Why A Four-Day Work Week Doesn't Work

http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/18/careers-leadership-work-leadership-cx_tw_0818workweek_print.html

by swombat • 18 years ago

11 13 18 years ago

krschultz• 18 years ago

You can't argue with 37signals being able to produce a lot of results with their 4 day work week. . .

BUT does anyone else see the irony of them always posting blog posts responding to Hacker News stories? I thought with the 4 day work week everyone spent less time distracted and more time doing?

I think working from home/allowing any hours as long as results are produced is great for some jobs like hacking and design - but it utterly fails for other jobs. If you need to communicate with other businesses, you have to be there everyday during business hours. What happens if a big customer calls on friday and everyone is gone, 40 hours doesn't help much if it isn't on those days.

swombat• 18 years ago

Hmm, actually the 37Signals story appeared earlier than I posted this :-) So they're not really responding to HNews...

mechanical_fish• 18 years ago

I thought with the 4 day work week everyone spent less time distracted and more time doing?

Do you really think that the 37signals strategy of fostering a dialogue with HN readers is a distraction from their business plan? Given that the customer base for products like Basecamp consists of small businesspeople with a slight technical bent?

37signals, like Spolsky and the ArsDigita of yore and (ahem) YCombinator, fosters discussions about hacking because such discussions are a very effective marketing tool. Which is not to say that the company doesn't also do it because it's fun, and because it's good for their profession and for the world. It's one of those win-win-win situations.

sabat• 18 years ago

For once I whole-heartedly agree with a 37signals post.

pierrefar2• 18 years ago

They have a flaw. This quote says it all:

"Packing 40 hours into four days isn't necessarily an efficient way to work."

Why pack 40 instead of 32? The point of a 4-day week IMHO is not doing the same work-time in fewer days but to work more efficiently and so do the same work in less work-time, which in turn requires fewer days.

It's all about efficiency for both machines and people. Tell that to Forbes.

Goladus2• 18 years ago

I think the belief is that labor doesn't compress enough to be worth it beyond 40 hours per week. If you're doing manual labor of some sort, chances are you don't really have much room to manage time poorly, which is what 37signals 4-day work week is meant to address.

pierrefar2• 18 years ago

Even labor, of any kind requiring humans to do something, can be made more efficient by automation. So although you can't compress manually labor at all, you can make workers more efficient by giving them machines to help them.

Tamerlin• 18 years ago

I think Forbes also missed the point that hours aren't the criterion that people should care about, but rather results.

tstegart• 18 years ago

I agree with Goladus, some people don't have room to manage time poorly. When you work in a factory it is hours that matter because the results don't vary greatly by the amount of time you work. Sure, extremely long hours will make a difference, but if you put 16 doors on 4 cars per hour on a line, working two more hours doesn't really decrease that. You don't have time to goof off and be unproductive. If you just went by results, your whole assembly line would be screwed up, because its, well, a line.

Goladus2• 18 years ago

* As for saving on the cost of commuting, it likely isn't true.*

It likely is. And it seems like the author is really just reaching for something else to talk about.

There's no guarantee that employees will save on commuting costs. In many cases, employees will travel even farther because they'll use the extra day for vacations they wouldn't have taken or run errands that they would otherwise do while at work.

The whole point of saving on commute costs is so you can spend that time and money doing something less stressful and mind-numbing, like taking a vacation. So yes, if you only commute 4 times a week instead of 5 you're saving on commute costs, period.

froo• 18 years ago

if you only commute 4 times a week instead of 5 you're saving on commute costs, period.

The problem with your reasoning is that you're using regular mathematics and not (as is the case of this article) Journalist Maths.

It's one of those downfalls of us technical types, we only use real mathematics to prove points.

I for one am ashamed of myself.

mattmaroon• 18 years ago

Wait, I thought we were already on the 4 hour work week. Get with the program Forbes.

jrsims• 18 years ago

This article starts off assuming that a four-day workweek entails cramming the usual 40 hour workweek into 4 days instead of 5. I stopped reading right there, because the idea of "Four Tens" or "Power Shifts" aren't new ideas and really only work for certain types of people in certain roles.

People aren't robots. Just because you're getting the same amount of time per week from them doesn't mean you're the getting the same efficiency too. 37S has already expanded on this topic and I fully agree.

I get frustrated with these kinds of articles where the author demonstrates their lack of willingness to think outside the box or attempt to grasp some counter-intuitive ideas on this topic.

A workweek of four, eight-hour workdays with the option to work into your 3-day weekend on occasion is the way to go for a lot of traditional 9-5 office jobs, IMO. Your "Four Tens" and "Power Shifts" are going to burn out a lot of people unnecessarily. What I fear is that some companies will start experimenting with a 4-day workweek by compressing more human time into fewer days and will be unhappy with the results they get, thus returning to the standard 5-day workweek with the claim that their experiment failed and 4-day workweeks "don't actually work". The State of California is experimenting in this exact same manner now (Yes, the State of California - the gold standard in efficiency, right?).

As for those of us who have been bitten by the entrepreneurship bug, I think many of us actually can be more productive in working long hours - maybe even as much as 7 days a week - but that's because we are energized and driven by our vision. And ultimately, it's our choice anyway.

Not to be an ass, but wake me when we're ready to talk some sense here.

Why A Four-Day Work Week Doesn't Work

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