4 ms·

When I first graduated college in 2008, I got a job at Lockheed Martin which offered flexible working schedules. I loved it, but was so naive to think this was

by cebert 5y ago

When I first graduated college in 2008, I got a job at Lockheed Martin which offered flexible working schedules. I loved it, but was so naive to think this was commonplace. Adopting flexible working arrangements seems like an easy way for organizations to improve morale. At Lockheed, they let you pick if you wanted to work the standard 5x8 days 40 hour week, 4x10 days 40 hour week, or the 9x9 80 hour two-weeks with every other Friday off. This worked great. Everyone was aware that not everyone on the team could be counted as being available on Fridays depending on their schedule. Unfortunately for me when I left there, I realized how unusual this working arrangement is.

dgs_sgd 5y ago
I find the 9x9 80 hour two-weeks option very interesting. How common was this choice among employees?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jcims 5y ago
  Now that my kids are grown I would absolutely love this. You can stay in the pocket, get a quieter few days over the working weekend and it would help enforce good comms/docs when you wrap up your week. The only issue is that I would try to pack too much into the 5 day 'weekend' and be exhausted when I start back up.
  - DerArzt 5y ago
    I may be mistaken, but for this 9x9 they may mean five 9 hour days, the weekend, four 9 hour days, three day weekend.
    - jcims 5y ago
      Could be. My step-dad was just telling me about his night shift at AT&T in the 70's doing operations for switching sytems. They would to 10 8's in a row b/c it was hard for them to stay on the night shift schedule over the weekends, so this just let them stretch the weekend. He really liked it.
    - robotresearcher 5y ago
      That's right. Often called '9-80' and was pretty popular in aerospace.
- shiftpgdn 5y ago
  9-80 used to be extremely common in the oil and gas world. It's started to go away now that it's not just a "good ol boy" industry but plenty of supermajors still offer it.
  - apohn 5y ago
    I used to work with different Oil&Gas companies in Houston, and one of the things that enabled this was that they started work at 6AM and ended at 3PM. Part of the reason was to have time overlap with other Oil producing countries (e.g. the Middle East), and part of this was to avoid Houston rush hour traffic. I think it's easier to do 9 hour days when you start that early. It's nice to end your day at 3 and still feel like you have some daylight hours in the winter.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      That was one thing I hated about my regular job in the winter: driving to work usually in the dark and driving home always in the dark.
- shagie 5y ago
  I'm in the public sector, and a number of my coworkers do it. I had that schedule in the before times too - the entire day being off was advantageous for going out and doing things and eliminated an entire pair of commutes. Now, I have a 9x4+4 schedule where Fridays are half days. The reduction of the commute isn't as valuable when its "put on pants and down the stairs" and the full day to "do things" is reduced. The trick with the 9-80 schedule is to define the week starting at Friday at noon. Week 1: F: 0h; M: 9h; T: 9h; W: 9h; R: 9h; F: 4h (8-noon) = 40h Week 2: F: 4h (noon - 4); M: 9h; T: 9h; W: 9h; R: 9h; F: 0h = 40h And thus, for the defined 7 day period, the work doesn't exceed 40h. Additionally, no day is more than 9h (some places have requirements when 10h is worked within one 24h period). https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/80-work-schedule https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/80-w... https://gusto.com/blog/people-management/9-80-work-schedule https://gusto.com/blog/people-management/9-80-work-schedule https://www.zoomshift.com/blog/9-80-work-schedule/ https://www.zoomshift.com/blog/9-80-work-schedule/
- cebert 5y ago
  The 9-80 as we called seemed like the most popular option in my building. Ten hour days was too long for some. It was nice getting every other Friday off.
- TheAdamist 5y ago
  It seemed useful at first.. Afaik the non-union folks were all switched to 4x10 without choice when working from home over pandemic. I have to drive to the office and put on pants so prefer 9x80. And it was never 9x9,but that's close. It was 9-80, the Friday in between were 8hours. (2x40 hour weeks, week just shifted early to split the first Friday). Its a nice option, but harder to make up hours, if you have to shift them. Hr suggested we could get our non-work things done on every other Friday off, but my dentist doesn't work Fridays. 10x4 are tough for me, when I have to make up hours, hard to concentrate. And no one else other than my dentist has (every other) Fridays off, and he doesn't invite me on his boat. So no extra socializing.
- spaceisballer 5y ago
  As was mentioned in the public sector I feel like it was the norm. People liked having their every other Friday off (or other day they chose). When we were always in the office I chose to come in because fridays were quiet and I could work uninterrupted. Now almost all of my employees work a flexible schedule. They send me their schedule prior to the pay period starting. They have the ability to flex and violate the “core hours” one every two weeks (working less than 6 hours and can be outside the 10-2pm period). So for instance my one employee works about 2-4 hours every other Friday and has the other one off, just picks up the slack on some other day. And if they want to adjust their schedule more they just need supervisor approval (haven’t had a time yet where I had to deny a request). I personally stick to a mostly 8-4:30p schedule but if I have a big project coming up I shorten a day and put in extra time another day.
jjice 5y ago
I have friends at Lockheed and they all love the flexible schedules. What I find interesting is that a company as large as Lockheed does this, but it hasn't picked up much steam.
- ska 5y ago
  Fwiw these schedules seem to show up in a number of large organizations (both private and public).
hinkley 5y ago
> but was so naive to think this was commonplace. Been there, got the t-shirt, had it signed. Over the years it has been a bitter pill to swallow to discover that the majority of my first ten years was spent working at places that were exceptionally forward thinking in ways that matter to me but it turns out don't matter as much to loads of other people. I've spent a lot of time butting heads with people who are 5, 10, 15 years behind where I empirically observed 'standard practices' are at. The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed. All of the Agile Manifesto signatories had been doing their own thing for at least 5-10 years before they tried to compare notes in 2001, and it was another 10 before most of us accepted half of XP as de rigeur. 15 years is a long, long time to wait for 'rain'. > At Lockheed, they let you pick if you wanted to work the standard 5x8 days 40 hour week Boeing was also once that way, and that survived the MD merger, though I don't know if that's still true.
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
This is nice, but I find it disappointing that they didn't offer 4x8 32 hour weeks, when the company's culture seems to have already been set up for it. They could have let people opt in to reduced pay.
- brixon 5y ago
  That is very likely an option, but probably not used a lot. I have worked with several people that had a similar schedule, but they did not start at the company with that schedule and of course took a pay cut due to the lower hours. It is very difficult to argue for hiring someone that is not 40 hours. HR and management thinks in terms of full time (40) or part time (<30). The 30-39 hour schedules seem to be used to keep someone they really don't want to lose and not offered to new people. I have seen it with people getting close to retirement and people caring for someone sick or small.
- jhawk28 5y ago
  LM does offer part time arrangements, but it is not well known.
sys_64738 5y ago
And the shutdown week at Christmas. Few companies do this either.
me_smith 5y ago
The 9-80 schedule is one of the things I miss most about working for LM. Along with the great coworkers I had. Now I work for a typical software company, and I realize I took the flexibility of the 9-80 for granted. I got so much personal stuff done during that extra day off. And, for the rest of the days, I didn’t really feel like going from 8 to 9 hours a day that difficult.
- cebert 5y ago
  You and me both. It was such a nice perk.

by cebert 5y ago

dgs_sgd 5y ago

I find the 9x9 80 hour two-weeks option very interesting. How common was this choice among employees?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jcims 5y ago
Now that my kids are grown I would absolutely love this. You can stay in the pocket, get a quieter few days over the working weekend and it would help enforce good comms/docs when you wrap up your week. The only issue is that I would try to pack too much into the 5 day 'weekend' and be exhausted when I start back up.
- DerArzt 5y ago
  I may be mistaken, but for this 9x9 they may mean five 9 hour days, the weekend, four 9 hour days, three day weekend.
  - jcims 5y ago
    Could be. My step-dad was just telling me about his night shift at AT&T in the 70's doing operations for switching sytems. They would to 10 8's in a row b/c it was hard for them to stay on the night shift schedule over the weekends, so this just let them stretch the weekend. He really liked it.
  - robotresearcher 5y ago
    That's right. Often called '9-80' and was pretty popular in aerospace.
shiftpgdn 5y ago
9-80 used to be extremely common in the oil and gas world. It's started to go away now that it's not just a "good ol boy" industry but plenty of supermajors still offer it.
- apohn 5y ago
  I used to work with different Oil&Gas companies in Houston, and one of the things that enabled this was that they started work at 6AM and ended at 3PM. Part of the reason was to have time overlap with other Oil producing countries (e.g. the Middle East), and part of this was to avoid Houston rush hour traffic. I think it's easier to do 9 hour days when you start that early. It's nice to end your day at 3 and still feel like you have some daylight hours in the winter.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    That was one thing I hated about my regular job in the winter: driving to work usually in the dark and driving home always in the dark.
shagie 5y ago
I'm in the public sector, and a number of my coworkers do it. I had that schedule in the before times too - the entire day being off was advantageous for going out and doing things and eliminated an entire pair of commutes. Now, I have a 9x4+4 schedule where Fridays are half days. The reduction of the commute isn't as valuable when its "put on pants and down the stairs" and the full day to "do things" is reduced. The trick with the 9-80 schedule is to define the week starting at Friday at noon. Week 1: F: 0h; M: 9h; T: 9h; W: 9h; R: 9h; F: 4h (8-noon) = 40h Week 2: F: 4h (noon - 4); M: 9h; T: 9h; W: 9h; R: 9h; F: 0h = 40h And thus, for the defined 7 day period, the work doesn't exceed 40h. Additionally, no day is more than 9h (some places have requirements when 10h is worked within one 24h period). https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/80-work-schedule https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/80-w... https://gusto.com/blog/people-management/9-80-work-schedule https://gusto.com/blog/people-management/9-80-work-schedule https://www.zoomshift.com/blog/9-80-work-schedule/ https://www.zoomshift.com/blog/9-80-work-schedule/
cebert 5y ago
The 9-80 as we called seemed like the most popular option in my building. Ten hour days was too long for some. It was nice getting every other Friday off.
TheAdamist 5y ago
It seemed useful at first.. Afaik the non-union folks were all switched to 4x10 without choice when working from home over pandemic. I have to drive to the office and put on pants so prefer 9x80. And it was never 9x9,but that's close. It was 9-80, the Friday in between were 8hours. (2x40 hour weeks, week just shifted early to split the first Friday). Its a nice option, but harder to make up hours, if you have to shift them. Hr suggested we could get our non-work things done on every other Friday off, but my dentist doesn't work Fridays. 10x4 are tough for me, when I have to make up hours, hard to concentrate. And no one else other than my dentist has (every other) Fridays off, and he doesn't invite me on his boat. So no extra socializing.
spaceisballer 5y ago
As was mentioned in the public sector I feel like it was the norm. People liked having their every other Friday off (or other day they chose). When we were always in the office I chose to come in because fridays were quiet and I could work uninterrupted. Now almost all of my employees work a flexible schedule. They send me their schedule prior to the pay period starting. They have the ability to flex and violate the “core hours” one every two weeks (working less than 6 hours and can be outside the 10-2pm period). So for instance my one employee works about 2-4 hours every other Friday and has the other one off, just picks up the slack on some other day. And if they want to adjust their schedule more they just need supervisor approval (haven’t had a time yet where I had to deny a request). I personally stick to a mostly 8-4:30p schedule but if I have a big project coming up I shorten a day and put in extra time another day.

jjice 5y ago

I have friends at Lockheed and they all love the flexible schedules. What I find interesting is that a company as large as Lockheed does this, but it hasn't picked up much steam.

ska 5y ago
Fwiw these schedules seem to show up in a number of large organizations (both private and public).

hinkley 5y ago

> but was so naive to think this was commonplace. Been there, got the t-shirt, had it signed. Over the years it has been a bitter pill to swallow to discover that the majority of my first ten years was spent working at places that were exceptionally forward thinking in ways that matter to me but it turns out don't matter as much to loads of other people. I've spent a lot of time butting heads with people who are 5, 10, 15 years behind where I empirically observed 'standard practices' are at. The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed. All of the Agile Manifesto signatories had been doing their own thing for at least 5-10 years before they tried to compare notes in 2001, and it was another 10 before most of us accepted half of XP as de rigeur. 15 years is a long, long time to wait for 'rain'. > At Lockheed, they let you pick if you wanted to work the standard 5x8 days 40 hour week Boeing was also once that way, and that survived the MD merger, though I don't know if that's still true.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

This is nice, but I find it disappointing that they didn't offer 4x8 32 hour weeks, when the company's culture seems to have already been set up for it. They could have let people opt in to reduced pay.

brixon 5y ago
That is very likely an option, but probably not used a lot. I have worked with several people that had a similar schedule, but they did not start at the company with that schedule and of course took a pay cut due to the lower hours. It is very difficult to argue for hiring someone that is not 40 hours. HR and management thinks in terms of full time (40) or part time (<30). The 30-39 hour schedules seem to be used to keep someone they really don't want to lose and not offered to new people. I have seen it with people getting close to retirement and people caring for someone sick or small.
jhawk28 5y ago
LM does offer part time arrangements, but it is not well known.

sys_64738 5y ago

And the shutdown week at Christmas. Few companies do this either.

me_smith 5y ago

The 9-80 schedule is one of the things I miss most about working for LM. Along with the great coworkers I had. Now I work for a typical software company, and I realize I took the flexibility of the 9-80 for granted. I got so much personal stuff done during that extra day off. And, for the rest of the days, I didn’t really feel like going from 8 to 9 hours a day that difficult.

cebert 5y ago
You and me both. It was such a nice perk.