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Comment by jsprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

The article specifically points out that there were no business hours nor well-defined schedule. These musings may be relevant to some contracting firms, but are not applicable to the situation described in this article.

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I do have some sympathy for the author, but it's a good idea to keep in mind that just because nobody ever told you there was a rule against getting sloppy and working outside normal business hours, doesn't mean it's a good idea to do so. Having a passionate argument for why your problem is someone else's fault, is nowhere near as good as not having the problem in the first place.

You can't miss random days for no real reason. "I worked until 2am" isn't really a good reason... you're paid to come into work. Not to fuck about at home.

My impression was that this was a project contract. There would be no obligation to make paid appearances in this case.

I didn't see him say that, but that's really not my point. I'm not commenting to criticize him. I'm offering the consulting survival advice, which I'm pretty sure is generally applicable to all contracting gigs: don't work late for clients unless you absolutely have to.

I consider calling someone's behavior a pathology to be criticism.

That's fair, but that's not how I meant it.

They were obviously not impressed that he missed a day of work, one of many. I'm not surprised they let him go.

Consultants are not employees. Consultants are allowed to take off days anytime. They're allowed to start work at anytime and end work at anytime.

If they got this pissed about it, my guess would be that the client called Pillar and complained. Pillar must have felt that the author not going into the office made them look bad.

If you're working for the company, then yes, working until 2am is very much a good reason. Any company that doesn't see this as such is a shit company, plain and simple.

No. Really, really no. Don't work until 2AM for contracting clients. They won't appreciate it; they may the-opposite-of appreciate it.

> Any company that doesn't see this as such is a shit company, plain and simple.

Nothing is ever that simple. There are perfectly valid reasons for some companies to be unhappy with a contractor unilaterally deciding to work until 2am, and then not turning up for work the next day.

Falling asleep after your manager texts you to see why you haven't turned up for work today is unprofessional, whether you were staying up late night to code or to binge watch Netflix.

Please note that I am talking about this specific situation here. If you are working on your own products or in a team where people view this as expected behaviour, staying up late to take advantage of as many 'in the zone hours' as possible seems like an effective use of a programmer's time.

If that's what my client wants then yes I'll be there on time and in my seat coding. But I set my own hours as a contractor. How? Communication. You have to communicate what you are doing to your client and that is the OP's greatest failure here. It's a weakness of a lot of programmers given our general solitude and my own miscommunication in the past has lead to way more problems than any coding problem could.

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