Would you work for 12 hours in a row? What if it meant having a four-day workweek?
That’s the tradeoff that Jump Trading Group, a fintech trading firm, is hoping applicants make. In its job listing for a production engineer—which could be based in its offices in Chicago, New York, Sydney, or Singapore—they added an addendum: “Weekend Warrior.”
The company operates as “one global team,” it wrote in the job description. In practice, that means extra-long hours to align with “many global financial markets.” So far, so good. The production engineer will learn “new cutting-edge technologies” and “get their hands dirty to solve challenging technical problems.”
Then comes the warrior part. The engineer will work a “modified 4- or 5-day workweek” including Saturday and Sunday “to help support our infrastructure on a full-time basis.”
Every third weekend
Despite the title, it’s not an every-weekend gig. By Jump’s calculations, the employee will work “the equivalent of a third of the weekends in a year” based on an agreed-upon schedule with the two other weekend shift colleagues in a given region.
During “on” weekends, the engineer is on the clock for 12-hour shifts to overlap with colleagues in far-flung timezones. Those hours, however, are “flexible.” (A Glassdoor review of the company claims otherwise, saying there’s “No flexibility with hours” and it’s “difficult to even step off the desk.”)
Jump also stressed the community aspect to the role—owing to the fact that 12-hour shifts on weekends could end up lonely. “Worth noting, other teams have a similar setup, so you will join a virtual ‘weekend warrior’ team online all weekend in your time zone,” the description reads. “Also, Jump’s systems are heavily automated so most of your time will be focused on project work – but you will be available for immediate troubleshooting and support as required.”
The annualized base salary ranges from $150,000 to $175,000, with the chance for a discretionary bonus.
Perhaps that salary isn’t quite enough to offset the Saturday and Sunday grind. The listing for Singapore’s Weekend Warrior role was reposted on LinkedIn over three weeks ago and has garnered just 21 applicants. (The New York listing, just 20.)
Four-day workweeks remain a hit
Four-day workweeks at Jump may mean 12-hour days, which, if held constant along the week, mean 48-hour weeks all year—which evens out to an extra day of work. But many companies that remain committed to a four-day workweek are nixing the extra day entirely, not tacking its hours onto the other four. And employees are thrilled with their new 32-hour weeks—and they’re often even more productive, to boot.
Exos, a performance coaching company, has had a four-day workweek for nearly a year-and-a-half, which they say has slashed burnout, exhaustion and disconnect in half—and greatly improved outcomes.
Within six months of the new arrangement, Exos said its sales pipeline grew 211%, and within a year, 91% of employees rated themselves as productive, compared to 67% before the shift. Turnover even dropped from 47% annually to 29%.
“That feeling of trust has really magnified a culture of connectivity and loyalty,” Exos chief people officer Greg Hill told Coins2Day’s Emma Burleigh earlier this year. “We feel that in our poll surveys, we feel that in our offsites, we see it in our turnover.”
It remains to be seen whether the same impacts can be felt if only a company’s warriors are taking part in the new arrangement.
