Probably one of the more contentious discisions that I've had to deal with as a person with the ability to set culture at my startup, Compliable, was to support the four day work week. Which, is to say, our variant - where you pay for the full forty hours and only enforce thirty two total hours of actual work. This varient, to me, is the most human way to do things and I'll break down those reason briefly here
I've been many places where Friday was just an ass in seats policy implication. No one wants to push to production. No one wants to have a meeting. Lunch goes an extra hour and people just aren't fucking engaged. So why? Why force people to be in the office when they don't want to be. Why force them to hang out and send memes when they can be home (working if they want on projects they care about) or just taking time to enjoy their families. Or what a number of people do, schedule dentist/doctor appointments instead of using the other work days
One thing ive noticed is that when, we do need to push. People show up and they care and they try, because we, as a company gave them time. We respected their time, so when something broke off hours - its not an issue of coverage, its just taken care of. Thats something you don't see with over taxed engineering teams. You get crispy responses and while we still have a root cause analysis the next work day, we aren't dealing with have dead engineers.
I could find more bullets, and I probably should, given the number of times ive had to defend this cultural choice. But its deep in me, that part of me that just enjoys working without structure. Which I get to do, if I want on Fridays. I can spin up a microservice or I can go walk with my wife - I can go for a run and not worry im not in by 10am. I love it and I love giving that freedom to anyone who we employ. Honestly, its one of the few things in my life I don't mind defending - especially when folks hate it because we could be doing 'more'. Well, sure, you can always have people doing more, but the thing is
That shouldn't be the fucking requirement. People need to be motivated, and what motivates someone more than by telling them they get some of their life back to work on what they want.
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updated: 13 November 2023.