About 4dayweek.io

Most job boards treat work schedule as an afterthought - a checkbox buried in the fine print. But for the growing number of professionals who want a shorter work week, that makes finding the right role needlessly difficult.

Our mission is to make it easy to find companies genuinely offering reduced hours. We verify every listing, surface schedule details upfront, and curate roles across every industry and career level.

Back in 2019, I was commuting three hours a day to my job in Edinburgh. By the time the weekend came around, I was exhausted. But the kicker wasn't the commute - it was what happened on Friday afternoons. Every week, the office turned into a table tennis tournament. It was fun, sure, but it was a massive waste of time. And I kept asking myself: why am I travelling three hours a day for a table tennis tournament?

That frustration led me down a rabbit hole. I started Googling “4 day work week jobs” and found almost nothing. No job boards. No directories. No way to find companies that actually offered shorter weeks. So I decided to build one.

Speaking at SXSW 2023 - the first time the festival hosted a 4-day work week panel

In December 2020, I built 4dayweek.io in two days. It wasn't my first startup - I'd had about 10 failed projects before this one, including a University of Glasgow spin-out called Scoop Analytics. But this time felt different. I posted a Show HN on HackerNews and went to bed.

The next morning, my phone was buzzing non-stop. I'd set up a notification for every new signup, and it was going off every 10 minutes. 300 people signed up in the first few days. When that happened, I knew I was on to something.

It validated something I'd felt for a long time. If technology has made us roughly 4x more productive since 1950, why are we still working the same hours? The 5-day work week isn't some law of nature - it's a social norm, and social norms change. We went from 7 days to 6, then 6 to 5. The next step has always been obvious.

But it's not just about productivity. Every major 4-day week study - the UK, South Africa, Iceland, South Cambridgeshire - has shown the same results: output stays the same, burnout drops, people sleep more, exercise more, and spend more time with their families. Staff stay longer, recruitment gets easier, and companies save money. The evidence isn't mixed. It's overwhelming and consistent.

Today, over 13 countries have trialled or legislated for shorter working weeks. Unions, governments, and some of the world's biggest companies are all moving in the same direction. The 4-day week isn't a matter of if - it's a matter of when. And I want 4dayweek.io to be the place that helps people find their way there.