<story><title>More bosses give four-day workweek a try</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2020/02/21/807133509/enjoy-the-extra-day-off-more-bosses-give-4-day-workweek-a-try</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Ididntdothis</author><text>It seems a lot of these experiments are a success. But after a while somebody gets greedy and thinks “we get good productivity at 32 hours. I wonder how much more we could get at 40 hours?”  And soon you are back at the old schedule.&lt;p&gt;Something similar happened  at my company. For once a project was ahead  of schedule. So instead of thinking that the system worked well and keep working in relaxed manner management decided to “pull in” the deadline and suddenly the project was a death march again.&lt;p&gt;For some people it’s hard to accept that relaxed people are productive. They want to see stress and overtime or they will think that people are underperforming.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ChrisMarshallNY</author><text>I was a development manager for years, for a Japanese company.&lt;p&gt;The Japanese are type A++ (at least, in Tokyo). They are masters at applying stress across the Pacific.&lt;p&gt;As a manager, it was my job to insulate my team from the stress, and I often took the hit for telling my bosses that I wasn&amp;#x27;t going to push my people harder than they already were working.&lt;p&gt;It seemed to work out in the end. When they finally rolled up my team, I had been managing it for 25 years, and the person with the least seniority in my team had a decade with the company.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a whole different world, out there, now. I had a manager at a startup tell me that conventional management assumes that engineers will only stay at a company for 18 months, so they really pile on the stress.&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t even imagine that. There were a lot of downsides to working with the corporation that I worked for, but they treated us all with a great deal of respect, and made it possible for me to keep valuable, senior-level C++ developers for decades; despite rather sub-optimal pay, and a not-so-thrilling work environment.</text></comment>
<story><title>More bosses give four-day workweek a try</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2020/02/21/807133509/enjoy-the-extra-day-off-more-bosses-give-4-day-workweek-a-try</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Ididntdothis</author><text>It seems a lot of these experiments are a success. But after a while somebody gets greedy and thinks “we get good productivity at 32 hours. I wonder how much more we could get at 40 hours?”  And soon you are back at the old schedule.&lt;p&gt;Something similar happened  at my company. For once a project was ahead  of schedule. So instead of thinking that the system worked well and keep working in relaxed manner management decided to “pull in” the deadline and suddenly the project was a death march again.&lt;p&gt;For some people it’s hard to accept that relaxed people are productive. They want to see stress and overtime or they will think that people are underperforming.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kody</author><text>I agree that it&amp;#x27;s hard for some people (managers) to see a relaxed, happy person and believe that they&amp;#x27;re also totally productive.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t blame them either; I feel like the image of overly-caffeinated, stressed-out people is embedded in our collective consciousness as representative of High Productivity and our lizard brains can&amp;#x27;t seem to be able to reconcile that with the data that is saying &amp;quot;relaxed people who make enough money, are treated well, and have the freedom to live satisfactory lives outside the office will most probably be more productive, focused, and effective at work.&amp;quot;</text></comment>