4 ms·

With an on-site contract, "working hours" refers to all times on the premises of the employer (us) except for break time. For people working remotely, this is

by cygned 8y ago

With an on-site contract, "working hours" refers to all times on the premises of the employer (us) except for break time. For people working remotely, this is more difficult, there’s no clear definition. Eventually, I don’t see a problem there anyway, given we measure by output and prohibit engineers from reusing our stuff in their private projects. We do not employ people we don’t trust so we never had issues so far.

x0x0 8y ago
Also an employer. I would generally define this as not during work hours. Work hours are flexible, but don't be stupid: just don't interleave work stuff and personal project stuff and use your own equipment and you'll be fine. ie if you take breaks from work and instead of wasting time on HN or reading news you bang out code on your personal projects, I'm not going to be enthused about that. But if you generally work 10-6 or so, and by 610 you've shut our laptop and you're coding away on your personal laptop? Great, have fun. Please don't burn out. And ditto re: trust. The way to solve not trusting your employees is to fire them and hire trustworthy ones. As a concrete example: we have had to implement a lot of data table stuff in javascript. If an employee copied that (functionality, not our code) and productized it, I wouldn't care. We'd probably even license it. I would want a discount on that license :) This generally only applies in CA, and also to companies that are heavily invested in keeping the goodwill of their employees. Personally, I don't pick fights I can't win, and having valued eng leave is definitely not a win.
- jkaplowitz 8y ago
  > ie if you take breaks from work and instead of wasting time on HN or reading news you bang out code on your personal projects, I'm not going to be enthused about that. But if you generally work 10-6 or so, and by 610 you've shut our laptop and you're coding away on your personal laptop? Great, have fun. Please don't burn out. That works well enough for employees who work 8 uninterrupted hours per day 5 days per week as their work week. (Even for them, sometimes copyrightable personal projects are different enough to serve the same mentally restorative purpose during the workday that browsing the Internet can, like if it's poetry or designing a sweater.) But not everyone performs best or happiest like that. What about the employees that typically work 11-2, go for a gym break 2-4, work 4-6, go for dinner and time with their family, and then work 8pm-2am... but mix some personal side projects into the 8pm-2am part and think up advances on those personal projects while at the gym, plus do extra work for both personal and employer purposes on weekends? Yes, these patterns are consistent with people I know in the industry. (I'm combining multiple people for anonymity.) Notice those hours added up to well more than 8 work hours per day and more than 40 per week. If such people can't interleave personal and work stuff, they'll probably spend less time on work stuff overall and give less productivity to the company (if they don't switch to a more permissive employer).
  - x0x0 8y ago
    bluntly, not every employee is for every employer. And this is also for the protection of the employee. I'm a founder, and I can make pretty durable promises, but even my promises aren't 100% durable. If we get bought, or we don't perform and I get fired, my promises no longer matter. The employee doesn't want to be in a situation where he or she has built something valuable, I'm no longer in a position to keep my commitment, and the new owners want a piece. I see that you're SRE/ops so your work is naturally more bursty, so that may color your perspective. For my company, I'm not sure how we would deal with that, except we don't really keep people on call outside of hours. We hired ops living in E Europe so they come on as we go to bed. edit: given your suggestions of poetry or sweaters, sure, knock yourself out. I still won't be stoked about working a different business during my hours.
    - jkaplowitz 8y ago
      Some of the people I combined in my example are SRE/ops like me (though as of recently I'm now more manager than IC); some are product people, some oversee a bunch of different engineering teams, and I'm including both ICs and executives and many different ages in this amalgam... lots of productive people are bursty. It's chiefly the young single typical-lifestyle neurotypical software application developer that isn't. There are better ways to protect the employee, though: the legalese can omit time of day / day of week / place of work / equipment used as conditions of IP assignment. My current employer does this. (No it's not based in the US, but it is a startup funded by both US and home-country VCs). Of course, the employer does own stuff created within the course of employment. Not a problem in any of the plausible future successful or failed exit scenarios. Last thought: many good people in tech, very much able to do the jobs you ask of them, have ADHD, or kids, or athletic hobbies, or other reasons to do a bursty workday. Sometimes people seemingly outside these categories may turn out to be in them (e.g. new parents). Being incompatible with such workers makes it harder to hire and keep the talent tech companies need to succeed. (Sometimes it's illegal too, but that's a separate conversation.)
      - x0x0 8y ago
        Omitting equipment-used from IP ownership is an absolute non-starter. Similarly for time of day; I have to have clean ownership of IP for future funding and/or acquisition. I feel the same for people who require very bursty working hours. Part of the job -- perhaps the most important part! -- is to collaborate with your team. If you want to spend 90m during the workday to go to the gym, make sure you're not holding your teammates back. We currently have two employees that do that and it works well for everyone. If you require 3 hour breaks mid afternoon, you're probably not going to work here.

by cygned 8y ago

x0x0 8y ago

Also an employer. I would generally define this as not during work hours. Work hours are flexible, but don't be stupid: just don't interleave work stuff and personal project stuff and use your own equipment and you'll be fine. ie if you take breaks from work and instead of wasting time on HN or reading news you bang out code on your personal projects, I'm not going to be enthused about that. But if you generally work 10-6 or so, and by 610 you've shut our laptop and you're coding away on your personal laptop? Great, have fun. Please don't burn out. And ditto re: trust. The way to solve not trusting your employees is to fire them and hire trustworthy ones. As a concrete example: we have had to implement a lot of data table stuff in javascript. If an employee copied that (functionality, not our code) and productized it, I wouldn't care. We'd probably even license it. I would want a discount on that license :) This generally only applies in CA, and also to companies that are heavily invested in keeping the goodwill of their employees. Personally, I don't pick fights I can't win, and having valued eng leave is definitely not a win.

jkaplowitz 8y ago
> ie if you take breaks from work and instead of wasting time on HN or reading news you bang out code on your personal projects, I'm not going to be enthused about that. But if you generally work 10-6 or so, and by 610 you've shut our laptop and you're coding away on your personal laptop? Great, have fun. Please don't burn out. That works well enough for employees who work 8 uninterrupted hours per day 5 days per week as their work week. (Even for them, sometimes copyrightable personal projects are different enough to serve the same mentally restorative purpose during the workday that browsing the Internet can, like if it's poetry or designing a sweater.) But not everyone performs best or happiest like that. What about the employees that typically work 11-2, go for a gym break 2-4, work 4-6, go for dinner and time with their family, and then work 8pm-2am... but mix some personal side projects into the 8pm-2am part and think up advances on those personal projects while at the gym, plus do extra work for both personal and employer purposes on weekends? Yes, these patterns are consistent with people I know in the industry. (I'm combining multiple people for anonymity.) Notice those hours added up to well more than 8 work hours per day and more than 40 per week. If such people can't interleave personal and work stuff, they'll probably spend less time on work stuff overall and give less productivity to the company (if they don't switch to a more permissive employer).
- x0x0 8y ago
  bluntly, not every employee is for every employer. And this is also for the protection of the employee. I'm a founder, and I can make pretty durable promises, but even my promises aren't 100% durable. If we get bought, or we don't perform and I get fired, my promises no longer matter. The employee doesn't want to be in a situation where he or she has built something valuable, I'm no longer in a position to keep my commitment, and the new owners want a piece. I see that you're SRE/ops so your work is naturally more bursty, so that may color your perspective. For my company, I'm not sure how we would deal with that, except we don't really keep people on call outside of hours. We hired ops living in E Europe so they come on as we go to bed. edit: given your suggestions of poetry or sweaters, sure, knock yourself out. I still won't be stoked about working a different business during my hours.
  - jkaplowitz 8y ago
    Some of the people I combined in my example are SRE/ops like me (though as of recently I'm now more manager than IC); some are product people, some oversee a bunch of different engineering teams, and I'm including both ICs and executives and many different ages in this amalgam... lots of productive people are bursty. It's chiefly the young single typical-lifestyle neurotypical software application developer that isn't. There are better ways to protect the employee, though: the legalese can omit time of day / day of week / place of work / equipment used as conditions of IP assignment. My current employer does this. (No it's not based in the US, but it is a startup funded by both US and home-country VCs). Of course, the employer does own stuff created within the course of employment. Not a problem in any of the plausible future successful or failed exit scenarios. Last thought: many good people in tech, very much able to do the jobs you ask of them, have ADHD, or kids, or athletic hobbies, or other reasons to do a bursty workday. Sometimes people seemingly outside these categories may turn out to be in them (e.g. new parents). Being incompatible with such workers makes it harder to hire and keep the talent tech companies need to succeed. (Sometimes it's illegal too, but that's a separate conversation.)
    - x0x0 8y ago
      Omitting equipment-used from IP ownership is an absolute non-starter. Similarly for time of day; I have to have clean ownership of IP for future funding and/or acquisition. I feel the same for people who require very bursty working hours. Part of the job -- perhaps the most important part! -- is to collaborate with your team. If you want to spend 90m during the workday to go to the gym, make sure you're not holding your teammates back. We currently have two employees that do that and it works well for everyone. If you require 3 hour breaks mid afternoon, you're probably not going to work here.