Workplace Experiments at 37signals
37signals.com
37signals.com
How much more business can you get when your clients have time off on the weekend to visit you for taxes, lawyering, medical checkups, dentistry, or banking or more important for the DMV or court? Why do they insist I take off a work day or speed through congested traffic to make it to their office by 5? Why does everyone love to wait 5 days just so they can cram together at the mall or in the same restaurant?
Why go through the congested highways because EVERYONE is working at the same time?
Why? Why why why why?
Join in on my revolution my brothers.
I worked four 10's for about a year, and I can say that you just get stir crazy by the end of the day, and you don't get any more/less done than an 8 hour day. If a four day week meant 32 hours, then I could see the benefit, but to a company, that just says "20% less work will be done." If you try to argue that the same work will be done, they will ask why you are goofing off 20% of the time.
As for staggering schedules, I'm with you. It's retarded that we all work at the same time. I chose my dentist specifically because he was open on weekends (he takes tuesdays and wednesdays off).
Companies are still hiring based on standardized patterns established eons ago. I had thought all that rah-rah of the dot-com boom would have taught us about the information revolution and how information workers are different.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Careers/story?id=1180149&page=...
I wonder how the experiment is going...
And I think they're right: you're going to get the same amount of shit done. The best developers on our team work round the clock, because they love what they're working on.
I've missed a couple of jobs because of this insistence of mine of not working five day weeks, but I don't think any of them would have been a particularly good fit for me, anyway, so no big loss. If the employer isn't a really good one, other employees could be bothered by one person only working three days a week, though, so I can understand employers being hesitant to hire someone with that requirement. And, when I begin hiring, I suppose I'll have to think about these kinds of issues more seriously.
Here, Warren Buffet says, "Most of the managers at Berkshire have “… no financial need to work” - this simply means that the people who are working are working because they love working."
http://www.pluggd.in/2008/03/startup-entrepreneurial-lessson...
In this one, pg says that if someone gave him $1 billion, he'd still be doing "much the same thing".
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=79057
So my question is this. If you love what you're doing, why would you want to do it LESS? And if you don't love what you're doing, then why are you doing it?
And bosses that make the job uncomfortable or have a negative attitude
Lastly, you may love programming but maybe programming the stuff you think up or like, not someone else's vision or tool or w/e.
Every company did crap like this, and well, it didn't stick and it didn't stick for a reason.
I remember when agencies had masseuses, on-site yoga, almost every agency paid for "self-improvement" and most had half-day fridays. Not to mention all the free food, traveling expenses, etc.
It's cool they're doing it, but it's been done before and it didn't really work out the first time around so I'm not holding my breath expecting success this time around.
Mod me down if you want, but that was a big thing back in the day and how you picked which agency you went to work for.
The key is to hire rockstars-- they produce more value in four days than a mediocre employee does given weeks. If you gave the typical person free food and time off. They'd stuff themselves until they got diabetes and spend the rest of their time watching reruns of 'Room Raiders' on MTV.
At a startup you should work whenever you feel like it (which is hopefully seven days a week starting at 11pm and going til dawn, with copious amounts of caffeine and loud music). But if you can get a lot done in four days and it'll keep you happy, work four days, you don't have any corporate culture to prove anything to.
Startup: "...pre-revenue cash burning startup."
Business/company: "...solid profits, plenty of users..."
By this definition, most YC companies would be startups while 37signals/Fog Creek/Google would be companies. Incidentally, Facebook is still a startup by this definition, despite its size.
So like you say, the startup has to do whatever possible, because as I say, they're on borrowed time. They onus is on them to demonstrate that their idea and execution is accepted by the market ("Make something people want"). In a business with customers, profits, etc, they've done that and it's just a matter or managing what has been created. When you get to that point (especially when hiring non-founders), you have room to be flexible.
Startups need productivity not man hours. If you're happy you might make a 'happier' product, be more likely to succeed with business partners, more charming to angels and VC's, more friendly with your friends and even a better lover with your lover.
Each person only has so much to give.. you can squeeze a lot at the beginning and loose later or take a steady pace and reach the goal with a lot less stress.
a 4 day workweek is like crack - I've got an extra weekend day to get things done at my own pace. go shopping when no-one else is in the malls, work on side projects, spend time with family - whatever...
Retention here is waaaayyyyy higher than any other tech job I've worked. It's easier to put up with the office politics and bureaucracy when you've got an extra day off.
BTW - Mondays off is better than Fridays off. All the problems and meetings happen on Mondays while Fridays are normally more laid back and leave you with time to do work instead of slogging though status meetings and production issues that occurred over the weekend.
If this works, they will talk about this endlessly, which is a great thing.
The more time that your job allows you not to be there, the more time you have to pursue passions of your own choosing. This makes for more well-rounded, happier, employees. And it's this well-roundedness that's going to pay off for them in the long-run.
Personally, I love that 37signals is challenging so much of the status quo in business.
"If their employees are happy, shouldn't they be staying overtime anyway?" is precisely the wrong way to look at this.
* If an employee is happy, expecting them to work more hours is probably not the best way to keep them happy.
* Productivity goes down when you spend 16 hours a day at work. Creativity suffers as well.
* Morale goes down when engineers realize that managers are too incompetent to schedule tasks appropriately.
* Morale goes down when engineers realize that managers don't understand that results aren't proportional to face time.
Any hacker aspiring to be an entrepreneur should rebel at being asked to put in 80 hour weeks for $0. You're not going to do your best work, and your life/health will suffer. It defies common sense.
I think this is worth repeating every few days until it is thoroughly internalized. I burn out every once in a while...and when it happens, my productivity is shot...sometimes for weeks. I have to be careful to keep exercising every day, spend a reasonable amount of time watching movies or playing music or games and interacting with other people, or a weird sort of do-nothing depression kicks in. I don't even realize it while I'm working, until it's too late. I can even be enjoying what I'm doing, and having some satisfaction about results, but if I overdo it, something clicks and the next time I run into anything slightly frustrating/boring/repetitive it's all over and the burnout kicks in.
- for me it has been months, sometimes years. I guess it could kind of turn you off for a whole career.
It'd be different if you had equity or some further promise of long term benefit.
You don't know how much is enough until you know how much is too much.
So Mark's taking flight classes? Guess what, that comes out of everyone's salary. So does the extra holiday every Friday, and all those other honey-traps.
From one of the first reply comments by Jason Fried:
"Why not just pay a higher salary instead of ‘funding passions?"
"First, this isn’t really about the money. It’s about encouragement."
"We want to encourage and motivate people to find something interesting to explore. Most people can spring for their own photography classes, but how many people actually do it on their own? Most don’t but many would if they had a bit more encouragement and support."
Someone below that said:
"As far as funding passions, I’m sure there are tax benefits from having your employer pay."
Also weekly company movie viewings - either outings if something good is playing or good 'ol Netflix.
Our first movie would be Office Space, as a friendly reminder of why starting your own thing is the best thing to do in life.
Plus think of this way: how many times do you resolve ideas passively in the shower, out on a walk, picking up dry cleaning/doing laundry, out shopping, etc.?
There's a reason that happens and just like exercise, if you don't schedule it, it's easy to let it slide when things get busy.