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I actually worked at a company who tried something similar to this (6 hours/5 days) for about ~2 months, and it worked for a little while. Unfortunately we foun

I actually worked at a company who tried something similar to this (6 hours/5 days) for about ~2 months, and it worked for a little while. Unfortunately we found a lot of problems with this: - People who started early (~7am), left really early, and people who like to start much later (~10am). This led to only ~3 hour overlap time period when the majority of the dev team was in. There was a small effort to normalize the start times, but we could never find a common time that worked for everyone. - I felt this put an obscene amount of pressure on some people (including myself) more so than others. - People hate meetings, people beg and cry that meetings are a waste, but the bitter reality is ether you get everyone on the same page at once, or you need to do it separately, which becomes even more pressure for certain people. Combine this with the limited time when you can guarantee the majority of dev will be in, makes it difficult. - The coop/intern students i felt got shafted hard by this, since time is so much more valuable during that two months they often got very little direction. - I also personally found that about 6 of us (team leads/seniors) ended up with much more pressure, and stress due to trying to force 8 hours of work into 6 hours of a day. In the end we ended up giving up on the idea, due in combination to other departments complaining, some HR payroll issues, and problems with coverage.

matrix 9y ago
This highlights something about our industry that I find a little weird. Collectively we want to be respected as professionals, yet feel it's ok come into work whenever it pleases us despite its impact on the team. In my view, a true professional shows up and gets the job done, no matter what. Asking employees to show up at 9 am on a reasonably consistent basis so that the team can work effectively seems like a pretty low bar to me (except in the case of special personal circumstances, of course).
- loader 9y ago
  Especially when you're telling them they only need to work 6 hours. If my boss said we're moving to 6 hours a day, I'll be pretty happy to oblige and be in when they need me.
- krausejj 9y ago
  It sounds old fashioned, but I have to agree. I look at my parents -- my mom worked 16 hour shifts in a hospital with no natural light for almost 40 years. She was doing work that touched people in life or death situations; a far cry from many of the apps we're building. She never complained. Yet we find problems sitting for 8 hours in an Aeron chair drinking micro-brew coffee with the freedom to check out Facebook or Amazon whenever we want. Was my mom unhappy? Nope, she loved her job. Was she tired and burned-out at times? Absolutely. I think a lot of this has to do with perspective.
oddthink 9y ago
Yeah, I have a hard time imagining this working. If anything, I'd like to be able to get back to working the 8-6 days I could before I was doing school dropoff in the mornings. It's not like there's any dead time, for me at least, although it probably varies by industry. Back when I was in finance, we needed to be around whenever markets were open, if only to be able to run one-offs and answer questions for the traders. In tech, there's always more to do. The bulk of the hard stuff isn't raw programming, it's doing the data analysis to figure out where problems are, trying to come up with experiments to run, documenting them so you don't repeat yourself six months later, and so on. On top of that, there's whiteboarding out ideas with people, teaching interns and more junior folks, meetings with aligned teams to share knowledge, manager-stuff (1:1s, planning), writing up docs (also to share knowledge), trying to learn how something works, etc. I don't think I can manage more than a few hours of raw code time myself, but that's a pretty small slice of the things that need doing.
lucideer 9y ago
Disclaimer: I've never worked for a company that tried this, so this is conjecture. It strikes me that #1, #3 and a large part of #4 are not problems caused by the reduced hours but purely by the flexible hours. Do you think this system could've been more successful with more coordinated working schedules? #2 on the other hand sounds like a systemic problem exacerbated by reduced hours, rather than caused by. It seems to hint at an imbalance in resource allocation in general, which is a problem worth addressing even with the increased hours.
- pc86 9y ago
  I think a lot of people conflate shorter schedules with working schedules. I still remember having jobs in HS and college where your start time was assigned. Sure, you could come in early if you wanted, but for most of them being ready for work (let alone arriving) more than a minute or two late was a quick road to unemployment. Obviously I don't think software developers should be fired for rolling in at 8:02, but on my current team our start time is 100% personal preference, and the window is about 4 hours wide. If you added shorter schedules on top of the insanely flexible schedules, we'd basically have separate teams at that point. Most places I think can only operate on one: shorter work days or more flexible work days. If you're going for the shorter work days, you need to be more strict about what time people arrive or it's a lot harder. Subsequently if you're super flexible about arrival and departure time, it's hard to maintain any team coherence unless everyone is putting in 8-9 hours a day. None of this matters if the team is set up to handle remote work well and the majority of communication is written.
  - lucideer 9y ago
    In my current company, the start time is fixed (9) and adherence to it is flexible (probably also a 4 hour window, but with a strong unspoken preference for being reasonably "on time") so our work schedules overlap. I think this is a fairly efficient balance, and I would guess shouldn't suffer heavily from the problems mentioned by the GP if we were to introduce a shorter work day. On your point on remote work, I don't really think this is true. One day response turnarounds can be a real pain in writing.
mjevans 9y ago
I'd like to point out the obvious solution to not everyone being there all the time. Force the sync mechanisms and processes to be "remote only" oriented. * Instead of meetings, have discussion threads and deadlines for achieving a decision goal. * Instead of face time, document requests and responses in a more formal way (and have an informal channel as well for sounding out ideas). * Use a corporate owned chatting mechanism. IRC, Slack, some xmpp nightmare, just find something that works. Preferably run your own server. * Maybe some jobs where already over capacity, divide the workload further.
- pc86 9y ago
  "Preferably run your own server" has nothing to do with remote-only work or setting up a team for success remotely, it's just dogmatism. A remote-only company hosting its own IRC instance is in no better position to succeed than a remote-only company reliant on Slack for communication. Yes, services shut down. Yes, DDoS attacks happen. But buildings also lose internet access, people trip over cables, etc. The weaknesses are different but one is not inherently better than the other.
trysomechai 9y ago
Why not have core hours then? Ex: 9am to 1pm are core hours. You can adjust your hours around that time frame.
- mjevans 9y ago
  Why not 11:00 to 15:00, or 13:00 to 17:00? Or even, why not reduce the core hours? 10:00 to 12:00 ?
rmc 9y ago
> - I also personally found that about 6 of us (team leads/seniors) ended up with much more pressure, and stress due to trying to force 8 hours of work into 6 hours of a day. Isn't the point to do less work per day?
- pc86 9y ago
  The argument for shorter work days is that people are more productive per unit of time in the office, and that the net result is increased productivity. So maybe less total work but if that argument holds water then it makes sense that your work day in a 5- or 6-hour day should probably feel a little more hectic, and a little busier, than an 8- or 9-hour day.
  - gozur88 9y ago
    I expect as you get away from the very bottom of the organizational tree it's impossible to be more productive in less time. Too much of what you do involves the sort of interfacing with other people that isn't going to benefit much from more focus.
settsu 9y ago
Sounds like systems & practices weren't developed & adjusted for the change.
kristerv 9y ago
interesting insight. We all get in at the same time, but the meetings point is definitely an issue for me.

matrix 9y ago

This highlights something about our industry that I find a little weird. Collectively we want to be respected as professionals, yet feel it's ok come into work whenever it pleases us despite its impact on the team. In my view, a true professional shows up and gets the job done, no matter what. Asking employees to show up at 9 am on a reasonably consistent basis so that the team can work effectively seems like a pretty low bar to me (except in the case of special personal circumstances, of course).

loader 9y ago
Especially when you're telling them they only need to work 6 hours. If my boss said we're moving to 6 hours a day, I'll be pretty happy to oblige and be in when they need me.
krausejj 9y ago
It sounds old fashioned, but I have to agree. I look at my parents -- my mom worked 16 hour shifts in a hospital with no natural light for almost 40 years. She was doing work that touched people in life or death situations; a far cry from many of the apps we're building. She never complained. Yet we find problems sitting for 8 hours in an Aeron chair drinking micro-brew coffee with the freedom to check out Facebook or Amazon whenever we want. Was my mom unhappy? Nope, she loved her job. Was she tired and burned-out at times? Absolutely. I think a lot of this has to do with perspective.

oddthink 9y ago

Yeah, I have a hard time imagining this working. If anything, I'd like to be able to get back to working the 8-6 days I could before I was doing school dropoff in the mornings. It's not like there's any dead time, for me at least, although it probably varies by industry. Back when I was in finance, we needed to be around whenever markets were open, if only to be able to run one-offs and answer questions for the traders. In tech, there's always more to do. The bulk of the hard stuff isn't raw programming, it's doing the data analysis to figure out where problems are, trying to come up with experiments to run, documenting them so you don't repeat yourself six months later, and so on. On top of that, there's whiteboarding out ideas with people, teaching interns and more junior folks, meetings with aligned teams to share knowledge, manager-stuff (1:1s, planning), writing up docs (also to share knowledge), trying to learn how something works, etc. I don't think I can manage more than a few hours of raw code time myself, but that's a pretty small slice of the things that need doing.

lucideer 9y ago

Disclaimer: I've never worked for a company that tried this, so this is conjecture. It strikes me that #1, #3 and a large part of #4 are not problems caused by the reduced hours but purely by the flexible hours. Do you think this system could've been more successful with more coordinated working schedules? #2 on the other hand sounds like a systemic problem exacerbated by reduced hours, rather than caused by. It seems to hint at an imbalance in resource allocation in general, which is a problem worth addressing even with the increased hours.

pc86 9y ago
I think a lot of people conflate shorter schedules with working schedules. I still remember having jobs in HS and college where your start time was assigned. Sure, you could come in early if you wanted, but for most of them being ready for work (let alone arriving) more than a minute or two late was a quick road to unemployment. Obviously I don't think software developers should be fired for rolling in at 8:02, but on my current team our start time is 100% personal preference, and the window is about 4 hours wide. If you added shorter schedules on top of the insanely flexible schedules, we'd basically have separate teams at that point. Most places I think can only operate on one: shorter work days or more flexible work days. If you're going for the shorter work days, you need to be more strict about what time people arrive or it's a lot harder. Subsequently if you're super flexible about arrival and departure time, it's hard to maintain any team coherence unless everyone is putting in 8-9 hours a day. None of this matters if the team is set up to handle remote work well and the majority of communication is written.
- lucideer 9y ago
  In my current company, the start time is fixed (9) and adherence to it is flexible (probably also a 4 hour window, but with a strong unspoken preference for being reasonably "on time") so our work schedules overlap. I think this is a fairly efficient balance, and I would guess shouldn't suffer heavily from the problems mentioned by the GP if we were to introduce a shorter work day. On your point on remote work, I don't really think this is true. One day response turnarounds can be a real pain in writing.

mjevans 9y ago

I'd like to point out the obvious solution to not everyone being there all the time. Force the sync mechanisms and processes to be "remote only" oriented. * Instead of meetings, have discussion threads and deadlines for achieving a decision goal. * Instead of face time, document requests and responses in a more formal way (and have an informal channel as well for sounding out ideas). * Use a corporate owned chatting mechanism. IRC, Slack, some xmpp nightmare, just find something that works. Preferably run your own server. * Maybe some jobs where already over capacity, divide the workload further.

pc86 9y ago
"Preferably run your own server" has nothing to do with remote-only work or setting up a team for success remotely, it's just dogmatism. A remote-only company hosting its own IRC instance is in no better position to succeed than a remote-only company reliant on Slack for communication. Yes, services shut down. Yes, DDoS attacks happen. But buildings also lose internet access, people trip over cables, etc. The weaknesses are different but one is not inherently better than the other.

trysomechai 9y ago

Why not have core hours then? Ex: 9am to 1pm are core hours. You can adjust your hours around that time frame.

mjevans 9y ago
Why not 11:00 to 15:00, or 13:00 to 17:00? Or even, why not reduce the core hours? 10:00 to 12:00 ?

rmc 9y ago

> - I also personally found that about 6 of us (team leads/seniors) ended up with much more pressure, and stress due to trying to force 8 hours of work into 6 hours of a day. Isn't the point to do less work per day?

pc86 9y ago
The argument for shorter work days is that people are more productive per unit of time in the office, and that the net result is increased productivity. So maybe less total work but if that argument holds water then it makes sense that your work day in a 5- or 6-hour day should probably feel a little more hectic, and a little busier, than an 8- or 9-hour day.
- gozur88 9y ago
  I expect as you get away from the very bottom of the organizational tree it's impossible to be more productive in less time. Too much of what you do involves the sort of interfacing with other people that isn't going to benefit much from more focus.

settsu 9y ago

Sounds like systems & practices weren't developed & adjusted for the change.

kristerv 9y ago

interesting insight. We all get in at the same time, but the meetings point is definitely an issue for me.