9 ms·

Don't call me a '5:01er' (2015)

97 points by s_kilk 10y ago

zebraflask 10y ago
At my company, leaving at a reasonable time is encouraged, if not insisted upon. Facilities locks down the building and parking lots in the early evening and doesn't like people staying late. Practically speaking, there's no way to put in >8 solid hours of programming or engineering work, day after day. Like a lot of people, I have a handful of solid programming hours each day before mental fatigue sets in. The rest of day is spent handling the related work - planning, emails, background reading, etc. More than 8 hours would be an absolute waste of time.
- hermitdev 10y ago
  Totally agree. Firm I used to work for, for my first 2 years, 7 to 7 was required M-F, and 8 hours on Saturday with 4 work from home on Sunday. It was utter bullshit. We didn't even have that much work to do at the time. A lot of it was inventing work. It was all about facetime to management. Result was burnout and a lot of turnover. Once i was the only one left, i basically said fuck it. Especially, as a team of 1, I was also on call 24/7. Going from 7 to 7 to a 9 to 5 day increased my productivity, happiness and income.
  - taneq 10y ago
    > Once i was the only one left, i basically said fuck it. I'm amazed it took you that long. > Going from 7 to 7 to a 9 to 5 day increased my productivity, happiness and income. Wait what, 'fuck it' meant 'I'm cutting back to a 40-hour work week', not 'I'm walking away and not coming back except on a contract rate 10x what I'm currently being paid'?
- fuzzfactor 10y ago
  "there's no way to put in >8 solid hours of programming or engineering work" I guess not if they lock it down like a bank. OTOH, there are some high-endurance operators who not only work smarter during the regular hours, but routinely develop superior creative solutions exclusively during the extended sessions that simply require more than 8 (or whatever) hours of solid effort or concentration. My office (a scientific lab) is open 24/7/365, and I have breakthroughs whenever I want. Anything less would be poor utilization of facilities, transportation, and personnel.
davidgerard 10y ago
Our dev instances all live on AWS. We don't keep them up 24/7 - instead, we save about £2k/mo by running them only from 08:00-18:00 UTC. (Probably we'll move that an hour in summer.) At six o'clock, your dev instance goes off. This saves me shouting "GO HOME!" a lot ...
- jon-wood 10y ago
  That's a fantastic way or working, more companies should do it!
chrisbennet 10y ago
C'mon, does't your company put a little extra in your paycheck once in a while when you need it? "Hi boss, it's crunch time at home with the new kid on the way. I'm gonna have to ask you to put some more money in my check this month, you know, just until she ships." (That is sarcasm for the impaired.)
- gravypod 10y ago
  You don't get bonuses or raises when you really need it?
  - dexwiz 10y ago
    No, and they should not. Giving bonuses or raises to employees during personal rough times is a slippery slope. It eventually leads to mentality like, "Well of course Tom makes 5k more, he has a family to support." Its easy to turn this around, and for employers withhold pay or advancement, because the the employee is perceived to not need it.
    - imesh 10y ago
      And as an employee you should do the same with your time.
  - khedoros1 10y ago
    I get quarterly bonuses and have an annual compensation review that usually results in a raise. "When I really need it" doesn't have much to do with that. At my last employer, they laid me off two days before my son was born. I work out an agreement with my manager for what my work schedule will be. I owe them the time and work that I agreed to. They owe me the compensation package that they agreed to.
  - chrisbennet 10y ago
    Not sure if you're being sarcastic also. The point I was trying to make is the how assymetric the employee/employer relationship is; they expect more than 40 hours "during crunch times" but they would laugh if you suggested working less or paying more. This is the phrase I was parodying: "Hi Bob, it's crunch time with the new product. I'm gonna have to ask you to work a few extra hours this month, you know, just until we ship." Never got a bonus, ever. When I wanted a raise, I would give it to myself by moving to a new company for more money. Loved going to work and worked for great companies. (I work for myself now. My boss is a jerk.)
knztmz 10y ago
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation
ourmandave 10y ago
I'm a 4:58er. If I don't get out before the warehouse people I might as well stay until 5:30 by the time the parking lot clears. On the flip side, I'm usually in at least 20 minutes early every morning.
elchief 10y ago
They shoot tv shows and movies in my building several days per month, starting right at 5:01, and it ain't quiet. We were Turing Industries for a while!
marcus_holmes 10y ago
I manage a dev team. I don't care how many hours they work. I don't measure when anyone comes in or when they go home. I care about output. We don't pay people to sit at desks. We pay people to write code. Writing code is a creative endeavour - good code can occur in the shower as that sudden realisation strikes about how to refactor the messy state engine. Insisting that people sit at desks until the boss leaves is a really strong signal of bad company culture, and probably bad code. Because development is creative, it is affected by mental state. Worrying about the kids or the bus timetable is counter-productive (you're not thinking about code, you're thinking about what your colleagues will make of you running to the bus). Good development environments minimise these worries, allowing developers to focus on writing code.
- gspetr 10y ago
  > I manage a dev team. I don't care how many hours they work. > I don't measure when anyone comes in or when they go home. > I care about output. I've got a personal anecdote, it's not meant as an attack on you. Had a manager at BigCo. who claimed exactly that. That BigCo. was also the one who won awards for being model employer. One time he decided he really-really wanted a raise at the next review and introduced a system of punishment where if you're late by N minutes you'll have to do N*P (Where P is number of people in the team) tasks from the backlog. After work. Unpaid. I was on vacation when this was introduced. Got into minor traffic accident soon after I came back. Got assigned the tasks. Put in my resignation soon after - the man could not be reasoned with. His arguments? I broke employer's rules being late. And the unpaid overtime part? I asked him specifically at the interview 2 years before that if the company had unpaid overtimes. The answer was a resolute "No". EDIT: Formatting.
  - aidenn0 10y ago
    Yup, number of managers who say "I don't care about effort only output" is much higher than managers who actually care about output over effort. I'm fortunate that my manager actually does act how he talks. Personally, I don't care too much if you value the presence of my butt in my seat more than how much I get done; it's your dime, so to speak. However if you lie to me about what you are paying me for, then neither one of us is going to be happy.
closeparen 10y ago
Can we stop with the implicit assumption that children are the only valid reason to have a life outside of work? I cook dinner, read fiction, take weekend live audio gigs, took motorcycle class and bought one. I plan to learn to sail, get an amateur radio license, pick up an instrument, and (money permitting) earn a private pilot rating. Oh, and see friends who are not coworkers. And date. When I program outside of work, it's in a domain or part of the stack I wish I knew more about, i.e. not what I'm doing at work. My on-call shifts are scheduled well in advance. When I'm not on call, work stays in its timebox. We all deserve to live full lives, not just parents.
- jdmichal 10y ago
  I think it's just an easy fallback from an emotional perspective. It would be a "political suicide" of sorts to argue against a parent wanting time with their children. Not so much about a sailor wanting time with their boat, etc.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - rootlocus 10y ago
    "political suicide" or not, I'm paid for 8h/day. What I do with my free time is nobody's concern and I sure don't have to defend myself for respecting my contractual obligations.
    - closeparen 10y ago
      Sure, but I'm pretty sure the problem being discussed here is specific to at-will salary workers, who do not have specific contractual obligations and are not paid for specific hours.
      - rootlocus 10y ago
        I'm not familiar with "at-will salary workers". How does that work? If they don't have contractual obligations, what do they get paid for?
omginternets 10y ago
Ha! And here my approach has always been "leave when the work is done", with a liberal application of "time to call it a day and clear my head". There's a latent assumption that the author hasn't touched upon, which is that putting in more hours yields a greater productivity. I've found the opposite to be true (to a point). All I can say is I don't regret my decision to freelance.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  Also consider, If you worked until you were so tired you were no longer productive, any outside work (personal projects etc) done after work will suffer low productivity too. I want to save a little energy for after work, not just spend it recovering.
vacri 10y ago
This seems like an overly-passionate response to an inconveniently tight bus schedule.
- kinos 10y ago
  Hello, I logged in purely just to respond to you. Inconveniently tight is an understatement when it comes to public transport. You're dealing with a beast that can appear ANY time within a 30 minute radius around the "estimated" arrival time. And if you miss it, that can be an hour out of your life. Combining the fact that now you'll miss your transfer(s). This also ignores all the prep time that goes into catching a bus such as packing your things, ensuring you have the money, getting out of the office (where people don't respect or understand the bus schedule). I also didn't account for things such as crosswalks and rude drivers. I assume every crosswalk will be about 10 minutes to cross, given lights and drivers general disrespect for pedestrians. For reference, I've gotten so angry at my local Public Bus system I started a blog to deal with my rage issues caused by it.
a-saleh 10y ago
Fortunately, we don't have at-will employment over here, and I have been quite up-front to my manager that in this team I would be leaving at 5:01, because I have a little daughter at home. And it was fine, because we already had a senior guy, working from his house, from 7:01 to 15:01 :-) And it is fine if somebody leaves early because of i.e. board-game night, or pub-crawl, unless our servers are on fire or you already have a scheduled meeting :) To be honest I kind-of pride myself on being a 9 to 5 programmer. I remember reading about some studies that consistent work 6 hours a day is more productive than 12 hours a day after ~3 months. Then I saw this with my own eyes, where I worked with a friend on a project, and I always worked every day between 8 00 and 12 00 and he tried to crunch from like 1 pm to 1 am ... my code was less buggy, more stable and by a week we actually had ~same ammount of working lines written.

97 points by s_kilk 10y ago

At my company, leaving at a reasonable time is encouraged, if not insisted upon. Facilities locks down the building and parking lots in the early evening and doesn't like people staying late. Practically speaking, there's no way to put in >8 solid hours of programming or engineering work, day after day. Like a lot of people, I have a handful of solid programming hours each day before mental fatigue sets in. The rest of day is spent handling the related work - planning, emails, background reading, etc. More than 8 hours would be an absolute waste of time.

hermitdev 10y ago
Totally agree. Firm I used to work for, for my first 2 years, 7 to 7 was required M-F, and 8 hours on Saturday with 4 work from home on Sunday. It was utter bullshit. We didn't even have that much work to do at the time. A lot of it was inventing work. It was all about facetime to management. Result was burnout and a lot of turnover. Once i was the only one left, i basically said fuck it. Especially, as a team of 1, I was also on call 24/7. Going from 7 to 7 to a 9 to 5 day increased my productivity, happiness and income.
- taneq 10y ago
  > Once i was the only one left, i basically said fuck it. I'm amazed it took you that long. > Going from 7 to 7 to a 9 to 5 day increased my productivity, happiness and income. Wait what, 'fuck it' meant 'I'm cutting back to a 40-hour work week', not 'I'm walking away and not coming back except on a contract rate 10x what I'm currently being paid'?
fuzzfactor 10y ago
"there's no way to put in >8 solid hours of programming or engineering work" I guess not if they lock it down like a bank. OTOH, there are some high-endurance operators who not only work smarter during the regular hours, but routinely develop superior creative solutions exclusively during the extended sessions that simply require more than 8 (or whatever) hours of solid effort or concentration. My office (a scientific lab) is open 24/7/365, and I have breakthroughs whenever I want. Anything less would be poor utilization of facilities, transportation, and personnel.

davidgerard 10y ago

Our dev instances all live on AWS. We don't keep them up 24/7 - instead, we save about £2k/mo by running them only from 08:00-18:00 UTC. (Probably we'll move that an hour in summer.) At six o'clock, your dev instance goes off. This saves me shouting "GO HOME!" a lot ...

jon-wood 10y ago
That's a fantastic way or working, more companies should do it!

chrisbennet 10y ago

C'mon, does't your company put a little extra in your paycheck once in a while when you need it? "Hi boss, it's crunch time at home with the new kid on the way. I'm gonna have to ask you to put some more money in my check this month, you know, just until she ships." (That is sarcasm for the impaired.)

gravypod 10y ago
You don't get bonuses or raises when you really need it?
- dexwiz 10y ago
  No, and they should not. Giving bonuses or raises to employees during personal rough times is a slippery slope. It eventually leads to mentality like, "Well of course Tom makes 5k more, he has a family to support." Its easy to turn this around, and for employers withhold pay or advancement, because the the employee is perceived to not need it.
  - imesh 10y ago
    And as an employee you should do the same with your time.
- khedoros1 10y ago
  I get quarterly bonuses and have an annual compensation review that usually results in a raise. "When I really need it" doesn't have much to do with that. At my last employer, they laid me off two days before my son was born. I work out an agreement with my manager for what my work schedule will be. I owe them the time and work that I agreed to. They owe me the compensation package that they agreed to.
- chrisbennet 10y ago
  Not sure if you're being sarcastic also. The point I was trying to make is the how assymetric the employee/employer relationship is; they expect more than 40 hours "during crunch times" but they would laugh if you suggested working less or paying more. This is the phrase I was parodying: "Hi Bob, it's crunch time with the new product. I'm gonna have to ask you to work a few extra hours this month, you know, just until we ship." Never got a bonus, ever. When I wanted a raise, I would give it to myself by moving to a new company for more money. Loved going to work and worked for great companies. (I work for myself now. My boss is a jerk.)

knztmz 10y ago

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation

ourmandave 10y ago

I'm a 4:58er. If I don't get out before the warehouse people I might as well stay until 5:30 by the time the parking lot clears. On the flip side, I'm usually in at least 20 minutes early every morning.

elchief 10y ago

They shoot tv shows and movies in my building several days per month, starting right at 5:01, and it ain't quiet. We were Turing Industries for a while!

marcus_holmes 10y ago

I manage a dev team. I don't care how many hours they work. I don't measure when anyone comes in or when they go home. I care about output. We don't pay people to sit at desks. We pay people to write code. Writing code is a creative endeavour - good code can occur in the shower as that sudden realisation strikes about how to refactor the messy state engine. Insisting that people sit at desks until the boss leaves is a really strong signal of bad company culture, and probably bad code. Because development is creative, it is affected by mental state. Worrying about the kids or the bus timetable is counter-productive (you're not thinking about code, you're thinking about what your colleagues will make of you running to the bus). Good development environments minimise these worries, allowing developers to focus on writing code.

gspetr 10y ago
> I manage a dev team. I don't care how many hours they work. > I don't measure when anyone comes in or when they go home. > I care about output. I've got a personal anecdote, it's not meant as an attack on you. Had a manager at BigCo. who claimed exactly that. That BigCo. was also the one who won awards for being model employer. One time he decided he really-really wanted a raise at the next review and introduced a system of punishment where if you're late by N minutes you'll have to do N*P (Where P is number of people in the team) tasks from the backlog. After work. Unpaid. I was on vacation when this was introduced. Got into minor traffic accident soon after I came back. Got assigned the tasks. Put in my resignation soon after - the man could not be reasoned with. His arguments? I broke employer's rules being late. And the unpaid overtime part? I asked him specifically at the interview 2 years before that if the company had unpaid overtimes. The answer was a resolute "No". EDIT: Formatting.
- aidenn0 10y ago
  Yup, number of managers who say "I don't care about effort only output" is much higher than managers who actually care about output over effort. I'm fortunate that my manager actually does act how he talks. Personally, I don't care too much if you value the presence of my butt in my seat more than how much I get done; it's your dime, so to speak. However if you lie to me about what you are paying me for, then neither one of us is going to be happy.

closeparen 10y ago

Can we stop with the implicit assumption that children are the only valid reason to have a life outside of work? I cook dinner, read fiction, take weekend live audio gigs, took motorcycle class and bought one. I plan to learn to sail, get an amateur radio license, pick up an instrument, and (money permitting) earn a private pilot rating. Oh, and see friends who are not coworkers. And date. When I program outside of work, it's in a domain or part of the stack I wish I knew more about, i.e. not what I'm doing at work. My on-call shifts are scheduled well in advance. When I'm not on call, work stays in its timebox. We all deserve to live full lives, not just parents.

jdmichal 10y ago
I think it's just an easy fallback from an emotional perspective. It would be a "political suicide" of sorts to argue against a parent wanting time with their children. Not so much about a sailor wanting time with their boat, etc.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rootlocus 10y ago
  "political suicide" or not, I'm paid for 8h/day. What I do with my free time is nobody's concern and I sure don't have to defend myself for respecting my contractual obligations.
  - closeparen 10y ago
    Sure, but I'm pretty sure the problem being discussed here is specific to at-will salary workers, who do not have specific contractual obligations and are not paid for specific hours.
    - rootlocus 10y ago
      I'm not familiar with "at-will salary workers". How does that work? If they don't have contractual obligations, what do they get paid for?

omginternets 10y ago

Ha! And here my approach has always been "leave when the work is done", with a liberal application of "time to call it a day and clear my head". There's a latent assumption that the author hasn't touched upon, which is that putting in more hours yields a greater productivity. I've found the opposite to be true (to a point). All I can say is I don't regret my decision to freelance.

Chris2048 10y ago
Also consider, If you worked until you were so tired you were no longer productive, any outside work (personal projects etc) done after work will suffer low productivity too. I want to save a little energy for after work, not just spend it recovering.

vacri 10y ago

This seems like an overly-passionate response to an inconveniently tight bus schedule.

kinos 10y ago
Hello, I logged in purely just to respond to you. Inconveniently tight is an understatement when it comes to public transport. You're dealing with a beast that can appear ANY time within a 30 minute radius around the "estimated" arrival time. And if you miss it, that can be an hour out of your life. Combining the fact that now you'll miss your transfer(s). This also ignores all the prep time that goes into catching a bus such as packing your things, ensuring you have the money, getting out of the office (where people don't respect or understand the bus schedule). I also didn't account for things such as crosswalks and rude drivers. I assume every crosswalk will be about 10 minutes to cross, given lights and drivers general disrespect for pedestrians. For reference, I've gotten so angry at my local Public Bus system I started a blog to deal with my rage issues caused by it.

a-saleh 10y ago

Fortunately, we don't have at-will employment over here, and I have been quite up-front to my manager that in this team I would be leaving at 5:01, because I have a little daughter at home. And it was fine, because we already had a senior guy, working from his house, from 7:01 to 15:01 :-) And it is fine if somebody leaves early because of i.e. board-game night, or pub-crawl, unless our servers are on fire or you already have a scheduled meeting :) To be honest I kind-of pride myself on being a 9 to 5 programmer. I remember reading about some studies that consistent work 6 hours a day is more productive than 12 hours a day after ~3 months. Then I saw this with my own eyes, where I worked with a friend on a project, and I always worked every day between 8 00 and 12 00 and he tried to crunch from like 1 pm to 1 am ... my code was less buggy, more stable and by a week we actually had ~same ammount of working lines written.