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Ask HN: Has anyone successfully convinced management to switch to a 4D workweek?

16 points by TurkishPoptart ↗ HN
Curious if I should raise this to my manager or bring it up at the CIO level. I think the benefits outweigh the downsides. Of course, on-calls would be working 24x7 per shift.

16 comments

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jokethrowaway
Most of my peers (in the socialist republic of EU) work 4x week to minimise the money that gets wasted in taxes. Often times when people progress they just ask to keep the same salary and work less so there is less taxable income for the taxman to steal (and rates are not progressive: if you earn even a penny over a certain amount you pay significantly more taxes on your whole income).

We are all contractors to minimise taxation so the company gets to pay 4/5 days and gets most of the productivity anyway.

For managers it's a no brainer, for employees, I don't think the extra day of freedom is worth the loss in pay.

I guess in a stricter company we would be punished for not being as productive on friday.

camdat
Which EU country has a non-progressive tax rate?
danielEM
Poland offers flat tax rates: 12% for IT entrepreneur or 19% for employees.
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isbvhodnvemrwvn
That's not quite right, if you have a single person company (with unlimited personal liability) you can choose between revenue and income tax. Both are flat rates, revenue is 12% for certain groups of companies, including software engineering with revenues below several million euro, income tax is 19% universally.
BrandoElFollito
I do not understand. How are you losing money by being paid more?
gymbeaux
They’re saying that the tax rate is not like the US where you pay x% on the first $y dollars and so on… but rather you pay x% on your entire income for the year. So if at $100k the tax goes from 15% to 20%, and I get a raise from $99k to $100k, I actually net less after the increased taxes than if I just stayed at $99k.
BrandoElFollito
It does not work that way at all - nowhere in Europe.

You have ranges, say from 0 to 100 you pay 10%, then for the amount above 100 up to 200, you pay 20%, then for the amount above 200 to 300 you pay 30% and so on (the numbers are all made up).

So when you get a raise from 100 to 150, you pay 10% on 100 (10) and 20% on 50 (10), so a total of 20. You get a net 150-20 = 130.

If it was the way it was described it would be insane.

There are also cases where the tax is flat and the same no matter the amount (usually not for salaried people)

gymbeaux
That doesn’t surprise me, I was just translating what the other guy was saying!
mickelsen
What? What country does that? Most have a progressive tax system, so when you earn more and move into a higher tax bracket, only the amount of income that falls into that bracket is taxed at the higher rate, not your entire income.
msarrel
No, I can't get them to accept that there's a fourth dimension.
quickthrower2
Management never wants to accept reality. Not even physical reality.
quickthrower2
Yes, but only because the company leans this way already (some people doing part time or 4 days already) and I did it due to health. Never hurts to ask. Direct manager first. Check your HR policy documents first, but ask anyway.
instagib
Someone posted a calculation on how much time everyone spent commuting daily unpaid on a work fridge and correlated it to why we have few new people stay at the company.

Even more people left and management finally caved for a four day work week.

The downside was we had more time to work and it extended already long days longer with the commute so you have to use one weekend day or more to recover.

The upside was when there was a problem, we had more time and people you could put on it without going into overtime, comp time, or unpaid time.

Convert from 40 hours to 32 hours, no.