Greece - 6 day working week

[Jumper118]

I am surprised more companies do not ditch the Monday to Friday and increase work hours but have more days off. Since 2016 I have worked 12 hour shifts but only work 7 days in 14. With holidays you are working less than half the year whilst still doing 40 hours a week.

Reduces commuting costs and if more people did it the roads would be less clogged. I also get to take my kids to school which would never happen on Monday to Friday and also gives me 6 hours to do what I want.

I am sure companies that do not need to operate 7 days a week you could even do 3 days of 12 hours taking you to 36 hours.

At my work the weekend shifts for day/nights are 3 x 12 hours, 6am-6pm and 6pm to 6am. 36 hours in total and with the weekend shift being higher paid its a great shift to get. if you take a week off when you're on a weekend shift you get 11 days off, so it feels like you get 1.5 weeks for 1 weeks holiday. Most people who do it do normally pick up extra shifts during the week in busy periods or if someone is off sick or on holiday too. Quite a few people with kids find it useful as well because they can save on child care and take their kids to school during the week.

Unfortunately my department doesn't cover the weekend shift. The only downside is you cant see your mates on a weekend when they are off.

 

[VRDoctor]

Startups typically want longer hours than a regular company. While hybrid working and remote work is often fine I'm not sure many would want you to do just 28 or 30 hour weeks unless you're essentially a part-time employee being paid proportionally less.

Startups (or at least the ones that will succeed) are task orientated, not optic orientated. They are also more agile in thier hiring practices - they often cannot compete with the big boys on salary so they offer other perks in order to attract the best talent. I've worked for a few.

Four-Day Week Set To Explode in 2024 - Startups.co.uk

2024 could be the year of the four-day week, as research finds a huge number of businesses plan to trial or implement the policy this year.

startups.co.uk

The 4-day working week: a viable option for startups in the future? | EU-Startups

The conversation around the viability of a 4-day working week has picked up. Working for 4 days is said to help teams become more productive, enhance rest

www.eu-startups.com

https://4dayweek.io/blog/tech-companies-with-4-day-work-weeks

 

[413x]

All this 4 day a week talk. I'm going to see if I could get it too. From my perspective I don't see why not

 

[Terminal_Boy]

In rhodes, the hotel staff were saying they get one day off a month during the season, then no work for the remainder of the year!

Shops open dawn till dusk.

Was just going to post this having spoken with various locals at Pefkos over the years. Seasonal staff there work all hours during the tourist season, because unless they have second job to go to over the winter, the money they make has to last them until the next season.

 

[dowie]

Startups (or at least the ones that will succeed) are task orientated, not optic orientated. They are also more agile in thier hiring practices - they often cannot compete with the big boys on salary so they offer other perks in order to attract the best talent. I've worked for a few.

Doesn't matter that they're task-oriented or whatever, the fact is they have lots of tasks to do and typically require longer hours in order to achieve that.

So long as others can work longer hours then there are people who will out-compete others by doing that.

 

[Jokester]

Reading between the lines of the media spin here, did Greece not have a opt out of the WTD prior, so people were just straight up doing cash in hand for work over 40 hours and then not declaring the income?

 

[VRDoctor]

there are people who will out-compete others by doing that.

That's a very old fashioned perspective. I don't know where you work but modern workplaces, esp start ups, don't operate like that anymore.

Empathetic, contemporary and well trained effective managers see right though that kind of stuff.

There is greater stock put in preventing burnout, esp for high performers which are the target of start ups and agile companies. It's not about hours and bums on seats anymore.

 

[dowie]

That's a very old fashioned perspective. I don't know where you work but modern workplaces, esp start ups, don't operate like that anymore.

Sorry, but startups typically still expect plenty of work, an extra full day off per week is going to be a fad for a minority of them in the same way that PR gimmicks like "unlimited time off" actually tend to mean employees taking a bit less holiday.

There is greater stock put in preventing burnout, esp for high performers which are the target of start ups and agile companies. It's not about hours and bums on seats anymore.

No there's lots of lip service about it and very little action in reality. And the basic fact of competition remains that overall people who choose to work longer can still get more done.

I remember a while back some games company made a big public faff about crunch time and how they were eliminating it... then surprise surprise went back on the whole thing when they were up against a deadline.

Google used to have something called 20% time where their brilliant engineers could spend a whole day per week working on anything they wanted, in reality, these days with people trying to push for promotion and do more, perform better than their peers how well is that 20% time thing going in reality? Are people actually spending a whole day per week on some hobby project? Or are they mostly trying to keep on top of their day job and make the best case they can for their promo pack and promotion to the next employee level?

People might be less productive on average in the additional hours worked but they still get stuff done and there are often competing pressures, new deadlines that get in the way of feel-good initiatives.

With unlimited time off employees who want to compete still won't take it, other also feel pressured (especially if not top performers). With notionally 1 day off per week, combined with remote or hybrid working then realistically similar things can easily happen, is the guy who is already behind on some deadlines still going to choose one non-weekend day that week to not work? Is the developer with multiple backlog items and a performance appraisal requirement to reduce the backlog going to take all their days off?

And on the flip side, is the guy who wants to do more, complete more and try and work on the new initiative he's proposed in order to earn a promo going to take all those extra days off?

There are inherently obvious conflicts of interest with all that stuff... I mean you could force 4 days a week and force no remote work and exactly 9-5 4 days a week only from the office and everyone out but in reality, hardly anyone would do that and in reality, most people work more than just 9-5 in any number of office jobs (plenty of jobs will have 9-5 but a culture of staying till 6pm or so) but especially in startups even more hours can be required and especially when close to deadlines. That's true of many competitive fields - big law, investment banking etc.

"yeah we've got a big demo on Monday for the investors and you've got your weekly extra day off on Friday/tomorrow, please do still take it off even though the demo isn't complete and we'll look like chumps if you do" as if...

 

[SexyGreyFox]

I feel guilty working 13.5 hours a week.

 

[VRDoctor]

Sorry, but startups typically still expect plenty of work, an extra full day off per week is going to be a fad for a minority of them in the same way that PR gimmicks like "unlimited time off" actually tend to mean employees taking a bit less holiday.



No there's lots of lip service about it and very little action in reality. And the basic fact of competition remains that overall people who choose to work longer can still get more done.

I remember a while back some games company made a big public faff about crunch time and how they were eliminating it... then surprise surprise went back on the whole thing when they were up against a deadline.

Google used to have something called 20% time where their brilliant engineers could spend a whole day per week working on anything they wanted, in reality, these days with people trying to push for promotion and do more, perform better than their peers how well is that 20% time thing going in reality? Are people actually spending a whole day per week on some hobby project? Or are they mostly trying to keep on top of their day job and make the best case they can for their promo pack and promotion to the next employee level?

People might be less productive on average in the additional hours worked but they still get stuff done and there are often competing pressures, new deadlines that get in the way of feel-good initiatives.

With unlimited time off employees who want to compete still won't take it, other also feel pressured (especially if not top performers). With notionally 1 day off per week, combined with remote or hybrid working then realistically similar things can easily happen, is the guy who is already behind on some deadlines still going to choose one non-weekend day that week to not work? Is the developer with multiple backlog items and a performance appraisal requirement to reduce the backlog going to take all their days off?

And on the flip side, is the guy who wants to do more, complete more and try and work on the new initiative he's proposed in order to earn a promo going to take all those extra days off?

There are inherently obvious conflicts of interest with all that stuff... I mean you could force 4 days a week and force no remote work and exactly 9-5 4 days a week only from the office and everyone out but in reality, hardly anyone would do that and in reality, most people work more than just 9-5 in any number of office jobs (plenty of jobs will have 9-5 but a culture of staying till 6pm or so) but especially in startups and especially when close to deadlines.

"yeah we've got a big demo on Monday for the investors and you've got your weekly extra day off on Friday/tomorrow, please do still take it off even though the demo isn't complete and we'll look like chumps if you do" as if...

There is so much wrong there (and unsupported by the current literature) that I can't even be bothered refuting it.

I'll leave you to your old fashioned and outdated notions of what the modern workplace is.

 

[Ayahuasca]

There is so much wrong there (and unsupported by the current literature) that I can't even be bothered refuting it.

I'll leave you to your old fashioned and outdated notions of what the modern workplace is.

While there has been a shift in the last few years towards the ways you've described, there are still absolutely plenty of startups that want to do things the old way and try to brute force it with hours.#

In those companies, there's also still a lot of people who will put in extra hours for no pay just to get ahead of their peers.

 

[VRDoctor]

While there has been a shift in the last few years towards the ways you've described, there are still absolutely plenty of startups that want to do things the old way and try to brute force it with hours.

I'm not pretending it's all roses but I did caveat it:-

"Startups (or at least the ones that will succeed) are task orientated"

 

[Ayahuasca]

I'm not pretending it's all roses but I did caveat it:-

"Startups (or at least the ones that will succeed) are task orientated"

I don't think it's that simple either, there are startups that will succeed using the "old fashioned" approach because there are many other factors at play.

 

[dowie]

There is so much wrong there (and unsupported by the current literature) that I can't even be bothered refuting it.

Sure...

I'll leave you to your old fashioned and outdated notions of what the modern workplace is.

I'll leave you to your belief in every new story/PR attempt and denial of reality.

Do you deny that for example, "unlimited holidays" is actually rather far from the supposed PR around it? that was the big thing a little while back and you could have waffled about the "current" literature re: how great an idea it is.

But I'm not disputing that people believe this stuff is a great idea in principle, you could take time to cite that if you like but it doesn't change the argument being made here... years later when people look at how that actually worked out then guess what? Unlimited holidays = less holidays!

Try to be a bit more grounded when it comes to new gimmicky practices, there are often good reasons/obvious pressures behind the existing ones.... games developers aren't doing "crunch time" because they think it's fun and all really want to do it for example.

 

[Chrisc]

I work 6 days a week every week since I started working other than holidays and the coof. Its great as it only gives you half the number of free days to spend all of your monies on computer parts and so you end up saving more. You also get paid more too as you are going more hours. On average I do 53-56 hours which is easily sustainable all year round without burning out.

56hrs a week and not burn out? impossible...

 

[Jumper118]

56hrs a week and not burn out? impossible...

Pretty easy once you get used to it. It also depends on the job.

One of the guys who came here was from steel mill doing 5*12 hour shift a week and he reckons the work here is easy. Another guy was working on fishing boats in the north sea and he said that was too hard for him, but there are plenty of fishermen who do that their whole life and those are extremely intense and long hours in bad conditions.

We've also had people come from other factories who think its way too hard and stressful and have left after a few months or couple of years.

I'm not pretending it's all roses but I did caveat it:-

"Startups (or at least the ones that will succeed) are task orientated"

It really depends on the job. Maybe at some desk job you can get away with low working hours, but any real job where the company is actually making something or running machines the more men in and the more hours they put in, the more product you can ship out. Simple as that really.

There are many other examples where you need people to work certain hours and they can't just walk in and out as they please. Your posts previous do sound quite delusional to the average wagie slave.

 

[Rroff]

56hrs a week and not burn out? impossible...

I can't remember exactly now but my brother used to work like 50-60 hours a week, spend nearly 100 hours a week playing World of Warcraft, goodness knows when he slept.

 

[adam cool dude]

56hrs a week and not burn out? impossible...

It is easy you just don't sleep as much. 5am start. Back at home at 5pm for dinner. In bed by 10pm and up again at 4am to start it all over again. 6 hours sleep.

Plenty of time to sleep when your dead.

 

[Rroff]

Plenty of time to sleep when your dead.

Few years of that and you might as well be dead and it will definitely take a toll on your mental health, especially if alternating shift patterns.

 

[Ayahuasca]