Ask HN: Are companies open to a 4-day work week?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8727806

by daenz • 12 years ago

18 17 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I've been experimenting with a 4-day work week at my current employment. I'm curious if any other employers are open to that kind of arrangement.

ernestipark• 12 years ago

Ryan Carson blogged about the 4-day work week at Treehouse: http://ryancarson.com/post/21708810513/4-day-week

wilblack• 12 years ago

Do you mean a 40 hour 4 day work week or a 32 hour 4 day work week? I'm all for the latter.

daenz• 12 years ago

Either

Major_Grooves• 12 years ago

they're quite different though. One is just squeezing a 5 day week in to 4 days. The other is only working 4 days worth of hours.

mrmondo• 12 years ago

The standard 5 day week in Australia is 37.5 hours. Our organisation has many people that work only 4 days at 30 hours.

Aeolun• 12 years ago

My previous employer was. Getting Wednesday in addition to the weekend off was the best schedule I've had in my life.

axilmar• 12 years ago

I would be in, but not if my paycheck was reduced.

davelnewton2• 12 years ago

Obviously some are, some aren't.

It depends heavily on how those four days are managed, the nature of what you specifically need to be doing while "on duty", etc.

Reasonable companies will recognize that an efficient 32 hours can be as productive (or more so) than an inefficient 40 hours. The trick is to show that this is the reality of what happens.

If you can generate empirical evidence supporting the same, it should be an easy sell. Good defect and task tracking can help with this.

dagw• 12 years ago

Several people at my workplace have gone down to a 90% work week, taking every other Friday off. The 10% pay cut is small enough to not really notice, but the positive effect of the extra day off every other week is huge. Once my current backlog of work has been cleared I'm considering trying it myself.

sjs382• 12 years ago

We do that at the company where I work, for creatives and developers (but not project/client admins, who need to be to clients during regular business hours).

We call it a 9/80 schedule (9 days, 80 hours), and it doesn't require a pay cut, or a reduction in the number of hours worked.

We work 9 hour days, 4 days per week and then we alternate between having the remaining day off and 8 hour work days. We also stagger the our days off, so that any department is never down a significant number of people.

It works really well. We arrive 1 hour before anyone else, so that hour of uninterrupted work is very valuable. There is some pushback from a particularly unorganized Account Leader, but I think everyone understands why that pushback exists.

shiftpgdn• 12 years ago

The 9/80 is pretty standard in the oil and gas industry.

wannano• 12 years ago

My former employer offered us 4 x 10h which reduces the commute to work, vehicle wear and tear, mileage and offers 3 day weekends. On the other hand, the 10h days can put a toll on your health when sitting at a desk for that long.

4 x 8h is a good idea as long as you can maintain the level of productivity. Given the competitiveness of the marketplace 4 x 8h might not work unless you have extra employees to fill in the 20% void.

Another factor to consider is your location. If you're getting paid 80% of the full time income and you live in an expensive city, you might find it difficult to adjust your lifestyle. Usually when you're not working (earning), you're spending.

In the end it's all about balance.

jasonkester• 12 years ago

In practice, every company is open to a 4-day work week, if you're valuable to them and the alternative is losing you. Some companies are just more likely to extend the same benefit to everybody.

Definitely do it, by the way. I dropped down to 4 x 8h when my second son was born, and simply never switched back. My quality of life is a lot better now, I don't seem to ever get sick anymore, and I get 3-day weekends every single week.

Way better than having an extra few grand on a paycheck.

himanshuy• 12 years ago

I think,it is not possible for the companies in consulting or services business.

mcv• 12 years ago

Many are, but unfortunately not all.

I've worked 32 hour weeks (with occasional overtime) for most of my working life, I think. I've never had a 5 day work week since 2009, and I don't quite recall my work weeks from my first few jobs (2001 - 2008), but I think those may have been 4 day weeks too. My brother had also always worked 4 day weeks, since the early '90s, I think.

But I have also worked a 5 day week for at least a year, and I've turned down a job at a company that totally understood my desire for a 4 day week, but still only wanted to hire me for 5 days.

All my freelance gigs (since 2012) have also been 4 days or less, though my current client cannot accept less than 32 hours per week for some odd reason.

But this is in Netherland. I'm sure it's different in other countries.

Someone• 12 years ago

In the EU, they all must be open to it. http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/employment_and_social... (from 1997):

"In respect of employment conditions, part-time workers may not be treated in a less favourable manner than comparable full-time workers solely because they work part-time, unless different treatment is justified on objective grounds. [...] social partners and/or Member States after consulting the social partners should identify and review obstacles which may limit the opportunities for part-time work and, where appropriate, eliminate them."

Such directives get translated into law in different ways in different countries, but the overall message is clear.

Ask HN: Are companies open to a 4-day work week?

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