I prefer three 10-12 hour days for 100% pay.<p>Purely answering the question... The pay, unless you bill by the hour. If you bill hourly and you can comfortably live on 80%, then you can aim for 4 days and flex if needed. It will give you time to work on side projects or just relax.<p>If you're salary, then the 4 day 'deal' is a Faustian bargain. You will be expected to be available for free on the fifth day, and you will rarely ever get it off. That's just the nature of business.
I'd go with 4 days. My last two jobs have been less than full time (originally 3.5 days a week, right now it's more like 4.5 days/week), and it's pretty great.<p>If anyone wants to do this the key is:<p>1. Have some money in the bank so you're nor desperate for a job.<p>2. Have in-demand skills.<p>3. Get some practice negotiating.<p>4. Ideally do this at place you already work, or with consulting client: much easier than negotiating shorter workweek with people who don't know you.<p>(If anyone is interested I'm writing a book on how programmers can get to a sane workweek: reasonable hours, remote work, or even a shorter workweek, though that's harder. Initial email course is at <a href="https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/" rel="nofollow">https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/</a> until the book is done.)
Depends what kind of progressive income tax system you work in. At the end of the day for me, 80% salary wouldn't mean much less net income, but that extra free time would be amazing.
80% salary assuming my significant other is working either in the same schedule or a 5-day a week now. If not, I'd still do it but I'll probably need to do some budgeting :-)<p>4 days of work and 3 days of rest is, IMO, the perfect balance. You get enough time to rest that you actually look forward to going back to work (if you enjoy it).<p>Most of us do a lot of chores on the weekend that we can't do in the weekday because they're only open 9-5. A 3 day weekend would give us more time to ourselves.
I Always go for a paycut and 80% salary. At 26, have never worked a full 5 day job.
But I just prefer to have the extra day to actually do things I enjoy, or trying new things(i'm a learning new things addict) everything from language classes to yoga, to dance, to making it easier to go on longer holidays Friday-Monday, no hassle!
Definitely the latter.<p>However, I'd also take 50% and a 5-day week, if the team was guaranteed to be as pleasant to work on as the best team I've worked with.
I recently changed from 5 to 4 and took the pay cut. It's awesome and humane. Especially with young children keeping me busy at weekends. The assumption you stated doesn't apply to me though.
It really depends on if I believed that my fifth day would be mine or would the demands of the work bleed into that day? Similar to 20% time at Google - it's easy for your "real" work to take over that time if you don't defend it actively and it's unlikely that you'll be vigilant the whole time.<p>I think in knowledge work - trading off time for salary is generally not a great move because we're almost always "on the clock."