
Trial claimed to show a 4 and 5-day work week are equally productive. It didn’t - cocoflunchy
https://medium.com/@robertwiblin/a-widely-publicised-trial-claimed-to-show-a-4-and-5-day-work-week-are-equally-productive-655dac3aee94
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kd5bjo
The article here boils down to arguing that the answers to these three
questions aren’t representative of productivity:

1\. Meets formal performance requirements of the job

2\. Fulfills responsibilities specified in job description

3\. Performs tasks that are expected of him or her

As an employee, those should cover everything I’m evaluated on; any company
that claims this isn’t enough is either horribly mismanaged or trying to
exploit its workers by requiring them to do things they didn’t sign up for.

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duado
That’s a view that works if you want a static job, like a passport inspector.
No one expects or wants them to go “above and beyond.” But in a company like
Google, the work that needs to be done is far harder to define, and change
frequently. You cannot expect to be promoted or even stay employed if you are
just planning on doing what was specifically enumerated in the job description
when you applied. for the job.

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kd5bjo
I imagine the google job description for a software engineer is something
like:

* Write and maintain software in accordance with business strategy

* Assist other technical staff when their duties overlap your area of responsibility

* May be required to be available 24/7 up to 15 days per quarter

* Periodically provide feedback to management about coworkers' performance

* Interview and evaluate candidates for technical positions

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mruts
The less number of days people are expected to work, the more advantage
motivated and ambitious employees have. If everyone has to work everyday, the
only thing a person can do is to work longer hours, which have a decreasing
marginal gains every extra hour worked. But with a weekend, an employee now
can use 2 extra days to get ahead, theoretically doing 40% more work.

With a 3 day weekend, this goes up to an eye popping 75% more work, or even
just a 25% increase for one extra day.

Because of this, I contend that a 4-day work week is highly unstable and that
employees are going to naturally fall into a 5 or 6 day pattern to get ahead.

For a long time, people have been talking about leveling off work hours since
productivity has/will go up. But the reality is that no one doesn’t want to
work. No one wants to just work 4 hours a day and be done with it. We want to
word harder and do more and make more money and be more successful. That’s who
we (humans) are and it’s foolish to think we can change that.

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jriot
It is foolish to think people actually want to work more and that we tie our
success to working harder and making more money.

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mruts
Do you have a better metric in which we all can compare ourselves by? Because
I know that the first thing everyone asks each other when they first meet is
"what do you do?" If work doesn't matter, why does everyone ask each other
that question?

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jriot
Why do we need to compare ourselves based on work? When I ask people what they
do it's a general question. I am data scientist yet my friends are auto
mechanics, in sales, teachers, work in the veterans department at colleges
etc... We don't compare ourselves based on our occupation.

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robertwiblin
Would be good if the title could be edited so the word 'This' isn't missing at
the start:

"This trial claimed to show a 4 and 5-day work week are equally productive. It
didn’t."

