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Comment by TuringNYC | Hacker News Reader

"I know several top 1% engineers in the Valley who disengage from recruiting processes when 996 or something similar is mentioned."

Setting this expectation early seems honest and the best thing to do. The worst is when companies sell people on WLB but then flip it to 996 -- you end up with all the wrong people and no one wins. Best to be transparent from the onset.

I always encourage candidates to go visit the company several times if possible, including a visit at 5:30pm or 6:30pm to see the state of the office and attendance. There is no right or wrong answer --

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> including a visit at 5:30pm or 6:30pm to see the state of the office and attendance

As an academic, I used to work 11am-8pm many days when I was younger thanks to flexible working hours, and I wasn’t the only one working late but not early. I realize this is probably more rare in corporate settings, but keep in mind if the place has flexible hours you might see more people at 6pm despite people not doing 996.

That was true of me as well, and at the same time, I was working alongside parents who worked 7:30-5:30 with a break to pick up the kids from school.

Nobody wants a "visit" from the founder, anyway. They want timely two-way flow of information, access and guidance on the occasions when they need it, and maybe (maybe) an occasional chance to hang out socially as a group with no reference to work. Nobody wants the founder randomly dropping by during work hours to assess morale.

This is really my priority to achieve at a job, and one of the reasons I try to be good enough to be indispensable is to be allowed to roll in in the morning whenever I get there.

I have a very tough time in the morning convincing myself to go to work, and a very tough time at work tearing myself away from something in an intermediate state. Things at work are always in an intermediate state at 5:00, unless you stopped working well before then (or got very lucky), so I always end up working late whether I come in on time or come in late.

So I'm always trying to get to the point where management lets me get there when I get there, and trusts me to be productive. It's a mental thing. I get up early and do a lot in the morning; I'm a morning person. Maybe too much so. The time between getting off work and going to bed is garbage time for me; a long annoying commute and a meal. When I leave at 5:00 I just fall asleep by 9:00.

I think that is great if you want flexibility, and I used to do that also!

What i'd assess at 6:30 is whether people are on meetings or on focus time. If you have monitors with zooms full of 5-6 people, I wouldn't think that is flex hours, i'd assume that is a meeting being scheduled at 6:30.

On the other hand, if you have people focus working, you cannot draw any conclusions from that.

Personally, I stay at work late. But there is a difference between me being obsessed with a problem and working thru the evening trying to solve it (awesome for me) vs meetings that are being scheduled at 6:30pm or 7pm

Glad I live somewhere that I had to look up 996 because I didn't know what it was.

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