Ask HN: Is it possible to have a structured work day in software dev?
I feel so burned out and anxious all the time, not because of overwork, but due to a lack of formal structure in my work day.
I'm thinking of starting out on my own someday, but I wonder, is it even realistic to have a 9-5 kind of structure in IT/software dev field ? Whether i work for a big org / startup / myself, is it inevitable that I have to work round the clock and I've to accept it as a way of life ? Is there a sub-field in software dev where in I can login at a specific time / logout at a specific time and not have to worry about work after I log out.
PS: Honestly speaking, I used to work at IT service industry not too long ago (perhaps in mid 2000s), where I was working on a boxed software. Except for some crunch time during major releases, there was no pager duty expected, the pay was average at best and work was monotonous bug fixing, but I felt much more at peace since work was always predictable most of the time. With this on-call culture thanks to the 99.99 uptime thats become the de-facto industry standard for most companies, I wonder whether such companies exist anymore !
150 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 202 ms ] threadWorking late has a huge knock-on effect on your social life and ability to interact with society around you. That's probably contributing to your burnout.
If there's budget or willingness, having someone in that timezone who can perform your role for that meeting may be possible.
I'd be very wary of taking any regular work outside of your contracted hours unless there is a lot of $$$$ involved and your relationships can survive it.
You might get some mileage out of a long vacation, or agressively pruning your work hours.
Having that kind of meeting be regular sounds like a bad management to me.
Predictable, steady work schedule.
Nice compensation package.
Pick two (at most). Sometimes you‘re really lucky, but it won‘t stay forever as the organization will drift into one of the corners naturally.
Note it‘s okay to re-pick occasionally as sometimes you need one more than the other in life.
I sure did, and found some peace in this great article from NYT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15107818
Mine also has international teams across the globe and we don't regularly have meetings at unreasonable hours (except for employees in India)
This is done by not expecting managers in Europe to manage day to day work going on in Asia, etc.
Your company doesn't value your well being and you should leave.
Sure it is. The company must be small enough to not have interational clients or big enough to have dedicated support team for different timezone. But not that big to have entire dev team in different timezone you need to communicate with. Or even bigger to have also management in every time zone necessary.
My friend works as a dev in a big corporate software company and has a stable schedule. Not 9-5 but more like 11-7 by his own choice. He said his colleages with familly life can start at 7 and be home after 3pm.
This seems like an issue with the Org given the information posted, but it also seems like you have a somewhat supportive manager. There is a lot of merit for considering finding a new role or a more "temporally normal" Org.
If your goal is to only work a 9-5 schedule starting your own company may not be the best option, but YMMV.
Good luck!
We do meandering sync calls[1] for 1 hour, four times a week. Plus a weekly demo call.
It's a matter of how much your management cares about developer experience and efficiency. Get another job :)
[1]: https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/standup-meetings-are-dead/
Whatever works for your team and company, but this sounds excruciatingly inefficient and disruptive. This means that your entire team is interrupted for at least an hour every day, to be part of a meeting that may or may not be productive.
IMO meetings should be anything but meandering. They should have a clear agenda, a strict start and end time, and everyone should be clear on what the outcome was and what was agreed.
Addressing some of the points of the article you linked:
> No one reads async stand-ups.
> If you dig into the “everything async” world you will find the teams that do it best are actually lying.
That might be your experience, but is not objectively true. In my company we use Geekbot, and while I can't speak for everyone, most people do read the async updates.
Let's keep in mind what standups are: quick meetings (15m tops; that's why they're done standing up), where the team can synchronize on work in progress, and address any blocking issues. If there are no blockers for my team members, do I really need to know what they're working on? That should be obvious from regular communication over Slack or GitHub.
So the whole concept of daily meetings, even quick ones, is not strictly necessary. Extending this to an hour daily, and repurposing it for general banter or other regular meetings, seems very unstructured and chaotic.
> Creating a daily social space for the team builds trust and compassion. We get to learn about each other’s hobbies, interests, and lives outside of work.
Ah, so you're using these meetings for social activities. Personally, I don't think knowing my coworkers on a personal level is required to have a professional and cordial relationship. Everyone is different, and I appreciate that others do need that sense of connection, but I wouldn't enjoy forced social activities. At my company we do optional one on one and group sessions specifically for banter and getting to know each other. These can be fun, but the good thing is that they're entirely optional, and are scheduled precisely for this one purpose.
In addition to this, there can be game sessions and, preferably, physical meetups that can serve to create this personal connection, but again, I don't think any of it is strictly necessary to work with someone. There are completely distributed teams that have never met in person, that have established sufficient rapport and trust between them to do great collaborative work. "Teams will always work better when they know one another" is objectively wrong.
The entire concept of forced social activities is reminiscent of large corporate environments where management thinks team building exercises are what makes teams do great work. This always felt cringy, fake and ultimately didn't result in anything. Trust is built naturally by working with someone; not by being forced to learn about their personal lives. The fact our working environments have shifted to being mostly online doesn't change that fact.
> Finally, it actually reduces meetings and interruptions for the team. When we have a team retro, we do it during the sync. Weekly, monthly, quarterly planning—it all happens during the sync.
Frankly, this sounds awful. This means that people are never sure what the purpose of the meeting is and how long it will last. Doing these daily would absolutely interrupt any activity that requires long periods of concentration, such as programming. I would much prefer to have days without any meetings at all, and have scheduled meetings for a specific purpose.
Also, you have quarterly, monthly and weekly planning meetings? That sounds overly excessive.
But again, if all this somehow works for you, then by all means, keep at it. But most of these would be deal breakers for me to work in such an environment, and you shouldn't present this advice as something that wi...
As others have said you are being overworked by your employeer. It's not only mean they dont care about your health, but also it means their processes are bad exactly because company itself will only lose in the end: quality will drop, productivity will sink and people will leave.
As about working on your own be it freelance or starting your own company: this way you will only have to work much more. So far I haven't seen any single successful entrepreneur or founder who wasn't working 12 hours a day for at least several years before they get anywhere.
Also it obviously gonna depend on what is your speciality. I guess some RoR / Java developer will more likely to find long-term contract.
But, you may need to change job.
I’ve had two employers who had one “let’s all work late and eat together” day a week, but this was consistent and coordinated with everyone’s families.
Unpredictable work hours are entirely avoidable if you’re not in a startup.
I do know, however, that some of my colleagues in Asian countries feel an non-official pressure to accept late-evening meetings so that European and American colleagues may participate.
The most extreme example I have is myself, in France, having calls with people in New Zealand. That's an 11-hour difference. Basically, we'd have them at 8 AM CEST, which is 7 PM NZDT.
8 AM is somewhat early by Paris standards (usual office day begins at 9 - 9:30, with many people coming in around 10) but it's still feasible. I don't know how the day is organized in NZ, but I'd assume being done at 8 PM is a bit late but still tolerable.
Exactly. So if it works for Europe with New Zealand, it should work at least as well with Asia.
You should be weary with Spain, though. Even though it's quite out West, they're still using Central European Time (same as Hungary / Poland in the East), which is completely absurd. Hell, even France shouldn't be using CET, but WET / GMT. Only Portugal uses WET, and you have to go East to Finland / the Baltics / Romania / Bulgaria / Greece to switch time zones again (EET / GMT + 2). [0] is a handy map of time zones in Europe.
> The problem comes when you try to make THAT compatible with the California as well, which we determined it's just not possible in my last company.
You mean a call involving the three at the same time? Yeah, I can't see how that could be reasonable for all parties involved.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Time_Zones_of_Europe.svg
In some companies you might start later and finish later. Of course every company is different and some might insist on you being until very late there.
It worked out for me because I worked 1PM to 11PM or so (my bosses weren't thrilled about it, but not a lot they could do), but I'd have been very unhappy if I was working a normal 8 - 5 or 9 - 6 day.
These days I live in Europe and won't work outside my standard hours, with very rare exceptions, backed up by some fairly strong laws (Germany, so not as strong as France, I think) and some interesting wording choices in my contract.
It's within the (usually hard-fought for) rights of employees in many countries to refuse such meetings. Unless they explicitly signed up for such a schedule of course. However, I would be very surprised if freelancers and people in leadership positions can refuse to participate in such meetings. In turn, they usually have higher salaries.
Of course, it sucks for people in other countries not being able to refuse to work at weird times. But if they could refuse, their country would immediately be much less attractive as an outsourcing destination.
Edit: tl; dr: regular remote meetings should between people in leadership positions. Day-to-day work should be managed by local managers, else it will either suck for everybody or suck enormously for workers in the country with weaker worker rights.
It looks cheaper on paper but this way you get all the overhead of offshoring but bad productivity. It’s terrible.
When I was living in Hawaii I was up at the crack-end a few times a month, pounding coffee, trying to ignore the roosters.
Social acceptability had nothing to do with it. It wasn't a great hour for Brussels either.
It’s understood that European folks try to schedule Europe-only meetings in the morning so that there is plenty of time available in the afternoon for NA colleagues, and conversely NA folks keep their mornings open for team meetings.
I personally shift my work day to starting at 7 so that I have an even larger overlap, but not all of us do that and it is not expected of anyone.
I altered my work hours to 3AM to 12 noon. It is amazing.
I catch everyone in the office at the end of the day for meetings. I pick up and finish and work they need done, I get 3-4 hours of deep work every day when they are all gone.
And then I finish at noon, so I can go exercise and enjoy the day working on my startup.
Bed at 6PM to wake up at 3AM
Yes he has to wake up 1h earlier than me on that day, but he also probably earns 2 or 3 times my salary just because of his location so fair enough.
The right to disconnect feels more about letting people disconnect "after hours". But this depends on your hours.
My "team" is composed of around 700 people across Asia and Europe.
My kids are in school during work hours.
My 6pm—midnight slot is strictly private life and there is no reason for it to be otherwise.
So, your last line contradicts the rest of your own comment.
I said in another comment, If you were a police officer, pilot, truck driver, deep sea diver or in numerous other professions, you'd be expected to do some weird hours and have a lot of time away from home.
This is where I think people are being unreasonable. Remote work, we have it better than ever, no commutes, no time away from family, almost non-inconvenience but now, even a late night meeting is against "my time".
I think with remote work, the cost of walking 50 meters, sitting in a comfortable chair and dialing into a meeting from 11pm-12am is pretty inconsequential all things considered. You can probably have the meeting in your jammies on the couch.
I'm not 100% discounting that it's inconvenient, but I mean, relative to the things I've been through and others have to go through, it's minuscule in comparison.
Lastly, I think you're just lucky you work for a company who allows you to just say no to meeting with your peers in other time zones. Again, you might be lucky and everyone has a good crossover with you, but many don't have this luxury, and never meeting with your peers, at least where I work, means you're not part of the team and you're getting fired.
We rotate the difficult meetings in the group so we all feel some of the pain, but three is a bit of pain and I guess that's why it's called "a job" and why I'm part of a team.
Staying at peoples houses who get up early and make a lot of noise after a hard night falling asleep is never much fun.
A lot of good points on this thread, and even though I've always advocated for doing more async work within our team, I'll push a bit harder now.
I'm all for restricting employers from my personal space, however I would expect the same to be applied to all other members rather than be a special case.
Personally, I tend to rotate the awkward meetings so it sucks equally rather than weighted more on someone else. As a remote worker, myself and my family are ok with that because I'm available during the daytime.
However, if you're unable to work async nor be flexible to accommodate your fellow team members, then I suppose the company's recruitment process is to blame.
For me working remotely isn't just about having my ass in a different geographical location, it's about flexibility. Both in my private and professional life.
I didn't say you can't spend time with your kids, but personally, working 8am-9am then 8pm-12pm doesn't sound so bad either. (for example). I find kids need to do homework and get to bed early so those times for me would work pretty well.
With remote work I appreciate having the option to use the inevitable idle time to be more efficient with house chores and such but remote work never brought me the freedom you tout...
I have worked remotely in the past before COVID and tried your suggested approach, would be free during afternoons and work from 17-00, or split the day in morning and evening work. It didn't ever give me the same relaxation as I get from having free time until the end of the day.
So there you go, we're different.
Once way to make things more fair is to set up two or three bi- or three-weekly recurring meetings to cover all participants time zones. So everyone gets it to happen in their own TZ at least every other week or so.
I know the practice is often different, depending on where the company's headquarters are, but I encourage folks to spread the rotating TZ idea out of fairness and respect for colleagues elsewhere.
Our LT took the feedback and we have since regionalized the teams so people don’t work too far out of their time zone.
If that’s not possible, perhaps find somewhere else that works in one time zone.
At worst you’ll carry around the scars of burning out for the rest if your life.
And yes, it is possible to work reasonable hours. Not only that, but it should be the default.
Absolutely, at least in Europe. Not everywhere, be wary of “we’re family” and “hustle” types.
99.99% uptime does not mean you need to be on a meeting every night.
Your manager is bad. Really bad. Becoming a manager doesn't mean you put on some ring and now you're in the "inevitably bad club".
Like others have said, find a new job that respects you.
This. Find a new job. That's everything you need to know.
/e: also,
"I feel so burned out and anxious all the time, not because of overwork, but due to a lack of formal structure in my work day."
Please do it asap and treat yourself to at least two weeks of personal time before switching jobs. You're shortening your lifespan here because someone else is doing a shitty job (and I not only mean your direct manager).
Out of interest, why do you feel it would be difficult right now, wherever you're from?
Talent is oversaturated at all levels in the USA while cost of living just keeps going up and up and up. This is why leetcode and system design are pushed so hard - they filter out a ton of candidates on arbitrary shit that you will likely never do in your day job... and if you do, you won't have to do it in less than an hour.
Add on that lots of companies aren't hiring and every company knows it - you're not going to get the best offers.
I don't want to be condescending but as someone who is hiring, I find it unusual you're not aware of looming economic slowdown?
I'm also starting a company now, but I'm definitely not hiring or spending much money at the moment until the outlook improves. Maybe you will get lucky and coast through it but I'd do some research.
As if I don't know what's going on around me? Weird take. There are still enough positions, especially in the IT sector in Germany, where we don't have enough applicants or employees for (sorry, don't know how to phrase it better). The IT sector is a major economic factor, overall and especially for a lot of companies. ESPECIALLY in economically hard times. Sure, hiring will slow, but just because in the US there are lots of big IT companies having big lay-offs, don't assume it's the same in other countries.
Have a look: https://sifted.eu/articles/startup-tech-company-layoffs/
Companies that are laying off are the ones that have been dysfunctional anyway or have only been able to operate because of peculiar circumstances (Gorillas, Getir) and don't have a viable business cases.
We both don't know how it will be, but I personally really need those people. We are pre-market, we have enough funding and runway. I know what I'm doing. Also, it really depends on the company and the sector. At any given time, I guess at least a few companies will do good and can hire people. We're one of those.
All the best with your company.
/e: ok, found what I was looking for: https://www.ifo.de/en/press-release/2022-08-02/shortage-skil... This is especially dire for any IT related positions.
The world, including the tech world, is much bigger than you think.
Though I have only seen a tiny fraction of it myself, here’s where I’ve had reliably contained workdays: 1) Machine learning systems for internal Ops processes, we technically had on call rotation but I never heard of anyone being paged at a terrible hour 2) Data engineering for strategic dashboards, where “I will fix it when I get in tomorrow“ is totally fine 3) A cross geography team who is clients are in my time zone, which set the norm that the other people had to shift their working hours instead (I’m not saying that this is globally optimal, but they knew what they were signing up for, and I can be confident this pattern will persist)
Each has their own trade-offs, but my point is that you can find options anywhere along some dimension if you keep looking
I think your best options are to speak with your manager about it or start looking for other jobs with better work-life-balance. The companies you are looking for certainly do exist!
* You're meetings go later than midnight or 1am, I think that's unreasonable.
* You're working more than 8 hours a day.
I also used to complain to myself about this a lot, then I became resentful and I became kind of grumpy / surly in the meetings. I complained to my managers about it and then I realized, for them, meeting attendance was more important than anything else. So I just adapted my schedule to that aim and it was a success.
For me it wasn't late night, it was early morning meetings that were a problem, I'm a night owl, I understand everyone is different, there you might like working early mornings for example.
Anyway I still struggle with the meetings, but I realized that I used to get up early and commute, and I also realized I have a very flexible life and I even have some of my meetings from bed if I'm extra tired, just turn off the camera.
After a while looked around me and saw that there are truck drivers, who drive all night, they are away from family for long periods of time. Pilots have to do all sorts of weird hours. I guess nothing is perfect, but at least once your meetings are done, you're off to a comfortable bed.
TL;DR: While it seems bad, is your situation really that bad, can you somehow make it work for you? Can you take most of the day off and work evenings? Can you be more flexible yourself?
We all have our own idea of what excellence in software engineering looks like, but sometimes we're actually working as chairsitters, other times we're email account managers, sometimes we were only hired so our name/expertise/certifications can be listed on the "About Us" page.
Most of us would say an engineer can still be excellent with a flexible start time, but a chair sitter absolutely can't have that. However it would be fair for a chair sitter to get on the clock time to devote to upstream open source projects or to experiment with new database systems that might be useful for scaling.
I'm talking about meeting attendance being important not just "chair sitting". It's important as a senior engineer to contribute to meetings for planning, setting direction, performance reviews etc. Which is what I'm doing in these meetings.
At one stage I was busy with projects and I'd refuse to attend the late night meetings, because I was busy, I thought just coding was what was important. Then I started to attend the meetings, wake up at 6am and work again. But that's when I realized that, the waking up early and working wasn't what they wanted from me , they wanted me to contribute to the meetings.
So now I reserve myself more for the important meetings task.
Stockholm syndrome, maybe a bit of ptsd.
I’d not follow such advice @op. Find a place that respects you.
Honestly, on my late meeting days, I just work about 3 hours and attend the meetings late at night, because that's what's expected of me and that's enough. The meetings can be intense so I just save myself for them and generally enjoy my day.
My company respects me a lot, but it also respects the fact that it's not all "one timezone is important and others suck" We have to meet with people all over the world and sometimes, it's my time to compromise and meet / work late?