7 ms·

Can we agree that different people have different optimal working styles? Some people get everything done first thing in the morning and are useless in the aft

• semanticjudo 4y ago
  Saving to copy/paste on every [X workstyle] is best thread…
• barkerja 4y ago
  Agree 100% with this take. But my question is: how do you mesh all these types together and run an effective team/company? Or is that even possible?
  • helij 4y ago
    By having agreed core hours.
  • davidweatherall 4y ago
    Hire based on working style.
    • kelseyfrog 4y ago
      This is a really great way to introduce systemic neurodivergency filters and expose a greater surface area for unfair hiring practice lawsuits.
      • rsanek 4y ago
        Not sure if I'm just missing the sarcasm but almost all companies have been hiring based on the same working style of 5 days a week, 8+ hours, in office, open workspace for quite a while. What's the problem with choosing a different set of strongly opinionated defaults?
      • andai 4y ago
        Normal working conditions are a neurodivergence filter.
  • dsr_ 4y ago
    In a large enough group, all things are possible, and a good manager can make them happen. In a small group, start by asking what the company needs, and hire or move people to fit. It might not be possible to get a good fit for everyone. Honesty and flexibility is the best policy: one dev who misses every morning meeting has a problem, but if half the team misses it fairly regularly, or everyone is yawning, move the meeting. Ask people about their working styles up front, and be clear during the hiring process if you have core hours, or inflexible shifts, or need everyone to be in person on the first Wednesday of the month, or whatever.
• joadha 4y ago
  How do you maximize opportunities for collaboration?
  • galoisscobi 4y ago
    Set 2 half days as office hours where people self organize and collaborate on whatever they need to solve. Poll the team to find what those 2 chunks of time are. 2 half days is arbitrary, the core idea would be that builders/makers have uninterrupted time to focus and build for the rest of the week.
  • bluefirebrand 4y ago
    Maybe I trust people too much, but I feel people will find and make their own opportunities to collaborate if they feel like collaboration is required to complete their tasks. If you're maximizing "opportunities to collaborate" you're probably taking their attention from their work unnecessarily.
    • Hermitian909 4y ago
      > Maybe I trust people too much, but I feel people will find and make their own opportunities to collaborate if they feel like collaboration is required to complete their tasks. I find this breaks down at larger companies. The problem is that people often do not understand when collaboration is required. This is usually not their fault. Someone up failed to communicate up or down the chain (either on the receiving or sending end). I've watched groups reproduce each other's works, bungle rollouts, etc. based on this lack of communication. The cost of these miscommunications was sometimes greater than everyone's salary put together. A truly excellent culture of communication and collaboration reduces the frequency and severity of these events but there's no silver bullet.
• elevaet 4y ago
  To further complicate matters, different fields of work have different optimal working styles/cycles as well. I did some very physical seasonal work for about a decade where most of us would work about 3 months of the year, very intensely. After years of experimentation, the boss of the finest company in this industry figured out that a 3 day on, 1 day off cycle worked best for productivity and morale. This cycle gave everyone a chance to rest and recover from the athletic level of physical labour. It was really interesting to step out of a 7 day week and into this 4 day cycle every year.
  • teekert 4y ago
    This also depends on age, i.e., it sounds like I'd need 1 day on, 2 days off for this type of work ;)
    • elevaet 4y ago
      I probably would too, at this point!
• weldedtogether 4y ago
  We see the same issues in education with kids learning in different ways, and those who learn better in X way might learn less because they're being taught in Y way. It comes down to the overhead in time and complexity (usually money as well) being too high to justify accommodating everyone. We just sorta jam everyone into the same thing and figure we'll get enough out of them. As the culture shifts more toward worker's work/life balance being important (if it ever does here in the US) I think this will change, but I don't think we'll see ever enough flexibility to accommodate everyone. We'll settle on another standard and stick to it till enough people complain.
  • junipertea 4y ago
    Different learning styles are actually disputed [0], but I agree that 1. it's easier for employer to fit everyone in one box. 2. If people had more individual approaches, they would work better [0]https://www.educationnext.org/stubborn-myth-learning-styles-state-teacher-license-prep-materials-debunked-theory/ https://www.educationnext.org/stubborn-myth-learning-styles-...
    • paulsutter 4y ago
      Your link doesn't demonstrate that all people learn in the same way, merely tries to debunk a specific/narrow set of learning styles (that seem bizarre in the first place)
      • mym1990 4y ago
        The idea is that many people will learn best when a combination of teaching methods are present, rather than one person always being taught in style X vs style Y. But most schools and teaching institutions are setup as farms that make students believe that if they don't find success in this narrow little box, then they must be dumb or doing something wrong. Surely the idea that people learn in the same way is as bizarre as the idea that people learn in one of 4 ways.
      • TameAntelope 4y ago
        Here are a few better sources. "Learning styles" are not established science, by any means. https://career.ucsf.edu/sites/g/files/tkssra2771/f/Article%20UCSF%20SEJC%20January%202017.pdf https://career.ucsf.edu/sites/g/files/tkssra2771/f/Article%2... https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA628405045&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=15399664&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E682cdd7e https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA628405045&sid=googleS... https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/LearningStylesMyth https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/LearningStylesMyth https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/the-myth-of-learning-styles/557687/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/the-myth... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-learning-styles/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-...
• Consultant32452 4y ago
  I produce as much as my teammates working about 1-2 hours 5-days per week. It would be a massive social problem for most employers to let me get paid what I make and have everyone see me only working 1-2 hours per day. That's why I had to switch to consulting. My case is extreme, but that's why you won't see employers letting people have visibly different work arrangements.
  • srfwx 4y ago
    Have you ever considered that your teammates may be working 1-2 hours each day too ?
    • Consultant32452 4y ago
      Some aren't working at all.
• TimPC 4y ago
  Ultimately though we need to pick an arrangement. It's going to be very difficult to have part of society on reduced five day work weeks and part of society on four day work weeks. It creates unusual demand patterns on schools and daycare which you need to decide whether to run on a four or five day pattern. It's hard for the schools or daycares if the teachers/ECEs opt for four day work weeks but a substantial portion of their market requires five day services. The push for a four day work week is inclusive and allows most people to shift to a four day work week. The push to people working in accordance with their optimal work patterns unfairly targets the service sector and restricts how their choice in how they work based on demands for their services.
  • Cerium 4y ago
    A substantial portion of the service sector runs with a seven day schedule, we don't push schools to offer seven day service in response? Perhaps having more mixed working arrangements will improve societal flexibility and better serve all people.
    • TimPC 4y ago
      I think it's a legitimate problem though that schools and daycares operate predominantly on a five day schedule now that works for a large number of workers. If we go to a model where we have something resembling a 50/50 split between longer 4-day work weeks and shorter 5-day work weeks we end up with a huge problem in how to schedule services so that they work for the majority of people. There will be overwhelming pressure on schools to have days that match the shorter length of day in the five-day workweek so that parents who opt for five days can spend time with their kids. There will be overwhelming pressure to have four slightly longer school days so that parents who opt for the four-day work week can spend time with the kids on the three days off. It's very difficult for schools to opt for both solutions as it would require doubling the number of class types being offered which makes it harder for smaller schools to have sufficient students in every class to be financially viable. Even if we solve financial viability schools would need the ability to tell teachers which schedule they had to take rather than letting the teachers freely choose. I can't stress how much this choice of working approach would be bad for the school system.