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I work at a medium-sized software company. We've had similar problems with younger employees. Guys literally posting in company-wide Slack channels that they're

• nesyt 9y ago
  Are you against this? Flexible working hours that can bend to accommodate very malleable human lives seems better than rigid adherence to traditional schedules for the sake of it.
  • alexanderstears 9y ago
    It's important that businesses answer the question and stick to it. Do they want people to work a set schedule or not? Or businesses can make demands, but in this labor market they'll have to pay for people to meet 'em. I can promise to be in my chair at 9 am everyday, but I want to leave at 5 and if I'm tired, the business gets to pay for a less than productive day.
    • humanrebar 9y ago
      If they want me commuting during both morning and evening rush hour, they better pay a premium over companies that let me work around commuting. The extra 30+ minutes per day stuck in traffic or on trains does not come for free.
      • deleted 9y ago
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  • Y7ZCQtNo39 9y ago
    Yeah, if a person really feels the need to sleep in, I can't imagine their productivity would be much different if you had a culture for pressuring for adhering to schedules. I think many people to fail to realize that writing software is very unlike producing widgets in a factory line. Some people hit periods of high productivity when they work quietly, alone, for an hour or two. And you might get more in that 1-2 hours than you would all day with the constant distractions in the modern office.
    • potta_coffee 9y ago
      I normally have about a 3-4 hour window in which I can be extremely productive when coding. The rest of the day it's extremely difficult for me to get anything substantial done.
  • turc1656 9y ago
    I imagine what dionidium is getting at is the lack of good, reasonable cause to either not show up or be late. For example, I'm fortunate enough to have a high paying job in the finance industry and our office/company is pretty laid back and very good about the work/life balance thing. But managers here would react in two different ways to people being out late drinking and oversleeping vs. there being a massive accident so you decide to turn around and work from home. It basically boils down to responsibility, usually, for most managers. If you are supposed to be somewhere, be there, unless there are truly unforeseen and unusual circumstances. How else will they know if you will make it to a client call early in the morning? Or meet that deadline? The younger crowd seems to be largely detached from the idea of responsibility that was drilled into previous generations.
    • TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
      > The younger crowd seems to be largely detached from the idea of responsibility that was drilled into previous generations. My father graduated college making $42k/yr. Inflation adjusted, that was about $60k/yr in today's dollars. I just graduated, have experience in the field, and am getting a salary of $35k/yr in today's dollars. Meanwhile, upper management is getting millions. In that kind of work environment, why _should_ I care? It's not like they're going to fire me.
      • DavidWoof 9y ago
        I'm always kind of fascinated by posts like this on this site. Could I ask what field you're in that pays 35k/yr, apparently in the US, is in the field of your degree, and yet is somewhat related to Hacker News? Or are you not in tech at all and this site is an outside interest? Or maybe you're just in a rural area? I don't mean this to sound challenging out all, I'm just kind of curious.
        • turc1656 9y ago
          I'm not surprised. There are a lot of jobs outside of the main metro areas that don't pay that much. They could be, for example, a DB admin for a non-tech company where their priority is not IT because IT is viewed as a cost center. Or perhaps a third party B2B company that is the low cost solution for a larger, more recognized company. You might be surprised what some people make in those cases.
• Y7ZCQtNo39 9y ago
  Maybe there are some engagement issues? Do people feel connected to the work and to their peers? I've observed increases in this type of behavior when things aren't going so well. When people feel like they are shipping software that makes a difference, they want to be there. If it's only this individual, then it probably speaks more to their behavior than anything systemic. But if it is others too, I would look more broadly.
  • dionidium 9y ago
    Setting aside my particular company, your response is just more evidence of the culture change I'm talking about. Not every job is going to engage you or enable you to make the kind of difference you want to make in the world. The notion that this is a valid excuse for telling your boss, "hey, pops, I'm not feeling engaged this morning, gonna be in later" is a new one. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe not. But it's definitely a different thing.
    • Y7ZCQtNo39 9y ago
      I think there is some truth to what we're both saying. At my particular company, the koolaid has always been about how innovate and exciting the work is. But you get in and spend a lot of your time fixing bugs and working on old, monolithic codebases. People want to make a difference, employers sell the vision, and then there's this mis-match and you have the disengaged worker. I think the problem is the reality that most software jobs need skilled workers, but skilled workers are often seeking enough intellectual stimulation from their jobs to make a difference, and a lot of this work isn't the the type of life-changing envisioned.
      • toyg 9y ago
        > the reality that most software jobs need skilled workers It's not just skill, it's also a level of creativity that one needs to do things like programming. And that creativity is often absent when the work is too boring.
        • 9y ago
• alexanderstears 9y ago
  It's very weak of them to do that, but when HR lackeys pay lip service to 'work life balance' and 'work life integration', it's easy to see where people get the idea. This is one of my favorite points of tension in business - 1) Businesses want people performing at their highest level 2) Businesses want people to work collaboratively without much latency 3) Businesses want to pay people as little as possible In these high-concentration jobs, it's not unusual for people to be most productive at night. However, many people don't want to work at night so there's a cost to working with people during the best time for them. And businesses don't want to put up the money for people to justify a radical lifestyle alteration. So everyone gives and takes and things work suboptimally but well-enough that no one terminates the relationship.
• neves 9y ago
  I'd prefer my software developers with a sharp mind than sleepy zumbis that are just physically present.
  • dionidium 9y ago
    That's a perfectly valid company policy. What I think is different is that it's quickly becoming a cultural expectation in some cohorts, not merely an employee-friendly perk.
    • s73ver_ 9y ago
      Because most companies have to offer that, now. Otherwise, in most cases, we can go somewhere else doing the same kind of stuff, but with a company that does offer that flexibility. As a bonus, I might get a raise for doing so, too.
  • foldor 9y ago
    I think it's more about the attitude of not being prepared. Someone who is prepared will go to bed early enough to allow them to show up on time without being exhausted.
    • mtone 9y ago
      That's just favoring the early birds. Go look at statistics on lack of sleep, and consider the massive health, productivity and creativity implications. Surely, you will not assert that a third of the population lack sleep because of attitude or responsibility issues?
      • nilkn 9y ago
        What is an earlybird? Is it someone who is unambiguously physically hardwired to get up early? Or is it someone who has made the choice to implement the sequence of changes in their life necessary to facilitate comfortably getting up early in the morning? I imagine both sorts of earlybirds exist, and I'd be interested in seeing how common each is.
• deleted 9y ago
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• bluedino 9y ago
  >> "feeling a little sleepy this morning, gonna be in later." Most clients don't want to deal with that kind of behavior. "It's been 3 hours, why is the site still down?" "The developer isn't in yet to fix it." Being reliable and showing up to work on time is a job skill as much as good communication, being a hard worker, etc I realize that you should be flexible with workers' hours but people also need to realize coverage is needed.
  • heimidal 9y ago
    There’s a really big difference between providing coverage in an emergency and a butt being in a seat every morning. Every tech company I know of issues laptops that are taken home every night to production support employees for this exact reason.
  • watwut 9y ago
    Most developers are not in position where the client would have slightest idea when developer came in. If you have regular hours long outages that require specific developer to come in and fix the code asap, you have huge mismanagement problem. The developers coming not in the morning is your least problem. Insufficient testing, apparently badly set up servers+application and most likely general mismanagement are primary problem. Also, if you are in this situation, then it is reasonable to assume that your developers had to deal with similar outages in the middle of the night or during weekends.
  • johngalt 9y ago
    There certainly was an element of punctuality that has been lost, but it goes both ways. Clients don't want to deal with this either: "Sorry it's 5:01pm. The dev will be back tomorrow morning. Enjoy being down for the next 16hrs." I'm all-in for the kids these days sheesh comments, but if you think 'back in the day' workers had the constant availability expectation that we have in the modern era with cell phones, that's just factually incorrect. It wasn't only employees that reliably adhered to the schedule, it was also management. If that changes, both sides should accept the trade offs, otherwise you are expecting the employee to treat the schedule as sacred, while the employer treats the schedule as something which is changed on a whim. Lazy unreliable people certainly exist, but they don't usually last that long in any role. Poisonous management practices that set people up for failure have a much longer shelf life and do more damage.
• CJefferson 9y ago
  I'm happy to be at work at 9am on the dot, if my boss is happy for me to leave at 5pm on the dot, and not read any email or slack until 9am next morning. In my experience it is basically impossible in modern tech jobs to do that.
  • kevstev 9y ago
    Seriously. Some companies want it both ways- constant access via email/slack/on call rotations, but a strict clock-out time of 5pm? "You aren't a team player."
    • jaymzcampbell 9y ago
      So, so much this. I am really sick of the double-faced bullshit nature of companies extolling their work-life balance and then going nuclear when anyone exercises it. At some of my jobs it really didn't matter how much work you did during the commute or at home - no, what actually mattered was are you at your desk after 7pm showing your "dedication". You could've been literally watching /dev/random on your screen but it counted.
    • Ascetik 9y ago
      Yep, I was accused of this multiple times because I didn't want to work more than 40hrs a week and basically be on-call 24/7/365
    • slimshady94 9y ago
      It's a tragedy of the commons, isn't it? If everyone left at 5PM, I'd be pretty tempted to stay till 6, for a chance to bond with management and get promotions faster.
• deleted 9y ago
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• bluGill 9y ago
  In the 1940s most jobs did depend on coworkers being there. If even one person is missing the entire assembly line is down and nobody can start. As such being a minute late for work affects all your coworkers, it isn't just you have leaves at 5:05 instead of 5:00 it is everybody else you work with. And yes everybody did leave on time (or everybody worked late). Of course that means you hire extra people to cover people who are sick, but lateness cannot be tolerated. Things are very different. My first meeting is at 9am, and nobody has any reason to care if I work 4am - noon or 9am-5pm, or more likely 8am-5pm with a one hour lunch break.
• watwut 9y ago
  > Guys literally posting in company-wide Slack channels that they're "feeling a little sleepy this morning, gonna be in later." That is primary advantage of flexible working time, which is something everyone up to now praised as huge improvement. I dont do that because I have family, but dont see a problem assuming a.) they work full time when you cont worked time and b.) I can come sooner as norm + leave sooner and not be punished for it by management assuming everyone gotta stay late. > Can you even imagine somebody saying that to their boss in some black-and-white movie from the 1940s? Movies are not representation of society as it exists. It is not true now and it was not true back then, especially because censorship back then was heavier and because 1940 was second world war time. Notably, films could only present "correct standards of life" (for the times) unless the plot called for something else. Alcohol consumption, could not be shown unless the plot called for it. The law had to be respected and upheld. I remember old movies from later eras where both white collar and blue collar dudes drunk on the job and were various grades irresponsible.
• closeparen 9y ago
  It may surprise you that many workplaces (mine included) are not particularly interested in butts-in-seats hours. Obviously you need to show up to your meetings, but if the work is done no one cares whether you work 8-4 or 11-7.
• 0x00000000 9y ago
  Maybe I'm lucky but that sounds like a bad place to work. I can show up any day or time I want as long as I work the total required hours and don't miss meetings.
• s73ver_ 9y ago
  It's software. It can be done any time of the day. Hell, it can be done at home. Quite frankly, they are right. Those that complain are in the wrong.
• empath75 9y ago
  Does my job pay me when I figure out a work related problem when I’m in the shower at 6am. Or for reading a random white paper at 2am? I’m not building car parts. My job is thinking and I literally do it every waking hour. I could care less if and when my coworkers show up as long as they’re getting work done.
• dang 9y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15748742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15748742 and marked it off-topic.