I’ve gone down to 4 days, taking Fridays off to look after my son, and I certainly won’t be going back to 5 days until he’s in school. Looking after a toddler all day isn’t exactly a day off, but it is extremely rewarding, and something I’d recommend to any parent thinking about dropping down a day.
It definitely has some downsides however, I’m the only one in the team that’s off that day, so there’s usually meetings and information that I miss out on, as well as a 20% cut in pay, but I’m very lucky to be in a position where we could afford it, and the time with my son is worth it.
Based on most of the studies i’ve seen, at least for office/information jobs, that pay cut is unjustified. People mostly get as much done in 4 days as 5.
Usual counterpoint is that you're not being paid just for the things you get done, but also for availability - for being there when there's a need to handle something unexpected. This has real value to a business, so you being available for 80% of the time justifies some degree of pay cut.
My point is this would be an unfair clause, no private business would sign terms that would force them to work for free. Yet, somehow it's enforced and acceptable for private individuals.
In our case it's not enforced, and we're not under any 5 nines obligation.
On the other hand, we're a bunch of lazy sysadmins and don't prefer to work if it's not necessary. As a result, we design our systems for resilience, so any problem both doesn't get big, and can wait the next morning, or next Monday 99% of the time.
Also, we definitely love what we do, hence we sometimes choose to take some work off of our colleagues' hand on a slow night. So, I personally prefer to read a tech doc, learn something and apply to on our systems if I have nothing better to do instead of watching TV.
IOW, we're not losing sleep doing our job.
TL;DR: It's acceptability depends on the circumstances a lot. If the employer is abusing you with that stick, that's bad. Otherwise, I see no problem.
The usual counterpoint to that is that for highly skilled work 95% of what you do can be done by someone else who takes 1/2 to 2/3 your salary and it's the last 5% that you're actually being paid the big bucks for. This is stuff that you have to do rarely but it brings a lot of value; whether you have 5 days every week or 4 days every week to get that out of the way doesn't matter, because you do it for a couple hours a week at most.
That's usually the understanding everyone has by default, unless you're doing some specific job that requires greater availability (and are compensated for it), or... you're eroding this understanding yourself by doing something unwise, like replying to company e-mails or IMs after hours.
One rule I learned to stick to: never install apps for company e-mail and IM chats on your personal smartphone. Just don't. Otherwise, you never truly "leave the office for the day".
We've had to explicitly tell just-out-of-college new hires to stop at the end of the workday. The reasons are different for each but a lot of them have gone home and kept working without being asked or expected to.
Plenty of places just assume you can do on-call or it's required, including high-tech companies. I'm not compensated outside of normal salary/equity for on-call hours. If I don't get paged, great. But if it's a heavy week I don't get anything extra.
I'd love to join a union to be able to reasonably bargain against this.
...that's how I've been forever, aside from those few jobs that required more availability. In those cases, it was part of my job description, so agreed upon by all parties before I took the job.
I can't really tell. I mean, there's enough people on HN who say they do pair programming at work, and some even that they do whole projects almost exclusively in some sort of group coding sessions - to me this seems like a bizarro world, so what do I know about majority of software jobs?
For me personally, every software job I've done so far - including both the ones where I was one of few (or even the only) coders in the company, and ones where I was but a small cog in a multinational corporation - all of them had an availability component. Usually in the form of being there to answer some question, or help someone who's blocked or slowed down by an issue I'm the best suited to resolve (or the only one in the team/branch/company who can).
I've only had successful paired programming in one situation and it was amazing. I believe it worked because we were friends and at the same knowledge level. In three days, we ripped through a project that should have taken a month. Our 'C' code was perfect because there was always someone looking at it in real time and catching the errors on the spot.
I do not think that I will ever encounter this level of productivity ever again.
I've done a lot of pair programming with mentees and it's very rewarding. They usually learn a lot and it helps building a relationship with them. Bonus points if they see you struggling with a problem/bug.
It depends. There are some people who bring a lot of value by just being there to answer the occasional questions. When I'm oncall and I know that some colleagues are on vacation, I'm definitely more tense. In an ideal world, knowledge would be spread within the team, but with turnover it's hard to reach and maintain that state.
It may be "justified" while five days remains the norm, as it may be possible to get similarly-capable employees to take the position for lower pay, to get that extra day off every week. This should provide a pretty big benefit to companies that can leverage it while five is still typical (assuming that the shift to four is in fact going to become a trend)
Thinking like an employer - how can i leverage social norms to get same or more work for less pay. If you’re not an employer, why are you thinking about it this way?
Oh, sure, I think employees ought to organize to increase wages in general. But absent that, the value of perks like a four-day work week (while it remains an unusual perk, at least) do factor into wage negotiations, and individuals can't do much to resist that on their own (aside from... not get the job and keep working five days somewhere else). I'm talking "is", not, "ought", in describing it the way I did.
An employer that not only requires years and years of primary, secondary and tertiary education, the majority of your waking hours, the responsibility to deliver what you promised and all the pain and stress that implies, but on top of all that, requires you to be passionate about the whole thing sounds like hell on earth to me.
Employment is a transaction. You get my honest effort, experience and an amount of time agreed upon beforehand. In return I get money so I can live the life I want. That's the end of it.
“A crying baby” you imagine for the sake of being contrarian != your son.
Also toddler, not a baby. A toddler spends most of their time exploring and learning, discovering the world. A perfect example of a still free, undomesticated human being. A perfect spiritual teacher, in the body of the closest human being you’ll ever have :)
By the way, the job quote is one of the broken propaganda stories of capitalism. Even when you like your job you’re still slaving away for money. You believing that’s a great outcome is the point.
I actually work 6 days a week (only Sunday off) noon until midnight with a two hour break 5-7pm.
That’s 60 hrs of work a week, but I get to spend every morning 7am-noon with my kids. It’s been a great change of pace for me personally. We have a garden we do as a family, I can do doc appointments, some field trips, etc. while still working extremely hard. It’s not for everyone, but that schedule has been great for me personally.
Lol for almost all human history working all a day was the norm.
I don’t necessarily have to do that much work, but I want to get ahead. Most people I grew up with work 40-70hrs a week, often two to three jobs.
It’s natural for me to work that much. I don’t even blink at it. What else would you do? Play video games, watch tv, “party”? I can accomplish and build things and spend the rest of the time with family and friends. It’s a good life imo
> What else would you do? Play video games, watch tv, “party”?
Sorry, but this is such a sad statement to me. I mean, unless you absolutely love the field you work in, in which case that's amazing, go for it! But if you're like the rest of us, there's so much to see & do in life besides work! As an example, I'm reading, learning to cook, traveling, and trying to get fit. These provide their own satisfaction & meaning in ways that work doesn't.
On the contrary, I feel sort of sad that so many people seem to find their work unfulfilling. I work a job that’s more work than some alternatives could be. I could at any point quit and find easier work that paid better. But I chose to work here, right? I’m privileged enough to not be obligated to stay. I’ll assume most people here have similar flexibility.
I find the “cooking as alternative” suggestion interesting too. I can understand the desire work on a creation for yourself (a meal), but for me that’s balanced by the desire to create something amazing for the world. By the same token, I could take every Friday off and work on a side project, but fundamentally that’s not going to be as fun or productive as working on the main project I’ve chosen to work on: ie, my job.
Now raising a family I can totally see as a competing interest, if I were raising children I would be working less. But I’m not (yet).
I hear what you’re saying but since this is hacker news we’re mostly white collar and we’re not talking about all human history, we’re talking about 2023+.
I spend my entire weekend with my kids for one thing. Don’t you miss out on things? And yes I play video games or do literally anything other than work before bed. If you’re including side projects you actually want to build in your 60 hours, that’s totally different of course. And I also don’t mean to judge, as the people working those 2-3 jobs NEED to do it. Nobody wants to.
> I get to spend every morning 7am-noon with my kids.
I work from home, so I have no commute (saves a boatload of time) and get to eat every meal with the family (who ever is home). I also spend probably 4-7 hrs with my children every day (and all day Sunday’s). I’m pretty more involved, but sure I miss some stuff. I can’t do afternoon / evenings (unless it’s 5-7pm).
In terms of my work breakdown, I tend to do 60-70 hrs. But I code and manage our farm part time (kids will eventually assist with). That’s probably 50 hrs coding/designing, 10-20 hrs on the farm, depending. That obviously will shift a bit depending on weather. I also take 2-3 weeks off coding work to harvest; which are like 12 hr days for a week at a time.
Appreciate hearing your story! This is why I refuse to get chickens, let alone actually farm! I’m not disagreeing that this is a great amount of time with the kids, as many people see theirs way less than they would like. Still I can’t imagine losing half of my precious weekend, and in fact want another day of weekend like the people in this article. But not enough to take a pay cut because I’d rather take the money now and retire earlier. Cheers!
> for almost all human history working all a day was the norm.
References for that? Didn't they do studies showing that e.g. hunter-gather type tribes such as Kalahari bushmen had about the same amount of downtime as modern Westerners?
At any rate, the sort of work you're doing makes a huge difference as to how sustainable doing it 60 hours a week is.
(Quote from article linked below:
“Our hunter-gatherer ancestors almost certainly did not endure ‘nasty, brutish, and short‘ lives,” he writes of seminal studies of the Ju/’hoansi, a hunter-gatherer group living in southern Africa. “The Ju/’hoansi were revealed to be well fed, content, and longer-lived than people in many agricultural societies, and by rarely having to work more than 15 hours per week had plenty of time and energy to devote to leisure.”)
As a manager, I always measured by consistency. I could care less about how much someone worked, frankly.
The engineers would commit and if they met their commitments they were usually good. Sometimes I’d have to nudge them one way or the other, but rarely did I see an issue.
I tended to try to inspire others - aka you can design your own projects, deadlines, etc. My job was to guide, provide cover / funds and ensure success is recognized. My teams were definitely intense at times, but always self-committed and everyone became invested. That’s how to help people grow the most and get the most out of them imo.
That said, most of our deliverables I always pushed publicly (parents, papers, open source, etc). This ensured good future job prospects.
I support it, as long as you’re well compensated and you like it. I think due to wanting to “stick it to the man” there can be too much anti-work sentiment.
It’s okay if it’s a throw away side project but not okay if it’s for your employer? Wat. Seems like a silly distinction and backward if anything.
I definitely don’t work as much as you but I also love my work and work random odd hours and sometimes voluntarily extra. I like it and it’s definitely paid of dividends for my career growth.
It's not anti-work sentiment. It's like the people who drink too much alcohol or smoke everyday: is it bad for your body? Probably, but you definitely can go ahead and do it, no one is going to stop you.
There’s a lot of anti work sentiment going around. For example, in threads about “what if I finish my sprint work early” at least half of commenters say “lie and pretend you didn’t finish so you can not work”.
You’re analogy only works if the activity is bad for your health but I’m not suggesting anything bad for health.
Fact is, some people can just work harder than others. This is obvious is it not? It is not because some people are lazy and others aren't. It is not a moral issue. Some people just have higher energy levels in my experience (I'm not one of them, as a type this at 8pm nearly comatose). They just have more capacity. I think it is genetic.
I did this, then when my son went to school, kept the day off. It's super valuable to just get some time for yourself. Have recently changed career and gone back full time, but pining for that extra time (luckily my company seems to be thinking about a 4 day week)
This doesn’t make sense to me unless it moves you into a lower tax bracket or something. Eg. If you made $100k and were taxed at 30%, you’d get paid net $70k. If you took a 20% gross pay cut, you’d get paid $80k gross and $56k net. 56k is 20% less than 70k.
In the Austrian tax system you are not taxed in one bracket. The first 15k are free next 5k at 15%, next 10k at 25% and so on. So your average tax rate will always be lower than your marginal rate, thus removing 20% gross will never remove 20% net. Actual values depend on your income of course.
In the UK we have the tax free allowances, but we start to lose them as we earn more. For instance, around £100k in earnings they start to tax your personal allowance so you are effectively taxed at 60%. You then move into 45% tax and then start to lose pension allowances at £250k.
First world problems, but these are all cliffs where it makes sense to keep your income down. Losing 20% off the top line will reduce your income by closer to 10% if my math is correct.
We have a problem in the UK with higher earners dropping out of the workforce partly because of the tax incentives. I personally choose not to work as an employee in the UK because I would be paying more than 50% in tax.
That is horrible. Basically repeating the mistakes the government makes with people on benefits in the tax code. I don't understand how you can design any financial incentive systems with discontinuities such that you actually earn less by working more. That is a totally unforced error. I agree that people on 100k a year maybe don't need some kind of allowance but then just add another bracket at 85k that erodes it away instead of pretending that the people at 99k still really depend on it.
The child benefit threshold makes it pretty bad for most mid to high household incomes too, effectively a 60% marginal tax rate between £50k and £60k if you have a student loan
Yes, basically every country works like that. I don't know why people talk about "moving a higher braket" like it's a discontinuity in the amount of tax you pay. It's always a _marginal_ tax rate.
There's very few countries in the world with tax systems like that - even Estonia I believe has some tax free threshold, such that the first $x of your income is not taxed (then a flat rate of 20%). Sure, if your income was massively above that threshold then a 20% cut is pre-tax income would be pretty close to a 20% cut in take-home income, but I'd think for most here on HN it wouldn't be anything like that much (though probably not as low as 10%).
As a resident in Estonia, I believe you're talking about the basic exemption of 6000 euros [0]. The rest is as you said.
Also if you're married, this amount is combined between spouses. And for some things like 3rd pillar unemployment funds, tuition fees and donations, we get paid 20% back regardless of our income previous year. Some years I got around 500-1000 euros as a tax return, but when I checked this month (for 2022), it was 0, as I didn't have any of these exceptions last year.
It definitely has some downsides however, I’m the only one in the team that’s off that day, so there’s usually meetings and information that I miss out on, as well as a 20% cut in pay, but I’m very lucky to be in a position where we could afford it, and the time with my son is worth it.