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Just do this at your current job, especially if they have an “unlimited time off” policy, start putting in those fridays. Don’t make a big deal about it, don’t

Just do this at your current job, especially if they have an “unlimited time off” policy, start putting in those fridays. Don’t make a big deal about it, don’t abruptly leave at 2 (every day)… spend the latter couple hours reading, working out, etc. The catch? You gotta be good at defending the work hours you do put in. Don’t lie, don’t make up excuses, but be prepared to say I did xyz as planned. This will obviously not work for everybody in every profession, but it’s your life and you can try to take some of it back on your own terms. It’s easier to fly under the radar than to ask permission.

darkhorse22 5y ago
If you're good enough you can pretty much dictate your working conditions. But it's bad advice for most people. I've seen plenty of mediocre devs take this kind of advice, and it's sad/embarrassing to see. Anyone who's decent figures out that they can cut corners at their first job. 90% of the devs I've worked with (conservatively) should never cut corners and should've been putting in more hours to become adequate. Most feel-good self-help advice like this is worse than useless, it's harmful to anybody who finds it novel.
- rantwasp 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effec...
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
I've worked at several tech companies with distributed or remote teams and flexible hours. Every one of them had a few employees who were considered so good that they could get away with working visibly fewer hours than everyone else and only being available when they wanted to work. Great for them, terrible for everyone who had to work with them. When one person has significantly less availability than everyone else, the rest of the team is forced to structure their activity around catering to that person's schedule. Superstar engineer only works a couple hours per day? Prepare to block that time off in your calendar so you can try to catch them to coordinate that work you need to do together. Rockstar coder unavailable every Friday? Better hope they're not blocking your work, otherwise you're waiting until Monday to make progress. Or more realistically, you're going to waste all Friday trying to solve something on your own that could be finished 10x faster if you could get 15 minutes of that person's time. > Don’t lie, don’t make up excuses, but be prepared to say I did xyz as planned. The fallacy is that for most tech jobs, that "xyz" is rarely the end of the story. Planning isn't perfect and we almost never know the complete scope of a task or project at the planning phase. The end result is a lot of work shifted to other team members who are forced to pick up the slack simply because they're available and reliable, unlike the person who disappears every Friday or spends every afternoon at the gym. This may work in a hypothetical workplace with perfect planning and perfectly isolated work units, but in practice it just moves the excess work burden to other teammates. You're not sticking it to the company, you're sticking it to your team. When I transitioned to management I made a point to try to balance workload and availability across teams. It often makes more sense to let go of superstar engineers who are only available 4 out of 5 days per week and only working a few hours per day, even if their work is good in isolation. A healthy team requires everyone to play by similar rules.
- rantwasp 5y ago
  hah. classic management thinking. do you understand that the time spent working on something is only very weakly correlated with the quality of the deliverable? do you understand that some people can save you months or years of work and operational pain? do you understand that some people no matter how much they work end up creating negative value and someone has to clean up after them? you also have a very distorted view on what a superstar is. you’re effectively substituted toxic person with high output with superstar. “superstars” get where their input is needed and provide the input in a timely manner (most of the times even before it’s requested). superstars think about the product and the output of the team as a whole. superstars grow junior developers and instill the values that will turn them in then next gen of superstars. superstars don’t sacrifice the future because of the present. superstars despise managers with but-in-seat mentality such as yourself. you probably have never worked with a superstar or if you did you were oblivious to the value they actually created.
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    > classic management thinking. I think you misread. I was speaking about my experience as an employee in this situation. When a single team mate refuses to work with everyone, you have to put in extra work to work around them. It's as simple as that.
    - rantwasp 5y ago
      this is what triggered my response: > When I transitioned to management I made a point to try to balance workload and availability across teams. It often makes more sense to let go of superstar engineers who are only available 4 out of 5 days per week and only working a few hours per day, even if their work is good in isolation. Rarely does something needs an answer right now. Asynchronous work? Also, of course you don’t want to encourage people that are straight up hostile, but also your expectation that I’m gonna drop everything at any point in time to answer some thing that does not matter right now is pure bs. randomization is where productivity goes to die.
- kodah 5y ago
digisud 5y ago
I have a 40 hour contract. I could reduce my hours official and getting the percentage amount less. I try to reach 40h. I cat follow your argument? Should u just start stealing because no one is controlling me? There should always be something to clean up, automate, make nicer or learning about something business relate (can be Technologie). We have headcounts or we had no more budget for one person more. So I would prefer this headcount to be filled with someone good and working 40h because if you work 20 I could try to get someone else additional doing the other 20. Is is so much different in all other companies or why is this brought up so often?

darkhorse22 5y ago

If you're good enough you can pretty much dictate your working conditions. But it's bad advice for most people. I've seen plenty of mediocre devs take this kind of advice, and it's sad/embarrassing to see. Anyone who's decent figures out that they can cut corners at their first job. 90% of the devs I've worked with (conservatively) should never cut corners and should've been putting in more hours to become adequate. Most feel-good self-help advice like this is worse than useless, it's harmful to anybody who finds it novel.

rantwasp 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effec...

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

I've worked at several tech companies with distributed or remote teams and flexible hours. Every one of them had a few employees who were considered so good that they could get away with working visibly fewer hours than everyone else and only being available when they wanted to work. Great for them, terrible for everyone who had to work with them. When one person has significantly less availability than everyone else, the rest of the team is forced to structure their activity around catering to that person's schedule. Superstar engineer only works a couple hours per day? Prepare to block that time off in your calendar so you can try to catch them to coordinate that work you need to do together. Rockstar coder unavailable every Friday? Better hope they're not blocking your work, otherwise you're waiting until Monday to make progress. Or more realistically, you're going to waste all Friday trying to solve something on your own that could be finished 10x faster if you could get 15 minutes of that person's time. > Don’t lie, don’t make up excuses, but be prepared to say I did xyz as planned. The fallacy is that for most tech jobs, that "xyz" is rarely the end of the story. Planning isn't perfect and we almost never know the complete scope of a task or project at the planning phase. The end result is a lot of work shifted to other team members who are forced to pick up the slack simply because they're available and reliable, unlike the person who disappears every Friday or spends every afternoon at the gym. This may work in a hypothetical workplace with perfect planning and perfectly isolated work units, but in practice it just moves the excess work burden to other teammates. You're not sticking it to the company, you're sticking it to your team. When I transitioned to management I made a point to try to balance workload and availability across teams. It often makes more sense to let go of superstar engineers who are only available 4 out of 5 days per week and only working a few hours per day, even if their work is good in isolation. A healthy team requires everyone to play by similar rules.

rantwasp 5y ago
hah. classic management thinking. do you understand that the time spent working on something is only very weakly correlated with the quality of the deliverable? do you understand that some people can save you months or years of work and operational pain? do you understand that some people no matter how much they work end up creating negative value and someone has to clean up after them? you also have a very distorted view on what a superstar is. you’re effectively substituted toxic person with high output with superstar. “superstars” get where their input is needed and provide the input in a timely manner (most of the times even before it’s requested). superstars think about the product and the output of the team as a whole. superstars grow junior developers and instill the values that will turn them in then next gen of superstars. superstars don’t sacrifice the future because of the present. superstars despise managers with but-in-seat mentality such as yourself. you probably have never worked with a superstar or if you did you were oblivious to the value they actually created.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > classic management thinking. I think you misread. I was speaking about my experience as an employee in this situation. When a single team mate refuses to work with everyone, you have to put in extra work to work around them. It's as simple as that.
  - rantwasp 5y ago
    this is what triggered my response: > When I transitioned to management I made a point to try to balance workload and availability across teams. It often makes more sense to let go of superstar engineers who are only available 4 out of 5 days per week and only working a few hours per day, even if their work is good in isolation. Rarely does something needs an answer right now. Asynchronous work? Also, of course you don’t want to encourage people that are straight up hostile, but also your expectation that I’m gonna drop everything at any point in time to answer some thing that does not matter right now is pure bs. randomization is where productivity goes to die.
kodah 5y ago

digisud 5y ago

I have a 40 hour contract. I could reduce my hours official and getting the percentage amount less. I try to reach 40h. I cat follow your argument? Should u just start stealing because no one is controlling me? There should always be something to clean up, automate, make nicer or learning about something business relate (can be Technologie). We have headcounts or we had no more budget for one person more. So I would prefer this headcount to be filled with someone good and working 40h because if you work 20 I could try to get someone else additional doing the other 20. Is is so much different in all other companies or why is this brought up so often?