In the spirit of always starting your negotiation high and working toward a palatable middle, I'd like to propose a 2-day work week and 5 days off.

You may think that sounds crazy, but how many hours of dedicated, actual work do you do in a week? If you work a "9-5" and are reading this comment at work right now, I can give you a hint: it's not 40 ;)

I think we'd all be less distracted and more focused if we forced the "week's work" to happen in 2 , 8-hour days, and we could feel less guilty about not being perfectly-oiled constantly productive machines for the remaining 5/7 days of the week.

Age 49 here. I'm seriously considering that my next job should be 3 or 4 days per week, even if that means a somewhat proportionately reduced paycheck. Would fight for 4+ weeks vacation too.

I need quality of life more than I need cash right now.

Instead of mandating that everyone should work a fixed work week why not just let people decide how much they want to work? The 40 hour work week is just a "social construct". Let the unit of labor be half a work day (4 hours) instead of a whole person. If people want to work 24 or 32 or 44 hours let them.

The labor market isn't much of a market if you can't even do something as basic as decide how much you want to work.

There is probably an inflection point we've silently passed, where increased consolidation, high standards of living, and diminishing value in additional productivity mean that we can reduce the amount of work we need to do. However defending it will also require bold coalition building and trade policy. Countries that want to give their citizens a better life through shorter work weeks cannot do so if they're competing against other countries where workers are willing or forced to commit to 996 hours. Defending a better work week means enacting tariffs or other controls against trade partners that don't share the same policy, just as we should with offshored environmental violations.

I wish my office would switch the four days. Nobody really works on Fridays anyway. I’ll look at calendars and meetings with other employees where I’m at. People have maybe one meeting for the whole day.

I’d prefer we completely get rid of work hours.

Just tell me what we need to get done, I’ll do it, remotely of course. I’ve had various companies expect me to work extra hours for no additional pay , while never offering an extra day off.

Hell , I’d be down to do a 80 hour week if I know my average week is only 20 hours

Looks like, at least on IT, the world is starting to slowly change or experiment with 4 work days a week. I wonder how it will be influenced by job automation that is happening in parallel.

Rather than a 4 day work week, I always thought that a 4 hour work day was far superior (or at least, a 4 day work week of 5 hour work days; 20 hours a week total). You're not truly doing 8 hours of full work a week, so why not focus the time down to only productive hours? Here's an interesting article about it [0].

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2021/05/28/the-future...

If Eidos Montreal is the same as the game companies I have worked for they'll all be doing a ton of unpaid overtime. Work hours as stated on the contract meant nothing

Even as a conservative, I strongly support the normalization of 4 day work weeks, if for no other reason than to create more competition for domestic lower skill labor (which will over time result in rising wages). A job is the best social program. This will create more jobs while at the same time allowing people to live better lives. 40 hour work weeks have outlived their usefulness long time ago. It's ridiculous that people have to neglect their kids to make someone else rich.

> without changing the working conditions currently in place nor the salaries of employees, thus switching from the 40-hour week to 32-hour

Yes please!!

My hypothesis is that most people doing knowledge work already work 4 days/week, if not less. Call it "the shadow hours".

It's not possible or practical for managers to monitor how much their reports spend time thinking. Also, most managers understand how much secondary work takes up people's time and gets in the way of the primary work. I.e. Managers aren't really in a position to question how much time it takes someone to complete their work.

Shifting to a 4 day work week is simply codifying a practice that has been routine for some time now.

Will their salaries be lowered to match the new number of hours per week?

Progress! Bit by bit

I'd really like a 4/2 week. It's just annoying to have an odd number of days. You can't maintain a schedule of something every other day.

One of my favorite game studios on HN? I assumed a new Deus Ex was announced.

Glad they’re making this change, looking forward to reading an update next year.

If they really believe in this they should stop half ass it and work only one day a week for optimal productivity.

Probably 4 days of 20h instead of 5 at 16h if it’s anything like other triple A publishers.