Here are some common responses:
- We are a start up working hard to launch so it wouldn't work for us. I read this as: "we've advertised this as full time, but really it's 24/7"
- It would require too much effort to change our current culture. I read this as: "it's the way we've always done it, so no thanks"
- "We are only looking for full-time employees". This is the most common response. I always find it interesting when companies who struggle to attract top talent don’t consider offering a benefit such as a 4 day week. The law of diminishing returns means there is little difference between the output in a 4 vs 5 day week. This is also due to Parkinson’s Law.
If there was a financial incentive, however, I feel many of these companies would be more inclined to offering a 4 day week.
So my question is, if you weren't able to get a 4 day work week job (e.g. 32hrs) on a full salary, would you accept a small reduction in salary? Or would you instead stick to 5 days @ 100% salary?
I've also created a poll on Twitter asking this [1]. So if you have a moment to give your honest reply, I'd really appreciate it. It may help me convince more companies to offer their roles on a 4 day work week - there are huge benefits for both employers and employees imo.
I personally believe that working 4 days per week doesn't equate to 80% output, more like 90%, and therefore I feel the salary should reflect this. However, in order to normalise the 4 day week, I feel that a small salary reduction might be a good first step.
[1] Link to the poll: https://twitter.com/philostar/status/1393199633543966723
Will you be on call?
Whats the culture around "off-hours" contact?
How often if ever does crunch happen? Will the company pay more after 32 hours?
What percent of my time is expected to be in meetings vs getting things done, and how much do you expect to be done?
I have worked at places with all fridays off during the summer. We did all our releases on time even though summer was usually the biggest time. 4 days really doesn't seem to make much of a difference at all. Fridays are so often either no meeting days or at least not important ones. Overall, I absolutely have taken a paycut for legitimate work life balance increases, and I prefer to work with others who would as well.
- 4 day week job listings get 15% more applications [1]
- Staff will be more productive. Microsoft experimented with a 4-day work week and productivity jumped by 40% [2]
- Staff will be happier and healthier [3]
- Staff retention will improve (e.g. "Now that I'm working a 4 day week, I could never go back to work 5 days")
- Some developers would compromise salary. In our current poll 84% of people would prefer to either work 3 days @ 60% salary or 4 days @ 80% salary
- Reduced office costs (e.g. close the office 1 day per week)
- It's better for the environment (e.g. less travel, closed offices etc)
[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/four-day-workweek-res...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/04/microsoft...
[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38843341
Link to the poll: https://twitter.com/philostar/status/1393199633543966723
Link to the website: https://www.4dayweek.io
In fact I recently went down to 3 days a week for 60% salary and that's even better (although I do use the other day for other work sometimes if it's something I'd like to do).
Main benefit has been increased time with my daughter.
My 2 cents for anyone trying it:
1) Take Monday off - everyone is still getting stuff together on Monday so it won't be so disruptive. Plus, you won't hate Mondays anymore :)
2) Be very strict with the day off. Never compromise on it, at least for the first few months. Make sure everyone understands that you are absolutely not working and cannot work that day and things will be OK. If you don't it will cause confusion and many problems.
I recently worked for a Belgium startup in the NY office. Many of my coworkers in the old world had an agreement to work less for less pay. When I asked my HR in US to reduce hours for less pay due to Covid-19 the answer was exactly like OP listed: "we have always done it this way... it's not possible in US ... if you decrease your hours by one hour you will count as half-time employee and lose all benefits".
In an instant I would give up 20% pay for an extra day off. Covid-19 is far from over and lots of parents are still juggling all sorts of issues.
I don't expect too many employers would be happy with 100% of the overheads (health insurance, office space, administration) for 80% of the productivity.
A 5x6hr or 6x6hr schedule seems to work well also. SW is a mental game, and similar to learning an instrument the reps and sleep time in between matters more than giant globs of hours with declining productivity and potential bad habits/injuries due to fatigue.
The reason is that companies that employ software engineers are engines for transforming labor to value. They get a multiple in dollars in revenue out of their labor cost to you. Suppose this multiple is 3x. Then if an software engineer works 80% time, the indifference point for the company isn't paying 80%, but actually paying 40%. I don't think that number is acceptable to most employees.
Of course, this is politically popular with the HN crowd because many people are software employees. But you need to look at it from the other side too.
How could you make it work then? Well if you were a superstar before that made $200, you probably can get away with 4 days as week and $80. Or if the company is a low productivity company (e.g. their multiple of EV on the employees time is really low like 1.1), then they can probably 80% time for 75% pay.
With matching markets (employee/employer) you need to solve both sides' problems. (It's easy to solve just one side's problem: just advocate for doubling/halving employee pay. Employees/employers will love that.)
I love it, it is my favorite perk of the job I have. I'm able to use my afternoons to exercise, take care of chores around the house, and run errands if necessary. My night after dinner time is completely free.
Another perk that's similar but not exactly the same thing is flexible schedule, meaning if I have something to do during work, I can "make up the hours" later. This is especially powerful when you work 80% time normally.
I would say that the reason most companies don't want to do 4 day weeks is because of meeting schedules. This is why I'm here each work day; so I can be at my team standups every day.
Ever since I went full remote, and this was in 2018 well before the pandemic, I no longer feel like working full time is a hindrance to my life in general (outside of work) and I can still do most things I want to do. In the age of pandemic and working remote being the norm, I imagine the interest for reducing work days is less intense than before for other folks too.
Having said that, I really like what you're doing, pushing for a new way to work; even if that doesn't become a standard, it would be nice to see it become an option.
The common responses you get really make me sad as well. The first two at least made an attempt to give you a reason for rejection, the last one is just so infuriating. "We are only looking for full-time employees" as a response basically just says "Go away, don't waste my time".
I'll say though, from the perspective of the company, almost no company is ever going to receive a cold call/email from you and say, hey, this suggestion sounds good, let's change our entire company culture based on this one random person's opinion. If this movement indeed gets traction, it'll take companies lots of time to change. It's similar to remote work (before the pandemic). Remote has been viable for a long time, but it took companies consciously making a huge effort to do so (barring a pandemic that forces them to).
For me, it's the best arrangement I've ever had. If I don't feel like it or need to take care of some other stuff, I just work for a couple hours a day. Other times I really enjoy it and work 8-10. Additionally I get long weekends without having to use any holidays.
I also think my employer gets a better deal this way. Being productive 8 hours a day is more or less wishful thinking. I think the reality is somewhere between 4-6 hours for normal people. Hence I'm still almost as productive asif I were working 40h/week, but at 80% the cost for my employer. Everybody wins.
Ergo (roughly speaking) you're asking employers to cut cumulative productivity 20%, and thus revenue/profits 20% for ... what? while other employers race forward with "100%" employees, producing 25% more per week.
40-50 hour weeks seems about the limit before employee productivity & availability ends. Claims of how productive ("refreshed! rested! alert!") employees are on shorter work weeks doesn't translate to comparable results, i.e.: 80% work time doesn't produce near 100%.
My personal goal is productivity. Give me more time at home, yes, I'll be productive there ... but I can be more productive via an employer (that's why I'm employed) than growing/building what I need on a farm. Cutting work hours means less work getting done, both for my own ends and my employer's bottom line.
I like my work. I contribute to society by working - that's why I get paid, my work is worth something. Given more $, I can better provide for family (which includes freeing wife to focus 100% on family care & opportunities, rather than 20%).
To really make it work, keep the "normal" work at 5 days @ 100%, then another proportionally-paid day to work on deep technical debt: there is much in any codebase which really should be fixed/improved, but is too obtuse/obscure to convince management it needs time doing in place of any of other numerous tasks. Result is more than 20% increase in productivity, by warding off defects and friction.
Employer might want to review that option further in light of me spending that additional time anyway working a secondary job: better I spend more time (and get more $) focusing on extended work on same project, than being temporally & mentally unavailable.
Reducing my time & salary by 20% as suggested would mean wife would have to take on a full-time job, dropping her family time massively in return for little more than making up for my salary drop. I'd rather sacrifice a few of my own hours per week to better support family's time together.
I think that's a reach. I fail to understand how you'd arrive at such a conclusion.
From my anecdotal experience, most startups would actually prefer paying more if that meant they could get 6 days of work. But regardless, I think your conclusion for that particular point is a reach, unless there is more context/information around this.
> I personally believe that working 4 days per week doesn't equate to 80% output, more like 90%, and therefore I feel the salary should reflect this.
I believe it is super difficult to generalize this. For some, it could be that 4 days per week = 70% of 5 days per week, and for some it could be that 4 days per week = 90% of 5 days per week as you mentioned. Now, if people fall into the category of 4 days > 80% output, then good for them no? They can finish 5 days worth of work in 4.25 days and chill out the rest of the time and take it easy? Especially in these times when most tech employees are WFH, they can simply just spend time with their family, catch up on a show, do some house errands, read books etc etc.
I'm not sure that's a fair reading. I'm sure there are places that are like that, but I think that for a lot of places a more accurate read is "we already have more work to do than people to do it; we're addressing that by actively hiring (rather than by overworking people); one of our biggest challenges right now is hiring fast enough." Given that hiring is a major challenge, I'm not surprised that it doesn't seem like a good play to take 80% of the capacity for the same effort of hiring.
Yeah, yeah, diminishing returns, so you're probably losing less than 20% productivity. But I'd be shocked if on average it's as low as the 5% that one commenter claims (or even negative as another commenter claims. I figure 20% is still "in the ball park".
It'd be worth it if offering it as a perk makes the organization 25% better at hiring. And I believe that it can help, but I'm not sure it can help 25%.
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> This is also due to Parkinson’s Law.
Parkinson's law states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". In a lot of organizations, that does indeed apply. But in some organizations, especially startups, the situation is "here's a list of work that we'll never get to, get through as much as you can in the time available"; there's no spare time for work to expand in to.
Now, you still get diminishing returns on more hours worked. But not as bad in some organizations as in others.
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But I'm just an IC, and I haven't talked about this with leadership, so what do I know?
I'm a single person who isn't looking to start a family, so I don't really use most of the money I make. It'd give me time to work on my more esoteric/mathy/experimental programming projects that I enjoy. At this point in my career getting job offers is pretty easy, so I wouldn't take a pay cut for no reason...but trading back time sounds super fair.
Of course, I'd have to talk to the company to make sure we agree on what the boundaries and expectations are. Just like with the current 5 day set up, ambiguity can easily be taken advantage of or lead to unexpected outcomes for both parties. That's not a reason to be hesitant, it's just a reason to be explicit and make sure everyone is upfront about discussing it maturely from the outset.
Like others, I've worked at a company who had fridays off in the summer and it really didn't hinder productivity at all. We just planned accordingly.
My reasons are:
1- I struggle to self motivate and do something productive, if I have more time I would, at best, play video, at worse I would waste time arguing about politics in Reddit.
2- I’m a software engineer and I normally finish all my daily tasks in 4 hours ish. The rest of the day, while I’m waiting for more task, I’m available if anyone needs my help, but most of the time I’m doing nothing. And now that I’m working from home, this 'nothing' results in personal things. So 4 days week would only lead to do the same work done but in 4 days instead of 5 and get pay less.
3- I’m single and in my late 20s. I want to work more now so when I start a family I can work less.
I've tried other arrangements - longer hrs/day in return for 1 day off every 2 weeks. Worked well and the benefits are such that at this stage 80% of salary for fewer hours would be a good arrangement.
The real danger is the unstated but practical assumption that you're on the book for fewer hours and lower pay but in real life expected to continue to do 50, 60, more hours week because of culture and events.
I’d like to go back. For 80% of the pay? Hard to say. Honestly, my costs are a bit fixed. The problem I have is that even at the ~400k/yr I make, I don’t have enough still. I need closer to 500-600k to feel comfortable. Slice that down by 20% and it’s getting me back where I’m at (uncomfortable).
I think I’d have to move and live in an entirely different area where giving up 20% of my income would have no sizable effect on my life. (Including retirement and so forth)
So at 80% the employer is probably getting 85%, perhaps more.
Finally, it's worth considering, for companies that honor the standard Monday holidays (in the USA and UK) those are already 4 day weeks. If that's 10 holidays, we're now only talking 40-ish days. If days were 8.5 hrs not 8 That's another ~10 days. Now you're around 30 days.
Maybe that's a number you can sell? I'm certainly trying to do so.
It's a terrible cycle and if I ever have an "F you" valued exit, I'll stop for good. Or maybe work three days a week.
It was pretty nice. You could schedule appointments or whatever for Friday afternoon, or if not, enjoy a longer slab of weekend time. If you were leaving town for the weekend, you could avoid the Friday evening traffic rush and perhaps even get to where you were going with plenty of time to get a good camping spot, or room, or whatever.
I'm not a factory line worker were my output is correlated to the number of hours I spend at work.
I'm paid because I add value, how and at which times I add such value is mostly up to me.
Yes, there are deadlines and incidents, there's coordination with others, but if I'm available at weird hours when really needed (i.e. value again), I expect freedom to choose when I do what's needed and take downtime even if it's the middle of a typical workday.
I'd also want to understand how benefits are handled: - Insurance: what plan is offered and how much does the company pay? - 401(k) and matching? - PTO: how much is earned and how can it be used. - Holidays: what if Christmas falls on a Friday? Do I get a different day off?
As far as I know I was first who had this arrangement two years ago, but now I see it quite common among my team. I am also thinking about lowering my work to 3 days a week for further pay reduction.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/776163853/microsoft-japan-say...
Some feedback for your site: Require salary range to be listed.
We had to economize a little more, but I was happy with it. I started doing side work, spent more time learning things or sometimes I would do nothing.
I'd have a hard time doing it willingly because it's not just me. But if it was forced on me, I wouldn't complain.
In the end, it's about managing priorities (at the time) and stress. Working less that increase focus and avoid burn out by giving you freedom to do "other" personal things.
For example, I work what is called a "9/80" schedule. I work 9 hours, M-Th and on Fridays, I alternate between a day off and working 8 hours. This gives me a 3 day weekend every other weekend, while still putting in 80 hours every two weeks.
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What's the point of money if you can't spend it because you're working all the time?
Let's say you are training for for the olympics, caring for a relative, volunteering for an organization, or something similar, just make your availability 4 days per week.
If your time is structured, you aren't "off" on fridays, you're busy.
I work pretty intensely M-Th. Probably easily 10 hours. Then Friday-Sunday I disconnect (Friday mornings are demos and fun mtgs). Fri-Sun I can _completly_ disconnect for a while.
So personally I want Mo-Th and 100% of my salary :)
If the profits aren’t going down why is my salary going to go down?
20% reduction in work days means 50% increase in off days.
Personally I have the feeling that I need like a day to disconnect from work topics and focus on other things, so the extra day would help.
Some companies in some countries offer 7.5h/day (37.5h/week) and NOTHING bad happened. Turns out it probably improves the lives of the company's employees (which in turn, improves the company itself).
No, I wouldn't work 4 days per week for 80% of the salary. Hell, I would be more productive working 4 days per week! Why on earth would I receive less money? If any, pay me more. Obviously, this only applies to a few jobs out there (e.g., software engineering).
But as you also state, i wonder if, due to Parkinson’s Law, that it would be mutual beneficial for all both employers – and employees – to work 4 days for 90% of the pay?
Also, due to French regulations, working 80% will lose you 35%+ of your paid holidays. So that's something to keep in mind.
2. You should try with non startups. Lifestyle businesses often have a better work life balance that this provides.
As for would I do it? Yes, I've done it.
3 days off / 4 days work = 3/4 = 0.75
2 days off / 5 days work = 2/5 = 0.4
So with a 4 day work week you can nearly double the ratio of free days to work days for only a fifth of your salary.
If you claim that people are more productive and diminishing returns kick in at the 4-day mark, then that by definition means that the first 80% of time spent on work is responsible for more than 80% of output.
A good point in favor of doing this is multiple EU countries already operating on a 35-hour work week and paying 100% of the salary. This is equivalent to 91.42% at 32 hours.
That's the number we should be trying to aim for.
But how would you manage death marches?
I wouldn't be happy if I heard that some random person is contacting my employer to change the contract and payment structure at the company I work for. Advocating for yourself is one thing, cold calling companies and potentially affecting people that never asked for this is just wrong. Even if it's just to offer it as an option and it doesn't sound compulsory in your pitch.
I hope that some unfortunate person with a couple of kids and a mortgage who is just getting by doesn't get get a 20% pay cut because of your actions.
I don't get what's in it for you but you're either underestimating the potential damage that you would do if you were successful, or you simply have bad intentions with this.