Comment by typicalrunt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by typicalrunt | Hacker News Reader

Every office is different with regard to the hours worked as well as when those hours are worked. I find the latter is more important than the former.

At my office most people get in around 9:30am to 10:00am, and leave around 8 hours later. What I found was that I couldn't get any work done around that time because productivity slows down to a crawl in the middle of the day, usually due to meetings, figuring out what they need to do for the day, or the usual inter-cubicle communication.

I fixed this for myself by coming in early, around 7:00am. That means I have approximately 2-2.5 hours of uninterrupted time when I have peak energy. Then when everyone gets into the office I don't mind the interruptions. Those are the pros.

The cons are that I have to wake up at 6am to drive into the office (~40mins drive). As well, 8 hours from 7am is 3pm, but there's no way I can leave at that time without losing face. Instead, I leave at 4pm. I currently rationalize this extra hour of "work" by saying that I take a 1 hour lunch that I don't charge for.

Timeboxing myself into a 8-9 hour timespan means I really need to prioritize my work for the day. Once the clock strikes 3:30pm, I make it a mission to take the next 30 minutes to wind down and prepare for the next day. This has helped me reduce the stress associated with the work day.

> without losing face.

Honestly, isn't the crux of the problem? Even if you are a superstar, you'll still get typecasted as smart-but-lazy and find yourself on the outside. Generally speaking, this is an organizational problem.

In many offices, you need to be around when things come up. There are very few jobs where you come in, work by yourself for 8 hours and then go home. Communication is important, and if you aren't there, it's hard to communicate.

Email, sms, voice can cope with crisis that arise. In a small office face is important; less important in an environment that's geographically distributed.

Very little communication I have around the office are crises - but they are important. If I insisted on having a completely different schedule from my coworkers, I'd either be impeding their work, or subjecting myself to emails, SMSes, calls, etc, outside of my work hours.

Lots of company have flex time so people can choose their hours but have some overlap for communications. This is also where the "mid day meeting rush" comes from that exacerbates the situation.

This. The medium of communication really depends on the type of content and it's priority.

High priority: call me or use some other synchronous communications protocol. Everything else: email, ticket please. Async is better.

I'm used to working in geographically separated teams in different timezones, so starting my day 2 hours ahead of everyone else is no different than me working in a different timezone. Once you solve this problem, you have solved the majority of your communication difficulties.

Sure, but when that emergency crops up in the middle of that 40 minute commute, you aren't going to be helping the team very much.

It's no different than being out to lunch. You're 20 minutes away from the office in your scenario, and hopefully you're not the only person who can fix things. No one should be the company savior, and if you can't leave the office, you have bigger issues than working different schedules.

but the question is: what's the time range necessary for immediate communication? Do all developers need to be in full-communication mode for a full eight-hour span? And if so, when does code get written?

They don't need to communicate immediately, but when I ask a question to a developer I need them to get back to me on that same day. For most of my projects I cannot afford to wait until the next day for an answer. I emphasize this in every email I send. It usually goes something like, "I understand if you're busy working on something else at this very moment. However, this is for a project due tomorrow morning so I would appreciate a response before lunch/end-of-the-day."

Is there always exactly one developer who has the answer to each of your questions?

You could use the extra hour to exercise. Go to the gym, or go for a bike ride, if your office has a shower. Exercise is almost as important as sleep for health and creativity. Lunch is included in normal 9-5 hours.

I have to agree. The first two hours before everyone else shows up are my most productive.

For me it's the exact opposite. I come in at 9.30am and leave at 6.30pm. Most of my coworkers leave around 4pm, which leaves me 2-2.5 hours at the end of the day to really get shit done.

I'm not a morning person. Understanding and accepting this has helped me manage my time much more effectively.

What you've defined is "core hours". This is the range of time in the day when meetings happen and productivity tends to slow down to a crawl. It sounds like your company's core hours are 9-4. It's fairly standard (some places have core hours being 10a-2p).

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