Between 2 and 3 is a very crucial step that is easily missed but very, very important:

Get a HR department with a clue and keep them out of the hiring process.

Because if you offer something like this, you can (and must) pick your talent. You will get access to the best who come with a built-in productivity rate of a factor 2+, and you will have to identify them during the hiring process.

Basically what you have to do is what Ford did back in the day. He paid his workers REALLY well. In turn, everyone wanted to work for him, so he could pick the best and most productive mechanics for his factories. His workers were also pretty worried that they may lose that killer job, so they did anything and everything to make sure they don't get fired because that was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Fuck this up and you lost.

If you offer something like this, and today the big deal is a shorter work week, not paying 5 bucks an hour more, you have your free choice of talent. And of course you have to make good use of that.

Back when I was in development, I did have a developer I paid full time who was here for about 25-30 hours. During a "good" week.

I refused to "force" him to come in 40 because the last thing I wanted was that a person who can write flawless multi-threaded code from scratch would be pissed over being rewarded for writing flawless multi-threaded code with having to work more. His productivity was already about a factor 1.5 or 2 above anyone else, so why should I piss off the most productive person on the team, and the go-to person when shit hits the fan to get something fixed?

True. But on my days off, at least I do projects I actually want to do instead of testing the 10th web-app this year alone.

You have to pay me to bore me, I'll do the interesting stuff for free.

Of course they don't. They already can't afford a house, why do you think they'd fall for that bullshit joke called retirement? They'll never see anything like it.

You're lucky if you do, if you aren't already at least 50.

Ok, fine, let's compromise.

WFH and doing it for 4 days a week seems to be a sensible compromise.

Yeah, people don't have to beg for a job anymore, they can actually tell you to stick it and go to another company, just as desperate to hire as yours is.

If you call it "orientation", you should not be surprised if the people "orient" themselves and realize what a hellhole your company is.

Call it "onboarding".

Companies that thought they could at least remotely offshore jobs already did so ages ago. Stop trying to scare people into keeping your office chairs from floating off into space, we're not buying that bullshit anymore.

Fine by me.

An economy that doesn't serve its participants can as well go to hell.

Fridays meetings are a godsend! You will NEVER see agreements being closed this quickly, especially if you make it obvious you have all the time in the world while they want to leave early for the weekend.

The last time we had a work hour reduction in my country was in 1975. From 48 to 40 hours. Ever since, productivity has increased twofold to twentyfold, depending on industry.

And now people want to lower their work hours by 1/5. Not even their productivity, but yeah, let's say we lower productivity by 1/5.

Care to tell us how those companies even survived back in 1975? Cutting down hours AND having only about 20% productivity on average to start with? How did they even manage? How could they possibly stay in business?

Not so new at all. It's been the consultant's mantra for decades now.

"10% more with 10 percent less"? Never heard of it? Consultants have been selling that bullshit for ages. You can always increase your productivity by 10% and cut your workforce by the same 10%. Every year. No really, that's what they're selling.

And suddenly, after decades of following that creed religiously, it's a "ridiculous notion"? Perish the thought! You think the consultant who has been selling you this sage advice for so long could be wrong?

HERETIC!!!

That's fine, then give these people the structure of a work week and leave us who are capable of self organization out of that bullshit.

From a job, I need mostly money. I don't need an occupation, I'm quite capable of keeping myself occupied and busy.

I'm not here to cater to the sensibilities of fragile leadership. I'm getting paid to get shit done.

Pretty much this right here.

Fridays are the worst. Everyone's basically watching the clock tick down to 1pm which is also the time when I can safely break SLAs and start running the security tests I should only do after work hours, because nobody but me is around who would even notice that some systems go down.

You don't think anyone gets anything sensible done on a 9 to 1 Friday, do you?