[honeybee]

It's an interesting thought. In cities like Mumbai, where a person from the suburbs often spends four hours to commute to work for eight or nine hours, it would mean so much more free time to be able to spend a whole extra day at home.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

Well it depends upon job to job. A bus driver cannot remote work. Does not mean remote work is not an option for others. Same here. For a non customer facing job, 4 day workweek is not an issue.

I was not able to answer whole day because I got dragged into some issue and I couldn't say Mr.X will deal with you today.

I see Mr.Narayan already touched upon that issue. If you are doing a job that can be done by Mr.X yesterday, and Mr.Y today and Mr.Z tomorrow, then yes. I understand why someone would think 4-day week is cool if their job can be done by anyone else in their group, or a 3 day delay is not an issue in their job. Folks don't worry about who is their bus driver on a given day. I am not talking about call center agents or support roles where any person who can address your need on 24x7 basis. Such jobs already have rotations. I had to manage 24x365 coverage for our customer support employing 5 people for one role for 12 years, so I know the drill.

Most jobs do involve dealing with customers. I know you don't deal with customers, but I also know your projects cannot be done by someone else 3 days a week when you are away.

As a startup we have 6-day week (fully WFH), because 5-day is not sustainable at this stage. I even have staggered off days, so every day someone is available. Still when I have to have a meeting with two people who have off days on different days, it is frustrating. That is with staggered 6-day week, now imagine staggered 4-day week. I have experimented a lot since I have a free hand in trying different things with my employees. I can tell you that a person working 4h/day for 7 days a week is lot more productive than a person working 12h/day for 4 days. Yup, 28 hours is better than 48 hours. It is because people are available more often, even if for lesser hours. Their overlap with colleagues and customers is much better.

Originally Posted by v1p3r

The reality is that if I - as a small Indian entrepreneur - must compete with an established western company, I need to be available and building and answering calls and emails 7 days a week. Hell, Mukesh Ambani still does it.

Tell me about it. We as employers have to worry about off days when calls must be taken and emails must be answered. We are not a call center that can rotate people around shifts. If a customer is collaborating with X on a daily basis, and X is off on customer's work day every week, that will make a very pissed customer. Your work days have to match customer's work days, otherwise it is trouble.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

Does person A work round-the-clock 6 days (possible, I guess)? If not, what happens if the customer has an issue during person A's off-duty hours (got to eat & sleep sometime, if nothing else), or a critical issue happens 7th day of the week? They wait until A is available again, or someone else trained to handle the situation takes care of it?

Rather difficult to explain this over a social media debate which I am not competent at in any case. Employee A verus B facing the customer is only one piece of the puzzle. The primary issue is organizing all your factors of production - men, materials, machines and management to sync with each other in time, in geography and serve the customer when the customer wants it or the days the customer works. The more you sub divide any of these factors of production the messier it gets. For example if you were told that machine tools A, B, C can be used Mon to Thu but cannot be touched the other three days of the week when machine tool D, E and F must be used it just makes things messier. It can be done but at a cost in finance, cost in co-ordination and cost in pulling your hair. As I said, with no disrespect, you may be viewing this only from the prism of an employee. Tarry and give a thought to the hapless employer who created the employment in the first place. As for my business we worked 5.5 days a week which tallied well with our customers and certain functions or services worked full 7-days a week with staggered days - but those were very standardized jobs - aircraft dispatch, refueling, pilots, line maintenance etc - and the industry has very well set norms world wide of how the labour stagger will be organized and the customers men and women were staggered exactly on the same lines. Peace

Originally Posted by Samurai

I have experimented a lot since I have a free hand in trying different things with my employees. I can tell you that a person working 4h/day for 7 days a week is lot more productive than a person working 12h/day for 4 days.

Your work days have to match customer's work days, otherwise it is trouble.

Spoken like a man who has created employment and knows what it is like to organize factors of production to sync with each other on one hand and the customer on the other.

I also believe a 4-day week or a 35-hour week can work if most of the eco-system is on the same plane. It is also a function of where that economy & society as a whole is on its socio-economic state of evolution. If you are where India and China are currently trying as a collective nation to fire on all cylinders to get up to a base point then the society as a whole ends up with longer working hours. I won't debate if that is due to competition, weaker productivity or social attitudes but it does happen. Japan and South Korea went through it from the 1950s till the last decade. More evolved countries like those of Western Europe have evolved to where they are where the whole society gets organized around more productive at work and more leisure time and greater automation all around and hence a 4-day week or a 35-hour day or whatever. The fact that their entire eco-system works more smoothly - supply chain, lack of daily bottlenecks, less Govt babu hassle etc makes this possible. One company in isolation trying this can be a challenge for itself. But in India of today any one who has built a small or a medium business will know what I'm writing that you have to wring out every ounce from each factor of production to stay afloat.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

...The primary issue is organizing all your factors of production - men, materials, machines and management to sync with each other in time, in geography and serve the customer when the customer wants it or the days the customer works...

...you may be viewing this only from the prism of an employee. Tarry and give a thought to the hapless employer who created the employment in the first place.

You're right I haven't been an employer (yet), but why do you keep assuming that means I have a limited perspective?

I control a downstream aspect of what one would call the order-to-cash cycle, but the aspects of business you mention, lying upstream and downstream from my role, impact my ability to perform my job daily.

It needs a well-oiled machine to keep things moving from the point a customer wants to engage, through the factory floor, dispatch, logistics, install, configure, remote support + maintenance (both hardware and services), getting paid either by milestones delivered or frequency written into the contracts, the whole works. Rinse and repeat (with varying nuances) for every customer we engage, refine everything that didn't work well the last time.

The processes have been standardized and refined over time, same as every industry, and single-points-of-failure removed/minimized, where possible.

A smaller setup, or a growing startup like in mod Samurai's case, obviously works at different scale and have different dynamics. Technical aspects, training needs or simply costs (or some other aspect entirely) may dictate he can't have multiple similarly-skilled people handle a customer-facing role interchangeably. That doesn't mean roles performed at larger scale by interchangeable staff are necessarily always low-complexity.

I started off by acknowledging there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution, there never is, and there are parts of industry (or several industries in toto) that have constraints that make the cost/benefit ratio of doing something like this unfeasible, but you also have to look at it from the perspective that there are several industries where this can work and can be beneficial (this is the part you call me 'gentry'). None of us work rigid schedules, and the overarching principle is common for all of us irrespective of industry and customer base:

...serve the customer when the customer wants it or the days the customer works...

It isn't like I was born in an air conditioned IT office and have seen nothing else. My first exposure to organized labor was on the factory floor and offices of my father where I spent a lot of my formative years, and spent a lot of leisure time since. He comes from an industry where the only job you could ever make remote is probably a couple back-office roles (if that), and he makes plenty of arguments on the subject that sync with yours, while acknowledging how technological advancements have changed the industry over his career. He doesn't like every change, but knows they can't be ignored, accepts some can't be reversed. I watched and observed for years as he agonized over labor issues, raw material, unscheduled downtime, power supply fluctuations ruining machinery, and even how his well-groomed appearance was essentially destroyed after morning rounds (he's old-fashioned that way and still scoffs at my temerity to wear casual attire to work).

I have a factory-floor perspective right at home with several decades of his experience to draw from, if the conditioned air of my current workplace ever gets too airy for my head.

I didn't argue for or against the subject of the thread, just that it not be discarded with prejudice. The world will move on and things will change, whether you or I like it or not. As I mentioned in a previous post, my own job will probably look drastically different in a few years, and I need to adapt or perish.

No further argument from me. Peace.

[libranof1987]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Burnout, stress lead more companies to try a four-day work week

Just to spice things up, my company just declared that starting this month, we'll have 10 hour work days (including one hour for lunch), 5 days a week.

[am1m]

Considering that the majority of members on the forum are employees and quite possibly (from the number of posts during 'office hours'...like this one! ) IT guys working in 'air conditioned environments' (or from home these days), I guess it's understandable that that point of view will be more articulated.

While the employer point of view is certainly important and respected, I'm not sure why everyone has to be entrepreneurial or battling it out on the shop floor just to express an opinion. Obviously some jobs and roles cannot have the luxury of a 4-day week, I think everyone gets that. I suppose the discussion is the applicability/feasibility of such a voluntary proposal for those jobs that can extend such a benefit. Otherwise we'll keep arguing at cross-purposes.

[landcruiser123]

4- day week in India is a pipe dream in a country where many work 6 days a week. Honestly, it is a stretch for me to work 4 days in the US.

I recently finished reading Bullsh*t jobs by David Graeber. The author, an anthropologist, explores what went wrong in our employment model. A part of his book focuses on Keynesian economics.

More here on the Keynisan Economics: https://www.theguardian.com/business...p/01/economics

Back in 1930, Keynes predicted that the working week would be drastically cut, to perhaps 15 hours a week, with people choosing to have far more leisure as their material needs were satisfied. The world was then gripped by a dreadful slump but in the long run Keynes was sure mankind was solving its economic problems. Within a hundred years, Keynes predicted, living standards in "progressive countries" would be between four and eight times higher and this would leave people far more time to enjoy the good things in life.

Interestingly, even Silicon Valley investors like Naval Ravikant also echo similar thoughts.

[ashokrajagopal]

Originally Posted by landcruiser123

4- day week in India is a pipe dream in a country where many work 6 days a week. Honestly, it is a stretch for me to work 4 days in the US.

I recently finished reading Bullsh*t jobs by David Graeber. The author, an anthropologist, explores what went wrong in our employment model. A part of his book focuses on Keynesian economics.

I wasn't going to pitch in to divert the topic at hand further, but since we already have Graeber's Bull shit jobs here, I wanted to post a few questions.

This is an honest attempt to understand, especially since we saw Japan, China, SKorea etc brought up multiple times.

1. While we know EU is able to handle less work sitting on slavery and colonialism, what is the point if the global south get into a self imposed "extended work hours" ? What really is the end game here ?


2. We know SKorea and Japan have grown very well. South Korea has the biggest growth recorded ever in the history of the world.
But, again, what really is the end game here?

SKorea is on path to where Japan is right now, right ?
I mean, if "LIFE" as a whole is about less sleep and more work right from your childhood, the only condition we can aim for is to be like Japan, right ?
Population is too nihilistic to even reproduce.

I am trying to genuinely understand what are the legitimate reasons for giving away the present for a future that is getting farther and farther away.

For most populations, the message given is "Work hard now, and it will get better in future"
Decades pass, and the message evolves into "Work hard now..."

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by ashokrajagopal

1. While we know EU is able to handle less work sitting on slavery and colonialism, what is the point if the global south get into a self imposed "extended work hours" ? What really is the end game here ?

I am not quite sure what you mean here, also it is factual incorrect. Look it up, more EU countries did not, then did colonialism. Admittedly those few tried their damnest to make up for the lack of the others, but most coloniasm was done by only one/two handful of countries. (of course, the Dutch tried to lead the pack here for a long time, no mistake, blame my ancestors)

Originally Posted by ashokrajagopal

What really is the end game here ?

It really depends on your own views and what you believe in. As I explained in my earlier post I think you need to see this 4 day working week in a somewhat larger context. It is also not necessarily limited to working the same number of hours in fewer days.

My daughter and son in law, are both actively pursuing careers, have a 9 month old baby daughter, own their own house, a car, take lots of holidays around the world, pursue many interests and hobbies, and neither of them have ever worked a full time job. They both work part time, between the two of them make enough money to lead a very comfortable life. It’s a good example of modern day couple putting this whole work/life balance thing into good practice.

For me, working less, or rather having the ability to choose how much you work and when is part of what democracy promised to be. Again, it depends on your view, what and who to believe. I am a firm believer that the big “promise of democracy” post second world war, is to bring a better, more prosperous life and level of equality to everybody.

If you look at the data around the world, that is certainly true. For most of us, irrespective where we live in the world, we tend to lead a more prosperous life than our parents, certainly compared to our grand parents. We life longer, more of us are getting better access to schooling and medical facility, equality has increased (with still much much more to do). With it comes a change into what people except of life, and what they can afford to do with their lives.

If you are working 50 hours a week, and still barely manage to make ends meet, the above might all be theoretical hog wash. But more and more people find themselves moving into a world where there is more than just work. And can start thinking about on how to lead your life, beyond just work. Part of that puzzle is also down to how traditional man/women roles are developing. (more women have started to work, in an increasing larger variety of jobs). The traditional role of the man being the main, if not only bread winner is becoming history.

To me it is about the ability to make individual choices in how to lead your life. There is no good or wrong, just individual preferences. And those are to a large extend a reflection of the time you live in. My dad worked his whole life, 6 days a week, two weeks holiday per year. He was a wealthy man, but the notion of just working less, or retiring early never ever crossed his mind. People of his generation, irrespective of their social station in life, just worked always.

I am probably of the generation that enjoyed more holidays, (5-6 weeks per year) and were the first to have ability to do so much more with our live than just work. My daughter and her husband (generation wise) are just a further extension of that.

Jeroen

[srini1785]

Originally Posted by ashokrajagopal

1. While we know EU is able to handle less work sitting on slavery and colonialism, what is the point if the global south get into a self imposed "extended work hours" ? What really is the end game here ?

Originally Posted by Jeroen

I am not quite sure what you mean here,

Even i could not relate these two issues, last checked we have a good 73 year run of independence (from colonialism) which we could have utilized for getting better. Other nations too, except for South Africa which attained independence quite late, have similar runs of independence to manage their own affairs. As @Jeroen mentioned, its not EU as a whole which is at fault.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by srini1785

Even i could not relate these two issues, last checked we have a good 73 year run of independence (from colonialism) which we could have utilized for getting better. Other nations too, except for South Africa which attained independence quite late, have similar runs of independence to manage their own affairs. .

Similar to most of former colonies I guess? I am not quite sure of the various details per country, but by the 1960s most of what we called colonialism had disappeared.

There were a few outliers; Namibia becoming the last country in the world to gain independence (from South Africa) in 2005!

Of topic, even so, the world is not done yet with various cries of “need for independence”. E.g. Scotland.

Jeroen

[honeybee]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

I am not quite sure what you mean here, also it is factual incorrect. Look it up, more EU countries did not, then did colonialism. Admittedly those few tried their damnest to make up for the lack of the others, but most coloniasm was done by only one/two handful of countries. (of course, the Dutch tried to lead the pack here for a long time, no mistake, blame my ancestors)

England, Portugal, France and Holland - these nations led the colonialism, quite possibly because they were by the sea and so had a natural advantage when it came to making long voyages by sea.

At least as far as India is concerned, the Dutch ceded to the English and left, French lingered on in Pondicherry and the Portuguese held onto Goa for a few months more.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by honeybee

England, Portugal, France and Holland - these nations led the colonialism, quite possibly because they were by the sea and so had a natural advantage when it came to making long voyages by sea.

Going widely off topic here, but it is important to understand who the big perpetrators of colonialism really are!

Don’t forget the Spanish, the Germans, the Italians, the Danish and even the Russians!

Have a look here at the list of colonies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloni...e_20th_century


Jeroen

[ashokrajagopal]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

I am not quite sure what you mean here, also it is factual incorrect. Look it up, more EU countries did not, then did colonialism. Admittedly those few tried their damnest to make up for the lack of the others, but most coloniasm was done by only one/two handful of countries. (of course, the Dutch tried to lead the pack here for a long time, no mistake, blame my ancestors)

Originally Posted by srini1785

Even i could not relate these two issues, last checked we have a good 73 year run of independence (from colonialism) which we could have utilized for getting better. Other nations too, except for South Africa which attained independence quite late, have similar runs of independence to manage their own affairs. As @Jeroen mentioned, its not EU as a whole which is at fault.

Totally at peril of going off topic, my statement is not supposed to stress on the dynamics of how global north is global north and how south is south.

There is this idea that West is developed because of X, and it would take Developing economies to "work hard" to get there --- this is a very common argument for such stuff as extended work hours etc.
I was only pointing to this, not blaming EU or Japan.


Broader point, it is without doubt that irrespective of whether one earns a higher salary or not, I am sure everybody at least in this forum would agree that they have longer work hours than their parents ever did.
It is generally not a function of how much you earn.

Across the board, "jobs" have disappeared and "work" has appeared in its place. It is also seen as a good thing. My questions are in this direction.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by ashokrajagopal

I am sure everybody at least in this forum would agree that they have longer work hours than their parents ever did.
It is generally not a function of how much you earn.

.

Well, for India that could be true, especially the last few decades.

But the general trend is the other way. Here is a very interesting website:

https://ourworldindata.org/working-h...more-than-ever

A few examples:

Long term view over centuries:



More recent (last couple of decades)



Top of the list of those who have seen their numbers of hours increase:



Top of the lost of those who have seen their numbers of hours decrease:



I must admit, I never quite understand how they measure this. In the Netherlands lots of people have an all in contract. So you get paid for 40 hours, irrespective of the number of hours you actually make. So no overtime.

They probably look at numerous data sources, but at least certain trend are visible.

Jeroen

Jeroen