[HN Gopher] The surprising connection between after-hours work a...
___________________________________________________________________
The surprising connection between after-hours work and decreased
productivity
Author : tchalla
Score : 297 points
Date : 2023-12-10 21:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (slack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (slack.com)
| simplypeter wrote:
| There is no way that climbing the stairs to the 10th floor will
| be as fast as climbing to the 1st or 8th floor, let alone the
| 10th floor. The same applies to working hours. There's no way
| you'll be as productive in the 10th hour as you were in your
| first hour.
| fleischhauf wrote:
| I don't fully get the analogy. 10th floor is higher than 1st or
| 8th, so then you would get more work done? You can certainly
| climb 10 floors with the same speed as 1 or 8..
| nikau wrote:
| Replace 10 with the highest floor your muscles can go to
| before they are exhausted
| FredPret wrote:
| Brains aren't like quadriceps. I get more productive as I work
| longer and build momentum. More and more concepts are loaded in
| memory, so to speak.
|
| To me, it's more like speeding up until I hit the wall on the
| tenth floor.
| balderdash wrote:
| I'm of two minds on this a. It depends if we are building or
| thinking - building definitely benefits from more time, and
| feel like I get momentum (as you described), implementing
| something over 12+hr sprint is hugely productive for me. On
| the other hand if I have a problem to solve I'm completely
| unproductive trying to do it at 3am.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| sure but cache warming works on the order of 30 minutes
| PedroBatista wrote:
| Surprising huh?
|
| If the wording and subjects presented in the "article" sound a
| bit like Bill Lumbergh with a polo shirt was the author, don't
| forget Slack is Salesforce now.
| kortilla wrote:
| How do they control for the fact that people who are falling
| behind frequently work more after hours?
|
| Is it that after hours works causes loss of productivity or is
| that slow people work after hours to try to make up for falling
| behind?
| balderdash wrote:
| 100% I feel like a lot of the time after hours work is driving
| by lack of productivity / prioritization / understanding "good
| enough"
| caminante wrote:
| I smile out of respect on calls when a subject matter lead
| says
|
| a. they've gotten as far as they can given incomplete
| inputs/scope
|
| b. and they're not going to prioritize further meetings until
| the lead provides what they need
|
| Not being a "team player" in a fuzzy sense is actually
| "helping the team" prioritize efficiently!
| saiya-jin wrote:
| You can't be a team player while being in 1-man team, and
| everybody else doing their own stuff not related to your
| goals. That's not much of a team work.
| ImaCake wrote:
| They do mention it in passing, but there is no way to
| statistically control for that without a randomised controlled
| trial (or Mendelian Randomisation).
|
| There is no reason to think that working outside hours is the
| cause of the problem. It could be a consequence of an
| individual struggling outside of work that then leads to having
| to try to catch up.
| halfcat wrote:
| > How do they control for...
|
| They don't. It's an observational, self-reporting study, which
| can only establish correlation, and not causation.
| matrix87 wrote:
| > people who are falling behind frequently work more after
| hours?
|
| From my experience it's the opposite, the people who are
| falling behind aren't the ones working irregular hours
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that the
| marketers who wrote this have probably heard of a control
| variable at some point in their life.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| I think there's a vicious cycle of correlation.
|
| People like that tend to work in the wrong ways and always make
| up for it in extra time and stress. If they said "no more extra
| time" they might be more willing to change the bad habits that
| lead them to be unproductive.
|
| I've seen it a lot. People become so used to their zombie state
| they waste hours without really thinking and if they just
| stopped and analyzed the situation, they'd approach things in a
| much better way or troubleshoot rather fast.
|
| Obviously, it's all mixed with career incentives and so many
| other factors, but I'm a big proponent on having people work on
| their contractual quantity of hours and not more (except on a
| rare occasion which ahould not happen often, like 1-3 times in
| a year).
| greenyoda wrote:
| Big discussion from a couple of days ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38579890
| cedws wrote:
| >Employees who log off at the end of the workday register 20%
| higher productivity scores than those who feel obligated to work
| after hours
|
| >Slack's Workforce Index, based on survey responses from more
| than 10,000 desk workers
|
| Okay, so this "productivity" data is self-reported. How do you
| know that the after-hours workers aren't simply rating their own
| productivity lower than actual, or that the 9-5 workers aren't
| rating their productivity higher than actual? This data is
| useless.
| butterlesstoast wrote:
| You could say the opposite is true as well. How do you know
| after hours workers are not rating their productivity higher
| than actual? How do you know that the 9-5 workers aren't rating
| their productivity as lower than usual?
|
| All data in of itself is useless. A sample pool of 10,000
| volunteers is pretty good in the realm of statistics.
| mym1990 wrote:
| "All data in of itself is useless"...what does that even
| mean? That's like saying a chair in of itself is useless
| because no one is sitting in it. And this could be
| extrapolated to saying everything is useless.
|
| Data's usefulness stems first from its many defining factors,
| which validates it, and then opens doors to using that data
| to explore insights.
| richk449 wrote:
| > And this could be extrapolated to saying everything is
| useless.
|
| Now we are getting somewhere.
| mym1990 wrote:
| I mean I can do mental gymnastics to understand the
| sentiment, but it really just comes down to individual
| preferences and definition of "use". To me, the
| usefulness of everything is in constant flux, and that's
| kind of cool to think about.
| halfcat wrote:
| It's the nature of the study that parent comment is referring
| to.
|
| If a study is self-reporting, it's an observational study
| which can only establish correlation, meaning the study can
| only say, "there might be something here that warrants a
| further research".
|
| A clinical trial is needed to establish causation.
|
| So while 10k sample size reduces the error bars, it only
| increases the confidence that there might be something here
| worth doing a more rigorous study later.
| kortilla wrote:
| > A sample pool of 10,000 volunteers is pretty good in the
| realm of statistics.
|
| No it's not. No sample size can make up for other biases.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > All data in of itself is useless. A sample pool of 10,000
| volunteers is pretty good in the realm of statistics.
|
| The point isn't the size. The point is there are too many
| confounding factors. It could be that people who work longer
| hours do so because they are high on trait conscientiousness,
| which also causes them to report low productivity
|
| It could even be because they are conscientious that they
| actually work slightly slower, and/or it could be that people
| who are less conscientious just don't care as mcuh about
| producing what was expected.
|
| To paraphrase the late Hitch: productivity metrics are not
| great. Neither is the word "connection" in science-adjacent
| reporting.
| christophilus wrote:
| To me, it reads like this: "those who log off of Slack are more
| productive" which matches my experience perfectly. My
| productivity shoots up as soon as I close Slack.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Depending on your role, communication on Slack could be as
| much as 50% of your job responsibilities.
|
| Not everyone is a line dev who codes 7 hours after a 10
| minute standup.
| groestl wrote:
| > Not everyone is a line dev who codes 7 hours after a 10
| minute standup.
|
| Funny enough, those often answer fastest. The busiest
| communicaters sometime don't answer for days.
| dwaite wrote:
| Because of how malicious notifications are by default in
| Slack (e.g. @here, @channel, bots you can't mute) and how
| poorly the catch-up flow is (e.g. no "unreads" view on
| mobile, I'm in 16 different slacks which have to be
| tabbed into individually), I tend to catch up 1, maybe 2
| times a day.
|
| Similar to how when corporate email got pushed into a web
| view rather than being accessible via a native mail app;
| the only way I could manage things was to filter into
| topics, and some topics I only check once a week.
| acchow wrote:
| And how does that affect the productivity of those who are
| trying to reach you?
| taneq wrote:
| How does it affect the overall long term productivity of
| the team, I think is the real question.
| x0x0 wrote:
| It forces them to structure their work so they don't need
| constant realtime questions from teammates generating
| constant interruptions.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| If it wasn't important enough to warrant a phone call,
| probably not that much.
|
| I was getting a couple hundred IMs a day and I would say
| that less than five of them were actually worth an
| interruption.
| autoexec wrote:
| A lot of this stuff seems obvious and self-evident, and I
| wouldn't be surprised if much of it was supported by actual
| research, but you're absolutely right that self-reported data
| gathered from internet surveys is questionable at best.
|
| Every person has their own definition of what their
| "productivity" even means, they each have only their own
| subjective measures of their own productivity, and there's no
| verification to check who is providing the data, to catch those
| who simply outright lie or to catch people who click through
| the survey without even reading/understanding what is asked.
| Two people could both report 10% higher productivity when in
| fact there is nothing similar about their productivity levels
| at all.
|
| Internet polls and surveys are cheap and easy which is why so
| many people use them, and they can be pretty fun when all
| you're trying to find out is which celebrities are popular or
| which harry potter character you are, but they are generally
| terrible for getting data useful for actual science or for
| anything where accuracy matters. It's no wonder that there's
| such a huge reproducibility problem in social sciences
| considering the heavy reliance on self-reported data through
| internet surveys.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Welcome to evidence in the soft sciences. I can't really blame
| them though, the kind of experiments needed to really measure
| these kinds of things would never past muster with an ethics
| board.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| It is difficult to measure productivity, but what would be
| unethical about it?
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > what would be unethical about it?
|
| Introducing Jira to the experiment.
| tremon wrote:
| Isn't this just a variation of "those who feel more productive
| during the day log off earlier"? Or reversing the statement,
| "those who feel less productive during the day feel compelled
| to work longer hours"?
| acchow wrote:
| Those who are in a lower productivity state (stress, sleep
| quality, etc) are more likely to work after hours?
| taneq wrote:
| Those who are under the pump are more likely to be
| stressed, sleep poorly, AND work longer hours. Zounds!
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Sure but is it a particularly long bow to draw to say those
| who feel less productive often are in fact less productive?
| kqr wrote:
| Not at all, but then all the survey says is that less
| productive people make up for it by spending more time.
| That hardly surprises me -- desk workers usually feel an
| obligation to complete tasks even on days they aren't
| running hot.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Yeah or if you're the type of person who THINKS you're not
| productive and therefore that causes you to work more hours.
| akomtu wrote:
| High performers don't need to put in extra hours, in other words.
| Big surprise.
| ascotan wrote:
| I don't think this is a reflection on performance. seems like
| the key word here is "obligated" to work after hours. this is
| due to managers pushing deadlines on their reports. honestly
| this isn't much of a surprise. If your boss is obligating you
| to work after hours you are unhappy. one issue here asking
| engineers to work after hours in a 'you build it you own it'
| culture. in my mind this qualifies for being "obligated" to
| work outside of business hours.
|
| A more interesting item in the slide deck is that anyone that
| has more than 2 hours of meetings in a day has a loss of focus.
| I think it's conceivable to say that a heavy meeting culture
| may also force people to be "obligated" to work after hours
| because they have lost focus time in the day.
| seeknotfind wrote:
| For me, I'm most productive after hours because during the day, I
| get too many pings and escalations. After hours is the only time
| I can focus and get deep work done myself. This is something I'd
| really like to improve, but I'm really not sure how. I've tried
| creating discussion groups and many other approaches to make
| knowledge transfer more efficient. However, the real issue is
| company growth. A huge recent period of growth has meant a focus
| on training people. This is only the kind of thing I could defend
| against if I were 1-2 ranks higher in the company, and honestly,
| this lack of longterm growth planning is one of the reasons I
| would leave my company.
|
| One approach I've been thinking of experimenting with is saving
| everything I say, and using an LLM with my custom knowledge base
| to answer a question. I actually think a borg-like communication
| structure in a company could be really efficient. If every
| communication was publicly available, and we used ML to make that
| information consistent and to answer queries, I think you could
| achieve coherence with a company much faster, move as a unit much
| faster, and get a lot more done.
|
| However, it's still a pipe dream at this point due to the context
| length limits. The actual amount of important context at a
| company is many times what a model can keep in mind now. As
| models get bigger, or if a group can run multiple models many
| times to make the company info widely consistent, it would be
| much better.
|
| For instance imagine now, 30 people at your company work on one
| project, and 50 people work on another. They might take a
| slightly different definition for a term, and do work which is
| ultimately counterproductive to each other. Usually, it takes a
| conflict arising to resolve this, and people are long stuck with
| the mutually-incorrect definition. If an ML algorithm can look at
| everything both groups are saying and point out inefficiencies, I
| think you could get more cohesion, especially before problems get
| big enough to be a drain.
|
| That being said, this type of system is more of a pipe dream, and
| I don't think it will be feasible for a few more years. In the
| meantime, I'm struggling how to balance communication with work.
| Advice appreciated.
| twodave wrote:
| I ran into this problem after a promotion and some company
| growth left me over a much larger footprint of our engineering
| department than I was used to. I ended up making a couple rules
| for myself and establishing a couple new routines, which all
| have helped:
|
| "Handbooking" - this is something I learned from reading about
| Gitlab and ended up adopting for my department. If it's
| important, it goes into the handbook. If it's not, then I
| probably don't need to know it anyway. This alone took a lot of
| burden off me (people only ping me now if something is missing
| from the handbook or if they didn't understand it, both of
| which are signals that the handbook needs work).
|
| Office hours - I don't do this consistently, but when I feel
| like the interruptions are still too frequent I'll just post
| some office ours in our dev channel and tell people they can
| bother me in a few 2-hour blocks that week. Otherwise I sit
| there and livestream whatever work it is that I'm doing for
| whomever is interested in that sort of thing.
|
| Trusting - I found much of my increased stress was a lack of
| faith in others to do a passable job of things, so I'd burden
| myself with them. In a lot of cases things went as badly as I
| expected by letting go, but my personal stress was reduced
| nonetheless.
| seeknotfind wrote:
| Thanks for the tips. I tried live streaming work a few times.
| I think it can work as long as people don't ask questions too
| much, but I feel a bit too egotistical to do it. It doesn't
| feel great.
| twodave wrote:
| Yeah, I feel that. Usually I have like a 2 hour coding
| block planned with something new/interesting, so it would
| end up being more of a workshop, like e.g. here's how to
| build a really quick cron job for our k8s cluster or
| whatever. I tend to keep an eye out for little ~2 hour
| tasks that would be interesting and just save them for
| those blocks.
|
| Aside from that, ego is a lot more about attitude than
| action. If you remain inquisitive/curious/accepting/etc.
| then you won't be seen as cocky.
|
| Also, just a reminder if you're in an advanced position
| then showing off your coding skills is less about ego and
| more about helping. I had a boss early on point out to me
| (much to my surprise) that the programmers sitting around
| me were drowning trying to put together even simple
| solutions to their problems, and I had the ability to save
| them hours with just a few minutes of attention. Obviously
| you can only take that so far, but it gave me a lot of
| confidence to know I could help folks out.
| twhitmore wrote:
| Yes, there's this amazing thing called "documentation".
|
| Confluence works well if you KISS - write just what the
| audience needs to know, in terms they can read & find.
|
| Avoid writing grand tracts of wanna-be architecture, policy,
| theory or planning; just write useful actionable material on
| topics your audience needs. You will find this works.
|
| Source: I led 400 devs and this was the only way that could
| scale.
|
| http://literatejava.com/documentation/how-to-write-good-wiki...
| deviantbit wrote:
| Interesting. I found I wrote more, and better code once everyone
| left me alone.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| The only people surprised would be the "MBA class" of management.
| Anyone who has ever worked any job would gladly tell you how
| productivity decreases if you work after hours. It's not a
| revolutionary idea.
| gnabgib wrote:
| Posted yesterday:[0] (190pts, 128 comments). Slack either changed
| the URL (fooling the dupe detector?), or mods made yesterday's
| title much less clickbaity.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38579890
| jvans wrote:
| Less is more work posts are so trendy now. The comments
| invariably point out unexplored confounding variables and the
| posts lack sufficient substance to be interesting. At the end of
| the day you can reason that hours != productivity, which everyone
| knows by now
| moaf wrote:
| The key point here is feeling obligated to work outside regular
| hours. My most productive time is early in the morning or late at
| night. There's just less happening at that time, both
| professionally and personally. There are fewer interruptions and
| less need to context switch, making it easier to focus and get
| things done.
|
| Knowing that I'm more creative and productive outside normal
| business hours, I try to take brakes during the day because I
| know I'll make up the time later. I'd much rather get out of the
| house and take an hour walk when the sun is up and work at night.
| guhcampos wrote:
| How is that still surprising?
| danaris wrote:
| Because far too many people still think that more hours worked
| directly and linearly translates to more productivity, with no
| upper bound.
| lexandstuff wrote:
| For those that only read the headline, this is an important
| caveat:
|
| "On the flip side, employees who work outside of standard hours
| by choice, to better suit their schedule or to pursue personal
| ambitions, report no negative impacts and even a slight uptick in
| their wellness and productivity scores."
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I personally do this a great deal. So many things that are not
| coding in life (from visiting museums to getting lunch with a
| friend to going to a government office to getting medical tests
| done) are far easier during normal work hours.
|
| Coding can be done at midnight, when none of those things can
| be done.
| tomcam wrote:
| I'm pretty much retired but I have zero sense of holidays. I
| always worked much more efficiently when everyone left the
| office, and 3 or 4 day weekends were always pure heaven. (I
| liked my work though.)
| gsuuon wrote:
| I wonder if that means pursuing work-related personal ambitions
| (i.e. promotion), or outside-work personal ambitions (i.e. side
| projects)? Could side projects actually reduce burnout?
| groby_b wrote:
| Yes. If you want to pursue them, but not if you add a side
| project just to battle your burnout.
|
| A core part of burnout is lack of control, and a side project
| can give you that feeling back - if you do it for the joy of
| it.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| I read this as "who prefers to work non-standard workday" e.g.
| 11-7 which I used to do to avoid traffic. I really enjoyed it
| and the slower morning was really helpful for me. early morning
| stand-ups post-pandemic really killed my morning happiness.
| nikau wrote:
| Seems this is very cultural, eg in Japan there is an expectation
| that you must always work back late, so people don't give 100%
| for 8 hrs as they know regardless of performance they will need
| to put in more hours of overtime.
| kazinator wrote:
| Those who feel on top of their work don't feel they have to catch
| up on work after hours?
|
| Where is the surprise?
| what wrote:
| Dupe from yesterday (128 comments):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38579890
| fma wrote:
| People who feel obligated to work after work hours also are
| probably in a poor work culture company.
|
| I log off when I went to log off and if I have an idea or a
| reason to work at night I do it. If I feel it's not productive I
| sleep early and do it in the morning.
|
| Those who feel obligated could also be doing it to look good to
| their boss.
| 7e wrote:
| Simplest explanation: the lowest performing employees feel the
| need to work after hours to keep up. Few people start out working
| more hours than necessary.
| bofaGuy wrote:
| > "Employees who log off at the end of the workday register 20%
| higher productivity scores than those who feel obligated to work
| after hours."
|
| Maybe people who are less productive end up having to work more
| hours.
| paulddraper wrote:
| This reminds of the Dilbert about marriage + happiness:
|
| https://nonconformist1.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/dilbert_r...
| zmmmmm wrote:
| I agree, I think it's mixing up cause and effect.
|
| Especially how it is phrased with "feel obligated", it's clear
| these are people who are conscientious about their productivity
| and most likely set a higher bar for their output. It's hard to
| think their out of hours work is causing their loss of
| productivity, rather their work environment is causing it and
| only the people who feel bad about it (ie: would report that
| their productivity wasn't adequate) actually work longer hours
| to compensate.
| lll-o-lll wrote:
| Or equally. Maybe people who are well organised are more
| productive. Which, personally, I think is self evident.
| nostrebored wrote:
| I think that the clear result here is:
|
| Workers who feel they're less productive work more. Which makes
| perfect sense. Workers who feel they're less productive may be
| more likely to try to compensate or worried that they will be
| fired.
| sublinear wrote:
| My own experience is that hours worked are irrelevant. It can
| vary. Deal with it. To believe otherwise is to think management
| fully understands the work ahead of time. This is not usually the
| case. To a lesser extent, even the devs might not know.
| Overscheduling and underscheduling happen all the time. Things
| catch on fire. You have to work accordingly. Some days you can
| stop early. It's not entirely in the hands of the workers. You
| won't know until you start.
|
| What matters more is a reliable result done on time and everyone
| is happy with the effort required to achieve that. That's a
| complex balance to achieve across the whole team. You need
| everyone recognizing the long term benefits of a job well done
| and they need to feel comfortable with their part of it.
|
| Working slowly after hours with no promise of getting much if
| anything concrete done is a deep joy for some of us. I sometimes
| need to play with my work to know what I'm doing tomorrow. It's
| often outside the scope of what I'm being asked to do, yet vital
| to a successful project instead of a mediocre one full of garbage
| decisions smoothed over by management lies and stress on the
| whole team to maintain.
|
| What world does one want to live in? Build it and enjoy. That's
| where productivity, happiness, and ease come from. There are so
| many heroes out there casually looking at work while eating
| cereal in their underwear at 1am. They're no more stressed than
| anyone else.
| dannycastonguay wrote:
| Agreed. It's important to put enough effort that you find
| meaning in your work, but not so much that it ruins your
| wellbeing. Here's a rough algorithm that works for me:
|
| 1. Estimate the hours you think it will take to complete a
| task.
|
| 2. Double it and let the team know you did that.
|
| 3. Do the work well including good documentation.
|
| 4. Assess your progress when you've spent 50% of the planned
| hours. If you're not at least halfway done, avoid overworking.
| Instead, seek help within the team and descope.
|
| 5. Utilise any extra time for learning new and useful skills,
| if you finish ahead of schedule.
|
| Cheers
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I agree. This requires a healthy workplace though.
|
| I worked somewhere, well two places where I was literally
| taken to task about how long something took. Repeatedly. They
| didn't care about why, just that it wont happen again.
|
| It didn't: in both cases it's time to fire up Word again and
| edit my CV (pretty much the one reason I use that program!)
| lokar wrote:
| It's reasonably straightforward to produce a very nice
| resume/CV in LaTeX.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| Maybe. But that's like learning to build a car and then
| building one and fine tuning one because I had to go to
| an office 200 meters away once in a few years.
|
| Yeah, I did Texin' in college and tried after that as
| well. No body gave a shit and now when I look at CVs for
| hiring purposes I don't give a shit either. Now my CV is
| on a live.com free throwaway account -- that's where it
| resides and gets worked upon and converted to PDF when
| needed.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| If I move away from Doc, it'll be to Markdown most
| likely, or some kind of paid generator thing.
| danaris wrote:
| ...and then you find that you have to go back and do
| another one in Word, for the places that will only accept
| a .docx as input.
| matrix87 wrote:
| > There are so many heroes out there casually looking at work
| while eating cereal in their underwear at 1am. They're no more
| stressed than anyone else.
|
| I personally know several people from amazon, pretty much all
| of them acknowledged the crazy oncall expectations there.
| Combine that with the pip culture and visa issues, and your
| statement above about being "no more stressed than anyone else"
| is just ridiculous
|
| Expecting people to work at 1AM, romanticizing them as
| "heroes"... that's not a normal culture. That's not a healthy
| lifestyle for the employee and can lead to long term health
| consequences. And it never applies to everyone equally, because
| why would you call them "heroes" in the first place
|
| It's one thing if management expects it, it's another thing if
| I as an employee choose to trade 4 daytime hours for 4
| nighttime hours because I know I can be more productive at that
| time. But building that type of management expectation into a
| work culture is a red flag
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| "Crazy on-call expectations that require you to be available
| and potentially working at any hour of the day and night" is
| something _very_ different than the topic under discussion,
| and I didn 't interpret sublinear's comment at all to be
| endorsing that viewpoint.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| It is not about the time on the clock, but who controls that
| clock. If it is the employee they are happy!
|
| Get the 1am lover to do 9-5 they will be as miserable as the
| 7-3 guy being woken up a 1am
| water-your-self wrote:
| My best hours worked start at 7pm when the world is quieter
| and my peers arent around to disrupt me.
|
| Plus it feels good that the next time I see someone I have
| conjured a deliverable.
|
| Meanwhile, if you give me daily 9am meetings I am not
| functional at any point in the day
| fatnoah wrote:
| Pre-Covid, I was a VP Eng at a startup (total eng team of
| ~40), I had so many "discussions" with the CEO about who
| was in the office at what time. The team was people from
| all stages of life and backgrounds. My QA lead got to the
| office at 6am and left at 3pm to avoid traffic. Another Eng
| was a single mom, and was in the office from 9:30am to
| 3:30pm, and then got back online for a bit after 8pm. Etc.
| Etc.
|
| Time and again, I'd simply reply with metrics to
| demonstrate how the team was hitting product & roadmap
| goals while improving quality. One that really made the
| point was the Github commit heat map, since there were
| commits ranging from 6am to 1am every day, with occasional
| outliers.
|
| On the plus side, I felt particularly well prepared for the
| WFH / hybrid era, since I was already in the habit of
| looking at results & outcomes (and setting expectations
| based on these) vs. hours of butts in chairs.
| kergonath wrote:
| That sounds great. I wish more people in mid- to high-
| management would see things that way. From my experience,
| your single mom's schedule would be great for me.
| NearAP wrote:
| These varied schedules won't work in every situation.
| Sometimes, people need to meet (even if virtually) or
| they need answers to questions and situations where
| people's schedules aren't kind of synced becomes
| problematic.
| sublinear wrote:
| Yeah I'm not talking about being "on call". I don't know
| anything about Amazon other than it's probably full of bad
| culture. Nowhere I've worked has ever been like that except a
| handful of emergencies.
|
| I'm talking about working at a relaxed place because everyone
| actually gets their stuff done 9 to 5. A place that's fun and
| interesting enough that you feel happy to randomly think
| about work in the middle of the night for an hour or two or
| whenever else motivation strikes to keep it that way.
|
| I'm saying that these little nudges from the team where extra
| hours are silently worked prevents _being forced to pick up
| the slack_ that shouldn 't be there in the first place. Slack
| comes from miserable people regardless of how many hours they
| do or don't work.
| matrix87 wrote:
| I initially thought above comment was about on call because
| of the "things catch on fire part", I guess not
|
| > where extra hours are silently worked prevents being
| forced to pick up the slack that shouldn't be there in the
| first place. Slack comes from miserable people regardless
| of how many hours they do or don't work
|
| This is true except from my experience the miserable people
| who leave slack for others to pick up aren't normally all
| that miserable, just not really motivated. At least,
| they're not miserable until management does something about
| it
| zztop44 wrote:
| I think it depends. I've encountered some people that
| definitely seen that way. But I also know that during
| every period of prolonged underperformance in my career
| (there have been a couple) I have felt awful about it
| despite having a strong incentive to try to convince
| myself it's my fault.
| strken wrote:
| I think a lot of underperformers end up in a hole where
| they're burnt out to such an extent that they don't have
| the energy to leave. It takes clarity, introspection,
| positivity, and extra work to find a new job; those are
| exactly the things that burnout saps.
|
| Of course, most people are really good at hiding their
| emotional state, since that's a requirement to fit into a
| professional workplace. The facade of happiness stays up
| well after the real thing is gone.
| indigochill wrote:
| > A place that's fun and interesting enough that you feel
| happy to randomly think about work in the middle of the
| night for an hour or two
|
| I feel like in my experience it's actually less about fun
| and interesting and more about do you feel like the people
| running the company see you as a compatriot or a cog? I
| worked at a pretty tiny startup in college where I
| regularly talked with the CEO and worked directly for one
| of the VPs. They were great and from start to finish it's
| been my most positive work experience, since I felt like
| one of the team. Dare I say it even felt a bit like a
| family (well, the CEO and VP were a husband-wife team and I
| was a college kid at the time).
|
| Then I switched to a company that billed itself as having a
| startup culture but really couldn't because of turf wars
| between layers of irrelevant middle management, never mind
| regular tone-deaf decisions from upper management and
| repeated bad bets from them that lead to multiple layoffs.
| The work itself is actually more interesting than what I
| was doing at the real startup, but the mismanagement has
| pushed me into a mindset of mostly only giving them what
| I'm contractually obligated to, with rare exceptions for
| smaller projects that I feel I can have a greater direct
| impact on. I would hazard a guess that management in that
| company is actually a net negative because if it wasn't for
| all the bad politics there, I'd probably be just as happy
| to give them extra time because like you say the work is
| fun and interesting. And I know a couple other guys there
| who -were- regularly giving extra time until they got
| repeatedly personally burned by management.
| watwut wrote:
| > a company that billed itself as having a startup
| culture but really couldn't because of turf wars between
| layers of irrelevant middle management, never mind
| regular tone-deaf decisions from upper management and
| repeated bad bets
|
| Honestly, that sounds like typical startup to me.
| indigochill wrote:
| The real startup I worked at was probably around a dozen
| people when I joined. You could probably grow some beyond
| that and still be reasonably agile (that is, the CEO
| still has a good idea of the day-to-day operations and
| can move the company to the right market fit), but once
| you're at a size where irrelevant middle management is
| capable of existing (probably around the point that you
| need two layers of management), I'd posit it's not really
| a startup any more. Although this might fly in the face
| of the common definition.
| lannisterstark wrote:
| this isn't about 'on-call' or 'expectations.' Eg, I'm
| currently looking at a work problem casually (it's about 11
| PM) because I have some time and I'm curious, so I can slack
| off tomorrow at work. Win win.
| matwood wrote:
| Amazon is known to be a bad place to work for the exact
| issues you list. The OP was talking about generally, which I
| agree with.
|
| This conversation feels very similar to comp conversations
| where outliers drive the discussion.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| This sounds more like a Visa problem though. I think the best
| stress reliever is when you know you are safe losing your job
| or walking away by yourself, you have enough money saved that
| you can spend more than a year doing whatever you want even
| if you were to lose your job and without having to worry
| about it influencing your life. Then the motivator to do long
| hours and work at odd times is passion, desire to climb and
| feeling of ownership rather than fear of losing your job.
| pnut wrote:
| I'd like to know what proportion of the working population
| is in such a strong financial position that they have a
| year's worth of (nonretirement) living expenses sitting
| around.
|
| If we're off in fantasy land, the real best stress reliever
| is to have enough money to cover your expenses for the rest
| of your life, so you don't even have to consider trading
| your time for money in the first place.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Probably not that large proportion, but working in tech
| if you save 50 percentage of your income you should be
| able to reach that position within a year.
|
| Yes, but I think being able to generate savings for a
| lifetime is a much further out goal than just 1 year
| which in tech is very realistic to save 50 percent.
| danaris wrote:
| Friendly reminder that "working in tech" doesn't mean
| you're pulling in $250k+/yr. _Most_ people "working in
| tech" aren't in Silicon Valley, and can't easily save 50%
| of our income per year and still have enough to pay for
| both food and the mortgage/rent.
| saulrh wrote:
| You only see people going on-call with no stress because
| everyone else burned out and quit. Very simple selection
| effect. Declaring that things can never be better and that this
| is fine prevents us from finding useful and meaningful
| improvements that will make our teams happier, healthier, more
| productive, more stable, and more inclusive.
| deebosong wrote:
| I'm in the "creative" field (aka, visual time-based arts, so to
| speak, but honestly, it's "work," and in the same vein, every
| other job is teeming with much-needed creativity that often
| doesn't get translated to visual arts, but that's an aside).
| But this is how I approach my work as well. All that is to say,
| I really appreciate this post, and it's very validating to
| whatever I've experienced in the "creative" visual arts field.
| Which to me kinda points to larger meta patterns that emerge
| from work in general.
| atoav wrote:
| I have seen this repeated so often, but let me put something
| clear: If your work constantly requires weird hours when it
| could realistically be a 9-to-5 job if they just hired
| enough/the right people or had their marbles together in terms
| of organization -- then the only reason you need to do this is
| mis-management.
|
| I worked in the film industry where you are sometimes for
| actual physical reasons (the sun being the sun) required to
| work weird hours. Excuse my french here, but only idiots wear
| bad work schedules as a badge of honor. Bonus points for when
| you confuse the thin bond you form with the other victims of
| such abuse with friendship. If you constantly need to
| overschedule people, you did a bad job at resource allocation.
| If your work load is constantly on the edge and things are
| always "exciting" for all the wrong reasons, you are managed by
| incapable fools. In a smooth operation the _content_ of the
| work is exciting, the schedule and the work hours boring.
|
| You can call yourself a "hero", but it is your life (that all
| of us only get _one_ of) you 're wasting. If you ask me (and
| you didn't) there is better a good reason each time it is
| wasted like that.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I am willing to step in to do the extra
| mile when there is a good reason, but in my experience it is
| very rare that there truly is. If the content of my work is
| exciting I can easily go for the whole day, but it would be in
| the interest of my employer to stop me, so I can do this for
| months without burnout and fatigue.
| mavamaarten wrote:
| Fully agreed.
|
| Especially in IT, most deadlines are arbitrary moments in
| time, pulled out of someone's ass. If the deadline is so
| tight that people need to work more hours, either there has
| to be a very good reason which there very well might be, or
| someone's shit at making deadlines. Then admit you did poorly
| at planning, move the deadline, and only then can you start
| thinking about making your people work overtime.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| > Overscheduling and underscheduling happen all the time.
| Things catch on fire. You have to work accordingly.
|
| You need more predictability than that in most things. Even
| start ups. The picture you are painting is of a badly organized
| company that needs to slow down a bit and ... think.
|
| I have worked for that kind of company and the more boring
| sort. The more boring sort tends to make more profit.
|
| Startups might be different, but it must be intentful chaos -
| not getting caught up in pointless busywork.
|
| > Some days you can stop early.
|
| Rarely. The only companies that allow that are probably the
| ones that made you do a 24h stint the day before.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| In my humble opinion you have started totally on something that
| a study/poll like this doesn't even point to.
|
| You are talking about I/we/people "wanting/loving/preferring"
| to work at certain hours or for certain length of hours
| (usually not often or not regularly/daily) compared to being
| "asked/made/forced/expected" to work that way
| often/regularly/daily.
|
| > There are so many heroes
|
| Heroes? Really? Okay.
| jader201 wrote:
| _> There are so many heroes out there casually looking at work
| while eating cereal in their underwear at 1am._
|
| Please don't call these people "heroes", and if you're doing
| this, please stop. You're setting expectations that everyone
| else should also be up at 1am "casually looking at work", and
| if they're not, they're not a true "hero".
|
| This is how unhealthy work/life balance starts at companies.
| People that work after hours for fun is is called workaholism.
| Meanwhile, the people that are also having fun from 9-5 are
| suddenly not doing enough, and are no longer having fun.
|
| And of course the "heroes" are not stressed -- they're able to
| enjoy working long hours, and making their way up the ranks by
| being a "hero".
| Lutger wrote:
| Framing abuse and alienation as heroism is how capitalism
| extracts value from the most precious resource in our
| decadent lives: time and energy.
|
| Within the confines of my insignificant job, I appreciate
| more the professionalism of a properly work-life balanced
| management, which should provide more than enough wiggle room
| for the weird hours people without fetishizing their
| volunteer work.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Framing abuse and alienation as heroism is how capitalism
| extracts value from the most precious resource in our
| decadent lives: time and energy.
|
| I think it's broader than capitalism. It's a tool of
| coercion. If you manage to gaslight people and make them
| feel bad about their performance, then it's easier to make
| them do absurd things without resistance. Nothing the
| stakhanovites would not do and while they were living in a
| kind of dystopia, it had nothing to do with capitalism.
|
| > Within the confines of my insignificant job, I appreciate
| more the professionalism of a properly work-life balanced
| management, which should provide more than enough wiggle
| room for the weird hours people without fetishizing their
| volunteer work.
|
| Indeed!
| drBonkers wrote:
| > There are so many heroes out there casually looking at work
| while eating cereal in their underwear at 1am.
|
| You're insane.
| Muromec wrote:
| There is a difference between being excited about learning
| this fancy technology thing in your 20ies and having to deal
| with the same basic shit to afford desirable lifestyle in
| 30ies.
| pawelwentpawel wrote:
| Form the point of view of a maker / contributor it's common
| sense that the more tired you are, the worse your output will
| be. For me, there is a cut off point where the time spent
| working "tired" or after hours is just not worth the return
| anymore.
|
| That said, not every work is directly "building" - some aspects
| of a job might involve collaboration, communication and helping
| others out when they're stuck. Spending some time after hours
| to help a colleague who got stuck might have a result which is
| disproportionately larger to the input that a tired person had.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I'd guess most people have had the experience of working late
| and beating their head against a problem for hours, leaving
| it, and solving it in minutes the next morning.
|
| This isn't about opinion. There's increasing hard evidence
| that limited hours and a four day work week don't just
| increase employee happiness, they increase productivity and
| company value.
|
| The question isn't "Why do only some people regularly want to
| work long hours?" but "Why are long hours considered heroic,
| when in fact they cause predictable harm to individuals and
| organisations?"
|
| It's not just IT. Law, medicine, finance, and even big-name
| architecture all have the same culture of professional hazing
| where newcomers are expected to give themselves stress-
| related PTSD before they're allowed to start climbing the
| ladder.
|
| And the abuse becomes generational because of "It never did
| me any harm" - when in fact it clearly did.
| kipchak wrote:
| Maybe it's something like a much milder kind of historical
| human sacrifice, where the intuition is that greater
| sacrifice means greater reward. This is useful in some
| cases such as delayed gratification but is harmful when the
| sacrifice is seen as directly producing the desired gain.
|
| Generally there's a correlation between sacrifice and and
| reward- the "no pain no gain" idea goes back fairly far for
| example. When the intuition taken to it's logical extreme
| that the greater the ask the greater the sacrifice
| necessary, which is where you get something like Moloch.
|
| It's interesting you mention the ladder and hazing - one
| idea is that human sacrifice was more prevalent the
| stronger the hierarchy, and that sacrifice helped support
| the hierarchy and priests in a position of authority, which
| seems to run parallels to what you're describing.
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-human-
| sacrifi...
| rightbyte wrote:
| > My own experience is that hours worked are irrelevant. It can
| vary. Deal with it.
|
| Why? Just work your hours.
|
| Once I grew out of the initial imposter syndrom in my first
| job, I would never work late for some arbitrary deadline.
|
| > There are so many heroes out there casually looking at work
| while eating cereal in their underwear at 1am. They're no more
| stressed than anyone else.
|
| Oh please. They are losers getting abused, not heroes. And they
| wage dump the rest of us.
|
| You can get away with romantizing that for hackers or business
| owners in the startup phase. That is like 0,5% of us.
| fransje26 wrote:
| > Working slowly after hours with no promise of getting much if
| anything concrete done is a deep joy for some of us. I
| sometimes need to play with my work to know what I'm doing
| tomorrow.
|
| It could be argued that code exploration at the pace you need
| should be part of your regular working hours, if that is what
| is needed to do your job efficiently. In the extreme, not
| allowing your employees to do so is failed management.
|
| Of course, the knowledge and efficiency you gain by doing so is
| not measurable by any quantifiable metric, so it's easy to see
| how it will be conveniently discarded as unnecessarily.
|
| Even better, by having you convinced that it is something you
| should do in your own free time, they can reap the benefits
| without the costs. Full profit.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Well, as long as you don't expect others to perform in similar
| way all is fine.
|
| Since, you know, we have this tiny little thing called actual
| life we enjoy living, which definitely absolutely 100% doesn't
| happen in front of screen, any screen. Or you/we have kids. Or
| need 7-8h of sleep like a normal person does.
|
| Doesn't matter at the end what are the reasons, I _know_ on my
| proverbial death bed (and all years from right now leading to
| it) I would regret massively spending more time at work then
| necessary, since it eats time I can do everything else. Life is
| awesome if you do some effort to make it so. Not so much
| without that effort part, then even that screen may look like a
| good use of time. Also life is much much shorter than youngish
| folks feel like it is, and the window for great experiences is
| much smaller.
| JohnFen wrote:
| In my younger days when I worked in an office, my "in-office"
| time was largely just seat-warming, because it's very difficult
| for me to actually get much done in the office environments
| that companies seem to prefer. Instead, I'd actually do my work
| on my "off hours", when I can be in a productive environment.
|
| As I aged, though, I started wanting to have a life outside of
| programming, so stopped that practice. Now my employer has to
| be happy with whatever I can get done during work hours, but I
| have a much happier life.
| jjav wrote:
| > It's often outside the scope of what I'm being asked to do,
| yet vital to a successful project
|
| While I understand the sentiment (BTDT and thoroughly enjoyed
| it!) it is very important to see this as a management failure.
| If something is vital (or even mildly important) to the success
| of a project, it must be accounted for in the timeline and
| properly resourced.
|
| Anything else leads to deathmarch projects where the extra free
| work after hours becomes more and more expected and required,
| no longer a fun diversion.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| I saw a sign in a cubicle farm one time: "In every group,
| someone's the weakest. If you don't know who that is, it's you."
| Fuck that.
| goodpoint wrote:
| The person who put up that sign is desperate for reassurance.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| The subtitle of this piece:
|
| > Slack's Workforce Index uncovers new findings on how to
| structure the workday to maximize employee productivity, well-
| being and satisfaction
|
| The base assumption of the employer structuring and managing the
| employee's well-being and satisfaction feels so 19th century. I
| know it's still the prevalent paradigm in HR in most places, but
| it's crazy how hard that idea persists.
| hackerlight wrote:
| > Employees who feel obligated to work after-hours register 20%
| lower productivity scores
|
| Very notably, this excludes people who _want_ to work after-
| hours. A rare person but they do exist in some fields.
| dijit wrote:
| Before I thought I had ADHD I would sit around the office not
| doing much of anything in a sort of "ready" state, ready to jump
| on the next thing someone would try to distract me with or
| "ready" for the next meeting that is sometimes more than an hour
| away.
|
| It's only after everyone else went home and I felt relaxed that I
| finally got any of my actual work done. :(
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| That sounds like my self-diagnosed ADHD - I have exactly the
| same thing. What changed your mind about having ADHD?
| goalonetwo wrote:
| That scenario speaks to me as well but it seems to be more an
| issue with modern society than anything else.
|
| Isn't this "ADHD" everyone that has a hard time getting
| things done because we expect constant interruption and we
| got used to it?
| cromulent wrote:
| > Isn't this "ADHD" everyone that has a hard time getting
| things done because we expect constant interruption and we
| got used to it?
|
| I would have agreed a couple of years ago but since then I
| have become considerably enlightened about neurodiversity
| and how differently brains can work.
| goalonetwo wrote:
| I would love to learn more about this. My assumptions is
| that everyone is dealing with this issues but some people
| are able to push through with motivation/discipline and
| the right environment.
|
| I'm not convinced that calling "ADHD" anytime we have a
| hard time doing something is the right way to recognize
| that we now live in a society that is absolutely full of
| small dopamine hits.
| cheema33 wrote:
| Same for me. I struggle to get much done during the day. Way
| too many distractions. I become quite productive around 4pm and
| onwards. And yes, I have been officially diagnosed with ADHD. I
| sometimes do take low-dose meds. And they appear to help.
| orev wrote:
| What most IT people think of as "real work" is being able to
| concentrate on a problem and work towards solving it. This is a
| creative type of work, and requires a quiet mind that can
| focus. When you're in fire-fighting mode, the
| fight/flight/freeze survival hormones are active, which
| suppresses creativity (it's not smart to be thinking about your
| next cave painting when there's a lion stalking you).
|
| Being in one or the other mode is normal, and not related to
| ADHD.
| tglobs wrote:
| Anyone have a link to the wordings of the original questions
| asked?
| Eumenes wrote:
| I have alot of colleagues that avoid their actual work by taking
| on pet projects or some cross functional nonsense. I have a
| colleague that takes calls with vendors almost weekly, knowing
| there's no budget for it. Someone who spends hours with HR or
| recruiting on some DEI stuff. Someone who wants to be a
| professional conference speaker. Almost anything to avoid coding.
| Meanwhile, those of us that simply log on to do work have to pick
| up their slack. Management doesn't care. I understand this isn't
| the case everywhere but happiness equates to doing less for some.
| I don't engage in those projects and I'm very productive.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The 8 hour work day: created for physical laborers, extended to
| paper-pushers, and forced onto creative workers along with
| productivity-sapping random meetings.
|
| The current white collar worker paradigm is proof that capitalism
| is inherently inefficient. The theory that a business will
| naturally optimize for efficiency does not survive a meeting with
| human culture, which has nothing at all to do with organizational
| efficiency, and everything to do with repetition, imitation,
| resistance to change, and the easiest short-term path. If you
| want to get more productivity out of a human, you need to do more
| than just tell them what time to arrive and go home.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > The current white collar worker paradigm is proof that
| capitalism is inherently inefficient
|
| Of course it's inefficient. If you don't have a dictator saying
| what to do, then people deciding between themselves to try
| stuff won't always get it right. But it seems to work better
| than everything else in the long term.
|
| > If you want to get more productivity out of a human, you need
| to do more than just tell them what time to arrive and go home.
|
| No one just does this, and lots of companies don't even do it.
| Working times are mostly so that there are work overlap times
| so people can communicate and not be blocked on things.
| lolive wrote:
| 47 here. And 20 years of dev experience. I am now hired by a big
| company. As far as I understand, it is to become a "manager" (==a
| politician). So now I spend my days having pointless meetings
| with bozos.
|
| Because of the poor management, we have had reorganizations and
| budget cuts all along the year. Making proper work impossible.
|
| So now, I simply code what we need, after hours. This is
| exhausting, as it is double days. But extremely valuable in the
| end.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It's good that you have ownership of the problem, but make sure
| you get something out of it. If someone else will get credit
| for your hard work, you will experience explosive demotivation.
| lolive wrote:
| That happened today, as our demo was successful and the team
| collectively reached a level of applied theory that is
| matching the expectations of our stakeholders.
|
| Truth is that the addition of the word "applied" to that last
| sentence is 100% my effort.
|
| But my point of view is that everybody will get benefit from
| that effort, and we can now make everyone understand that the
| theory that my team has been pushing for months is really
| good.
|
| No one of the team could have achieved that [because of their
| poor understanding of those pesky "implantation details"]. So
| i just did it.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| "employees who work outside of standard hours by choice, to
| better suit their schedule or to pursue personal ambitions,
| report no negative impacts and even a slight uptick in their
| wellness and productivity scores."
|
| So, if, like alot of Hacker News readers, you're hacking away on
| your next startup idea after hours, you should be fine.
| stochastimus wrote:
| > working less is good > blog by "Slack"
|
| True or false, the jokes write themselves sometimes
| osigurdson wrote:
| We all know that working your ass off is the way to get things
| done. The problem is, in most companies, no one can tell the
| difference between hard working people and folks who take it
| easy. If a project takes 6 months it must have been hard if it
| takes 6 weeks on the other hand it must have been easy. No one is
| going to run the experiment twice.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| My strategy:
|
| * Work for a small company
|
| * Show up at 10am
|
| * Leave at 4pm
|
| If I'm really into what I'm doing I'll happily do some work after
| hours, or on the weekend. No one ever expects it and honestly I
| try to keep the fact that I'm doing it a secret (don't push
| commits, just keep changes local).
| hasoleju wrote:
| I have been there. I was working long hours because work was
| exciting. And also I wanted to show my boss that I put in a lot
| of effort. I voluntarily spent a lot of time in the office to
| finish tasks more early than expected. Sometimes this extra time
| was completely unproductive and the things I did turned out to be
| irrelevant a few days later. Sometimes it was very important for
| the business that things got finished and the extra time was
| therefor productive. I learned for myself, that I cannot sustain
| working long hours regularly without loosing interest in the job.
|
| Right now my mantra is: Keep showing up.
|
| For me this means get work done on a regular basis. My focus is
| to work on this topic for years without loosing interest, instead
| of prioritizing to finish the current workload as fast as
| possible.
|
| Real productivity is achieved when you are an expert in the
| domain and you have built a network in the company or market
| segment. Expertise and personal network are the main levers to
| get thins done.
| dutchCourage wrote:
| I noticed this as well. When I was freelancing I would
| sometimes get inspired and motivated and work til 10pm or
| later, not because of a deadline but because I felt like it.
|
| Each time, I noticed the next day was rather slow. I was more
| tired and less inspired.
|
| Forcing myself to stop after 6pm worked wonders, I would wake
| up the next day easily, my brain overflowing with new ideas. On
| top of that I'd manage to sustain that motivation for several
| days or even weeks in a row.
| intrepidsoldier wrote:
| Have they considered how Slack contributes to decreased
| productivity?
| goodpoint wrote:
| "surprising"? It's very well known and nowadays well proven by
| neuroscience.
| pk-protect-ai wrote:
| Wow, slaves perform worse when tired! What a discovery... Fck any
| employer with required "off hours" and wage formulas for
| compensation. Actually ... fck off hours.
| bananamerica wrote:
| Is that really surprising to anyone?
| foobarbecue wrote:
| What is this "productivity score"? Did they just ask people if
| they feel productive and call that a "score"?
|
| I couldn't find that info in the article.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Two factors:
|
| Scrum and its idiotic sprints, especially two weeks sprints.
| Sometimes things are more complicated than what they seemed, and
| maybe they just need a couple more days. In the overall scheme of
| things, no big deal, yeah, from time to time, things take more
| time than expected, the world is not going to end because of one
| or two days in 99% of the circumstances. Sometimes you win,
| sometimes lose and all that jazz. But, then the sprint is over
| tomorrow, a one day delay becomes a two week delay,
| demoralization and demotivation ensue, trust is fucked, and it is
| all downhill from that point.
|
| Second point, closely related to this one, is the strange idea
| that some managers have that any delay can be solved by the
| copious administration of more overhead. Let's schedule more
| meetings! Let's micromanage more! Of course, the developers are
| slacking! Beatings to rescue. And this is related to the first
| one, because this kind of manager is usually a True Believer in
| Scrum.
|
| Over time, developers, like any other animal, is mentally geared
| towards avoiding pain. Shortcuts will be taken, and one of the
| most obvious is overtime. And at first it works, overtime
| actually works a lot of time, until it is chronical.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| This is a pretty fraught area. As the comments show, there's a
| lot of emotion, and cultural differences at play.
|
| "Cultural differences" can be macro, like, in Japan, a 10-12-hour
| workday is _de rigueur_ , and it can be "micro," like individuals
| that have different clocks.
|
| I had an employee, who is, no exaggeration, one of the best
| engineers I've ever known. But he couldn't come in early, to save
| his life. He'd roll in, around noon, but would often stay until
| 2AM.
|
| The Japanese loved him. He was often on their time zone.
|
| American HR hated it, and I got called on the carpet, numerous
| times, as his manager.
|
| But I stood up for him, and let him do his odd hours, even though
| it cost me. Fortunately, Japan backed me, and they were the ones
| in charge (that didn't win me any friends on this side of the
| pond).
|
| I have been "retired" for the last six years. In that time, I
| have worked harder -and far more productively- than I ever did,
| in the workforce.
|
| The key seems to be, as has been alluded in the comments, mastery
| of my own schedule.
| rlkf wrote:
| Seldom has the "surprised Pikachu" emoticon been more
| appropriate.
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