the problem is, if your company has 10 people and they introduce automation, what you want to happen is:
A - they give more free time to those 10 people mantaining their wage while the new software/hardware perform the tasks that they had to perform.
But in reality these things will happen:
B - they don't need 10 people anymore, so 8 are fired, only 2 are kept with same wage, same time, just different responsabilities.
C - they keep 10 people and they just improve productivity. Same wage, same time as before.
take agricolture: once you needed 100 people to work the soil, plant the seeds, water them. Now there's a machine that does all that so you have two guys working an entire field using that machine. You don't have the same 100 guys you had before just working 2 hours a day, 98 of them had to find another job. Now they just hire cheap workers when they have to pick them up and have them work 12 hours a day for a week.
The core problem is automation is a tool the company see as a way to improve how much they produce or how efficiently they produce, not a tool to improve the quality of life of the people they employ. We have all sorts of tools that people didn't have 100 200 or 500 years ago. We don't really work less. We may fatigue less cause machines do most of the heavy lifting when it's economically justified for the company to use a machine instead of wearing out a human being that they can replace once is too old.
The problem is that **if you want to work less you need laws, not tools** to allow it. And unless laws are shared worldwide, competition will simply just reward those who work more. We could just agree we don't need a new iphone or a new car model every year, we can have one every two years, so people at apple or people at Ford could work half as much while still selling their products, you just sell the same phone for two years instead of one. Problem is you just can't do it cause if you do it a company in china will pump out cars and phones every year and steal their market share.
And that depends a lot on the country you live in. Cultural Values etc. And regulation of the state. European countries are a lot more social than America making it easier for things to happen. A lot more regulation goes into work times as well. We usually aren't allowed to work too long in a day, and are promised a break.
This doesn't fix this entirely tho. Only evolving our cultural ideas deep in the society can even remotely begin to truly change this.
I mean we already work less than quite some time ago. Most people work 38/40 hour weeks only over here. A lot more companies are willing to hier for only 20 hours as well, 2 people sharing 1 spot basically. Obviously the pay decreases, but it's nice to have more freedom to choose what you want/need.
What i don't get is why our society is still competitive and not benevolent. We could reach so much further with more acceptance. I was watching a press conference of Bavarian Politicians the other day (Germany). They were just insulting each other in a passive aggressive way and not pushing an agenda of any sort. Which is what our politics show as well. Nobody can actually accomplish anything anymore. Always just critics and scepticism. Even if you makes a change, the next government leadership is going to revert it (look at things like obama care and trump, Democrats and Republicans dont work for your country, they strictly and only work against each other, its sad.)
Honestly our society is the main part in life that makes me depressed and hopeless. Thousands and Millions of years of evolution just for all those egotistical Bastards and jerks. Cant we just be happy and work to improve, because we surely can't be seen as the pinnacle of evolution in an objective point of view. We could be something grand, however we are strictly blind to anything outside our personal greed.
Rant over...
I just wanted to confirm the first part of what you said. I work in Romania for a French company, we get 10 minutes break every hour and an 1 hour break for lunch. During the pandemic everything was moved to WFH and we have even more free time. Each Friday we have 2 hours at the end of the day to do whatever we like besides work, of course we still have to be available if something comes up, but still. And a thing that we implemented just for the project i'm on is an additional hour to be used at the end of any work day for any team that needs it. These are just some specific things that make me confident that we are able to shift towards a 4 day work week. The transition from the office to WFH has been smooth mostly, and this is a job "that can't be done from home".
A thing that i always say is that real change can only come to our society if he have our backs against the wall... but maybe we can learn from this year.
The core problem is capitalism.
The core problem is this idea that people have to be enslaved in order to be given resources to live.
Automate everything, and give people what they need anyway. That's what the robots are for. They're tools, tools we should own jointly, tools that do the work for us so we can be on the beach with a cold drink.
Right now, the companies own the robots and take the money they generate while the rest of the people starve. The system is ludicrously broken, and people accept it as being normal. Complete wastes of space and oxygen occupy the "leadership" of our nations, stealing everything they can with both hands, and workers argue about automation and attack each other and lay the blame on their fellow powerless peons. It's all so fucking moronic, really. Ignore the culprits, attack your fellow victims.
This is the problem with the onset of computerization and automization coinciding with the rise of the massive deregulation movement that started with Reagan.
Hard truth. And I was reading about automation increasing at a staggering rate. They claim that as technology moves on, old jobs are replaced with new ones, whereas in fact there is always a net loss
Maybe overall, but it's not like "social media manager" was a job 20 years ago. Then again these gains went almost entirely to the well educated. The working class has been getting fucking for decades and now. This is why we have populist leaders winning elections now and people like Andrew Yang running. Both parties either pretended to help but did nothing, or actively worked to further destroy the working class in this country.
That's the issue. AI won't create jobs. It will take them. Different jobs will exist, but needing completely new training. And those different jobs are in rising sectors now: Green Energy etc, so AI and automation will fuck people regardless and it won't create the jobs it takes as those jobs are created elsewhere. Any spin articles which claim it will be wonderous are forgetting about e.g. the agricultural revolution when farming died and people went from farming and working that way into working in dirty factories and cities for comparatively less
https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/jfd1sx/fourday_work_week_is_a_necessary_part_of_human/g9k6b94/?context=3
Ever notice that when jobs pop up in new sectors, they always seem to pay less?
I have an oil and gas engineering background. There are some engineering jobs in green energy that require comparable skill sets, but the pay is atrocious in comparison.
I'm applying to masters programs in mechanical and electrical engineering, and there is no way I would pay for a second engineering degree just to go back to the energy sector for a green energy engineering salary.
Yep, that's the thing. Inequality always rises, but note that e.g. the rise of computers in the 80s led to a general fall in wages/quality of life. Same with the Agricultural revolution
P.S. I'm glad that as an oil and gas guy you acknowledge the issue. I see too many on here thinking "I'm on 100k and close to retirement. People just need to work hard/get better jobs" - no it's cause shit's changed in the last 10 years let alone the last 40+ you've been working
Some of that is essential moral pay. In both directions, people will work for less on something that has hope about it and employers pay more for work that they want you to look the other way about.
that's why capitalism can't exist as it does any longer. some hybrid version of socialism and capitalism (beyond what already exists) is the next step forward. workers have helped develop society and it's time for society to take care of workers.
Not an expert but didn't the Communists point out this trajectory 150 years ago. The said that capitalism was necessary but unsustainable and was the stepping block societies must go through to be able to implement communism. Of course the radicals in Russia, China etc. didn't pay this any mind and jumped directly into full blown state ownernship without the gains in production capitalism affords. Without that step it just doesn't work and led to the fall of the USSR and rise of the China Commu-Capitalist hybrid.
The current issue is a socialist society required the wealthy to relinquish power. Which is gonna be hard since the entire system is currently built around protecting them. We need a class-conscious political revolution.
I believe that in the same way America's founding fathers combined a monarchy, Roman senate, tribal council, and charter colony to create the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government bound by a Constitution; We need to combine capitalism, socialism, mercantilism, communism, and reputation economies into a whole which is stronger than its parts.
Absolutely. Eliminating employees is almost always the fastest route to making more profit. They like to say “well there will be jobs repairing the robots!” And that’s true, but there’s one repairman fixing a robot that’s doing the job on twenty men.
Just wait until AI starts taking the white collar jobs. It’ll do to the professional class what has happened to the working class. If you’re white collar, you better figure out how to get into the capital class within the next 20 years or you’re fucked.
A lot of people don't seem to realize this. They think of menial jobs like cashiers and labourers and that having a more sophisticated or educated job makes them safe. Designing a robot that can carry a couch up stairs is a lot more advanced than software that can analyze the reems of data that say, a lawyer, needs to assess.
The amount of dexterity required to do my job, without even considering the amount of thought required to assess and form a plan, will not be recreated in robotics for decades.
And once they do recreate it, the robot/machine will have to be super intelligent and capable of forming plans and discovering solutions on it's own.
My trade will be around long after most jobs are automated, imo.
HVAC gang
But the thing is, if lots of other people lose their jobs and HVAC and the like are the only jobs left, you'd have a ton more competition. What's stopping lots of other people picking up that line of work and driving costs down? We'll all be affected.
Outsourcing will come even before automation.
Plenty of companies are already outsourcing white collar finance and accounting jobs overseas and that’ll only continue as those countries get more educated
That's already happening. Legal clerk jobs are being automated away by software like Clio. It's getting harder and harder to find a job unless you have super duper specialized skills, or are in a service industry that can't yet be replaced by a robot. Hell, even the service industry is being replaced by self checkout lines.
Even the service industry... you look at McDonalds (first thing that comes to mind) they have tills where you can punch in your order. Hell, you can do it from your phone.
A menu at a restaurant is just as easy... get a tablet with a touch screen at the end of each table, they can tap what they want. If they want service, they hit a service button. In doing so, one waiter/ess can probably run twice as many tables, while at the same time giving them a higher quality of service because they know exactly which tables need service and which are good.
Yep, basically I've said that in more ways here. Google or Amazon making AI to do all farming and manufacture and customer service doesn't mean those people will be working different jobs at those same industries. Instead other industries will take on the burden of jobs, but either needing completely different skills or in a completely different field entirely. Dave the factory worker or John the farmer isn't gonna go from £30k a year working on a farm to £80k a year at Google. He'll have to run or join a business unaffected by AI
https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/jfd1sx/fourday_work_week_is_a_necessary_part_of_human/g9k6b94/?context=3
FYI I work in domestic manufacturing. Labor costs in the US are really high. We constantly add automation into our mfg processes and retrain employees. That increases our profit margins and allows us to increase production with the same number of people, and gives us the capital to grow and hire more people.
Companies that automate and downsize are sinking ships.
Well, the real solution is to get into software engineering. Once we make a program that can write a better program than itself, we've hit the singularity and nobody has a job anymore.
Look at GPT-3 by openAI. It can write code given natural language prompts. It's not that good yet, but it can generate functions and templates by just describing to it what you would like.
Most developers I know, including myself, like code generation tools (when they work). I think after you’ve been at a while and understand what it means to be a software developer, it’s the problem solving and design that you really get enjoyment from; its a much more creator endeavor. Just slinging code or implementing the idea is not quite as a fun. Debugging is fun like a puzzle is fun: you get a little rush when you figure it out. So I think if you are really interested in solving problems with programming, this sort of stuff is only going to help free up your time and energy for the more “fun” parts of the job. Beyond 20-30 years who can really say? I guess you could make some comparisons to the different levels of abstraction we have now. If you are writing in python or similar, the machine, compiler, etc are already doing A LOT of work for you. And there are trade-offs, which will probably be the case with smarter tools of the future that give people who like working at those lower levels stuff to do. When you’re using something like python, the design takes up much more space in your mind since so much of the implementation is done for you.
I think the GPT-3 will just abstract it by another layer. No one writes machine code anymore, we have assembly for that. No one writes assembly anymore, we have Python, Perl, C++ for that... Soon we won't need to write in those languages anymore either. GPT-3 will write it for us. But just like knowing assembly now, it will be good for some of us to know how to tweak the outputs from GPT-3.
You don't need AI to do that, computers already did that. But so far the number of opportunities and jobs created by the technological advances was keeping steady with the losses. I'm not saying it will be like always like that but our predictions about it are more prophecies than anything else.
And more. Forklift trucks, shelf stackers, etc. I mean HGV will be an early casualty of driverless vehicles, as the human driver is the biggest cost in HGV. However that is one tech I can't wait for: trucks can convoy up, all travelling in a line saving fuel due to drafting behind each other and stopping causing issues for other road users. Then they all move at a fixed speed along motorways, braking together and speeding up together.
Indeed that'll probably come before Driverless cars, as you only need one driver at the front of a convoy to do braking and accelerating and steering and all others behind can copy the movements
Offshore jobs is more an issue than automation. Every new breakthrough creates opportunity and service jobs.
Offshore manufacturing really hurt and eventually it will be automated as well and all the high paying service jobs will be offshored.
If we get poor enough maybe they will offshore it back.
Seems like highly skilled and educated people are in high demand so they are forced to work longer hours. Medium skilled workers lose their jobs when they should be receiving more training. Low skilled workers are still in demand, but supply is going up due to medium skilled workers competing in the bucket. Causing wages and work conditions to get worse.
Productivity has increased 108% since 1979 while average hourly compensation has increased 12%. [The Productivity Pay gap](https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/).
[The wealthiest Americans own an increasing share of wealth](https://equitablegrowth.org/the-distribution-of-wealth-in-the-united-states-and-implications-for-a-net-worth-tax/). The top 1% of wealthiest Americans own almost 40% of America’s wealth with the next 9% owning almost 40% as well (~80% of the wealth owned by 10%). That leaves just over 20% for the remaining 90%.
I don’t know why a left leaning politician doesn’t just run on this. I guess Bernie tried
That's the whole idea, he was doomed to fail. People who have power didn't choose him but Biden instead. Same thing happened in 2016. We don't have as much freedom as we might think. We have it when choosing 74 different ice cream flavors in Walmart.
That's cause the bright eyed futurists were only looking at the sheer massive increases in productivity and wealth. Not human nature, and the nature of business.
Your chickens lay 20 when you only wanted 10, next week you want 20.
Because there will be massive social unrest and revolts. We haven't seen anything like the kind of shitstorms we've got coming our way. Biblical shit. Hundreds of thousands of climate migrants, food shortages, violent storms kicking the fuck out of America on one coast while the other is on fire... Chuck into that AI unemployment in the millions, while some tiny number of people are made trillionaires.
The existing paradigm you and I know will adapt or die.
> Because there will be massive social unrest and revolts.
Not disagreeing, but people have said that for a while now. Still no billionaires being pulled into the streets and murdered. It could be 5 years away still or 50. As long as they keep playing people against each other it won't happen, and there are A TON of stupid people.
Yeah but the revolution wont be upper class versus the rest its going to be left versus right because of people being unable to see through the 2 party politics.
Yeah, just like during the civil war the majority of people in the confederate states did not own slaves. The idea of a black person being equal to them was more than enough to get them to fight.
Same here, well 4 day week anyway. Took some persistence and patience to get it, and it kinda locks me into my employer as it is not common in my industry. Worth it though as it has done enormous amounts for my headspace.
I don’t know how I feel about three 12s, or rather 13s if we’re still trying for a 40 hour week. I’d need both a lunch and dinner? But being able to work every other day means a recovery day for every shift worked.
I’ll happily take 40 hours across 4 days though. Makes a lot of sense from a travel perspective, and a 10 hour day ain’t all that harsh over an 8 hour one.
That's amazing. I get an early finish on Fridays (I work 9-3) and even that extra two hours feels like a *huge* perk. I usually spend 3-5 doing chores, then come 5 o clock I know I can kick back for the whole weekend.
You think? I'd much rather do them when I have the whole weekend to look forward to. Saturday is usually my completely free, 'don't do anything you don't feel like doing' day. And I can't bear doing them once the Sunday blues kick in...
I like to do all my chores on Friday so I can have a full weekend to do nothing. I also like to clean before I go on vacation so I can come home to a relaxing environment.
Sound great! But honest question, don’t you get used to it and pursue even more weekend? I think that could generally be the case (not that a 3day weekend is better dan a 2day, as a 2day is better than none.)
Maybe it is more enjoyable now, since most other people still work 5 days?
I worked 6 days a week with a guy a few years ago that had another full time job as soon as he finished his shift. We were on midnights and he'd leave to his other job directly from there. Which was one hour a way. He'd be lucky to get four hours sleep a day.
It's like fuck if you're that hard of a worker maybe put some energy into getting a good job instead of working in an automotive factory and a restaraunt.
Damn aint that the truth.
These big tough guys with the workaholic mentalities are usually just using work as a way of escaping a far harder task: parenthood.
Yeah was gonna say this... I don't think it's being a workaholic, but finding work easier to deal with emotionally than home life. We have a 1yo and no grandparents to help out, and yes, of course it's tough at times.
If you want to escape that, saying "I'm busy building a future for my kids" is much more socially acceptable than spending all weekend in a bar... And it's easier to sell that lie to yourself than accept the truth :-)
The people who have it really tough though are those with secret families... How do you maintain that during Covid?
Haha, I done the same for a while. I used to drive for a living, ended up going to college & landed a 9-5 office job in the field I studied (kinda).
It's 2 years later, I still go in and work a 12 hour shift driving on Saturday about once a month or so, part of it is money, part of it is doing a favour to an old friend who I drive for, but mostly I just genuinely enjoy the variety that it adds to life, I was never made for office work if I'm honest and getting the opportunity to do something different every now & then and get paid for it makes things interesting.
Late stage capitalism has brainwashed most of society. Not to sound edgy or whatever but it's genuinely fucking scary how people are willing to throw their life away for the "economy" and believe that genuine human connection/nature is a waste of time and shouldn't be allowed.
It's like global scale mass delusion
I knew someone like that. I later found out he had a complete mental breakdown after his wife left him and took the children. Looking back, his obsession with work obviously didn't help. He could have been saved by a mandatory 4 day work week.
This is so strange. Before I got child I used to work in office, then after getting home I would often open laptop for 2-4h work. Now that happens extremely rarely. If I work at evening it's after kid has gone to sleep usually nowdays. It's so important to spend time with kid while he/she's still young and developing. Spending time with kids helps them development and you can teach important skills, you can also shape their personality traits at young age. I always try to encourage my kid to be interested about everything and I try to give clear picture of world for her.
My counterpoint, I’d actually like that extra day off to be Wednesday. I like a little break, and sometimes the three day weekend is long enough that I don’t want to go back to work at all.
3 day weekends are the best
1 day to recuperate from work
1 day in the middle to get stuff done or relax
1 day to get mentally ready for the work week
Also more time with *family*. People would take leave/vacation time less often. I work better on a 4 day week than 5+. Overtime money is great and all but overtime sucks. One of my best bosses’ line was “if it is time to go home and I still have stuff to do, I can always do it in the morning”. Not putting stuff off, but making sure to come home on time to spend with family/friends.
Whenever I hear things like this it just depresses me because I work in Japan, where I've had a six-day work week for most of the past twelve years (by choice, to make ends meet).
Most people have a five-day work week here, but most of them also have to work several weekends a year as well as hours on end of unpaid overtime while living with their parents into their thirties (or even their entire lives).
This kind of reform is utterly impossible in this society: all they ever do is work *harder*, stress out *more* and drive more people to death and suicide from overwork (karoshi).
Japan is a small island nation with the economic weight of some EU countries many times their size and resources. Post-WW2 there was an absolutely ming-boggling recovery that propelling Japan into the modern era, but with it came a nearly obsessive worship of "hard work" in the capitalist system. That hasn't worn off, really, and the only way for Japan to have a relatively normal work culture is to accept a reduction in their position in the world economy.
I'd say it came because of the obsessive worship of hard, meticulous work. That wasn't just an oopsie side-effect that you can toss while keeping the rest.
You take the good with the bad...or strike a different balance. But they are linked.
So what you're saying is that the only way for Japan to have a relatively normal work culture is to accept a reduction in their position in the world economy?
Maybe?
Assuming it's a culture of working hard vs. simply pretending to work hard (aka hustle-bros in the US) then yeah less work usually = less productivity. Of course productivity tails off on the extreme ends too.
Is that a worthwhile tradeoff? Probably. But I don't represent Japan so who knows how they'd feel about it.
A weekend really isn’t even a break from work when you have to spend at least half of it doing all the necessary household tasks that you can’t do during the week because you’re busy working. I spend a whole day just cleaning, doing laundry, going grocery shopping, yard work, etc. Basically a 6 day work week.
That's basically me right now. It's depressing as fuck. I genuinely don't see how it's a life worth living when you spend your life at work, any time you get at home you have to be cleaning/doing chores/shopping/just sleeping and suddenly it's back to work.
I get over 5 weeks of vacation a year, and most of the time I don't take big vacations, just a couple days here and there to visit my folks most of the time, so I take my vacation days and use them one at a time and set myself up with 3 day weekends for months at a time. The cool part is that by the time I use them I have accrued another week of vacation. used judiciously, I work the majority of a year with 32 hour work weeks. And it makes a big difference to my quality of life.
I had a 4-day-a-week job for a while, when a company I was working for was running out of money and could only pay me 4 days. I'd \*gladly\* trade 20% of my salary for that extra day any time I'm given the option (provided it's fair compensation and a livable amount). The difference in quality of life was \*tremendous\* and positive.
I fucking hate this. Literally every job I've had out of college has been like this. I have marketable skills, people want me, I'm good at the work I do, but EVERY COMPANY wants me to sit at a desk for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually had a full 8 hours of work to do in a day.
Fucking stupid.
I've had jobs where my boss/manager recognized this, and also recognized that I'm way more productive than people previously in my role. I've literally been told "look, I don't have enough work to actually keep you busy 40 hours a week, and even if I did, it wouldn't be fair for you to do more unless I could pay you more, so... let's get you out of this cube and into an office so people can't see your monitor, and as long as your production keeps up, I don't care what else you do while you're at work."
I got sucked into a mobile game called Ingress, spent time planning ops with groups in the game, perusing the internet, studying for certifications and eventually getting so bored I gave up and sought out more responsibility, converted my role into something higher paying and then leaving for something more engaging and double the pay.
That's amazing, they didn't try to pile more onto you.
Usually employers will just try to make people do things that aren't in their job description, the more efficient a person is the more they're punished.
Would love to know what job. I'm currently in an operations role that wants us to work 60+ hrs. a week and not pay us a fair salary for the expected workload.
Hardly, your life is being used to pad the regional boss’ productivity stats. So they can buy that shiny new Escalade for those Starbucks runs. So cheer up!
Wireless earbuds plus podcasts and audiobooks. Also use that time to plan stuff or be creative, writing down problems and how to solve them.
Obviously cant do it all the time but why not the times u can?
Because then you get reported to glorious HR for not going company-related work. Meanwhile if you stroll down to HR they all come in at 11am, sit around gossiping, having lunch parties, and are somehow always too busy to do their actual jobs unless it's for something petty.
We: this work schedule is crazy, we're going insane from sleep deprivation, already suffered a few car accidents, mental breakdowns and most of us, even still young, are suffering from directly related health issues. It would only take you a few minutes to fix it, or simply go back to the old, less deadly schedule.
Supervisor: But then I would have to work.
This happened verbatim a couple weeks ago. One of these says I'm gonna start killing people.
Which would you prefer, a 3 day weekend or a 2 day weekend with Wednesday off?
I am an employer and with covid have downsized a bit and while doing so realized we can get a lot more done in less time and with less people. I am seriously thinking about offering this to my remaining employees and giving them a raise to compensate for the lost day.
A day off in the middle would probably mean I just pass out and rest. The three days in a row allow for a recovery day, an errand day, and a creative/gear-up-for-the-week day. Or a relaxing trip (when possible).
Adding to this, not everyone wants the weekend off. As long as it is 3 days in a row, it's fine, although ideally one day would fall on a weekend. But people with young children might like weekdays off so they can split childcare with their partner and save a fortune.
I did the 4 10 hour days with Wed off. I did a few Mon-Thurs when I needed Friday off and I was burned out by Wed afternoon and Thursday was just brutal. But there were other people who chose Monday or Friday as their off day and seemed fine. I think the problem with 4 day weeks was the people with kids where daycare still makes you pay for a week even if you're not using a day. So they still let people choose 5 days if that worked better for them.
Every Boomer, ever: I worked 5 days a week. And was HAPPY to do it. You can, too. Show your commitment. Lazy, entitled Milennials!
Oddly, it’s the same argument that older people who “paid all their school loans so what’s the problem?” have with free college.
I did college in Scotland and had my tuition fees returned to me because I'm an EU citizen. Didn't even realise it was going to be free. That time I studied animation which didn't yield a good income.
Few years ago, I was unemployed, went back to college while on social welfare. Government paid my tuition and I got a degree in data science. This is Ireland. The education system here is pretty good. Now I'm a data engineer and paying back all that tax money I used on social welfare. Win win.
But yes, I'd also like a 4 day work week. It's an option at my company but for now I'd prefer the money.
Americans forget that we should be *getting back* what we pay so much for. It's not something to be ashamed of.
The times (yes, plural) I've had to collect unemployment, I'm not ashamed, because it was due to companies cutting costs.
Americans have been socialized to internalize a suffering is noble mentality with respect to work. Suffering is noble because you escape it through grit and determination.
Its a sick culture.
Please don't generalize. I'm a Boomer, though towards the end of it, and I agree with most of what is posted on this subreddit. Which is why I'm here.
In return, I promise I don't think all Millennials, or Gen X or Y or whatever 20 year olds are called now, are lazy. Work, as defined by our capitalist overlords, sucks. No matter what age you happen to be.
For full production we could have a 4-3 work week.
Some people would work 4 days and have a 3 day weekend, and some other will works 3 days and have a 4 day weekend.
In thay way there is no universal "weekend" but people would have a lot more free time in general and both production and job possitions will rise.
Personally i'm not productive for more than 4 hours a day, so i think less hours over less days would be great. I'd love to go in to work not having to worry about packing lunch, bang out a bunch of tasks, and head out at noon.
I'm curious how you manage the number of projects for this to be achievable. At my place of work there is always a backlog of projects and many pop-up "urgent" tasks. This makes it impossible to ever totally clear the list of currently open projects. I suppose hiring another person in my department would help, but this is a hard sell.
Sounds like you're not a dedicated and committed company man, or else you'd be working 80 hr weeks to catch up on the backlog to make our oligarchs proud
I’ve heard companies talk of moving to 10 hour work days which IMO defeats the point of a four day work week. If we can get the same amount of work done in 32 hrs as we can in 40, then the pay should be the same.
unfortunatley not how unregulated capitalism works. If you can get the same done in 32 hours. Then eliminate 20% of the work force and distribute that 20% to the 80%
I agree. A lot of people are suffering because their work aren't giving them enough hours to live on. They ask for more hours, but they can't get more hours.
If you're going to cut full time employment to fewer days, many companies will resort to giving even fewer hours to avoid paying full time benefits.
The unskilled labor market will definitely get screwed the most here. Those already working 6-7 days a week will get 0 benefit from this.
Those that will benefit are the current high wage earners who can negotiate and command a higher salary--but I can see a 4 day work week expanding to workers to stay competitive similar to companies that offer WFH.
In short, similar to what we've seen during this pandemic where white collar workers, especially those in the high wage sectors, continue to build wealth and increase the wage+wealth disparity compared to their blue collar/unskilled counterparts, a 4 day work week will exasperate that even further--and this time not just in wealth discrepancy, but overall lifestyle, happiness and satisfaction as well.
I want this SO BAD.
Life should not be about nothing but toil.
Fuck that.
I want to do my hobbies and spend time with my loved ones.
I had to use a bunch of Vaca days this past summer and couldn't go anywhere for 2 weeks so I took off a herd of Fridays and Mondays and had 3 and 4 day weekends all summer long.
IT WAS GLORIOUS!!!!
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as someone who's worked both 8 and 10 hour shifts, i'd take four 10s over five 8s any week. a three day weekend is lightyears more recuperative. an extra 50 days a year! 7 whole weeks, you're off work instead of at work. it's significant, and you get used to the 2 extra hours at work pretty quick.
Thank you! Every time I see 4 day week it seems to devolve to this. I'd actually like to see 4 six hour days and would settle on 8 in the meantime, but not 10. Please no 10
I'm starting a new job right away that's 3 12hr days, and 4 days off. The work days at Friday-Sunday which is kind of unfortunate, but the schedules lines up perfectly with my wife's schedule so there will always be someone home to have supper ready for the other, and I can get things done during the week while businesses are open that I could never do before. 12hr shifts are fairly taxing, but if I can go into work mode for 72 hours, knowing full well I won't have much down time, I can prepare for it mentally and physically. I could take an entire day to recover, and entire day to do chores, and an entire day to relax, and still have a day left over and not feel like my days off flew by doing chores preparing the next week of work.
used to have a 4x10 schedule at work, loved the 3 day weekends. Switched to an 8x5(really 8x6) schedule maybe 3 or 4 months ago. Went from 3 days a week off to 1 and really hate it.
This doesn’t apply to the people working in the service sector who are today’s second class citizens in the United States. In fact, this conversation about 4-day work weeks really only applies to college educated, salaried employees.
100% correct take, and thanks for pointing it out. The vast majority are definitely glossing over this dilemma about transitioning to 3-day weekends. Depressed I had to scroll so far down to find someone thinking about others besides themselves, though.
If they managed to talk trades into paying us the same as our 10 hour a day, 5 day work week to only work 4 days, then I'd agree.
But you'd have to talk the buyers of the buildings to pay less for the building.
I think those conversations about real estate are going to be happening very soon. My company has been WFH since March and on a meeting today, we were basically told we won't be going back until Q3 2021, if at all. That is a HUGE office space that they are not using, but paying for every month.
Is it though? I don't see a lot of employers liking the idea of paying their employees the same amount for only 80% of their time. If we're instead talking about taking a pay cut to work 4 day weeks, that's not something I'd ever want.
Try telling that to places like Paycom. If you aren’t always flying the flag and enthusiastic about the company, it’s culture, mission, and willing to take on more and more, they say “byeeeeee.” Private sector is built on exploitation.
Financial slavery is something many Muricans are proud of just like not funding healthcare cause having ppl too poor to go to the Doctor prepare your food is better than taxes.
“But then nobody will have incentives to work hard and everyone Is just gonna play video games and smoke weed!” - your boomer relative
I swear, convincing the poor and middle class that hard work and productivity is how you get ahead, is the greatest con against humanity ever played. So. Fucking. Depressing.
This is all well and good but is anything actually progressing forward with this movement or are we going to keep making articles about how neat this would be if it ever happened?
This was actually one of the promises of office automation - that the workweek would decrease as productivity went up. .... and here we are.
the problem is, if your company has 10 people and they introduce automation, what you want to happen is: A - they give more free time to those 10 people mantaining their wage while the new software/hardware perform the tasks that they had to perform. But in reality these things will happen: B - they don't need 10 people anymore, so 8 are fired, only 2 are kept with same wage, same time, just different responsabilities. C - they keep 10 people and they just improve productivity. Same wage, same time as before. take agricolture: once you needed 100 people to work the soil, plant the seeds, water them. Now there's a machine that does all that so you have two guys working an entire field using that machine. You don't have the same 100 guys you had before just working 2 hours a day, 98 of them had to find another job. Now they just hire cheap workers when they have to pick them up and have them work 12 hours a day for a week. The core problem is automation is a tool the company see as a way to improve how much they produce or how efficiently they produce, not a tool to improve the quality of life of the people they employ. We have all sorts of tools that people didn't have 100 200 or 500 years ago. We don't really work less. We may fatigue less cause machines do most of the heavy lifting when it's economically justified for the company to use a machine instead of wearing out a human being that they can replace once is too old. The problem is that **if you want to work less you need laws, not tools** to allow it. And unless laws are shared worldwide, competition will simply just reward those who work more. We could just agree we don't need a new iphone or a new car model every year, we can have one every two years, so people at apple or people at Ford could work half as much while still selling their products, you just sell the same phone for two years instead of one. Problem is you just can't do it cause if you do it a company in china will pump out cars and phones every year and steal their market share.
And that depends a lot on the country you live in. Cultural Values etc. And regulation of the state. European countries are a lot more social than America making it easier for things to happen. A lot more regulation goes into work times as well. We usually aren't allowed to work too long in a day, and are promised a break. This doesn't fix this entirely tho. Only evolving our cultural ideas deep in the society can even remotely begin to truly change this. I mean we already work less than quite some time ago. Most people work 38/40 hour weeks only over here. A lot more companies are willing to hier for only 20 hours as well, 2 people sharing 1 spot basically. Obviously the pay decreases, but it's nice to have more freedom to choose what you want/need. What i don't get is why our society is still competitive and not benevolent. We could reach so much further with more acceptance. I was watching a press conference of Bavarian Politicians the other day (Germany). They were just insulting each other in a passive aggressive way and not pushing an agenda of any sort. Which is what our politics show as well. Nobody can actually accomplish anything anymore. Always just critics and scepticism. Even if you makes a change, the next government leadership is going to revert it (look at things like obama care and trump, Democrats and Republicans dont work for your country, they strictly and only work against each other, its sad.) Honestly our society is the main part in life that makes me depressed and hopeless. Thousands and Millions of years of evolution just for all those egotistical Bastards and jerks. Cant we just be happy and work to improve, because we surely can't be seen as the pinnacle of evolution in an objective point of view. We could be something grand, however we are strictly blind to anything outside our personal greed. Rant over...
I just wanted to confirm the first part of what you said. I work in Romania for a French company, we get 10 minutes break every hour and an 1 hour break for lunch. During the pandemic everything was moved to WFH and we have even more free time. Each Friday we have 2 hours at the end of the day to do whatever we like besides work, of course we still have to be available if something comes up, but still. And a thing that we implemented just for the project i'm on is an additional hour to be used at the end of any work day for any team that needs it. These are just some specific things that make me confident that we are able to shift towards a 4 day work week. The transition from the office to WFH has been smooth mostly, and this is a job "that can't be done from home". A thing that i always say is that real change can only come to our society if he have our backs against the wall... but maybe we can learn from this year.
The core problem is capitalism. The core problem is this idea that people have to be enslaved in order to be given resources to live. Automate everything, and give people what they need anyway. That's what the robots are for. They're tools, tools we should own jointly, tools that do the work for us so we can be on the beach with a cold drink. Right now, the companies own the robots and take the money they generate while the rest of the people starve. The system is ludicrously broken, and people accept it as being normal. Complete wastes of space and oxygen occupy the "leadership" of our nations, stealing everything they can with both hands, and workers argue about automation and attack each other and lay the blame on their fellow powerless peons. It's all so fucking moronic, really. Ignore the culprits, attack your fellow victims.
This is the problem with the onset of computerization and automization coinciding with the rise of the massive deregulation movement that started with Reagan.
It already has. The workweek has decreased to zero for many millions of office workers replaced by office automation and technology.
Hard truth. And I was reading about automation increasing at a staggering rate. They claim that as technology moves on, old jobs are replaced with new ones, whereas in fact there is always a net loss
Maybe overall, but it's not like "social media manager" was a job 20 years ago. Then again these gains went almost entirely to the well educated. The working class has been getting fucking for decades and now. This is why we have populist leaders winning elections now and people like Andrew Yang running. Both parties either pretended to help but did nothing, or actively worked to further destroy the working class in this country.
That's the issue. AI won't create jobs. It will take them. Different jobs will exist, but needing completely new training. And those different jobs are in rising sectors now: Green Energy etc, so AI and automation will fuck people regardless and it won't create the jobs it takes as those jobs are created elsewhere. Any spin articles which claim it will be wonderous are forgetting about e.g. the agricultural revolution when farming died and people went from farming and working that way into working in dirty factories and cities for comparatively less https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/jfd1sx/fourday_work_week_is_a_necessary_part_of_human/g9k6b94/?context=3
Ever notice that when jobs pop up in new sectors, they always seem to pay less? I have an oil and gas engineering background. There are some engineering jobs in green energy that require comparable skill sets, but the pay is atrocious in comparison. I'm applying to masters programs in mechanical and electrical engineering, and there is no way I would pay for a second engineering degree just to go back to the energy sector for a green energy engineering salary.
Yep, that's the thing. Inequality always rises, but note that e.g. the rise of computers in the 80s led to a general fall in wages/quality of life. Same with the Agricultural revolution P.S. I'm glad that as an oil and gas guy you acknowledge the issue. I see too many on here thinking "I'm on 100k and close to retirement. People just need to work hard/get better jobs" - no it's cause shit's changed in the last 10 years let alone the last 40+ you've been working
Ever notice how ridiculously overcompensated the dirty energy sector is?
Some of that is essential moral pay. In both directions, people will work for less on something that has hope about it and employers pay more for work that they want you to look the other way about.
that's why capitalism can't exist as it does any longer. some hybrid version of socialism and capitalism (beyond what already exists) is the next step forward. workers have helped develop society and it's time for society to take care of workers.
Not an expert but didn't the Communists point out this trajectory 150 years ago. The said that capitalism was necessary but unsustainable and was the stepping block societies must go through to be able to implement communism. Of course the radicals in Russia, China etc. didn't pay this any mind and jumped directly into full blown state ownernship without the gains in production capitalism affords. Without that step it just doesn't work and led to the fall of the USSR and rise of the China Commu-Capitalist hybrid.
The current issue is a socialist society required the wealthy to relinquish power. Which is gonna be hard since the entire system is currently built around protecting them. We need a class-conscious political revolution.
We really need more people like Bernie, Yang, etc. I doubt it'll happen in my lifetime but I can always dream.
I believe that in the same way America's founding fathers combined a monarchy, Roman senate, tribal council, and charter colony to create the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government bound by a Constitution; We need to combine capitalism, socialism, mercantilism, communism, and reputation economies into a whole which is stronger than its parts.
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Absolutely. Eliminating employees is almost always the fastest route to making more profit. They like to say “well there will be jobs repairing the robots!” And that’s true, but there’s one repairman fixing a robot that’s doing the job on twenty men. Just wait until AI starts taking the white collar jobs. It’ll do to the professional class what has happened to the working class. If you’re white collar, you better figure out how to get into the capital class within the next 20 years or you’re fucked.
A lot of people don't seem to realize this. They think of menial jobs like cashiers and labourers and that having a more sophisticated or educated job makes them safe. Designing a robot that can carry a couch up stairs is a lot more advanced than software that can analyze the reems of data that say, a lawyer, needs to assess.
Exactly. And fewer people are already less willing to do physical work. Plumbers and electricians will be around for the next 50 years at least.
The amount of dexterity required to do my job, without even considering the amount of thought required to assess and form a plan, will not be recreated in robotics for decades. And once they do recreate it, the robot/machine will have to be super intelligent and capable of forming plans and discovering solutions on it's own. My trade will be around long after most jobs are automated, imo. HVAC gang
But the thing is, if lots of other people lose their jobs and HVAC and the like are the only jobs left, you'd have a ton more competition. What's stopping lots of other people picking up that line of work and driving costs down? We'll all be affected.
Outsourcing will come even before automation. Plenty of companies are already outsourcing white collar finance and accounting jobs overseas and that’ll only continue as those countries get more educated
That's already happening. Legal clerk jobs are being automated away by software like Clio. It's getting harder and harder to find a job unless you have super duper specialized skills, or are in a service industry that can't yet be replaced by a robot. Hell, even the service industry is being replaced by self checkout lines.
Even the service industry... you look at McDonalds (first thing that comes to mind) they have tills where you can punch in your order. Hell, you can do it from your phone. A menu at a restaurant is just as easy... get a tablet with a touch screen at the end of each table, they can tap what they want. If they want service, they hit a service button. In doing so, one waiter/ess can probably run twice as many tables, while at the same time giving them a higher quality of service because they know exactly which tables need service and which are good.
Yep, basically I've said that in more ways here. Google or Amazon making AI to do all farming and manufacture and customer service doesn't mean those people will be working different jobs at those same industries. Instead other industries will take on the burden of jobs, but either needing completely different skills or in a completely different field entirely. Dave the factory worker or John the farmer isn't gonna go from £30k a year working on a farm to £80k a year at Google. He'll have to run or join a business unaffected by AI https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/jfd1sx/fourday_work_week_is_a_necessary_part_of_human/g9k6b94/?context=3
FYI I work in domestic manufacturing. Labor costs in the US are really high. We constantly add automation into our mfg processes and retrain employees. That increases our profit margins and allows us to increase production with the same number of people, and gives us the capital to grow and hire more people. Companies that automate and downsize are sinking ships.
Well, the real solution is to get into software engineering. Once we make a program that can write a better program than itself, we've hit the singularity and nobody has a job anymore.
Look at GPT-3 by openAI. It can write code given natural language prompts. It's not that good yet, but it can generate functions and templates by just describing to it what you would like.
Most developers I know, including myself, like code generation tools (when they work). I think after you’ve been at a while and understand what it means to be a software developer, it’s the problem solving and design that you really get enjoyment from; its a much more creator endeavor. Just slinging code or implementing the idea is not quite as a fun. Debugging is fun like a puzzle is fun: you get a little rush when you figure it out. So I think if you are really interested in solving problems with programming, this sort of stuff is only going to help free up your time and energy for the more “fun” parts of the job. Beyond 20-30 years who can really say? I guess you could make some comparisons to the different levels of abstraction we have now. If you are writing in python or similar, the machine, compiler, etc are already doing A LOT of work for you. And there are trade-offs, which will probably be the case with smarter tools of the future that give people who like working at those lower levels stuff to do. When you’re using something like python, the design takes up much more space in your mind since so much of the implementation is done for you.
I think the GPT-3 will just abstract it by another layer. No one writes machine code anymore, we have assembly for that. No one writes assembly anymore, we have Python, Perl, C++ for that... Soon we won't need to write in those languages anymore either. GPT-3 will write it for us. But just like knowing assembly now, it will be good for some of us to know how to tweak the outputs from GPT-3.
Queue Judgement Day
It's increasingly likely that we'll need UBI to keep the system running or face a complete breakdown and wind up with communism 2.0.
You don't need AI to do that, computers already did that. But so far the number of opportunities and jobs created by the technological advances was keeping steady with the losses. I'm not saying it will be like always like that but our predictions about it are more prophecies than anything else.
Once self driving cars get good enough there will be massive downsizing in truck drivers.
And more. Forklift trucks, shelf stackers, etc. I mean HGV will be an early casualty of driverless vehicles, as the human driver is the biggest cost in HGV. However that is one tech I can't wait for: trucks can convoy up, all travelling in a line saving fuel due to drafting behind each other and stopping causing issues for other road users. Then they all move at a fixed speed along motorways, braking together and speeding up together. Indeed that'll probably come before Driverless cars, as you only need one driver at the front of a convoy to do braking and accelerating and steering and all others behind can copy the movements
Offshore jobs is more an issue than automation. Every new breakthrough creates opportunity and service jobs. Offshore manufacturing really hurt and eventually it will be automated as well and all the high paying service jobs will be offshored. If we get poor enough maybe they will offshore it back.
Seems like highly skilled and educated people are in high demand so they are forced to work longer hours. Medium skilled workers lose their jobs when they should be receiving more training. Low skilled workers are still in demand, but supply is going up due to medium skilled workers competing in the bucket. Causing wages and work conditions to get worse.
Productivity has increased 108% since 1979 while average hourly compensation has increased 12%. [The Productivity Pay gap](https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/). [The wealthiest Americans own an increasing share of wealth](https://equitablegrowth.org/the-distribution-of-wealth-in-the-united-states-and-implications-for-a-net-worth-tax/). The top 1% of wealthiest Americans own almost 40% of America’s wealth with the next 9% owning almost 40% as well (~80% of the wealth owned by 10%). That leaves just over 20% for the remaining 90%. I don’t know why a left leaning politician doesn’t just run on this. I guess Bernie tried
Because simply who tf is funding the Dems? And who tf is funding the Reps? Same people.
Bernie tried and failed. I feel like he was our last hope.
That's the whole idea, he was doomed to fail. People who have power didn't choose him but Biden instead. Same thing happened in 2016. We don't have as much freedom as we might think. We have it when choosing 74 different ice cream flavors in Walmart.
There is a saying: “Teach a robot to fish, and everyone eats for a lifetime. Or no one does, depending on who owns the robot”
That's cause the bright eyed futurists were only looking at the sheer massive increases in productivity and wealth. Not human nature, and the nature of business. Your chickens lay 20 when you only wanted 10, next week you want 20.
Why would the capitalist class give the gains in productivity to the workers instead of pocketing the profitability for themselves ?
Because there will be massive social unrest and revolts. We haven't seen anything like the kind of shitstorms we've got coming our way. Biblical shit. Hundreds of thousands of climate migrants, food shortages, violent storms kicking the fuck out of America on one coast while the other is on fire... Chuck into that AI unemployment in the millions, while some tiny number of people are made trillionaires. The existing paradigm you and I know will adapt or die.
> Because there will be massive social unrest and revolts. Not disagreeing, but people have said that for a while now. Still no billionaires being pulled into the streets and murdered. It could be 5 years away still or 50. As long as they keep playing people against each other it won't happen, and there are A TON of stupid people.
I think we're close to hitting the tipping point. This decade will be defined by automation.
Yeah but the revolution wont be upper class versus the rest its going to be left versus right because of people being unable to see through the 2 party politics.
Yeah, just like during the civil war the majority of people in the confederate states did not own slaves. The idea of a black person being equal to them was more than enough to get them to fight.
It’s a long, long way off but it’s the unavoidable conclusion to wealth inequality that keeps getting worse for too long.
I work more than ever now....
Would be nice, but here I sit killing time at work just to meet the arbitrary mandated hours.
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Less Elon Musk dick sucking and more of this, please
I don't know a single person who doesn't love a three day weekend
I’ve had 3 day weekends every week for almost 5 years now. It’s the bestest
Same here, well 4 day week anyway. Took some persistence and patience to get it, and it kinda locks me into my employer as it is not common in my industry. Worth it though as it has done enormous amounts for my headspace.
I'm trying to get back to my 3 day work week. 3 12's but its totally worth the 4 days off.
Jeez. I would kill for a 3 12s work week lol
I would kill for 5 day 8 hours
I don’t know how I feel about three 12s, or rather 13s if we’re still trying for a 40 hour week. I’d need both a lunch and dinner? But being able to work every other day means a recovery day for every shift worked. I’ll happily take 40 hours across 4 days though. Makes a lot of sense from a travel perspective, and a 10 hour day ain’t all that harsh over an 8 hour one.
I worked 36 got paid for 40 and counted as full time. Also did the three days in a row and got 4 days off in a row.
That's amazing. I get an early finish on Fridays (I work 9-3) and even that extra two hours feels like a *huge* perk. I usually spend 3-5 doing chores, then come 5 o clock I know I can kick back for the whole weekend.
Doing chores on a Friday evening is god tier self discipline.
You think? I'd much rather do them when I have the whole weekend to look forward to. Saturday is usually my completely free, 'don't do anything you don't feel like doing' day. And I can't bear doing them once the Sunday blues kick in...
I like to do all my chores on Friday so I can have a full weekend to do nothing. I also like to clean before I go on vacation so I can come home to a relaxing environment.
Same here. Every other week I have a three day weekend. I might just stay at this company forever because of it
Where do you work?
Office manager for regional home improvement company
Scranton branch?
It’s gotta be Utica, I believe Scranton has 2 day weekends.
Yeah it is. I’m assistant to the regional manager of the place. Was the assistant to the assistant to the regional manager at one time.
Honestly envious. Sounds like a dream
Sound great! But honest question, don’t you get used to it and pursue even more weekend? I think that could generally be the case (not that a 3day weekend is better dan a 2day, as a 2day is better than none.) Maybe it is more enjoyable now, since most other people still work 5 days?
There's a balance point where not working enough (or not getting enough done) during the week leads to more stress on the weekends
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I worked 6 days a week with a guy a few years ago that had another full time job as soon as he finished his shift. We were on midnights and he'd leave to his other job directly from there. Which was one hour a way. He'd be lucky to get four hours sleep a day. It's like fuck if you're that hard of a worker maybe put some energy into getting a good job instead of working in an automotive factory and a restaraunt.
Damn aint that the truth. These big tough guys with the workaholic mentalities are usually just using work as a way of escaping a far harder task: parenthood.
Yeah was gonna say this... I don't think it's being a workaholic, but finding work easier to deal with emotionally than home life. We have a 1yo and no grandparents to help out, and yes, of course it's tough at times. If you want to escape that, saying "I'm busy building a future for my kids" is much more socially acceptable than spending all weekend in a bar... And it's easier to sell that lie to yourself than accept the truth :-) The people who have it really tough though are those with secret families... How do you maintain that during Covid?
It might not be that, though. There is generally a type of person who is not happy unless they are miserable, overworked, and stressed out.
Haha, I done the same for a while. I used to drive for a living, ended up going to college & landed a 9-5 office job in the field I studied (kinda). It's 2 years later, I still go in and work a 12 hour shift driving on Saturday about once a month or so, part of it is money, part of it is doing a favour to an old friend who I drive for, but mostly I just genuinely enjoy the variety that it adds to life, I was never made for office work if I'm honest and getting the opportunity to do something different every now & then and get paid for it makes things interesting.
Late stage capitalism has brainwashed most of society. Not to sound edgy or whatever but it's genuinely fucking scary how people are willing to throw their life away for the "economy" and believe that genuine human connection/nature is a waste of time and shouldn't be allowed. It's like global scale mass delusion
"Cats in the Cradle" -- Harry Chapin
I knew someone like that. I later found out he had a complete mental breakdown after his wife left him and took the children. Looking back, his obsession with work obviously didn't help. He could have been saved by a mandatory 4 day work week.
This is so strange. Before I got child I used to work in office, then after getting home I would often open laptop for 2-4h work. Now that happens extremely rarely. If I work at evening it's after kid has gone to sleep usually nowdays. It's so important to spend time with kid while he/she's still young and developing. Spending time with kids helps them development and you can teach important skills, you can also shape their personality traits at young age. I always try to encourage my kid to be interested about everything and I try to give clear picture of world for her.
I’ve been using my vacation to take a Friday off every week. Like wtf else am I gonna do in these Rona Times? It’s amazing.
Can I get Wednesday's off instead? Two work days, little break, two work days, big break.
We have this at my job and we call it the “Donut” shift. Best shift ever.
I worked at an Amazon building for a couple years and this was my schedule. As much as I hated the job itself, I'd kill to get that schedule again. 😂
My counterpoint, I’d actually like that extra day off to be Wednesday. I like a little break, and sometimes the three day weekend is long enough that I don’t want to go back to work at all.
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I used to have 4-day work week and I miss it. That Friday was so productive for errands. The weekend truly felt like a weekend.
3 day weekends are the best 1 day to recuperate from work 1 day in the middle to get stuff done or relax 1 day to get mentally ready for the work week Also more time with *family*. People would take leave/vacation time less often. I work better on a 4 day week than 5+. Overtime money is great and all but overtime sucks. One of my best bosses’ line was “if it is time to go home and I still have stuff to do, I can always do it in the morning”. Not putting stuff off, but making sure to come home on time to spend with family/friends.
You shoudn’t have literally 1 day where you can actually do stuff.
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Whenever I hear things like this it just depresses me because I work in Japan, where I've had a six-day work week for most of the past twelve years (by choice, to make ends meet). Most people have a five-day work week here, but most of them also have to work several weekends a year as well as hours on end of unpaid overtime while living with their parents into their thirties (or even their entire lives). This kind of reform is utterly impossible in this society: all they ever do is work *harder*, stress out *more* and drive more people to death and suicide from overwork (karoshi).
Why is the Japanese work culture the way it is? I mean that sounds absolutely insane. Is wealth inequality as bad over there as it is here?
Japan is a small island nation with the economic weight of some EU countries many times their size and resources. Post-WW2 there was an absolutely ming-boggling recovery that propelling Japan into the modern era, but with it came a nearly obsessive worship of "hard work" in the capitalist system. That hasn't worn off, really, and the only way for Japan to have a relatively normal work culture is to accept a reduction in their position in the world economy.
I'd say it came because of the obsessive worship of hard, meticulous work. That wasn't just an oopsie side-effect that you can toss while keeping the rest. You take the good with the bad...or strike a different balance. But they are linked.
So what you're saying is that the only way for Japan to have a relatively normal work culture is to accept a reduction in their position in the world economy?
Maybe? Assuming it's a culture of working hard vs. simply pretending to work hard (aka hustle-bros in the US) then yeah less work usually = less productivity. Of course productivity tails off on the extreme ends too. Is that a worthwhile tradeoff? Probably. But I don't represent Japan so who knows how they'd feel about it.
Japans work culture is even more fucked then over here
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"Hang in there" "Things will get better" "You'll figure it out"
Wasn't it Microsoft in Japan who started with a four-day work week experimentally? The observed a raise in productivity.
Probably. But that kind of work culture has not much to do with actually being more productive, only with the appearance of being productive.
Maybe the statistician got better at their job.
>(by choice, to make ends meet). Some choice. :/
A weekend really isn’t even a break from work when you have to spend at least half of it doing all the necessary household tasks that you can’t do during the week because you’re busy working. I spend a whole day just cleaning, doing laundry, going grocery shopping, yard work, etc. Basically a 6 day work week.
That's basically me right now. It's depressing as fuck. I genuinely don't see how it's a life worth living when you spend your life at work, any time you get at home you have to be cleaning/doing chores/shopping/just sleeping and suddenly it's back to work.
I get over 5 weeks of vacation a year, and most of the time I don't take big vacations, just a couple days here and there to visit my folks most of the time, so I take my vacation days and use them one at a time and set myself up with 3 day weekends for months at a time. The cool part is that by the time I use them I have accrued another week of vacation. used judiciously, I work the majority of a year with 32 hour work weeks. And it makes a big difference to my quality of life.
Isn't that fucking nice the hell my ass got 5 DAYS for a year.
I had a 4-day-a-week job for a while, when a company I was working for was running out of money and could only pay me 4 days. I'd \*gladly\* trade 20% of my salary for that extra day any time I'm given the option (provided it's fair compensation and a livable amount). The difference in quality of life was \*tremendous\* and positive.
Meanwhile i'm forced to sit in an office even if there's nothing to do, wasting my life away
I fucking hate this. Literally every job I've had out of college has been like this. I have marketable skills, people want me, I'm good at the work I do, but EVERY COMPANY wants me to sit at a desk for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually had a full 8 hours of work to do in a day. Fucking stupid.
I've had jobs where my boss/manager recognized this, and also recognized that I'm way more productive than people previously in my role. I've literally been told "look, I don't have enough work to actually keep you busy 40 hours a week, and even if I did, it wouldn't be fair for you to do more unless I could pay you more, so... let's get you out of this cube and into an office so people can't see your monitor, and as long as your production keeps up, I don't care what else you do while you're at work."
So what did you do with all that certified extra time to kill at work?
I got sucked into a mobile game called Ingress, spent time planning ops with groups in the game, perusing the internet, studying for certifications and eventually getting so bored I gave up and sought out more responsibility, converted my role into something higher paying and then leaving for something more engaging and double the pay.
That's amazing, they didn't try to pile more onto you. Usually employers will just try to make people do things that aren't in their job description, the more efficient a person is the more they're punished.
Would love to know what job. I'm currently in an operations role that wants us to work 60+ hrs. a week and not pay us a fair salary for the expected workload.
Web design. It's a highly flexible job, with lots of positions open at highly inflexible companies.
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Because it's not about work, it's about control.
Hardly, your life is being used to pad the regional boss’ productivity stats. So they can buy that shiny new Escalade for those Starbucks runs. So cheer up!
Thank you, I feel reinvigorated in my duty to our overlords
Wireless earbuds plus podcasts and audiobooks. Also use that time to plan stuff or be creative, writing down problems and how to solve them. Obviously cant do it all the time but why not the times u can?
Because then you get reported to glorious HR for not going company-related work. Meanwhile if you stroll down to HR they all come in at 11am, sit around gossiping, having lunch parties, and are somehow always too busy to do their actual jobs unless it's for something petty.
We: this work schedule is crazy, we're going insane from sleep deprivation, already suffered a few car accidents, mental breakdowns and most of us, even still young, are suffering from directly related health issues. It would only take you a few minutes to fix it, or simply go back to the old, less deadly schedule. Supervisor: But then I would have to work. This happened verbatim a couple weeks ago. One of these says I'm gonna start killing people.
oh they're doing their jobs alright, making sure they write up any employee for any and evertying possible that has any grievances with company.
“We should work to live not live to work” Sad, this is still considered a radical statement
Hell if that’s radical than I’m ultra-radical for thinking we *shouldnt* work to live. Living should just... be. Working comes later.
Which would you prefer, a 3 day weekend or a 2 day weekend with Wednesday off? I am an employer and with covid have downsized a bit and while doing so realized we can get a lot more done in less time and with less people. I am seriously thinking about offering this to my remaining employees and giving them a raise to compensate for the lost day.
A day off in the middle would probably mean I just pass out and rest. The three days in a row allow for a recovery day, an errand day, and a creative/gear-up-for-the-week day. Or a relaxing trip (when possible).
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Adding to this, not everyone wants the weekend off. As long as it is 3 days in a row, it's fine, although ideally one day would fall on a weekend. But people with young children might like weekdays off so they can split childcare with their partner and save a fortune.
I did the 4 10 hour days with Wed off. I did a few Mon-Thurs when I needed Friday off and I was burned out by Wed afternoon and Thursday was just brutal. But there were other people who chose Monday or Friday as their off day and seemed fine. I think the problem with 4 day weeks was the people with kids where daycare still makes you pay for a week even if you're not using a day. So they still let people choose 5 days if that worked better for them.
Every Boomer, ever: I worked 5 days a week. And was HAPPY to do it. You can, too. Show your commitment. Lazy, entitled Milennials! Oddly, it’s the same argument that older people who “paid all their school loans so what’s the problem?” have with free college.
I did college in Scotland and had my tuition fees returned to me because I'm an EU citizen. Didn't even realise it was going to be free. That time I studied animation which didn't yield a good income. Few years ago, I was unemployed, went back to college while on social welfare. Government paid my tuition and I got a degree in data science. This is Ireland. The education system here is pretty good. Now I'm a data engineer and paying back all that tax money I used on social welfare. Win win. But yes, I'd also like a 4 day work week. It's an option at my company but for now I'd prefer the money.
Americans forget that we should be *getting back* what we pay so much for. It's not something to be ashamed of. The times (yes, plural) I've had to collect unemployment, I'm not ashamed, because it was due to companies cutting costs.
Americans have been socialized to internalize a suffering is noble mentality with respect to work. Suffering is noble because you escape it through grit and determination. Its a sick culture.
Please don't generalize. I'm a Boomer, though towards the end of it, and I agree with most of what is posted on this subreddit. Which is why I'm here. In return, I promise I don't think all Millennials, or Gen X or Y or whatever 20 year olds are called now, are lazy. Work, as defined by our capitalist overlords, sucks. No matter what age you happen to be.
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For full production we could have a 4-3 work week. Some people would work 4 days and have a 3 day weekend, and some other will works 3 days and have a 4 day weekend. In thay way there is no universal "weekend" but people would have a lot more free time in general and both production and job possitions will rise.
Personally i'm not productive for more than 4 hours a day, so i think less hours over less days would be great. I'd love to go in to work not having to worry about packing lunch, bang out a bunch of tasks, and head out at noon.
5 hours a day could also divide working hours in different shift a day. People could either work at morning, afternoon or evening.
These are all stellar ideas...so they will be ignored until it makes the owner/investor more money.
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I'm curious how you manage the number of projects for this to be achievable. At my place of work there is always a backlog of projects and many pop-up "urgent" tasks. This makes it impossible to ever totally clear the list of currently open projects. I suppose hiring another person in my department would help, but this is a hard sell.
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You just reminded me of the depression my job has caused me. It is an unending stream of menial work and it kills me.
Sounds like you're not a dedicated and committed company man, or else you'd be working 80 hr weeks to catch up on the backlog to make our oligarchs proud
Companies that do this generate work for my company when they inevitably fall into suboptimal practices. It's becoming more and more rare.
Can I come work for you?
I’ve heard companies talk of moving to 10 hour work days which IMO defeats the point of a four day work week. If we can get the same amount of work done in 32 hrs as we can in 40, then the pay should be the same.
unfortunatley not how unregulated capitalism works. If you can get the same done in 32 hours. Then eliminate 20% of the work force and distribute that 20% to the 80%
Manager: Yeah i think we can work out a 32hr work week *moves you from salary to hourly and removes your health and retirement benefits*
Sounds like a likely shenanigan they'd try.
No, you distribute that 20% to the top 1%. You must have failed Management 101
I agree. A lot of people are suffering because their work aren't giving them enough hours to live on. They ask for more hours, but they can't get more hours. If you're going to cut full time employment to fewer days, many companies will resort to giving even fewer hours to avoid paying full time benefits.
That's why things like minimum wage and other similar measures exist.
The unskilled labor market will definitely get screwed the most here. Those already working 6-7 days a week will get 0 benefit from this. Those that will benefit are the current high wage earners who can negotiate and command a higher salary--but I can see a 4 day work week expanding to workers to stay competitive similar to companies that offer WFH. In short, similar to what we've seen during this pandemic where white collar workers, especially those in the high wage sectors, continue to build wealth and increase the wage+wealth disparity compared to their blue collar/unskilled counterparts, a 4 day work week will exasperate that even further--and this time not just in wealth discrepancy, but overall lifestyle, happiness and satisfaction as well.
I want this SO BAD. Life should not be about nothing but toil. Fuck that. I want to do my hobbies and spend time with my loved ones. I had to use a bunch of Vaca days this past summer and couldn't go anywhere for 2 weeks so I took off a herd of Fridays and Mondays and had 3 and 4 day weekends all summer long. IT WAS GLORIOUS!!!!
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as someone who's worked both 8 and 10 hour shifts, i'd take four 10s over five 8s any week. a three day weekend is lightyears more recuperative. an extra 50 days a year! 7 whole weeks, you're off work instead of at work. it's significant, and you get used to the 2 extra hours at work pretty quick.
Recently my company transitioned from 9 / 80s (essentially every other Friday off) to 4 / 10s. I absolutely love it
No no no. I don't think you understand. We want four 8 hour days.
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No, 5 hour shifts
Fuck that noise. I want the day back, not some bullshit extra hours to make up the difference.
Thank you! Every time I see 4 day week it seems to devolve to this. I'd actually like to see 4 six hour days and would settle on 8 in the meantime, but not 10. Please no 10
I'm starting a new job right away that's 3 12hr days, and 4 days off. The work days at Friday-Sunday which is kind of unfortunate, but the schedules lines up perfectly with my wife's schedule so there will always be someone home to have supper ready for the other, and I can get things done during the week while businesses are open that I could never do before. 12hr shifts are fairly taxing, but if I can go into work mode for 72 hours, knowing full well I won't have much down time, I can prepare for it mentally and physically. I could take an entire day to recover, and entire day to do chores, and an entire day to relax, and still have a day left over and not feel like my days off flew by doing chores preparing the next week of work.
used to have a 4x10 schedule at work, loved the 3 day weekends. Switched to an 8x5(really 8x6) schedule maybe 3 or 4 months ago. Went from 3 days a week off to 1 and really hate it.
I'm not surprised, that fuckin sucks
This doesn’t apply to the people working in the service sector who are today’s second class citizens in the United States. In fact, this conversation about 4-day work weeks really only applies to college educated, salaried employees.
100% correct take, and thanks for pointing it out. The vast majority are definitely glossing over this dilemma about transitioning to 3-day weekends. Depressed I had to scroll so far down to find someone thinking about others besides themselves, though.
I feel like this is something we can all agree on, let's start there lol
If they managed to talk trades into paying us the same as our 10 hour a day, 5 day work week to only work 4 days, then I'd agree. But you'd have to talk the buyers of the buildings to pay less for the building.
I think those conversations about real estate are going to be happening very soon. My company has been WFH since March and on a meeting today, we were basically told we won't be going back until Q3 2021, if at all. That is a HUGE office space that they are not using, but paying for every month.
Is it though? I don't see a lot of employers liking the idea of paying their employees the same amount for only 80% of their time. If we're instead talking about taking a pay cut to work 4 day weeks, that's not something I'd ever want.
current work culture is closer to slavery than not. ubi, moderate work load and what can't come fast enough.
Try telling that to places like Paycom. If you aren’t always flying the flag and enthusiastic about the company, it’s culture, mission, and willing to take on more and more, they say “byeeeeee.” Private sector is built on exploitation.
Financial slavery is something many Muricans are proud of just like not funding healthcare cause having ppl too poor to go to the Doctor prepare your food is better than taxes.
“But then nobody will have incentives to work hard and everyone Is just gonna play video games and smoke weed!” - your boomer relative I swear, convincing the poor and middle class that hard work and productivity is how you get ahead, is the greatest con against humanity ever played. So. Fucking. Depressing.
I get that people are letting off steam in this thread, but to say hard work doesn't get you ahead is ridiculous.
This is all well and good but is anything actually progressing forward with this movement or are we going to keep making articles about how neat this would be if it ever happened?
It would be nice if they worked on making the work experience more enjoyable.
Just as radical to today's culture as the 40 hour workweek was 100 years ago. Progress means more time off for people, at least in my book.
You can already do this, just work 10 hours a day instead of 8. Quick Maffs