The End Of 9-To-5: When Work Time Is Anytime | Hacker News Reader

The End Of 9-To-5: When Work Time Is Anytime

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31 pointselptacek24 comments

Freedom to schedule work around life instead of life around work is literally the #1 benefit I'm looking forward to from self-employment. No more showing up for 14 hours just to be seen at the office for the right 14 hours, huzzah.

I guess it depends on your exact plan, but I think a lot of people think that and then find out self-employment is more like finding any life because of how much time you have to put into it.

yeah, its easy to self employ and get by, its pretty hard to self employ and make it a career.

i have a pretty damn flexible job, as long as i get my work done etc. definitely don't need to be self employed for it

Naw, it's all about method. You have to get fast at doing different things, especially "non-billable" things that don't cause revenue.

Many people are just crappy at maintaining self control, so throw hours at problems they don't need to. Little companies doing accrual based account then putting a high value employee on bookeeping, spending too much type discussing (or if it is just 1 guy, too much time thinking about it) what to do rather than doing it, spending too much time on clients who aren't high enough probability to land are three errors I see over and over in small companies.

I personally use a pretty similar (though less formalized) approach at prgmr.com, more out of laziness and cheapness than anything else. 1. I don't want to pay for an office, and 2. people will work for less money if you let them work whenever. (and you can often get a good deal hiring people who get fired from regular jobs for not showing up on time.)

The thing in my case is that support stuff needs to be answered. Most people are cool waiting 12 hours for non-urgent stuff, so that's fine. Then the monitoring system needs to page, which it doesn't right now, which is a pretty big hole,but one that should be able to be solved automatically.

So how do vacations work? Can you still get that week off where no results are expected from you? Or would bosses presume with all this flextime you are already on vacation? "Sure you can go on vacation, just make sure you make those calls and send out the emails"

From my personal experience, being self-employed definitely makes you feel more productive. No more wasting time on obviously useless or invented tasks just to justify your presence in the office. Also, being a designer, I don't have to look for a creativity switch anymore that should function from 9 to 5. Sorry, my mom made me really creative and productive from 10pm on.

Yea. I'm productive from about 7am (first coffee) to, say, 12pm, and then not until the evening. Working according to your own rhythm makes things so much more fun.

So where did this radical work system come from? It was created by two human resource workers who became frustrated that the daily grind wasn't only constraining, it was also inefficient.

Some good points, but I don't really think they invented the non-traditional work system, but this article sure makes it sound that way.

They're the first that I heard actually formalize it. It was several years ago. While I'm sure that it's been done for decades (if not longer) you still have to give them credit for recognizing it as a great idea.

This reminds me of a book I've been meaning to read for over 10 years: http://www.amazon.com/Leveraging-People-Profit-Hard-Manageme...

Sounds like you'll still be meaning to read it in another 10 years.

Likely. Too busy working. ;-)

That's ok :) My reading wishlist grows a lot faster than I read books, so unless that changes, I'll clearly never be able to read all the books I want to. Just the way things are.

I used to work as a freelance journalist, and did find a couple of downsides to working from home.

1) It's easy to procrastinate, so it's bad if you're not disciplined. 2) Your 'office' is always a few feet away, so it's bad if you're a workaholic.

There is something nice about clocking out, going home, and forgetting about work for a while, instead of sitting at dinner thinking "I've really got to do X."

But if you're disciplined and balanced, yes, it can be great.

I am fortunate enough to have an employer and a manager who allow me to work from home. This used to be an infrequent option but became a necessity when I lost access to a car. (The office is a 45-minute drive away.) Even with having to get three children ready for school, helping with homework, preparing dinner and doing other household chores, I have never been more productive.

I start my day early and sometimes end it fairly late, but as earlier noted, with balance and discipline it can be extremely rewarding for both you and your employer.

Personally, I like the 9-5 daily regiment. I guess it doesn't have to be a specific time frame, as long as I can block off 8-10 hours per day and do my work only during that time. Another important thing for me is to separate my work environment from my home as much as possible. Judging by the other comments on here, maybe I'm becoming a minority.

Lately this topic gets repeated and I picked up this phrase which I like "Control your own schedule while paying all the bills is a pretty good life"

I wonder how firing's like under such a system. Do they do performance reviews once every two weeks, or something like that?

Why should it matter? People in normal workplaces can screw around for months before they get fired. Physical workplaces are good for identifying the workers who do nothing, but not the workers who do nothing useful.

Good point, thanks.

As far as I can tell, HR mostly stamps my paperwork and then does things behind the scenes. When I have questions, they answer my emails. No reason most couldn't work wherever, whenever.

In any reasonably well functioning team, you don't need performance review, everyone knows who's working hard and who's not.

Flexible time is what is so great about academia. If only the university bureaucrats also worked on flexible time.

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