
What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week - ingve
https://spin.atomicobject.com/2019/01/04/32-hours-lessons/
======
seanalltogether
I've often felt that a 5 day work week is about _availability_ , not raw
productivity. I could easily compress all of my weeks work into 30 hours or
less, but that's not what my managers and clients value. What they value is
the fact that I'm making progress on my tasks, and that my reachability is not
preventing anyone else (people above me or below me) from making progress on
their tasks

~~~
YayamiOmate
That's what i notced with my friend in the managerial position. He can spend
most of the time in Work From Home mode, has really good pay grade, and can't
rest. He's looks like he's on a wrist band leash getting mails every 2-3
minutes and needs to somehow react on 10%.

He doesnt do much other than be available 12-16h 6-7days a week. It's taking
more toll than one would expect.

~~~
adetrest
I could never understand why would someone accept these jobs. What's so great
about becoming a manager and work 60h/week? How's that better than 40 a week
as a subordinate and letting someone else worry about all the office drama?

~~~
IMTDb
It's just a different set of skills and you create value/feel rewarded in a
different manner. It's not better or worse, it's just different and appeals to
different kind of people. Take some other example from video games:

\- Why would anyone pick a healer in an MMO group ? What's so great about
becoming a healer ? How's that better than playing a DPS, actually
contributing to killing the boss and letting someone else worry about your
health bar ?

\- What is fun about plying support in DOTA ? I mean the fun is being the
carry and killing everyone on the other team to win games ? How can anyone
willingly waste his gold to buy visibility wards, that is really not fun at
all.

The healer/support/manager (="helper") position appeals to people who like to
focus less on the pure "productive" task at hand. They like to focus on
getting a full picture of everything that is happening, anticipating potential
issues, fixing them, and allowing the DPS/carry/engineer (="producers") to be
in the best possible position so they can perform their job. This can be fun
for some people even if you don't see it that way. This often is really not an
easy task. This often is critical for the success of the team.

And just like there are good and bad "producers" there are good and bad
"helpers". The skillset is different, the measure of value creation is
different, and the fun is different.

~~~
coding123
Also healers get placed in the dungeon ASAP - high priority because there are
so few. I play a tank, and feel similar status effects.

I want to know the analogy of healers that rage quit (they do so more than
DPSs or Tanks) with the entire manager/subordinate thing ;)

~~~
james_s_tayler
Easy. 50% of devs promoted to management go back to dev within 12 months (or
so I keep hearing).

------
garrettdimon
We've been doing 4-day/32-hour weeks at Wildbit for over a year now, and it's
been great. We're a remote-first team of just under 30 people spread across
quite a few time zones. It's a mental hurdle at first, but the company has
continued to grow and be as productive as we were before.

We're all just much more mindful of how we each spend our time these days. We
also strive to reduce meetings and lean more on asynchronous communication in
order to reduce interrupting each other. That lets everybody focus more and
get more high-quality work done in fewer hours.

Our initial write up: [https://wildbit.com/blog/2017/05/31/experimenting-
with-a-4-d...](https://wildbit.com/blog/2017/05/31/experimenting-with-a-4-day-
work-week)

The follow up with what we learned and what we adjusted:
[https://wildbit.com/blog/2017/10/19/4-day-work-week-
update](https://wildbit.com/blog/2017/10/19/4-day-work-week-update)

------
lubonay
Programmer here. I worked on a 4-day week for about a year between 2017 and
2018 for a small consultancy company.

The company needed the help of a senior developer but could not afford a
competitive salary, so I offered to take a pay cut along with an extra day off
each week. Of course, I was flexible in case my day off needed to be moved
around for something important, but that almost never happened.

Thursdays were my off days, and I think this actually boosted my productivity.
Aside from what other comments already mentioned about making better use of
your time, this setup allowed me to return every Friday recharged and with
some fresh perspective and ideas about my current tasks.

The quality of life improvement was great, and my work did not suffer at all.
This makes me wonder: if working 32 hours/week can make you more productive
than working 40, why the hell do people often put in way more than that?

Sounds like working 80 hours/week would create almost as many problems as it
would solve, leaving you with some very questionable "progress". The only way
I can imagine doing this is if you do two or three separate jobs, e.g. coding,
design and marketing, so you don't get tunnel vision.

~~~
catacombs
> This makes me wonder: if working 32 hours/week can make you more productive
> than working 40, why the hell do people often put in way more than that?

I work in a very competitive field, and there are times where I must put in
12- to 16-hour days to ship a project out on time. We get compensation days in
lieu of ovetime pay, which has its pros and cons.

~~~
lubonay
I've been in a similar situation in another company, where the whole team was
working 12 hour days for a week or two to meet a deadline, but those didn't
really feel productive... and the project ultimately failed. I believe it was
mismanaged, which caused the overtime in the first place and made all those
extra hours not worth it.

On the other hand, I've heard lots of stories like yours, where the project
was only possible due to the pure grit of everyone working on it. Most of
those stories were in game development, which seems at least twice as chaotic
as regular software development.

------
klyrs
I've recently started taking vacation in half-days. I have some flexibility to
work remotely, and I've taken a couple of weeks away -- staying in an airbnb
with friends, we work short days and go hiking or whatever in the afternoons.
It's marvelous, and beneficial to my mental health.

This winter, I had an excess of vacation, so I took 3 weeks half-off. With
only 4 hours, I find myself very focused -- I'll set a reasonable goal, and
stay on track for the full time. At the end of my work day, I've accomplished
one or two tasks; I feel good about what I've done and still have energy and
time to take care of personal business. At the end of a half-time period, I
don't feel behind the ball like I do coming back from a full vacation -- I
have time to put out fires, respond to requests, etc.

I'd estimate that I get as much done in a 4-hour day as I would in 6 hours of
a normal 8-hour day. Honestly, I'd be happy to work half as many hours and
take a 25% paycut... if only my employer agreed

------
broahmed
Related: "How to become a part-time programmer"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17131691](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17131691)

~~~
xondono
I would love to be in a position where 20% off my salary is not something to
worry

~~~
itamarst
If you can't cut your expenses, getting better at negotiation will help you
with both parts. Given how much Google and the like pay at the top tier, and
the availability of remote work across geographic zones, it's highly unlikely
you're at peak pay for your experience level.

So you can:

1\. First, get a higher salary. 2\. Then, go down to 4 days and take the 20%
cut.

Example: when you get a job offer, merely by saying "can you do better?" you
can quite often get a 10% higher offer, because usually initial offer is at
the bottom of the pay range.

~~~
xondono
The main problem here is that I went for hardware engineering, which almost no
one is willing to hire as remote work.

I also happen to live in spain, comparing with other friends working in the
same sector, I’m likely above top 10% in salary/age ratio.

Sadly in this country, at age 30 this is 40k€/y that after taxes becomes
29,700€.

Rent alone takes more than a third of that, I take ~3500€ directly for
savings, and I need to stretch the rest to cover the rest of my costs,
including stuff like medical insurance, gas, etc...

I know this is partly my chosing and the first comment that will come to a lot
of people is “move”, but I can’t do it without heavily disrupting my
girlfriend’s career (she’s still finishing her studies and working part time).
Our hope right now is that her current job might give her the option to
(legally) move to the US.

~~~
itamarst
It's definitely harder in some fields, yes—mostly I'm talking about
programmers, who have an easier time.

That being said, I'm told negotiation can still help even for hardware people
(but I don't have personal experience with how that works).

------
wojcikstefan
I'm very grateful that I came across this article.

For a long time now I've been struggling with balancing work and life. I've
recently started playing with the idea of exchanging a pay cut for a 4-day
work week (I haven't brought it up to my employer yet though). It seems
obvious now, but I haven't previously considered using my vacation days to do
a test run.

Most of the points in the article are solid, but the one about improved focus
struck me as odd. It seems that the author is conflating the change in work
hours with a change in his process. Even without any schedule changes, you'd
still benefit from thoughtfully planning your day out. Then again, maybe less
time _forces_ you to be more proactive.

~~~
itamarst
From personal experience working 4 days a week, and talking to others who have
done so, the change to shorter hours is definitely a forcing function: you end
up prioritizing better and planning better because you have to.

I talk about the contrast between the "work longer!" attitude and the "work
less hours but still produce the same" here
[https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/02/11/working-long-
hours/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/02/11/working-long-hours/) and here
[https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/)

------
duckworthd
My $0.02.

I've been working a 4 day/week schedule for 1.5 years now. Initially, I took
the time off to lead a nonprofit volunteering project but quickly got burned
out (4 days work, 1.5~2 days nonprofit work = 5.5~6 days/week). I've since
reallocated the extra day to hobbies and am quite happy with the setup. As
I've explicitly taken an independent contributor role at work, I feel no need
to be 100% available, and my colleagues respect that.

Overall, I'm very happy with my current schedule and will fight tooth and nail
to keep it. If you can afford it and have the drive to do something with your
extra free time, I highly recommend it.

~~~
shimms
How did that conversation go with your manager when you first wanted to reduce
your hours?

I had a similar conversation about 8 years ago, moving from 5 days to 4 days.

My boss at the time wasn't too happy with the proposal, and suggested it might
just be easier for them to replace me with someone who wanted to put the full
effort expected in.

~~~
itamarst
Typical response is never "awesome, let's do that" because... why should they?
They'd prefer you to work 5 days a week. So they'll push back.

But, as an existing employee you're valuable: you know a lot of things that
take a lot of effort for new employee to learn. And so quite often the answer
is just "yes", or stalling but "fine, ok, yes" if you push at it.

Of course, some places the managers have no respect at all for employees or
understanding of your value. You probably don't want to work those places at
all, and if you do this won't work.

If you want a detailed howto, I wrote a book about it:
[https://codewithoutrules.com/3dayweekend/](https://codewithoutrules.com/3dayweekend/)

------
pasta
I have been working 24, 32 and 40 hours for longer periods of time.

While 24 hours is great for personal time I felt like I got out of touch with
my company, collegues and work in general.

40 hours a week is just 'getting those 8 hours a day full'.

I felt when working 32 hours I was most productive and did the same work as in
a 40 hour week. Every week I started fresh and felt more relaxed over all.

------
grenoire
If you are doing 7-5 days, is that really... 32 hours?

~~~
leethargo
Maybe that includes 1h lunch break plus some short coffee breaks?

I think that, in Germany, lunch break does not count towards the paid hours in
salaried jobs.

~~~
philk10
Yeh, he was including a lunch break which is not in the paid hours

~~~
treis
It's still not 32. 7 to 5 is 10 hours. Subtracting 1 is 9. Times 4 is 36.

~~~
chucksmash
Maybe subtracting two per day, or the "leave by five" had an implied "at the
very latest." Surely he did the math before putting the number in the title of
his blog post.

~~~
jeffro_rh
He worked four 10 hour days and called it 32 hours a week. We don’t have any
reason to trust his math.

------
andai
The author had a lot of vacation days left, and instead of taking them all at
once, decided to give himself a bunch of 4-day work weeks. I wondered recently
about the feasibility of doing this, does anyone know how open the average
employer is to this sort of thing?

~~~
sokoloff
I've never minded when my employees do this (and can't imagine why I would).
I've also done it myself fairly often because of the PTO rollover limits.

You've earned the vacation days. If your vacations happen to be every Friday
for 8 Fridays in a row because that's what you prefer, that's none of my
business.

~~~
chrisseaton
Some employers ask you to take holiday in longer blocks because they want
people to be able to properly relax and recharge and they think you can't do
that in just blocks of one day.

(Not saying I agree, but that's what they say.)

~~~
toomuchtodo
I suggest not working for employers who attempt to dictate how you use your
PTO without a legal leg to stand on.

~~~
kwrobel
In some countries it is mandatory by law to have 14 days in one block per
year.

~~~
eru
One finance job I worked in had that regulation. (But it wasn't a general
thing in that country.)

~~~
sokoloff
Policies like that are often designed to (or at least conceived/fantasized to)
ferret out/prevent single-actor fraud.

Forcing someone to take two contiguous weeks out of the office means that
someone else will need to be briefed for continuity and there's an enhanced
chance of detecting "weirdness" that might be associated with a fraudulent
scheme.

~~~
eru
Yes, 'conspiracies' of more than one person are much harder to keep under
wraps. That regulation was directly in response to the high-profile cases of
rogue traders.

------
oldboyFX
Different people can function under different workloads, and there is no magic
formula that will make everyone happy.

I've been clocking in ~50h/week for a couple of years now as a contractor and
it's worked well for me. Working remotely helps a lot as there's no commuting
and I can start being productive 15 minutes after waking up. I'm also able to
distribute the weekly workload as I please (except daily standups). Some days
I'll clock in 12 hours, and other days work barely at all.

All clients were happy with this kind of arrangement so far.

------
aasasd
I keep lowkey looking for studies on how much actual free time a person has in
a day— _really_ free, subtracting all chores and commuting. I've heard that
some people have timed that and the results were rather surprising compared to
the ‘common knowledge,’ but I'd like to have a source to cite.

~~~
wojcikstefan
To build on top of that, I'd want to see how much of that truly free time is
in a "high energy state". What I mean by that is a free time where you're
awake/energetic enough to do something meaningful – read a challenging book
and take notes, write a thoughtful email to a friend, host a party, try to
build a new friendship, etc.

On most workdays I find myself so spent that a) I don't want to see people, b)
I don't have any mental energy left. I can only do such things on the
weekends, but then I'm also fighting with all the chores that have accumulated
over the week.

A 4-day work week sounds very appealing because of the challenges mentioned
above. An extra day with free _and high-energy_ time would be amazing.

~~~
silveroriole
I can say that for me, working 4 days wasn’t like getting one extra day per
week - it was more like getting any actual weekend at all. Saturday used to be
“I’m too exhausted to do ANYTHING, let’s stay in”, and Sunday was, like you
say, a chore day. On Monday I’d still be tired, and demotivated because my
weekend was such a waste.

On 4 days I finally feel like I don’t have to spend my weekends preserving my
energy. I can actually plan things to do without thinking “oh no, I shouldn’t,
that’ll make me too tired for chores/work.” I can have a life!

edit: also, a benefit that people don’t tend to consider is that getting
certain chores done is much faster on weekdays. You won’t find queues at the
shops, bank, opticians, doctors etc on a Friday morning!

------
denormalfloat
One other minor perk of working fewer hours is lower taxes. The first hour you
work in a week is taxed much lower than the last hour you work. (In countries
with progressive tax systems.)

~~~
emmanuel_1234
Isn't that simply a consequence of having less money in your pocket in the
end?

~~~
tatami
It is. But working 80% looks more attractive, when you work 80% for 84% of net
income, rather than looking at the 80% of your salary.

This assumes your employer will pay you less linearly, my previous employer
had paid the half-time staff about a quarter of the full time salary for 25
hour weeks.

------
janandonly
The past decade I have worked about 24 hours or 3 days a week, only making
more hours (or full days) when it could not be avoided. I would advice this to
everyone.

