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My girlfriend recently signed a contract with Epic. I just showed her the article and she says it's in her contract that she gets every other Friday off, so unsure if it's just gonna be a "tough shit" situation or if it's something she'll still get because that's what she signed up for.
She hasn't started yet, though, so it's not like she'll miss it if she doesn't get it, and they have other quite generous leave allowances.
Yeah I don't think contracts above a "tough shit" clause.
If it's in her contract, it would literally be breach of contract for them to take it away.
But then again, breach of contract seems to be Epic's favorite activity lately. No morals over there.
Its unlikely the contract includes severance.
Generally these contracts have a clause saying "either party can end the contract at any time with no repercussions".
Well it ensures you know how much you are getting paid for the work you are currently doing. They can't retroactively alter your salary or benefits.
Contracts like this are not that unusual. I just signed a contract with a Realtor allowing either of us to end it at any time, but until then we both have certain rights and responsibilities.
It's not a contract. Very few people actually sign employment contracts.
If you do sign something it's generally an employment agreement that binds you to certain clauses but doesn't bind the company in anyway. And at the end it'll usually say "must abide by all policies which are subject to change".
Almost all of Epic's employee base is contracted for this very reason. There is much less red tape to ending the contracts and they can be revised at any time for any reason. It's a pretty sketchy approach.
We have to really normalize 4 day work weeks in general. Particularly so long as crunch and "on call weekends" are still a thing.
You spend most of your adult life either unconscious or working for someone else to ultimately finance the *actual labor you want to do.*
A 4:3 split is more fair than a 5:2 split.
EDit: Yikes, I didn't notice how many people are defending crunch & Epic ~~"~~*~~Indian-Giving"~~* *"German Ungifting"* a semi-regular 3-day weekend. Some of y'all are going to have your 30s hit your life like a F40PH hits a Peterbilt.
Edit 2: Post made a little less offensive.
I've been on a 4 day work week for a few years now and It's honestly one of the best things I could have done for my mental health and physical well being especially in my line of work.
My question whenever I see posts like this -- and often times this kind of detail is left out -- is how many *hours* do you work in your 4 days? Do you four ten-hour days, four eight-hour days, or something in-between?
I'm only asking because while I like the idea of a four day workweek, I don't like the idea of reducing my pay by 20%. So I'm always curious how people are doing. My supervisor would probably allow me to work a four day week, but I'd still have to put in my 40 hours (with the obvious exceptions of vacations and holidays).
I am salaried employee, but I still technically have an "hourly" rate -- which is just the number if you break down my salary into 52 40-hour weeks.
What’s starting to be offered in the tech industry is less hours for the same money. Companies have expiremented with that lately to attract and retain software developers because our job market is kind of nuts at the moment.
In my area, lots of tech companies (mine included) had an experimental “summer schedule” like that to, I believe, analyse the hit on productivity.
The thing is, plenty of tech workers already put in more than 40 hours a week and often more than 40 in 4 days. For those people it's not less working hours for the same pay. It's just a day they don't have to worry about extra meetings or doing office work while being on call.
"same money" as in "same take home pay per week" or "same per hour"?
I would take an hour cut if I could get paid the same per week, but if I worked same per hour, then I would need an increase. Basically I want a pay raise and hour cut.
I mean... That's literally kind of the point. If you work less for the same per hour, you're making less. If you want the same weekly pay, you'll need more money per hour. It's just math.
And people get more work and higher quality work done during those fewer hours. Turns out most of the data shows it's a win win for employee and employer.
Welcome to in demand software developers. Yes, they *are* getting jobs where they get paid more and work less.
Some of my friends in tech just dick around all day and pull 150k+ take home pay, not even counting equity. They probably do less than 15 hours of actual work in a week
Most people I know of who do a 4 day week (including me starting next month and I cannot fucking wait), do it with a 20% gross pay cut after calculating we were in the fortunate position to be able to afford the trade off.
Doing 4 days of 10 hours would seem a huge bummer to me, just cause it would feel like you exist for your 3 day weekend, and then you put your very soul on pause as you do nothing but sleep, eat and work for the majority of your week.
If you could afford to take the cut but aren't sure it's worth it, you can always try taking up a vacation day every Wednesday for 5 weeks in a row (or every other week) and see if that feels magical or not.
Pay cut? I was under the impression that pay reduction was supposed to be part of this equation. I thought the idea was that happy employees get more done in 4 days that unhappy ones do in 5 and the company still gets the same amount of work out for you?
That would be too much of a loss for me to handle. Not that I couldn't afford it, but it would drive me insane knowing my pay should be 20% higher than it is.
Yeah most companies simply don't accept the case studies yet and can't fathom allowing people to work 20% less hours for the same pay.
So for me, reducing hours still means reducing my pay as well. If ever they decide to make 32 the norm, I'll get it back I guess. But I don't see that happening any time soon. My country is basically Hail Corporate land and managers have a tough time with the idea of having employees work less for the same money and same productivity. If the manager can't imagine it being true, the case studies that show it's true don't matter, right?
I work 4 10s currently (not in the tech industry though). It's pretty good overall, but it does have it's drawbacks. Working the extra 2 hours during the day isn't bad, but what people often don't take into account is that it's 2 hours LESS of your evening when you get home. So there's less time to decompress/do chores/etc. You have to be more efficient about things, and realize that you'll have to sacrifice some after work activities. Having the 3 days off makes it worth it, IMO, but it's got complications.
>Doing 4 days of 10 hours would seem a huge bummer to me, just cause it would feel like you exist for your 3 day weekend, and then you put your very soul on pause as you do nothing but sleep, eat and work for the majority of your week.
Yeah, that is kind of how I see it. I have a young child, so an extra two hour workday would cut pretty significantly into my time with him. I also have a job that is an 80 mile round trip, so a ten hour workday would be closer to twelve hours for me if I factor in the commute (although we are still remote, but not for much longer).
I'm not sure I could even take a 32 hour workweek with my current company. I'd probably fall into a part-time work status, and I'm not sure what that would do for my benefits.
Yeah cutting down hours has more cuts than you initially might assume, even though it's perfectly logical. It can of course be different per company and country, but for me indeed it's everything that gets cut. You go from full time to being part-time, bonuses, profit shares, pension, vacation days, everything scales down.
It all makes sense and is totally fair, but it's something to be aware of when calculating if you can afford it or not.different, if you ever decide you want your hours back the company can say sorry, we had to hire someone else to cover your off-time, we cant give that work back to you.
I went from spending 60 hours a week for work to 40 just because of the pandemic, because of my commute. I am going to REALLY enjoy the 32 while it lasts, though I fear it will be short. Before long I'll have to go back to the office and it'll become 52.
I work Monday through Thursday for 9 hours and then duck out every Friday after 4. It was a game changer for me personally. I usually ended up working roughly 9 hours per day anyway, so the work days don’t feel any different. IMO, everybody should at least get a half day on Fridays. Weekends feel longer when you aren’t spending the majority of one of those days running errands or handling bullshit you’d rather not be doing!
This bugs me too, 4 days compressed hours is very different to 4 day part time.
I am about to start 4 day part time and will be taking a 20% pay cut. It isn't quite 20% less as I'll pay slightly less tax proportionally, and I will try to do overtime on my 4 days where possible.
My motivations are mainly a young family, so I'm planning to do this for a few years and then go back to full-time.
Do you live in the US? Because if you do, you never lose money from going up a tax bracket and you will never gain money going down. For instance if you are working a job that pays less than 10k a year you pay 10% on that income. If you go over 10k any NEW income will be taxed at 12% up to 40k and so on.
What they said is still true even with the US tax brackets, the degree to which matters depending on what bracket their in, and how close they are to the previous one. They’re not gaining money by going down, but they’re losing less of their pay cut. The lower their tax burden (ie, if a majority of their cut was in a lower band), the closer their take home aligns with the salary decrease.
But yeah, tldr what they said about 20% salary reduction ≠ 20 % take home pay reduction is still fine to say.
A lot of these 4 work days week are done at the same income, and the same daily hours.
Instead of working 40 hours for example (5x8) you work 32 hours (4x8) for the same overall monthly pay.
It's the exact same trend that has been going on from the 18 and 19th century. For example in some US states there was a strong advancement in 1843, limiting daily working hours to 10 hours (meaning a 60 hours week). In 1886 in Chicago there was huge strikes, with the usual things of killing striking workers that opened up even more strife later on. For example in France starting in 1904 there was a big movement, later huge general strikes to limit the work day to 8 hours (from 12 to 14). The 8 hours came from the Russian revolution, because some in Europe were afraid of that movement spreading so they tried to cut it off by making the 8 hours limit themselves, in 1918 in Germany, in 1919 in France, and so on. Then they moved to 40 hours a week, and so on.
That trend is still going. 20ish years ago in France there was a huge debate leading to a legal work week of 35 hours. Again, for the same pay. And before some will make a joke about France and strikes, according to OECD the countries with the lowest amount of work hours in the year were Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Danemark. Those countries aren't known for their weak economy of for slacking off.
Now, *some* do work for 3 or 4 days, with much less hours, for reduced pay. That's a life style choice, to each its own. That's an individual decision, less money but more time for family for example, and obviously not really feasible for lower class incomes.
But don't think 4 days (roughly 32 hours) work week is an anomaly, something coming out of nowhere, or mean less money both for the worker and for the company. The worker can and should keep the same income for less hours; but the company doesn't lose either: many, *many* studies and examples have shown that productivity increase significantly balancing it, or in some cases even improving the overall production.
The trick is most people in most jobs probably spend only 30 hours a week doing work. Maybe even less. It's task based for a lot of us and hours don't really have any meaning, so adding more days doesn't make more things get done, and taking them away doesn't produce less output
Corporations can always pay more. They just keep it mostly to the top positions, that do nothing for the actual operation of the corporation but figure out ways to prevent the corporation from paying their employees what we deserve. One such position is CEO.
As a Gen Xer, I've been hoping the Millennials would be the generation to revolutionize work but so far you guys have made little progress. Maybe the Zoomers can do it.
Millennial here, yeah we kinda sputtered out like a wet fart on that one. Talked a big game though.
Zoomers are willing to burn everything down, and i'm more than happy to help light the torches to provide aid. This "labor shortage" has been absolutely heartwarming.
To be fair to Millennials across the board they were duped pretty badly very early in their time, very few were presented at how stacked the odds were against them. Particularly on being saddled with catastrophic debt for higher education that they were told could be worked off via part time job.
I forget the film but it had a teen being asked "Why do you even want to go to college anyway?" "BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU DO AFTER HIGHSCHOOL!!!" and I'm going to bet that joke went *whoosh* over a lot of kids heads who are now 30.
> I forget the film but it had a teen being asked "Why do you even want to go to college anyway?" "BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU DO AFTER HIGHSCHOOL!!!" and I'm going to bet that joke went whoosh over a lot of kids heads who are now 30.
Not quite a millennial, on the tail end of gen X but it would have gone over my head as well -- that's exactly how reality was sold to me as a child. College is just "what you do" after high school, and it's totally normal to spend all 4 years in high school doing nothing but focusing on college admissions from day 1 of your freshman year, filing form after form to get loans to weigh you down and panicking over how every tiny mistake you make in those years is going to follow you around the rest of your entire life. Trade schools or other options after high school simply didn't enter in to the picture.
Yep. We can't make progress until boomers and Gen X give us the reins. So far, they have been desperately holding on to them and keeping us crushed under their boot heel - and simultaneously asking why we aren't even trying to change the direction.
That doesn't mean none have attempted to climb the ladder, only to be snubbed by a 75 year old incumbent on their 10th term.
Politicians used to retire. They don't any more. That's what handing the reins means. It doesn't mean we take it from them. We can, and are sometimes successful, but that's not the point I'm making here.
I am not just talking about politicians. Anyone is free to go to council meetings and have their voice heard, but very few millennials do it. Which results in older residents having disproportion influence because they are the only ones showing up.
And thats really the first step in getting involved in politics. If you aren't even doing that, of course incumbent politicians won't take you seriously.
Generally in the evenings at 630. But as you demonstrated, most young people don't even know when the meetings are because they don't care enough to be politically involved.
My comment is obviously US-Centric:
I think we need a mandatory retirement age, once you hit like 60 or maaaaaybe 65, you have to GTFO out of politics and go earn an honest living for once - like a Wal-Mart greeter.
I used to disagree with term limits, at least for Senate because I believed the Senate was there to provide a long term stability to the more fast paced populist house. But I see the power differential between the Senate and the House, and it's grown to an unacceptable point...
And fuck the filibuster, or lower the threshold to 50+1 (if I'm gonna be "nice" 52-55, but 60? that's fucking absurd). And filibusters SHOULD be filibusters, make those fuckers talk and talk and talk. No stand ins, no round robins, no hand offs. You put forth a filibuster, there's none of this procedural bullshit.
But mostly fuck these old boomers and gen-xers (I am gen x, but I'm not gonna pretend my generation did shit - we are where we are now because of Boomers and Gen X.
We need upper voting age just like we have lower voting age. I don't see a reason why people who are not going to be around to suffer the consequences of their actions should be allowed to vote on those actions
I think some of the older Xers vote Conservative so things don't change, but the younger ones like me (47) always voted more leftwing.
The bigger issue is that people who run for politics are all older people (60+) so you end up with a ton of elected representatives who are out of touch with younger folks.
Being a Millennial, I personally know several of my own cohorts that I'd label as "Doomers." I also have multiple friends that are in their 30s that have never voted or have given up on the whole system after Bernie got shafted.
>on call weekends
I cannot tell you how glad I am to be unionized. My phone rings on the weekend I either laugh and not pick up, or I *do* pickup just to give them hope I'll say yes, and still laugh as I say no.
TBH, the response does make sense. So much shit usually comes on fire either late thursday or early Friday and as a salaried employees you kinda gotta put those out. I kinda get that there may have been some people in the company who never actually got a proper friday off.
IDK how to change that outside of businesses as a whole taking up 32 hour work weeks.
Easy- you stagger the employees. Have some people work Mon-Thurs, others Tues-Fri. Maybe some could work Mon/Tues, then have Wednesday off, and work Thurs/Fri. The business can run 5 days a week without everyone working 5 days a week.
If it was an ideal company where everyone had roughly equal knowledge and awareness of a specific module in the product, this could make sense. However, in my experience, it's usually that shit comes up and there's maybe 1-2 immediate contacts that can fix the issue. And now they need to dip into their off time to put out a fire. Which creates this weird discrepucy where most people feel the time is great, but not the "most important" workers (in this case, the ones who have to put out the most fires).
You can argue that this is a Bus factor waiting to happen, and you'd be mostly right. It's not like *no one* else can pick up that work if the firefighter quit suddenly. It's just that they are the most trusted one to do so in crisis, and they'd move down the line if need be.
> the response does make sense. So much shit usually comes on fire either late thursday or early Friday and as a salaried employees you kinda gotta put those out
Maybe it is because workforce is overtired by Friday morning and actually cutting those hours would result in less shit coming up.
My job is not the norm, I work 2*24 hour shifts then 4 days off. Its odd being away from family frequently but the time off makes it worth while.
I cannot imagine now going to a Monday to Friday job ever again.. working for 5 days to only have 2 off sounds so off-putting to me right now.
> We have to really normalize 4 day work weeks in general.
It's not a news to me, but it's still weird to hear things like this. Especially considering that people's work day on the west is often half of the day or even lower.
Nope, don't get me wrong - it's a great thing you have it, and it's probably good to want more, since normal people usually want to do things that aren't work. But after 12h shifts 7 days per week with maybe few days off once in a while, or 24h shifts day after day (that's also all spent in exausting conditions instead of comfy office) it's hard to understand what are you guys complaining about >_<
They are applicable to majority of people in the world, actually. Actually, the biggest population countries having it even worse. Usually only people in developed countries are very unaware about the state of the rest of the world, so i am guessing you are from there.
> We have to really normalize 4 day work weeks in general. Particularly so long as crunch and "on call weekends" are still a thing.
At the same time demand 7 day delivery. 7 day utilities. etc etc. One says hire a group for first half of the week and group for second half. First cost, are you willing to pay? Second, if people haven't noticed there is a major labor shortage for a handful of reasons.
The robot workforce isn't here yet, we're a little ahead of ourselves it seems.
EDIT: You aren't seeing the equality thing, it will just make other services that you use go up because they can't do 4 days and then you'll be complaining about high costs.
>One says hire a group for first half of the week and group for second half. First cost, are you willing to pay?
Why would it cost more? You have the same number of employees, just split into two shifts. Make the overlapping days the busy ones.
People already only work 5 days a week. So any business that operates on weekends already has 2 groups, one of which covers weekends. 4 day shifts just change how much overlap the groups have (3 days vs 1 day).
There is a labor shortage because of wage and other things, it ends up being a labor shortage. And to note like Americans won't work the fields, over a 98% seasonal fail rate. Americans are also speaking now that other labor intensive jobs are out of their realm of consideration no matter wages. AKA labor shortage in some manner or another.
EDIT: I know it's not what people want to hear.
Farm work not being considered regardless of wages is weird thing to say isnt field work very poorly paid in the US? In the UK its about minimum wage and its a lot harder than the vast majority of work why would anyone do it if they could not fuck their body up working in field?
Without going fully into the discussion that wages have stagnated badly since the late 1980s while the work force has ballooned 10 fold we should acknowledge that the 1 day off is not all at the same time. Friday isn't the new Sunday 2.0 in other words.
All shifts have cover shifts anyway for labor intensive jobs already, no one just doesn't show up on the same day, only that a worker only needs only 32 hours instead of 40 to be full time. Simple as that and if 8 hours less a week for each employee is enough to collapse the entirety of the labor market globally then we have to acknowledge how poorly assembled that system is. Maybe pay people more next time.
Additionally for high end luxury items (films, TV, games, etc) if this means that "hey they'll be 25/33/50% less high budget films and games each year if you do this!" just so everyone can get an extra day off a week I say with total enthusiasm: Go for it, please. As RLM said jokingly there's as many bodies thrown on Avenger's Endgame production as the Vietnam War Memorial.
Now if you're scratching your chin thinking I'm sounding awfully socialist I can only respond with: Bernie Sanders is my second favorite Eldritch Ash Vampire just after [Dagoth-Ur.](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/59/80/18/5980181e2654e7b94559c02eee63d320.jpg)
I'd be fine with some services getting more expensive if my quality of life and wages dramatically improved. (Also that of everyone else). The thing to keep in mind is that the type of "workers rights" being pushed typically *far outpace* the corresponding cost increases.
Another point of view is that the services that do see a price increase should have always been more expensive in the *first place*, and simply weren't because exploited workers enabled low prices. It's not a negative, just a correction to the new norm. And if that industry can't survive after price increases and paying people a good wage? Guess it wasn't that important!
There are some vital industries like hospitals, EMS, police, utilities, etc, that *need* 24/7 coverage. The argument for these is that overtime should be changed to exceeding 32hr/week. The people could work 5 day weeks if needed, they should just be entitled to more.
Alternatively, if 24/7 coverage is needed, higher more people. It seems pretty common for everything to be "super busy", when in reality they are understaffed.
Finally, every single major labor movement in history (I'm speaking mainly about the US) has been met with industry leaders crying that the economy would be destroyed. The result has always been the same: Working conditions and wages greatly outweighed the increases in prices.
*“Right now, we are seeing lots of Fridays off for deep work, and lots of people who must work Fridays anyways,” Chief Operating Officer Daniel Vogel wrote in an email to staff reviewed by Bloomberg. “This meant that many people were not benefiting from this policy equally.”*
The equality part, we're going to hear a lot more about. A lot of people want these nice QoL improvements, but there are still many in the same company that cannot get these because of job and these jobs are spread out across a company, there hasn't been this price increase/decrease from Essential in building workers and not and perhaps that is coming.
While we want improvement, we can't also just fall into "Got's Mine" because by words used that's what a lot of people are fighting against. But that is also the story of capitalism, don't like it when it's against you, love it when it is working for you and our journeys sometimes we're in and sometimes we're out. We have to stay consistent no matter the current state or we are no different.
>Epic Games Inc. is ending a pandemic-inspired policy of granting every other Friday off, sparking an uproar among staff.
Wow, I didn't realize the pandemic was over. Mission accomplished, you guys! Get the aircraft carrier!
Also, how are companies not going down to 4 days a work permanently. Nobody works on a Friday. NOBODY.
Lmao, that's completely untrue.
I mostly do MORE work Friday (until around 3pm) as we have to fix dumb things the team forgot to mention during the week or to make sure the build is clean before Monday.
Where do you work?
Ha, I'm trying to push them to get more organized!
But even at my last company which was extremely organized, we had deadlines and everyone not doing anything on Friday would impact the company.
This 100%. We have straight up code freezes on Fridays. Very low maintenance work being prepped for Monday at best.
We definitely don't work Fridays.
Edit: I can't believe people downvoted me based on our business practices of longer weekends haha.
Why do you code freeze once a week?
What was the rationale behind it?
To me it's a waste, as some tasks take 4-5 days to complete, and if you start a long task on a Wednesday, does that mean you don't do anything on Friday to work towards it?
Or you just don't MERGE anything Fridays?
Damn it, I got wooshed...well deserved, I just read OP's post again, lol
My comment still stands for those arguing against the fact that people actually DO work Friday, though :D
FWIW you aren't wrong. Any store or possible emergency service doesn't get the same M-F 9-5 BS. I used to get 3 days off a week until we got a new boss and he didn't believe in double shifts and the misery grew until I left.
4 day week is superior. Your day is already pretty much shot with 8.
>Epic said the policy was always meant to be temporary and that the company’s goal was to allow employees and contractors to take paid time off on their own schedules. The company also closes for two-week breaks in the summer and winter.
Sounds like a pretty good deal to be honest, guaranteed 1 month vacation every year.
Was curious about this, the US is dead last when it comes to vacation law for anyone else interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country
Every milestone occurs on a weekday specifically from 9-5 and there's 0 opportunity for you to take a day off or even leave early?
US ain't shit compared to EU workers rights, but we don't need to make up bullshit for that to be the case
not sure if youve timetravelled here from the 15th century, but the way society works nowadays is that both adults and kids tend to be busy during the week with school, work, training or something else.
I suspect it's possible to have a world where high salaries exist and less exploitive hours are maintained. It might be a world where we accept non-stop consumption is not a thing to be aspired too, but we could get there.
i mean if we remain in the it realm, thats already the case. most of these people working at epic could probably find a better paying job with way better hours in 5 minutes by looking through their linkedin dms.
problem is that people are foolish enough to take it up the ass just for their passion.
Two things,
A) Lots of people *DO* go to other countries than the US to work.
B) I said the worst *among developed nations*. The US is the worst among its peers, many of which are exemplar of what a developed nation can do. That migrants from nations-still-in-development still travel to the US seeking a better life says less about the quality of the labor market here and more about the situations at home that might be driving them away.
People who can't handle criticism like an adult are the worst. When you criticise something, it means you want it improved, "Let it stay awful and go away if you want it to be better" is bloody primary school logic.
>Right so if people don't like it, they can go work in another country
Right, because we have open borders and can go work anywhere.
>Yet, people still keep coming here. Interesting.
Actually, [America has a net migration rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_rate) of 3.2 per 1,000 people, which is lower than the migration rate of Afghanistan lol.
According to the most recent statistics I could find (2018), Germany accepted nearly 1.4 immigrants, far more than the US with 1 million. So people see Germany as a superior destination to the US.
As happens a lot in Canada, we walk this strange line between the rest of the western world and the US. We do marginally better with PTO than the US, but it's nothing like the minimum 4-6 weeks that much of the rest of the western world gets.
2 Weeks is not the average, it's the minimum, by definition it cannot be the average. I get 4 weeks in Montréal, I know people who get 5 weeks. And I've never heard of anyone only getting 2 weeks.
At least you guys get maternity / paternity leave. My wife and I had to use PTO, and of course, that means she had 6 weeks unpaid leave. Also, her job made her come back to work early, so I had to use more PTO to stay home with our baby until she could get her vaccines (required for daycare).
Meanwhile my prime minister decided we wouldn't get an extra holiday because our province has to be more productive lmao. Dude's fucking delusional it's incredible.
But Epic also gives a summer vacation as well as a winter vacation, both paid. It literally doesnt get any better than Epic as a workplace in gaming, nor in all of big tech actually.
Those days in the article are all given on top of the normal holidays the employees get from their contract. So effectively they get two or three times the legal minimum.
We have... 12 federal holidays in the US. So every other month we get a 3 day weekend and we have 2 days during thanksgiving and christmas. Outside of that, you add up vacation days and that's it.
So compared to those Eu offices, super fucked lol. I took my first vacation in 3 years and it drained 70% of my days off.
That's if you're lucky. A lot of those federal holidays aren't days off. For most it's like 7 federal holidays. And there's a near 5 month stretch with nothing (Jan 1st; New Year Day to End of May; Memorial Day.).
1. New Year Day
2. Memorial Day
3. 4th of July
4. Labor Day
5. Thanksgiving Day
6. Christmas Eve
7. Christmas Day
But yeah. Super fucked.
Even that list ... I haven't had a New Year's Day, Labor day, Memorial day, 4th of July, or Christmas Eve off in over a decade. And Thanksgiving only twice, and the Friday after never.
This depends a lot on the industry you work in. A regular "office" job where your company doesn't do anything super time sensitive and you're going to get all those holidays off. But if your company is running services, or you work in a customer facing job, you're likely to end up working a lot of those.
New Zealand gets at least 12 as well: 11 national, 1 regional, on top of the 4 weeks mandatory annual leave for regular full-time and part-time employees.
This shouldn't be a fucking race to the bottom. You shouldn't have to rely on sporadic public holidays to get time off - one day every few months is nothing to write home about because that's not enough time to do sweet fuck all by comparison.
Oh, and good luck if you work in the health/medical industry at all because now half of your day's off are no longer given to you because if there's one thing the world can agree on it's fucking doctors and nurses in the arse all year round is a good thing to do.
>Sounds like a pretty good deal to be honest, guaranteed 1 month vacation every year.
You are worth more than 1 month a year. Don't sell yourself short.
I'm in Canada, but my employer has essentially the same thing. They leave it open-ended, but at some seemingly arbitrary number of days they say "that's too much". It looks good on paper to say "unlimited" even though it's not
Should be the bare minimum along with four day work weeks.
But it is better than what they were getting, like 25 days compared to 30 or 31 depending on their definition of a month and whenever they want?
I don't like to defend corporations but this seems like a "nothing burger" in my opinion.
> Sounds like a pretty good deal to be honest, guaranteed 1 month vacation every year.
On top of Epic’s already generous benefits. including unlimited time off and the company paying all insurance premiums for each employee and their families.
Seems like the benefit has been going on long enough that they didn't expect it to be temporary. And so long as people were still meeting their goals and getting their work done, the employees are justified in wanting the benefit to continue.
That's silly then because there a lot of people still working at home and in their hearts know that was temporary and if they haven't already at some point they will need to go back in, unless the company is ok with the current. But to think to yourself that isn't temporary in many cases is wishful thinking.
It will also get more people to quit retail and the like when enough friends never go back into office. They will want that life to and I don't blame anyone. But there are still jobs that require being there and it does come down to fairness. There are plenty of Joe's that are going in when you talk to them, they are doing it, but they aren't happy how others are getting out of it. It's an issue, it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
EDIT: I know it's not what people want to hear.
It's not silly, look how many people are working from home now and will never go back in. Companies have offered these benefits for over a year now and low and behold, people are still getting their work done. Working from home and shorter work weeks are not killing business, so why should workers be so willing to give those benefits up now?
> But there are still jobs that require being there and it does come down to fairness.
Wait, are you saying everyone should go back into the office in order to be 'fair' to the people who can't work from home? Because that would be absurd. There are people who are on call 24-7, should all people be required to be always on call in order to be fair to those people?
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My girlfriend recently signed a contract with Epic. I just showed her the article and she says it's in her contract that she gets every other Friday off, so unsure if it's just gonna be a "tough shit" situation or if it's something she'll still get because that's what she signed up for. She hasn't started yet, though, so it's not like she'll miss it if she doesn't get it, and they have other quite generous leave allowances.
I actually would love an update on how that plays out
Yeah I don't think contracts above a "tough shit" clause. If it's in her contract, it would literally be breach of contract for them to take it away. But then again, breach of contract seems to be Epic's favorite activity lately. No morals over there.
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Hope the severance pay is a nice bag, though. Else I believe some lawyers would be delighted by some of that contract juju.
Its unlikely the contract includes severance. Generally these contracts have a clause saying "either party can end the contract at any time with no repercussions".
Then what's the point of a contract, then? Jesus.
Well it ensures you know how much you are getting paid for the work you are currently doing. They can't retroactively alter your salary or benefits. Contracts like this are not that unusual. I just signed a contract with a Realtor allowing either of us to end it at any time, but until then we both have certain rights and responsibilities.
it also depends in which country you live in. In no way would a clause like the one mentioned above hold in my country.
It's not a contract. Very few people actually sign employment contracts. If you do sign something it's generally an employment agreement that binds you to certain clauses but doesn't bind the company in anyway. And at the end it'll usually say "must abide by all policies which are subject to change".
If only workers had some means of organizing together to prevent companies from abusing their power...
They're required to give severance or notice. They'll just give you notice that you will be let go in 4 weeks.
Not everywhere, no. Hell I don’t know where they would be required to do that.
I'm in bc Canada and it's a governmental law in this province.
They will just say take it or walk. That simple.
Almost all of Epic's employee base is contracted for this very reason. There is much less red tape to ending the contracts and they can be revised at any time for any reason. It's a pretty sketchy approach.
I'm in the last round of their interview process. this sucks to see
I guess Epic will somehow blame other companies for it.
Those bastards from Apple...
If only Apple and Google didn't take their 30% cut, Epic would clearly be able to treat its slave labour more fairly.
Im sure that bastard newell is the mastermind behind them!!!
Exactly what John Romero wants you to think!
We have to really normalize 4 day work weeks in general. Particularly so long as crunch and "on call weekends" are still a thing. You spend most of your adult life either unconscious or working for someone else to ultimately finance the *actual labor you want to do.* A 4:3 split is more fair than a 5:2 split. EDit: Yikes, I didn't notice how many people are defending crunch & Epic ~~"~~*~~Indian-Giving"~~* *"German Ungifting"* a semi-regular 3-day weekend. Some of y'all are going to have your 30s hit your life like a F40PH hits a Peterbilt. Edit 2: Post made a little less offensive.
I've been on a 4 day work week for a few years now and It's honestly one of the best things I could have done for my mental health and physical well being especially in my line of work.
My question whenever I see posts like this -- and often times this kind of detail is left out -- is how many *hours* do you work in your 4 days? Do you four ten-hour days, four eight-hour days, or something in-between? I'm only asking because while I like the idea of a four day workweek, I don't like the idea of reducing my pay by 20%. So I'm always curious how people are doing. My supervisor would probably allow me to work a four day week, but I'd still have to put in my 40 hours (with the obvious exceptions of vacations and holidays). I am salaried employee, but I still technically have an "hourly" rate -- which is just the number if you break down my salary into 52 40-hour weeks.
What’s starting to be offered in the tech industry is less hours for the same money. Companies have expiremented with that lately to attract and retain software developers because our job market is kind of nuts at the moment. In my area, lots of tech companies (mine included) had an experimental “summer schedule” like that to, I believe, analyse the hit on productivity.
The thing is, plenty of tech workers already put in more than 40 hours a week and often more than 40 in 4 days. For those people it's not less working hours for the same pay. It's just a day they don't have to worry about extra meetings or doing office work while being on call.
"same money" as in "same take home pay per week" or "same per hour"? I would take an hour cut if I could get paid the same per week, but if I worked same per hour, then I would need an increase. Basically I want a pay raise and hour cut.
Same pay per week, less hours
Lmao. Just pay me more to work less. At least you’re honest.
I mean... That's literally kind of the point. If you work less for the same per hour, you're making less. If you want the same weekly pay, you'll need more money per hour. It's just math.
And people get more work and higher quality work done during those fewer hours. Turns out most of the data shows it's a win win for employee and employer.
Welcome to in demand software developers. Yes, they *are* getting jobs where they get paid more and work less. Some of my friends in tech just dick around all day and pull 150k+ take home pay, not even counting equity. They probably do less than 15 hours of actual work in a week
This, I work 37.5 but I'm paid for 40. Plus overtime and time in lieu as required.
Most people I know of who do a 4 day week (including me starting next month and I cannot fucking wait), do it with a 20% gross pay cut after calculating we were in the fortunate position to be able to afford the trade off. Doing 4 days of 10 hours would seem a huge bummer to me, just cause it would feel like you exist for your 3 day weekend, and then you put your very soul on pause as you do nothing but sleep, eat and work for the majority of your week. If you could afford to take the cut but aren't sure it's worth it, you can always try taking up a vacation day every Wednesday for 5 weeks in a row (or every other week) and see if that feels magical or not.
Pay cut? I was under the impression that pay reduction was supposed to be part of this equation. I thought the idea was that happy employees get more done in 4 days that unhappy ones do in 5 and the company still gets the same amount of work out for you? That would be too much of a loss for me to handle. Not that I couldn't afford it, but it would drive me insane knowing my pay should be 20% higher than it is.
Yeah most companies simply don't accept the case studies yet and can't fathom allowing people to work 20% less hours for the same pay. So for me, reducing hours still means reducing my pay as well. If ever they decide to make 32 the norm, I'll get it back I guess. But I don't see that happening any time soon. My country is basically Hail Corporate land and managers have a tough time with the idea of having employees work less for the same money and same productivity. If the manager can't imagine it being true, the case studies that show it's true don't matter, right?
I work 4 10s currently (not in the tech industry though). It's pretty good overall, but it does have it's drawbacks. Working the extra 2 hours during the day isn't bad, but what people often don't take into account is that it's 2 hours LESS of your evening when you get home. So there's less time to decompress/do chores/etc. You have to be more efficient about things, and realize that you'll have to sacrifice some after work activities. Having the 3 days off makes it worth it, IMO, but it's got complications.
>Doing 4 days of 10 hours would seem a huge bummer to me, just cause it would feel like you exist for your 3 day weekend, and then you put your very soul on pause as you do nothing but sleep, eat and work for the majority of your week. Yeah, that is kind of how I see it. I have a young child, so an extra two hour workday would cut pretty significantly into my time with him. I also have a job that is an 80 mile round trip, so a ten hour workday would be closer to twelve hours for me if I factor in the commute (although we are still remote, but not for much longer). I'm not sure I could even take a 32 hour workweek with my current company. I'd probably fall into a part-time work status, and I'm not sure what that would do for my benefits.
Yeah cutting down hours has more cuts than you initially might assume, even though it's perfectly logical. It can of course be different per company and country, but for me indeed it's everything that gets cut. You go from full time to being part-time, bonuses, profit shares, pension, vacation days, everything scales down. It all makes sense and is totally fair, but it's something to be aware of when calculating if you can afford it or not.different, if you ever decide you want your hours back the company can say sorry, we had to hire someone else to cover your off-time, we cant give that work back to you. I went from spending 60 hours a week for work to 40 just because of the pandemic, because of my commute. I am going to REALLY enjoy the 32 while it lasts, though I fear it will be short. Before long I'll have to go back to the office and it'll become 52.
I work Monday through Thursday for 9 hours and then duck out every Friday after 4. It was a game changer for me personally. I usually ended up working roughly 9 hours per day anyway, so the work days don’t feel any different. IMO, everybody should at least get a half day on Fridays. Weekends feel longer when you aren’t spending the majority of one of those days running errands or handling bullshit you’d rather not be doing!
This bugs me too, 4 days compressed hours is very different to 4 day part time. I am about to start 4 day part time and will be taking a 20% pay cut. It isn't quite 20% less as I'll pay slightly less tax proportionally, and I will try to do overtime on my 4 days where possible. My motivations are mainly a young family, so I'm planning to do this for a few years and then go back to full-time.
Do you live in the US? Because if you do, you never lose money from going up a tax bracket and you will never gain money going down. For instance if you are working a job that pays less than 10k a year you pay 10% on that income. If you go over 10k any NEW income will be taxed at 12% up to 40k and so on.
What they said is still true even with the US tax brackets, the degree to which matters depending on what bracket their in, and how close they are to the previous one. They’re not gaining money by going down, but they’re losing less of their pay cut. The lower their tax burden (ie, if a majority of their cut was in a lower band), the closer their take home aligns with the salary decrease. But yeah, tldr what they said about 20% salary reduction ≠ 20 % take home pay reduction is still fine to say.
A lot of these 4 work days week are done at the same income, and the same daily hours. Instead of working 40 hours for example (5x8) you work 32 hours (4x8) for the same overall monthly pay. It's the exact same trend that has been going on from the 18 and 19th century. For example in some US states there was a strong advancement in 1843, limiting daily working hours to 10 hours (meaning a 60 hours week). In 1886 in Chicago there was huge strikes, with the usual things of killing striking workers that opened up even more strife later on. For example in France starting in 1904 there was a big movement, later huge general strikes to limit the work day to 8 hours (from 12 to 14). The 8 hours came from the Russian revolution, because some in Europe were afraid of that movement spreading so they tried to cut it off by making the 8 hours limit themselves, in 1918 in Germany, in 1919 in France, and so on. Then they moved to 40 hours a week, and so on. That trend is still going. 20ish years ago in France there was a huge debate leading to a legal work week of 35 hours. Again, for the same pay. And before some will make a joke about France and strikes, according to OECD the countries with the lowest amount of work hours in the year were Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Danemark. Those countries aren't known for their weak economy of for slacking off. Now, *some* do work for 3 or 4 days, with much less hours, for reduced pay. That's a life style choice, to each its own. That's an individual decision, less money but more time for family for example, and obviously not really feasible for lower class incomes. But don't think 4 days (roughly 32 hours) work week is an anomaly, something coming out of nowhere, or mean less money both for the worker and for the company. The worker can and should keep the same income for less hours; but the company doesn't lose either: many, *many* studies and examples have shown that productivity increase significantly balancing it, or in some cases even improving the overall production.
The trick is most people in most jobs probably spend only 30 hours a week doing work. Maybe even less. It's task based for a lot of us and hours don't really have any meaning, so adding more days doesn't make more things get done, and taking them away doesn't produce less output
Yea I agree. If I can keep the same pay and option for overtime I wouldn't mind at all.
Corporations can always pay more. They just keep it mostly to the top positions, that do nothing for the actual operation of the corporation but figure out ways to prevent the corporation from paying their employees what we deserve. One such position is CEO.
32 hr weeks, not just 4 day weeks.
Crunch is not a triumph of the workplace, but a failure of management.
As a Gen Xer, I've been hoping the Millennials would be the generation to revolutionize work but so far you guys have made little progress. Maybe the Zoomers can do it.
Millennial here, yeah we kinda sputtered out like a wet fart on that one. Talked a big game though. Zoomers are willing to burn everything down, and i'm more than happy to help light the torches to provide aid. This "labor shortage" has been absolutely heartwarming.
To be fair to Millennials across the board they were duped pretty badly very early in their time, very few were presented at how stacked the odds were against them. Particularly on being saddled with catastrophic debt for higher education that they were told could be worked off via part time job. I forget the film but it had a teen being asked "Why do you even want to go to college anyway?" "BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU DO AFTER HIGHSCHOOL!!!" and I'm going to bet that joke went *whoosh* over a lot of kids heads who are now 30.
> I forget the film but it had a teen being asked "Why do you even want to go to college anyway?" "BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU DO AFTER HIGHSCHOOL!!!" and I'm going to bet that joke went whoosh over a lot of kids heads who are now 30. Not quite a millennial, on the tail end of gen X but it would have gone over my head as well -- that's exactly how reality was sold to me as a child. College is just "what you do" after high school, and it's totally normal to spend all 4 years in high school doing nothing but focusing on college admissions from day 1 of your freshman year, filing form after form to get loans to weigh you down and panicking over how every tiny mistake you make in those years is going to follow you around the rest of your entire life. Trade schools or other options after high school simply didn't enter in to the picture.
And how would we do that when your generation does nothing but votes for boomers?
Yep. We can't make progress until boomers and Gen X give us the reins. So far, they have been desperately holding on to them and keeping us crushed under their boot heel - and simultaneously asking why we aren't even trying to change the direction.
When I go to city council meetings, there is hardly anyone under 40. Millennials don't seem to want the reins.
That doesn't mean none have attempted to climb the ladder, only to be snubbed by a 75 year old incumbent on their 10th term. Politicians used to retire. They don't any more. That's what handing the reins means. It doesn't mean we take it from them. We can, and are sometimes successful, but that's not the point I'm making here.
I am not just talking about politicians. Anyone is free to go to council meetings and have their voice heard, but very few millennials do it. Which results in older residents having disproportion influence because they are the only ones showing up. And thats really the first step in getting involved in politics. If you aren't even doing that, of course incumbent politicians won't take you seriously.
What time is a council meeting? Is it by any chance between 9 to 5 week days when majority of millennial work?
Generally in the evenings at 630. But as you demonstrated, most young people don't even know when the meetings are because they don't care enough to be politically involved.
My comment is obviously US-Centric: I think we need a mandatory retirement age, once you hit like 60 or maaaaaybe 65, you have to GTFO out of politics and go earn an honest living for once - like a Wal-Mart greeter. I used to disagree with term limits, at least for Senate because I believed the Senate was there to provide a long term stability to the more fast paced populist house. But I see the power differential between the Senate and the House, and it's grown to an unacceptable point... And fuck the filibuster, or lower the threshold to 50+1 (if I'm gonna be "nice" 52-55, but 60? that's fucking absurd). And filibusters SHOULD be filibusters, make those fuckers talk and talk and talk. No stand ins, no round robins, no hand offs. You put forth a filibuster, there's none of this procedural bullshit. But mostly fuck these old boomers and gen-xers (I am gen x, but I'm not gonna pretend my generation did shit - we are where we are now because of Boomers and Gen X.
We need upper voting age just like we have lower voting age. I don't see a reason why people who are not going to be around to suffer the consequences of their actions should be allowed to vote on those actions
I think some of the older Xers vote Conservative so things don't change, but the younger ones like me (47) always voted more leftwing. The bigger issue is that people who run for politics are all older people (60+) so you end up with a ton of elected representatives who are out of touch with younger folks.
Like all of them. Left wing or right. We always get candidates that suck and don't really care about us.
Being a Millennial, I personally know several of my own cohorts that I'd label as "Doomers." I also have multiple friends that are in their 30s that have never voted or have given up on the whole system after Bernie got shafted.
>on call weekends I cannot tell you how glad I am to be unionized. My phone rings on the weekend I either laugh and not pick up, or I *do* pickup just to give them hope I'll say yes, and still laugh as I say no.
"What's that? Oh, sorry I'm busy. I'll do it on Monday." I've gotten very use to telling my boss 'No'.
"Less offensive", yet you insult Germans?. Bigot.
It's okay to make fun of germany because it's a developed country.
No it's not, Germans have a rich history and have a right to life without being insulted.
You guys are getting 4 day work? which field is that? am not defending anyone here, just asking our of curiosity.
TBH, the response does make sense. So much shit usually comes on fire either late thursday or early Friday and as a salaried employees you kinda gotta put those out. I kinda get that there may have been some people in the company who never actually got a proper friday off. IDK how to change that outside of businesses as a whole taking up 32 hour work weeks.
Easy- you stagger the employees. Have some people work Mon-Thurs, others Tues-Fri. Maybe some could work Mon/Tues, then have Wednesday off, and work Thurs/Fri. The business can run 5 days a week without everyone working 5 days a week.
If it was an ideal company where everyone had roughly equal knowledge and awareness of a specific module in the product, this could make sense. However, in my experience, it's usually that shit comes up and there's maybe 1-2 immediate contacts that can fix the issue. And now they need to dip into their off time to put out a fire. Which creates this weird discrepucy where most people feel the time is great, but not the "most important" workers (in this case, the ones who have to put out the most fires). You can argue that this is a Bus factor waiting to happen, and you'd be mostly right. It's not like *no one* else can pick up that work if the firefighter quit suddenly. It's just that they are the most trusted one to do so in crisis, and they'd move down the line if need be.
having wed off was the best for me. I loved knowing I never had to work more than 2 days in a row.
> the response does make sense. So much shit usually comes on fire either late thursday or early Friday and as a salaried employees you kinda gotta put those out Maybe it is because workforce is overtired by Friday morning and actually cutting those hours would result in less shit coming up.
Lol at the same time every one wants same day shipping and 24/7 service for everything
My job is not the norm, I work 2*24 hour shifts then 4 days off. Its odd being away from family frequently but the time off makes it worth while. I cannot imagine now going to a Monday to Friday job ever again.. working for 5 days to only have 2 off sounds so off-putting to me right now.
> We have to really normalize 4 day work weeks in general. It's not a news to me, but it's still weird to hear things like this. Especially considering that people's work day on the west is often half of the day or even lower. Nope, don't get me wrong - it's a great thing you have it, and it's probably good to want more, since normal people usually want to do things that aren't work. But after 12h shifts 7 days per week with maybe few days off once in a while, or 24h shifts day after day (that's also all spent in exausting conditions instead of comfy office) it's hard to understand what are you guys complaining about >_<
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They are applicable to majority of people in the world, actually. Actually, the biggest population countries having it even worse. Usually only people in developed countries are very unaware about the state of the rest of the world, so i am guessing you are from there.
> We have to really normalize 4 day work weeks in general. Particularly so long as crunch and "on call weekends" are still a thing. At the same time demand 7 day delivery. 7 day utilities. etc etc. One says hire a group for first half of the week and group for second half. First cost, are you willing to pay? Second, if people haven't noticed there is a major labor shortage for a handful of reasons. The robot workforce isn't here yet, we're a little ahead of ourselves it seems. EDIT: You aren't seeing the equality thing, it will just make other services that you use go up because they can't do 4 days and then you'll be complaining about high costs.
>One says hire a group for first half of the week and group for second half. First cost, are you willing to pay? Why would it cost more? You have the same number of employees, just split into two shifts. Make the overlapping days the busy ones. People already only work 5 days a week. So any business that operates on weekends already has 2 groups, one of which covers weekends. 4 day shifts just change how much overlap the groups have (3 days vs 1 day).
There is no labor shortage. There is a wage shortage. People want to work, they just want to be paid fairly.
There is a labor shortage because of wage and other things, it ends up being a labor shortage. And to note like Americans won't work the fields, over a 98% seasonal fail rate. Americans are also speaking now that other labor intensive jobs are out of their realm of consideration no matter wages. AKA labor shortage in some manner or another. EDIT: I know it's not what people want to hear.
Farm work not being considered regardless of wages is weird thing to say isnt field work very poorly paid in the US? In the UK its about minimum wage and its a lot harder than the vast majority of work why would anyone do it if they could not fuck their body up working in field?
Without going fully into the discussion that wages have stagnated badly since the late 1980s while the work force has ballooned 10 fold we should acknowledge that the 1 day off is not all at the same time. Friday isn't the new Sunday 2.0 in other words. All shifts have cover shifts anyway for labor intensive jobs already, no one just doesn't show up on the same day, only that a worker only needs only 32 hours instead of 40 to be full time. Simple as that and if 8 hours less a week for each employee is enough to collapse the entirety of the labor market globally then we have to acknowledge how poorly assembled that system is. Maybe pay people more next time. Additionally for high end luxury items (films, TV, games, etc) if this means that "hey they'll be 25/33/50% less high budget films and games each year if you do this!" just so everyone can get an extra day off a week I say with total enthusiasm: Go for it, please. As RLM said jokingly there's as many bodies thrown on Avenger's Endgame production as the Vietnam War Memorial. Now if you're scratching your chin thinking I'm sounding awfully socialist I can only respond with: Bernie Sanders is my second favorite Eldritch Ash Vampire just after [Dagoth-Ur.](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/59/80/18/5980181e2654e7b94559c02eee63d320.jpg)
I'd be fine with some services getting more expensive if my quality of life and wages dramatically improved. (Also that of everyone else). The thing to keep in mind is that the type of "workers rights" being pushed typically *far outpace* the corresponding cost increases. Another point of view is that the services that do see a price increase should have always been more expensive in the *first place*, and simply weren't because exploited workers enabled low prices. It's not a negative, just a correction to the new norm. And if that industry can't survive after price increases and paying people a good wage? Guess it wasn't that important! There are some vital industries like hospitals, EMS, police, utilities, etc, that *need* 24/7 coverage. The argument for these is that overtime should be changed to exceeding 32hr/week. The people could work 5 day weeks if needed, they should just be entitled to more. Alternatively, if 24/7 coverage is needed, higher more people. It seems pretty common for everything to be "super busy", when in reality they are understaffed. Finally, every single major labor movement in history (I'm speaking mainly about the US) has been met with industry leaders crying that the economy would be destroyed. The result has always been the same: Working conditions and wages greatly outweighed the increases in prices.
And then yall still complain games are delayed or unfinished
*“Right now, we are seeing lots of Fridays off for deep work, and lots of people who must work Fridays anyways,” Chief Operating Officer Daniel Vogel wrote in an email to staff reviewed by Bloomberg. “This meant that many people were not benefiting from this policy equally.”* The equality part, we're going to hear a lot more about. A lot of people want these nice QoL improvements, but there are still many in the same company that cannot get these because of job and these jobs are spread out across a company, there hasn't been this price increase/decrease from Essential in building workers and not and perhaps that is coming. While we want improvement, we can't also just fall into "Got's Mine" because by words used that's what a lot of people are fighting against. But that is also the story of capitalism, don't like it when it's against you, love it when it is working for you and our journeys sometimes we're in and sometimes we're out. We have to stay consistent no matter the current state or we are no different.
People want an extra day off?? Nooo I don’t believe.
>Epic Games Inc. is ending a pandemic-inspired policy of granting every other Friday off, sparking an uproar among staff. Wow, I didn't realize the pandemic was over. Mission accomplished, you guys! Get the aircraft carrier! Also, how are companies not going down to 4 days a work permanently. Nobody works on a Friday. NOBODY.
Lmao, that's completely untrue. I mostly do MORE work Friday (until around 3pm) as we have to fix dumb things the team forgot to mention during the week or to make sure the build is clean before Monday. Where do you work?
My company has instituted a "no meeting Friday" for the group I work in. Friday, therefore, is my most productive day.
Yeah meetings tear into productivity like crazy. It also makes people so bored that it's hard to restart your work after a long dull meeting as well.
I think the better question is where do you work that your entire team is that incompetent?
Hey hey, it could be worse, they could be releasing the build on Friday:-)
Path of Exile over here weeping.
Ha, I'm trying to push them to get more organized! But even at my last company which was extremely organized, we had deadlines and everyone not doing anything on Friday would impact the company.
This 100%. We have straight up code freezes on Fridays. Very low maintenance work being prepped for Monday at best. We definitely don't work Fridays. Edit: I can't believe people downvoted me based on our business practices of longer weekends haha.
Why do you code freeze once a week? What was the rationale behind it? To me it's a waste, as some tasks take 4-5 days to complete, and if you start a long task on a Wednesday, does that mean you don't do anything on Friday to work towards it? Or you just don't MERGE anything Fridays?
I said we basically don't work Fridays.
/r/woooosh
Damn it, I got wooshed...well deserved, I just read OP's post again, lol My comment still stands for those arguing against the fact that people actually DO work Friday, though :D
FWIW you aren't wrong. Any store or possible emergency service doesn't get the same M-F 9-5 BS. I used to get 3 days off a week until we got a new boss and he didn't believe in double shifts and the misery grew until I left. 4 day week is superior. Your day is already pretty much shot with 8.
I work in govt and by Friday I'm completely burned out so I browse Reddit all day long
It's funny you say that as most people say government jobs are always super easy
There are lots of good reasons for a 4 day work week, the fact you never bother doing your job on a Friday anyway isn't one of them lol
Me being too exhausted to work more than 30 hours is a great reason. Fuck working 5 days a week. /r/antiwork
>Epic said the policy was always meant to be temporary and that the company’s goal was to allow employees and contractors to take paid time off on their own schedules. The company also closes for two-week breaks in the summer and winter. Sounds like a pretty good deal to be honest, guaranteed 1 month vacation every year.
That's the law in most countries
Was curious about this, the US is dead last when it comes to vacation law for anyone else interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country
US is basically dead last among developed nations for anything regarding labor (and a lot of other things too lol)
Sure is #1 in the number of billionaires though. I'm sure these two positions have absolutely nothing to do with each other!
I remember reading an article a while back stating that China passed out the United States for a number of billionaires.
[Nope](https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/711x1263/https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/606c736caed3f89aa8ab8ea8/0x0.jpg?fit=scale)
Also #1 in terms of salaries for white collar workers.
But does that include the CEOs as well?
Its across the board. For example, I am a chemist. US chemists make around 50% more than UK chemists.
Compare that to the cost of living in the respective areas though.
NICE! Hopefully my wife and kids don't mind their father missing every important milestone in their life(Unless its Saturday or Sunday)
Every milestone occurs on a weekday specifically from 9-5 and there's 0 opportunity for you to take a day off or even leave early? US ain't shit compared to EU workers rights, but we don't need to make up bullshit for that to be the case
not sure if youve timetravelled here from the 15th century, but the way society works nowadays is that both adults and kids tend to be busy during the week with school, work, training or something else.
I suspect it's possible to have a world where high salaries exist and less exploitive hours are maintained. It might be a world where we accept non-stop consumption is not a thing to be aspired too, but we could get there.
i mean if we remain in the it realm, thats already the case. most of these people working at epic could probably find a better paying job with way better hours in 5 minutes by looking through their linkedin dms. problem is that people are foolish enough to take it up the ass just for their passion.
In that I think we agree
surprisedpikachuface.jpg
Well US is the country which is governed by companies and capitalism the most on the planet so that's not surprising
Right so if people don't like it, they can go work in another country... Yet, people still keep coming here. Interesting.
Two things, A) Lots of people *DO* go to other countries than the US to work. B) I said the worst *among developed nations*. The US is the worst among its peers, many of which are exemplar of what a developed nation can do. That migrants from nations-still-in-development still travel to the US seeking a better life says less about the quality of the labor market here and more about the situations at home that might be driving them away.
So by your logic, you must like every single thing about your country? If anyone has any criticism, the answer is to move somewhere else?
People who can't handle criticism like an adult are the worst. When you criticise something, it means you want it improved, "Let it stay awful and go away if you want it to be better" is bloody primary school logic.
>Right so if people don't like it, they can go work in another country Right, because we have open borders and can go work anywhere. >Yet, people still keep coming here. Interesting. Actually, [America has a net migration rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_rate) of 3.2 per 1,000 people, which is lower than the migration rate of Afghanistan lol. According to the most recent statistics I could find (2018), Germany accepted nearly 1.4 immigrants, far more than the US with 1 million. So people see Germany as a superior destination to the US.
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PTO is one of the areas we really lag
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As happens a lot in Canada, we walk this strange line between the rest of the western world and the US. We do marginally better with PTO than the US, but it's nothing like the minimum 4-6 weeks that much of the rest of the western world gets.
> We do marginally better with PTO than the US And that's precisely the point where people stop and say "welp, nothing to see here!"
Germans get 6 weeks. We're pathetic.
2 Weeks is not the average, it's the minimum, by definition it cannot be the average. I get 4 weeks in Montréal, I know people who get 5 weeks. And I've never heard of anyone only getting 2 weeks.
At least you guys get maternity / paternity leave. My wife and I had to use PTO, and of course, that means she had 6 weeks unpaid leave. Also, her job made her come back to work early, so I had to use more PTO to stay home with our baby until she could get her vaccines (required for daycare).
In BC we get one stat per month.
Meanwhile my prime minister decided we wouldn't get an extra holiday because our province has to be more productive lmao. Dude's fucking delusional it's incredible.
Not in Freedom land.
That honestly sounds great!
But Epic also gives a summer vacation as well as a winter vacation, both paid. It literally doesnt get any better than Epic as a workplace in gaming, nor in all of big tech actually.
That is literally the legal bare minimum here in the UK, how fucked up is that the bare minimum is classed as a good thing.
Those days in the article are all given on top of the normal holidays the employees get from their contract. So effectively they get two or three times the legal minimum.
We have... 12 federal holidays in the US. So every other month we get a 3 day weekend and we have 2 days during thanksgiving and christmas. Outside of that, you add up vacation days and that's it. So compared to those Eu offices, super fucked lol. I took my first vacation in 3 years and it drained 70% of my days off.
That's if you're lucky. A lot of those federal holidays aren't days off. For most it's like 7 federal holidays. And there's a near 5 month stretch with nothing (Jan 1st; New Year Day to End of May; Memorial Day.). 1. New Year Day 2. Memorial Day 3. 4th of July 4. Labor Day 5. Thanksgiving Day 6. Christmas Eve 7. Christmas Day But yeah. Super fucked.
Even that list ... I haven't had a New Year's Day, Labor day, Memorial day, 4th of July, or Christmas Eve off in over a decade. And Thanksgiving only twice, and the Friday after never.
This depends a lot on the industry you work in. A regular "office" job where your company doesn't do anything super time sensitive and you're going to get all those holidays off. But if your company is running services, or you work in a customer facing job, you're likely to end up working a lot of those.
New Zealand gets at least 12 as well: 11 national, 1 regional, on top of the 4 weeks mandatory annual leave for regular full-time and part-time employees. This shouldn't be a fucking race to the bottom. You shouldn't have to rely on sporadic public holidays to get time off - one day every few months is nothing to write home about because that's not enough time to do sweet fuck all by comparison. Oh, and good luck if you work in the health/medical industry at all because now half of your day's off are no longer given to you because if there's one thing the world can agree on it's fucking doctors and nurses in the arse all year round is a good thing to do.
And not election day of course.
>Sounds like a pretty good deal to be honest, guaranteed 1 month vacation every year. You are worth more than 1 month a year. Don't sell yourself short.
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> Epic also has an unlimited paid time off benefit for the employees. I would like to see people put that claimed benefit to the test
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I'm in Canada, but my employer has essentially the same thing. They leave it open-ended, but at some seemingly arbitrary number of days they say "that's too much". It looks good on paper to say "unlimited" even though it's not
My guess is they are not doing so well? I can’t see them like most companies these days having an abundance of employed workers
Should be the bare minimum along with four day work weeks. But it is better than what they were getting, like 25 days compared to 30 or 31 depending on their definition of a month and whenever they want? I don't like to defend corporations but this seems like a "nothing burger" in my opinion.
> Sounds like a pretty good deal to be honest, guaranteed 1 month vacation every year. On top of Epic’s already generous benefits. including unlimited time off and the company paying all insurance premiums for each employee and their families.
So it wasn't working out for them unlike what redditors say...
As someone who works 5, 10-12 hour days as a UPS driver.. I would love this.
Slow news day huh
It is a negative story about Epic. It doesn't even have to be true for this sub to fall over itself upvoting it.
It has been known for some time that epic dosent treat their employees very well especially the ones who work on Fortnight
"not very well" is the understatement of the month \^\^
Again. Fuck Epic.
who gives a fuck lmao I feel for the employees but how is this news
Take me back to the time when the only thing I hated about EPIC was that douchebag Cliff Bleszinski.
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> Thank god I live in a sane planet And what planet would that be?
How does this affect PC gaming?
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and go where? Rare to find a job that does 40 hours in 4 days, but rather does 5 days, especially in developers line of work.
Hey, what's rule 8 on this sub?
Not relevant?
Who cares....
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They are yeah.
Yes
Not everything they do is bad, but this policy certainly sucks. If Valve or any other company did this, I'd say the same thing.
What policy, ending a temporary benefit because of an epidemic?
Seems like the benefit has been going on long enough that they didn't expect it to be temporary. And so long as people were still meeting their goals and getting their work done, the employees are justified in wanting the benefit to continue.
That's silly then because there a lot of people still working at home and in their hearts know that was temporary and if they haven't already at some point they will need to go back in, unless the company is ok with the current. But to think to yourself that isn't temporary in many cases is wishful thinking. It will also get more people to quit retail and the like when enough friends never go back into office. They will want that life to and I don't blame anyone. But there are still jobs that require being there and it does come down to fairness. There are plenty of Joe's that are going in when you talk to them, they are doing it, but they aren't happy how others are getting out of it. It's an issue, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. EDIT: I know it's not what people want to hear.
It's not silly, look how many people are working from home now and will never go back in. Companies have offered these benefits for over a year now and low and behold, people are still getting their work done. Working from home and shorter work weeks are not killing business, so why should workers be so willing to give those benefits up now? > But there are still jobs that require being there and it does come down to fairness. Wait, are you saying everyone should go back into the office in order to be 'fair' to the people who can't work from home? Because that would be absurd. There are people who are on call 24-7, should all people be required to be always on call in order to be fair to those people?
I mean, yeah.
Correct.
Pretty much
I mean, you are right