Getting Real About Office Hours
blog.metalabdesign.com
blog.metalabdesign.com
We have an office. We are a results oriented shop that measures our performance on results, not hours worked. While sometimes we might choose to work from home, we generally work in our office. My employees, however, have no mandate to actually be in the office at any specific time except for one Monday afternoon meeting a week (which you can call into if you really need to).
I agree with the author, working from home isn't always a good idea. I'm not sure it's ever really a good idea actually. However, the flexibility for a parent to pick their kids up from school or take a day to go fishing to ponder a problem is huge. It results in happier employees, but also much more productive ones (at least in my experience stretching into teams of 50+).
This extends to vacation days, btw. We have unlimited vacation days. I only ask that for extended vacations (more than a couple of days) that you work with me so that we can keep the project nicely staffed and scheduled. That caveat is, of course, that your meeting my high expectations for actually getting stuff done. In part because of the character of person we hire, that's never been an issue.
I don't see why we have to confuse the two issues. Remote is not the same as flexible.
I ask because from my perspective startups generally have a finite amount of capital and resources, and maximizing those resources is key to survivability. There is always work to be done, so until you've earned the stripes there is no cruise control.
I think that if you're doing it right, you don't have to worry about the literal amount of time an employee is "working" or "not working". If you are treating your employees right, they will reciprocate, and they will be interested in making a great product, really interested. They will contribute in unexpected ways, and they will take care to perform outstandingly on a consistent basis because of the way you perform for them. You just have to be willing to give up that classical "I own your eight hours mwahaha" viewpoint.
Inspiration can't be scheduled; maybe if you would let your employees go home and play some video games, something in the game would trigger an idea that would result in huge wins for your company. Inspiration almost never arises in the face of intimidation, though. (Not good inspiration, anyway; maybe inspiration about how to sabotage, how to collect paycheck while manifesting passive-aggressive resentment and crossing fingers that the boss ultimately falls on his face and loses everything.)
You have to be reasonable about your expectations. People need to live balanced lives. You don't want workaholic employees, you want employees who lead healthy, good, balanced lives. Encouraging emotional starvation may look good on paper but it almost always results in lurking, pernicious, rarely-perceived-until-it's-too-late crumblings elsewhere.
There is always work to be done, on almost anything. Give your employees some trust and freedom, and as long as you're hiring mature professionals, you'll get much, much more than your initial investment back. It may not always manifest as extra time-in-chair, but it's always worth it. How can it not be? You let your employees live their lives, you empowered them to both live well and remain in control. That's always worth it.
I agree with you about inspiration in some regards, I spent the first half of my career as a creative in the advertising industry. However, not staying focused on the problem you're solving is generally very dangerous when it comes to technology startups. If you think you need a lot of new and unique ideas every week, your startup will likely fail for a variety of reasons including but not limited to a sub-par product that does a lot of things but not one thing well, and a convoluted marketing message that confuses consumers.
Second, we're a team. There is no "I" that can sit at home and work whenever they feel like inspiration has granted them the ability to produce. I have to manage the product and UX (try communicating that over IM), another guy is responsible for the iPhone which is entirely supported by web services (a 3rd person).
Lastly, I've spent about 13 years working very closely with designers and developers, and I can't decide which group has the most self-appointed prima donnas. You either got it or you don't, but those that don't have a lot of reasons why they need special treatment. I generally avoid these people and I hope they avoid me. I don't have time to drop pedals in front of their feet where they walk. I go to great lengths to make our culture and work environment relaxed and enjoyable for the TEAM, but there's no room for loners who need special treatment just to create.
If you can do that well, I'm sure it can work fabulously. Why does ROWE not run into the same problems as results oriented incentives.
Most non-technical professional firms I've worked in evaluate performance solely on results. We book our own flights, we schedule our own meetings with clients, etc. In other words, the company expects us to be grown-ups and one either meets those expectations or ceases to be employed.
I've also worked for companies that are obsessed with hours. The worst was a software firm that was focused on an increasingly complex set of "flexi-time" rules designed, on the surface, to allow flexible work hours while maintaining some common work time and also enforcing "fairness".
In reality, I found that it was really just a way for managers to avoid having to deal with cracking down on lazy workers. Without the byzantine set of flexi-time rules they would have had to confront dead-wood employees and can them. The software firm was unsurprisingly filled with engineers with poor people skills that had become managers and were uncomfortable doing this.
Hire carefully, have high expectations, make them clear, be goal and result oriented, check in often and communicate well, and fire people that don't get their work done.
100% agree with comment above. I've never, ever seen a functional, professional services company where working from home was the norm or even a good idea. It's just that, as an adult, it's sometimes the most useful, necessary, and responsible choice.
I've never, ever seen a functional, professional services
company where working from home was the norm or even a good
idea.
Hell yes. Fishing per se isn't what I'd pick, but the freedom to use even small amounts of real solitude and calm surroundings in order to clarify thoughts - that would improve my work life immensely. I can think so much better without the constant bustle of people. There's really no polite way to tell everyone in an office to shut up and back off, because you need clear mind time to see a problem properly.
I also personally find frequent interruptions in my ability to manage my own schedule pretty damaging. If I know I'm going to have to be somewhere 1-3pm on Wednesday, I will probably not get anything done Wednesday morning, either, in anticipation of being interrupted: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
If you spend 30 minutes commuting, that consumes an entire hour of time, arbitrarily splits two other potentially productive 2-hour blocks in half, and risks afflicting your emotional state with fear and anger that affect your work and interactions with others. If you make it 3 4-hour days rather than 5 2-hour days that means people have days where they can live their life free of a stressful commute altogether, and that is a huge win.
When I work from home I don't work a 16 hour day. I work 8 to 6, in fact I often work more hours, am done earlier, and get more accomplished. I didn't have to waste any time or stress commuting, I got to make myself lunch and spend 30 minutes meditating in peace and quiet, and there was no background noise at all for the whole day.
Instead of getting distracted by facebook, email, hacker news, and wikipedia I take a few minutes here and there to do house chores like laundry and sweeping. Those are the sort of long term efficiencies that make working from home so beneficial.
The biggest thing I miss about the office, apart from being able to attend meetings when scheduled, is the reliable wired LAN. The VPN is much slower and using the web version if Outlook blows given the volume of email I deal with. Personally, I wouldn't want work from home more than one or two days per week, because being available for random walk-ups and face-to-face interaction with co-workers is an important part of the job. But when I need to tackle a technical problem that requires a lot of reading and a state of "flow" there are huge advantages to working from home.
Does that mean that they aren't allowed to bug each other about work related things (or schedule meetings etc.) or are they literally not allowed to talk to each other? I'm hoping it is the former!
On the other hand, if the incubator is cheap and filled with interesting people, I'd probably do it just for the opportunity to interact with others.
I work with a distributed team and we get a lot done. Our developers have worked together physically for 4 days total in the space of 2 years. There are issues, but I wouldn't call the situation better or worse, but rather different. We enjoyed our time together, but our team is geographically dispersed and we make it work. Even if sometimes that means typing out our body language. :)
As an individual getting started you will want to try different enivironments until you get it right. Meaning don't blow your savings on what you think is the right environment. First experiment - check out co-working/incubator space on a rental/short-term lease basis. Try working from home for a while and be thoughtful about what you'd need to make that situation work.
Understand that every one of these articles (whether from 37s or Meta or whoever) have a big unwritten caveat of "this is what works for us." It is always useful to be exposed to new ideas and experiences this way, but it still gets a little tiresome to read the "I agree 100% this is exactly how it should be done!" comments because as with everything there is a wide spectrum of possibilities to apply to each situation.
Just before the new year we built a brand new office for myself in our house and it has been great. Before I was in a spare bedroom that doubled as my girlfriend's computer area and productivity just wasn't as high as it is now with my own space.
Plus, I got to fill it with a bunch of my sports stuff. You can't top that. Photos available upon request if you're into gawking at other people's workspaces.
I currently do a mixed approach: whenever I feel I need to 'bike over' to achieve mental separation, I rent a place for the afternoon or the day in a co-working area, or I go to some library (sometimes without internet access, even better :-)
Next year as I move to the countryside with my family, where place is really cheap compared to my current place (Paris/France) we'll keep a dedicated room for product development, and another room for servers/infrastructure (garage most likely).
I've been a one man band for almost 4 years now. The first three years I've worked from home. From the start it worked great. But eventually I used to spend the entire day "working" and actually doing 6-8 hours of productive work, with pockets of non-work time inbetween (which I wasted on TV, Web, reading or going for a coffee with someone). Then, at the end of the day I was both unsatisfied with the amount done, and by the fact that I was "working" for the entire day.
Now I'm renting a small office very close-by, which allows me to walk to the office and back every day. This creates a mental separation of when I'm at work and am supposed to be working, and when I'm at home and am supposed to be living my life. It's done wonders both for my productivity and overall hapiness.
Also, this allowed me to not clutter my (relatively small) flat with bunch of hardware I need at work. Main stuff I do on my laptop I can still do at home (in case of emergency, or if I sleep in or decide to work from home, which is something I allow myself, but very rarely).
On related note, I also miss low background noise/chatter, which I'm attempting (successfully at the moment) to compensate with tuning to a local radio station, as opposed to just playing my music playlists.
Working from home with a family is not a lot of fun - the end of your work day coincides with the time when everyone else gets home, like it or not.
I'm looking into options, but office space is spendy here in Italy, and I don't want someplace that takes 45 minutes to reach, either.
I think that I've adapted by becoming more nocturnal - my son goes to bed at 7 PM, I go to bed at 4-6 AM, which gives me a full "work night". The internet is quieter, the house is quiet, the phones aren't ringing - it's just me, my code, and my headphones for a good long chunk of time. If that doesn't work for you, getting out of the house could be a good thing.
The primary reason for me though is the social aspect. Being by myself all day for several days drives me nuts.
alternatively, i heard mysql required that all of their remote employees needed to have a separate room at home where they worked from... i think having a separate space (whether it's in your home or not) helps a lot.
Does it not seem like a conflict of interest to anyone else that 37signals preaches the work-from-home lifestyle while selling remote collaboration tools?
My living space and work space are the same. But on most days, I'm out the bedroom door at 6pm and in talking to my wife and playing with my son in the kitchen at 6:01pm. Happiness and productivity are very tightly linked.
I recently went back to a separate office, it's been a freaking blessing. And don't get me wrong, I was very productive at home -- I'm just more productive in the right ways now. Working at an office generally gives you more focus on what's really important.
That's the average work environment, in my experience :)
> Working at an office generally gives you more focus on what's really important.
I do work from home but with a specific (and very small) area as my office - I'm far more productive here than in the cubicles I used to work.
I've found that I actually work hours than I used to, at a higher productivity level than I used to. I am very motivated and passionate about what I do, which helps an awful lot. I don't think that everyone could do it, and I don't think it's the best possible solution, but it works better than anything else I've tried yet.
I work from home. Coming into the office: after weeks and weeks, I develop a pattern. It's extremely different than my first week at work. My first week coming in to the office, I'm extremely punctual: I clock in at 10, and out at 6. I spend a good amount of my day interfacing with my Project Manager, talking to my fellow programmers, taking smoke breaks with them. Call of Duty, and NERF fights break out irregularly
Working from home: after weeks and weeks, I develop a pattern. I wake up early, 6 or 7, and start in on work or go to the gym. I may have four hours of uninterrupted work time before work "officially" starts. Maximum efficiency without interruption. I can "come in to work early" - 3-4 hours early - without feeling like I'm being taken advantage of, because I may stop working earlier than normal work hours. I usually don't, though -- my typical work weeks clock in at over 50 hours, and I'm the better for it. I'm learning when other people are sleeping.
I always ask my project manager and my director what's going on for the rest of the day to ensure I'm working when everyone else expects me to be. I have some flexibility in my schedule, and I try really hard to not abuse it. I give as much warning as I can that I'll be away from my computer. I took no days off from work last year except when I had to travel to SXSW because I was nominated for a web award and for when I had to have surgery/recovery for cancer.
iChat or Skype with video can easily solve the body language issue. "Emoticons" as horrid as they are, are invaluable in communication. Exclamation points, too. As outside my comfortability zone as it is, this statement: "No problem kicking it out before Monday! :)" communicates my situation far better than "I can deliver by Monday" does. Really, I don't mind putting in a few more hours over the weekend to ensure the project launches, but there's no way to communicate that without facial expressions or emoticons, so abuse the shit out of both.
That the employees in this post aren't doing that - or aren't perceived to be doing that - is worrying. But then isn't the author the same control freak guy who was micro-managaging in a previous post? I suspect there's a company culture centred around following the letter of his instructions rather than actually thinking.
Communication is key. Of course, my team is split between two offices, one in PA and the other in California, so we're used to communicating on the phone or via Skype. My desk phone is also forwarded on days I work from home, so if I'm keeping early hours, a team member can get in touch with me if necessary. In three years, however, I've never been called after 5:00 PM.
Wouldn't you want to go in to the office pretty often? If your goal is getting things done, and going to the office to meet with your team is the best way of realizing that goal, then wouldn't employees come in as needed naturally?
I thought the policy was pretty good but I don't think it worked out that well for me. It meant I was at the office until at least 8pm every day, usually later.
First, for extremely talented, highly individually motivated people it's important that they have the flexibility of process to figure out what works best for them. Chances are that such folks will do good work pretty much regardless of any formal process, but working out a system that maximizes their productivity, reduces their stress, and increases their job satisfaction can be very important. Often these tend to be "non-traditional" systems or even unique solutions depending on the various traits of the individual, sometimes people have different ways of working. These are the sort of 99th percentile workers that would be running their own startup if they weren't working with you, they work because they love it and they are not just cogs they are artists, their work is creative and creative work often requires non-traditional work environments and hours.
Second, for individuals with average talent and average individual motivation process tends to be more important. Indeed, process is often a critical element in the success or failure of teams that are primarily composed of average workers, whether developers or otherwise. Many of the non-traditional work environments and work rules that translate into success for 99th percentile workers will result in catastrophic failure when applied to groups composed mostly of average developers.
This is what makes generic advice so difficult. Advice that applies to one group will frequently cause consternation and failure in the other. The advice of Jason Fried, coming from 37signals, often applies only to the first group. Both Jason's advice and this critique from MetaLab are perfectly valid but neither is suitable as blanket advice for every developer across all skill levels and in any organization.
People need to first understand that there is no one-size-fits-all process that will maximize developer productivity in every situation and that different processes are necessary for different skill levels, personalities, and levels of individual motivation. Once that is understood then they can move forward towards figuring out what sorts of work environments and schedules work best for each individual.
I think if you treat people like they're "those kind of people" they may just start acting and producing like "those kind of people".
Excessive accountability and other policies designed to maximize productivity often have the undesired effect of making people feel mistrusted. It is employees that feel like a part of something, whose efforts matter that do the best work.
I love this quote from Cristóbal Conde, president and C.E.O. of SunGard:
"If you start micromanaging people, then the very best ones leave.
If the very best people leave, then the people you’ve got left actually require more micromanagement. Eventually, they get chased away, and then you’ve got to invest in a whole apparatus of micromanagement. Pretty soon, you’re running a police state. So micromanagement doesn’t scale because it spirals down, and you end up with below-average employees in terms of motivation and ability."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/business/17corner.html?pag...
It understandably never got read or voted up due to its unappealing wall-of-text presentation, but I think it's an important angle on the issue.
One benefit to the employer he didn't mention is lower salary. I have had opportunities to move to jobs with 20% more pay but it hasn't been worth giving up the flexibility of my current job.
We all go through different phases of inspiration and flow and what works good in one phase doesn't necessarily work in another.
I think that the ideal is to have an office with normal working hours and have the staff expected to generally meet those hours (within a couple of hours on the start and end time). However, with this, offer leniency on individual adhesion. For instance, if someone has an appointment during the day, or needs a half-day, or needs a whole day off, or whatever, and that person has no impending obligations that day, simply require a few minutes of notice and then let it slide without Nazi-tizing the operation.
The workplace needs to be concerned with productivity, not draconian enforcement of arcane rulesets. Leniency with the schedule is fine as long as the employee is performing well.
It is good to keep general office hours. Fried's approach as quoted here seems naive and reactionary to me; we've all worked at places where hours have received far too much emphasis, but the right solution isn't doing away with them completely because there's a lot of benefit for everyone involved (clients, company, employees) in having generally-followed hours.
Generally-adhered-to office hours benefit everyone. It's good to have everyone in the same space. It fosters relationships, it results in collaborative creative spurts, not to mention the personal benefits of getting out of the house, "grown-up" time without distraction or the normal demands at home with the family, and so on.
The right solution is compassionate enforcement and a focus on productivity and morale, not absolute compliance with pre-defined generalized rules.
One of my old employers operated almost this way and it was totally awesome ... until the forward-thinking, ex-NSA programmer boss got supplanted by the business-school manufacturing executive. Almost the whole team followed the good boss out of the company.