Curious if this trend could ever take off in America. Given our culture of overwork, I doubt it would become a national trend, but I could certainly large tech companies adopting this convention, and maybe some cities or states. Anyone here have personal experience with a four day workweek?
I work for a big tech company that started doing 4 day workweek during COVID.
They basically tracked JIRA tickets closed and found a huge spike in those as well as developers reporting burnout. Higher-ups figured this could be a blanket solution.
Currently our setup is Wednesdays are not 'on-call'. Its being handled in a sort of "at your team's discretion" fashion to give you an idea of how strictly its being enforced and the style of implementation.
That aside, I love it. Possibly essential for a wfh environment. Burnout is real on an all code in your room schedule. It also gives me incentive to push on a project Tuesday night so I can sleep in Wednesday mornings. Projects that require a ton of communication take a hit (mid conversation Wednesdays go ghost), but I believe actual developer productivity goes up. Also I never lag on house chores or errands which is a massive boon to my mental health.
So all in all. Why not? It makes everyone happier and isn't a huge blow to output. My team has released some massive projects in the last year with extremely tight deadlines, so I imagine if it's not possible at your company, your entire situation is unhealthy.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 20.4 ms ] threadThey basically tracked JIRA tickets closed and found a huge spike in those as well as developers reporting burnout. Higher-ups figured this could be a blanket solution.
Currently our setup is Wednesdays are not 'on-call'. Its being handled in a sort of "at your team's discretion" fashion to give you an idea of how strictly its being enforced and the style of implementation.
That aside, I love it. Possibly essential for a wfh environment. Burnout is real on an all code in your room schedule. It also gives me incentive to push on a project Tuesday night so I can sleep in Wednesday mornings. Projects that require a ton of communication take a hit (mid conversation Wednesdays go ghost), but I believe actual developer productivity goes up. Also I never lag on house chores or errands which is a massive boon to my mental health.
So all in all. Why not? It makes everyone happier and isn't a huge blow to output. My team has released some massive projects in the last year with extremely tight deadlines, so I imagine if it's not possible at your company, your entire situation is unhealthy.