sergeyfomkin

Totally agree with your last point — I’ve tried exactly that model myself: working a little every day, remotely, and it works incredibly well. It keeps the pressure low, the mind clear, and people don’t mind doing an hour or two even on a Saturday if needed. But yeah, it only works for people with high self-discipline — otherwise it just turns into doing nothing at all.

Absolutely. Take Google or Meta — both have gone through rounds of layoffs while still keeping thousands in roles focused on alignment, planning, or internal coordination. McKinsey and other big consultancies often produce reports with minimal new insight, tailored mostly to justify executive decisions. Even in finance, layers of middle office and compliance roles exist not because they’re strictly needed, but because no one wants to take on institutional risk. These aren’t government jobs — they’re high-paid, private-sector roles that persist because the system values control and optics just as much as output.

Yep, the irony is that the workweek has quietly shrunk — but instead of freeing people, we trap them in offices and force them to fake productivity. It’s not about output anymore, it’s about control. That’s what a formal 4-day week could challenge.

A lot of what we call work today really is just performative. As long as people stay busy, no one questions where the value goes. AI just makes it harder to hide the fact that so much of the system runs on keeping people occupied instead of actually improving their lives.