
Microsoft Japan’s 3-day weekend boosts worker productivity - nefitty
https://soranews24.com/2019/11/03/microsoft-japans-experiment-with-3-day-weekend-boosts-worker-productivity-by-40-percent/
======
TrackerFF
The 5-day workweek was implemented what, 100 years ago?

Are we to believe that a 100 year old bizops practice is the optimal solution?

I honestly think that the main reason it's (nearly) impossible to implement
something new, is because the old practice and mentality is so ingrained and
etched in management, they'll feel cheated if the need to pay the same for
less days (even though hours may be the same).

They'd rather have people around for as long as possible, doing 70%, than
having them less but delivering 90%. The same type of management that values
facetime and butts in seats over nearly anything else.

~~~
claudeganon
The whole arrangement is about control, preventing workers from having the
time or energy to build competing enterprises, develop skills beyond a certain
level, or organize against their employers. It’s the same reason why most big
corps oppose a national healthcare system in the US: it keeps people locked in
to their current positions and has the knock-on effect of putting downward
pressure on wages and turnover expenses.

~~~
umvi
> It’s the same reason why most big corps oppose a national healthcare system
> in the US: it keeps people locked in to their current positions

Ok, then why isn't EU a Mecca of enterprise and innovation? Seems like EU is
largely technologically stagnant compared to the US despite tons of safety
nets at every level.

~~~
TrackerFF
There are many reasons, IMO.

1\. The US has almost 330 million people; Europe has 740 million - but we're
spread over so many different countries / policies / cultures etc. Hell,
eastern Europe was locked out up until 30 years ago, and didn't stat to see
industrial prosperity until 20 years ago.

2\. USA had a massive advantage after WW2, while Europe was still in shambles.
The rebuilding of Europe wasn't really completed until the 50s and 60s, at a
time when the US experienced its golden age of industrial development.

3\. More rich people and more investors compared to Europe, from earlier on,
coupled with excellent schools that could produce and feed talent into the
industry.

Sure, we here in Europe have had excellent schools, but nowhere near the
financial backings. In many countries, financial backing of tech and companies
have been a gov / state affair, which in turn can be extremely limited
compared to private investors.

etc.

~~~
Vrondi
Yeah, it's just amazing how people completely forget that whole "bombed
literally to bits in WWII" thing. Most Americans have no clue how long
rationing lasted in the UK after WWII, and yet you guys managed to implement
the NHS. Meanwhile, at the same time, the fabulously prospering USA has never
managed to do anything to take care of this basic need of citizens, yet keeps
calling itself "superior".

~~~
complexmango
The United States was once a 3rd world country that lost 10% of its population
in the American Civil War. Within 5 decades of that, it produced 50% of the
worlds manufacturing output.

Needless to say, Europe was it its peak at the time, and has only declined
since.

Excuses are easy to come by - root causes are more useful to examine.

~~~
hollerith
The US was the second country to industrialize (Britain was first; France
third) and that industrialization had been going very strong for many decades
before the start of the American Civil War. Also life expectancy, infant
mortality, adult height and similar measures were better in the American
colonies than in the most advance Western European countries a century (and
probably a century and a half) before the start of the Civil War. So I don't
agree that it was a 3rd-world country at the start of the Civil War.

(I have no opinion on grandparent; I am reacting only to your choice of the
term "3rd-world country".)

------
124909
This year I was forced to change to a 3 day work schedule (4 day weekend), by
some recent boneheaded changes in Italian tax law for self-employed workers:
if I were to make more before tax, I would make less after tax. That means
that the average tax rate has a discontinuity and the marginal tax rate
diverges at one point.

Even if this change was to be reversed by the new government I don't think I
would go back to working full time: not only I'm less stressed and more
productive (per hour worked), but a more interesting change is that you stop
defining yourself by your profession. You are not a programmer, you code to
pay the rent and are all the other things you do in the four days you have
left.

(I'm using a throwaway, because it doesn't take long to figure out what the
limit income is and derive roughly how much I make per hour)

~~~
sidlls
This is exactly how many conservative Americans think our tax system works (it
doesn't work like that at all). Republican politicians and their henchmen like
Rush Limbaugh played that up for years during the 90s to help keep the anti-
government anger stoked. Whenever they were called on it they hedged back to
some weak argument about having to work twice as hard for each marginal dollar
being a disincentive.

~~~
sethammons
I don't understand the downvotes. I have friends who have turned down more
work/pay because of it pushing them to the next tax bracket. They think that
that would _lower_ their overall take home. They seem to not understand that
it is a marginal rate. If they felt that the effort vs reward was not
valuable, that makes sense. But they think they will actually lose money.
Maybe I'm the one missing something.

~~~
TrackerFF
No, it's a completely widespread tactic and misinformation (how tax brackets
work), not only in the US, but elsewhere too.

I'm in Norway, and have heard the exact same things. People that turn down
extra work, because they're certain that the said OT pay is getting bumped
into the next tax bracket, and they'll net LESS than if they had not worked at
all.

------
spydum
I definitely want to believe, but they implemented this for one month. So
literally four days off, and declared success? Couldn’t many of those
measurements be just standard deviations? Curious how productivity gain was
measured and whether or not this is just a honeymoon period and at some point
it settles back to baseline..

~~~
Barrin92
There's also the issue that Japan is quite notorious for a work culture that
prohibits people from leaving to early and staying at office for a long time
sometimes doing very little work. So the opportunity to increase productivity
(or just not getting less work done) is probably bigger because there's a lot
of slack to cut out.

In Germany we have a very different culture. You come at eight or nine and
leave at four or five, you have your break but otherwise you're basically
supposed to work. I have a hard time believing that cutting an entire day out
is going to increase productivity a lot.

~~~
stefano
A german company did a similar experiment with positive results:
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-5-hour-workday-gets-put-
to-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-5-hour-workday-gets-put-to-the-
test-11571876563)

~~~
pluma
Note that they explicitly did it with the intention of clamping down on
informal breaks, socialising and other "distractions". The founder heavily
suggested he decided on this solution because he wanted to cut down on on-the-
clock use of Facebook, private conversations, etc. They basically enforce a
rather strict work focus during those 5 hours and justify it by offloading
that overhead into leisure time. Also the 5 hour cut-off is socially enforced
with a strict "countdown".

Our company is in the same region of Germany and we independently started
experimenting with our work time but our focus was employee well-being via
stress reduction and encouraging our employees to use the extra free time for
self-care.

We ended up with a flexible 25-40 hour work week (or similar 60-ish % adjusted
for non-40 hour positions). The goal is to keep each employee's work hours as
close to 25 as possible but allow for "overtime" (up to the full 40 hours) if
necessary. If we notice employees are working "overtime" over a longer period
of time, we rebalance the work load or adjust timelines as possible to get
them back to 25.

Despite the reduction of work hours by 30-40% the effective work output only
shrunk by 10-20%. But the real benefits are social.

------
_hn_throw_away
Fuck everything about 5 day work weeks.

I'll gladly switch to any job that offers a 4 day work week. It's one of the
best perks.

As someone with ADHD, work days are entirely spent getting work done. There
isn't any extra slack or allotment for personal tasks. They're 100% owned by
the employer.

Weekends offer barely enough time to catch up with chores. There isn't enough
time both to catch up and still have fun. I use vacation time to catch up on
chores, so that's spent too.

I don't want to spend most of my life working. I feel like a slave, and now my
youth is almost gone.

I don't care if it's a 10hr/4day schedule or a 9hr/4day 8hr/4day with less
pay, I want an extra day for myself. I'm an excellent engineer aside from my
ADHD quirks, and I'll go anywhere that offers this where I live.

My own startup (I almost have the capital for a long runway) will be 9hr/4day.

Fuck everything about 5 day work weeks.

~~~
Doxin
As someone with ADD (essentially ADHD with only the "attention deficit" bit,
no hyperactivity) I recognise the feeling. I'm lucky to be in a position where
I can work 4 days a week, but I'd still barely have energy left for fun
activities.

I've now been on methylphenidate (also known as ritalin) for about a month and
_good god_ that has made a difference for me. When I get home I can get right
into hobby projects or chores instead of just deflating on the couch until
bedtime.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, have you tried looking into medication? I
know a lot of people are vehemently against medicating ADHD issues, I was
pretty much one of them. The thing is you can totally try it out and if it
doesn't work for you or has side-effects you'd rather not deal with you can
stop easily enough.

I've heard plenty of ritalin horror stories, but a lot of those start making
sense once you read the list of side effects. You need to be somewhat lucky to
not be too affected by them. If you are there's other medication that can be
tried.

I guess my point in a nutshell is don't suffer if you don't have to. I've
spent 25 years suffering with my inability to choose what to focus on, and a
simple pill has let me trade that for cold hands and a restless leg. I'd take
that deal any day. Speak to your GP and ask what your options are. Worst case
you're no worse off than you are now.

~~~
TurkishPoptart
Is it a long-acting medication? Doctors seem to diagnose me with
anxiety/depression or ADD/ADHD. The antidepressants don't help. Does the
ritalin "work" all day, or do you have to redose it?

~~~
Doxin
I'm currently on 15mg in the morning and then 15mg after lunch. It doesn't
_quite_ last all the way to lunch or all the way to the end of the day but
it's already such a massive improvement that I really don't mind too much. I'm
lucky to not get much if any "rebound" when it stops working, so I can just
keep going at my old pace even when it does wear off.

There do exist long-acting versions and I might try those in the future, but
for now this is already pretty damn amazing.

> anxiety/depression

As far as I know those are commonly comorbid with ADD/ADHD. I'd get pretty
anxious and stressed by having the feeling of not working hard enough while
simultaneously being unable to work harder in any case. You'll definitely want
to talk to your doctor. Mention that you might like to see if medicating the
ADD/ADHD helps with your symptoms.

------
janesvilleseo
My employer, a F500 non FAANG company, has been doing something similar for a
long time. During the summer they have what they call summer hours. It’s
usually from June through August. Friday’s are mostly off. That is if your
work is complete then you can leave early. We have a large remote workforce so
I assume quite a few of those remote workers don’t work at all on Fridays. It
is a nice perk and I do hope it continues. It does not seem to impact our
ability to hit our targets in any negative way. No idea if they ran any
numbers to see if it impacted them positively, but we all like it and we have
been hitting our numbers for the most part across the company.

~~~
jekrb
> "if your work is complete then you can leave early"

What happens if your work is complete before Friday during non-Summer hours?

~~~
wyldfire
I don't think I've ever worked somewhere where I could exhaust the work items.
There's always vastly more work to be done.

------
HHalvi
In a country like Japan, anything you do to improve work-life balance(also the
way its looked at) is going to add to productivity.

------
dstaley
> Due to its success this year, Microsoft is planning on repeating it again
> next summer or perhaps at other times as well.

If the results were truly as remarkable as the article is making them out to
be, why not implement it all year?

~~~
thrower123
We've done this the last few years at my company, so that we have every other
Friday during the summer off, staggered for coverage.

It's nice. Nobody ever does anything on Friday anyway, and a three-day weekend
lets you actually go somewhere or get a project done. Moreover, when you have
a weekday off regularly, you can actually go to the post office or the bank or
all the other places that are only open when working people are working and
can't go.

~~~
ekianjo
The most people get used to it, the more I would expect "Thursday" to become
the new Friday and you should expect to quickly end up losing the benefit of
that additional day off as laziness takes over.

~~~
Whirl
My company implements an optional every other Friday off. Somewhat
surprisingly, Thursday hasn’t really become the new Friday. In fact, the
people who choose to work the full 5 days tend to get more work done on
Fridays, since fewer people are around to interrupt them. The people who take
those Fridays off are generally happier and still pretty productive on
Thursdays.

------
nickjj
Posts like this remind me why I really enjoy working for myself.

You have the option of being able to decouple your hours worked from your
accomplishments. You get to choose whether or not you take the day off because
you crushed it yesterday, or you can continue grinding it out hardcore for
months just so you can take a few extended breaks in the near future.

You are in control of the dial that dictates when you work.

------
kull
How do you implement such amazing perk for customer support team in a
bootstrap startup where cash and people is a limited resource, but your
customers need support at least during the office hours? I guess I should not
dream about it now , as such experiments work only for companies with a lot of
money or departments which do not need their work to be done in a specific
time during a day?

~~~
geofft
In any support organization I've worked in (including software teams with
support responsibilities, software teams with escalation responsibilities,
etc.), a given customer question doesn't necessarily get a good answer on the
same day. The SME might be out sick, there might be an incident distracting
everyone, the problem might be genuinely hard and require
research/experimentation, etc. Even if you have a 24h SLA it's usually 24h to
a response saying "We're looking into it but check out the FAQ", not to a
resolution. And this gets _more_ likely the _smaller_ your team is.

So invest in better FAQs and diagnosis tools and in procedures to reduce
incidents, instead of trying to throw more bodies at the problem, because you
don't have more bodies. Customers will be happier about getting actual answers
sooner than they otherwise would.

This isn't a perk, any more than weekends or healthcare or market compensation
is a "perk." It's an investment in getting better results for your business
and for your customers, through making sure you have healthy and productive
employees.

------
basugasubaku
It looks like this was a sales department. The metric of productivity was
sales per employee according to the tweeted image and the Nikkei article.

The sources also mention better use of meeting time via an increase in shorter
meetings and teleconferences.

------
MatekCopatek
Entirely anecdotal, but my personal experience confirms this. I switched to
4-day weeks nearly four years ago and it feels very beneficial. Claiming I get
the same amount of work done in less time would be an overstatement, but I'm
definitely more productive in the four days when I'm working. Can't remember
the last time I suffered any work-related stress and my motivations for taking
time off are almost purely external now (spending time with friends and
family), never the feeling of needing a break.

------
protomyth
My favorite version of this is the M-H then T-F weeks. That way you get a 4
day weekend every two weeks and the office has 5 day a week coverage if you
put people on alternating weeks.

~~~
anticensor
As parent replied that H stands for Thursday, I should add to that three-shift
staggering pattern would be more useful: mo-th, we-sa, fr-tu

~~~
protomyth
Why would I want to work the weekend?

~~~
anticensor
This results in an overall 7-days-a-week schedule, with a desirable property:
two shifts working at a time on weekdays and one shift at a time working on
weekends. Fr-Tu was intended to be Fr,Su-Tu.

~~~
protomyth
I can work M-H, have a 4 day weekend, work T-F, have a 2 day weekend, and
repeat. I am not sure how I would do that with your schedule. Plus, I don't
want to work weekends.

~~~
anticensor

       mo-th twice, then 6 days off
       we-sa twice, then 5 days off
       fr-tu once, then 6 days off

------
bonoboTP
A single month trial says nothing. A rational employee would surely work a lot
during this trial period, because if the experiment is successful, they get a
lot more free time in the future.

Nobody works at 100% productivity all the time, but if it only about a month
with a big incentive, they can tap into their reserves and improve
productivity for the prospect of more free time.

Social experiments are very difficult because the observed subjects know about
the experiment.

~~~
nevode
+1 (BTW I'm not implying the 4-day week doesn't work)

------
HenryKissinger
"For many ages to come the old Adam will be so strong in us that everybody
will need to do some work if he is to be contented. We shall do more things
for ourselves than is usual with the rich to-day, only too glad to have small
duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread
the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be
as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put
off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to
satisfy the old Adam in most of us!" \- John Maynard Keynes

------
someonehere
Interviewed at Dolby Labs once. They told me depending on your start date, you
get every other Friday off. Someone else may start on a different cycle so
they have the opposite Friday off from you. They said Fridays are pretty much
a day with no meetings and time to finish projects or tasks. If the following
Monday of your Friday off is a holiday, you essentially get a four day
weekend.

------
ThomPete
One month is not enough to check whether this works. Furthermore it's
important to check for the Hawthorn Effect.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect)

------
taurath
Japan’s work culture is crazy. Everyone works too many hours and is NOT
productive. It seems like the easiest problem in the world to solve for them,
give people back some time in their day, enjoy life more, and get more
productivity.

That said, Keynes predicted we’d have a 20 hour work week by now in the US,
and when exactly does that happen.

~~~
zeroonetwothree
To be fair, if you wanted the standard of living of the 1930s you can achieve
that with 20 hours/week of minimum wage. Average income was around $8-9k at
that time.

~~~
api
True if you add that you won't likely be able to live in certain cities or
expensive towns. But that leaves most of the country. There are some really
beautiful places you can live that are not expensive.

Check out the Appalachians if you like to live in a misty postcard, and the
stereotypes are largely false. Your neighbors are more likely to be artists or
organic farmers than the characters from Deliverance. (I used to live in
Asheville which is moderately expensive but you don't have to go far from town
and it gets cheap.)

------
hurrdurr2
Meanwhile, at my company, our HR has decided to cut sick leave to the CA state
mandated 3 days minimum.

So now we have people coughing their heads off at work and spreading flu
everywhere. How efficient can you be I wonder when you are sick? Yet people
seem to take pride in the fact that they are still working while battling an
illness.

I'm honestly surprised they tried this in Japan which has a super rigid work
structure.

------
bArray
I would also like to add that whilst this may (or may not) work for companies
such as Microsoft, rolling out something like this nationwide is still a bad
idea. There are many roles where this will have little effect on productivity,
likely less office-based roles. Another reason not to roll this out nationwide
is simply that lower paid roles may also see even lower pay.

That said, given the opportunity, I believe I would much prefer to work four
days a week if the pay was adequate to support myself comfortably. I much
prefer the idea of having a job to support my lifestyle and hobbies, rather
than my life being by job. I've always liked the idea of having a day-ff mid-
week, we used to do this as school children and it made the week a less of a
drag (you were always looking forward to the "weekend" being at most one more
day away).

~~~
blotter_paper
> There are many roles where this will have little effect on productivity,
> likely less office-based roles. Another reason not to roll this out
> nationwide is simply that lower paid roles may also see even lower pay.

What kind of roles are you talking about? The food service workers gotta keep
flipping burgers all week while you eat out on your midweek weekend? You sure
that won't affect productivity/caring-about-health-code-standards? As somebody
who has seen the actions of disgruntled line-cooks behind the scenes, I'd pay
extra to have my food prepared by a relatively content worker -- even for
selfish reasons.

> That said, given the opportunity, I believe I would much prefer to work four
> days a week if the pay was adequate to support myself comfortably.

Of course you would, you're a human.

~~~
bArray
> I'd pay extra to have my food prepared by a relatively

> content worker -- even for selfish reasons.

Of course, but where productivity doesn't increase significantly from having
additional time spent not working, there will simply be less work done - i.e.
people will be paid less. I don't know whether your burger flipper will be
more disgruntled from working more hours a week or getting paid less and
working less.

I highly suspect that such trade-offs are privileges of those who get paid
more, hence have enough excess income that they can take a day off without
significant detriment or their companies are in a position to swallow those
costs. And it's not even that simple in the second case, one of my old
employers made several billion dollars profit every year, but were still
making engineers redundant in order to reduce engineering costs and increase
investor gains. Microsoft seems to be in a position where they can just
swallow such costs and not worry investors, even if productivity didn't
increase significantly. Even it's ability to do such experiments is owing to
it's size.

> Of course you would, you're a human.

It's not quite that simple - I personally have life-long goals that I would
like to work more on. After speaking to people from a wide walk of life, I
don't believe everybody has such passions for their side projects, or their
goals simply benefit from more cash (i.e. holidays, family, expenses, etc).
For some people their work is their goal.

I'm also willing to take a 1/5th cut, as long as I can still make the rent.
Not everybody would be willing to say that, especially if you find yourself
closer to the breadline.

The audience here on HN is likely to be middle class and above... My point is
that before protesting nationwide for a day to be cut from the working week,
we should also consider our lesser paid equals. Everybody's case and reasoning
will be different.

~~~
blotter_paper
> Of course, but where productivity doesn't increase significantly from having
> additional time spent not working, there will simply be less work done

I don't believe that productivity in the service industry doesn't
significantly decrease with number of hours worked. I get that with some work
you end up mulling over it while you're away and coming up with a solution to
a problem in a way that doesn't apply _nearly_ as often for a kitchen
environment, but I've seen workers who felt they weren't getting enough time
off show up drunk, take 45 minute breaks without clearing it with management,
not bother with proper food handling procedures (e.g. putting meat products in
ice and water before throwing them in the walk-in so that time spent between
holding temperatures would be minimised and bacteria wouldn't grow in the meat
we served to customers), etc. Even as somebody who tried to stay on the ball,
I would be slipping up and making dumb mistakes at the end of a 14 hour shift
in a hot kitchen without enough time for adequate hydration. Work two of those
in a row and I doubt you'll be at peak efficiency, either. When I worked in
food service workers tended to be asking for less hours, not more. We'd bribe
each other to take shifts. That doesn't mean we didn't want more pay, it's
just that the bottom feeders of society also value their free time. Being paid
less means that each hour you sell you get _less_ for. Selling your reading
time for $8.50 an hour feels way worse than selling it for $50.00 an hour; at
$50.00 you feel like you're building towards something, at $8.50 you feel like
you're pissing away your life for practically nothing.

> It's not quite that simple - I personally have life-long goals that I would
> like to work more on. After speaking to people from a wide walk of life, I
> don't believe everybody has such passions for their side projects, or their
> goals simply benefit from more cash (i.e. holidays, family, expenses, etc).
> For some people their work is their goal.

I get what you're saying here. My point with the "you're human" line was that
you were making an argument about the service industry employees based on how
we as a society could most efficiently capture their labor value, and then
stating your own desires for work-life-balance in more human terms.

~~~
bArray
A 14 hour shift is quite significant for anybody, I just came off a solid 20+
hour shift myself (long story - code needed to be pushed out for a deadline).
I can certainly appreciate all the points raised.

I still don't think that we can blanket say: "less time worked is beneficial
to all the people". I think people need the ability to choose based on their
goals and situation (and not be forced into a decision).

This certainly gets quite complicated quite quickly. In the UK for example,
we've had zero hour contracts and apprenticeships for quite some time. In some
cases they've allowed people greater flexibility around their personal
situation and in others they have been used as a tool to pay people below
minimum wage.

> [..] we as a society could most efficiently capture their

> labor value, and then stating your own desires for

> work-life-balance in more human terms.

Sure. But this work-life balance is also reflective of a realistic input into
society. If given the choice, I would accept full pay and work zero days (and
some have chosen this life-style with a social support systems). As a society
and a company we need to maximize productivity per hour - and part of that
equation could be less hours worked, but it could also not be.

------
perfunctory
This is not the first experiment of its kind. Here is a New Zealand firm,
trusts manager, experimented with 4-day workweek with very satisfactory
results

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/world/asia/four-day-
workw...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/world/asia/four-day-workweek-new-
zealand.html)

Here is an article about how working less is a solution to just about
everything

[https://thecorrespondent.com/4373/the-solution-to-just-
about...](https://thecorrespondent.com/4373/the-solution-to-just-about-
everything-working-less/168119985-db3d3c10)

I personally have been working 4 days a week or less for more than a decade
already. Loving it. Does it improve my productivity? Why the heck should I
care! It improves my life.

~~~
pault
Are you self employed or is this something you have been able to negotiate
with your employers?

------
gamesbrainiac
There are a lot of comments here that are espousing the value of getting more
time to do the work - this is fine. Some businesses need to be open 5 days a
week.

However, if your work does not really require you to be in the office, then I
see no issue with people working even two days from home.

What I feel is that in order to get to the office, a lot of work needs to be
done before you can get there, and it is an expense (in terms of time as well
as money) that the employee bears.

I think we need to realize that we are in the 21st century, and that most
things can be resolved by video-conferencing and email. We have so many tools
for remote communication, and they are really very good.

It is high time, we took full advantage of them, and give people less stress
in their lives, and more time to spend with their families and developing
themselves.

------
Scapeghost
In the Middle East and Southeast Asia even a 2-day weekend is rare!

People CHOOSE to work ALL week, only closing for a few hours just for Friday
prayers because of social norms.

Expat workers in the Middle East get only a couple consecutive weeks off per
year to go visit their families.

In developed societies, I think even keeping it a 2-day weekend and allowing
employees to have at least one day of their choice to work from home would be
great.

~~~
colsw
work from home is very industry/role dependent, IT can easily work from home
but the same can't be said for Hardware Ops or finance, who often rely on
paper even in "modern" companies.

if there's going to be a "new default" I think the 3 day weekend makes the
most sense, or a Wednesday off scheme where you work 2 sets of 2 days.

------
crca
I work for a non-FAANG Fortune 100 company that just implemented a 4/10
schedule after being 9/80 for a number of years. These are the perfect kinds
of symbiotic moves where everyone benefits - employees get more time for their
lives, employers save operating costs, and the environment saves a day of
commuting from thousands of people.

~~~
imafish
Can you elaborate on what 4/10 and 9/80 means?

~~~
bpodgursky
Work 10 hours a day M-Thu but get Friday off, or get every other Friday off,
respectively.

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BurningFrog
A reminder that most scientific studies that report sensational results enough
to "go viral" are wrong.

And this doesn't even claim to be scientific, AFAICT.

But it _does_ report that we don't have to make hard choices. We can pay less
and get more. You can see why this message travels fast.

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h1d
I work alone in Japan for my own company but boy people work too much I think.
Some people reply to my message after midnight and that is someone who is
employed and not someone running a company.

And some other people message me on Saturday morning and again, that is an
employee but the good part is that for the people I know, they don't look
unhappy or maybe they're just used to that work hours... I don't think I'll
want to work like that if I'm an employee.

When I was an employee for the one year in my entire life, I asked for
overtime (I was the only person getting it in a company of about a dozen
people) and usually worked 9-10 hours for 5 days.

------
colanderman
Does anyone know whether this is 40% daily or weekly productivity? If it's
daily, that's only a 12% weekly boost (still good! but less breathtaking). If
it's weekly, that's an amazing 75% daily boost!

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tai_hn
This is a bold statement. I don't think I can get more things done when I take
one more day off. Can you?

They don't show how they measured their productivity exactly. I also don't
think a month trial is good enough to derive the conclusion. Furthermore,
there is a chance that other variables affected the result. It's difficult to
come to the conclusion through this kind of uncontrollable experiment where
you cannot control the variables and constants.

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opencl
I wonder how many hours per day these people are working. With Japanese
corporate culture a 4 day workweek could still easily be 50+ hours.

------
sabujp
apparently from comments below this was a sales metric and had nothing to do
with software engineering. However many colleagues have so much vacation time
built up that if they don't take one three day weekend a month they stop
accruing vacation

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ISL
The 23 percent change in electricity use could largely be explained by the 20
percent reduction in the time people were in the office.

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benibela
Would you still get a productivity boost, when the workers spent the weekend
working on their open source projects?

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rb808
This is great, why not move to 4 or 5 day weekends?

------
baxtr
I honestly wonder what most people would do with the extra time? Side
projects? Hobbies? Family?

~~~
david-gpu
I've worked 4-days/week for a year and on Fridays I do the same sort of things
as Saturday and Sunday.

Initially I thought it would be a special "hobby day" but the reality of being
a parent took over.

------
artur_makly
finally..they get a break.

------
ekianjo
How is productivity measured by Microsoft in Japan where they have huge market
dominance and therefore could actually fire most most of their workforce and
still generate as much business, resulting in gazillions % of productivity
improvement?

------
quotemstr
Go ahead: implement a four day work week. I'll keep working five or six days
per week like I do now, and consequently, I'll look more productive and
impactful compared to the do-as-you're-told types. You can't actually stop
people in a creative profession from working, and tech generally evaluates
people on their impact. What do you think will happen?

~~~
nefitty
It is good to be a hard worker. It is also good to spend time on activities
that help us achieve our own goals, instead of the goals of an organization.

That's great that you're proud of how much you work. Along with their work,
some other people are proud of their parenting, their hobbies, their
friendships, etc.

~~~
quotemstr
> other people are proud of their parenting, their hobbies, their friendships,
> etc.

People can choose to work more or less. But if someone chooses to work less,
he forfeits the right to complain about being paid less and being promoted
slower compared to people who work more.

The proposed four day work week would _increase_ this disparity between hard
workers and "default workers" who work as much as they're told to work, then
do other things, some of which you just mentioned. Many people already find
vaguely unjust, though it isn't.

~~~
WilliamEdward
Consider that work-hours are not necessarily the only measure of productivity.
If i work 100% and do it in 4 days and you work 100% and do it in 6 days,
you're the loser in this scenario.

