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This was the most interesting part to me: The way it’s supposed to work is if you’re salaried/exempt, you’re getting paid to do a job, not for a specific numbe

by qntty 6y ago

This was the most interesting part to me: The way it’s supposed to work is if you’re salaried/exempt, you’re getting paid to do a job, not for a specific number of hours. So if you work 45 hours one week and 36 hours the next, that’s supposed to be okay. And some places work like that, and when they do it’s mostly fine. When you have that kind of trade-off, that flexibility is a benefit. But at a lot of places, that flexibility is much more one-way. You’re expected to work the company’s standard business hours at a minimum, plus any additional time it takes to get your job done. If you have to work 45 hours one week, that’s just what’s expected of salaried workers. But if you work 36 hours the next week, you’re going to be charged four hours of PTO (or you’re going to get weird looks and questions about why you left at 1 pm on Friday).

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
If someone's backlog goes to zero, their manager can't find more work that needs to be done, and there is no reason that person needs to be available during core working hours, requiring them to sit in the office and kill time is ridiculous. The catch is that for most of us, those conditions are almost never met. When was the last time had a job where the entire backlog of work was cleared out and there were no tasks you could be helping with? Usually if that happens more than a few times, the team is on their way to being reassigned or even laid off. The 40-hour workweek target is best viewed as a feedback loop. If everyone is consistently working more than 40 hours per week, something is wrong. Team size needs to be increased, schedules need to be pushed out, scope needs to be reduced, inefficiencies (meetings!) need to be pulled out of the way. Something has to give. Likewise, if someone is consistently running out of work early, the schedule needs to be brought in, the person should help take pressure off of some other tasks, blockers need to be removed, and so on. The challenge as a manager is that estimation and work-assignment are a two-way process. I work with team members to assign backlog tasks. If someone is consistently taking 20 hours of work for themselves and pretending its a full work week, someone else has to pick up the remaining work.
- busterarm 6y ago
  Our team probably has a 3-5 year backlog of things that could be done, but largely it does not make sense to do them. I only tackle a little bit of it with my idle time each week. Reason being, work that gets done requires code-reviews and often communication and understanding within the organization. I personally might have the bandwidth but collectively as a team and an organization, we do not. And I prefer if my whole team has a little bit of breathing room like this. It means we're rested and prepared to tackle the hard problems and fires that come our way. Nobody burns out. Realistically I don't want anyone putting in more than 32-33ish hours most weeks.

by qntty 6y ago

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

If someone's backlog goes to zero, their manager can't find more work that needs to be done, and there is no reason that person needs to be available during core working hours, requiring them to sit in the office and kill time is ridiculous. The catch is that for most of us, those conditions are almost never met. When was the last time had a job where the entire backlog of work was cleared out and there were no tasks you could be helping with? Usually if that happens more than a few times, the team is on their way to being reassigned or even laid off. The 40-hour workweek target is best viewed as a feedback loop. If everyone is consistently working more than 40 hours per week, something is wrong. Team size needs to be increased, schedules need to be pushed out, scope needs to be reduced, inefficiencies (meetings!) need to be pulled out of the way. Something has to give. Likewise, if someone is consistently running out of work early, the schedule needs to be brought in, the person should help take pressure off of some other tasks, blockers need to be removed, and so on. The challenge as a manager is that estimation and work-assignment are a two-way process. I work with team members to assign backlog tasks. If someone is consistently taking 20 hours of work for themselves and pretending its a full work week, someone else has to pick up the remaining work.

busterarm 6y ago
Our team probably has a 3-5 year backlog of things that could be done, but largely it does not make sense to do them. I only tackle a little bit of it with my idle time each week. Reason being, work that gets done requires code-reviews and often communication and understanding within the organization. I personally might have the bandwidth but collectively as a team and an organization, we do not. And I prefer if my whole team has a little bit of breathing room like this. It means we're rested and prepared to tackle the hard problems and fires that come our way. Nobody burns out. Realistically I don't want anyone putting in more than 32-33ish hours most weeks.