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Segmentors vs Integrators: Google’s work-life-balance research
- lunchladydoris 5y agoThis is exactly why I am happy to be going back into the office. The physical separation really helps and my commute acts as a good transition period.
- helij 5y agoI have no issues with this but I worked from home before the pandemic. Once it's 17:30 or so that's it. Close the computer and go my way. No matter how much stuff needs to be done. Once it's time it can wait till tomorrow.
- skydhash 5y agoI get a set schedule from 10am to 5pm. As my desktop is the most comfortable setup, I use it after hours too, but I close all work related software at 5pm. I use Safari as my personal browser and Firefox as my work one (Most of my software are pretty utilitarian as I have a ps4 and an Apple TV for entertainment purposes). The other things is I don't do work outside of my desk.
- thebackup 5y agoYou only work 7h per day minus lunch break? Sounds sweet. Do you get paid for full time? I usually work 7am to 4pm but lately we have been ordered to work overtime so currently I am doing 7am to 5pm and a couple of hours extra on Saturdays. Personal life pretty much consists of taking care of the kids and maintaining the house.
- skydhash 5y agoI'm a contractor working full time on a project. If something is not done after 7 hours of continuous work, it may as well wait for tomorrow as I will be very tired and less than performant. Also mental health. I've been burned out previously and it was not pleasant. I try to separate work and personal life as much as I can (mostly virtually, as I'm working from home). If I had an office space, I would leave my desktop there.
- avl999 5y agoQuit and find a new job. No tech company worth its salt should be counting hours worked for its developers.
- micvbang 5y agoWow, that sounds absolutely brutal. Where is this? A startup in the US?
- helij 5y agoedit: I realized that it wasn't me whom you asked the question, apologies.
- t-writescode 5y agoMost companies will throw out their employees at the drop of the hat when they feel like it. Is it really worth giving them that much of your time every day? I don't think so. If you keep this up for the next 10 years, what will you have to say about yourself and your accomplishments?
- __turbobrew__ 5y agoI dont see anywhere in my employment contract that says my ass needs to be in a seat for a certain amount of hours per week. I just do my best to meet my employment obligations — especially when working from home I can meet those obligations in less than 40 hours per week. If my employer said I needed to work regular overtime or if they demanded I work a very rigid schedule I would just leave and find a job elsewhere. The tech job market in my city is so hot right now I get solicited by recruiters 3-4 times per week, it just isn’t worth it to spend time in a place which doesn’t treat you well.
- rodgerd 5y agoInteresting; for me it's the opposite. I find it too easy to linger around the physical workplace and never quite get away if I'm not careful.
- smichel17 5y agoWhen I WFH, I still get dressed into "work clothes". When I check out for the day, I'll change into something more comfortable (not that slacks and a collared shirt are particularly uncomfortable). I don't remember to do this every day, but when I do, it really helps me unplug afterwards. No work clothes = no work!
- civilized 5y agoThe analysis here is very superficial. No evidence is provided that trying to enforce a work-life barrier would make those who don't currently enforce one happier. The drivers of being a segmentor or an integrator could be a combination of personality traits and how demanding a person's manager is, rather than something someone could simply choose to change and expect benefits.
- nawgz 5y agoIt seems a little facile to argue a person can’t change their approach to work. It’s not like we are creatures of pure instinct, and if your professional knowledge job isn’t a place you consciously operate I don’t know where such a thing would occur.
- civilized 5y agoLet me clarify. Yes, you can change, but the question of whether this is likely to be beneficial is not answered by this data.
- noirbot 5y agoBut isn't the question also "will your team/manager/obligations allow you to change your approach?" Or, if you want to have more integration with your team, how does that work if they live in another country/state, or simply have very different interests?
- kccqzy 5y agoWell I did find some evidence in the linked article, albeit older evidence. > For example, in 2012 our Dublin office ran a program called “Dublin Goes Dark” in which they asked people to drop off their devices at the front desk before leaving for the night. Googlers said that this site-wide effort resulted in a shared sense of stress relief for many.
- Robotbeat 5y agoTHAT sounds plausible. I think there are healthy ways to integrate work and life (if you work at a place that has some worker protections in particular), I think being friends with coworkers is good and helpful for both work and personal life, and I think it's good to daydream productively about work ideas, BUT being able to not feel like you're on-call all the time must be a big advantage in reducing stress levels.
- nend 5y agoIt'd be nice if they had defined what it means to separate personal and work lives. Like, don't check email after work hours? Or, don't be personal friends with coworkers? Or don't discuss personal plans during work small talk? There's a lot of different ways to "separate personal and work lives", and there's a lot of different interpretations between how blurry that line can be before you have a separation or don't have separation.
- cbhl 5y agoI believe that "there is a clear boundary between my career and my non-work roles" was literally the prompt text, where folks rated it on a scale from "Strongly Disagree" to "Strongly Agree". At Google's scale, individuals have different preferences for all of these things. Some people don't want to read email after they leave the office at 5pm. Other people leave at 3pm to pick up kids, but sign back on from 7pm to 11pm to address stuff. Others will work whatever hours M-F but won't respond to emails on the weekend. Someone else works with a team across an ocean, and so they check email Sunday through Thursdays or Tuesday through Saturday. It's not one size fits all; it's about creating a work environment where folks feel comfortable talking about enabling flexibility without creating expectations of being always-on.
- atomicnumber3 5y agoThe main model I use is strict firewalling: no personal stuff on the work laptop, no work stuff on the personal laptop. No personal stuff during work time, no work stuff during personal time. I then poke a very well chosen set of holes in the firewall: some coworkers get added on signal on my personal phone. Some personal tasks that are time sensitive happen during work time. ...sometimes pages happen during personal time. This makes sure that for the most part, stuff stays where it's supposed to be. But when exceptions are made, they're very high leverage.
- apeace 5y agoI hope I don’t insult anyone I work with who reads this, because they’re all wonderful people and I enjoying hanging out with them. But for me, I realized a long time ago that I’m happier if my “friends” are different from my “work friends”. At least in the NYC startup scene, I’ve noticed a tendency for coworkers to spend a lot of time together outside the office. I used to do it, too. Not just the occasional Thursday evening beer, but every weekend, or even several times a week. They treat it as their main social circle. I’m a programmer, but coincidentally most of my friends are artists. I enjoy that they’re not particularly invested in what I do, but I still feel appreciated when they sometimes ask about “how the internet works” or “what really is coding anyways?” I can be a “tech guy” but not make it my entire identity. Overall, I think it’s better that when I’m with friends I get to talk about the other aspects of life, and take a break from being constantly tech-focused. And, of course, get my mind off of work for once!
- throwaway984393 5y agoIt was like this for me in the hacker scene. I wanted to learn about security, but I didn't want to be around toxic people all the time. But at work, the people I hang out with outside the office don't talk about tech or work, because we hang out to pursue our other interests: music, climbing, auto racing. I'm probably the only one bringing up work outside of work...
- ryandrake 5y agoI've ended up with kind of a middle ground: A good number of my friends are ex-coworkers. We wouldn't consider each other as friends when we were there, for various good reasons, but as ex-employees, you share the bond that you all "survived that mess." I believe it is good to build up a strong socialization fabric, woven out of people who you don't spend all working-day with. We have a "neighborhood dads" group that cuts across professions but tend to have age in common. You can have a hobby group that cuts across all kinds of demographic and political views, but is focused on a single activity. If I lose or quit my job, I don't also suddenly lose daily contact with my friends. If your only friends are workmates, that's more of a single string that can snap rather than a strong woven fabric.
- Iefthandrule 5y agoI have found that for the most part, even if we aren't working for our employer, we are still "working" at building the economy in other ways: working on the house to increase the value of land, brushing up on skills to make us better workers, (sports) gambling, monitoring crypto or other assets. The analogy that comes to mind is that even when we technically aren't at our employer, we are still acting as worker bees for the queen of our hive/economy. I wonder if others have felt similarly. The meals and sleep parts seem more or less like ways to keep us effective at the aforementioned work.
- avl999 5y agoIn my free time I watch sports, some tv shows, read books and play golf. I am spending minimal (if any time) on those things you mentioned above. It seems like a personal choice to spend your free time on things that feel like work.
- feviskus 5y agocorrelation != causation: segmentors are significantly happier, maybe because they have opportunity to hang out with non-work friends. for people who just moved across the country to a brand new city, work is their primary source of socialisation. they hang out with coworkers also because they dont know many other people.
- deelowe 5y agoOdd stance given how much google has historically encouraged the blending of personal and professional lives. Are they reversing this position in earnest or simply desperately trying to get back to the “campus” mode they pioneered?
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y agoThis seeems like a sensible analysis of the 9-to-5 office worker approach to life. However. I suspect this does not project well on the lives of entrepreneurs and self-directed workers. For example, I believe if you were to include on this survey non google staffers, like entrepreneur farmers, merchants, mercenaries, i.e. roles of independent, founder devs, and any self-directed entrepreneurs that live their profession 24/7, i suspect you'd find that they are far happier than the rest of the sample set. There is nothing wrong with overlap of work and play, if work IS play and you enjoy it. The vast majority of entrepreneurs do because as owners they can do their job as they see fit. Anecdotally, i see this evidenced quite often when i see entrepreneurs retire due to external pressures: once founders give up their raison d'etre, their health decline is fast and dramatic.
- pm90 5y agoOwnership changes your approach to work. It’s no longer somebody else’s system/product/company, it’s _yours_, your creation, your baby.
- HugoDaniel 5y agoStopped reading at "We on Google’s People Analytics team..."
- wffurr 5y agoNeeds (2016) in the title.
- jeffbee 5y agoI was wondering, because of the anachronistic Google Plus link in the sharing bar.
- endtime 5y agoDisclaimer: I happen to work for Google, but speak on my own behalf and not my employer's. I don't have any relevant inside info. Is it possible that people who are otherwise happier "segment" better as a result? Someone lonely or unhappy might naturally try to get their social needs met via work, for example.
- jawns 5y agoThis seems feasible. Or maybe it's not happiness itself but just having other things you value highly enough that you make it a priority to give them uninterrupted time: family, friendships, hobbies, etc. Perhaps it's a space-filling thing, where if you don't have those things for whose sake you need to set boundaries, including a hard unplug, work creeps into the available space? Or maybe it's a combo of competency and healthy work environment. You feel comfortable that you can get things done during business hours, and that your employer does not expect anything more, and so you feel good about setting boundaries, and that confidence is correlated with happiness?
- novok 5y agoI think there are many camps as far as making work friends go, and there are weird social circumstances that make making friends through work in english speaking countries a more of a risky thing, which is an indictment of the culture itself. Imagine if you told a child or college student they shouldn't make friends with their classmates in school, but instead only make friends with activities out of school. We spend a large amount of our lives at work and school, lets make it enjoyable. The culture of 'you should be miserable at work, because it's WORK' is toxic. I also think it's ok to make friends outside of work too.
- GuB-42 5y agoFriends have to come from somewhere, and "integrators" may just be people who are in the process of making friends while "segmentors" are those who already have a network. If you are single and just arrived in a new place, you probably won't have a lot of friends, and you will naturally form new friendships in the places you are the most often, and work is an obvious one. Like school is for students. So at least for some time, you will be an "integrator". The opposite is for people who have been in the place for many years before getting hired, they already have a lot of friends, have a lot to do after work and don't have time to integrate a new group, they will be "segmentors". Also, especially now, friendships tend to outlast jobs, and therefore, "integrators" can turn into "segmentors" as their group of friends no longer work together.
- comradesmith 5y agoI just changed jobs and I’m quite a bit more segmenty now. Though I like to think that for me being segmenty isnt about personal distance, but about stopping working (or worrying about work) on time each day. I like meeting people and making friends, and even if I attain perfect work life balance that social aspect won’t change.
- wintermutestwin 5y ago>Google research shows that those who rigidly separate their personal and work lives are significantly happier about their well-being than those who tend to blur the lines between the two. That's pretty ironic given that Google (and their ilk) have invested so much into making their campus' "sticky." Will this signal a sea change? I'm doubtful...
- crehn 5y agoI live in a 1-bedroom apartment, and things that have allowed me to segment much more efficiently, is (1) always writing down goals for the next day/week before stopping work, (2) putting my work computer and notes on a shelf out of sight at the end of the day, and (3) making small adjustments to my desk (e.g. rotate it 90 degrees) to make it feel different after work. This on top of dealing with my personal struggles head-on has overall made me much happier, and I’d say more efficient.