 or 6 day pattern to get ahead.

For a long time, people have been talking about leveling off work hours since productivity has/will go up. But the reality is that no one doesn’t want to work. No one wants to just work 4 hours a day and be done with it. We want to word harder and do more and make more money and be more successful. That’s who we (humans) are and it’s foolish to think we can change that.

edavison1• 7 years ago

I'm down with the points you made in the first three sections but your last point ("That's who we humans are and it's foolish to think we can change that.") is needlessly cynical. Attitudes toward work have changed immeasurably in the last 500 years and they will continue to change––if you haven't read it you should check out Weber (or just read the wiki page on the Protestest Ethic lol).

jriot2• 7 years ago

It is foolish to think people actually want to work more and that we tie our success to working harder and making more money.

mruts2• 7 years ago

Do you have a better metric in which we all can compare ourselves by? Because I know that the first thing everyone asks each other when they first meet is "what do you do?" If work doesn't matter, why does everyone ask each other that question?

Trial claimed to show a 4 and 5-day work week are equally productive. It didn’t

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