
What happened when Swedes tried six-hour days? - mutor
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38843341
======
brightball
IMO the need isn't for 6 hour workdays but for some regular outside of work
time available during the work week.

I work an 8:30-5:30 job and this ensures that everything I need to do outside
of work during normal business hours builds up to consume my weekend. I know
several people who work for business with half-day Fridays and that's when
they get all of their outside-of-work things done ensuring that their weekends
are actually free for doing the things that they want to do.

If you have kids this is an even bigger deal. If you don't, you're free for
whatever every evening. If you have kids, your after work time is committed
until they get to sleep every night. Having that work-day time when your kids
are in school becomes HUUUUUUUGE.

I also know people who work for CVS doing 12 hour shifts with a limit of 80
hours over the course of two weeks. This leads to a lot of full days off every
2 week period...and they love it.

It's less about the "X hour workday" and more about the "X hours of free time
during regular working hours"

~~~
alkonaut
Swedes typically do 9h days because we take long, unpaid lunches. White collar
workers in cities normally do ah hour at noon -1pm. The 9h day is a bummer,
but with flexible hours at least I can normally do a 2h lunch if I need to go
to the dentist or sort something else out.

Half days off is a brilliant idea, because it makes it easy to know when to
schedule kids appointments withe doctor etc.

~~~
mattmanser
This sounds like you're counting the 2h toward the length of the day?

I thought one generally doesn't include lunch in the day length. So an 8 hour
'day' with an hour lunch is 8-5, 8 hours working + 1 hour off-time.

When they say "6 hours" in this article, they're excluding lunch.

~~~
cmdrfred
I think it depends on the trade. I'm in the process of leaving a IT job that
forces you to take a unpaid "lunch" but expects you to be available to them
during that time. Its a way to cheat and fill the schedule in some cases.

~~~
knz
> a IT job that forces you to take a unpaid "lunch" but expects you to be
> available to them during that time.

That's up there with "You can't work remotely but we expect you to VPN in
after hours to fix any issues".

~~~
sokoloff
The latter is perfectly reasonable in some (many?) circumstances.

Break-fix work needing to be done on-call/24x7 while requiring in-office
presence for design and new feature development (a fundamentally different
type of work, typically requiring a higher level of collaboration) seems
perfectly reasonable to me.

~~~
knz
> The latter is perfectly reasonable in some (many?) circumstances.

I live in a northern climate and when it snows can either spend 1 hour stuck
in traffic or just work from home (and possibly come in after traffic has
cleared).

My previous employer was adamant about being in the building from 0830 to 1700
even if it was a blizzard. My current employer lets the employees manage
whether they need to come in or not (any day not just during bad weather). I'm
sure you can guess which one has happier and more productive employees!

~~~
sokoloff
I'm facing a Nor'easter, 12+" of snow, etc, here tomorrow and will be working
from home for the day. To me, that's perfectly natural and anything less
flexible would be insanity/inanity.

The key there is (almost) no one will be in the office because it's a
synchronized event. OTOH, if everyone worked from home 2x/week at random, it
would be chaos trying to plan whiteboard design sessions.

------
awful
I worked for well over a decade in a US +100y.o. global research company, who
famously kept everyone working during the depression. Famously, 8 hour work
days with summer work hours reduced to roughly 7.x hours because the founder
respected workers and family life. Half hour for lunch, variable depending on
responsibilities, excellent on-site food, a barber shop, other amenities.
Significant Christmas bonus, mostly shut down over holidays, pension later
401ks. I would arrive at home at 4pm after full day in the summer and a half
hour commute - and still had until after 9:30pm to garden, home projects,
before the sun set. Bottom line, things got done but Wall Street doesn't take
kindly to that kind of giveaway nor freedom to employees and forced a buyout.
Of course I understand noone cares what I think, but I had the greatest
personal and professional recognized successes and triumphs in that very
environment, freedom coupled with discipline, and I simply cannot understand
people's point of view when they talk of longer hours.

~~~
splintercell
You can't have more money, AND fewer hours/more vacation.

If the company still paid good money, then it just means that they were a
really profitable enterprise.

It's like if a company like Google which currently pays top dollar, decides to
pay average market salary, but loads the compensation offer with perks and
time off, then I bet people would be saying that Google is a profitable
company because it gives employees all these perks, whereas Google gives all
these benefits because it's a hugely profitable company.

Some people would rather get paid more (especially if they are young) then
work comfortably, maybe it's too hard for you to believe but America is full
of people like that.

~~~
CydeWeys
> You can't have more money, AND fewer hours/more vacation.

This assumes that productivity is constant per hour worked, which is far from
the truth for many professions. For most professions you the productivity
delta not only decreases with too many hours, it even eventually becomes
negative. There's no reason to suspect that eight is the optimal number of
hours for every profession; it's just a historical quirk left over from the
days of predominantly manual factory labor.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>This assumes that productivity is constant per hour worked, which is far from
the truth for many professions.

Even in white collar that's not true. For creative problem solving it mostly
holds but it doesn't hold very well in situations where the immediate product
that isn't cutting edge and/or isn't mostly aesthetic (basically the artsy
people and the R&D people). For everything else there's a pretty direct
relationship between time and productivity.

~~~
CydeWeys
It's true for most (if not all) white collar professions, not just the
creative/artistic ones. You can't stare at Excel spreadsheets for ten hours
straight and be as productive in the tenth hour as you were in the first. Or
say that you're doing case research -- you're certainly more bored and easily
driven to distraction after you've already been reading for many hours in a
day.

People aren't machines.

------
jahaja
The common sentiment in articles like these is to try to appease to the owner;
"look, the productivity!". We seem so subjugated by this state of affairs that
worker happiness and health is not allowed to be an end in itself.

~~~
leereeves
Workers don't seem particularly eager to fight for shorter work weeks right
now.

"Appeasing the owner" with promises of higher productivity might be the best
strategy for passing these changes.

~~~
tombone12
Workers aren't eager to fight for their rights at all right now, most unions
in Sweden struggle just to maintain membership numbers.

That is the most exceptional thing about the trial: that it happened at all in
a climate where collective bargaining is declining and the decline of the
concept of a stable job.

~~~
KirinDave
When I talk to Swedes they seem to be way ahead of the curve on the idea that
total employment is unsustainable. I wonder if maybe they'll approach this
problem from a different angle?

------
kristopolous
I've been doing sub-20 hour work weeks for a while now. I'd like to never go
back to anywhere near 40.

To the workaholics out there I say stop working extra for free. Those
additional hours are unsolicited gifts to an employer who would fire you if it
was possible. Stop giving your labor away, seriously.

~~~
branchless
People are cornered by high rent/land prices. They understand this and hate
it. The whole point behind high land prices is to prevent most people
achieving financial independence. At this point the workers call the shots.
This is why we are kept wage slaves.

~~~
kristopolous
The market structure for land and its methods of entitlement are certainly
wonky and need reform ... but I'm pretty sure we're "wage slaves" because the
labor movement was successfully killed off in the 50s red scare along with the
rise of classical liberalism in the 60s which poo-poos collective action,
devalues communal capital, and encourages uncoordinated individual action.

So when the productivity gains that were promised in the 50s came in the 80s
there was no labor movement to force a shorter work week, so instead there
were layoffs and bigger profits on top.

We never got the promised 20 hour work week of the 50s because collectively we
forgot and abandoned the multi-generational labor struggle which got us the 40
hour one. These things aren't going to just get handed out.

~~~
Shivetya
I seriously have issue with calling us wage slaves and such, let alone
claiming its because of the failed labor movement.

we are slaves to our uncontrolled passions that marketers have ruthlessly and
easily exploited having us believe we need something we cannot afford. we
allow ourselves to be convinced that our life would not be as fulfilling
without the latest fad/gadget/etc.

If people paid in cash for what they want, put off such purchases for three or
more days, and bought a home one income could support, there would less "slave
to wages" than people think

~~~
mrec
> If people [...] bought a home one income could support

I think GGP's point was that those are becoming hard-to-impossible to find in
many places, especially places with decent-paying jobs.

I don't agree with him that this was a deliberate conspiracy by employers to
keep workers oppressed; I think it has far more to do with an out-of-control
financial sector and governments addicted to over-loose monetary policy. But
blaming people's "uncontrolled passions" for wanting a stable home, one they
might actually be able to pay off one day, is a bit silly.

(Disclaimer: this is a view from London, which while it might not be _quite_
the absolute worst for housing is pretty damn close to it. YMMV.)

~~~
kristopolous
Businesses extracting profit from the labor of its workforce isn't a
conspiracy. It's fully disclosed to children in school and I don't think
anyone challenges it.

Now if the question is whether they try to maximize profits, once again, this
is not a secret or a back room conspiracy, this is how it works.

As an employee, enter into every negotiation knowing this.

~~~
mrec
> Businesses extracting profit from the labor of its workforce isn't a
> conspiracy.

I'm not sure you who you're arguing with. What I said was

> I ___don 't_ __agree with him that this was a deliberate conspiracy

and branchless' GGP comment I was disagreeing with wasn't about "extracting
profit from the labor of its workforce" in general, it was about "The whole
point behind high land prices is to prevent most people achieving financial
independence."

------
peeters
> During the first 18 months of the trial the nurses working shorter hours
> logged less sick leave, reported better perceived health and boosted their
> productivity by organising 85% more activities for their patients, from
> nature walks to sing-a-longs.

How do you eliminate bias in a trial like this? I mean, a lot of people _want_
to move to a 6-hour day, so they'll be working hard to prove they're
productive in that format. That doesn't mean it'll be sustainable though once
it becomes the new normal.

~~~
johnchristopher
Why isn't 18 months enough ?

~~~
woliveirajr
I don't think someone can pretend to be less-sick, more pleased, working-
harder for 18 months.

~~~
vidarh
I'm very much in favour of shorter working days, but here is one way you can
"pretend" to be less sick:

Being sick is not a binary. We've all had days wher we feel like shit but
figure we don't feel quite ill enough to stay at home, and so end up taking a
couple of painkillers and favourite source of caffeine and end up working.

Presumably the shorter the work day, the more likely you would be to consider
it ok to push through it if you feel ill, _especially_ if you have vested
interest in demonstrating that a new arrangement like a 6 hour day "works".

I'm not saying they did, but there are many ways they could plausibly sustain
something like that for quite a while. The question is whether it is
sustainable on a long term basis, or if it would change if/when a 6 hour day
is no longer an experiment.

~~~
amclennon
_> Presumably the shorter the work day, the more likely you would be to
consider it ok to push through it if you feel ill_

If the net effect is that you still show up to work anyway, does it really
matter?

~~~
vidarh
It doesn't if the effect persists. Hence the last line of my previous comment:
It does matter if people eventually goes back to the old behaviour once they
feel "secure" about the 6 hour day.

To be clear: I'm not stating a belief in terms of whether or not people do
this or not, but it is a tricky confounding factor to exclude, because
everyone involved in an experiment like that will have vested interests in the
outcome that might significantly affect how they act.

It's not like you can double-blind a study like this. Ultimately it will
likely take long-term studies from places that actually implement it on an
ongoing basis over much longer time frames to get a true picture of the
effects.

That said, as I said, I'm all for working fewer hours. I just don't think
figuring out what the cost/benefit tradeoff is will be remotely this simple.

------
devdad
I'm actually a Swedish business owner (me and co-owner) doing 30 hour weeks.
One of our main goals of starting our digital consultancy was to work less but
receive same or better pay. It works well for us. We're at least as productive
as we were as employees.

The main difference being we cut out "fika" \- this was easily 60 minutes per
day at our old work place - and dropped all private web lurking from the work
days. We just decided we didn't need all that downtime from doing work during
days, we'd rather spend it at home.

Clients are pleased with the work, I get to both drop and pickup up my kids
everyday. In Sweden, if you've got web dev skills, this is very doable.

I believe in it on a bigger scale for worker happiness sake and really hope
we'll get there soon.

~~~
tomcam
It's great that you cut out fika, because as we all agree, fika is... er,
what, exactly?

~~~
MagnumOpus
Coffee breaks, essentially.

From the first google result: "Fika is a common practice at workplaces in
Sweden and Finland where it constitutes at least one break during a normal
workday. Often, two fikor are taken in a day at around 9:00 in the morning and
3:00 in the afternoon. The work fika is an important social event where
employees can gather and socialize to discuss private and professional
matters. It is not uncommon for management to join employees and to some
extent it can even be considered impolite not to join one's colleagues at
fika. The practice is not limited to any specific sector of the labor market
and is considered normal practice even in government administration."

~~~
devdad
This is a good interpretation of the term. Sorry for not explaining the
concept of fika :)

My company is a bit weird in the Swedish work culture since we don't really go
for breaks at 9.00 am and 3 pm. But we get to go home at 3-4 pm because of it.

I realize that this is privileged and that the fika fills an important need
for a break during more physical or mentally demanding work.

------
morinted
_" I thought it would be really fun, but it felt kind of stressful," says
Gabriel Peres, as he slots a Petri dish inside one of the 3D printers he's
built for the company._

 _" It's a process and it takes time and when you don't have all that [much]
time it kind of feels like skipping homework at school, things are always
building up."_

That's a perspective I hadn't considered. Maybe the 6 hour work day makes more
sense for service-based work like nursing, fast food, etc.

For us techies it could actually be a nuisance (depending on how the
individual works).

~~~
balabaster
For me, some days it would be awesome, on others it would be stressful as
shit.

What I would prefer is to work as long as I need to and when I come to a
logical breaking point, I go home. Some days that may be 4 hours, other days
that may be 12. Some things I can't easily break down into chunks that easily
fit into 8 hours and not have me lose my place by going to sleep. Some days I
get into a flow and I don't even realize I'm hungry until it's dark again and
I suddenly realize everyone's gone to bed and left me on my own. Other days I
struggle to figure out what I'm doing and the more I fight it, the harder the
struggle becomes. It's not because of a lack of discipline or lack of want to
work, it's just that I struggle to connect dots that when I'm on form just
connect themselves.

On days when I'm on form, I'm unstoppable, a machine that just churns out
working, tested, simple, elegant solutions to problems. When I'm not on form,
I can't figure out how chew gum without gagging. This seems to hinge on how
much sleep I've had, which directly impedes the amount of time I have in a
day... finding the balance between enough sleep and enough time to get work
done to a high degree of quality is a constant struggle

So I don't think changing the length of the work day for me even enters in to
my psyche. It's always either far too long or nowhere near long enough... it
would be the same if the work day was 2 hours long or 22 hours long.

That's what it's like for me, I can't speak for everyone else.

~~~
maxxxxx
That's what I did as freelancer. I often did my 40 hours work week in 3 days.
And I think I did better work that way. In my corporate job I often don't have
an inspiration at 9 am so I pretty much sit around and pretend to be busy. It
would be much better to take off that time. And then you have that moment
where everything makes sense and can crank it out in 18 hours.

Unfortunately programming is treated like assembly line work where every hour
(and every worker) is equal. I don't think this reflects reality well.

~~~
reloop
I used to do this early in my career too, until I realized how
counterproductive it was. I've found that it isn't "coding marathons"
themselves that are good, but being motivated, undisturbed, structured etc.
Few people are that everyday, so we have to work on it.

Nowadays instead of coding full out until I go home and crash on the couch I
try to spend the last hour of the work day documenting what I've done, what
need to be done tomorrow and even what I'm doing this evening. That way I've
probably had some decent time off, I know what to do the next day and can more
easily get started. Even if I'm not motivated I can do something simple for a
couple of hours, at which point I usually get motivated again.

Coding marathons feels good when you do them, but they also builds up debt.
Both in the structure of the project and in motivation. It's quite natural
that it's hard to get started if you don't have an obvious starting point and
you anticipate that you have to do a full 8 to 10 hours and be completely
spent at the end.

~~~
balabaster
Yes, it's not the coding marathons themselves, it's being in a moment of
intense focus and flow where your fingers really seem to be coding on their
own. Time becomes meaningless, ceases to exist even because you're lost in
your own world and everything just makes perfect sense.

~~~
reloop
What I'm saying though is that we perceive "coding marathons" as good because
we can only do them when we are in a good state. Say you have five coding
sessions and in four of them you run into some problem, you get disturbed (or
demotivated) or something else that halts your progress. While in the fifth
none of that happens, so you end up having a long period of "flow". Then one
might conclude that it's the coding marathon or the flow itself that is good
when in reality it's the really the other factors that correlate with having a
long session that really matters. And if you practice you can make more
headway each day, even achieving flow in shorter sessions, than you ever could
only being motivated to do coding marathons sometimes.

~~~
tscLegend
I think what you are trying to say is consistency is better than inconsistency
given the same amount of work. The consistent worker will be able to get items
done in 5 days, but the inconsistent one will take 3 of those days, do the
work, then twiddle thumbs at work for the next two days to regroup. Both are
"ready" back on the start of day 1, but which one is more efficient?

One could argue that the person can make a better use of the two extra days
spent working but not productive on items related to specific work items. So
it may not increase productivity to the employer but it increases productivity
to the employee.

------
robert_foss
As I remember the conclusions of this experiment were two-fold:

    
    
        * Employees are happier, more productive and less stressed
        * The cost of staff increased due to sustained wages for less worm

~~~
bisby
So basically:

* if you have a job that requires X work be done. The more productive, happier employees still get X work done. If I'm happier and suddenly don't spend 2-3 hours of work time on reddit or hn, I can actually get MORE work done in less time. I imagine a lot of HN style jobs fit into this category. I know I can write more code when I'm well rested and thinking clearly.

* if you have a job that requires Y hours be worked. You have to hire more staff to cover the extra hours. For example, hospital care (like the lady described in the article). If you need a hospital staffed 24/7, you now need 4 people to staff a single day instead of 3.

~~~
alkonaut
> if you have a job that requires Y hours be worked. You have to hire more
> staff to cover the extra hours. For example, hospital care (like the lady
> described in the article). If you need a hospital staffed 24/7, you now need
> 4 people to staff a single day instead of 3.

That's the equation in its simplest first-order form. There are lots of
factors you can put in the equation, of which you mentioned a few:

\- reduced employer cost for recruiting if people are happier in their jobs

\- reduced employer cost for sick leave/temps if employees are healthier

\- increased efficiency because employees are more efficient/make fewer
mistakes

\- reduced healthcare costs for society if everyone is healthier

\- increased employer cost of training and education if more people need to do
the same task

\- ... the list goes on and on.

In a society with publicly funded healthcare, the cost of sick workers is
triple: first the employee is replaced by a temporary, often more expensive
nurse to fill in. Second, society pays the insurance/sick leave for the person
home sick. Third, the sick person now _causes_ more work for the same public
organizations (healthcare). The costs of people in working age being ill is
one of Swedens largest econommic problems at the moment. In a small scale
experiment the large scale effect of a healther population can't be seen in
the direct economic outcome but it can be estimated.

------
rocky1138
Has anyone ever studied the effect that happens when some people are faced
with data supporting a given position they argue the exact opposite? It's a
sort of tone deafness, I think.

From TFA:

"So I don't think people should start with the question of whether or not to
have reduced hours. First, it should be: what can we do to make the working
environment better? And maybe different things can be better for different
groups. It could be to do with working hours and working times, but it could
be a lot of other things as well."

Well, yeah, but a comprehensive study just showed that reducing working hours
gives a tremendous improvement to the quality of life and number of jobs in an
area. So why shouldn't we look at it?

------
coldcode
I am all for having nurses and doctors work 6 hour days for regular pay. The
idea that doctors should pull 24-48 hour shifts in hospitals is insane. The
cost of this is virtually nothing compare to other expenses in hospitals.

~~~
humanrebar
They say the reason is to minimize handoffs and communication snafus (double-
administering meds, for instance). That's a good point, and maybe a reason to
have longer shifts _for now_ , but long-term, there should be significant
investments in hospital infrastructure so unforced errors are harder to make.

~~~
Coding_Cat
People are always asking on here "what are some inefficiencies a startup needs
to tackle" and I think this is a great example: Hospital support software.

From what I've heard and seen it's a total nightmare across the globe in
almost every use-case. Just having a way for doctors and nurses to put all
information in one clear place while also combining with the infrastructure to
enforce certain information (e.g. when medication is retrieved from storage,
for who is it, and was it pre-approved) to help prevent things as double-
dosing (or forgetting to dose).

Doesn't sound easy tbh, but if you want a challenge here it is.

------
JBlue42
I was tempted to post an Ask HN the other day titled "Are Americans F-ing
Crazy?" after seeing how, after only an extremely busy month, my coworkers
already seem shot and burnt out.

It's an architecture firm (buildings, not software) and I'm one of the few
that works only 40 hrs/wk and gets to walk out on time every day and never
work on the weekends. So many people came back from the holidays sick, mainly
I think because their bodies were so fried from the prior year that it finally
caught up. Now, they're back on that cycle.

As IT support, I get to hear it all. The father of two that told me he needs
to keep a laptop checked out so he can answer questions sent at 1 am. People
that were given laptops so they could work remotely, but instead just work
nights and weekends. A new mother, already back into the swing of working
10-11 hr/days and maybe a little more at home when the kid's asleep. Constant
work on weekends.

And that's all for salary. For free work. For what? Great for the clients and
the business owners but it makes no sense to me. Seems like a product of poor
planning, client management, and the powers that be never saying no.

I've done the client services work in a previous life, the 80-100 hr weeks.
Luckily, I was paid for each and every one worked, sometimes making the more
in double time than my base 40 week. Burn out and depression easily followed
and made some hard choices (and took some pay cuts) to transition to something
a little more doable and a bit more balanced.

They live that chaos because they're taught in school or inculcated in their
first jobs that that's how things are. Is it because my generation (I'm early
thirties) is struggle to pay off debts (school ones, in the tens of thousands
for some) while also trying to do all the things our parents did? Have a house
(median price in LA - $610k) or raise a family (one kid - $250k before 18)?

It just strikes me as insane sometimes that this how we set ourselves up.

Maybe it's purely anecdotal based on past near decade in a major city. I'm
from a rural place and life can be a bit easier, at least if you have family
and friends near.

Sorry for going off on a rant but I was so saddened when looking around a room
that day (open office, of course) to see how terrible people looked and it
made me think "Why can't we do better?"

~~~
JBlue42
Sorry for any poor spellings, grammar, or odd words. Was tired and typing
quickly without proofing.

------
johansch
Strangely, this wasn't mentioned in this or the other English-language
articles about this that I saw:

The setup was to during 23 months test if six-hour days resulted in any
meaningful improvement on the (rather high) amount of sick leave the employees
used.

The conclusion was that the amount of sick leave only went down with 0.6%.

------
wlll
I commented on the previous thread about this, but I work somewhere between
about 4-5 hours a day on average I think, have been doing so for the last 6
months. My productivity is now greater than it was when I worked 8, and I'm
more relaxed and happier.

I'm a contractor so it's relatively simple for me to do this, I'm in a lucky
position in that I can afford to not work 8 hours, but personally I can really
see a huge benefit.

~~~
iraphael
Out of curiosity, is this a result of your employer having flexible working
hours and you being able to get the work done in that time, or are you also
being paid less? (or are you in freelance, etc?)

~~~
wlll
I moved company last July from a full time job to contracting elsewhere.

I'm now a contractor in the very real sense. I use my own computer, I work
generally when I want to (I set the total hours at the beginning of any month
and choose what hours to work when within that framework).

In terms of pay, becoming a contractor means my pay went up and I can work 4
hours a day and do as well as I was full time, though I do try to work more
like 4.5 - 5 hours a day (gotta pay that mortgage down).

What this means is that I generally only work when I'm motivated and "feeling
it", the rest of the time I relax, learn, program, climb etc. It may seem like
I'm expensive at > 2x what I was on when full time, but I think I'm giving way
more for the time I put in, eg. no % of an 8 hour day spent being tired or
"slacking". For instance I stopped the clock to read HN :) I'm also _way_
happier than I was before.

~~~
cableshaft
Out of curiosity, when you made the transition, how did you find the first
clients to work with? Did it require a lot of hunting down work?

~~~
wlll
It was through a contact I had at a previous company.

------
miltondts
At least for software engineering we should realize that after some
time(probably 3h) per day/sleep we are doing negative work. At that point we
are most likely creating more problems/bugs than working code. Actually this
just reminded me of the gitlab incident and many others that happened to me
and coworkers. The most damaging mistakes I can remember seem to always be
linked to tired people coding.

------
wazoox
Didn't Kellog's implement 32 hours work week back in the 30s with tremendous
success?

Yes... 1933: [http://www.alternet.org/labor/when-america-came-close-
establ...](http://www.alternet.org/labor/when-america-came-close-
establishing-30-hour-workweek)

------
Asooka
Why didn't they scale back pay proportionally? Or would that make pay too low
per person? Maybe I'm severely overpaid as a developer, but I would take a 25%
pay cut for 25% less work.

~~~
alkonaut
That would make pay too low for e.g. nurse to be an attractive job, yes.

It's possible that if this is tried in larger scale that e.g. employees will
be offered either 90% pay for 80% work, or that a deal with unions is to
freeze wage increases for N years in exchange for ever shortening work hours.

> Maybe I'm severely overpaid as a developer, but I would take a 25% pay cut
> for 25% less work.

As a swede and parent I'm entitled to that while I have kids < 8yo. Really
good set up I think.

~~~
askvictor
How does a nurse's salary in Sweden compare to other professions?

~~~
alkonaut
It's comparatively low considering the long education. It's higher than in
other service jobs like retail but lower than for blue collar industry work in
the privatd sector.

------
vivekd
Is this really proof. These nurses knew that they were the subject of a study,
they knew that the hours were temporary, and they knew that if the outcome was
positive they may get to work less and get paid the same for the rest of their
lives. Of course they had a very strong incentive to organize more activities
and be as good as possible for the trial period.

If you really want a study, try finding workers in a factory who work 6 hours
and then compare their productivity to workers in a different factor who work
8 hours.

------
edblarney
Because the nature of the work was very 'hourly wage oriented' and there
wasn't really room for 'productivity gains' ... what happened was:

Avg. hours per worker went down - but otherwise costs remains the same.

The state has to pay for 'x hours of work' to fill the demand, so why on earth
did they think there would be any savings?

'Joe, you get every Friday off'

'Sue, you get to work every Friday'.

???

This might be better in a situation wherein people can simply 'get more done'
in 'less time' and opt to spend less time at work.

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Gustomaximus
Did they try the 4 day week @ 7.5hrs?

This seems the more obvious choice for worker happiness. Also would give more
time back to both emplyee/emplyor as for the former you dont have 5 days
commute and the latter for things like nursing there is less handover times
and similar prep.

Also I imagine if a bloc of countries did this en masse it would limit any
detriment. That said I'd prefer 10hr days, which often is the case anyway, if
I could get a 4 day week!

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pizza
I have a strong belief that I have no proof for that our society would be more
productive if wages were such that people didn't have to worry about their
next paycheck or their replaceability or their hierarchical fetters of
restraint from free responsibility. Seems we get stuck in local optima by
being "good responsible hard-working employees"

------
dsfyu404ed
Working 6hr or 10hr isn't really the issue. It's being forced to work one or
the other when that's not a good fit for the situation.

------
Entalpi
Why not do a binary search study and perform another with 7 hours instead!
There must be some form of sweet spot!

~~~
programLyrique
It's what we've done in France since 2000:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek)

Some want to make it more flexible...

------
ars
> boosted their productivity by organising 85% more activities for their
> patients, from nature walks to sing-a-longs

That sounds like the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect)
to me.

------
stefs
personal anecdote.

* i'm a software developer in central europe. * i suffer from delayed sleep cycle (i.e. i'm a night owl). * i picked up weightlifting (as the main hobby) to compensate for all the sitting and the club has fixed workout times in the evening (i.e. no 24/7 gym access). the harder i work out, the more sleep i need.

i used to work a 42 hour work week (from 7:30am - getting up at ~6:30am to
~6pm) at a small web dev company in the countryside for 2 years. close to the
end i was practically burnt out, close to tears every evening and broke out in
celebration when they told me i was fired. even after 2 years my sleep cylce
hasn't normalized - i've been constantly sleep deprived.

afterwards i got another software dev job at a company in the capital where i
first worked 25 hours and now work 30 hours a week with flexible time -
roughly 6 hours a day monday to friday, no core time (except for scheduled
meetings).

i get paid more for those 30 hours than for the 42 hours in the first job, but
have less money at the end of the month because i used to live with my parents
at the first company.

there are a lot of differences (more competent superiors etc), but personal
observation regarding work culture and time:

* i'm usually well rested: due to flexible time i rarely set an alarm and wake up on my own depending on when i went to bed and how much i worked out (or boozed) the previous day. this means sometimes i'm in the office at 3pm. sometimes 7am. doesn't really matter as long as i don't have any meetings (which are very rare; currently once a week at 2pm). if i want to stay home for the day i send my teammates a message.

* stress level is extremely low because i can always take time off without much bureaucracy if i have to attend personal matters.

* due to only working 6 hours a day i can easily accumulate overtime which isn't paid but goes into an 1:1 overtime pool. this enables the next point:

* i rarely sit idle. if there isn't any work to do, i'll go home. period. if there's a lot of work to do (and i'm in the zone), i'll happily stay longer. it evens out and i never idly wait for the clock, passing time. i usually work more during the winter and less during the summer, when customers are on vacation.

* if i'm feeling unwell but not sick (or not sick enough for sick leave) i work from home and take frequent naps. if i'm sick it's rarely for long because coming to work sick is heavily discouraged and i just stay in bed. i go back to work as soon as i feel healthy and ready even when my doctor approved more sick leave.

* if my concentration is slipping and i don't get any work done, i call it a day. if i'm super productive and in the zone i stay because i want to.

* because of all those things i love working there. i think my employer is fair, understands efficiency and treats us employees well and i wouldn't want to cheat the company because "do as you'd be done by". i wouldn't call in sick if i had a hangover (or are otherwise unfit to work due to my own fault). if i work from home i don't do the dishes on company time. i'm honest - and so is my employer (as far as i can tell - i never caught them trying to cheat me). loyality is high; in case i suspect a colleague of cheating i'm actually on my employers side and tell them to quit their bullshit because of self interest (i don't want to lose those perks).

* i don't think i could deliver the same bang for the buck with an 8 hour work day because i wouldn't be able to accumulate the overtime i'd need to take time off if i'm not at my best. but if i wanted more - or even less - that'd be possible.

* i still earn enough to get by comfortably.

* i don't have kids yet but many of my colleages do and they love working part time because it makes things so much easier and enables them to spend more time with their offspring, even though they earn less. but this way their spouses can work more and earn more, so it evens out - and they can share responsibilities easier.

TL;DR: in my opinion 30h/week is the best bang for the buck for both me and my
employer because i only work when i'm productive, so the company doesn't have
to pay for my idle time and i can minimize stress and frustration. i
understand this is partially possible due to the nature of software projects
(deliver on time, but it doesn't matter much when you do the work).

edit: also, i can do 6 hours without the mandatory 30 minute break, if i'm in
a hurry.

edit 2: i can't offload work to teammates. if i take time off, work just
accumulates. no cheating!

