back
195 comments
I find it odd that everyone here is talking about productivity. Although I guess it's to be expected since posts about increasing productivity are popular in HN; lots of people here focusing on their careers I suppose.

Personally I find we work way too many hours. We spend the good part of 5 days a week (if we're lucky) at work, often literally all the daylight hours, at least in winter. I have to take my daughter very early in the morning to the nursery, then I can't see her until the evening.

I want to believe that future generations will look back and find this unconceivable, and I hope AI shows us the way.

It's so internalised that people gatekeep working long and hard...

I assume the "commute -> work -> chill -> sleep" cycle is doing a lot of work, you basically have no time to even think about what you're doing. Add some kids, a mortgage, health issues, it's the perfect cocktail. The "work -> vacation" cycle is also a good one, you can rationalise wasting 3-6 months in a work you don't enjoy to have a few weeks of peace (and spend all your money so you have a "good" reason to go back to work)

In a way it's also more pleasing to be fully invested in the rat race, once you start to want get out of it you'll hate every single second of your work week wondering where we as a specie fucked up so bad

I think you're right - the average person absolutely works more hours than is healthy or most beneficial to the true, human experience.

I would bet many people agree with you, too! Even many people in these threads.

I think what you may be seeing (I'm speaking for myself, I suppose?) is people who've thought about it for a long while, and we have to think about it in ways we can introduce and fight for that stance with our bosses, or with our shareholders, etc, since those are the people we have to convince, not the people in the trenches doing the work.

For myself, I have to operate as both my boss - trying to make enough money to continue or elevate my desired way of life - and myself the person - trying to live life to the most joyful and fullest.

People spend all their lives doing pointless work, accumulating wealth, then have nothing to spend it on so buy something like a car they don't need (like an SUV).

It's odd there aren't more people questioning this. Wouldn't they rather enjoy their lives while they're young and not worry about having tons of disposable income when they're old?

I guess there's something about security that drives people to the latter. Also I feel like there's an addiction and/or conditioning element to it. I think people are scared of what will happen if certain people (thick people) no longer have to work. What will they do during the day etc?

I'd like to believe this too, but given that medieval peasants and antique slaves worked more or less the same hours as we do I'm quite pessimistic. Whenever we automate something they just come up with a new bullshit job that adds nothing to the standards of living, instead of reducing the workload for everyone.
Agreed, I find it astounding how so many people seem to be ok with devoting almost all their useful hours of life to work (although maybe they aren't ok but cope / convince themselves somehow).

My weekday: get up and immediately go to work, come home, have about 2 -3 hours spare time, sleep, repeat. In that 2-3 hours I'm supposed to source healthy food, exercise, contact family, maintain friendships, maintain a romantic relationship, do laundry, keep the house clean, volunteer / contribute to society, meditate, read, do endless life admin, plan for the future, and finally relax. Then on the weekend, at least 1 day catching up on all the garbage that inevitably couldn't be done during the week. And maybe I'm left with 1 day out of 7 to do things I actually want to do (if I have the energy left).

And let's not even discuss the range of crap tasks that must be done during the 0 business hours I have free: posting mail, going to the doctor, getting an electrician or plumber, contacting the real estate agent, contacting any business really. Lucky I can work remotely or else do any of these I need to take half a day off work.

It's no wonder people have trouble with anxiety and sleep in modern times. There's literally not enough fucking time in the day to do everything which needs to be done. Even if you try to minimise and optimise every part of your life, you still barely have enough time to enjoy yourself.

And we are living this life for what exactly? So in 50 years I still won't own a home and the environment will be irreparably destroyed?

4 day work week? Sure! And if the rich weren't allowed to weasel and corrupt their ways into 0% tax rates it'd be even better!
This is a cultural thing, I think. I'm proud to work more hours than my boss expects. My relative never brag about the number of days off they have, but will quickly tell you that they only took one week off last year. The expected reaction is: wow, you're a great worker.
Companies are adopting the 4 day work week, but the numbers are still super small, even in tech industry that are most open to these type of experiments. Nevertheless it's happening and it's a movement with a lot of supporters around the world. For anyone interested here is a directory of 200 4-day week companies I work on: https://okjob.io/companies/ New company submissions are very welcome.
When I was nomadding around SE Asia, I worked 5 hours a day, 6 days a week (so I had time to do all the cool stuff in the places I was travelling through). That worked really well - I was at least as productive as I normally am in a standard 40-hour week.

A decade ago I was working 5 days a week from an open-plan office, and mentally clocked out around 2pm each day. Office culture meant I was just moistening a chair from then until it was acceptable to leave around 6pm.

For the last few years I've been working 35-45 hour weeks from home, especially during COVID, and that was fine productivity-speaking.

I'm currently working 4 days from a co-working space, and 1 day from home. I know my productivity drops when I'm at home, but I'm not sure why this changed in the last year or so.

I think a 4-day week would probably work well for me at the moment. But I'm not sure - I could end up with Tuesdays looking a lot like Mondays do at the moment. Or the extra day to do all the other stuff would be amazing and I'd really focus on the other four days. shrug

Developer productivity is a strange beast. Can't measure it. Can't control it directly. I know it when I see it, but I couldn't explain why or how.

I was nomadding in Istanbul, working 4h per day, whenever I wanted to. This was the perfect setup. Unfortunately, as one gets older the classical developer role is not really possible anymore. Now I work 8 to 9 hours, 2 days in the office per week, 3 days at home. While it is better than the normal 9 to 5, quality of life really suffers. But I think it is mostly about that the 4 hours I could do whenever I wanted without human contact, just deploy and make it work. Now I have more of a management lead role. Maybe I should switch back to pure development... But I am afraid, because I saw it, at least in Germany, this means it is going downhill career-wise with age.
For me personally, when no commute, even 6x4 hours is much better than 4x8 hours ( 1 hour spent at lunch etc, effectively 4x7 maybe 4x6 anyway )
Last Sunday, I was walking down the street with my kids when a man bumped into me trying to cross the street. He turned around to apologize and we had a discussion at the red light. He was working a 12 hour shift and was now on his break which he had to rush to get to the store. He said memorial weekend was extremely busy. "After that we will go back to regular busy."

When we talk about 4 day workweek, it's for some specific jobs. Not for that guy. Culturally, at least in the US, we would be happier if some people worked 7 days, 24 hours a day.

Ex: wouldn't it be better if the bank was open after work? Wouldn't it be better if USPS would show up on Sunday? Isn't it annoying that Chick-fil-A is closed on sunday?

Personally , I would love to work 4 days a week, but if the people that package and ship the product I help develop worked only 4 days, we would have angry customers. They will switch to our competitor who will brag about faster delivery.

4 day workweek is a cultural problem. We will have to give up on our instant gratification mentally to make it a reality.

You don't have to have individuals working 24/7 to have things open 24/7.
4 day work weeks will be for the elite. While those in service jobs will probably end up with two 30 hour a week jobs. The definition for full time won’t change, but skilled workers will get full time benefits at 32 hours, everyone else will continue to get screwed.

It’s kind of like unlimited PTO. It sounds good on paper but some people will receive outsized benefits compared to others.

> Ex: wouldn't it be better if the bank was open after work? Wouldn't it be better if USPS would show up on Sunday? Isn't it annoying that Chick-fil-A is closed on sunday?

Of course. But that has nothing to do with 4-day work week. There are classes of jobs that should be desynced from each other - like e.g. stores and banks and barbershops, etc. should be open outside of core office hours, etc. We just can't figure out how to force society into running on shifts.

No, the market cant handle that right now. A 4 day work week happens because of market forces. Companies don't need to offer perks unless they cant attract enough applicants or retain their top talent. We just saw this last year that companies done need anymore applicants. We are also seeing now that companies don't even care which part of their talent they keep.

There might be a class divide coming that would include 4 day work weeks, but the vast majority of us scrubs are going to be 5 days a week for a while to come. At a minimum we are going to have to ride out this financial crisis for the next decade.

The entire point of this is that productivity does not go down in a 4 day workweek and retention goes up. As an employer, you get the same amount of output, happier employees, and better retention. Everyone says they’re a data driven business until the data tells them something they don’t believe.
Management seems determined to mandate RTO. I am not seeing a flood of alternative perks being offered with suddenly being forced to waste 5+ hours of my life each week commuting.
Seems you think that a 4 day work week is paid as 5 is currently. I don’t see why that’d be necessarily true. In that scenario, it’s kind of like a part time worker and I can see many businesses finding appeal in that.
I know there are multiple ways this could be implemented, but the thing I'm hearing most is you'd probably work longer hours during those 4 days, which is a tradeoff I might be cool with. Otherwise, just chopping a day off the work week and not reducing my pay sounds great, too. I'm less motivated and productive on a Friday as it is, because my cherished 48 hours is finally within reach.
A 4 day, 40 hour workweek works suprisingly well for international teams, because the longer days usually mean more timezone crossover.
I worked this schedule for many years (not in tech, "skilled" labour) and it's amazing. This was a 7 day a week operation and it worked quite well in terms of crossover here too. Each person had a fixed schedule but the day of the week for each person would vary so there'd never be a full "shift change over", so to speak, but always some overlap between the shifts and it helped with information exchange greatly. The guy working Monday-Thursday would overlap with people starting their weeks from Tuesday to Thursday, for example, so there was always a "working knowledge" of what was going on.

It worked well on the management side of things too, but with an actual "changeover", as you'd have a Monday-Thursday supervisor and another Thursday-Sunday supervisor, with one day a week of overlap however that Sunday-Monday changeover didn't have an overlap (although there was a lot of OT on this job so it did frequently happen).

I am working 75% since about 7 years now. However, I did not chose 4 days, but 6 hours (and 5 days). I like this much more because I can more evenly distribute my workload and I have a more regular schedule, including recovering from work on a daily basis. 6 hours is the maximum I found I can concentrate and be productive. Afterwards, my output always decreased significantly and I was mainly wasting time.
Opposite for me. Much rather have an extra day where I can do anything I want with no one bugging me. Workdays are basically a wash for me anyways.
I never got it to work during various economic cycles where they owed me more than they could afford, but I tried once or twice to go to 30-some hours and it seemed to me the best solution would be to come in late on Mondays.

That was an at age when I still tried to take weekend trips and if anything unplanned happens it can make the return trip very stressful, which colors the entire experience if you don’t have to be in until noon you get to use more of Sunday without worrying about logistics.

I work in a remote friendly company (I can but don’t have to work fully remote). In addition to being remote friendly, they are also schedule friendly. If I have to take two hours for a personal matter during the day, I just say I’m afk on a chan on slack and I take two hours, the company trusts me to just do my job, time management is up to me.

Honestly with this setup I don’t need a four days week.

Just the other day I asked my boss if I can reduce my hours a bit, essentially giving me a 4-day workweek, just that even those days have slightly reduced hours (8->7 hours, though the lunch break is 1 hour, so really it's down from 9->8 hours. Subtext: I don't consider the forced 1 hour lunch break a good thing in my position BTW. It's okay when working from home because you can actually relax, but working from home doesn't always work so well in embedded software development)

Personally I think it'll improve my productivity because it'll give me more time to spend on "hobby" software development, which should improve my general motivation and in turn improve my productivity at work. Well that's what I'm thinking anyway. I've been wanting to do this for a couple years, and finally it's likely that I'll manage to pull it off!

Course, my salary will go down a bit, but it's probably high enough at the moment.

The ai leaders should come out and say… “Ai advancement is so powerful (as we have been saying and hyping for our shareholders) we now will offer our beloved employees - 4 day workweeks, as the productivity gain has removed 1 days worth of work for the work week” And so will begin our fever dream tech utopia
I’ve been working 4 days a week informally for a decade. Everyone checks out on Fridays with the exception of the rare fire.

I suspect it’s the same for other information workers.

Searching the very title on Google give me these:

(2023) Is the 4-day work week closer than we think? - Nearly half of Aussies think it will happen within five years. https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2023/is-the-4-day-work-week-cl...

(2021) Four-Day Workweeks Are Closer To Reality Than You Think https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeswigunski/2021/05/03/four-d...

(2018) Why the 4-day workweek might be closer than you think — and the 10 careers best suited to it https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/24/future-of-the-workforce-care...

.. Maybe it is as close as nuclear fusion.

Here in the Netherlands plenty of companies already switched to a 36 hour fulltime workweek, and I know of at least one large company (15.000+ employees) went to a 34 hour workweek. And all those companies pay the same as 40 hour companies.
I know people think a 4 day work week is the bees knees, but I'm not sure I would enjoy working a 10 hour day (assuming we are still expected to work a nominal 40 hour week). With commute, it means 12 hours+ a day, so less time for fitness or post-work de-stress.

As it is, the current 8 hour work day is really a 9 hour work day since lunchtime is not considered part of that 8 hour day, so if employees take that into consideration, it becomes an 11 hour day (or 13+ hours including commute).

P.S. anybody remember when we used to also work saturdays? Can't be just me...

4 days a week is great. I’ve dropped down to 4 days work (4x8hours paid), and look after my son one day a week. My wife has switched to doing compounded hours on 4 days (4x10hrs paid) and looks after our son on another day.

We both get close to an extra 2 months a year with our son, which is phenomenal.

One thing I wouldn’t recommend is having a Wednesday off - it’s what I’ve had to do, and I find it a big interruption to my week & flow, a Monday or Friday would be better.

Kind of wish employers would use this to hire more people to get additional productivity. But they probably won't do that, which shows how strong their inclination is to only retain employees that meet established preferences.

Treating healthcare as a benefit (as in the US) also works against expanding employment, as its a large fixed cost per employee that can't really be reduced.

Another part of this is that companies are in competition with each other. If company A reduces their workweek/hours but their competitor does not, then that might lead to them falling behind. It could be the difference between company A getting their new product out before company B which could theoretically mean the difference between launching a successful product and the company failing.

Whether this is how things actually work out...I'm not sure. It probably does in our short-term move fast economy over an economy that values long term investment, stability,\ and quality over quantity. To be able to switch to shorter work weeks, we also have to switch the economy to be more long-term oriented...which seems impossible after a decade of fake economy with free money getting everyone addicted to short-term games via gambling on startups and stock market.

I’m curious what the logical extreme of this is. Why 4 days? Why not 3 days? 2 days? 1 day? No days? When do we hit the equilibrium level between less work resulting in meaningfully less output? Were these jobs ever needed?
> great as a retention tool.

Until it becomes standard then its 3 days a week. Im all for it, if you can increase productivity, but it's likely too many people won't be able to.

Frankly after the pandemic aren’t we all going to learn humans can’t work all day and consume nothing. They need enough free time to actually buy and experience all this stuff we are toiling to create.
I wouldn't mind 5 day work weeks nearly as much if they had a 3 day weekend. This isnt a serious suggestion, but an 8 day week where I felt like I had a block of actual away time would be such a killer improvement for me.

But I do hope I see a 4 day week in my lifetime. That would be massive.

I wonder if productivity is ever going to increase to the point where we work one day a week.
Just like research on X wonder drug cures y needs the mandatory [on nice] feels like 4 day work week articles need the mandatory [for the same pay as 5 days]
The point is not the productivity, the point is giving something to workers in exchange NOT pretending WFH, for me the answer is NO. In 2024 all jobs done at a desk should be REMOTE, I do not care about how many days per weeks or hours per day, I do REJECT to be geographically bound just to keep up the keynesian circus of digging a hole today, fill it tomorrow and dig again that is the modern city.

In the past we have had paper archives, expensive office machines to handle paper and so we are bound to the office, this is not true anymore and there is NO REASONS behind the desire of human slavery to keep up the dense city model, needed only by surveillance capitalism and big real estate businesses, practically incompatible with the Green New Deal.

4-day work week, benefits and so on are this: gift in exchange to remain bound to the office. Not something else.

If my company would switch to 4-day workweek I would use the extra time to work another job.
Yes, 4 day work week... Especially for contractors that are paid by the day (and the amount of work to be done stays the same).

I'd love a 4 day week if the daily rate went up so the pay doesn't change. Somehow I'm not holding my breath.

After that we've got to work on the 3-day work week, and the 2-day work week, the 1-day work week, and 0-day work week.

The AI Legacy Code - an AI-UBI inherited collectively by all humans - can make that happen.

Let's work to end work!!!

Let me offer an intentionally shocking counterpoint:

The 4-day workweek only appears possible due to the peace divident, and the peace is rapidly coming to an end. We'll need the fifth, and maybe the sixth day of the week to produce shells, missiles, trucks, tanks, ships, planes, and to make up for the lost productivity of those who are on the battlefield.