This keeps cropping up. It sounds nice, particularly for nebulously-defined knowledge work. But, the usual:
- this only applies to task-focused jobs; e.g. the service industry still needs people to work all the time customers might turn up
- studies may have picked companies/orgs that are likely to have the foresight and talent to try a new way of working; this may not scale well to general work
- how do companies that have customers that work 5 days a week work this out? Do you need two people working overlapping 4 out of 5 days so they cover all 5 days for every customer-facing role?
- if people can do 5 days' work in 4, can they also do 4 days' work in 3? What's special about 4 days? Will work scope down until it becomes true that it could be done in 3 days, just as 5 days' work seems to have scoped down to be doable in 4?
bendigedig · 20h ago
> - if people can do 5 days' work in 4, can they also do 4 days' work in 3? What's special about 4 days? Will work scope down until it becomes true that it could be done in 3 days, just as 5 days' work seems to have scoped down to be doable in 4?
My suspicion is that the time spent per week at work or 'doing' work is no longer the limiting factor for productivity in a vast swathe of knowledge economy jobs.
I have a theory that the human brain can only give-out so much creativity before it needs a bit of freedom to wander. I suspect that knowledge workers have big periods of time where their minds are effectively 'resting'/rejuvinating but these people are obliged to remain in the office and look like they are working.
Perhaps the four day week projects are showing that if people are given the choice, they can exchange some of that resting time for free time?
bendigedig · 20h ago
Or if you subscribe to David Graeber's bullshit jobs theory, if 80% of jobs are bullshit then what is the problem in reducing the amount of bullshit that needs to be done?
Four days of bullshit instead of five?
pydry · 20h ago
The problem is if that bullshit job is in the wealth defense category then billionaire A who makes his employees work 5 day weeks risks gaining an advantage over billionaire B who only makes them work 4.
fakedang · 17h ago
But there might also be a positive effect on billionaire B's employees, who might be able to work even more efficiently than billionaire A's.
I noted a recent statistic, which states that the revenue of Chick-fil-A per outlet is more than the revenue of the next three fast food chains combined. And they're not even open on Sundays!
al_borland · 4h ago
Is being closed on Sunday what leads to round the clock lines at their drive-thru?
Chick-fil-A is very trendy and popular, and they don’t have enough restaurants to meet demand. The customers seem to be driving this, not being closed on Sunday.
If there were 2 equal restaurants, say 2 different McDonalds in similar markets, and one was open 6 days and another 7 days, would we see the Chick-fil-A effect? I’m betting not.
If this was the case, the Filet-O-Fish wouldn’t exist. It was developed by a McDonald’s owner in Ohio where the town was 85% Catholic, and didn’t eat red meat on Friday. He effectively only had a real business 6 days per week and was struggling. The fish sandwich was his answer and turned things around for him.
Paul_Clayton · 2h ago
I received the impression that being closed on Sundays was part of corporate culture, a statement of valuing something other than maximizing value extraction. A poster here commented that the franchise agreements were unique in the poster's experience in having a flavor of partnership. Customer service seems to be emphasized.
B&H Photo seems to have a similar (even greater?) customer service drive. More than one poster here has commented that being closed on Jewish holy days (including Shabbat) is not a major deterrent given the quality of customer service and products.
Keeping one's word even when it hurts is a mark of virtue and integrity means such virtue is expressed in a breadth of life activity. Miracle on 34th Street hints on the advantage of "having a heart", even if Mr. Macy saw it as a corporate gimmick.
A McDonalds being closed one day a week because the managers like outdoor activities that day (or to try to achieve a Chick-fil-A effect) would see the ethos behind that behavior informing other behaviors.
Marketing can support a false reputation, but trust is important to social function. Betrayed (or mistaken if you are Roj Blake) trust wounds society.
fakedang · 4m ago
Nope. I meant that in spite of being closed on Sundays, they managed to do higher revenue numbers. I really don't know how anyone could infer otherwise.
It's not the result of being closed on Sundays. The entire discussion was about how great working conditions can lead to higher business success. But way to go on derailing the discussion.
gruez · 15h ago
Surely that's explained by factors like the market segment they're in? Just by math alone you'd expect them to have 15% less sales from having less hours open. Maybe 20% if you factor in that Sundays has more traffic than other days of the week. But it's not as if them being closed on Sundays can plausibly boost productivity. They already presumably have people working in shifts, so it's not like each worker is working less hours.
RiverCrochet · 21h ago
If companies need to maximally be available to customers, then why aren't all customer-oriented businesses open 24 hours?
Customers are spoiled with cheap unsustainable wages, especially the service industry where people really don't want to put in 8/10 hour days but are doing that because there is no other option.
The equitable future of that type of work is appointment-based. Meaning you as the customer go into a website and make an appointment to do what you need to do--and if you really derive value out of having a person do something for you, then this should not be a problem including any charges associated.
It would work out great for e.g. retail returns; go on to an app, make an available appointment, upload your receipt, and then go do the exchange/return. No lines so a better experience for the customer, and it would also firewall-off invalid returns and a good number of abuse attempts.
A really good pizzeria not to far from me has moved to this model successfully. If you want a pizza, you grab a timeslot, then pick it up. You can't just walk in and expect to get one 30 minutes from when you walk-in at a random time (unless they're free). The pizza is that good. This won't work for low-quality products, of course.
philipallstar · 21h ago
> why aren't all customer-oriented businesses open 24 hours?
Because that's not the established pattern of work for existing business that are hard to change.
> The equitable future of that type of work is appointment-based.
I think the word "equitable" needs to be replaced with one with some meaning to it. The problem with your suggestion is: should city centres or malls only be populated with shops, cafes and restaurants that are by appointment only? How would that actually change anything regarding what the shop would like to do? They can be open 4 days a week and be appointment-only or walk in. But I imagine a shop that isn't by appointment only will in generally lose compared to a shop that isn't. A restaurant is about the only type of place that can already sustain the premise of appointment-only, and only then likely in a regulatory/property environment that makes it hard to start alternatives.
RiverCrochet · 1h ago
You're in a mall.
There are 4 shops. 2 require you to make an appointment using an app to pick up food, but the food is fantastic and you get the food when they agree to provide it. The lead time is usually 30 minutes during the busy lunch hour, so you can order before you go to the mall.
The 3rd shop is a McDonalds. They recently got an app and it's great, but ... the underpaid people there are rude, take a long time to prepare your food and half the time they are understaffed because no one wants to work there very long. The food used to be cheap but lately it's not much cheaper than the other places. You've complained about the service before but they tend to have a new manager every month, so you don't believe anyone cares.
The 4th shop has great Dominican food, and they are super friendly. The food is cheap, the service is good, the portions are huge, and it's awesome! But it suddenly closed after you saw ICE agents around one day.
Which is better really?
1718627440 · 4h ago
I don't understand what the benefit of appointments for a pizza is. I'd expect that a huge part of pizzas is sold to people who are walking there anyways. Wouldn't you loose them and they would just go to the pizzeria around the next corner? What is the benefit for the pizzeria beside the cost for operating a website and hiring/buying software (developers), because programming that website isn't really the same expertise as making pizza? Most times the pizzeria is just idle anyways. This won't change, because the customers still need to pick it up, so instead of just picking it up, they need to take time to visit a website and pick it up.
duskwuff · 16h ago
> - this only applies to task-focused jobs; e.g. the service industry still needs people to work all the time customers might turn up
This is a problem which service industry jobs have already solved by scheduling employees in shifts. A typical fast food restaurant may be open 18+ hours a day, 7 days a week, but they certainly aren't requiring each of their employees to work those hours.
lotsofpulp · 14h ago
This problem is only solved with a sufficiently large workforce willing to work evenings/nights/weekends, at sufficiently low prices.
Gigachad · 13h ago
For office work I don’t think many people care if they get the Monday or Friday off. Both are almost equally desirable.
al_borland · 5h ago
While still knowledge work, when I started my career I was working as a sys admin in a data center. It required 24x7x365 support. No one worked 5 days. All weekday shifts were 4x10. All weekend shifts were 3x12.
It doesn’t get to a 32 hour week, but it does still give a 3 or 4 day working week. I don’t see why this wouldn’t work for other support or customer facing roles.
Many types of businesses are closed on random weekdays, Monday is a popular day to be closed for businesses that operate on that weekend, and they seem to make it work. Ones I’ve called often have an answering service for those days.
Where I was at, on holidays we’d run a skeleton staff of 2 people to keep things going, with on-call if anything big happened.
I don’t think anything is special about 4 days, just baby steps. I personally think I was most productive on the 3x12 schedule. It let me hyper focus on work, and really have long stretches of deep work without interruption, while also giving me adequate time to rest and recover from that. I think I’d get much more done if I moved back to that, personally. Working 5x8, as I do now, isn’t that useful. Half the day is full of meetings, and as soon as I start to dig into something, the day is over. What should take a day ends up taking weeks.
I’m not necessarily looking to cut hours, but more to get more heads down working time, without working free OT. I actually found 4x10 to be the worst, 3x12 was the best, for me.
someone7x · 21h ago
> how do companies...
> Do you need...
> Will work scope down...
Sounds to me like a list of problems for market forces to solve.
philipallstar · 18h ago
My point is market forces will stick with 5 days.
jplusequalt · 18h ago
A 4 day work week is a great step in the right direction. These things can be figured out on a case by case basis--many businesses are already running on sub 5 day work weeks, or their work weeks are abnormal (Tues-Sun, Wed-Sat, etc.). But, yes, there will need to be some businesses who retain the 5 day work weeks.
However, the benefit is that a large percentage of workers will have an extra day per week to focus on family, hobbies, engaging in the local economy. That outweighs any of the concerns you bring up.
pipodeclown · 17h ago
Most of the Netherlands banks have switched to 4 dat workweeks, sure you don't get as much work done on 4 days but it sure is nice to have an extra day off:)
Spivak · 19h ago
This argument can be applied equally against the weekend so I'm not sure it holds that much water. We've figured out how to have people work 5 out of 7 days, what drastically changes if it becomes 4? What if it had always been 4?
But to answer your question about coverage, $dayjob handles that with an on-call rotation and moving shifts for customer support.
doesnotexist · 19h ago
Apparently they did this in Iceland and it's been fine?
The less than 400k population is a good sample size, however, their main revenue comes from tourism, aluminum smelting, and fisheries, and they have a relatively large source of geothermal and hydropower with a very homogenous population (>80% Icelandic). Data centers are about 1% of its GDP. Even Iceland needs barkeeps and restaurant workers to work at least 5 days/week with restaurants in touristy areas open 7 days/week with shorter days on Sunday. Having worked a life of manual labor and white-collar jobs, sometimes both in the same job, the 4-day work week is really for specific types of industry or work. Tech, for sure, but not the food service industry...
NotAnOtter · 16h ago
Pay walled, so won't read the actual article.
That said, I'm not sure why this is always so popularly discussed in Eng forums. The reality is, our work is inherently async, and 90% of IC's could work 1 days/week if we magically squished all our work in that time frame. Many in practice get away with a 4 day work week. My company has a no-meeting Friday and I'm full remote, if I've finished my work I just quietly take it off.
So the reality is this: a 4 day work week for IC's means either asking them to work less or forcing them into a schedule they already had access to but opted to not take.
Why would a business be incentivized to have their staff work less or force them into an uncomfortable schedule that doens't adhere as nicely to the realities of parenthood or other adult commitments.
MrJohz · 57m ago
Note that 4 day work here typically implies 4×8 hours, i.e. a reduction in hours for the same pay. This is how the trial worked in the UK, and is what most groups I've seen are campaigning for.
The goal is not just to rearrange work hours around the week, but to reduce work hours overall.
fnordpiglet · 16h ago
1) not every employee at every company is a programmer, even companies that employ programmers, which most don’t.
2) not every programmer is a remote employee
3) it’s sort of weird to not read an article but comment on it and make generalizations about the working patterns of all people based entirely on your personal situation
NotAnOtter · 16h ago
1) Not relevant to my argument. My commentary is focussed on eng IC's, and I'm picking that subset due to my other comment about these articles always being super popular in eng circles
2) Yes, which is a separate issue. 1) Nearly all IC's should have the option to at least work remotely on some days, 2) All management should allow for their reports to take the day off if the work is complete. The fact that I get away with working a 4 days a week is a loop hole not a solution.
3) Realities of paywall articles. I'm not paying for the top ~20 news sites individual $5/month subscription. Nothing wrong with disclaiming I haven't read it and providing my thoughts on the subject. I'm highly doubtful the article contains anything new anyways, just rehashing the same half dozen arguments that have been around for 20 years, plus 1 or 2 new ones sourced from 2020. Probably includes a link to some recent study about some group trying it out and finding some success, which the author extrapolate's to the rest of the corporate world, and probably commentary from some CEO. You've read it, let me know how far off I am.
windows2020 · 13h ago
Seems this would work if 1) we slow it all down, or 2) hire more people.
I don't know about you, but there are often periods at work where the week goes by too quickly.
Maybe this would spur hiring and give workers more leverage.
then "workers" will want to go out on their newly-free Friday and have a coffee and some lunch with friends...and those workers better damn well be there to serve them!
NotAnOtter · 16h ago
I'm not an advocate of 4-day work week, but this argument always makes me laugh.
What is it you think happens on Saturday? Do you think those baristas are working 7 days/week?
trinix912 · 17h ago
That's how Sundays work in some European countries - businesses, shops and some restaurants are closed, with a few exceptions (depending on the country ofc). Doesn't automatically mean one can't spend the time well.
commandlinefan · 16h ago
It'd be nice if I could go out to eat on Fridays, but if everything just shut down on Friday I'd personally be good with that, too - I can imagine a world where nearly everything except maybe emergency services just took a day off. I would welcome the guilt-free opportunity to do absolutely nothing "productive" for one day a week.
1718627440 · 4h ago
That's the status quo. But still good to acknowledge when things are nice.
fnordpiglet · 16h ago
Service company employees tend to work in shifts and not every employee works every shift, therefore they’re able to cover every day and shift - but with different people. Look at the people at your coffee shop sometimes and you’ll notice they’re not always the same people.
- this only applies to task-focused jobs; e.g. the service industry still needs people to work all the time customers might turn up
- studies may have picked companies/orgs that are likely to have the foresight and talent to try a new way of working; this may not scale well to general work
- how do companies that have customers that work 5 days a week work this out? Do you need two people working overlapping 4 out of 5 days so they cover all 5 days for every customer-facing role?
- if people can do 5 days' work in 4, can they also do 4 days' work in 3? What's special about 4 days? Will work scope down until it becomes true that it could be done in 3 days, just as 5 days' work seems to have scoped down to be doable in 4?
My suspicion is that the time spent per week at work or 'doing' work is no longer the limiting factor for productivity in a vast swathe of knowledge economy jobs.
I have a theory that the human brain can only give-out so much creativity before it needs a bit of freedom to wander. I suspect that knowledge workers have big periods of time where their minds are effectively 'resting'/rejuvinating but these people are obliged to remain in the office and look like they are working.
Perhaps the four day week projects are showing that if people are given the choice, they can exchange some of that resting time for free time?
Four days of bullshit instead of five?
I noted a recent statistic, which states that the revenue of Chick-fil-A per outlet is more than the revenue of the next three fast food chains combined. And they're not even open on Sundays!
Chick-fil-A is very trendy and popular, and they don’t have enough restaurants to meet demand. The customers seem to be driving this, not being closed on Sunday.
If there were 2 equal restaurants, say 2 different McDonalds in similar markets, and one was open 6 days and another 7 days, would we see the Chick-fil-A effect? I’m betting not.
If this was the case, the Filet-O-Fish wouldn’t exist. It was developed by a McDonald’s owner in Ohio where the town was 85% Catholic, and didn’t eat red meat on Friday. He effectively only had a real business 6 days per week and was struggling. The fish sandwich was his answer and turned things around for him.
B&H Photo seems to have a similar (even greater?) customer service drive. More than one poster here has commented that being closed on Jewish holy days (including Shabbat) is not a major deterrent given the quality of customer service and products.
Keeping one's word even when it hurts is a mark of virtue and integrity means such virtue is expressed in a breadth of life activity. Miracle on 34th Street hints on the advantage of "having a heart", even if Mr. Macy saw it as a corporate gimmick.
A McDonalds being closed one day a week because the managers like outdoor activities that day (or to try to achieve a Chick-fil-A effect) would see the ethos behind that behavior informing other behaviors.
Marketing can support a false reputation, but trust is important to social function. Betrayed (or mistaken if you are Roj Blake) trust wounds society.
It's not the result of being closed on Sundays. The entire discussion was about how great working conditions can lead to higher business success. But way to go on derailing the discussion.
Customers are spoiled with cheap unsustainable wages, especially the service industry where people really don't want to put in 8/10 hour days but are doing that because there is no other option.
The equitable future of that type of work is appointment-based. Meaning you as the customer go into a website and make an appointment to do what you need to do--and if you really derive value out of having a person do something for you, then this should not be a problem including any charges associated.
It would work out great for e.g. retail returns; go on to an app, make an available appointment, upload your receipt, and then go do the exchange/return. No lines so a better experience for the customer, and it would also firewall-off invalid returns and a good number of abuse attempts.
A really good pizzeria not to far from me has moved to this model successfully. If you want a pizza, you grab a timeslot, then pick it up. You can't just walk in and expect to get one 30 minutes from when you walk-in at a random time (unless they're free). The pizza is that good. This won't work for low-quality products, of course.
Because that's not the established pattern of work for existing business that are hard to change.
> The equitable future of that type of work is appointment-based.
I think the word "equitable" needs to be replaced with one with some meaning to it. The problem with your suggestion is: should city centres or malls only be populated with shops, cafes and restaurants that are by appointment only? How would that actually change anything regarding what the shop would like to do? They can be open 4 days a week and be appointment-only or walk in. But I imagine a shop that isn't by appointment only will in generally lose compared to a shop that isn't. A restaurant is about the only type of place that can already sustain the premise of appointment-only, and only then likely in a regulatory/property environment that makes it hard to start alternatives.
There are 4 shops. 2 require you to make an appointment using an app to pick up food, but the food is fantastic and you get the food when they agree to provide it. The lead time is usually 30 minutes during the busy lunch hour, so you can order before you go to the mall.
The 3rd shop is a McDonalds. They recently got an app and it's great, but ... the underpaid people there are rude, take a long time to prepare your food and half the time they are understaffed because no one wants to work there very long. The food used to be cheap but lately it's not much cheaper than the other places. You've complained about the service before but they tend to have a new manager every month, so you don't believe anyone cares.
The 4th shop has great Dominican food, and they are super friendly. The food is cheap, the service is good, the portions are huge, and it's awesome! But it suddenly closed after you saw ICE agents around one day.
Which is better really?
This is a problem which service industry jobs have already solved by scheduling employees in shifts. A typical fast food restaurant may be open 18+ hours a day, 7 days a week, but they certainly aren't requiring each of their employees to work those hours.
It doesn’t get to a 32 hour week, but it does still give a 3 or 4 day working week. I don’t see why this wouldn’t work for other support or customer facing roles.
Many types of businesses are closed on random weekdays, Monday is a popular day to be closed for businesses that operate on that weekend, and they seem to make it work. Ones I’ve called often have an answering service for those days.
Where I was at, on holidays we’d run a skeleton staff of 2 people to keep things going, with on-call if anything big happened.
I don’t think anything is special about 4 days, just baby steps. I personally think I was most productive on the 3x12 schedule. It let me hyper focus on work, and really have long stretches of deep work without interruption, while also giving me adequate time to rest and recover from that. I think I’d get much more done if I moved back to that, personally. Working 5x8, as I do now, isn’t that useful. Half the day is full of meetings, and as soon as I start to dig into something, the day is over. What should take a day ends up taking weeks.
I’m not necessarily looking to cut hours, but more to get more heads down working time, without working free OT. I actually found 4x10 to be the worst, 3x12 was the best, for me.
> Do you need...
> Will work scope down...
Sounds to me like a list of problems for market forces to solve.
However, the benefit is that a large percentage of workers will have an extra day per week to focus on family, hobbies, engaging in the local economy. That outweighs any of the concerns you bring up.
But to answer your question about coverage, $dayjob handles that with an on-call rotation and moving shifts for customer support.
https://farmingdale-observer.com/2025/05/31/iceland-approved...
That said, I'm not sure why this is always so popularly discussed in Eng forums. The reality is, our work is inherently async, and 90% of IC's could work 1 days/week if we magically squished all our work in that time frame. Many in practice get away with a 4 day work week. My company has a no-meeting Friday and I'm full remote, if I've finished my work I just quietly take it off.
So the reality is this: a 4 day work week for IC's means either asking them to work less or forcing them into a schedule they already had access to but opted to not take.
Why would a business be incentivized to have their staff work less or force them into an uncomfortable schedule that doens't adhere as nicely to the realities of parenthood or other adult commitments.
The goal is not just to rearrange work hours around the week, but to reduce work hours overall.
2) not every programmer is a remote employee
3) it’s sort of weird to not read an article but comment on it and make generalizations about the working patterns of all people based entirely on your personal situation
2) Yes, which is a separate issue. 1) Nearly all IC's should have the option to at least work remotely on some days, 2) All management should allow for their reports to take the day off if the work is complete. The fact that I get away with working a 4 days a week is a loop hole not a solution.
3) Realities of paywall articles. I'm not paying for the top ~20 news sites individual $5/month subscription. Nothing wrong with disclaiming I haven't read it and providing my thoughts on the subject. I'm highly doubtful the article contains anything new anyways, just rehashing the same half dozen arguments that have been around for 20 years, plus 1 or 2 new ones sourced from 2020. Probably includes a link to some recent study about some group trying it out and finding some success, which the author extrapolate's to the rest of the corporate world, and probably commentary from some CEO. You've read it, let me know how far off I am.
I don't know about you, but there are often periods at work where the week goes by too quickly.
Maybe this would spur hiring and give workers more leverage.
What is it you think happens on Saturday? Do you think those baristas are working 7 days/week?