HACKER Q&A
📣 mooreds

Any US companies who offer less than 40 hour weeks


This came up on a slack of which I'm a member. I've heard of some companies here and there who have less than 40 hour weeks for their entire staff (googling for them reveals a few).

And I know individuals who have been at a company who have done it for a short time or a while.

But is there a list of US based companies that offer a 4 day work week or less? I did some googling and didn't find much.


  👤 quantumofalpha Accepted Answer ✓
I've seen a fair share of googlers who work 4 days a week and getting 80% of the pay. Most prefer to get 100% of the money though, especially since at review time you're judged on what you accomplished, not raw butt-in-the-seat time.

Likely sub-100% work time is something you'd have to negotiate with your managers after spending some time at a company, not right from day 1. One case I've seen - a guy working 50% between google and PhD (working on alternating weeks) flat out said there's no way in hell he'd get hired into this kind of arrangement - it was only after building trust with management and moving to a team with lower workload/stress.


👤 rekwah
https://4dayweek.io/ is a job board for positions like this.

Original Show HN is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26900533


👤 zinodaur
I work at a larger SF based company (1000+ engineers). I was full-time up until recently, and switched to hourly contracting work. I typically bill between 10 and 20 hrs a week.

The really surprising thing for me was how willing my company was to accommodate me once I made it clear I wanted to reduce hours - I think people have a lot more negotiation power than they think they do


👤 koch
I've been trying to maintain a list of exactly this: https://thelistofcompanies.com

I would love to add more to the list, or if you know of any that aren't on there, please open a pull request!

These are all companies that have a standard 32 hour week with no reduction in pay.


👤 peoplefromibiza
Isn't it common in US to work less than 40 hours/week?

In my country most companies offer 35 hours/week jobs, the country's average is 33 hours and it's illegal to work more than 48 hours including extra hours, but I know that in countries like Germany, the Netherlands or France is less than 30 (Germany is 26 if I am not wrong).

It's mostly public jobs and white collars here, I work as a software engineer for a large insurance company and the standard insurance contract is 33 hours a week, I have a different contact and nominally I should do 40 hours, but working from home I do about 30, full salary (nobody checks the hours anymore).

During the pandemic I had no chances of going on holiday, so I kept working and I still have 40 days of paid vacation left from 2020+2021.

It's pretty standard here.


👤 spullara
Sure! All the companies that don't want to give benefits will schedule you for 30-35 hours or less. Search for "part time". It won't be programming though :)

👤 tfang17
I run Eureka Surveys and we have summer Fridays (off at 1 PM on Friday) year-round!

👤 stemlord
Someone on HN posted a link to a job board site they built which aggregates these companies, in a comment within the past couple months. I'm unable to find it now but hopefully that makes another appearance here!

👤 simonjgreen
US working hours blow my mind. 37.5 is the normal here. I don't think we're less productive.


👤 aprdm
I’ve been interviewing recently and it surprised me the amount of companies offering Friday’s off in summer or having permanent 4d weeks.

👤 fmxexpress
UpWork has 20,000+ hourly project listings that are US only and listed as less than 30 hours a week.

👤 brian_spiering
Basecamp has “summer hours” - May 1 through August 31 has 32-hour work weeks (Monday-Thursday 8-hour per day) https://m.signalvnoise.com/employee-benefits-at-basecamp/

👤 avip3d
I mean, there's always part-time