Alternative to Mustachianism - Does this seem suitable?

[Rewdoalb]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-04/mexico-s-richest-man-wants-a-three-day-workweek

Some of his reasoning makes sense! Especially with a job that is fulfilling, it makes more sense to continue working and benefitting others with one's experience. This also stabilizes the labor market through population changes by generation.

[GuitarStv]

"Would people earn less this way?"

"No, I think the companies that can take this on are those in which productivity has led to excess personnel."




I've never worked at a place that had any sort of qualms laying off employees in cases of excess personnel.

[obstinate]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-04/mexico-s-richest-man-wants-a-three-day-workweek

Some of his reasoning makes sense! Especially with a job that is fulfilling, it makes more sense to continue working and benefitting others with one's experience. This also stabilizes the labor market through population changes by generation.

Meh. Few companies will allow anyone to do so, and I'm almost willing to guarantee you that the richest guy

• likes work more in general (how do you think he got rich?), and
• has more fulfilling work available to him

than most people. That said, if it works for you, by all means, but you don't want to go to that place until you have your retirement money all set up. When shit hits the fan, do you think they're going to lay off the full-timer or the three-day worker first?

[Prairie Stash]

I have to work 40,000 hours in my life, roughly, everyone has a number. I can spread it out, 3 day workweek, or get it done with. If I work 5 day weeks, banking 2 days pay, the target gets hit earlier. Banked money grows at 7%, it's like getting raises of 7% on the money, that's rough math. If you can't afford to bank 2 days pay/week how could you work a 3 day week, don't argue about the feasibility of a 40% savings rate.

Overall I find the MMM accomplishes a similar outcome with less overall days worked. His way front loads the benefits though.

[Papa Mustache]

Heard on the radio that Amazon is playing with this idea of a 30 hr work week. Oh, and reduced pay as well.

https://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/amazon-30-hour-workweek/2016/08/29/id/745738/

I wouldn't mind the reduced hours but who wants reduced pay?

[CanuckExpat]

Keynes predicted this back in the 30s: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/sep/01/economics

Didn't quite happen... Yet?

[farmerj]

this idea of a 30 hr work week

Obamacare's employer mandate kicks in at 30 hours; are these positions 29.5 or 30?

[Zamboni]

From talking with people over the years, I think many people would love to have a 3 or 4 day work week. Or 5 half days. But many companies with white collar employees here in the US make that nearly impossible. And, if you do manage to secure this condition, then jealous peers can undermine anyway. It is this jealousy that makes me think this would be such a desirable option if it were not so stigmatized by others.

I managed a couple of times to negotiate part time in professional positions that are normally full time. My pay always reflected the reduced hours. But, in all cases, some peers were either covertly or openly hostile about it. People wished they could do it . . . so I said "why not just ask they will let you." Which led to a diatribe about how it must be nice to be rich like me but they could never afford the pay cut. Bear in mind that even at half pay I make about the average household income, and at 80% pay in the 4 day a week job I made substantially above that. I've never gotten an inheritance or anything like that (in fact I grew up pretty poor), and I have no spouse, but my coworker just refuse to compute that they could live just fine on 50% pay or even 80% of our generous pay.

Bottom line: people choose to work so many hours due to their addiction to the false God of "luxury," spendypants ways and wastefulness. But here are MMM . . . everyone already knows that.

[sakura]

instead of shorter work week, id prefer just longer vacations. Ive heard Mckinsey is offering 70%-30% of working-unpaid vacations. Thatd be sweet!

[nobodyspecial]

I tried that today, I'm "working from home", I am actually doing some work but mostly just relaxing/recovering from a brutal set of travel recently.

My job is mostly thinking - I am far more productive in an occasional day when I just think about the problem but don't actually write code.
And I don't have any meetings. I think a regular 4day week = 3day weekend would boost my work.
 

[MrMoogle]

"Would people earn less this way?"

"No, I think the companies that can take this on are those in which productivity has led to excess personnel."




I've never worked at a place that had any sort of qualms laying off employees in cases of excess personnel.

Would they earn the same per hour or per year?  You can "earn the same" per hour, and keep this true, but still get paid less per year. 

[GuitarStv]

"Would people earn less this way?"

"No, I think the companies that can take this on are those in which productivity has led to excess personnel."




I've never worked at a place that had any sort of qualms laying off employees in cases of excess personnel.

Would they earn the same per hour or per year?  You can "earn the same" per hour, and keep this true, but still get paid less per year.

Typically more empoyees means more costs for a company (unless there are no benefits of any kind given).  It's more cost effective to maintain fewer employees.

[MrMoogle]

"Would people earn less this way?"

"No, I think the companies that can take this on are those in which productivity has led to excess personnel."




I've never worked at a place that had any sort of qualms laying off employees in cases of excess personnel.

Would they earn the same per hour or per year?  You can "earn the same" per hour, and keep this true, but still get paid less per year.

Typically more empoyees means more costs for a company (unless there are no benefits of any kind given).  It's more cost effective to maintain fewer employees.

Sure, but there are also benefit cliffs.  Like the 30 hours for Obamacare.  If you're down to 3 days a week, that's more likely to be 24 hours, so there can be a reduction in overall benefits given.  But again this is "earn the same," not benefit the same.  And many would not be willing to take the benefit hit.

But if you're married, and one works 40 hours to get the benefits, then the other could do a 24 hour gig. 

I think it would be a good option to have, but still have a 40 hour option too.

[Jrr85]

"Would people earn less this way?"

"No, I think the companies that can take this on are those in which productivity has led to excess personnel."




I've never worked at a place that had any sort of qualms laying off employees in cases of excess personnel.

Would they earn the same per hour or per year?  You can "earn the same" per hour, and keep this true, but still get paid less per year.

Typically more empoyees means more costs for a company (unless there are no benefits of any kind given).  It's more cost effective to maintain fewer employees.

I really don't think it's the cost to employers that are the problem; it's that people don't want to accept that a 50% cut in time worked will result in a much more than 50% cut in wages.  We faced this issue at a law firm I worked at.  We had trouble retaining female lawyers because of the grueling work schedule and the extra pressure they felt when conflicts between family and work arose, but when they were offered part time or just reduced time options, they didn't like them.  There are just things that cost the same whether you work 30, 40, 50, or 60 hours per week.  If you have a work computer, that cost isn't cut in half when you work half time.  Same as an office if you have a dedicated office.  Same with accounting and backoffice support.  You probably take up more of an assistant's time when you work part time.  And of course if you want to keep benefits, those don't go down at all.  So they would be offered part time work at a pay that was still pretty generous and reflected a lower cost of overhead than they actually were responsible for, and they still typically didn't like the percentage.  Pretty much all but one of them took an all or nothing approach.   

Companies that are not professional corporations can probably manage some of the fixed/overhead costs better so that they can offer a smaller reduction in wages, but I suspect even then a lot of workers would still have trouble emotionally accepting a greater than 50% cut in wages for a 50% cut in time spent.

[arebelspy]

It would be a big societal shift.

I think, as more and more automation occurs, we're more likely to have a UBI and no need to work at all (with people who do still working 5 days a week) than shifting to everyone working 3 days/week, but we'll see.  Either way, there's disruption coming.

[marty998]

We are already seeing mass casualisation and significant growth in part-time work here. There's only minuscule growth in full time work - companies just don't need the labour anymore.

Automation is already here - most of our non-BAU initiatives at work are geared towards automation of some sort.

[Jrr85]

We are already seeing mass casualisation and significant growth in part-time work here. There's only minuscule growth in full time work - companies just don't need the labour anymore.

Automation is already here - most of our non-BAU initiatives at work are geared towards automation of some sort.

Not sure where "here" is, but in the U.S., a lot of the growth in part time work is driven by regulation, especially Obamacare.  Some employers end up on the hook for a lot of extra benefit costs when somebody goes full time, so they look to minimize the number of full time employees, even if it's at the cost of having more part time employees. 

[cerat0n1a]

Plenty of people working 3 or 4 day weeks at my employer pretty much across the board - engineers, lawyers, IT people, HR, Finance staff. Most, but not all, because they have young children. There's a pro rata reduction in pay & holiday, but not other benefits (not typically a big deal here where companies don't have to worry about health provision.)

The UK (and I think all EU states) introduced a law that all employees with more than 6 months service have the right to ask for "flexible working" (i.e opting out of Mon-Fri 9-5.) The employer is not obliged to say yes (and typically will not allow it for senior or critical positions) but it's fairly normal for white collar workers.

While it's true that there's an overhead in terms of computers and office space for each extra employee, there's some evidence that people get just as much actual work done in 30 hours as they would do in 37.5 or 40, so I haven't really heard companies citing it as a problem.

[talltexan]

I would think employers that offer a 32 hour work week would see retention increase. Workers wouldn't jump ship to another company who'd expect 40 hours.

[GuitarStv]

While it's true that there's an overhead in terms of computers and office space for each extra employee, there's some evidence that people get just as much actual work done in 30 hours as they would do in 37.5 or 40, so I haven't really heard companies citing it as a problem.

I have no doubt that productivity in a large number of jobs could be just as good (or better) on a 30 hour work week.  On the whole though, most company management is stupid.  They have terrible methods of measuring productivity and quality of work.  Asses in seats for set periods of time is a method that a large majority of management is comfortable working with, and reducing this metric would make many of them nervous.