Young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek

Moving back to the US after living abroad I was used to month long holidays. I applied to a few companies and tried to negotiate 5 weeks PTO. They wouldn&#x27;t budge. Then 4 weeks. Still no. I offered to drop my salary in exchange for vacation. Still no. I asked HR why everything else was negotiable except PTO and they told me I would have more time off then people who&#x27;ve been there for 7+ years.<p>This was my first clue that there was a lot of momentum to keep you dependent on your employer and it doesn&#x27;t stop with a paycheck. 10-12 days per year really restricts your mobility. Instead of backpacking through SE Asia for a month I basically used that time for Thanksgiving and&#x2F;or Christmas.<p>BTW, having 3 days off means you can sprinkle on additional vacation time throughout the year. I&#x27;m not surprised Gen-Z would negotiate less vacation time if they could use it more effectively.

Young people don&#x27;t want to work hard because there&#x27;s little incentive.<p>No matter how hard you work, unless you&#x27;re in the top 5%, you&#x27;re <i>far</i> priced out of most places most people want to live.<p>You can afford everything comfortably beside housing &amp; health care (which you don&#x27;t need much of when you&#x27;re young) on a relatively low wage in the US.<p>So you&#x27;ve pretty much given up on housing. What&#x27;s the point in working hard?

In my experience working at a 4DWW company I saw the opposite.<p>The happiest were the oldest, most established workers, because they had already ticked off all so many life goals, had a house, a dog, kids, etc and so less money and more time was great.<p>In contrast the youngest workers had no stable housing, and wanted <i>more money</i> more than they wanted time, because they wanted an ability to buy themselves some of those lifestyle things the older workers already had (read: stable housing).<p>In practice the young workers that needed more money simply used the other day for another job, which was their right.<p>This was in an environment with a dysfunctional unaffordable housing market, so maybe this all just shows how important affordable housing is and how it eventually starts to trumps all other issues.

I&#x27;ve seen some strange criticisms after a friend of mine transitioned to a 4-day week. Like whether he has any ambitions, doesn&#x27;t want to work etc. He is a very committed, good programmer really kinda keeping the company running. I bet he gets more stuff done in 4 days than others in 5. But he has a very active private, social life. He goes a lot on vacations, has hobbies or is just actively enjoying life. He&#x27;s also in europe so quite a bit of vacation.<p>Programmers usually have a comfortable salary, even with 80% you&#x27;re still above average and have a lot of disposable income. Maybe a smaller apartment but who cares.<p>He has such an enormous quality of life that I kinda suspect that all the ones got it wrong. In the end life is not about grinding for the man, it&#x27;s just a means to an end. They should justify themselves, not him. It&#x27;s also really stupid considering how committed he is, he just has a rich life besides work. I see others just working inefficiently, trying to dodge responsibility and being kinda lazy. But he get&#x27;s criticised.

I had a 4 day workweek for a period of time after I got diagnosed with ADHD in a ripe age. Eventually bumped it back up to 5 days because it paid me 1&#x2F;5 more. My efficiency, however, is around the same, or even slightly lower, than it was when I was working 4 days. Which isn&#x27;t low enough to cause me any issues, but it&#x27;s also sort of silly that I get paid more for the same&#x2F;less solely due to spending more hours in the office and not for the work I&#x27;m actually performing. This isn&#x27;t because I&#x27;m quiet quitting or whatever trend there is hip with the anti-work crowd, it&#x27;s simply because I&#x27;m more tired and I perform worse when I&#x27;m tired.

Here is one thing about 4 day week that opens eyes. If you are let&#x27;s say 35 and hope to retire at 60, switching to a 4 day week could save you about 1,300 workdays—that&#x27;s, roughly 3.5 years.<p>The 5-minute window where my funny 4 day week calculator will shine: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;okjob.io&#x2F;4-day-week-calculator&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;okjob.io&#x2F;4-day-week-calculator&#x2F;</a>

[…]<p>&gt; <i>Now it is true that the needs of human beings may seem to be insatiable. But they fall into two classes --those needs which are absolute in the sense that we feel them whatever the situation of our fellow human beings may be, and those which are relative in the sense that we feel them only if their satisfaction lifts us above, makes us feel superior to, our fellows. Needs of the second class, those which satisfy the desire for superiority, may indeed be insatiable; for the higher the general level, the higher still are they. But this is not so true of the absolute needs-a point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all of us aware of, when these needs are satisfied in the sense that we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes.</i><p>[…]<p>&gt; <i>For many ages to come the old Adam will be so strong in us that everybody will need to do some work if he is to be contented. We shall do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich to-day, only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!</i><p>* John Maynard Keynes, <i>Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren</i> (1930)<p>* <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.econ.yale.edu&#x2F;smith&#x2F;econ116a&#x2F;keynes1.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.econ.yale.edu&#x2F;smith&#x2F;econ116a&#x2F;keynes1.pdf</a><p>An essay putting forward &#x2F; hypothesizing four reasons on why the above did not happen (We haven&#x27;t spread the wealth around enough; People actually love working; There&#x27;s no limit to human desires; Leisure is expensive):<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vox.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;11&#x2F;20&#x2F;7254877&#x2F;keynes-work-leisure" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vox.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;11&#x2F;20&#x2F;7254877&#x2F;keynes-work-leisure</a>

This is a huge trend in Europe. A sizable portion of people I know are simply deciding to work as little as possible, even if that means getting paid less. The general perception is that there is no point in saving for a house or for retirement, and many perceive the career ladder game to be a fool&#x27;s errand. So they just want to get enough money to live at present.

If there&#x27;s one thing that has truly happened with the pandemic, it&#x27;s that it has exposed the psychopathy of grinding in corporations, and made people more aware of the value of their own lives. Thus, leading to large masses of people not caring about the corporate and management nonsense.<p>For folks who are concerned about younglings not working hard enough or China will take over or some other boomer ideology, this is even happening among youth in developing countries.<p>Solution: People want to be treated with respect and dignity. That&#x27;s it. As long as companies treat people as fungible factory workers, companies will be in a constant churn of employees - especially as the newer generations are smaller in size.

Degrowth ironically growing in popularity.

One way to think about it is that you’re getting a 20% pay bump. It’s not 1:1 exactly but I’m willing to bet a lot of people would trade certain perks for a 20% bump. But it’s a net loss for society to remove these perks. Being young means you don’t need these perks. You don’t give a damn about healthcare, child care, or life insurance. But you most likely will in a decade and getting it back these perks would be nearly impossible after you trade short terms gains for long term loss.

I took a $50k job in my late 20s just for full remote with no calls&#x2F;meetings, just Github issues and a chat app for synchronization.<p>I felt pathetic accepting the offer especially after my counteroffer was rejected (imagine your bluff failing here, lmao), but I remembered sitting in meetings for a higher paying job fantasizing about how I&#x27;d give half my salary away just to have no meetings and living on a beach surfing in the mornings. And that&#x27;s what I did.

I hope the four day workweek is an actual four day workweek (I.e. 32 hr weeks) and not 10x4&#x27;s. Those are worse.

I give myself a fixed number of &quot;hands on keyboard&quot; hours that I need to meet each week and track my time to the second. If I hit my number in four days, hey, three day weekend. If I don&#x27;t hit it by Friday, I&#x27;m working Saturday. I love it. I want to keep doing this for as long as I can.

Should be fighting for a 3 day work week by now, not a 4.

Give us Wednesday off, not Friday.<p>Then we can rest between 2-day work spurts.

I would sacrifice &gt;20% of my pay for a 4-day work week.

I negociated a 4-day workweek for my first job when I was 23.<p>25 years later, I wouldn&#x27;t do it. I&#x27;m worried for my retirement, I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;ll have enough saving to live in a safe and convenient place, and have access to good healthcare. This is the type of things you don&#x27;t think of when you just graduate and are used to the student worklife.

Source for the article:<p>“Younger workers want a 4-day workweek — and some would give up remote work or higher pay for it” <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bankrate.com&#x2F;personal-finance&#x2F;younger-workers-want-four-day-workweek&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bankrate.com&#x2F;personal-finance&#x2F;younger-workers-wa...</a><p>&gt; Close to 8 in 10 Gen X and baby boomer workers (or 78 percent for those between the ages of 43 and 77 combined) support a four-day workweek.<p>&gt; But younger workers indicate they’re willing to go to greater lengths for the schedule, and it sets them apart. More than 9 in 10 of Gen Z and millennial workers who prefer a four-day work week (or 92 percent) would still be willing to work that schedule if it meant giving something up, versus 86 percent of Gen X and baby boomers.<p>&gt; The steps those younger workers say they would be willing to take include working longer hours (48 percent), changing jobs or companies (35 percent) and coming into the office or working fully in person (33 percent) to have three days off a week. Some would even be willing to take less vacation time (20 percent), accept a pay cut (13 percent) or take a step back in their careers (12 percent) for it.

Old people will also!

Older people as well. :)

If ppl got the same quality of life our grandparents and maybe some parents got, I&#x27;m sure this wouldn&#x27;t be a topic.

If they (or you, or anyone) want a 4 day work week, then why not pick a profession that allows it? Most healthcare related fields work in 12 hour shifts, so working 3-4 days a week is the normal standard.<p>Not every professional job is an office job 9-5.