5 ms·

This premise doesn't jibe with products that are "always on". Support 5hrs/day? I hope "great support" isn't part of your value prop. Devs can't even be reac

This premise doesn't jibe with products that are "always on". Support 5hrs/day? I hope "great support" isn't part of your value prop. Devs can't even be reached because they log out of slack, etc at 1pm and over the weekend? I hope "uptime" (riiight) isn't part of your value prop. As a consultant we do lots of new product development for clients where uptime and support are a big deal, especially during rollouts/launches where we're encountering a flood of new issues (UX and technical), going totally dark after 1pm weekdays isn't a remote possibility. Having said that, we very rarely actually work more than 35hr/week or on weekends. But we do put my personal phone number in our SOW for CRITICAL issues (haven't been called yet). So yeah maintaining a sane work culture is critical but telling everyone to completely unplug at 1pm is nuts IMO. This article isn't outlining every details obviously and maybe the example company really doesn't care about uptime or quick support (desktop app for enterprise??). And maybe they are glossing over the fact that every week there actually is someone on call but most people unplug at 1pm. If so, that sounds pretty reasonable!

aaomidi 7y ago
You could hire another shift of support engineers for those times...
- stuff4ben 7y ago
  which costs more money. Getting more work out of fewer people thereby cutting costs and increasing shareholder value is the capitalist thing to do. Not saying it's right or wrong.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    No, that's like saying cheating people or killing them is the capitalist thing to do. Defending capitalism becomes indistinguishable from attacking it; either way, the assertion is false. A market economy is a way of optimizing welfare through profit-seeking, but it has no meaning or existence or justification without constraints and boundary conditions. What constraints we should have is a political question completely separate from whether we should have private ownership of capital and free markets.
- foxrob92 7y ago
  My employer does this to provide 24h support: - one shift predominantly in UTC-8 -> US West Coast - one shift predominantly in UTC+8 ~> Singapore/Australia West Coast - one shift around UTC+0 -> Europe For 8h days, it works ok. I think that shorter days could work, if the shifts were split. There are also some offices outside of the 3 major time zones, which also fills in gaps. Of course, dev availability is not usually 24/7 but there are two layers of support before issues reach dev.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  To be fair, I've worked for a company that initially staffed people on all shifts round the clock, and hand-offs from one shift to another are an issue. Eventually they realized they could just have people on days in the US and an opposite schedule in India instead of three US shifts. But communication certainly didn't improve.

aaomidi 7y ago

You could hire another shift of support engineers for those times...

stuff4ben 7y ago
which costs more money. Getting more work out of fewer people thereby cutting costs and increasing shareholder value is the capitalist thing to do. Not saying it's right or wrong.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  No, that's like saying cheating people or killing them is the capitalist thing to do. Defending capitalism becomes indistinguishable from attacking it; either way, the assertion is false. A market economy is a way of optimizing welfare through profit-seeking, but it has no meaning or existence or justification without constraints and boundary conditions. What constraints we should have is a political question completely separate from whether we should have private ownership of capital and free markets.
foxrob92 7y ago
My employer does this to provide 24h support: - one shift predominantly in UTC-8 -> US West Coast - one shift predominantly in UTC+8 ~> Singapore/Australia West Coast - one shift around UTC+0 -> Europe For 8h days, it works ok. I think that shorter days could work, if the shifts were split. There are also some offices outside of the 3 major time zones, which also fills in gaps. Of course, dev availability is not usually 24/7 but there are two layers of support before issues reach dev.
perl4ever 7y ago
To be fair, I've worked for a company that initially staffed people on all shifts round the clock, and hand-offs from one shift to another are an issue. Eventually they realized they could just have people on days in the US and an opposite schedule in India instead of three US shifts. But communication certainly didn't improve.