Companies hiring for a 4-day workweek?
I'm pretty interested in finding a fully remote company, that hires for a 4-day workweek (as opposed to 5).
How can someone (in Europe) find such employers?
In most tech companies you can negotiate a lower number of days per week for lesser pay. In the last two decades I've been in the industry, I knew very junior people (early in their career) and very senior people doing 3-4 day workweek due to personal reasons in pretty much every company I worked in. It wasn't a big deal. Ability to take 3-6 month long unpaid breaks (sabbaticals), 4 weeks of PTOs, plus sick/carer leaves are quite standard in most good tech companies.
During Covid, many companies started doing rest/reset days every quarter that is basically a forced holiday for everyone together (no FOMO, no pressure to check emails, attend calls etc). Some companies have started to do rest/reset week every quarter! (because they think its necessary given their higher stress level work).
Getting time off isn't that hard. What is actually hard is getting high-quality work (where you get back as much as you give), satisfying work and a great team to do it with. Without great work and team, but have lot of PTO/perks etc it becomes very unsatisfying and not able to sustain interest.
I also see many companies screwing up by not investing in talent/skill development activities (not the typical corp L&D where they organise a workshop with some random person who seems very preachy and doesn't really practice). I wish they did this better and enabled people to manage their personal time better on their own.
I stroke such a deal by accident, clients informed me that due to budget cuts they can't afford my full-time services anymore, so rather than lowering my fees (never do that) or loosing the client, I offered them to hire me for 32h a week instead. My initial plan was to take another part-time project to fill the gap, and I did that for a while, but in the end now I really enjoy having 3-days weekends. You come on Monday to work with so much more energy.
Currently not hiring (will hire in the coming months again), but I run a small UI/UX design agency where we help B2B software teams design cleaner & more user friendly products [1].
A 4-day workweek is a core part of our culture. It dramatically increased productivity, increased energy levels and reduced overall mental pressure. The way we make it work is to not have everyone be away during the same day.
It’s really surprising that not more companies have 4-day work weeks.
If you’re an employer and you read this, just give it a try. All your concerns are most likely just limiting beliefs.
[1] http://www.fairpixels.pro
In Germany, employers with more than 15 employees cannot deny the request of an employee to work only part-time without a strong reason (e.g. the company cannot operate without you because you are the only employee with a specific license). That said, it’s difficult to be a remote employee vs. a remote freelancer because of taxes and insurance law.
There are currently ~100 companies on the platform atm but I have a backlog of new companies to add and see more companies every day
And @HN, if your company is open to 4 days @ 80% salary, please get in touch :)
Almost all Dutch companies will honor such a request. Of course, it comes with a 20% salary decrease if you simply go from 5 to 4 days of 8 hours.
I like 4-day weeks, but what I would like even more is a month consecutive vacation a year. (Which is just 20-23 days off, rather than the ~50 Fridays every year.) This is pretty common places in Europe like France or Denmark (where you must take at least three weeks consecutive vacation.)
Is this something any US companies are advertising?
I got my current 4 day gig just by being upfront with everyone I interviewed with that that's what I was looking for, and waiting until someone said yes.
Anecdata: I advertised that I was only available part time on an HN "who's hiring" thread and got picked up by a startup (Smarter Dx). They weren't necessarily looking for someone part time, but I was a good fit.
In certain European countries (e.g. Germany, Netherlands) you have a right to do part time. So you could just be transparent from the start that you want to work part time.
It’s likely not as well compensated as „SV-company-moving-to-4-workdays“, but might be an option if 4 workdays is more important.
My company is hiring for a 4-day workweek with an 8-hour workday. There are several fully remote openings. We have openings across various departments in the UK, US, Mexico, Brazil - https://www.signifyd.com/jobs/
Here is a post about our adoption of the 4-day workweek: https://www.signifyd.com/blog/signifyd-adopts-four-day-workw...
Disclaimer: I've worked here for a little over three years, and I believe this is one of the few companies with the best work/life balance I've EVER worked at.
Plug: www.snaplet.dev is such a company. We're building tools for developers. Our idea is that if our own company doesn't have the happiest, creative, and engaged developer's that we won't be able to build a product that's meant to help other developers.
Our internal state should reflect the way we want developer's to feel about our products.
In Switzerland it is quite standard that companies - including Exeon - hire employees with 80% workload. (We also have many colleagues working 20%, 50%, 60% and 100%) This model is very popular with people with kids and with university students, who need time to finish their studies. Work-life balance is important, so we also offer 5 weeks of paid time-off (at 100% workload), remote and flexible working and other benefits.
We are a cybersecurity scale-up and we are actually hiring: https://www.exeon.com/company/career
I had a job like this in the past and I loved the freedom of it the fact that I had plenty of energy left over to pursue other interests. So I wanted to recreate that for those that I hire.
EDIT: my role is part-time so it's not a fair comparison.
At WeGroup (https://www.wegroup.be/en/join-us) we are running a 4-day workweek without pay cuts. We are still experimenting with it, but everyone is loving it so far. The experiment is running for 2 months now, we saw a drop in output, which I think is normal. With a 4-day workweek comes more responsibility, so we are pushing the teams to take more ownership over the planning and feedback loops. We are running the experiment till end of June.
We are looking for:
* Backend (Python/Go/Postgres)
* Frontend (React)
* Infra/DevOps/Tooler (k8s/Docker/AWS/OpenSource-tools/CI-CD)
If you're in Europe I'd wholeheartedly looking into becoming a freelance contractor. Companies regularly hire contractors at 50%-100% more than the equivalent payroll cost, meaning you can easily work less (I haven't worked a 40h week since 2018)
This may not exactly be the answer you are looking for, but Red Hat (my employer) has 4wd employees, even in my current team. Depending on the team, you may be able to negotiate a 4 day workweek without problems. However, you'd have to reside in a country where RH has an office. I have been at previous companies too where negotiating a shorter workweek was not a problem.
We do have a few people working 3 or 4 days / week for 60/80% of the full-time salary.
You can check our offers https://fr.getaround.com/careers.
Otherwise, my experience is that if you specify it during the 1st call or in your application there's a good chance it's accepted.
Here in the Netherlands it's your legal right to work less hours for the same pay (per hour). In my company, the largest ISP, lots of people work either 32 hours, 36 (4x9) or something else. A standard contract at our company is 36 hours. Meaning every other Friday off by default.
So I think finding a job in the Netherlands would be a good start.
The 4-day workweek is great! Have you asked your current employer yet? If you like where you're at, it's not necessarily a reason to leave. Twice in my career I've started at a full time schedule, built trust for years, and then asked to work 20% less hours for 20% less pay. Each time with success.
In my experience, almost every startup in France is okay with a 4 day workweek (even if it's not said explicitly in their job offers). You just have to tell them about it during the recruiting process.
I worked for a very progressive company in the mid-80s that did 4 1/2 day work week, 7:30-5:30, and 7:30-11:30 with flex time options. Productivity was through the roof. We also experimented with other trends common today like open floor plans, shared office space, etc. and gave them up due to negative impact. Sadly, a new CEO and a sell off of a couple of divisions ended the practice, back to 8-5, no flex option, just like everyone else.
That should be rather easily doable but finding a company obviously depends on what you're looking for. Most likely you're in Software Engineering? If so, with which preferences and specialities?
Here at SumUp we're hiring fully remotely across the EU and most teams are very flexible regarding the working hours. A 4-day week should be easily doable and I've personally done that before.
Contact me via my email address in my profile and I'm happy to connect you with the best matching team.
Yeah, I managed to get this last time during salary negotiation. They wouldn't give me $offer+20%, or $offer+4day week, but I managed to get $offer-10%+4day week.
My company has a 4-day workweek, and personally, this is the best place I've ever worked at. It's an American startup, but about half of us (including) me are from Europe, and communication is very async-friendly.
Here's our post from this April's who's hiring thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30879344
I'm founder of Meetupcall, a startup working to help care organisations reduce loneliness and isolation for those most in need. We're currently looking for a senior Rails engineer on these terms.
If that sounds like something you might be interested in, let's have a conversation, my e-mail address is in my profile.
What i'd like to see is a job that lets me work part time and be super flexible about it.
E.g. i may be offline for 4 days and then work 7 days in a row.
Obviously it would require that i can work on things without being able to contact my colleagues at times (like weekends).
Has anyone seen such an arrangement?
A lot of companies in the Netherlands will be open to that. My experience is also that it's usually OKish, if you make it part of the salary negotiations.
If you are open to that, let them pick one day a week off / fewer hours per day and it'll be even easier to convince folks
I've been doing 4 days per week here in New Zealand, but I asked it when being hired. Maybe check some companies with remote work if they'd be keen to hire you for 4 days per week too, maybe write in your cover letter or in an email when applying.
I have an open position with a 4 working days week for a full stack developer.
The post is for junior but i need a medium/senior developer
https://menelabs.com/Careers
The company I'm at is fully remote and we (usually) have every other Friday off and the Fridays we do work are meeting-free. As someone who has to schedule medical appointments during the week, it's an absolute godsend.
It's easier to do on contracting. Been doing it for almost 3 years now and won't change it back.
However, I have seen plenty of my friends who does the same who are employed full time, even some who work in the offices physically.
EU/Remote
Hi! Hope this reply is appropriate here, I'll delete it if not. I run a medium-size bootstrapping startup, working on environmental problems and financial equality. What are you looking for? (except 4 days and remote)
How doss 4 day work week work with public holidays. Say that one week you have a bank holiday on Monday, but you usually only do Tue-Fri, would you be allowed the Tuesday off as well? Making that week a 3 day week?
At croit.io you can decide how much time you wanna work and change that whenever you need. It's therefore more of a free time schedule system and not a fixed 4 days.
Fully remote employer that allows for a flexible schedule after your first ninety days: coalitiontechnologies.com.
Check out sanscubicle.com , a community of service DAOs where they limit members to 60 hours per month.
The job I want is unset hours. I have a terrible sleep pattern.
I know what the job is (no job) but have to get there.
I’d rather have a six hour day
I'd be more interested in 2 or 3 day weeks, optionally up to 7.
And 100% remote.
I've been or still am self-employed and what I like about that is that I can work when I have the brainjuice to work and not work when I have no brain for it.
I do Go on the backend, Vue mostly on the front. Angular in the past. Some experiments with React and Svelte.
Sometimes I do classic websites (in Go).
Self-employed in Germany, but willing to give it up for the right employer, however I'm scared to do so. I value my freedom. I'm also 7 months in Germany 5 elsewhere, so 100% remote is required.
I don't really know what an employed work life looks like nowadays, tbh.
Isn't it time for a "who's hiring" on HN? Or when does that usually happen? It's the 2nd of May, beginning of the month.
Anecdotally, a friend of mine started a therapy practice to be open 4 days a week in person. After a while, they realized everybody was just moonlighting at other businesses on Friday because they just wanted to make more money...so now the business is open on Friday mornings as well.
Just thought it was interesting because odds are pretty high that any 4-day work week option is going to pay less and when given the option, a lot of people would rather just have the extra 52 paid days per year.
EDIT: I don't usually comment on down voting...but I'm really curious about this one.