Can the four-day week work for tech?

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(Image credit: Future)

It's that time of year when the clocks change and the nights draw in, the familiar starts to take on a new aspect as the shadows lengthen, and in the world of IT, trends that have been taken for granted are also starting to take on a new shape.

As countries battle productivity problems, can they replicate the success of Iceland's four-day working week? Elsewhere, developers have started to question just how useful AI coding tools really are, and OpenAI has had another successful funding round – but is interest in the company starting to wain?

In this episode, Jane is once again joined by Ross Kelly, ITPro’s news and analysis editor, to unpack the most interesting news that October brought.

Highlights

“These trials have been a major success, by all accounts. There's been a lot of chat about the shift to the four-day work week, which I'm sure we won't be moving to anytime soon. But a lot of workers in Iceland have definitely seen benefits in terms of improvements to work-life balance, the obvious reduction in hours. And Iceland hasn't taken a productivity hit in an economic sense, or in terms of the general business performance,”

“If you've got a three-day weekend, then you have one day that's winding down, one day to actually do something, and one day to have the Sunday scaries. But I mean, there are plenty of people probably in the UK, actually, who are already working a de facto four-day week. I work a four-day week, because I compress my hours, into four days.”

“[I]n the end, if there's nothing of any substance there, then it's going to go ‘pop’ eventually. So we'll have to see how – like I say that's not just OpenAI, it's the generative AI market in general that gives me that feel.”

Footnotes

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Rory Bathgate
Features and Multimedia Editor

Rory Bathgate is Features and Multimedia Editor at ITPro, overseeing all in-depth content and case studies. He can also be found co-hosting the ITPro Podcast with Jane McCallion, swapping a keyboard for a microphone to discuss the latest learnings with thought leaders from across the tech sector.

In his free time, Rory enjoys photography, video editing, and good science fiction. After graduating from the University of Kent with a BA in English and American Literature, Rory undertook an MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies at King’s College London. He joined ITPro in 2022 as a graduate, following four years in student journalism. You can contact Rory at rory.bathgate@futurenet.com or on LinkedIn.