Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?

While I’m already very much an advocate for paying my team what why’re worth, the recent shifts with remote work has put extreme pressure on companies to meet salary expectations in much larger markets.

I have an employee who needed a 33% increase due to market pressures. While we were going to already meet 15% of that at his next annual, budgets didn’t easily allow for the other 18.

Instead, he got a significant raise and a 4-day week to boot. He’s happy. I’m happy. And, frankly, we don’t see any productivity loss.

It is absolutely possible.

After few months if everyone's happy with your work, you can definitely ask for some days being remote and gradually increase it to fully remote, if you can manage yourself responsibly. 3 hours commutation is definitely not something you should endure for the rest of your life.

Most companies originally had a 5 day week, but dropped to 4 days without effecting salaries

So typically the salaries are "market rate". Difficult to say for sure though as most companies still don't disclose this

As for the job you mentioned, I know which company this is and its for a part-time job (i.e. not a 4 day week for 100% salary)

Speaking honestly, I added the part time jobs are added to "bolster" content (given there are so few 4 day week jobs atm). I'd recommend focusing on the jobs marked as "4 day week", they are typically "higher quality"

Where I live, even Walmart can't get people to show up for less than $15 an hour (even though we have no separate minimum wage than the national $7.25/hr).

The KFC across the street from the Walmart was recently advertising $17/hr.

$15/hr for that kind of tech experience would never fly here!

There's no way that gets filled right? That's completely divorced from reality lol.

Pay and holidays stayed the same as the original offer, not pro-rata. It was a case of "not enough money in the budget" rather than "you're not worth more"

“Today will be my last day.” is the proper response to such an action.

For sure, they hire people part-time quite often, so its just set up as a part time job.

Not too worried about them turning around and screwing me over, because we both know I'm the one holding all the cards. I trust them to look after me and treat me right, which is why I turned down the higher offer. If they betray that trust, there's nothing stopping me leaving. Didn't burn any bridges with the 2nd company, they're happy to have me back if it doesn't work out.

Ha, I’m in PST working with a lot of people in EEA. So yeah, if I’m taking a 7am meeting I’m clocking out “early”.

War, Deglobalization, Climate Change, Resource scarcity, Economic bubbles.

What the fuck are you on about, the world is olympic diving into the garbage heap.

Edit: If you downvote, please have the decency to explain your reasoning. Are you saying this opinion is incorrect? Why? It is to my understanding a race against time, when concerning climate change alone. One we are losing. Do you just dislike hearing about it?

The pandemic is still ongoing, plenty of countries still enforce masks.

Inflation is indirectly taxing people more and more and our society is going to hell because wealthy people brainwash people and destroy families.

Governments all around the world are becoming closer and closer to China every day.

Sure, we may have more technology nowadays (thanks capitalism) - but frankly I would have preferred being born in the 50s.

The world is objectively a shitty, awful place for billions of people.

In the greater scheme of things, you’re probably right. On the other hand, 2019 was the last “normal” year we will experience for a very long time. That doesn’t feel good.

GP didn’t say that the world is terrible because it is comparatively worse than it used to be, that would be a different statement. “Terrible” is not an objectively quantifiable adjective subject to factual policing.

For example, one person can say “The world is terrible because fascism is on the rise in many countries.” Another person pointing out that polio infection rates are very low does not cancel out the first statement. Everybody gets to have a subjective opinion!

Well, I do now feel like I owe my employer a huge favor XD.

I'm a software engineer. I'm working at a startup now after basically refusing to work at start-ups, or any kind of tech company, my entire career prior. I always worked at normal stable trustworthy non-tech companies that happened to need software engineers. I would still prefer to go back to the non-tech non-startup industry, but the offer was too good.

The process took less than a year. I entertained pitches from many many recruiters. I can't even remember how many. Most of them I rejected immediately because the jobs were beneath my high moral standard. I had introductory interviews at maybe 10-ish places. I actually went through the full interview process at only 3 places.

I was able to do all this purely because my existing job was stable and excellent. I would go back to it in a heartbeat if necessary. I was negotiating from a position of extreme strength with absolutely nothing to lose if the prospective new employer said no. I'm honestly afraid of a situation where I have no job and have to accept the first offer I can get. I might end up in a spiral of changing jobs frequently while trying to get back to a place that I find acceptable.

No, I could spend all day at the beach for the rest of my life. Same with hiking desert climates. Same with spending all my time in my wood and metal shop.

Absolutely not. I would live in a beach house, and I would indeed spend many hours laying in the sand, swimming in the ocean, etc. But I wouldn't literally spend the entire rest of my life doing nothing else at all. There would be socializing with friends and family, traveling, and taking care of my affairs. I would also spend plenty of time on hobbies of all sorts.

The key is that I would be living a life of complete and total leisure. Wake up whenever I want. Sleep whenever I want. Eat whenever I want. And each day, each moment, I would do whatever in particular I happened to feel like doing. I would not spend one moment of my remaining short life doing something purely because a capitalist system forced me to do so. That's the ultimate, probably unachievable, goal.

Unlike the two people who replied to you, I would 100% get tired of the beach within... 2 hours.

This july I tried one month of living close to the beach, in a rental apartment. I took half of the time off, and the rest of the time I worked from “home”. I went to the beach every day, and plenty of days I went all day.

By the end of the month I got tired of sitting on the beach.

My MiL’s place is a few minutes from the beach. When we visit, I mostly use it for nighttime walks. I would go crazy spending every day on the beach.

But boy is it great for a stroll with ice cream on a hot summer night.

I would. Also my skin burns in like 15 minutes, so I'd have to wear a burqa or something. But I imagine OP doesn't mean literally being on the beach all the time. Just have leisure time that you can structure as you like. I could probably last a year or two like that if I didn't have to work. Or maybe I'd find a project or several to work on anyway, just not as employment.

Speaking from experience, no.

32 hours so 4x8

This is an important distinction, but personally I think I prefer 4x10 over 5x8.

Productivity will probably be better too.

Yes, it’s 4x8.

What if I'm confident that I can convince you my 32 hrs are worth just as much or even more than s.o. else's 40 hrs though?

I as an applicant would also not want to be ruled out only based on that, I would want to have a chance to present my own full offer to you as well.

> Typically when a full time position is offered, the workload of a full person is needed (lets not discuss if 8h of work a day results in better or more output than less hours, thats another topic)

But that is the point.

If someone believes they can do a full-time workload in 4 days, how else should they approach this in a way that works?

Put another way: How many employers, do you estimate, would not even do an interview with someone if they knew they wanted to do 4 days? How would you, as a recruiter, figure out a candidate is capable of that? How would you pitch them candidate to an employer looking for full-time?

I don't see what GP did as much different than how most recruitment processes work from the hiring side. You usually don't find out:

  - salary
  - stock options
  - contractual terms, like non-competes 
  - etc

until you have cleared their hiring bars first.

I'd love to see full transparency on both sides, but until we do I don't think they did anything wrong, and in fact just applied the same approach used by many companies, waiting until they were committed before making their big ask.

Absolutely not. There are certain questions you can’t ask until after you have an offer because they will otherwise unfairly shade people’s perception of you. This is no different than waiting a few dates before disclosing medical issues and such to a potential mate. Convince people of your value first, then hit them with the conditions.

This isn’t a flaw to be fixed. It’s just how human interactions work. It has always been this way and always will be, no matter what you try to do about it.

If he had been up front his his ambition to work 4 days a week then he wouldn't have made it to interview at most of the places he did, let alone to offer stage.

Telling a recruiter things you'd like usually leads to them telling you to fuck off, so this advice is very good for getting zero jobs. If you get through a whole interview process (i.e. you like them) and the fact that they don't want to sit in your (virtual) office for five days a week is still a complete deal breaker you have a poor process. If you feel like that realisation wastes your time, I think you have some growth to do as a team lead.

Ironically I think this attitude is what encourages the bait-and-switch scenario. If someone tells you before interviews they want to work 4 days, 100% chance they'll be rejected. But if a perfect candidate gets to the final stage and then tells you they will only work 4 days the odds are much better and the leverage is on their side.

Also there isn't really part time / full time with salaried work. I doubt you're paying overtime if someone stays in the office for over 40 hours. Hiring for presence over productivity doesn't seem like a good metric.

"Please be an easier mark for me."

Yeah, and potentially the 3-5 other people who interviewed them as well! That would get me a bit fired up if they didn't ask me that until the end of the process.. as bad as when people tell me they want a remote role when it's clearly advertised as an in-city office-first role!

I'm usually upfront with my demand to work 4 days. I share it with them as soon as I know their basics like the location and the pay range.

In the last two years I've been committing just 16-24 hours/week of actual sit-down-at-desk work to the projects/contracts I've worked on. Despite not working 40 hours, I hit all my deliverables and leave my clients very happy. No secret sauce - I just focus on getting deliverables done and religiously avoid "stuff-and-fluff".

That to say; recruiters, team leads et al have little idea of how workload converts to time. If you're measuring hours you've already lost. The only thing that matters is output value.

> Michael Scott: Jim Halpert: Not a hard worker. I can spend all day on a project, and he will finish the same project in a half an hour.

To be fair, most employers include a lot of things in their job ads that shouldn't necessarily be taken literally or in the strictest sense possible. For example, a decent chunk of ads I've seen ask for a set of qualifications that would leave them with zero applicants if taken literally. I've also heard from multiple hiring managers and recruiters that "if you're not qualified but you really want to job, you should apply anyway".

Applying for a "full time" job, if you expect to be able to handle a "full time workload" is not a great stretch.

Also, as several other commenters have pointed out, employers routinely leave a lot of critical details out in the early stages — especially details that might make applicants not bother applying at all. Unless you're very clearly a rare exception to that norm (i.e. an applicant can tell that easily from the job ad) then it's a bit rich to expect applicants to lay everything on the table before you've even met.

Why can't you just make more clear in the beginning that this position is full-time and only full-time and that (for what ever reason) you are not able to consider part time workers for this job?

There is an information asymmetry. People want to disclose things that make them less attractive to employ as late as possible. Similarly there are things you don't tell the candidate beforehand too.

> Typically when a full time position is offered, the workload of a full person is needed

Yet when there is demand from prospective employees for something that is not offered (4 day week) but known to exist if you ask later in the interview process with some companies people will have to try if you are some company. Whether you are offering reduced time jobs or not for some positions that is available is an information you hold. You do not seem to want to hold that information back so you can make a decision depending on the candidate so you should very visibly perform send a costly signal that makes it clear reduced work hours are not possible. A costly signal would be "we are not able to consider non full-time applicants for this position".

I did not think this gets so much attention. A lot of the points you all wrote are correct. But still, if I am looking to fil a full time position (of course this is written in the ad...) and you dont want to work full time than this is totally fine but not a match. Maybe you think you can convince a company that you can generate the same output as other employees who work full time - and maybe that is true. But its insanely hard to do so. To this day (at least in germany in most companies I know) people are just not ready yet to admid that working time != working results. Just the turh for now (I myself hope too that this will change and I do my bits). And by the way I would assume that a lot of people who are active here are above average in there profession. I dont have proof for that but thats what I think. And guess what: a lot of candidates are not above average.

I consider the hours worked as part of compensation. It's something to be discussed during the negotiation phase. The company decides the structure of the hiring process. If you don't want to waste time, nothing stops you from moving the negotiation phase to the very start of the hiring process. I would personally prefer it if you did that as well. As an applicant it seems very awkward and unprofessional to come in and try to negotiate right from the start unless the company makes it clear that is what they want.

I work as a developer, and recruiters emails me in a daily basis. We all should try to minimize the recruiting efforts, but the amount of secrets that recruiters won't tell is just annoying... Sometimes even the company name they're recruiting for is a secret until you pass 1 or 2 interviews.

I know, there must be reasons for that, but from my point of view, it makes me lost a lot of time, and just for context, I spend 3 months looking for a job (with several interviews each week), this is just the proper market research everyone should do. And the end I was able to double my salary, work less, and get a lot bunch of great benefits.

And of course, the most annoying thing from this, was all the wasted time because recruiters 1) didn't wanted to handle me the proper information (like salary ranges or benefits) and 2) recruiters didn't make their own job, there was like 3-4 companies I applied for where, at the end of the process they wanted to hire me, but we're not able to do it since they have a contract with my previous company. Recruiters (or somebody else) should check that info before starting the process.

Unfortunately you're in the minority in my experience. Maybe your colleagues and yourself all act in good faith during negotiations, but they are no longer the majority in a large part of the industry. Many recruiters don't act in good faith with candidates these days, especially as KPI's are getting stretched and firms are starting to close out their recruiting efforts.

For candidates who have this as a dealbreaker with a hard-sell like this, I have one suggestion: Don't tell them it's a deal-breaker, just say you're looking at another offer with this perk and see what they can do. That way it doesn't look like you're gaming their hiring process, nor that you were interviewing in bad faith.

Same salary

yup, the QoL is amazing. I can understand non-sporty people not liking it though.