But... Ctrl-F "commute"? Nope, don't see anything. Are you either remote or living very close to the office? Having more than a few minutes of commute does potentially change the trade-offs.
I do commute, this gives me roughly 2x50 minutes of time in the train. Since I have a 4/5 work schedule, I'd say I have 2x50 minx4 days + 8 = +- 14 hours free time a week (week end and evenings are family time).
When you only have to work for 6 hours it's very easy to avoid the more congested hours.
Allowing you to get to work by routes that normally are collapsed, or just using the same route and getting there 15+ minutes earlier because there are no traffic.
I used to work 6 hours and commuted each day by bike for a total of 2 hours of commute. It was the best. You do your work AND get your daily exercise AND have 8 hours left over.
It was ~10km in a straight line uphill. Our roads aren't really built for bikes and I don't want to become a smudge on the road, so my route was more meandering to avoid every large straight road possible. My absolute fastest was 32 minutes going work->home downhill, taking the usually unsafe roads, because traffic was unusually low for that day. After I bought a velocimeter and used it for a while, my average speed was about 14km/h.
Given a choice, I think 8x4 would be more sensible in terms of benefits. The best use of free time is enjoyable experiences outside work, which is more doable when you have it without interruptions of a work schedule. Five hours a day is awesome if you have a hobby or a side project; not so much if you want to travel. The second reason is the time it takes to level up and actually start working. Honestly, this could be lessened if I didn't check reddit & HN first thing after I start working but I have grown a bit habitual to it.
At any given day, five hours of focused work is much better than eight hours filled with distractions, but I haven't found the magical solution to make that (super-focused work) happen.
Personally, I don't have much of an issue with working hours. The main issue is I can't enjoy long stretches of vacation. Yes, it's possible to sacrifice some of your salary to go wild, but you can't do it without getting a frown from your superiors.
Right now I work 4 days out of 5. I'm paid 4 and my retirement plan will be 4/5th too. But at the same time, I work on personal projects. I also choose my day off on tuesday. Because tuesday is not an extended weekend, so it's "my own projects day" and it's the first day like that in the week so I'm not tired like I'd be on, say thursday.
I have to work until 67 in my country. So when I'll be off, I'll be way to tired to start new stuff. Moreover, after 50 years old, I'll get a good chance of getting cancer or some other life-changing disease. So I think it's better if I take my time right now...
Final note : this holds because my job is not a dream job, so my return-on-time-investment is weak (I don't consider the ability to buy a big car or around-the-world vacations, or top-notch-phone to be a good return on the time I spend at work)
Your regular IT manager. I work in a private company and my skills are rented to governments. I like it because it's private but the benefit of my work helps others. I worked in other industries and the balance was not like that; it was more my boss makes a ton of money on me, selling stuff that I don't consider much...
Out of curiosity how do you value yourself? If you are able to have the pinnacle of technology in your hand connected to the global information storage while traveling easily. What more do you think this world has to offer you? Do you want servants?
Given that I'm actually in the former camp due to my love of travel, the way you phrased this is pretty condescending to people who hate spending money on concerts, hotels, airlines, etc.
Additionally, many people who like to buy 'things' are getting them for the experiences they provide. For example, it's hard to argue that someone who buys a VR system or a hot tub isn't getting 'experiences' when they use them with family and friends.
Just something to consider if you ever use this to berate people too 'materialistic' for your tastes.
My experience (in the US, for context) over the past few years is that valued judgement and condescension are far more common than they used to be, so GP may be more inclined to interpret things that way.
I'm not passing any judgement or condemnation. Everyone is allowed spend their money as they like, as well as value what they like. I was more aggravated by the tone of your final two questions "What more do you think this world has to offer you? Do you want servants?" As if one's desire to discover the amazing things our world has to offer is a bad thing...
I value Internet (a lot). But I don't need a phone to reach it. I value being able to move around, but I don't need a Ferrari to do it. I value meeting other cultures, but I don't need these to be 10000km's from my home.
Now as how I value myself, well, I dunno. I'm more interested in how the others value me :-)
The great thing about having Tuesdays off in NZ is that stat days are usually Mondays - you catch nearly all the stats as paid days and get an extra long weekend.
I'm just following the "system" here. Nothing fancy. I'm not in a situation where I can retire earlier. I could do it, but for that I'd have to make a ton of money, which implies competing with people which may be better at selling themselves than me. I'm afraid I wouldn't perform very well in such context.
I have mentioned to others on HN many times--don't wait until the tail end of your life to do the things you want to do. Practically every low hours boat and low mileage RV has a former owner who "waited too long."
I recently switched to a 36 hour week from 40 hours, which fortunately is something enshrined by law in the Netherlands.
I had the option of working 36 hours each week, but they wouldn't allow more than an 8 hour day. Having one half-day seemed to me like a total waste; not only do I still have to commute every day of the week, I'd only have a short amount of productive time.
So now I do 40/32 and have every other Friday off. It's great. While I work 10% less, and nominally get paid 10% less, the way taxes work out I ultimately only make 7.xx% less.
> Given a choice, I think 8x4 would be more sensible in terms of benefits.
It is, and I'm working 4*9 now which is great for my spare time and great for maintaining proper income/benefits. That said, I very much agree with the sentiment in the article: it feels like cheating the company. The extra hour a day is even less productive.
That said, I don't really feel guilty as the option described in the post is not available here. Work is important to me, but my spare time more so. I'm willing to work on a compromise to optimise the two, but then both sides have to bring something to the table (e.g. pay cut from me, more time off from my employer).
> That said, I very much agree with the sentiment in the article: it feels like cheating the company. The extra hour a day is even less productive.
I don't know why you feel like you're cheating them. Management are human too. They know you aren't productive for the entire day or choose to believe you are.
I know, but it's a bit like I'm spreading the 4 hours I was "supposed" to do on the fifth day over the four other days, even though they'd be far more productive on the fifth.
I wish more companies offered less than 40hrs/wk. But, hey, most places don't like even giving vacation.
I'd rather commit seppuku than go back to a 40hr office.
Have you also done anything about trying to find out why you have trouble focusing? I read some older article from your blog also and got the feeling you have been taking yourself as a static thing and that the things around you need to change for you to feel better. Or did i get that wrong?
Interesting view. I would myself say I've tried a lot of things and I wish I could be contempt with what I have, but it just never works out this way. However I'm totally open for suggestions, since I'm really willing to try anything (but "suck it up").
Also I have tried figuring out what's wrong/different about me and I have no answer. I've actually have had situations where I'm grateful for having a job at all, but the positivity only lasts a few weeks.
But since I'm giving the company the best hours of the day I would ask 80% of pay for the 60% of workload.
The author states that he's able to work with fewer distractions and better concentration when it's a 5 hour day, so everyone's a winner - he gets more time, he gets the same amount of work done, and the company saves money. I can imagine it works very well in the author's circumstances. But how many workers are in the same situation?
For a start, very few people can afford a 20% cut to their pay. Anyone in that situation is out.
For businesses that pay people enough that they could afford a 20% pay cut, such as the big high profile IT companies, the business is usually awash with cash; they need people to do more work and are willing to pay overtime for them to do it. Saving 20% of the wage bill is no incentive.
Lastly, as dasmoth points out, if you have a commute then you'd just be increasing the relative amount of time you're travelling compared to working, which I imagine would make it feel much worse. I have a 30 minute commute each way and when I do a half day it feels like a huge waste of time.
As a solution when it's appropriate I think it's great, but I doubt it's applicable to many people.
> very few people can afford a 20% cut to their pay. Anyone in that situation is out.
True, but among software devs it's proably a lot more common than in the rest of the population
> Saving 20% of the wage bill is no incentive.
It's the same argument as why businesses want workers to do 50h weeks and not 40. It's hard to find two talented persons so they find one and hope he'll work more. What they aren't seeing is that they'll have to find a replacement for him within just a couple of years.
The incentive for the business must come from the fact that once this is widespread enough, talented people aren't going to want to work for the old "we expect you to be here 40-50h" businesses.
> if you have a commute then you'd just be increasing the relative amount of time you're travelling compared to working, which I imagine would make it feel much worse.
This is important. First, if you have a 1h commute it makes no sense to go to an office every day and do 5h as you point out. For some it would make more sense to work 2-6 days a week from home, thereby reducing the number of commute hours per work hour. For others, it would make most sense to do 4x6 instead of 5x5 hours etc. Also (and this is very important) if you do commute it's important to be able to work during the commute. A 1h train ride is easy to convert to work (even if it's not productive work but at least being available for chat questions, catching up with email etc) but a 1h car ride is not.
True, but among software devs it's proably a lot more common than in the rest of the population
Even among that small subset of the population I doubt it's common. Your lifestyle expands to fit your income. That makes it increasing difficult to accept a lower wage. Further to that, it'll become even less common as developers get older and more commonly have mortgages and families.
Indeed - but if you asked me 10 years ago whether I'd rather have this setup than the extra pay - I would no doubt have taken less work. Consequently today I would perhaps have a smaller house, had I taken that chance.
There may be those that won't be able to take this offer because they already have the mortgage however,
Just finished a 2 month project without having a single meeting with business and I must say, things are much better. Business never told me directly what to do and I never told them directly how long something would take me. Best approach ever.
I seem to have this thing for honesty. If I intend to "work from home" but really do everything but, then I'd rather just work out some deal. Plus I like coming to the office, it's social.
The idea is that you still do the 5 to 6 hours of actual work and replace the 2 to 4 hours of shallow socializing with gym time or hobbies or deep socializing with friends/family/kids.
At the very least you replace the 1 to 2 hours of commuting with the above.
Honestly, living across the street from the office, I'm pretty fine going into work every day. The 5minute commute is bearable.
My only problem is not being allowed to work from home when I have tight deadlines. I'm much more productive at home.
I find I work more when I work from home. Partly I think because making my effort level visible is more important when people don't see me in a chair all day.
But yes, it's still nice to not have to keep up appearances when you for whatever reason can't concentrate.
Which makes zero sense to me because study after study after study has come out and said remote work makes for happier and more productive employees and saves the company money.
That does not necessarily work for everyone. For some work is an important part of social life, and some are not able to maintain a working discipline at home (frankly, me).
Yes. I work for a 100% remote company, and it is awesome. I don't think it's for everyone, but for me, it hits the sweet spot. I get to walk with my wife or play with my dog or putter around the garden during breaks or when I need to step away to clear my head. It's great.
I use local meetups on the rare occasion when I crave in-person tech socialization.
The one thing I do miss and haven't solved 100% is the ability to whiteboard with fellow engineers. We just Skype and share our screens. It's good, but not as good as whiteboarding.
I work with a number of people in my office who do completely different things than I do. If we didn't make time to just talk about whatever between the times we work, we would probably never need to speak to one another.
That being said, there is a benefit to having 'non-productive' communication with colleagues during working hours, because it builds trust and rapport. These become infinitely value at seemingly unexpected times, and it's difficult to calculate an ROI on asking your colleague how their weekend was.
On average my actual work load is between 3-4 hours including daily reports, correspondence, and meetings. The rest of the day is spent trying to look busy.
I wouldn't mind a 5-6 hour work day. That's plenty of time to get everything done and not feel like I have time bearing down on me.
One issue is that most companies would take a person asking for a lighter work hours as lazy, or not motivated
No matter the company, there will always have "that" vibe when wanting less hours, unless they are specifically seeking a part time
"What's wrong, don't you want to work 50 hours a week like the rest of us ? What's the matter ? Not motivated ?"
For a different perspective, consider the Netherlands where the right to work part-time is enshrined in law. It's really common for people to switch to 36 or 32 hours having previously worked 40 hours full-time, and it's culturally acceptable and isn't seen as lazy or unmotivated.
"and it's culturally acceptable and isn't seen as lazy or unmotivated"
Uh, you should probably add to that "... by other people who work part time". There most certainly is a career bias against part time workers. Sure, in some sectors it might be worse than others, and not all of it is that explicit - but come promotion time, working part time gives you a severe handicap.
Well, no, I wouldn't add that because plenty who work full-time don't see part-timers as lazy or unmotivated (or may intend to do so themselves at some point if they have a kid, for example).
And sure...it may indeed be the case for some that promotions are slower to come by not working full-time. Hardly strange- if you work fewer hours, your experience will accrue more slowly. But this is separate from cultural acceptability or value judgments by your coworkers/employer: one can be productive and motivated for 36 hours a week, just as one can be lazy and unmotivated for 40.
I really wish more companies would be willing to do this, as a childless adult I have no need for more than 20 hours worth of pay, and my health definitely benefits on a lighter schedule.
Currently I'm achieving this through contracting but I would much rather have a more typical employment situation to reduce the administrative burden and the need for sales.
There are countless part time jobs, but fewer interesting ones. That's a little picky on my side, however at the same time there are so many companies looking for developers full time you would think a few more would become part time friendly as a way to differentiate themselves.
> I really wish more companies would be willing to do this, as a childless adult I have no need for more than 20 hours worth of pay, and my health definitely benefits on a lighter schedule.
Pardon my ignorance but in your view how is having a child supposed to push this in the other direction? Do you see having a child as an opportunity/reason to raise the 20 hours/week to 40 hours/week and stay away from home longer? Because I thought the point of raising children was so you could spend some of your time raising a family, and my impression was most older people would rather be with their families than at work. Do you see yourself wishing that you could work 40 hours when you have children or something? Wouldn't it make more sense to work more now and save for that future instead so you don't have to work as hard then?
Yes... I was trying to say, wouldn't it make more sense to work more right now so you can save for when you do have children. Because, like you said, you'll need the money more later than now, and you'll want to spend more time at home than you do now. i.e. if you're like most people, you'll be less excited to work, and will do it more out of necessity than desire. So why not plan accordingly.
Yeah, I suppose if he's already decided for sure he doesn't want to, then this doesn't apply, good point. If the possibility is there though it seems a little dangerous not to try to save up for it. Worst case is you end up with too much money and can retire early and do whatever you want, which hardly seems like an awful outcome. Especially considering the reverse might mean not being able to provide for (or have much time to see) a potential family you might want later...
It's not going to be enough, that's why. Sure, you can work more right now to try to save up money, but making 30% more money now isn't remotely enough to make up for how much those kids are going to cost.
On top of that, you have to remember that you can't have kids by yourself (at least not easily, if you're male): you need a willing partner. If you're working your ass off to save money for kids, that means you're either letting your relationship suffer because you're at work all the time, or you're missing out on opportunities to find a partner. And the older you get, the harder it is to find a good partner (really, you need to find her in college; if you haven't found her by age 25, you probably won't).
All in all, our society simply isn't set up to have an enjoyable middle-class lifestyle and have kids. You need to pick one or the other: either be poor and have kids and struggle financially, or enjoy a more financially comfortable lifestyle and forgo having kids. Also, having a happy relationship and having kids are at odds with each other, so again you have to pick one. Either have kids and look forward to divorce and child support or at least a miserable marriage where you dread coming home from work, or find a partner who doesn't want kids and enjoy spending time with her.
It's little wonder that the birth rates in developed nations have fallen so low.
"Also, having a happy relationship and having kids are at odds with each other, so again you have to pick one. Either have kids and look forward to divorce and child support or at least a miserable marriage where you dread coming home from work, or find a partner who doesn't want kids and enjoy spending time with her."
That's a very dark line of thinking, and I'm sorry your life has led you to believe that is the case.
It's absolutely possible to have kids and a happy relationship, just as it's absolutely possible to not have kids and have a happy relationship, or have kids and a miserable relationship, or not have kids and have a miserable relationship.
Also, it's possible to have a middle-class lifestyle with kids; difficult, but possible. Living in the middle states of the US, with an in-demand skillset relative to the area you live in, and a semi-frugal mindset- it's absolutely possible. In San Francisco or DC? Not so much.
>It's absolutely possible to have kids and a happy relationship, just as...
Oh, I completely agree it's possible. Plenty of people do. But what are the odds that you'll achieve this? IMO, not very good. Considering the divorce rate, and how many kids grow up with divorced parents these days, I think the odds are actually against you. I think it makes perfect sense to avoid a situation that has a greater-than-50% chance of horrible failure (and given the struggles I see my single-parent friends going through, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I use the word 'horrible').
>Living in the middle states of the US, with an in-demand skillset relative to the area you live in, and a semi-frugal mindset- it's absolutely possible. In San Francisco or DC? Not so much.
Yeah, as with anything, YMMV. But if you're a software engineer or similar (as is probably rather common here), you're not going to do well in the middle states of the US; there just aren't many jobs there, and they don't pay that well, and you have the problem that if that job doesn't work out, you now have to pack up and move because that was the only such job within commutable distance. So we're mainly stuck in high cost-of-living locales (and to be honest, I've lived in both, and the lost CoL places have their own problems, such as lots of very conservative people and policies, making them not a lot of fun to live in).
im with OP.
if you are alone right now all the extra time you have will be yours alone, and all the money you earn will have to be enough to support you.
If i chose to do it like you sugested. Work 100% and save 50%, there is no way in hell that i would save that 50%. Nobody would. When you only have 10$ in bank to buy a lunch you buy it for max 10$ but if you have 100$ you have to force yourself to spend only 10$. you probably would not. I know that i would not do it 100% of time. So in the end you end up saving alot less then 50%.
when you get your child, the extra time that you have if you work less will be spend between you, your child/family, your alone time ( if you value it, will be not even close to 50% ) and because having a family is way more expensive, all the money you saved when working 100% and supposed to save 50% would be spend 3 times faster then when you where alone, and then you would have to go back to work.
> When you only have 10$ in bank to buy a lunch you buy it for max 10$ but if you have 100$ you have to force yourself to spend only 10$. you probably would not.
I would agree with you but this is not the situation we're talking about there. The OP is totally comfortable living with 50% of the income; clearly he's not counting pennies when he goes out to get lunch, and I assumed that's not a situation he's looking to get himself into either (but if he is for some reason, then OK, you're right).
It very much seemed like he'd be still living pretty darn comfortably and getting everything he wants at 50% pay. Unless you like to spend money just for the hell of it, I don't see why you'd spend more on your lunch just because you're making more money, when you're already eating whatever you want anyway.
> when you get your child, the extra time that you have if you work less will be spend between you, your child/family, your alone time ( if you value it, will be not even close to 50% ) and because having a family is way more expensive, all the money you saved when working 100% and supposed to save 50% would be spend 3 times faster then when you where alone, and then you would have to go back to work.
I was thinking more like, invest the money in something instead of directly spending (say) 10 years' worth of 2x salary in like 3 years of daily life expenses. Maybe even use it to start your own business and dictate your own hours... so many possibilities I can't even think of when you have the money.
The reason hourly employees are to be paid time and a half in the US is to incentivize companies to hire more people. Decreasing the full time/OT line increases the demand for labor. I just wish I knew how to make that thought agreeable in the US.
> I just wish I knew how to make that thought agreeable in the US.
Maybe relieving employers of the need to provide all full time employees with fringe benefits (ie. medical insurance)?
I don't know if this means we need a publicly funded, single-payer, healthcare system, or if there is a more attractive solution. But the way a person's healthcare is tied to their employer in this country is rather bizarre, and I'm sure it is widely regarded by businesses as an incentive to avoid brining on more full-time people.
Maybe relieving employers of the need to provide all full time employees with fringe benefits (ie. medical insurance)?
Even before it was legally mandated, market forces made it virtually impossible to not offer it for full-time skilled labor.
Why would I work for you when I can go to your competitor, work for them and get medical insurance? Even if I was in a position where I needed a job, as soon as I can leave, I'm going to go elsewhere.
My contract specifies a 7.5h workday... But I do only 6h/day, and so do most of my colleagues. I am very lucky: I live in France, this country has a strong culture of "stay late at work and the boss will like you", yet my firm does not care about that. It cares about getting sh*t done.
This is a broader subject than "work hours": my firm thinks that staying more hour to procrastinate is not not useful, and it believes that employees are more efficient when they are happy!
In order to have an efficient workforce and less turnover, I think any business should try to answer: "for each employee: what conditions does he/she need to be happy at work?".
You definitely have a dream job for France! I live here too but I am "lucky" to work for US employers remotely but from what I have seen at traditional French companies your situation is unusual. I hope that those ideas start to spread across French business culture!
I've worked in offices, now working from home. A few hours a day is enough to be considered exceptionally productive in terms of coding for me, this leaves a lot of time for other productivity, family, work around the house. In an office environment the rest of the time is spent looking busy. A surprising number of people will not admit it and will very adamently deny that they are not being productive, yet output shows differently.
But then there are meetings. Factoring in meetings takes a lot of time. Endless talk about improving process...
The flip-side of focusing on productivity and less so on actively participating in meetings or scheduling them is getting stuck in a coding job, being remote and not active in pursuing promotions the companies I work for usually fall back to relying on me for good code and meeting/exceeding planned output and that's it.
In my experience, if you have the goal of moving up a company hierarchy, you have to put on a show that you are a busy which has little to do with output (code) and lots to do with appearences (lot's of talking).
I am very very interested in this myself. I proposed something similar to my current company but got refused.
I experimented with different hours off on certain days and found that the thing that would turn me into a productivity monster would be a 4-5h work day with remote option. But now try to find something like this (especially in Asia). Despite loving my current job, I think if I would get a counter offer from a company with these benefits, I would probably quit right away.
I am personally not a office bee and dislike leaving when it's dark. I'm drained of all my motivation and the darkness makes me just want to go home, watch a YouTube video and sleep, just to repeat the same cycle again. I managed to counter this fairly successfully by working outside of cafes that have terraces and picking a new location every day. My motivation and productivity level stays up longer and the drain is reduced, but now if I just had more time...
I went through some kind of burnout as well last year (more related to personal stuff than work itself) and decided to take a long vacation. I didn't want to go back to the usual schedule and risk having the same issue again in a year or two, so I decided to work part time when I came back.
So, now I work Monday to Wednesday and have Thursday to Sunday free. This means I only have three days per week to make an impact on the company (as opposed to the ones who work full time), so I find myself really focused. My productivity vs before has skyrocketed.
What do I do on my extra days? Sometimes I go out, sometimes I just do nothing and relax, sometimes I do small side contracts or personal projects. I hope one of these takes off one day and allow me to recover the money I gave up when switching to part time. At least now I've got the energy to work on them.
I'm a remote freelancer and currently also doing 25h/week but usually distributed over 7 days. Originally started because the birth of my daughter but I've quickly noticed how my productivity increased. I think it's even more than my productivity in 40h in the office (also because I could never really relax there). I used to have the "I hate everything and being locked up in that office all day long is awful" moments every 3 months. Now my motivation stays roughly the same over the year.
Just had my weekly Wednesday off (oceanic the zone) and spent 3 hours working on my side hussle that is a web store. Tweaked the theme, analysed ad data and set up some new ad tests. I felt super productive getting as much done as might take 8 hours if the work was "jobified".
Spent rest of day trying out mattresses, getting a massage, cooking fish and watching star trek. Hoping I'm successful so that every day can be like this!
I've tried both 5 short workdays and 3 longer workdays. I like 3 longer workdays better. A full day for work and a full day for something else mean, to me, that I can focus more fully on work and then focus more fully on something else. A "half work, half not work" day means, to me, that I can't quite focus on either.
TFA presents the shorter week [the alternative to a shorter day] as 3 consecutive days; I prefer interleaving work and non-work days, so as to neither be absent from work for 2 days in a row, nor work for 2 days in a row.
Also worth realising that in a lot of companies you're not being paid for your output, you're being paid for a certain amount of access to your brain.
The value in your job isn't your output, it's the organisational outcomes that occur as a result of you doing what ya do.
Some companies are fine and built around the outcomes of 5 hours a day of your code. Some organisations though really want 8 hours a day of access to those sweet, sweet neurons. Even if the constant interruptions, meetings and feelings of unproductivity are side effects, perhaps they value the outcomes of 2 hours a day of your code and the value sharing that comes from an inane question at 17:59, more than absolute output.
Not saying the latter is more efficient or should be right, but just showing there's different value companies derive from their employees over and above project deliverables.
Absolutely. There are plenty of examples where the job completely dictates the hours: Operational roles can either require shifts, or on-call availability. And hours only get worse for people with critical skillsets!
Granted, I specialise in well-sounding rationalisations ;) however, I do think it's true for some knowledge worker jobs that it's not just the direct knowledge we impart into a specific project, but the knowledge distributed within a company.
I know that I've learnt things from meetings where it's evidently a burden/"waste of time" for the party I'm gaining from, and likewise, am fairly certain I've delivered value to others when it's been a waste for me.
It might not be the best way of handling it, but some organisations are designed to work that way, and as much as we can try and mould where we work around us, sometimes it's just a different dynamic.
It -can- be. I know I am woefully undertasked, and in way, way too many meetings. Oftentimes I'm thrown at things that are floundering despite having no knowledge of them, their history, their current deliverables, etc. Not to actually code, but to just be present. Even though I feel entirely useless in such a role, it seems to provide some comfort to my superiors, and even to the teams in question. There are enough areas I'm extremely knowledgeable in, there are enough times I -am- able to save people/teams large amounts of work, there are enough times I can basically just look at a set of stories that they're predicting will take man-weeks, and say "I'll have a solution in place for you to start playing with tomorrow", that my presence seems to benefit a number of people even when I do nothing at all, just as a security blanket. If that's worth my salary to them, while I still have time to learn things on my own (and, er, browse HN), fair enough.
I hope you're an architect-level or at least getting there. I kind of feel sad for some architects though, they rarely get to code anymore, their existence is meetings, but presumably their ability to coordinate and prioritize the big picture outweighs having them apply their coding chops. For coders that can't give up coding it's a self-limiting move to resist that direction, lots of companies seem to have pressure that to advance you have to do 'less'.
When you do your big prototype solutions is it usually something you toss over the fence to the team that now takes on the rest of the dev/qe responsibility or do you try to work closely with one or two people on that team as you build it? I mostly ask because another sort of altruistic (or selfish if you're just killing time until the next round of meetings) thing you can do with your role is go around dropping mana on heads-down coding grunts by working with them directly on something; they'll probably have a nice feeling of appreciation like this person, who they aren't quite sure does what but must be very valuable, is taking time to work with them, and hopefully you teach them a few useful things from your deep knowledge to boot.
Kind of. Due to some internal politics, we have an 'architecture team' being formed, by someone who I don't want to work for (but who wants to poach me). Meanwhile I've been the de facto architect for a year and a half for software development. My actual title is 'backend tech lead'.
As to approach, it depends. Occasionally I've written and hosted a solution, and given endpoints for people to test with, before then walking people through the specifics and bringing devops on board to move it to production, and then will still actively take a hand in making changes/fixes/etc. Other times I've basically just POC'ed it, and then suggested to a team "Hey, this looks like it will solve a problem you're facing, here's some POC code, maybe play with and evaluate this approach, see if it'll fit your needs?" and they have, and in the process have learned more about the particulars than I knew, so that they're in a good place to do the real evaluation and decide what direction to head in. And still other times, especially common with juniors, when someone hits a roadblock, I'll sit with them, seek to understand the problem, and either explain the nature of the problem, and some possible solutions, and leave it up to them to pick one (since they have the most domain knowledge), or work/talk with them to work to and understand an ideal solution (if it doesn't require domain knowledge I don't have).
This. I have been on contracts where "butts in seats" was a metric--they had to have the appearance of moving the ball on the project even though it was in the early stages and there was nothing for the developers to even do yet. I hate those deals.
You're either an asset or a cost. If you're an asset, you're directly going to generate the company more value than they're paying you by doing your job, whether that's encompassed by 'raw output' or just 'access to your brain'. If you're a cost, well, someone needs to keep the gears running and occasionally cleaned of the worst bugs, make sure communication lines are clear, etc., and there's a certain market rate for that, so at worst you're just another cost of doing business like the hardware you use. At best the company will repurpose largely idle costs so you can potentially become an asset by coalescing and together creating value worth more than the sum of your individual costs. But some companies don't do that, so they just have these skilled workers loafing around paid for their availability (butt-in-chair) to activate on fixing some random problems as they come up.
> you're being paid for a certain amount of access to your brain.
I understand what you are trying to say, but if this would be true, I should be paid for a lot, a lot of overtime. When I left the office, my brain still process some job-related topics. I catch myself thinking about some work issues on weekends, evenings and holidays.
Some of the best ideas for work problems I hadn't had in the office.
Conceptually, I think that's one of the primary reasons for a salaried, full-time, permanent employee (in "knowledge"-type roles.)
Of course there is still have hourly pay based work but, in principle, those would be for specific tasks or specialties not routinely needed.
Yes, I realize these are idealized, but the occurrence of misuse doesn't negate the point. That said, idealizing may be an unfortunately common affliction I suffer from...
I know this is off-topic, but I hate the st ligature, so out of place... I mean it's a screen I'm looking at, not press-printed paper, no need to save on fonts.
More broadly, there's overhead and limitations imposed by having to work on a given day. Even if you're working a short day, you usually can't take off and do a substantial recreational activity or really jump into some project.
People differ of course, but a 3-day weekend is worth a whole lot more to me than somewhat shorter days.
188 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 246 ms ] thread* Tests are running.
* long-running scripts are running.
* Code is compiling.
* Database is importing.
* Files are copying.
* etc
Thank goodness for this site and a few others.
https://xkcd.com/303/
* docker build -t whatever -f some/Dockerfile .
* aws cloudformation update-stack ...
But... Ctrl-F "commute"? Nope, don't see anything. Are you either remote or living very close to the office? Having more than a few minutes of commute does potentially change the trade-offs.
I think is a win-win
At any given day, five hours of focused work is much better than eight hours filled with distractions, but I haven't found the magical solution to make that (super-focused work) happen.
Personally, I don't have much of an issue with working hours. The main issue is I can't enjoy long stretches of vacation. Yes, it's possible to sacrifice some of your salary to go wild, but you can't do it without getting a frown from your superiors.
I have to work until 67 in my country. So when I'll be off, I'll be way to tired to start new stuff. Moreover, after 50 years old, I'll get a good chance of getting cancer or some other life-changing disease. So I think it's better if I take my time right now...
Final note : this holds because my job is not a dream job, so my return-on-time-investment is weak (I don't consider the ability to buy a big car or around-the-world vacations, or top-notch-phone to be a good return on the time I spend at work)
Additionally, many people who like to buy 'things' are getting them for the experiences they provide. For example, it's hard to argue that someone who buys a VR system or a hot tub isn't getting 'experiences' when they use them with family and friends.
Just something to consider if you ever use this to berate people too 'materialistic' for your tastes.
I value Internet (a lot). But I don't need a phone to reach it. I value being able to move around, but I don't need a Ferrari to do it. I value meeting other cultures, but I don't need these to be 10000km's from my home.
Now as how I value myself, well, I dunno. I'm more interested in how the others value me :-)
I presume you mean you have to work until 67 if you rely on the state to fund your retirement?
- low wages meaning lower contributions
- low investment returns
- changes to the tax system
- they started contributing signifiant amounts later in life due to other pressures
I had the option of working 36 hours each week, but they wouldn't allow more than an 8 hour day. Having one half-day seemed to me like a total waste; not only do I still have to commute every day of the week, I'd only have a short amount of productive time.
So now I do 40/32 and have every other Friday off. It's great. While I work 10% less, and nominally get paid 10% less, the way taxes work out I ultimately only make 7.xx% less.
I am not even convinced I am getting more work done at work. Oh well.
It is, and I'm working 4*9 now which is great for my spare time and great for maintaining proper income/benefits. That said, I very much agree with the sentiment in the article: it feels like cheating the company. The extra hour a day is even less productive.
That said, I don't really feel guilty as the option described in the post is not available here. Work is important to me, but my spare time more so. I'm willing to work on a compromise to optimise the two, but then both sides have to bring something to the table (e.g. pay cut from me, more time off from my employer).
I don't know why you feel like you're cheating them. Management are human too. They know you aren't productive for the entire day or choose to believe you are.
Also I have tried figuring out what's wrong/different about me and I have no answer. I've actually have had situations where I'm grateful for having a job at all, but the positivity only lasts a few weeks.
The author states that he's able to work with fewer distractions and better concentration when it's a 5 hour day, so everyone's a winner - he gets more time, he gets the same amount of work done, and the company saves money. I can imagine it works very well in the author's circumstances. But how many workers are in the same situation?
For a start, very few people can afford a 20% cut to their pay. Anyone in that situation is out.
For businesses that pay people enough that they could afford a 20% pay cut, such as the big high profile IT companies, the business is usually awash with cash; they need people to do more work and are willing to pay overtime for them to do it. Saving 20% of the wage bill is no incentive.
Lastly, as dasmoth points out, if you have a commute then you'd just be increasing the relative amount of time you're travelling compared to working, which I imagine would make it feel much worse. I have a 30 minute commute each way and when I do a half day it feels like a huge waste of time.
As a solution when it's appropriate I think it's great, but I doubt it's applicable to many people.
Most software developers, I'd guess
> very few people can afford a 20% cut to their pay. Anyone in that situation is out.
True, but among software devs it's proably a lot more common than in the rest of the population
> Saving 20% of the wage bill is no incentive.
It's the same argument as why businesses want workers to do 50h weeks and not 40. It's hard to find two talented persons so they find one and hope he'll work more. What they aren't seeing is that they'll have to find a replacement for him within just a couple of years. The incentive for the business must come from the fact that once this is widespread enough, talented people aren't going to want to work for the old "we expect you to be here 40-50h" businesses.
> if you have a commute then you'd just be increasing the relative amount of time you're travelling compared to working, which I imagine would make it feel much worse.
This is important. First, if you have a 1h commute it makes no sense to go to an office every day and do 5h as you point out. For some it would make more sense to work 2-6 days a week from home, thereby reducing the number of commute hours per work hour. For others, it would make most sense to do 4x6 instead of 5x5 hours etc. Also (and this is very important) if you do commute it's important to be able to work during the commute. A 1h train ride is easy to convert to work (even if it's not productive work but at least being available for chat questions, catching up with email etc) but a 1h car ride is not.
Even among that small subset of the population I doubt it's common. Your lifestyle expands to fit your income. That makes it increasing difficult to accept a lower wage. Further to that, it'll become even less common as developers get older and more commonly have mortgages and families.
There may be those that won't be able to take this offer because they already have the mortgage however,
At the very least you replace the 1 to 2 hours of commuting with the above.
Honestly, living across the street from the office, I'm pretty fine going into work every day. The 5minute commute is bearable.
My only problem is not being allowed to work from home when I have tight deadlines. I'm much more productive at home.
But yes, it's still nice to not have to keep up appearances when you for whatever reason can't concentrate.
Work from home 2 days a week has really changed my life for the better.
I use local meetups on the rare occasion when I crave in-person tech socialization.
The one thing I do miss and haven't solved 100% is the ability to whiteboard with fellow engineers. We just Skype and share our screens. It's good, but not as good as whiteboarding.
Yet, the privilege of spending 2 non-productive hours somewhere else is costing the employee 20% of the salary.
It's almost like a tax on not partaking in optics.
That being said, there is a benefit to having 'non-productive' communication with colleagues during working hours, because it builds trust and rapport. These become infinitely value at seemingly unexpected times, and it's difficult to calculate an ROI on asking your colleague how their weekend was.
I wouldn't mind a 5-6 hour work day. That's plenty of time to get everything done and not feel like I have time bearing down on me.
"What's wrong, don't you want to work 50 hours a week like the rest of us ? What's the matter ? Not motivated ?"
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/05/ec...
Uh, you should probably add to that "... by other people who work part time". There most certainly is a career bias against part time workers. Sure, in some sectors it might be worse than others, and not all of it is that explicit - but come promotion time, working part time gives you a severe handicap.
And sure...it may indeed be the case for some that promotions are slower to come by not working full-time. Hardly strange- if you work fewer hours, your experience will accrue more slowly. But this is separate from cultural acceptability or value judgments by your coworkers/employer: one can be productive and motivated for 36 hours a week, just as one can be lazy and unmotivated for 40.
Come back in a year.
Also, it would be better to ask the manager's observations regarding productivity. Biases and all, you see.
Currently I'm achieving this through contracting but I would much rather have a more typical employment situation to reduce the administrative burden and the need for sales.
Pardon my ignorance but in your view how is having a child supposed to push this in the other direction? Do you see having a child as an opportunity/reason to raise the 20 hours/week to 40 hours/week and stay away from home longer? Because I thought the point of raising children was so you could spend some of your time raising a family, and my impression was most older people would rather be with their families than at work. Do you see yourself wishing that you could work 40 hours when you have children or something? Wouldn't it make more sense to work more now and save for that future instead so you don't have to work as hard then?
On top of that, you have to remember that you can't have kids by yourself (at least not easily, if you're male): you need a willing partner. If you're working your ass off to save money for kids, that means you're either letting your relationship suffer because you're at work all the time, or you're missing out on opportunities to find a partner. And the older you get, the harder it is to find a good partner (really, you need to find her in college; if you haven't found her by age 25, you probably won't).
All in all, our society simply isn't set up to have an enjoyable middle-class lifestyle and have kids. You need to pick one or the other: either be poor and have kids and struggle financially, or enjoy a more financially comfortable lifestyle and forgo having kids. Also, having a happy relationship and having kids are at odds with each other, so again you have to pick one. Either have kids and look forward to divorce and child support or at least a miserable marriage where you dread coming home from work, or find a partner who doesn't want kids and enjoy spending time with her.
It's little wonder that the birth rates in developed nations have fallen so low.
That's a very dark line of thinking, and I'm sorry your life has led you to believe that is the case.
It's absolutely possible to have kids and a happy relationship, just as it's absolutely possible to not have kids and have a happy relationship, or have kids and a miserable relationship, or not have kids and have a miserable relationship.
Also, it's possible to have a middle-class lifestyle with kids; difficult, but possible. Living in the middle states of the US, with an in-demand skillset relative to the area you live in, and a semi-frugal mindset- it's absolutely possible. In San Francisco or DC? Not so much.
Oh, I completely agree it's possible. Plenty of people do. But what are the odds that you'll achieve this? IMO, not very good. Considering the divorce rate, and how many kids grow up with divorced parents these days, I think the odds are actually against you. I think it makes perfect sense to avoid a situation that has a greater-than-50% chance of horrible failure (and given the struggles I see my single-parent friends going through, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I use the word 'horrible').
>Living in the middle states of the US, with an in-demand skillset relative to the area you live in, and a semi-frugal mindset- it's absolutely possible. In San Francisco or DC? Not so much.
Yeah, as with anything, YMMV. But if you're a software engineer or similar (as is probably rather common here), you're not going to do well in the middle states of the US; there just aren't many jobs there, and they don't pay that well, and you have the problem that if that job doesn't work out, you now have to pack up and move because that was the only such job within commutable distance. So we're mainly stuck in high cost-of-living locales (and to be honest, I've lived in both, and the lost CoL places have their own problems, such as lots of very conservative people and policies, making them not a lot of fun to live in).
If i chose to do it like you sugested. Work 100% and save 50%, there is no way in hell that i would save that 50%. Nobody would. When you only have 10$ in bank to buy a lunch you buy it for max 10$ but if you have 100$ you have to force yourself to spend only 10$. you probably would not. I know that i would not do it 100% of time. So in the end you end up saving alot less then 50%.
when you get your child, the extra time that you have if you work less will be spend between you, your child/family, your alone time ( if you value it, will be not even close to 50% ) and because having a family is way more expensive, all the money you saved when working 100% and supposed to save 50% would be spend 3 times faster then when you where alone, and then you would have to go back to work.
I would agree with you but this is not the situation we're talking about there. The OP is totally comfortable living with 50% of the income; clearly he's not counting pennies when he goes out to get lunch, and I assumed that's not a situation he's looking to get himself into either (but if he is for some reason, then OK, you're right).
It very much seemed like he'd be still living pretty darn comfortably and getting everything he wants at 50% pay. Unless you like to spend money just for the hell of it, I don't see why you'd spend more on your lunch just because you're making more money, when you're already eating whatever you want anyway.
> when you get your child, the extra time that you have if you work less will be spend between you, your child/family, your alone time ( if you value it, will be not even close to 50% ) and because having a family is way more expensive, all the money you saved when working 100% and supposed to save 50% would be spend 3 times faster then when you where alone, and then you would have to go back to work.
I was thinking more like, invest the money in something instead of directly spending (say) 10 years' worth of 2x salary in like 3 years of daily life expenses. Maybe even use it to start your own business and dictate your own hours... so many possibilities I can't even think of when you have the money.
Maybe relieving employers of the need to provide all full time employees with fringe benefits (ie. medical insurance)?
I don't know if this means we need a publicly funded, single-payer, healthcare system, or if there is a more attractive solution. But the way a person's healthcare is tied to their employer in this country is rather bizarre, and I'm sure it is widely regarded by businesses as an incentive to avoid brining on more full-time people.
Even before it was legally mandated, market forces made it virtually impossible to not offer it for full-time skilled labor.
Why would I work for you when I can go to your competitor, work for them and get medical insurance? Even if I was in a position where I needed a job, as soon as I can leave, I'm going to go elsewhere.
This is a broader subject than "work hours": my firm thinks that staying more hour to procrastinate is not not useful, and it believes that employees are more efficient when they are happy! In order to have an efficient workforce and less turnover, I think any business should try to answer: "for each employee: what conditions does he/she need to be happy at work?".
Recently, I joined a coworking space.
I used to think that I'm "unproductive", but after seeing how others actually work, I'm surprised that businesses get any work done at all.
I'll be amazed if most employees work at more than 60% productivity.
But then there are meetings. Factoring in meetings takes a lot of time. Endless talk about improving process...
The flip-side of focusing on productivity and less so on actively participating in meetings or scheduling them is getting stuck in a coding job, being remote and not active in pursuing promotions the companies I work for usually fall back to relying on me for good code and meeting/exceeding planned output and that's it.
In my experience, if you have the goal of moving up a company hierarchy, you have to put on a show that you are a busy which has little to do with output (code) and lots to do with appearences (lot's of talking).
I experimented with different hours off on certain days and found that the thing that would turn me into a productivity monster would be a 4-5h work day with remote option. But now try to find something like this (especially in Asia). Despite loving my current job, I think if I would get a counter offer from a company with these benefits, I would probably quit right away.
I am personally not a office bee and dislike leaving when it's dark. I'm drained of all my motivation and the darkness makes me just want to go home, watch a YouTube video and sleep, just to repeat the same cycle again. I managed to counter this fairly successfully by working outside of cafes that have terraces and picking a new location every day. My motivation and productivity level stays up longer and the drain is reduced, but now if I just had more time...
So, now I work Monday to Wednesday and have Thursday to Sunday free. This means I only have three days per week to make an impact on the company (as opposed to the ones who work full time), so I find myself really focused. My productivity vs before has skyrocketed.
What do I do on my extra days? Sometimes I go out, sometimes I just do nothing and relax, sometimes I do small side contracts or personal projects. I hope one of these takes off one day and allow me to recover the money I gave up when switching to part time. At least now I've got the energy to work on them.
Spent rest of day trying out mattresses, getting a massage, cooking fish and watching star trek. Hoping I'm successful so that every day can be like this!
TFA presents the shorter week [the alternative to a shorter day] as 3 consecutive days; I prefer interleaving work and non-work days, so as to neither be absent from work for 2 days in a row, nor work for 2 days in a row.
The value in your job isn't your output, it's the organisational outcomes that occur as a result of you doing what ya do.
Some companies are fine and built around the outcomes of 5 hours a day of your code. Some organisations though really want 8 hours a day of access to those sweet, sweet neurons. Even if the constant interruptions, meetings and feelings of unproductivity are side effects, perhaps they value the outcomes of 2 hours a day of your code and the value sharing that comes from an inane question at 17:59, more than absolute output.
Not saying the latter is more efficient or should be right, but just showing there's different value companies derive from their employees over and above project deliverables.
I know that I've learnt things from meetings where it's evidently a burden/"waste of time" for the party I'm gaining from, and likewise, am fairly certain I've delivered value to others when it's been a waste for me.
It might not be the best way of handling it, but some organisations are designed to work that way, and as much as we can try and mould where we work around us, sometimes it's just a different dynamic.
When you do your big prototype solutions is it usually something you toss over the fence to the team that now takes on the rest of the dev/qe responsibility or do you try to work closely with one or two people on that team as you build it? I mostly ask because another sort of altruistic (or selfish if you're just killing time until the next round of meetings) thing you can do with your role is go around dropping mana on heads-down coding grunts by working with them directly on something; they'll probably have a nice feeling of appreciation like this person, who they aren't quite sure does what but must be very valuable, is taking time to work with them, and hopefully you teach them a few useful things from your deep knowledge to boot.
As to approach, it depends. Occasionally I've written and hosted a solution, and given endpoints for people to test with, before then walking people through the specifics and bringing devops on board to move it to production, and then will still actively take a hand in making changes/fixes/etc. Other times I've basically just POC'ed it, and then suggested to a team "Hey, this looks like it will solve a problem you're facing, here's some POC code, maybe play with and evaluate this approach, see if it'll fit your needs?" and they have, and in the process have learned more about the particulars than I knew, so that they're in a good place to do the real evaluation and decide what direction to head in. And still other times, especially common with juniors, when someone hits a roadblock, I'll sit with them, seek to understand the problem, and either explain the nature of the problem, and some possible solutions, and leave it up to them to pick one (since they have the most domain knowledge), or work/talk with them to work to and understand an ideal solution (if it doesn't require domain knowledge I don't have).
...you are being paid to be in a chair.
I understand what you are trying to say, but if this would be true, I should be paid for a lot, a lot of overtime. When I left the office, my brain still process some job-related topics. I catch myself thinking about some work issues on weekends, evenings and holidays.
Some of the best ideas for work problems I hadn't had in the office.
Of course there is still have hourly pay based work but, in principle, those would be for specific tasks or specialties not routinely needed.
Yes, I realize these are idealized, but the occurrence of misuse doesn't negate the point. That said, idealizing may be an unfortunately common affliction I suffer from...
People differ of course, but a 3-day weekend is worth a whole lot more to me than somewhat shorter days.