This is denial. There are absolutely problematic side-effects with the existing calendar system, and the obvious use-cases that jumped out to me are on the business/financial side. Yes, the changing length of months makes financial planning slightly more difficult. The arbitrary nature of how many non-business days occurs in a month cause issues (some months can have many more 'business' days than other months, skewing financial data for those months and the months surrounding them). Don't get me started on the fact that different years have, in the US, different lengths of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, skewing consumer behavior.
I'm not saying this is a good enough reason to even begin trying to upend the existing calendar system and replace it. But the somewhat random nature of how weekends and certain holidays are distributed throughout the calendar can have effects on business, and presumably other areas. One might suggest it is all awash because the bad effects of one year/week/month will erase the good effects of a future one, but I don't find that comforting if it contributes to, say, the company I work for having an under-performing year, resulting in layoffs (granted, there would be other factors here as well). Regardless, the inconsistency is a problem.
I recall working at a FinTech company and hearing some team gloat about something like an 8% increase in MoM revenue, only to be shut down by someone in finance pointing out that there were 8% more bank days that month. Imagine someone wasn't thinking of this and people got promoted (or fired) because of a total nothing-signal being misinterpreted as a hugely positive (or negative) performance. The existing calendar allows this.
> But the somewhat random nature of how weekends and certain holidays are distributed throughout the calendar can have effects on business, and presumably other areas.
Yes, and? Isn't it to be expected? Calendars are long-living standards, that adjust over long periods of time, because of the practical impact they have on societies.
Why should those commons adjust themselves in order to satisfy self-imposed, often antisocial business requirements? (how MoM revenue performance is calculated and rewarded is strictly a concern for said businesses).
If it should contribute to an underperforming year for your company, it would be a way lesser factor than the lack of preparation or perspective from its owners/executives, because the calendar-related discrepancies are already known in advance (and it's not a particularly recent phenomenon either).
Would even such a deciyear (or any other new) calendar be adopted, it would "diverge" again in the next 10/20 years by the simple sheer force of society cultural evolution: "we will have more bank days here", "we need more working days there", "ho, we need to mark this particular date because of this event", "ho, these partner countries follow a new tradition, we need to adjust somehow".
Ok. Perhaps a new calendaring system could make sense for businesses. The only way forward would be for businesses first to design and adopt it, in parallel with the public calendar system, and show how it works better. Would there be a favorable business case? Especially in relation with financial and regulatory requirements which are still based on civil years? (and even different across countries)
The calendar proposed by the article has the same problem, see the part about the yearend period and leap years. Yes, the issue occurs less often, but the question "what date is one month from today" still doesn't have a simple answer. Do we want 36 days from today? Today's date next month? What if today is the 2nd of Decilis, are we talking about the 2nd day of yearend or the 2nd day of Primilis?
These questions are a pain in the ass with the Gregorian calendar and they would be a pain in the ass with this one, and basically any conceivable calendar. No calendar can change the fact that there isn't an integer number of days in a year, and that the closest integer (365) doesn't have nice factors for making a calendar out of.
I'm not saying this is a good enough reason to even begin trying to upend the existing calendar system and replace it. But the somewhat random nature of how weekends and certain holidays are distributed throughout the calendar can have effects on business, and presumably other areas. One might suggest it is all awash because the bad effects of one year/week/month will erase the good effects of a future one, but I don't find that comforting if it contributes to, say, the company I work for having an under-performing year, resulting in layoffs (granted, there would be other factors here as well). Regardless, the inconsistency is a problem.
I recall working at a FinTech company and hearing some team gloat about something like an 8% increase in MoM revenue, only to be shut down by someone in finance pointing out that there were 8% more bank days that month. Imagine someone wasn't thinking of this and people got promoted (or fired) because of a total nothing-signal being misinterpreted as a hugely positive (or negative) performance. The existing calendar allows this.