The 4-day work week is long overdue. Keynes promised us a 15-hour work week thanks to productivity gains, but those productivity gains have mostly been eaten up by excessive corporate profit-taking. Lots of people are overworked and underpaid.
I've been working a 4-day week for well over a decade (also because I've got kids, but I did this well before I had kids), and I strongly recommend it for everybody.
And I bet he was quite right, but there is an important nuance: it's true for the 1940s level of consumption. If you reduce your level of consumption to 1940s level, you could easily manage to have 15-hour week.
> but those productivity gains have mostly been eaten up by excessive corporate profit-taking
You seem to gravely underestimate the huge gap in economic value between what people were consuming in Keynes' times and what they consume now. The productivity gains are embodied in goods in services like Uber, Amazon, Netflix, computers and stuff, computerized cars.
The newly built 1940s-level goods and services would cost a fraction of price.
It's probably a combination. Of course our standard of living has gone up, but so has wealth inequality.
And in a way, we're actually working more. Back in the 70s, a single income was enough to maintain a family with a house and kids and everything. These days, it's common for both parents to work, and yet we're not all twice as rich. Most of that extra money is eaten up by higher housing costs, which often depend on what people can afford to pay for the house they need, and with double income, we can afford to pay twice as much, so housing prices have gone through the roof.
I suspect we shouldn't have gone from one parent working fulltime to two parents working fulltime, but to two parents working part time. I've got a feeling we may have accidentally ruined this for ourselves.
> These days, it's common for both parents to work, and yet we're not all twice as rich. Most of that extra money is eaten up by higher housing costs
What was the average home size in 1970? What is the average home size today? Internet says that median house size in US went from 500sq feet to 907 sq feet. So yes, the consumption standards had risen significantly.
> These days, it's common for both parents to work
Can't say for US, but in EU these days it's common for parents to travel. It's common for parents to go on a massage or SPA on the weekends. It's common for parents to do sport, buy a bicycle etc. And I'm talking about regular blue collar peps.
My parents didn't do all that. They lived a much more humble life than most parents today. Also my mother did a shitload of manual work, she washed all the clothes manually, she did cleaning mostly manually, she fixed clothes with her own hands manually. How many times in the past ten years had you fixed your clothes with sewing?
So this "one parent was working" meant basically "another parent is doing a shitload of manual labor at home (because absent/more expensive goods and services) and they overall live a pretty humble life by today standards even adjusted for better services".
If you reduce your living standards to 1970s median, you can easily rise your kids with a single working parent. But neither you, nor your spouse and kids will like that standards of living.
That's true. Well, we also did sports and had bikes in the 1970s, but I think people definitely have more luxurious vacations than we used to. Back then, my family always went camping for three weeks in a tent. These days, we go on much more expensive vacations abroad. More people go by plane, too.
> What was the average home size in 1970? What is the average home size today?
The home I grew up in was larger than the house I raise my kids in. Lots of older houses weren't all that small, and plenty of new ones aren't that big, but they all got a lot more expensive.
> How many times in the past ten years had you fixed your clothes with sewing?
I always want to, but never get around to it. This lack of repair has definitely contributed to the disposability of our stuff.
> So this "one parent was working" meant basically "another parent is doing a shitload of manual labor at home
But we still have chores at home. Only now we have to do them outside working hours. Although I do quite a bit on my free wednesdays.
> If you reduce your living standards to 1970s median, you can easily rise your kids with a single working parent.
I have friends who do. But the thing they mostly cut their expenses on is still their house: they live in an old, poorly insulated house in the middle of nowhere that still needs a lot of work.
I think the feeling of not being twice as rich despite twice the income is a function of job insecurity and an awareness as we age that everything is a sham/game, no one knows anything, and everything could be taken away at any moment.
When you know for sure that you will have a job tomorrow, you’re more likely to sit back, reflect on, and savor your wealth.
On the other hand, knowing that people like you are getting fired at-will, unconscious fear sets in that the next time the music stops, you’ll be the one without a seat.
This feeling of not being able to control one’s destiny is what prevents us from enjoying our money sitting in the bank.
Even in tech, in Germany a 15h work week, i.e., a 36%-40% part time job’s salary would cover taxes, rent and rent utilities, and basic health insurance. No food, clothing whatsoever.
I just ran into something weird with my taxes that looks like I could cut my income by 25% and barely lose any money, because it's all taxes.
I know it doesn't make sense. I know how marginal tax rates work. And yet when the tax service estimates my income for 2024 at € 130k, they expect me to pay 50k in taxes, but if my accountant lowers the estimate to $100k, I'd only have to pay 22k. I have no clue how that works, but it looks to me like I should switch to a 3-day work week or take 3 months vacation.
How's the fraction of income devoted to housing in that calculation? A lot of people would love to go back to 1940s house prices, but of course you simply can't do that.
> A lot of people would love to go back to 1940s house prices
In USA? Adjusted for inflation, you had pretty flat housing prices until mid 90s, where the housing bubble started. And even now and on peak of the housing bubble of 2008 the house will cost you 250% the cost of 1940s house (or 180% of the 1950s which is more fair comparison since it was after the war) which is not that bad.
4-day work week with same salary means that 20% productivity increase is required just to compensate, which is quite big.
At the moment we need growth fuelled by productivity gains at constant hours, or even increased hours, not a reduction of working hours, which goes in the opposite direction and, again feels like Europe is giving up.
Keynes did not "predicted" that based on continued increased productivity, not because of any rights to it.
Unfortunately productivity gains have largely stalled for years: growth is very weak while population keeps increasing.
> but those productivity gains have mostly been eaten up by excessive corporate profit-taking.
I'd say there were mostly eaten by increased standards of living. Compare median global standard of living in Keyens times (say 100 years ago) and today. The difference is astounding, and we even work less for it than we did - just not "15 hours workweek" less.
I tell every prospective employer that I work 4*8. Only once over the past 24 years has this been an insurmountable obstacle for an employer.
Thought I suppose that this might be a lot harder in more conservative exploitative cultures. Working 4.5 days, with one free day per two weeks, is incredibly common in Netherland. Part time is not uncommon.
Germany isn't 45 German companies that will try it.
There's no labor shortage in Germany, what there is, are proper salaries.
One example are childcare workers in Kindergartens (Kita). Salaries are low and regulated, so nobody wants to do it. Increase the salary and you will have many workers lining up.
Germany has managed to grow for decades, from absolute destruction post WW2 without raises that accompany that amount of growth.
Tech workers in Germany are paid peanuts in comparison to Americans.
The situation isn't worse because some American companies offer good salaries, pushing the market up.
Do not increase the salary of tech workers in Germany. We are already making more of our fair share. More than double or triple the amount of money that a person working way harder makes.
Agreed. However, since we don't have the power to set the salary of childcare workers, we will just ensure we don't pay you as much as your colleagues in the US, UK or Switzerland.
Agreed. However, since I don't like being underpayed, I will pack my things and move to Switzerland after having received my taxpayer-funded education.
I assume you feel underpaid only when you look at Swiss salaries form German CoL perspective. But I assume Swiss salaries are not high when you're also paying Swiss CoL, then they're just regular salaries.
I'm from Vienna - CoL compared to salaries here is pretty high but managable with social housing.
It's just that my friend working for a subsidiary of my employer in Zürich makes 3x as much, gets to keep a lot more of that money due to the significantly lower tax burden and then after that her CoL is ~2-2.5x what it is here.
Additionally, her salary is paid in CHF which is deflationary while I get my money in Eurozone Funbucks. As you might know, Austria has been a European inflation leader in the last 1-2 years (~10%).
Compared to the Swiss we are completely and utterly underpaid. For equivalent work and similar living conditions she's left with almost double the money at the end of the year. Note: We both do not live lavishly by any means.
Yeah well, that's the cost of the Austrian welfare state and the "m'uh most livable city in the world" which is only so livable if you're on cheap social housing instead of paying private market rates.
And now the people expect even more handouts from the state to combat the insane inflation and the higher consumer prices than in Germany and even higher corporate and "high-icome" taxes to fund it all because that's what people vote for, whichever party promises more handouts and getting rid of foreigners, so say goodbye to all the skilled workers ever thinking about moving there to pay taxes.
The country is going down the drain and the rats are leaving the sinking ship. Last one to leave please turn off the lights.
Austria was never really a sought after destination for skilled immigrants since WW2 - just compare the quality of Turks or Yugoslavs that arrived in Switzerland vs. those that wanted to live in Austria.
This is even quantifiable to some extent when comparing the total economic output of the migrants in CH vs AT. Like night and day.
We're a tiny country governed by laws and systems created for and by a huge monarchy.
Sure, but nobody in Austria wants to change that in order to improve the situation and make it attractive to skilled workers, high earners and investors both local and from abroad.
Ask on Austria subreddit and everyone thinks Austrian SW devs are overpaid and should be taxed even higher eve though a developer from Poland or even Romania or Bulgaria makes more than them, or unionized bus driver for the local public transport company makes as much as a SW dev while having better benefits and job security to boot.
Ask them if there should be any tax breaks for skilled foreigners to come here like in the NL and everyone will think you're crazy. People vote for worse conditions for foreigners and high earners out of spite and for as much welfare as possible for the idle and lazy who know how to work the system.
Given this, is it any surprise that no skilled foreigner with high earning potential wants to work in Austria? You reap what you saw. If you wage a pitches and forks which-hunt against skilled workers and high earners, but of course not on those with massive untaxed inherited wealth who pay zero taxes, that's what you get, an unsustainable Ponzi welfare and pension scheme that will collapse in the future.
Berlin, Munich and other big cities, where most of the tech jobs are, have had massive inflation over the last few years. There is a huge gap in terms of rents and mortgages between those who bought or signed a rental contract prior to 2021 and now. Meanwhile the strong CHF has led to Swiss inflation being somewhat lower. Kurzgesagt: German CoL is catching up but salaries remain behind.
Whoever said that in Germany people make enough are nuts.
Let's suppose you have 2 kids. If you get a rental contract in Berlin Today, in 2023. The ideal space according to the government and known research is 30m2 per person, you'd need an apartment with 120m2.
120m2 apartments are like 2500 euros per month, more than half of your salary post-taxes. Tenants typically ask for rents to be 30% of your income, you'd have trouble finding an apartment.
Here's why people also don't have kids in Germany, salaries are terrible.
I've been living here in Berlin for almost 10 years. And only after 8 years I could have a decent life here, even making definitely above the market salaries. And by decent I mean, better than my third-world country.
People won't be willing to move to Germany if they'll live in a shoebox and have no disposable income. They'd rather stay home where their parents, family and friends are, save money and speak their local language.
And without Immigrants, given that Germans in general don't want to reproduce because they can't afford having kids, the country's population size will start decaying.
This post-war mindset from a few people in Germany that people need to get paid just enough to buy Bread and live in a shared flat is what is sinking that country.
>Whoever said that in Germany people make enough are nuts.
You make enough if you're some senior manager at Siemens, Bosch, Porsche, BMW, DHL, DB, Lufthansa, Infineon, big-pharma, etc. one of these companies who are Germany's FAANGs.
That's still very good money for German wages, also keep in mind that senior managers at those big wealthy German companies don't do shit all day while having a iron clad job security. Just send emails, drink coffee, have chats with other managers, then drive home, while ICs at scale-ups have a lot more work, stress and responsibility on their shoulders of keeping the ship afloat and the services running.
That's only true if you want to live within the most popular areas of Berlin, within the ring and in fancy kiezs. There are many areas around that you can easily aford a 120m2 apartment, do not spread misinformation please.
Sure, not everybody can raise a family in mitte or prenzlauer berg with a single salary. But that kinda makes sense, no ?
Sure, but rents and property prices in Zurich and Geneva aren't low at all either. Quite the contrary. My friend in Geneva is feeling super broke. Salaries are high only at the companies of the top of the food chain where it overpowers the insane CoL.
>Kurzgesagt: German CoL is catching up but salaries remain behind.
Ha, Austria laughs at this. Lower salaries than Germany with higher prices than Germany. Someone shout BINGO.
If anyone working in tech in Germany is feeling overpaid, I would recommend they get out of their current rental contract or mortgage and get a new one at current rates. Or simply forego their inheritance.
Saving for retirement in Germany as a middle-class employee is tremendously hard.
I feel like the discourse on worker rights / work-life balance and demographic issues are more decoupled than they should be. Low birth-rates are provably related to the ability of parents to spend time with their children.
This combined with other initiatives might help Europe recover from the serious imminent demographic collapse.
> Low birth-rates are provably related to the ability of parents to spend time with their children.
I'm constantly seeing this idea, and if anything, it's the opposite of truth. Poverty is always breeding much better than the middle class, and the fertility rates always fall when standards of living rise.
> ability of parents to spend time with their childre
Children are an opportunity cost. When parents have a free time, it's a choice between self-realization and spending time with a kid. Spending on yourselves or spending on a kid etc. When you are dirt poor or rich there is no such choice, you'll either have no resources to spend anyway or have enough resources to not bother.
I live in Berlin and surrounded by middle class people and nearly non have children. Give them one more day and they will go to Kitkat/hiking one more day a week. That's it.
> [...] it's the opposite of truth. Poverty is always breeding much better than the middle class
I'm constantly seeing this idea, and if anything, it misses the forest for the trees. Fertility rates fall when standards of living rise - up to a specific point. After that point, fertility rises to sustainable levels again. The research is quite clear on this.
> [...] it's a choice between self-realization and spending time with a kid
And this is exactly my theory on why the "slope" of childlessness occurs.
Rising towards the middle class means that all lesser needs are fulfilled and now only self-actualization remains unmet. The cruel joke is that people then forsake having children in favor of self-realization while someone a with more resources would not feel the need to make this compromise.
So in a sense, the most deprived people don't care and still have children despite the challenges (lower class), the less deprived people forsake children in order to meet their highest-order needs (middle class) and the mostly undeprived do not have to make any trade-offs like that and again have children. (upper class)
I live in Vienna, an arguably more family friendly city, and most middle class people around me (aged ~30-40) do have babies at home - esp. those working in relaxed environments like public sector. If you give people the resources, flexibility and time to have children without worrying, they will indeed have more children (in the long run).
Most of the expenses around kids revolve around the space they need. Bigger apartment, bigger car, more food are the bare necessities. Then come the expenses for additional flight tickets for vacations, bigger or more hotel rooms, needing to go on vacation during high season or not at all, extra-curricular activities, and so on. One kid can easily double your expenses from a couple's level.
Sounds good to me. Endgame: maybe have enough time for work AND leisure reading AND cooking AND household chores AND exercise AND volunteering AND civic involvement AND ... well, the list goes on. Also kids!
People working 40+ hours a week just robotically wall off entire areas of ways to spend their time rewardingly. My 0,02€.
I find it interesting when employees ask for this without reducing pay. They then think it’s a 20% reduction as it’s 20% less work. But then you factor the overhead including normal overhead like benefits, HR, office space and additional overhead like management (a manager can only many so many people so now we need two managers for a group) and your at around a 40% reduction in pay to support one less day of output.
- The employer pays salaries based on negotiation, not on merit or some scientific measurement. An employee is allowed to do the same.
- Unless the employee is privy to all the details and math pertaining this overhead and is the one who asked for this overhead, then it's appropriate that the employee doesn't care about the overhead at all.
- There is also overhead in the employees side that is not taken into account by the employer. Commuting to that "office space" also spends the employee's time and money, for example.
- A 20% reduction of work time never amounts to a 20% reduction of productivity or work output, unless the work consists solely of sitting in a chair (and that's not counting bathroom breaks).
> - A 20% reduction of work time never amounts to a 20% reduction of productivity or work output, unless the work consists solely of sitting in a chair (and that's not counting bathroom breaks).
I don't understand what you're saying here. If I work 20% less then that's 20% less work that I get done. I don't sit in a chair for work.
Edit: An example. If it takes me 5 days to hang siding on a house, and I don't work one of those days, that's 20% less I didn't work and about 20% less of the work that got done.
Lets say you have enough spare time and energy to make a jig, a trolley, an improved tool of some kind that helps you hang siding. For the time you spend making it you are behind on your general average siding panels per day. Once you finish your tool you will surpass your average. This is one of many many non-linear holes in your theory.
You may say 'but you can't guarantee I will make a jig, a trolley or an improved tool', at which point I give up trying to argue with someone on the internet and feel slightly deflated that the point was missed
> Lets say you have enough spare time and energy to make a jig, a trolley, an improved tool of some kind that helps you hang siding. For the time you spend making it you are behind on your general average siding panels per day. Once you finish your tool you will surpass your average. This is one of many many non-linear holes in your theory.
I like this. Thank you for providing me some more understanding.
Iirc, there are several of studies that imply that if you have the same developer working 40 vs 32 hours, the difference in output is often negligible, since not all hours worked are the same in terms of effectiveness.
You might not be aware of that effect, since you deny it explicitly when it comes to your own work, but you might view it in a different light if you turn it around:
Would you produce twice as much if you were to work 80 hours? Probably not, right? You'd maybe produce about 1.5 times as much, and the quality of your work would suffer greatly, leading to more work in the future.
The same effect might work in the other direction, up to a certain point.
The 40 hour work week is not god-given, in fact it has been reduced quite a number of times in the past (mostly due to unions, like most working condition improvemens). So I can not understand why so many people act as if it were set in stone.
> Iirc, there are several of studies that imply that if you have the same developer working 40 vs 32 hours, the difference in output is often negligible, since not all hours worked are the same in terms of effectiveness.
I guess it depends on the work. In my example, hanging siding on a house, the non-productive work is quite minimal. I guess that can vary depending on the work one is doing. The non-productive work still needs to get done so the productive work can get done, though.
> Would you produce twice as much if you were to work 80 hours? Probably not, right? You'd maybe produce about 1.5 times as much, and the quality of your work would suffer greatly, leading to more work in the future.
I doubt many people can sustain their work output over 16 hours for most jobs. But that's not really what we're talking about here.
> The same effect might work in the other direction, up to a certain point.
Sure, if you work faster when you work less hours. Are you saying this is what happens? Are you seeing people get too fatigued after 6 hours of work so that their productivity is diminished? I've not seen that in general with the people I've worked with or the work I do over the years.
> The 40 hour work week is not god-given, in fact it has been reduced quite a number of times in the past (mostly due to unions, like most working condition improvemens). So I can not understand why so many people act as if it were set in stone.
I'm not sure where this came from because I don't think any of those things. I think that the only way for work to get done is to do it. However many hours per week that takes is fine. I don't understand the argument that working less doesn't mean you get less work done in general.
All that said, I realize there might be something different to brain fatigue vs body fatigue when doing brain work (software development) vs physical work (construction). I've largely done physical work and can't relate well to brain work except as a hobby and occasional small bits of work.
You're quite right that there's quite a difference when it comes to physical work, especially not too physically demanding work without a large "brain work" component (or done by young, reasonably fit people).
Since we are on hacker news, a forum seemingly overrun by silicon valley devs, I didn't expect your comment to focus on that kind of work. But when we look at physically demanding work with a decent amount of brain work, for example some kinds of woodworking, you can still see that effect. People can work longer hours and more days to a certain extent, but then the rate of accidents goes up (and I'd expect it to behave in a non-linear fashion). And if that effect is true in that direction, why should it not work for less than 40 hours?
> I doubt many people can sustain their work output over 16 hours for most jobs. But that's not really what we're talking about here.
Apparently, I'm no good at making myself clear. It's probably the language barrier, I'm decent enough at understanding English, but I lack any sort of conciseness, I believe. This was meant to be an extreme example, to make the point more obvious, but let's use a similar, more normal one.
Let's say instead of moving to a 4 day workweek, we move back to a 6 day workweek. Daniel you believe that you get 20% more output than before? Even with physical jobs that don't involve too much brainwork, I believe that this is not the case, as there are diminishing returns when the time for recreation is cut too short.
That depends on the individual of course, younger people need less than older people in general, and things like children, disabilities, a long commute and a host of other factors can change the equation, too.
> I don't understand the argument that working less doesn't mean you get less work done in general.
The argument is basically that for brain work, if you spend 20% more time per week at work, you might only produce less than 5% more output, since your brain will otherwise produce too many errors, which cost time to correct.
That is seen as an inefficient use of an employee's time. Also, his implies that maybe we could get almost the same output from people who work a 4-day-workweek. Now the question is, where is the sweet spot, as it is unlikely to be the status quo (that's what I clumsily tried to imply with the remark about the 40-hour-workweek not being"god-given")?
This can't scale forever, of course, or we'd all be working 1 hour a week and be extremely productive in that hour :D
But maybe the 4-day-workweek is that sweet spot. And since wages haven't kept up with corporate profits for a while, a lot of people - myself included - are eager to find out.
Thank you for entertaining my arguments. I like that we have a lot of different people with different backgrounds, experiences, and opinions on HN which we can share with each other. I'm not much interested in continuing the discussion anymore but I do feel as if you have opened my mind a bit.
Sure but even without factoring in additional factors like unions and labour laws that is solely a question of negotiating a deal between an employer and an employee.
Getting a significant raise is not unheard of, in particular when switching jobs, and a 4 day work week is basically the same.
Basic negotiation strategy suggest that "labour shortage" is the right time to ask for this.
Some companies have extremely fat margins and regular employees may very well feel that some of that money is better spent on their salaries than dividends, C-suite compensation or stock buybacks.
If this becomes a common thing in the US I'd be worried about stoking the flames of class warfare between white collar and blue collar workers. Many of those blue collar jobs (public facing especially) cannot be compressed into a 4 day work week. Lots of blue collar workers are already furious about things like working from home, 'email jobs', flexible schedules, etc. On top of that many white collar workers already enjoy an unofficial 4 day work week with offices being ghost towns on Friday afternoons. So are we talking about realistically a 3 day work week with an extra 'will respond to e-mail emergencies' on the 4th day?
In reality though, this is only because they have a false sense of class association.
Both blue collar and white collar workers are part of the working class. This would actually benefit blue collar workers because of that. But there are always attempts to blur the lines with expressions like "laptop class" etc.
Blue collar people were always worse off than white collar. Historically, they didn't rebel, but just tried to get their kids the best education they could, so that the next generation could have an easier life as a part of the white collar class.
Blue collar workers might think that the WFH or flex time are good benefits, which they don't have, and that their own pay should be adjusted accordingly.
I've been working a 4-day week for well over a decade (also because I've got kids, but I did this well before I had kids), and I strongly recommend it for everybody.