(jcwren) RE: What time do you think geeks should have to get to work?

I think this is just a ploy to get XP for asking a similiar question! (J/K)

Seriously, many companies have the concept of "core hours". This is usuall 9:30 or 10:00 AM to 4:00 or 4:30 PM. If you're part of a team, this is when you should all be there. I've worked on jobs before where 1 or more of the critical developers wasn't there, and it really can wreak havoc.

I'm a believer in flex time and comp time. Flex is important, because 1/2 an hour can make the difference between my drive in being a living hell, and just pure hell. I *try* to be at the office by 8:45. I do this because I (currently) work 3 10 hour days, since my current contract is 30 hours a week. With a 45 minute lunch, that puts me out of the office at 7:30 PM. The drive home is pretty nice at that hour, but the drive in is really bad if I don't leave the marina by 7:45 or 8:00, at the latest. It's worse when school is in season (don't get me started about these damn parents that drive their brats to school, or let them drive, instead of taking the bus a.k.a. mass transportation!).

I do think if you pull an all nighter working on some hot and heavy code, you shouldn't be expected to show up at 8:30 the next morning. There has to be give and take. You also shouldn't show up at 9:30 every day, and leave at 3:30, with an hour lunch. Then, you're not honoring *your* part of the 2000 hours a year contract that I've menionted in another thread.

I've never been a manager, and Dog knows, I don't want to be (you over there! Change that shirt! And be here on time tomorrow!). But, if I were, there would be *some* rules. There has to be, anytime there's interaction between an employee and the rest of the company. If your arrangement is finish project 'X' by date 'Y', and no one needs to see you before it's done, do whatever you like. But if you're expected to be there to meet with vendors, interact with other team members, whatever, there *has* to be a certain window of time when people can be expected to find one another, and ask questions.

Where does this leave projects that are teams split up across the US, or the world? In a quandry. It's been my experience that work throughput is drastically reduced for the *majority* of groups that work like this. You'd be surprised how much is accomplished in impromptu hallways meetings, over lunch, etc. It takes a good bit of discipline to work with people 6 time zones off from you, and not get hung up by a 24 hour turn around when you have a problem. You *hope* there are things you can do in the mean time, while you're waiting for a response, but if you're in the design phase of a project, or debugging hardware, and waiting for news from a chip vendor, often you're just burning hours while you wait.

I do think that in this day and age, more people need to telecommute. With growth of cities, pollution, fossil fuel consumption, and all those facts, work at home WILL become more prevailent. But it takes discipline and coordination for that to work. Some people see work@home as 'No one knows I'm playing FreeCell all day'. Or, less severe, "I'll go to the store now, and work later". This is why some companies, particularly old-school are so resistant to work@home. No real accountability. They're still paying you for that time you're supposed to worknig at home, and if you're not working, you're screwing the company. An employer/employee relationship is a two way agreement, after all.

Brief diversion and diatribe here: You may like to think that "Well, if I get the project done by the due date, it doesn't matter what I do". This is a bad attitude, I think. The fact is, as an employee of a company, you are a company resource. If you weren't goofing off at home, and finished the project 1 month eariler, that would be 1 month less that the company has to recoup, and you could be on another project. So it's not a matter of "Oh, I'll finished as by the due-date", it should be an attitude "I'll finish this as fast as possible, within reason".

One other thing I was going to mention that was touched on. Work conditions: Few offices can have the ideal arrangement of every employee having an office. Offices are often still used as a sign of rank, rather than effectiveness. Cube farms will exist because they're space efficient. They have other problems, but building cost is something that's very visible as a bottom line item on a financial statement. You being 3 hours less effective per week is not. Also, building codes won't allow for offices at the density that cube farms can be put in, because of handicap access, and fire codes. If the cube farms are that noisy, the office policies need to be evaluated. Some places implement "quiet time" for 2-3 hours a day. This isn't a bad idea, at all, and sometimes is the best compromise for a cube farm enviroment. Cubes don't represent an ideal enviroment, compared to offices, where you can close the door.

So, all in all, core hours are essential to a development group. Flex time is important, and core hours, by definition, accomodate flex time. If you want to pull a few all nighters, and fix something or finish eariler, you should be able to take that as comp time. If you work at home, you have an obligation to actually accomplish some work, and not play FreeCell. It's all give AND take, not give OR take.

--Chris

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Comment on (jcwren) RE: What time do you think geeks should have to get to work?

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RE: (jcwren) RE: What time do you think geeks should have to get to work? by mischief (Hermit) on Sep 09, 2000 at 04:54 UTC
I think this is just a ploy to get XP for asking a similiar question! Of course! But only as much as your were asking a similar post to Ovid's Why do monks put up with it?. ;-) Seriously though, this is something that I've thought a lot about in the past. Your post and the replies to it made me want to see what others thought about this particular question. I've worked at companies before where I have been mostly independent in what I've been doing; ie, normally there is no reason that I have to be at work at a particular time (except of course for things like meetings etc). I've argued vehemently that I should be allowed a lot more flexibility than I'd had but mostly been denied this because, as BlaisePascal said, I didn't have enough "political clout". I've actually come to more or less the same conclusion that you've expressed in your reply - that core hours are important, but traditional times to be in the office are less so. You mentioned working from home: > I do think that in this day and age, more people need to telecommute. I agree with this, but I don't think that the infrastructure is available yet where this can become common practice. Even when the infrastructure is there, I reckon it'll take a while for it to catch on, for the same reason that programmers are required to wear suits to work. > So it's not a matter of "Oh, I'll finished as by the due-date", it should be an attitude "I'll finish this as fast as possible, within reason". Again, I agree with you. I just think that being able to set your own hours, at least in the case of most programmers, makes you more productive. If you aren't able to manage your time yourself you'll find out fast because you won't be able to keep up with what you have to do - either you'll get fired or you'll learn to organise yourself properly. You also talked about office space. As you say, most offices are much less than 100% perfect as a working environment and could be drastically improved (but aren't, generally for the reason you say - it doesn't look good on a balance sheet). This is one of the biggest reasons I think it's important for techies to be able to manage their own time. I know that if I come in at 11am and leave at 8pm, I'll get way more done than if I have to be at work from 9 to 5. Most of the other reasons for wanting to come in whenever I like are for the most part selfish - I prefer to stay up late and get up late, I like staying in bed for as long as I like and I prefer travelling to work when it's not so busy on the train etc. But the fact being able to come in when I want means I'm more productive is something that I find hard to accept that it's considered a Bad Thing.	[reply]
RE (tilly) 3: What time do you think geeks should have to get to work? by tilly (Archbishop) on Sep 09, 2000 at 14:53 UTC
The balance sheet for good office space is much different than it looks at first glance. Steve McConnell does a nice chapter on this in Rapid Development and concludes that for prices in his area at that time skimping on office space to get more developers was a foolish decision - by about a factor of 100. (BTW I recommend the book, a good chunk of it will give techies good facts and figures to use to make a good case to management..) Of course businesses have been ignoring research for years that says that code reviews are cost effective just in terms of improvements to debugging time. Let alone the implicit training benefits! In general costs that nickle and dime you to death get ignored by people because the up front bills are more obvious...	[reply]