

Oooh - I'd kill for a four day week... - hessenwolf
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/world/europe/30iht-dutch30.html?_r=1&hp

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jasonkester
I often hear people making statements like the one in the title (I'd kill
to...), but usually the first response that jumps into my head is "No, you
wouldn't."

If you really wanted a four day work week, you would have one. You'd make it a
priority and either negotiate it into your current job or go find an employer
who was flexible enough to allow it.

The fact that you're working 5 days a week can be taken as a statement that
you are in fact content to work 5 days per week.

I used to get this a lot when I'd come back from a long trip. "I wish I could
just drop everything and go traveling for a whole year..." But you can. You
just haven't. And if you thought about it, you'd probably realize that you
really just prefer to lead the life you're leading.

The key is to understand yourself and what you really want. Then do that.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
You seem to assume everyone can get anything they want, any time.

~~~
Xurinos
Just four days a week and a year. That is a far cry from "a pleasure cruise to
the moon" and "peace for all mankind".

But there is a middle ground. You can certainly work towards things, but
depending on your situation and available resources, you may not be able to
achieve some of them in the desired time frames.

------
hpaavola
Two years ago I switched to 30 hour week, and there is no way I'm going back.
I'm happier, in better shape and get so much more done at home.

I do understand why people work like crazy, they have huge mortgages or other
loans. I cut my hours before taking huge loan (I have smallish student loan to
pay), so I just need to adjust my future house/apartment to my income. It's
much more easier this way, than to first take huge loan and the trying to cut
hours.

But for my friends who don't have that much debt, I always recommend them to
work less. Here in Finland we have quite heavy progression in income tax. It
makes the pay cut smaller, since your tax percentage goes down. And if you
have small kids, kindergartner bills goes also down, since you can pick them
up earlier.

It's amazing how big difference two hours a day can make. Nowadays I exercise
at least three times a week (I lost 10 kilos this fall, yay!), I cook better
and healthier food and do some programming as a hobby.

Before cutting my hours, I made more or less average pay, now my salary is
pretty much the same as median salary.

And I don't think I get any less done at work than I used to. I'm quality
assurance engineer and I don't believe that anyone can really be productive
for 8 hours a day in non-trivial tasks.

~~~
pragmatic
I would love to do this. I'm on the no debt, small house end of things.
However, most employers in US (at least in my experience in the midwest) are
still in the factory mindset. Meaning they want you in your seat by start time
and there until end time. Working from home or working less hours is still
looked on with suspicion (but the work from home situation is starting to
improve).

I just don't think many employers are enlightened enough to allow a 30 hour
week for knowledge workers (in the US and at this point in time).

Totally agree with your lifestyle though. I would trade big house/car for more
free time any day.

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tybris
Also, high-tech industry is in a sad state in the Netherlands. Large IT
projects fail at a remarkably high rate. Successful start-ups move out.
Foreign tech corporations settle only for localization and catching a tax
break. There is not much of an engineering culture. Salaries are generally
low, venture capital non-existent. I moved abroad.

Ironically, Dutch engineering education is among the best of the world, but
after college, there's nothing that keeps computer engineers like Dijkstra,
van Renesse, Vogels, Kaashoek, Moolenaar and van Rossum at home.

~~~
toumhi
I would say salaries are good, comparing salaries and cost of living
(comparing to London or Paris for example).

I also heard contrary statements to yours regarding venture capital (may not
be at the level of the US though).

And, there are a bunch of technology companies (TomTom, booking.com,
Hyves...).

Companies seem to have a hard time hiring locals though, and there are quite a
lot of foreigners working in IT. So that seems to corroborate your point about
Dutch going abroad (or maybe simply not interested in software)

~~~
winfred
Salaries are low in the Netherlands for IT people. I'm a Windows admin and
also moved and went from pretax 34K euros in Amsterdam to $110K in California
in 2006.Then add on top of that a sales tax and an income tax that are each
roughly 10% lower in the US. Even if you compensate for lower benefits, cost
of living differences and a possible increase of my value due to additional
skills learned, there is a massive difference. I practically went from rags to
riches just by moving (and also went from about 8 weeks vacation a year to...
nothing :).

~~~
toumhi
Sure, salaries are much higher in US, even more so in California. :-)

But, by european standards, it's pretty good. London and Paris are more
expensive cities and salaries are lower (except maybe in finance).

I went from 31K in Toulouse (France) to 45K in Amsterdam 3 months later :-)
Not really rags to riches but still a very nice increase, even adjusting to
the higher cost of living.

------
cubicle67
I work between 25 and 30 hours a week. I don't earn a great income, especially
compared to figures mentioned here, but it's enough to pay the bills and I'd
rather spend more time at home than at work.

It works because we have a very modest house with an equally modest mortgage.
We own the car, my wife runs a very tight budget and we don't have many other
outgoings. Our largest expense (greater than the mortgage payments) are school
fees; we send our 4 kids to a Montessori school but we're happy to pay the
money because we can afford it (just) and it's something we both strongly
believe in

The downside to the extra time I have, is that I haven't exactly used it
wisely - in fact I've mostly squandered it, which makes me sad looking back at
the year gone by.

~~~
Xurinos
_The downside to the extra time I have, is that I haven't exactly used it
wisely - in fact I've mostly squandered it, which makes me sad looking back at
the year gone by._

I have been thinking about this myself, and I realized something: This
squandering that I am doing... I WANT to squander. I want that playtime or
whatever. It was what I enjoy at that time. Is it truly time wasted?

~~~
hessenwolf
I did a PhD, a postdoc, and I worked from home for a little while. Home time
mostly seems unproductive. I find it useful not to regret and just to try and
do a little bit more each day.

~~~
lkrubner
It depends what you mean by "regret". Some reflection on the mistakes you made
is necessary to correct your course and move in the right direction.

~~~
hessenwolf
Okay, i'll buy that. Reflection without regret and self recrimination.

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yummyfajitas
"...if we insisted on full-time surgeons we would have a personnel problem:
Three in four of our junior doctors are female."

We have had "part time doctors" in the US for a while, not to mention a
movement toward "girl specialties" (read: gyno/derm/few others). It's a
significant contributor to our rising medical costs.

Supply of medical services = (# of doctors) x (average hours worked). The # of
doctors is basically fixed (all medical school slots are filled, and there is
no movement to build more), which means part time doctors reduce the supply of
medical services. Net result: rising prices (note: not the only cause of
this), fewer people being treated.

Hopefully things work out better for the dutch than for us.

I think China has a very forward thinking idea on this: if training slots are
limited by government fiat, raise standards for women relative to men (since
society will get fewer hours of output from a given woman, she will need a
higher productivity to compensate).

~~~
zdw
This seems to be a basic personal economics issue - would you rather work 40+
hours a week at a job that paid X, or 20-30 hours at a job that paid X*2?

That's the rationalization a lot of professionals are making.

Similarly, if you're offering a rare/unique service that is in high demand,
and that only you personally can provide, and you start to become overworked,
do you raise rates? If you want time off, would it not make sense to raise
rates until you have a better work/non-work time balance?

~~~
yummyfajitas
Everything you say is true for a free market in goods/services. In that case,
rising prices would induce more people to become doctors, thereby increasing
the supply.

Unfortunately, there is no free market in medical training - supply is
artificially capped. A huge number of qualified people who want to become a
doctor are turned away from medical school, and the government artificially
restricts the number of medical schools (at the behest of the AMA) [1].

[1] Some numbers. I'll assume the average black medical student is qualified
(but the 49'th percentile is unqualified), giving me cutoff of MCAT VR 8.3 for
a "qualified doctor". This cutoff is chosen so I can call people who disagree
with me a racist. Some gaussian-fu suggests we could train at least 10-15k
more doctors per year.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20080801022539/http://www.aamc.or...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080801022539/http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2007/mcatgparaceeth07.htm)

(Unfortunately the AAMC took the numbers down, but the wayback machine is
helpful.)

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officemonkey
The best job I ever had (schedule-wise) was when I worked 30 hours/week at
home.

My normal day would be: get up at six and start work answering emails. Around
eight I'd rustle up a quick breakfast and eat it at my desk while I started
making the calls I needed to make. Done at noon.

If the 6 AM start time seems horrible, consider this: my commute from bed to
desk was less than 30 seconds and being done before noon was a powerful
motivator.

However a large portion of my job was traveling to different meetings
throughout the state. Depending on the location, these trips could take three
to five hours. So, if I had two meetings a week, I'd cut back my "office time"
the day before or the day after.

Regardless of how much travel I did, I was done for the week when I hit 30
hours. I was done before Friday 90% of the time.

For about four months of that time, my fiancee (who also worked from home) was
living with me. We would often go have lunch together or see a matinee.

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StavrosK
On the other side of the coin, most Greeks I know would also kill for a four-
day week. In fact, they would kill for any work at all.

~~~
dochtman
This is the EU; if they're qualified enough, they might be able to find work
here in the Netherlands.

~~~
StavrosK
Unless they don't speak a foreign language.

~~~
jpr
One would assume that most people of working age would speak at least English,
which should be enough to get started in many countries.

~~~
oscardelben
I don't know, I'm italian and people here don't know English, yes a few do,
but it's still the exception. I've also just lived 6 months in Madrid and it's
even worse. I know that countries in the north of Europe are better in this
sense but I see Greece to be more like Italy and Spain education than say,
Netherlands education.

~~~
StavrosK
Yep, most people here don't speak English to any passable level. Even if they
did, though, it's a bit hard for everyone to up and move out. Many people do,
but that's not a viable way of solving the problem for an entire country.

------
testosteles
I was working for a company that has every second Friday off, which was pretty
good. However the work wasn't. So I started looking around, but was not
finding any work I was interested in doing. Eventually an old client called
(I'm a contract software dev) and asked if I'd be interested in coming back. I
wasn't really excited about going back there, but I knew it would be better
than where I currently was. So I figured I'd just throw out a question:

"Can I work 3 days a week?"

They accepted a week later, and I spent the entire summer working 3 days at
this company, while spending more time with my wife and newborn son.

Sometime in September/October, I received another email from another old
client who was desperate for developers. I told him that I could only spare 2
days a week, not expecting him to accept this. Only he did. Shit, now I have
to work 5 days again! But this job is only a 15min commute, and I can work
from home 1 of these days.

I guess the point of this story is that sometimes you will get what you ask
for, especially if you have a good reputation. All you have to do is... ask
for it.

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duck
I work a four day week, 10 hours a day (which I am thinking is different from
the article's example) and love it. However, I've seen a dozen plus others try
it and all switch back so it obviously isn't for everyone.

~~~
wccrawford
Actually, it does talk about squeezing a whole week's work into 4 days, so
it's probably 4 10-hour days as well.

I've considered it, but I know my productivity sags at the 8 hour mark as it
is, so I don't think it's a good fit for me or the company.

~~~
wkornewald
Actually, I wonder at which point you guys notice that your productivity
drops. Very often my productivity drops noticeably after 7 hours, already, but
it can come back in the evening.

Also, it often drops after lunch, but this also depends on when we have lunch.
It's significantly worse if we have lunch around 12:00 than around
13:30-14:00. Our research group loves to go at 11:30 (!!!) which destroys the
whole day for me, so a few of us have just stopped eating together with them.

Update: I've added a poll: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2052007>

~~~
duck
I telecommute as well and basically have the first six hours of everyday by
myself, so I feel very productive during that time. After lunch it drops some,
but luckily that is also when meetings are so I feel it doesn't matter as
much. If I still have time left and don't feel very productive (which happens
maybe one day a week, sometimes more though) I usually have some work that
doesn't require much mental effort (like administrative or light maintenance)
and work on that. If I couldn't define my schedule like this it would probably
be harder.

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shin_lao
If you don't like what you're doing 5 days a week, you won't like it more 4
days a week.

~~~
furyg3
And if you love doing something, you'll certainly love it more if you do it
24/7! The world isn't this black and white.

Some people are sprinters, and some are marathon runners, and even more people
are some combination of the two at different points in their lives. Sure, some
jobs require people who can sprint for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, with
litte vacation, but many people don't want to live that way...

If you hate your job, you won't love it by reducing the hours, but it might
make it more bearable. If you like/love your job, but it's pushing you a bit
too hard, you may find it even more rewarding if you reduce your hours.

~~~
shin_lao
What I meant is that five days a week 9 to 17 is hardly "a lot" and if it's
already too much for you, perhaps the problem is with the job itself.

disclaimer: workaholic bias?

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c1sc0
I work a 4 day week on my day job and am switching to half-time in 2011. Funny
thing is: I'd say I work something closer to 60 hours a week with the side-
projects. I found it easier to adjust to the new standard of living by slowly
weaning off the teat: first 80%, then 60%, then ...

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sandeepshetty
I switch to working 3 days a week at my regular gig from Jan 1. Looking
forward to trying out stuff I've wanted to for a while and spending more time
with the family. Mostly excited about cutting back on the "waste" generated in
"going" to work.

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frobozz
Where the norm is a five day week, using homicide to reduce the available
workforce is counterproductive to getting it down to four days.

------
Juliuso
I'm going to try working part-time, and go back to school within the year.
I'll be much happier after I finish.

