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Comment by b3lvedere | Hacker News Reader

"This finding is not unexpected. Once you let workers do away with the commute to and from the office, office politics, workplace bullying, boring meetings, the need to wear and take care of business suits and other costly and often uncomfortable attire, you should not be surprised that they will feel happier."

Gee.. how weird... people get happier when you don't force them to deal with (unpaid) time consuming and frustrating corporate [insert your favorite animal feces right here].

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> force them to deal with (unpaid) time consuming

I have personally turned most of those into paid activities.

I wake up at 8:30 and start my commute at 9-9:15, and leave to arrive at 6 at home, essentially being free at the same time as when I work from home.

Pretty much everyone does the same in my team and even in my company as a whole.

Don't they track time to see that people are at the office less hours than contracted??

That's a pretty authoritarian move. No doubt some companies do it, but it's practically encouraging slacking via Godhart's law.

>That's a pretty authoritarian move.

It's mandated by law in many EU countries, even in the more privacy focused ones. To track workers working time to prevent or track any overtime hours.

But it's also used by companies to make sure all workers are at their desk for the full 40h, and not doing something else like commuting or 2h lunches. Hence why most companies don't allow WFH. They can't track your working time at home, and they're not allowed to install spyware on your devices, so butts ins eats at the office it is.

Can you give an example of such a law?

That exactly what it's called. That was my example. What do you want exactly?

France since 2017: le droit à la déconnexion Portugal since 2012: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/11/success/portugal-employer...

https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/human-resources/workin... - Colloquially known as the working time directive

I see what you're getting at. Still, the policy could be implemented by workers logging their time on Jira tickets, could it not?

No, Jira doesn't work for that. The law requires proper tracking of worktime, vacations, sick days, etc, so there are separate apps for that, some tied to a physical badge or token you need to scan when you enter/exit the building so that the system starts or stops tracking your time at work and that managers have a view who's in the office and who's not. Kind of like the punch cards and clocks of old days except digital.

Jira is explicitly to track the time you put in on specific technical issues/stories so that scrum masters and project managers have an idea how long tasks take, Jira doesn't track how long you spent in the office which can be longer than the amount of coding task you filled.

In a previous company I worked at there were displays in the building showing the current presence/absence of each employee, if they're in the office or not, if they're on sick leave, vacation, etc via icons next to their names on the displays like in some dystopian hellhole. And this was a tech company in one of the richer EU countries. Totally legal btw.

There are Jira add-ons for tracking leave, though. I can't see anything in the EU directive that mandates anything more than that although I can imagine some member states implementing stricter laws for the sake of simplicity. It's bonkers, it's basically banning a company from just saying "Work at your own schedule and don't work too long".

Welcome to Austria.

No, but if they started asking people to work their contracted hours they would be the ones to lose because the average work week is way above the 40 hours that is in our contracts.

For me personally this depends on various things. My job can be very diverse and it can be also very beneficial to get things done after 6pm. But if this starts to get to be a regulary routine where my free time gets eaten too much, i will notify boss and customer. Boss is usually on my side.

My children and wife are my top priority above anything else in this universe. I have made that extremely clear to each and everyone. I do and will not care even if their network is on fire or they lose a billion cash per hour. Bezos, Nadella and Musk themselves could be asking it, i would not care. Material and money come and go. Life is way too short for that.

If the customer is reasonable, i will be reasonable. If the customer is not, screams or starts to get (passive) agressive, they will be dealt with as slow and tedious as procedures and contract(s) allow. Most customers relent fairly quickly when they notice i am not so emotionally invested as they are.

I like this idea, but time spent commuting will never truly be paid. Because if you were working from home, you could still start later / end earlier and get the same amount of work done in less time.

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