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Comment by commondream | Hacker News Reader

Just to be clear, a lot of our company logs their hours from home in cities where we have no office. We've about 30 people in Portland, 20 in Orlando, and 30 remote. In all cases folks can work from home unless they absolutely need to be in the office for some reason (like being part of a video shoot).

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So what if you work from home?

If this is a "nudge nudge wink wink we don't really work 40 hours when we're working from home" kind of thing, then why make the pretense of working 40 hours?

I value my integrity. When I say I'm working 40 hours, I work 40 hours. If "working from home" is implicit permission to lie about how many hours you work, then that creates a system where dishonesty is rewarded and honesty is exploited.

And if it's a "it's a little nicer to work from home" thing, then I'd say, not really. I would actually rather not work from home--my home is my space, where I can de-stress and do what I want. I currently work at a job where I "work from home" and I actually have an office I rent for myself so that when I go home, I'm actually not working.

I've wink winked at people about it, but never prefixed with a nudge nudge. Arguments like this are always kind of funny to me, because I can't do anything but say our intention and what we do and hope you'll believe me. Believe me or not, I don't wink and nudge people and I work as hard as I can to keep folks within that 4 day work week that we've set up.

The battles on extending days we're dealing with are things like getting pinged through HipChat because we're across 5 time zones and avoiding email at night, not forced extra work because you work from home. I'd ask some devs and designers from the team to talk about it but it's Saturday, so they're not working.

So are people expected to work 40 hours/week or not?

> So are people expected to work 40 hours/week or not?

Folks are expected to work 32 hours per week, although if you get technical and throw in PTO and holidays they're actually expected to work 28.9 hours per week.

A little napkin math for anyone else doing comparisons:

28.9 hours * 52 weeks ~= 1500 hours

---

37.5 hours * 48 weeks ~= 1800 hours

37.5 hours * 47 weeks ~= 1760 hours

37.5 hours * 46 weeks ~= 1725 hours

37.5 hours * 40 weeks ~= 1500 hours

So even if you have 4 weeks off and 10 holidays, Treehouse still expects ~225 hours less work per year, or the equivalent of having 10 weeks off and 10 holidays at a normal 9-5 job with a half hour lunch. Treehouse likely gives 2 weeks off, 10 holidays, and 52 Fridays off :)

Their leave actually looks pretty generous:

18 days (or 4.5 weeks) paid time off

1 week off for the holidays (in addition to paid time off)

https://teamtreehouse.com/jobs/at-treehouse-3b0b0839-71a0-4f...

Okay, so that's a clear rule and that's great--your workplace sounds like a place I'd like to work.

My objection isn't to systems where there is a clear, honest expectation set. My objection is to systems where people say, "We don't give much time off, but you get to work from home a lot. Oh and we won't be able to verify if you don't work the 40 hours we expect, nudge nudge wink wink."

It sounds weird, but the latter is all-too-common, especially at startups.

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