4 ms·

Guess you live by the 40 hour rule, eh? Clock-in, clock-out, drone it out in corporate america? No one is saying you should be working 70 hour weeks consistent

by gt565k 10y ago

Guess you live by the 40 hour rule, eh? Clock-in, clock-out, drone it out in corporate america? No one is saying you should be working 70 hour weeks consistently. That's a recipe for burn out. OP said his expectations are that people will deliver when push comes to shove. Which is more than reasonable, as people who actually deliver and put in extra hours when it matters, are given more flexible schedules, because management doesn't have to micromanage them. If I work a 70 hour week and we deliver on-time or early, I can take extra time off. It's all about building trust. There's no linear workloads in software. We all know estimates are hard, and you should always pad your time. Some weeks you're stuck in meetings, some weeks you're coding like a mad man. I've had plenty of coworkers who are content with working the 9-5, not thinking about anything that's outside the box, because "that's not in their job description". I would not want to work with people like that.

smt88 10y ago
I'm not sure where the "corporate America" thing comes from, other than your own prejudices about how other people work. I've only ever worked for early-stage startups. I work by the 40-hour rule most weeks because I have experience and know how to run a team. Inexperienced (or short-sighted) managers burn themselves and their employees out by planning poorly. I used to do that myself. Now I don't make anyone work more than 8 hours a day, and we deliver a working iteration of our product every week. I'd love for my 40-hour rule to become zero hours (only doing "work" that I enjoy and is meaningful to me), because life isn't about work.
pc86 10y ago
> If I work a 70 hour week and we deliver on-time or early, I can take extra time off. Well you'd need to work 6 hour days for 3 weeks straight just to break even, so how long do you need to do it for "extra" time off? A month, a month and a half? Never. I'd be shocked if I saw someone allowed one 30-hour week. And what if you still deliver late? If management is poor enough to allow you in a situation where you need to work 1.75x beyond capacity just to meet a deadline, it's just as likely that you miss the deadline working that much, too. So if you miss it because management sucks you don't get your "extra" time off, I bet? > I've had plenty of coworkers who are content with working the 9-5, not thinking about anything that's outside the box, because "that's not in their job description". I would not want to work with people like that. The hours someone works has nothing to do with the quality of their work product or how committed they are to the business. I do plenty of things that aren't in my job description, I am well regarded professionally in my company and elsewhere, and I work 40.0 hours a week. I've had plenty of coworkers who sit at the office all day, not thinking about anything other than work, because they have no personal life, no hobbies, and their entire sense of self worth is wrapped in what they do for a living. I would not want to work with people like that. It's a good thing we can all decide what kind of life we want and do everything we can to live it!
- dagw 10y ago
  Well you'd need to work 6 hour days for 3 weeks straight just to break even Or you could just take Monday-Wednesday off the following week and go home early on Friday.
  - pc86 10y ago
    I think you are missing the forest for the trees. Yes, it is possible to come up with any number of scenarios where the average is 40 hours per week. That is not the point. My primary point was that "extra time off" indicates that you worked a net of less than 40 hours over whatever period of time we're talking about. Me working 50 hours in week A and 30 in week B doesn't do me any good. In fact in does the opposite because I will statistically do worse work in week A. If I were given "extra time off" I'd expect to work less than 30 hours in week B otherwise why am I not just working a consistent schedule and getting the additional benefits from that?
dagw 10y ago
I've had plenty of coworkers who are content with working the 9-5, not thinking about anything that's outside the box, because "that's not in their job description". Those two things seem rather orthogonal. I'm very much a 9-5 sort of guy these days, but I'm always thinking outside the box as it where about work projects and will happily spend my evenings and weekends reading papers and testing new models and algorithms that might be relevant to what I'm working on. Just don't expect me to miss dinner my family.

by gt565k 10y ago

smt88 10y ago

I'm not sure where the "corporate America" thing comes from, other than your own prejudices about how other people work. I've only ever worked for early-stage startups. I work by the 40-hour rule most weeks because I have experience and know how to run a team. Inexperienced (or short-sighted) managers burn themselves and their employees out by planning poorly. I used to do that myself. Now I don't make anyone work more than 8 hours a day, and we deliver a working iteration of our product every week. I'd love for my 40-hour rule to become zero hours (only doing "work" that I enjoy and is meaningful to me), because life isn't about work.

pc86 10y ago

> If I work a 70 hour week and we deliver on-time or early, I can take extra time off. Well you'd need to work 6 hour days for 3 weeks straight just to break even, so how long do you need to do it for "extra" time off? A month, a month and a half? Never. I'd be shocked if I saw someone allowed one 30-hour week. And what if you still deliver late? If management is poor enough to allow you in a situation where you need to work 1.75x beyond capacity just to meet a deadline, it's just as likely that you miss the deadline working that much, too. So if you miss it because management sucks you don't get your "extra" time off, I bet? > I've had plenty of coworkers who are content with working the 9-5, not thinking about anything that's outside the box, because "that's not in their job description". I would not want to work with people like that. The hours someone works has nothing to do with the quality of their work product or how committed they are to the business. I do plenty of things that aren't in my job description, I am well regarded professionally in my company and elsewhere, and I work 40.0 hours a week. I've had plenty of coworkers who sit at the office all day, not thinking about anything other than work, because they have no personal life, no hobbies, and their entire sense of self worth is wrapped in what they do for a living. I would not want to work with people like that. It's a good thing we can all decide what kind of life we want and do everything we can to live it!

dagw 10y ago
Well you'd need to work 6 hour days for 3 weeks straight just to break even Or you could just take Monday-Wednesday off the following week and go home early on Friday.
- pc86 10y ago
  I think you are missing the forest for the trees. Yes, it is possible to come up with any number of scenarios where the average is 40 hours per week. That is not the point. My primary point was that "extra time off" indicates that you worked a net of less than 40 hours over whatever period of time we're talking about. Me working 50 hours in week A and 30 in week B doesn't do me any good. In fact in does the opposite because I will statistically do worse work in week A. If I were given "extra time off" I'd expect to work less than 30 hours in week B otherwise why am I not just working a consistent schedule and getting the additional benefits from that?

dagw 10y ago

I've had plenty of coworkers who are content with working the 9-5, not thinking about anything that's outside the box, because "that's not in their job description". Those two things seem rather orthogonal. I'm very much a 9-5 sort of guy these days, but I'm always thinking outside the box as it where about work projects and will happily spend my evenings and weekends reading papers and testing new models and algorithms that might be relevant to what I'm working on. Just don't expect me to miss dinner my family.