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Comment by korzun | Hacker News Reader

> The average employee is lucky to be productive 70% of the time. 2.5 hours a week is only 6% of a 40 hour week. I think it is a great use of time.

I don't know where you are pulling those numbers from, but you are assuming that 6% magically comes out from the 'unproductive' time without factoring in the take home homework and other things that blow up the 2.5-hour mark.

It's not a static number and can't be used to make those claims.

The 2.5 hours will also scale up with the number of participants, 20 employees who are committing 2.5 each week (at very, very minimum) is a loss of 50 hours per week.

I can go even further and add people who did not attend the workshop but felt like they are now entitled to a 2.5-hour break of some sort (and rightfully so).

If the company can cut more than 50+ hours a week and still function, more power to them. Usually, that only lasts until the finance guys need to start cutting costs to improve the bottom line.

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> take home homework and other things that blow up the 2.5-hour mark

I would think "take home" implies you take it home, i.e. do it in your own time. I don't know what your undefined "other things" are.

> The 2.5 hours will also scale up with the number of participants, 20 employees who are committing 2.5 each week (at very, very minimum) is a loss of 50 hours per week.

It is this sort of thinking that is super counterproductive. Even if one of those employees learns something simple, like how to programmatically create CSV files and import them into Excel, they will have saved thousands of man-hours.

You can't nickel-and-dime people's time like this. Philosophies like yours tend to end up with timing people's bathroom breaks and scathing articles in the newspaper; rarely successful companies.

Also, I have a very simple policy: I'm as strict about work hours as my employer is.

You want 40 hours, butts-in-seats, timed breaks? Fine, I'm circular filing that idea that's going to save you multiples of my salary each year because I thought of it at home during off-hours, and you weren't paying me for that time.

I am exactly the opposite. What you are saying (as far as I can tell) is "If management is going to be petty and stupid, then I am too". I think it is smart to avoid being taken advantage of, but I think what you are actually doing is enabling your management's stupid behaviour. If both sides have a hard line behaviour, it will never change.

Instead, I recommend showing the advantages of flexibility. "I worked overtime to give you this thing which would not have been possible under your rules, how about cutting me some slack as a reward?" Somebody has to budge first. Now, if they are only interested in sucking up as much of your time as possible and paying you as little as possible -- then they are being abusive. As in any abusive relationship, your top priority should be to get the heck out of there. As a fall back position, of course, you should protect yourself as much as possible, but having an a priori position of being just as petty as your boss will really only result in unhappiness for everyone.

It's not "being petty", it's "asserting boundaries" in an abusive situation. You clearly decided to read only half the hypothetical -- or do you think a workplace timing bathroom breaks isn't abusive?

Your post reads as an uncharitable brag about how you're better than me, even though you conclude by agreeing with me.

It's not my duty to go above and beyond for people who are trying to abuse and take advantage of economic needs to treat me as a work animal, not a person in hopes they learn a lesson. You can if you want to, but I think that attitude is what enables that behavior, not mine.

Let me put it this way: have you been able to improve the situation using your approach? It's not about a person being better than another person, it's about working in a way that is successful. I'm saying that the other side of the equation thinks that they have to treat people poorly or else people will take advantage of them. Your behaviour will only reinforce their belief. My challenge to you is to find a way show them that they are wrong. If you succeed, then life will be better for everyone, not simply tolerable for you.

It's not going to work all the time. Some people are jerks and there is no way to convince them to work together with other people. They just take everything they can and give nothing back. My experience is that these people are pretty rare, though. The vast majority of people who act like jerks do it because they are convinced that there is no other option. I'm not saying that you are being a jerk, but the attitude that you espouse just reinforces their view. They believe that they must take everything, or there will be nothing left for them. They believe that they can't give anything back because it will all be taken from them.

Give something back for free, even if they give nothing back. How much you give is still under your control. It won't always improve the situation, but my experience has been that it will sometimes improve the situation.

You're extrapolating an extreme hypothetical back to my baseline behavior in an uncharitable way.

You're also taking a single action to generalize to all my behavior -- for example, you're ignoring the possibility that I would both "forget" the out of hours idea, but present them with studies about how treating "knowledge workers" better leads to increased output or other similar "during work" activities that might influence their behavior.

You're also ignoring a slew of other concerns, ranging from my emotional health to my willingness to lock IP up with someone I perceive to be a negative actor in society.

All because you want to brag about how you're better than me and be "right".

Alright. Fair enough. Obviously I was not able to communicate my point in a way that was inoffensive. I apologise for that.

You sound awful to work with. It makes me appreciate how lucky I am to work someplace where everyone has good attitudes towards each other and their workplace.

I'm sorry, that's based on what?

If you honestly think me responding to a terrible work environment by refusing to do work outside of work hours or go above and beyond for the company makes me a bad coworker, I think you have a very distorted view of workplace relationships.

Gotta side with SomeStupidPoint here. If an employer is going to whine about any deviation from the standard working hours on my part, then all extracurricular activity stops. You get the hours exactly and nothing more.

It doesn't matter when someone does their work. It matters that they did it, and did it well. Poisoning the water because someone is consitebtly 10 minutes late every morning is a signal to me that it's time to move on.

> I don't know where you are pulling those numbers from, but you are assuming that 6% magically comes out from the 'unproductive' time without factoring in the take home homework and other things that blow up the 2.5-hour mark.

I am pulling that number for 7 years of management experience and talking with other people with similar experience.

And I don't know for sure it will come from unproductive time but I feel comfortable saying that if the teacher is any good they will be very engaged during that 2.5 hours because it is so different than what they do day to day.

But my hunch is it will come from the unproductive time. Studies have shows that shrinking the work week does not mean employees do less work. They do the same amount of work more efficiently.[1]

People will stretch to fill the allotted time. And if they know that they don't have as much time they will work to compensate.

> The 2.5 hours will also scale up with the number of participants, 20 employees who are committing 2.5 each week (at very, very minimum) is a loss of 50 hours per week.

The company is getting concrete value from that. Having cross discipline knowledge allows teams to communicate more effectively, communicate with customers better, and appreciate other job functions more. Never-mind as another person wrote they might be able to automate the tedious parts of their job using scripts they learned how to write. But assuming for a second you are right and the ROI is negative. The ROI of having them browsing Facebook during that time is even more negative.

> I can go even further and add people who did not attend the workshop but felt like they are now entitled to a 2.5-hour break of some sort (and rightfully so).

Absolutely not true at all. These people are not on a break. They are learning. It is work. A different kind of work than they do day in and day out sure but still work. Not only that but they are getting a free (to them) education. Which has a predictable value on the market (look at the cost of a code bootcamp or college credit)

I'm not following the logic: someone is getting training so I deserve to work less? If I was in that scenario I wouldn't demand a 2.5 break. I'd demand 2.5 of training because I know how valuable that is.

I have a word for people who slack off for two hours while their peers are hard at work learning a valuable new skill: fired.

I have never heard of anyone putting so little value on training. You talk like they are playing foosball for 2.5 hours.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/business/international/in...

> But my hunch is it will come from the unproductive time. Studies have shows that shrinking the work week does not mean employees do less work. They do the same amount of work more efficiently.[1]

And yet, you want to fire people who let their brains relax for a couple of hours.

> You talk like they are playing foosball for 2.5 hours

Not a big difference. A lot of those people will forget most of the stuff they "learned" in a few months time.

> And yet, you want to fire people who let their brains relax for a couple of hours.

Not at all. I did not mean to say that if that's what it came out as. My intent was I would fire someone who intentionally works less because they feel they are entitled to because of something another employee is doing.

It's also how they do it. If they come to me and say "I don't think this is fair... here's what I think we should do" I would never punish them. Punishing people for expressing a concern to management is a terrible idea. But if they just start doing it because they decided that's what is fair... all the sudden they disappear for hours on end... that person is not a team player.

I would never fire someone for taking a break unless it became a problem with the work quality. Heck... one of my team just went and took a nap in the break room for an hour and I'm completely OK with that. He's probably exhausted (he has a kid at home) and will come back more productive. Context matters.

> Not a big difference. A lot of those people will forget most of the stuff they "learned" in a few months time.

They might forget the technical details but they will retain some of the vocabulary and now know what the developers are talking about. But if even 5% of them is able to save or make their department money because of what they learned in the class it's probably worth it. You don't need 100% success rate to see net positive returns.

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