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I don’t get how some people work different hours at home. Generally, I have to have Slack availability and then the meetings all get scheduled around the standa

I don’t get how some people work different hours at home. Generally, I have to have Slack availability and then the meetings all get scheduled around the standard 9-5 times. So I have to work the same times anyway, or else I will just look like I don’t work. Work from office seems like a lose-lose situation however. I have to commute, and at work, I just waste more time because showing up counts as work. I sort of wish I felt more at ease at home. I mostly work harder. So the one-size-fits-all-butts-in-seats, in some cases, falls into that stupidity where one party (the employer) causes a loss for both parties without benefits, because they’ll make no effort to figure out what works best for who and just have a dumb blanket policy.

lucb1e 6y ago
> I have to work the same times anyway, or else I will just look like I don’t work. Especially when working from home, doesn't one have to judge performance by the work output rather than physical presence? I understand that this ideal is not the reality everywhere, especially in the office if people don't know you started at 7am that they they'll look weird if you leave at 15h instead of 17h, but from home you can slack off anyway so you really have to look at the output and not presence. If not done already, you might want to look at tracking work time to make everyone feel confident that the others are doing their part, and bosses should notice when time worked does not match output.
SyneRyder 6y ago
> I don’t get how some people work different hours at home.. Not every company will have a stack of meetings or require you to be on Slack. For 10 years I did WFH for a company where everything happened via email, and it was designed to be asynchronous. That meant I could choose any hours to work, and I often worked at night & slept in through the morning. As long as the work got done and milestones were finished on time, it didn't matter. My personal opinion, but if a company is requiring you to work synchronously from home, something has gone a bit wrong and their processes are fragile. It's like multi-threaded code but the threads are always blocked waiting on each other. (In that case, the company is probably just doing WFH to save on rental costs and to get the employees to buy the office equipment instead.) At least in those cases you still get the benefit of designing the work environment you want with the gear you want, but you miss out on the time flexibility.

lucb1e 6y ago

> I have to work the same times anyway, or else I will just look like I don’t work. Especially when working from home, doesn't one have to judge performance by the work output rather than physical presence? I understand that this ideal is not the reality everywhere, especially in the office if people don't know you started at 7am that they they'll look weird if you leave at 15h instead of 17h, but from home you can slack off anyway so you really have to look at the output and not presence. If not done already, you might want to look at tracking work time to make everyone feel confident that the others are doing their part, and bosses should notice when time worked does not match output.

SyneRyder 6y ago

> I don’t get how some people work different hours at home.. Not every company will have a stack of meetings or require you to be on Slack. For 10 years I did WFH for a company where everything happened via email, and it was designed to be asynchronous. That meant I could choose any hours to work, and I often worked at night & slept in through the morning. As long as the work got done and milestones were finished on time, it didn't matter. My personal opinion, but if a company is requiring you to work synchronously from home, something has gone a bit wrong and their processes are fragile. It's like multi-threaded code but the threads are always blocked waiting on each other. (In that case, the company is probably just doing WFH to save on rental costs and to get the employees to buy the office equipment instead.) At least in those cases you still get the benefit of designing the work environment you want with the gear you want, but you miss out on the time flexibility.