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Comment by andyouthink | Hacker News Reader

First off, this is great. I applaud the fact that you can be profitable working fewer hours, and hopefully paying more than competitive salaries with good benefits.

But, that said, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned here that M-Th, 9-6 isn't a 4-day week, unless you include a required lunch hour, which most don't. So, since you didn't mention that, and I'm fairly sure that you work through lunch as many do including myself, then 9-6 M-Th is 36 hours, which is 4.5 "normal" 8-hour workdays.

I challenge you to be profitable working 32 hours a week (the equivalent of 4 8-hour workdays), preferably using flex time (so people can work those hours whenever they wish) and allowing telecommuting whenever the employee desires, and still be profitable.

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I'm on the product team at Treehouse and wanted to comment on a few of the things you mention here. Not everyone at Treehouse takes a lunch hour, but most of us do. I usually spend 30-45 minutes on lunch every day. A lot of our team at the office in Orlando goes to lunch together each day. I was at lunch for an hour and half yesterday with a big group of our product team and it's not like Ryan came and yelled at me afterward. In general I don't think anyone on our team cares too much how long you take for lunch or what your exact hours are. We care way more about what we're getting done than hours.

We also don't all work 9-6. It's a guideline that we use to help us know when we should be available for collaborating with others on the team, but I generally start at 8 AM and end at 5 PM each day.

A whole lot of our team works remotely or at least has the option to, but our video production generally requires that we be on site to produce our videos at the quality we want. Even with the people who need to be in the office there's a decent amount time spent away from the office, though. All of our developers and designers who work on the site work remotely.

Great to hear that. So you say most of you take a lunch hour, and then say you only take 30-45 mins. So, some work 32 hours, some work 33.5-34 hours a week, and others work 36, so that's 4 to 4.5 days a week, depending on who you talk to on the team. When I'm talking about flex time, I'm not talking about a long lunch, I'm talking missing hours in the morning or afternoon because your wife or kid is sick or is in a play at school and making up those hours on Friday. My point is not that Treehouse isn't a great place to work or that a 4 day work week can't work, but that there are a ton of startups that have flexible 40 hour weeks that allow telecommuting, and that flex time and telecommuting add to the complexity, which makes it just as much if not more of a feat to be profitable- and that is my point: it is laudable, but just isn't that big of a difference. If everyone in the office did 32 hours with no extra time and have flexibility to take care of their family as needed and work from any location they want as much as possible if they desire as long as they get the work done, and still be a profitable startup, then that would be impressive to me personally.

Lots of assumptions here. Why wouldn't they include lunch hour?

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