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When I was a hot shit young programmer being underpaid, I tried several times to negotiate a shorter work week in lieu of more money. My theory was either Frida

When I was a hot shit young programmer being underpaid, I tried several times to negotiate a shorter work week in lieu of more money. My theory was either Friday afternoon or better Monday morning so I could sleep in a bit after the weekend. Until recently I was a night owl. And the problem with trying to take a trip out of town on the weekend is that if your flight is delayed or you just want to save money, it’s much easier to guarantee you’re home by 9 am on Monday than by 11pm on Sunday night. If anything goes wrong with your transportation you end up with a more stressful Monday. Later when I had flexible hours I was able to sustain a middle distance relationship by working 9 hours a day Monday through Thursday and beating Friday traffic out of town to go see her. I still think everyone in software should be working 32 hours a week. I’ve been vocal in the past about making that a four day week, but it’s the morning commute and the lunch break epiphanies that really make the 8 hour day a lie, and I worry that taking one of those day away would have a bigger negative effect on productivity than taking 1.6 hours away from every day, the first hour or so of which is emphatically a productivity/hour boost.

com2kid 1y ago
HBO Max (pre merger) had a 32hr work week in the summer. (Not sure about now). Productivity remained constant, there were plenty of Jira stats to back that up. Meetings got shorter and more organized, small talk was cut down. People hustled more to get stuff finished. There have been studies showing we only have 20-30 productive hours of knowledge work per week. Adding more hours to the work week doesn't really result in more getting done, although it can result in a project actually going backwards if tired devs start submitting buggy code at a rate faster than bugs are being fixed.
- hinkley 1y ago
  I’ve gotten a better sense of when I’m grinding gears in the afternoon but if you’re really focused on a vexing problem it can be tricky to check in with yourself. Ids say probably about every three months I leave work one day thinking I’m five hours away from solving a problem, then overnight I realize I’m doing it the hard way, delete a third of my code and I’m done in 30-60 minutes, mostly due to tests and build times. I think more and longer breaks would also help.
- gruez 1y ago
  >Productivity remained constant, there were plenty of Jira stats to back that up. Is there a public source for this?
  - com2kid 1y ago
    Sadly no, they missed a great chance to do some PR blog posting. It sure made recruitment easy though. "We don't pay as well as your current job but my on call has gone off twice ever since I started here and you get 3 day weekends all summer long."

com2kid 1y ago

HBO Max (pre merger) had a 32hr work week in the summer. (Not sure about now). Productivity remained constant, there were plenty of Jira stats to back that up. Meetings got shorter and more organized, small talk was cut down. People hustled more to get stuff finished. There have been studies showing we only have 20-30 productive hours of knowledge work per week. Adding more hours to the work week doesn't really result in more getting done, although it can result in a project actually going backwards if tired devs start submitting buggy code at a rate faster than bugs are being fixed.

hinkley 1y ago
I’ve gotten a better sense of when I’m grinding gears in the afternoon but if you’re really focused on a vexing problem it can be tricky to check in with yourself. Ids say probably about every three months I leave work one day thinking I’m five hours away from solving a problem, then overnight I realize I’m doing it the hard way, delete a third of my code and I’m done in 30-60 minutes, mostly due to tests and build times. I think more and longer breaks would also help.
gruez 1y ago
>Productivity remained constant, there were plenty of Jira stats to back that up. Is there a public source for this?
- com2kid 1y ago
  Sadly no, they missed a great chance to do some PR blog posting. It sure made recruitment easy though. "We don't pay as well as your current job but my on call has gone off twice ever since I started here and you get 3 day weekends all summer long."