My company’s core philosophy is that there are only 20 productive “creative” hours of coding in the average week. We employ our devs and ask that they aim for 17 hours of billed time to our clients; the remaining 3 hours is spent on our internal sync and calls with clients. The rest of the week is theirs: if they want to keep coding, do it; if they want to mow the lawn, that’s great too.

After almost 8 years with this model, I think the evidence is overwhelming that we maintain somewhere between 85 and 90% of the productive output of our 40+ hour/week counterparts.

I’m excited at the prospect of a positive shift in work/life balance coming out of the massive WFH experiment that’s happened over the past 18 months.