
We work a 4-day week and just raised $4.75m (2012) - joeyespo
http://ryancarson.com/post/21708810513/4-day-week
======
ChuckMcM
Congratulations! That is a great milestone to celebrate.

I was wondering about your numbers though, your post says :

    
    
        > $3,000,000+ yearly revenue run rate (and growing fast)
        >
        > Grown the Team to 34 full-time people and hiring 
        > at least 10 more as soon as possible
    

Profitable with $3M run rate and 34 people? That is $88K fully loaded per
person. Can you share some techniques for keeping your burn rate so
economical?

[1] As an example, with a nice (but not lawyer nice) office and a healthcare
plan we're paying > $30K per employee annually for just office space and
medical benefits.

~~~
RyanZAG
It's probably a result of rapid expansion. eg, they did $3M revenue over the
last financial year, but only started that year with 20 or whatever employees.
So you should probably be dividing by something like an average of 26
employees and not 34, which gives $115K per person and seems more in line with
reality.

~~~
dworin
Usually a revenue run rate means "we extrapolated our previous short term over
the next year." It's useful for rapidly-growing companies where your next
three quarters are much more likely to look like your current one than the
previous three.

So that would mean they're still being very economical with per-employee
expenses. My guess is that a lot of those employees aren't developers, they're
in other roles where the average pay is lower (support, film and video
editing, administration, even some sales roles).

~~~
ryancarson
This

~~~
gailees
^#theman

------
ritchiea
My experience working 80 hour weeks wasn't with startups, it was with
political campaigns where I made far less money and there was obviously no
equity. Similar situation though, get idealistic 20-somethings recently out of
college without families to work endlessly.

I don't support 7 day weeks and 12 hour days, but frankly for politics it
works. Why? Because for 95% of campaign employees it's not work quality that
matters, it's talking to a ton of other people, repeating simple messages,
engaging them and asking them to get involved with the campaign. I am
extremely supportive of organizations that support reasonable work hours and
not overextending yourself. I would never work 7 days a week again. But just
as much as you should not needlessly overwork yourself and your employees, you
need to understand (or at least try to understand) what is necessary to hit
your goals.

I suspect the average engineer at most startups could use an extra day off.
For some founders it may make sense to work long hours because some of that
work is touching base with investors, forging connections and doing other
things that may not be intellectually draining but just need to get done.

~~~
mathattack
Political campaigns at least have downtime though, right? You can have a month
or two off between sprints. I think certain creative work (movies?) is like
this too.

~~~
pc86
When I worked on political campaigns it was summer (anywhere from May to
August) until election day (first week of November) for 90+ hours a week. I
joke around about my very first job where I worked 96 hours in the first 6
days, and since it was July it only got busier from there. It gets to the
point where you would much rather do 10+ hours of work every day of the week
than take that Sunday off but have to sacrifice sleep for the next week
because of it.

Particularly for statewide and national elections, the last 2-4 weeks before a
campaign there is nothing else. No downtime, no family, no hobbies, nothing.
Just the candidate, the message, the voters, the outreach. It’s rare in those
major elections to get more than 2-3 hours of sleep (or sleep at all) in the
last 72 hour push. Again these are elections for POTUS, Senator or Governor in
contested states. A state rep race is going to be much more low key but still
easily 60-80+ hours for the final month or two.

Things may have lightened up some since I moved to programming, but I doubt
it.

~~~
rgovind
Why do people work so hard for getting a candidate elected? Does it personally
benefit you or your family? I am not talking of idealistic 20-somethings but
of people in 35+ age group? Why do they work hard to get a candidate elected?

In a country like India, where I come from, this is totally
understandable...if your candidate wins, you stand to make a lot of (corrupt)
money.

~~~
pc86
Obviously idealistic 20-somethings make up the majority of the grunt work.
Hell, even idealistic 30-somethings make up the majority of the lower-level
management.

For most people who treat it as a career though, it's just a job. Rather than
a 40-hour a week office job, they have a job where they work 100 hours a week
5 months out of the year. The vast majority of campaign workers I worked with
in my younger days are now working in government (state and federal) so that's
definitely one of the best ways to get into that work. To be clear, I'm
referring to Administration-type posts, not civil service or public service
positions. These are still very political jobs such as spokesperson and
generic staffers.

EDIT: And maybe this is my idealism shining through (I'm still a 20-something,
after all :)) but a lot of us really believe that Our Side is better than The
Alternative, and we're willing to give up time to try to make that a reality.
Even though I don't make money from politics anymore, I still donate a decent
amount of my spare time every cycle to the candidate(s) I choose to support.

------
ryancarson
60+ employees now and we're still doing the 4-day (32 hour) week. Probably saw
this, but we have also since removed managers:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6886907](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6886907)

~~~
lquist
Do you mind sharing your current revenue run rate (roughly)?

~~~
ryancarson
$8m+

------
tlogan
Congratulation! This is how it should be done.

And I have a question....

All professors of management and organizations understand that work week
should be defined differently for knowledge workers. And that most the
important quality of knowledge workers is initiative.

So if you have 80 hours work week and all innovation or initiative is
dismissed, that can mean two things:

1) you are not "knowledge worker" but just "coding monkey" (it is "above your
pay")

2) the company sucks

Majority of tech companies require 7-day work week and they discourage any
initiative.

Does this mean that majority of programers are not actually hired as
"knowledge workers" but as "coding monkeys"? Or that majority of tech
companies suck?

EDIT: This 7-work week is actually based on calculation: 5 days * 10 hours per
day + 5 hours on weekend (just check email) which is 55 hours per week => 7
working days of 8 hours each.

~~~
ido

        Majority of tech companies require 7-day work week
    

I've been working as a professional programmer for the last 12 years, in 4
companies as an employee and a couple others as a consultant/freelancer. In
none have I seen 7 day work weeks as a standard, nor have I heard of such from
any of my many friends who also work as programmers. Am I an outlier?

PS I agree that tech companies (among others) often have a culture of
overworking.

~~~
tlogan
I put answer in my comment. Here is the answer:

This 7-work week is actually based on calculation: 5 days * 10 hours per day +
5 hours on weekends (to check email). All companies I worked required 10 hours
per day. 9 to 5 is not looked nice unless you don't login in the evening and
"do some emails".

Which tech company has 9 to 5?

~~~
rfnslyr
You poor soul. That is not the standard. I work strictly 7.5 hours a day for 5
days. Anything else = pay me more for my time.

If you are working your schedule (10 hours a day, what the actual fuck), you
are being taken advantage of.

~~~
Nicholas_C
>10 hours a day, what the actual fuck

I'm confused at your balking. Perhaps because I work in finance and shit hours
are the norm, but 10 hours a day is not ridiculous. I work that almost
everyday unless it's a busy week.

~~~
miloshadzic
Yeah, finance. That explains it.

~~~
rfnslyr
I'm in finance...

~~~
Nicholas_C
What do you do in finance?

~~~
rfnslyr
I develop internal applications in the investment banking sector.

~~~
Nicholas_C
Ah, by in finance I meant working directly in finance. I work as a financial
analyst.

~~~
rfnslyr
Even my buddies who work directly as analysts pack their shit up at a certain
time. I guess it's just that we have great management that cares for us. It's
our banks policy to very strictly enforce work life balance. You get scolded
if you do too much over time, regardless if things aren't getting done.

------
conorh
I worked at StreetEasy for 3 years (helping lead the dev team and writing lots
of code) when it was a fast growing startup and we didn't work a 4 day week,
but we worked normal business hours (9-5,10-6'ish) and never ever worked
weekends - unless you felt like working on some code. One of the co-founders
there had the opinion that we were in it for the long haul, not for the
sprint, so why burn out early. This seemed to work out well [1].

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-19/zillow-
paying-50-mi...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-19/zillow-
paying-50-million-for-real-estate-website-streeteasy.html)

~~~
graue
Congrats on your company's success!

However, I'm surprised that you single out a 40-hour work week as though it's
something exceptional. Isn't that the standard? I would never consider joining
a company that expected me to work weekends. I hope that's not as common as
you imply.

~~~
Domenic_S
Welcome to startups.

------
wtvanhest
I'm a finance guy, I don't know how to code. I signed up for teamtreehouse
about 3 months ago and I've successfully been able to learn HTML, CSS, and I
am starting to dive in to Javascript, MySQL, PHP and maybe AJAX.

The site has given me enough structure to learn the basics while other books
and the internet has provided me with more in depth learning.

I wrote Nick at teamtreehouse yesterday and said that I was disappointed with
the end of chapter quizzes because they were sometimes difficult to bypass due
to confusion over what they were asking.

He responded immediately and said they knew it was an issue and were hiring to
fix it very soon. While the round announcement is old, if they are in fact
hiring, it is great news for those who use their service.

Other than that one interaction, I don't know the team, but I was impressed.

I can say, I used to work a few blocks from their office in downtown Orlando.
Orlando usually sparks memories of Disney, but Disney is actually located in
Kissimmee, FL about 45 min from downtown. Downtown Orlando is young, great
nightlife, fairly small and EXTREMELY affordable.

Thanks for the customer service yesterday!

[Edited because the round was actually a few years ago]

~~~
fuqua
I'm just curious -- What do you want to do with your design/coding knowledge?
I'm in the non-tech world and have the desire to learn for the sake of
learning, but I also want to know what the hell I'm going to do with it!

------
leoedin
Over the summer I extended a lot of weekends with a days holiday and so ended
up working a lot of 4 day weeks.

Surprisingly, I found that my productivity really didn't drop that much. I
went into a week with a sense that I _only_ had 4 days to get stuff done, and
so often felt much more focused. It's only an extra day, but somehow in my
head a 5 day week feels almost endless. The suddenly it's Friday and you
wonder what happened...

~~~
kiba
I worked 30 hours a weeks for quite some time. While it is very focused, it is
also very painful. I don't record any downtime as contributing to my time at
all. If there's coffee break, bathroom time, time driving in car, etc, it
doesn't count.

Whether or not I am productive or not is another story altogether. I feel like
I don't accomplish much in 30 hours a week, but I know I was very efficient.
With the power of learning interest rate, I slowly accumulated knowledge and
skills. I was able to accomplish a few projects worth of note in that time as
well. In the end, I fell off the wagon because I couldn't keep up with the
painful routine of 30 hours a week hyper efficiency. If I want to make 30
hours work, I have to add mindless routines as well.

------
tieTYT
This sounds awesome. It reminds me of Henry Ford's Five Dollar Workday:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#The_five-
dollar_work...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#The_five-
dollar_workday)

> Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage ($120
> today), which more than doubled the rate of most of his workers. A
> Cleveland, Ohio newspaper editorialized that the announcement "shot like a
> blinding rocket through the dark clouds of the present industrial
> depression." The move proved extremely profitable; instead of constant
> turnover of employees, the best mechanics in Detroit flocked to Ford,
> bringing their human capital and expertise, raising productivity, and
> lowering training costs. Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5,
> 1914, raising the minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying workers.
> It also set a new, reduced workweek, although the details vary in different
> accounts. Ford and Crowther in 1922 described it as six 8-hour days, giving
> a 48-hour week, while in 1926 they described it as five 8-hour days, giving
> a 40-hour week. (Apparently the program started with Saturday being a
> workday and sometime later it was changed to a day off.)

> Detroit was already a high-wage city, but competitors were forced to raise
> wages or lose their best workers. Ford's policy proved, however, that paying
> people more would enable Ford workers to afford the cars they were producing
> and be good for the economy. Ford explained the policy as profit-sharing
> rather than wages. It may have been Couzens who convinced Ford to adopt the
> $5 day.

~~~
beat
At least according to author Matthew B. Crawford, Henry Ford did not raise
wages out of the goodness of his heart, so his workers could afford to buy
cars themselves.

From his original _Shop Class as Soulcraft_ essay:
[http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-
sou...](http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-soulcraft) _"
Given their likely acquaintance with such a cognitively rich world of work, it
is hardly surprising that when Henry Ford introduced the assembly line in
1913, workers simply walked out. One of Ford’s biographers wrote, “So great
was labor’s distaste for the new machine system that toward the close of 1913
every time the company wanted to add 100 men to its factory personnel, it was
necessary to hire 963.”

This would seem to be a crucial moment in the history of political economy.
Evidently, the new system provoked natural revulsion. Yet, at some point,
workers became habituated to it. How did this happen? One might be tempted to
inquire in a typological mode: What sort of men were these first, the 100 out
of 963 who stuck it out on the new assembly line? Perhaps it was the men who
felt less revulsion because they had less pride in their own powers, and were
therefore more tractable. Less republican, we might say. But if there was
initially such a self-selection process, it quickly gave way to something less
deliberate, more systemic.

In a temporary suspension of the Taylorist logic, Ford was forced to double
the daily wage of his workers to keep the line staffed. As Braverman writes,
this “opened up new possibilities for the intensification of labor within the
plants, where workers were now anxious to keep their jobs.” These anxious
workers were more productive. Indeed, Ford himself later recognized his wage
increase as “one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made,” as he was
able to double, and then triple, the rate at which cars were assembled by
simply speeding up the conveyors. By doing so he destroyed his competitors,
and thereby destroyed the possibility of an alternative way of working. (It
also removed the wage pressure that comes from the existence of more enjoyable
jobs.) At the Columbian World Expo held in Chicago in 1893, no fewer than
seven large-scale carriage builders from Cincinnati alone presented their
wares. Adopting Ford’s methods, the industry would soon be reduced to the Big
Three. So workers eventually became habituated to the abstraction of the
assembly line. Evidently, it inspires revulsion only if one is acquainted with
more satisfying modes of work."_

I think every worker in America should read Crawford's superb book, btw.

------
ryana
This post is 2 years old. Any reason to resurrect it? My first thought reading
through was that treehouse had some recent layoffs or poor results and this
was a "hah, look at you now" post. Thankfully I can't find news like that
anywhere.

~~~
yapcguy
_> World’s best investors, including Kevin Rose_

At last I got a laugh scanning the post.

------
joshdotsmith
Serious question: why does Treehouse need 45 employees? What's the division of
labor? Are most of them required for content creation, or engineering, or
what?

I've been thinking a lot about company size lately, and was always impressed
that not long before acquisition time Instagram had a team of just six (which
quickly expanded to twelve prior to acquisition).

Is such a small team size really only achievable by user generated content
companies?

~~~
jimrhoskins
You can see our full team, and their responsibilities here
([http://teamtreehouse.com/about](http://teamtreehouse.com/about))

The content team (teachers, video, audio, motion design) is a sizable portion
of the company. They focus on writing, producing, and supporting the learning
content and video.

The app team (devs + designers) focus on things like the the web app, the
learning tools like our code challenges, and quite a bit of other stuff.

We have support team members who are always interacting with and helping our
students. Marketing, sales, and operations are doing what you would expect
them to.

It's interesting to watch the scaling in person. When I started it was just
Nick Pettit and myself as teachers ( and we did our own video/audio work),
Ryan the CEO, and we had a contract dev and designer. Now it's ~60, not even
sure of the exact number, and everyone keeps really busy.

~~~
nickpettit
Can confirm.

Source: I'm Nick.

------
Domenic_S
Damn, I can barely click around the web without seeing a picture of that guy's
skinny mug plastered on something.

I'm beginning to think the business is marketing, not technology.

~~~
pclark
> I'm beginning to think the business is marketing, not technology.

Correct.

------
sb1752
Step 1: Create a product people want Step 2: Do whatever the fuck you want

------
TeeWEE
If I would work on my startup I just want to work on it... Thats what is
giving me fun.

Also if you work with external people this will communicate with you every
workday. Just ignoring them on a workday is not easy.

But I like the concept... Once profitable :-)

------
carbocation
I actually subscribed to TeamTreehouse because I wanted someone to hold my
hand to introduce me to iOS. It was a good experience.

For background, I've been programming for 20 years, first in Basic, then PHP,
Javascript, R, (a very small amount of) Common Lisp, and Go. Given that I
currently have little free time, it's quite nice to have someone show you a
Good Way to write idiomatic code in a new language.

I found their (high, compared to blog posts) pricing to be a positive
indicator of quality, and their videos and code seemed to match.

~~~
ryancarson
Thank you!

------
cocoflunchy
@ryancarson you should consider resizing that profile photo in the right-hand
column, it is 1.8MB and 3280px wide...
([http://static.tumblr.com/8759c003e3a97c8762c00ba9e1d5a164/m4...](http://static.tumblr.com/8759c003e3a97c8762c00ba9e1d5a164/m4ov1ha/sSwmkr5al/tumblr_static_img_9467.jpg))

Thanks from those of us who are stuck with Time Warner Cable ;)

~~~
ryancarson
Thanks, will do!

------
imderek
Does this include support staff? Does it not affect the quality of customer
service having your business go dark for three days each week?

~~~
jimrhoskins
Support team has a slightly different schedule to make sure Fridays and even
weekends have coverage. I'm not exactly sure what the schedule is, I'd have to
ask.

------
lux
I've been working 4 days/week for the past 3 years, which does mean I make 20%
less than I could be making, but at this point there's very little that could
convince me to ever go back to 5 days/week. It's good to see little pockets
where the idea is growing, because it's been tremendously positive for me.

------
neil_s
Ryan, why did Treehouse choose fewer days over fewer hours per day as a way to
reduce total hours worked? Anecdotal data says most information workers find
it hard to actually get more than 6 hours of work a day, so that would suggest
a 9-6 day not being optimal. Just wondering what made you choose one approach
over another.

~~~
ryancarson
We all have breaks throughout the day

------
andrewfong
Anyone have thoughts on how 4-day work week compares to a 5-day-but-shorter-
days work week (discussed a bit yesterday at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6912645](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6912645))?

~~~
RA_Fisher
I work for Treehouse. The 4-day work week is amazing and I feel it'd be very
hard to go back to 5 days a week.

What do I do on my Fridays?

If I have errands, they get run. I usually pop-in and off my computer.
Sometimes I actually am working, but I'm "playing". I'm a data scientist and I
love my job. I love working on my tools and I love trying new methods. So I
might be improving my D3.js skills. Or learning Python (like I have been). Or
teaching myself new Bayesian analysis, or survival analysis methods. So in
once sense I work on Fridays, in the other hand it feels like play. And I'm
not obligated, so I can get up whenever.

Also, this isn't every Friday or weekend. Many weekends are just non-tech
play, like a trip to Boston.

In general, my stress level is way down. I feel focused and happy to be at
work when I'm "there" (I work remotely, another Treehouse core value). I think
about Treehouse, much more than 4 8-hour days a week, but it's so much more
pleasurable! I'm totally thankful to work for Treehouse.

~~~
nfriedly
Think I could pick your brain about working remotely for Treehouse sometime?
My email is nathan @ [my HN username] .com

------
dblarons
I'd be interested to compare the benefits of a 4 day week with those of a 5
day, reduced hour week. I'm inclined to believe that the reduced hour week
would give you more productive days while still making lots of time to sleep
in or spend the afternoon with family.

Has anyone worked in this kind of alternative environment?

------
pmcpinto
Congratulations, I'm a big fan of Treehouse and I think that the world needs
more companies and leaders with a culture similar with yours.

For example I'm tired of seeing the Marissas Mayer's of the world praising
that they go back to work just two weeks after giving birth. What kind of
mother is this?

------
BadassFractal
Would love to work less at our startup, but the past year has been a non-stop
60-70 hour week marathon. I just don't know how you can work less when you are
worried that your company will die from not having tried hard enough.

~~~
tieTYT
You should know that working harder doesn't necessarily mean being more
productive. My informal research says "you're doing it wrong".
[http://legacy.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-
less...](http://legacy.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons)

------
cfontes
I really like the opening statement

"here’s what we’ve been fortunate to achieve:"

Even being really good you gotta have some luck too.

Being able to see that I think makes people being not assholes when talking
about their achievements.

------
yeukhon
What does 4-day week even have to do with the success of fund raise...? I
personally think it has little. You can work 48 hours every week and manage to
pull a couple millions if you are lucky.

------
aabalkan
Please add 2011 to title. Folks are thinking this is new.

------
semerda
Awesome work guys!

I'm curious how you guys decided on a 4-day week? Was it a group decision or
founder laying down the new way of getting stuff done?

~~~
commondream
I'm the other co-founder of Treehouse. It's something that Ryan enacted back
in the Carsonified days, but it's worked amazingly well and is just something
we've always done.

Company folklore has it that Gill, Ryan's wife, basically commented that it
seemed like the company was running them rather than them running the company
back then, so their solution was to switch to working 4 days per week.

------
yashodhan
Supposedly an old post (but I can't find the date year on hte post). Are
Treehouse still hiring?

~~~
ryancarson
Yup. Developers and Designers.

~~~
nfriedly
Could I chat with you about Treehouse sometime? My email is nathan @ [HN
username].com

~~~
ryancarson
Sure, please shoot me an email ryan @ teamtreehouse

------
Segmentation
Very few companies will consider 4-days, but I wish they would consider 5-days
at 7 hours.

~~~
SnacksOnAPlane
Just do it, man. I work 10-5. If someone complains, stop.

------
elleferrer
Congratulations on Treehouse's success! I totally believe in the 4-day work
ethic.

~~~
ryancarson
Thanks!

------
mnbvcxza
> more time with my kids then almost all other dads

:|

------
nnoitra
Are you hiring interns?

------
moheeb
Working four 10s is not that uncommon. Lame title.

~~~
Kynlyn
...except he stated in the article that they work 8 hours a day...

~~~
denibertovic
How is 9-6 8 hours a day? They work 9 hours a day. As stated in the article.

~~~
jaredsohn
9-6 could include a lunch hour.

A sibling post to yours says "Treehouse developer here. It's actually four
8s." so that is likely the case.

~~~
denibertovic
Working from 9-5 includes lunch as well. The fact that 9-6 includes lunch, the
fact that it needs to be mentioned, is ridiculous, you still spend 9 hours in
or around the office.

------
syntheticlife
Blog about it when you work a 4-day week and _earn_ $4.75m/yr.

~~~
ryancarson
Our yearly run rate is now $8.5m+ :)

~~~
smrtinsert
Nice work Ryan! You're an inspiration to those of us who want to produce great
work and enjoy high quality of life.

------
elag
"We work a 4-day week a̶n̶d̶ because we just raised $4.75m." I'd love to work
a 0-day week on Other People's Money. Not sure I'd write an insufferably smug
post bragging about it if I did. [edit] Just noticed that this is a two-year
old blog post and the first comment on it refers to "smug HN trolling" so more
fool me.

~~~
dbecker
Ryan has been posting here about his 4-day work week for a while, and I'm
guessing it started before raising the $4.75m. That would contradict your
assessment, though I hope someone can fact check the timing for me.

~~~
schmrz
There's a comment below the article where Ryan says that they have been
working four days a week since 2006.

------
nilsimsa
Looks like their website would need more work. The following link didn't work
for me a few times...
[https://teamtreehouse.com/subscribe/plans](https://teamtreehouse.com/subscribe/plans)

May want to make it a 5-day week a little longer...

~~~
ryancarson
Working for me

~~~
ra3
oh.. that means its working for everyone, right?

