An informal survey, of unknown content, of 15 unidentified people, with 6 of those people being in the "boosts productivity" camp. Cool beans. I guess that settles the matter once and for all.
The people representing the businesses in preprint hold titles like co-founder, CEO/founder, COO, General Manager, and CEO. The size of the business and sector are also noted. I think your framing of them as "unidentified people" is therefore off, it is certainly not the same as a journalist conveniently using "unnamed sources", this is standard academic practice.
Different companies measure different things, but they do measure and that is addressed in the paper. "revenue (DM10), profit (DM4), other financial targets (DM2, DM6), customer/client satisfaction ( DM8, DM6), story points (DM14), sprint goals (DM7), billable hours (DM12), capacity ( DM4), response rates (DM10), standard operating procedure metrics (DM9), sick leave (DM1, D M 4. DM9, DM15), lodgements (DM12), employee happiness (DM6, DM15), projects delivered on time (DM15), and net promoter score ( DM4)". There were also other benefits like hiring and retention.
So this is not what "unidentified people" "thought" about productivity, this was founders and the c-suite using their existing favoured metrics. On those metrics a large number of them reported an increase in productivity, and a larger group reported no deleterious effects on productivity. This is broadly consistent with the trends in the wider research into this area globally, which continually go against the predictions that productivity will drop. Is is universally applicable? I don't think anyone is claiming that.
I've followed this area for a while and, sorry to be impolite, it is your summary that is less accurate than the the one you accuse of being AI-generated.
They call you lazy for not wanting to compete against the entire world in your own country.
In the early to mid 90s, I worked at a Silicon Valley based software startup. We had something called "The Century Club". You made the club if you'd done 3 consecutive months in the last year without working less than 100 hours in any week of those months (averaging 100 hours was not good enough). More engineers were in the club than not. We were told that making the club was not mandatory, but nobody in the club was ever fired and most not in the club were eventually fired.
The next startup I was at had a similar culture without the cute name. I remember my most exhausting stretch there was coming in on a Saturday morning, for a database migration that had to happen outside business hours, and working straight through without sleep (other than nodding off at the keyboard) until Monday afternoon. Our CEO was kind enough to bring us food. Even in regular times there, I would go exercise from 10-11 PM, and more often than not I'd go back to the office after.
A decade later I was at Amazon. Our entire group of ~100 engineers was required by our VP to work weekends, in the office, for months at a time when approaching ship dates. The VP would send an email every Friday during this period to remind us to be there. Of course he wasn't there.
Those were all pretty counterproductive, but didn't seem that unusual. The difference in the US back then was that even asking about such things during an interview would often result in no offer because the candidate didn't have a "good" work ethic. Things have gotten a lot better in the US in the last 10-15 years, but a lot of that came from competition for talent. The more that competition eases, the more likely it is that we'll go backwards on this.
Relating back to the article... For the last 3 years of my career (I retired a few years ago), I worked 4-day weeks, and it was all remote. This is just as anecdotal as the article, but I felt I got far more done, with higher quality, than at any point in my career. It was such a revelation.
Think again: this is entirely homegrown.
The H1B is a byproduct and a tool of corporate greed.
You'll have to spell out what you're suggesting here. "Think again" only works on LLMs, and then only sometimes.
The responder is saying that domestic American capitalists do not need foreign influence to abuse or exploit labor. The H1B visa program has absolutely nothing to do, for example, with Walmart telling their full time employees how to apply for government assistance programs because they refuse to pay a livable wage.
Calling it a study is a disservice to science. As Feynman said, anything where they have to put science as a suffix is usually not science.
The word 'study' is no sacred possession exclusive to the natural sciences, and there is nothing wrong with properly conducted surveys as a method in sociology, economics or psychology.
If surveys targeting the very people responsible for optimising their businesses' productivity, with no incentive to falsify their conclusions, is good evidence. Without any other way to systematically measure the change in productivity across a plethora of different businesses implementing a four-day workweek, it is as good as it gets — much better than purely theoretical assumptions that productivity must have dropped.
You can find the study here if you wish to critique its methods: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-026-07536-x
"Methods This study took a qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews with n=15 industry leaders" .. "Participants were identified via media reports " .. "A total of n=15 key informants participated in this study" .. "Recent research into appropriate sample sizes for qualitative research found saturation typically occurs between 9 and 17 interviews and the researchers agreed that no fresh insights or themes arose after the twelfth interview in this study (Hennink & Kaiser, 2022)"
The interviews contain invaluable insights such as: “adopting the 4DWW takes work” “Productivity up, waste removed” “Management -led/employee -driven,” “Train for leisure,”
I stand by my statement.
This is such an absurd thought-terminating cliche. Science suffixation seems more an indicator of the age of the field, not its scientific rigour. Are "climate science" and "computer science" not science?
On the flip side, just because it says "ology" at the end of a word does not mean it's a science.
> As Feynman said, anything where they have to put science as a suffix is usually not science.
I appreciate Feynman’s contributions—and in fact have been recently revisiting the Messenger lectures—but that seems like an unnecessary jab. The use of “usually” is also a convenient cop-out which makes the remark meaningless because the speaker can pick and choose in any conversation so they always win.¹
I thought about it and picked the first thing which came to mind: Natural science. From Wikipedia²:
> Natural science or empirical science is a branch of science concerned with the description, understanding, and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and reproducibility of findings are used to try to ensure the validity of scientific advances.
Seems pretty scientific to me. But alright, let’s check the article to give it a fair shot in context. The only time the word “science” comes up is “Social Sciences”. Again from Wikipedia³:
> Social science (or the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 18th century. It now encompasses a wide array of additional academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, linguistics, management, communication studies, psychology, sociology, culturology, and political science.
That’s a wide range. Are all of those “not science”?
¹ Assuming your rephrasing is accurate and not missing important context.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWr39Q9vBgo
Worth watching the clip so you can hear the argument directly. IMO his point is that peer review is not what makes something science. Nor are studies, publishing papers nor p-values, even gathering and reproducing data is not what makes science science.
Pity they didn't also change the gas tax.
Share tax changes... ugh
My hope was cashed up bogans would start betting on shares instead of housing/crypto. At least it could be funnelled into something productive
In regards to other comments further down regarding Australia's tax rates being high, internationally Australia is on the lower end.
I believe the (seemingly very loud) naysayers about these tax changes are those who receive much more of their income via 'capital' than via 'effort', and so my sympathies are minimal to non-existent. Sure, I have capital investments that will yield lower returns, but I believe the changes make "the way it works" overall more fair to those who don't have the means to earn means passively.
Cashed up bogans may funnel more of their money into new house builds, which is productive...?
Semi-unrelated addition: To some extent I think that 'owning ones own house' is a motivator to work harder, so as home ownership has grown increasingly out of reach, so has some amount of motivation to actually work dried up. There's an inherent 'participation in society' to owning a home that has an intangible but high value. Whether this has anything to do with Australia's decreasing productivity, I don't know.
Just because someone doesn't invest in shares, doesn't mean they are a bogan. I'm sick of this term being thrown around at people you look down upon...
I can apply Australian citizenship next year but I will leave ASAP after becoming a citizen for Singapore, Dubai or Hong Kong where the tax is < 20%
To pay $89,000 in taxes you'd have to be earning in the range of $350k. Do you think you're hard done by? I'd be rather annoyed if you were eligible for family support allowance in that earning range? (partially because I'd be missing out on a decent chunk of government support myself)
What am I missing about your situation that makes it remotely sympathetic?
I just treat it as paying for Australian citizenship to make me feel better and it still comes out cheaper than buying a Saint Kitts and Nevis passport. Australian passport also opens up the E3 visa to go to the USA
It's a privilege to come into this country, its a privilege to live in Sydney. If you don't like it, you can leave.
I make less (even before tax) than you PAID in tax, yet you still want handouts.
I hate to put it like this, but that's exactly what the poster is doing.
people that count their tax dollars are usually very selfish to begin with.
i generally think the gov can do better with how money is spent though.
I want to know why you are keen to become an Australian citizen if you’re not enthusiastic about contributing your share.
Constructive discussion about appropriate levels of taxation is important, but let’s at least agree that the things we rely on (roads, hospitals, schools, defence, …) cost something.
It is always funny to see how many think they are hard done even though by the numbers they are the winners by a wide margin.
If you hate taxes and fees, Singapore has a 60% Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty on residential property applied to foreign buyers, on top of an already insane property market. There's huge fines and government intervention into _everything_ and a massive high-stress culture.
Hong Kong is equally absurd for property and has a sword hanging over its head, that falls if China ever makes a move on Taiwan; the inevitable US and global sanctions would decimate HK.
Dubai is just a comical option.
Not sure if serious.
If serious: This is a really weird and almost sociopathic thing to say. I really don't get where you're coming from. It's certainly not the cultural direction I'd like to see Australia moving in.
https://www.life.gov.sg/guides/domestic-helper
https://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/services/visas/foreign_domestic_...
Describing it as "pretty good value" bothers me in a number of contexts.
I'm also fine with this never becoming a thing in Australia. Not sure how out-of-touch or in-touch that makes me, but that's how I feel nonetheless.
@Loocid, thanks for saying what I was dancing around.
The money is better than they get back home, but the whole power dynamic is extremely exploitable which results in a lot of abuse cases.
perhaps try a different perspective of, "it's good i live in a place where we contribute for a common good"
I preferred living in Hong Kong and Singapore and do not enjoy living here honestly, but if you treat it as payment for my+partner’s backup citizenship, it seems more justifiable.
I'm in a similar boat, and can relate to the on-going management and suppression of lifestyle creep in order to reach worthwhile goals. It feels like a never-ending battle, even after 20 years.
That means the four-day-workweek is even better than we thought it was!
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02259-6
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/feb/19/four-day-week-...
"Participants were identified via media reports featuring Australian firms trialling the 100:80:100 model, in addition to companies listed on recruitment sites that specialise in 4DWW jobs. In other instances, eligible organisations were recommended by the participants themselves."
I'd expect organisations with positive results will be the ones recommended by other participants - "talk to these people, it worked for them too!"
I'm also interested in whether or not organisations converted all staff to 100:80:100, or if it was optional. Is the performance driven by peer pressure?
Finally, the participants' measures of productivity will have significant lag time in them, so it depends on trial's length, e.g. "revenue", "profit", "csat", "projects delivered on time", "net promoter score".
Table 1 has "Duration", but the units are unlabelled, if it's weeks, it's less than a year, months is probably better for seeing performance changes.
It's an interesting qualitative study, I'd certainly like a four day work week with no change in comp.
Take all that AI productivity and found a one-day work week company. One day of focused collaboration each week, let bots and brains chew on stuff in the interim.
there are a lot of parallels with crypto 'mining' a transaction and AI slopping a functional output.
Then Australian real wages have also declined. So there is already low motivation to work beyond the minimum expectation.
Australia also has strong social security, at least until now, and there are plenty of odd jobs due to the real estate and tourism industries, so there is little pressure to survive unless you owe too much credit.
Automation and technology adoption also lags behind. For example, people still wait thirty minutes on a call to get an appointment with a doctor instead of making an online booking.
For all of these reasons productivity has been low and declining. An extra day off work is a strong stimulus for squeezing what gets done into the rest of the days.
In my opinion this is an extreme, just as the work yourself to death culture in India and China is. On a scale of a few decades economies where people worked agressively harder have grown tremendously but at the expense of the long-term wellbeing of the people. Places like Australia that were well off and felt little pressure to compete have sustained good quality of life but at the expense of having no competetitve edge anymore.
The point was never productivity, it was about humiliation and control.
If it were about productivity, workers would be paid substantially more to reflect the immense productivity gains we’ve created through automation; we are not.
If it were about effective time management or efficiency, we would be on four-day, 32 hour work weeks to reflect the real productive output of labor; we are not.
Just like how RTO excuses of “mentoring Juniors” and “improving team cohesion” went out the door for mass layoffs, despite data showing that a flexible schedule adapting to the needs of the team rather than whims of leadership have better outcomes and higher productivity; we now pay higher commute costs, fuel costs, energy costs, and opportunity costs so real estate investments don’t invert.
It’s all bullshit and lies, and this is one more study to add to the Alexandria-esque library of research proving that there is no single good way of working, and the insistence of refusing to change how we work is ultimately costing us more than if we just learned to adapt.
Fixing the work week to just 5 days have similar issues. Some weeks will be less work and other weeks more work but you spend the same five days there. So the what you learn that matters is to spend 5 days physically there and perform a minimum workload so you don't get fired. You drag the weeks with less work and pick up inefficient habits as a result. That is what a 5 day working week teaches. Again there will be exceptions.
Now assuming this study is correct I am not surprised with the results. You just incentivized workers to get the same amount of output done with the condition that you gain 1 day off. Off course workers will find better and quicker ways of working to get that day off.
Even if we did a 4 working day week the problem of working based on time either fixed or paid by the hour remains. The incentivisation is the problem.
Likewise the office worker working 40 hours per week, five days a week. If on some days the worker can come home early because they completed what actually needs to be done then that is better for the worker. But instead companies have a fixed 40 hours + overtime expectation. On the weeks with less work, people do busy work but instead could be using that time doing what they want.
Again the problem is the incentivization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
Related to it we have novelty effect and bunch of other psychological effects that are hard to isolate in human science. In this sector, a lot of studies cannot be repeated.
Same as every study of open-plan offices shows that they suck.
The psychopaths in charge do not care.
With population declines locked in almost globally (About 71% of the world’s population now lives in countries with birth rates below the replacement level needed to maintain population size), working age population decline, reducing labor supply, is also locked in. Reduced go forward labor supply reduction means labor power.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/fertility-rate-of-world-pop...
https://www.suerf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/f_fa99ccdbe...
The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 - August 2025 (400 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47680794 (US specific citations)
My my, seems like we gots ourselves a socialist o’er here. We don’t take kindly to your kind ’round these parts. What’s yer idea? Improve folks lives? Treat others with respect and dignity and give e’ryone meaning? Are ya cuckoo in tha head? Git him, boys.
I see the opposite in most startups that have a 6 day work week to get ahead of the "slowly moving" 5 day work week competition.
Eventually, but what's the typical lifecycle of a company? And if e.g. Treehouse succeeds or fails, was that because of their 4 day work week or because of any of the hundreds of other reasons a company might succeed or fail?
Problem is there's no such thing, monopoly powers, government subsidies, inter-company issues, contracts.
All these things can mean that a less functional, more wasteful and less productive organisation performs (in the sense of the metric that companies care about , line go up) better than a 4 day week startup.
Similarly, have you ever been “in the zone” and worked non-stop on a fun project, being super-productive for a full week or even multiple weeks, but then “crashed” (or even burned out) and your output got worse?
New companies are on a race against the clock. At the beginning everything is a cost, you’re constantly losing money. So you plough through to survive until you become stable. Then you need to scale back and take it slower to allow yourself to recuperate and keep going.
Also, keep in mind that small companies can often be very productive simply by having fewer employees and “red tape”. You can have an idea, send a message to someone else, get an immediate OK and get going. When a company gets too big and has lots of processes to keep things running, a lot of effort is wasted on even getting started.
I heard one economist on the ABC give the example of carwashes[2]. From the 1990s to the early 2000s, car washes in Australia were largely automated and hand-wash car washes were relatively uncommon. However, the abundance of cheap labour has since led to a proliferation of hand-wash car washes.
1. https://files.littlebird.com.au/SCR-20260525-ietj.png
2. https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/abc-news-daily/the-pr...
I wonder how it truly factors into productivity, though. How is productivity measured, and does that measurement capture what is true?
You mention automated car washes as a baseline. I never used those in the past because I figured they’d be rubbish or would scratch the car or whatever. So I’d occasionally wash the car myself, and that’s it. Now that we have manual car washes available, I use them from time to time. They clearly (I assert) do a better job than anything automated. And they do it inside and out.
So I find the comparison interesting, but in need of elaboration.
Good.
Developed countries should not aim to emulate the US. To get the same productivity you’d have to lower the standard of living of all the employees to the same level as those in the US.
No. Don’t do it.
Quality of life matters much more than profits.
Speaking as someone born in Yugoslavia.
That's almost how it was in Yugoslavia. Companies where "owned by society", but workers had voting rights. Whenever there was a vote to decide whether extra profit should be used for capital investments and/or operational improvements or assigned to salaries budget, everyone voted to increase their salaries.
Not every employ should be a co-owner, or at least not everyone should have voting rights.
There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs. - Thomas Sowell
You can't because they didn't sell out completely. In fact they still have some power to protect the companies from foreign products.
The result is a mishmash of protectionism and globalization.
Humans are weird.
Paying high prices and losing your job are bad, but not as bad as changing your mind.
But let's say it's true. Great. Punish them with tariffs. They also have diminished political power because they're no longer a local employer.
We are colletively at a breaking point as a society where people legitimately can't afford to exist in a society that will soon mint its first trillionaire. This is beyond even French revolution levels of wealth inequality.
“Oh but businesses will leave”
Yeah so what, if they do, we either didn’t want them, or they _actually won’t_ despite the squealing, or they will go, and if their segment of the market is useful, will get snapped up by new/local versions which do respect local constraints from the get-go.
All of these are better outcomes than not doing anything because “what if”.
Aren't poverty rates being reduced basically everywhere and people getting richer across all deciles? The truth is that even if 90% tax rate was enforceable it would not change much - many problems plaguing societies right now are due to bad legislation and NIMBYs, with housing being the prime example. Somehow people want at same time: more houses, cheaper housing and as little new housing development as possible.
A more important point is why is it that Americans objectively are richer yet feel poorer?
I thought about this a lot. Some of it is expectation wrapped up in the American Dream. You work hard, and get those rewards. But that isn’t true because life isn’t fair and capitalism isn’t particularly humane or ethical.
Some of it is perceived. The people who strike gold without hard work expect to keep striking more gold, and when the yield shrinks you’re appalled because that’s not how things should be.
US is a deeply individualistic society, now more so than ever. We don’t always sacrifice for the common good, because they’re supposed to work hard just like me.
Anyway if you read all that, thank you.
For a relatively short period it was true. Now majority works hard, lives from paycheck to paycheck and can not even own a house. Most results of what they produce goes to feed ever growing appetites of Musks
Seems to me, the question is more why all that supposed prosperity doesn't translate to the living quality improvements one would expect.
Also, I guess it's worth noting I've been "exempt" all my life (not subject to 40 hours a week), so that particular labor win I guess didn't really cross my mind.
(Certainly not "naturally")
E.g. the Russian Revolution (one of the main workers' requests in the events leading up to the Revolution was the 40 hour work week and fair treatment).
The unions were just a symptom to mediate the threat of violence in exchange for a larger share of the added value generated by the worker.
On the whole though, I'd say yes, people do care about productivity so long as they feel it's connected to their world and oriented in the right-ish direction.
Of course the rich tried to work around it. But culturally they also understood that paying a lot of taxes was considered their duty to society, especially in times of crisis.
Yes, obviously. The bulk of work of the company is done by the workers. That is to say, most of the value is generated by the labor of the workers. If a commensurate share of the profit is not returned to the employees, they’ve clearly been undercompensated.
The problem is that people with power are largely incentivized to push this rate lower than the optimal-for-the-median-person rate in order to benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
I’d much rather pay the prices corrected-for-supporting-livelihoods, than the artificially inflated prices used to line the pockets of the rich.
But unless you do central planning (which doesn't work) you can't really separate these two, can you?
Citation needed. Very little of what we buy today as a consumer are commodities whose price is determined primarily by the cost of production — and even then labor costs are rarely the most significant cost.
Most things we buy are priced according to what the consumer is willing to pay for it, and the balance sheet of the companies that sell most of the things we buy show there’s a lot of wiggle room there.
Services and goods where lots of human labor is required get much more expensive with larger cost of labor. E.g. fast-food, food delivery. And there's nothing wrong with that of course - I'd rather pay 2x more for delivery than have people working on wages that are not enough to even feed them.
Surely there is more slack in the system than the Epstein class wants to openly admit.
I would love a three day weekend every weekend. in fact I'd even "pay" for that (My father used his LSL one day a week every week.. a genius idea imho).
But I dont see it happening any time soon.
Employees are expensive, good employees are hard to find, and sometimes things need to be fixed outside 9-5 to avoid having an angry client on your hands.
If you wanted to live with a QoL of the 1940s you could do so today working 2 days a week. Of course you’d have no air conditioning, shitty food, no running water, etc etc.
You don’t have to LIKE corps but you should at least understand your world before calling for the guys with guns to get involved.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-026-07536-x
Hopkins, J., Bardoel, E.A. & Djurkovic, N. The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of the 100:80:100 model. Humanit Soc Sci Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-07536-x
This is the actual problem to discuss, not the days per week.
Stressors vary a lot by industry and experience level. A senior manager in IT may do more than 40 hours a week plus be on-call with almost no stress as long as their projects are doing well. Meanwhile, there may be no sane amount of overtime pay that will convince a young guy doing roofing in his first year, and he's highly stressed out either way.
Anyone spinning this as a political issue is plain ignorant.
Most Australian companies would be better off simply paying (10~90% of) its employees to stay at home.
I do wonder to what extent this is due to the Great Feminization - it is now routine to find workplaces that have "upgraded" their wokeness from reminders that sexual and physical violence is not OK, to policies like "disparaging remarks are not tolerated" or "you must respect your colleagues at all times".
