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Comment by mundo | Hacker News Reader

My company (large-ish un-sexy software company you've never heard of) gave the software managers clear direction on this: "It's not realistic for people with school-aged children to be fully productive right now. Do not demand they take PTO or ask them to work at night. If they can only work five hours a day, that's what they can do."

I suspect it's unusual that my boss actually said that out loud, but I hope everyone is thinking it. This is a temporary situation none of us planned for, and it ought to be reasonable and expected to lower your standards until schools and childcare are around again.

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We might work at the same company!

I lead one of our teams and that's pretty much the explicit directions my VP gave us. Actually, the entire leadership team gave those directions. It's made me glad I switched jobs 18 months ago.

Somehow I'm the only one on our team with kids but some of my team has had a difficult time managing the change from an emotional standpoint and I just treat it the same way. I don't expect them to somehow magically "power through it". They're normally very productive and I know this will pass.

By this attitude you can recognise reasonable employers that care about their employees, and are not merely looking to exploit them.

My company (large consulting firm you have probably heard of) gave us essentially the same guidance from the top. The culture was already one that discouraged micromanaging, but they flat out said they don't expect us to be as productive. Most of my team is realistically working 15-20 hours a week, and that's ok because our clients are doing the same and understand when we miss milestones.

I've actually been impressed at the amount of empathy that's been going around, at least when it comes to adjusting expectations. Hopefully it sticks around.

Exactly the right response. Sounds like management may be a bit sexy though, stable companies that treat their employees well are rare.

Basecamp's founders have been working hard to hammer this point (lower expectations and treat humans like humans) home lately.

Exactly the same thing at Arm.

We had an all-hands and one of the questions was "are we expected to do our contractual hours" and the answer was to do what you can.

Honestly very impressed by how they are handling this, at every turn they repeat that they understand that everyone's situation is different.

"If they can only work five hours a day"

I appreciate the sentiment, but five hours?! That's your example of an acceptable low level of performance for someone working from home with a child with no possibility of childcare?

I'm splitting card of my toddler with my spouse, and on my BEST days, I get 3 hours of actual work done. 1.5 is more typical, and that's only because the toddler takes 2 hour naps.

One of the reasons we built Squawk, a push-to-talk group chat platform, was for this very reason. Many of our team have young kids at home, and current chat tools require too much work to ensure you're muted and not spamming your background noise all over the place. Might be worth a click - https://www.squawk.to

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