Ask HN: Always late to the office, is this OK? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Always late to the office, is this OK?

21 pointsorik44 comments

I am a 21 year old node & web developer working for a small company in the suburbs of large tech city in the US.

Since sophomore year of high school I’ve developed a habit of running five minutes late to most commitments I make. It’s a deep set behavior that I seem to have no grip on.

I like the office I work at. I’m underpaid, but it’s comfortable and low pressure. I think this is partially because I get along well with my boss and partially because he knows I could go work anywhere else and make more money.

The only expectation the office has is the one I can’t meet, showing up on time. Today I showed up at 9:06 and was told to go home for the day, and to come back on time on Monday.

Are there many programming jobs with more time flexibility that would fit me better? Is running late OK in the industry? Or should I be trying to fix this ~6 year behavior of running late? Has anyone dealt with similar issues?

Thanks HN.

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> Today I showed up at 9:06 and was told to go home for the day, and to come back on time on Monday.

This blows my mind. Are you a contractor or salaried? If you are salaried they are idiots (for throwing away a day of work while paying for it) and if you are a contractor I question their ability to require you to show up in the office a certain time...

I personally think that caring about "asses in seats" is a terrible policy and shows your employer doesn't trust you and you should consider moving on to another company. If you are getting your work done as expected then I'm not sure why people care if you are in the office on time.

Meetings are a different story, if you show up late to a meeting your are wasting a lot of time and it feels (regardless of your intent) disrespectful, this you should work on but showing up to work a few minutes late isn't a really issue IMHO.

Lastly this: "I’m underpaid, but it’s comfortable and low pressure." leads me to say GET OUT! Don't waste your life making less than you are worth for a boss who is going to get all pissy about 6 minutes. Developers, or at least most, don't "shut off" their brains when they leave the building. Sometimes problems are kicking around in my head long after I've left work and I've solved a number of problems in my off time (not actively working but I can't always fully control what I fixate on or think about). Because of this I don't any bullshit about being at work on time (though I'm normally on time or 10-15min early) or leaving a little early if I need to make another appointment. As long as I'm meeting expectations on the work I'm getting done I don't think it matters if you are a few minutes late every day.

I agree with all but your last point, or at least think there needs to be an exception. If you want extra time to do other things then having a low pressure job is nice, even if you get paid less.

I've definitely met my fair share of people who would gladly take a 50% pay cut if they could only work 50% of the time they do. Feel free to replace 50% with 80% or whatever.

I noticed that most of the "fuck them" answers here are from people who interpret the situation in the most convenient way, that is to say, pointedly ignoring the general case and focusing on the specific.

OP says s/he's always late. But everybody responding "fuck the boss who sent you home" is explicitly assuming that OP being sent home is an isolated incident instead of part of a pattern. The thread title says always late to the office.

I think failing to show up on time as a pattern is destructive and disrespectful of colleagues. What is kind of amazing is that so many answers here are presuming a pattern (arbitrary and capricious boss) while at the same time overlooking a stated pattern (perpetually late employee).

The meeting starts when I get there. Learned it from one of my bosses. Generally but not always he was right. There are times when it matters, those times in most businesses don't occur everyday at 8:59:59. There's a contradiction in declaring 5 minutes so valuable yet wasting 480 minutes by sending someone home.

>The meeting starts when I get there. Learned it from one of my bosses

This is equivalent to saying "I am the most important person in the room every time". Even if it's true, it's a destructive and disrespectful message to be sending constantly. And if it isn't true, it's disingenuous on top of being destructive.

> was told to go home for the day, and to come back on time on Monday.

This was an Old School gentle warning, use this day-off to think about what you want in your career, and whether this job is important to you. There are plenty of learned hacks to make yourself come in early.

Relative to the relationship with your boss. He may be taking your tardiness as sign that you're not serious about the work. Presumably, he wouldn't mind if you worked late into the evening, especially if you took on additional, more challenging assignments. Suggest reading on Managing-Up> http://www.forbes.com/sites/richkarlgaard/2014/06/14/12-easy...

When your time is unscheduled it's not a problem. When you're scheduled to be in a meeting, or working with someone, it's disrespectful and potentially expensive.

If you never work with anyone else it's not a problem - all that will matter is getting stuff done. But when you work with other people it will be a problem. You will get the reputation of being unreliable, and a reputation once acquired is almost impossible to shift. Even devs end up interacting with other people. If you're any good, people will start coming to ask your opinion on things. If it's noticed that basically you're not there when you're expected to be there, you will get a bad reputation, even if you think that ass-in-seat time is irrelevant to getting things done.

And you may think it's unfair, but a reputation for unreliability in turning up on time will spill over into an expectation that you will be unreliable in other matters. That's how things work.

If you freelance or contract and fail to meet deadlines then you will lose clients, contracts, and money.

So it's entirely up to you. People under 30 have a much more relaxed attitude, but ask whether they have the wide range of experience necessary to make a nuanced decision about whether this is important. And will you only ever deal with people under 30?

I wouldn't have made you go home, but I would think twice about trusting you with anything important. If you can't show the discipline to be at work when you're asked to be there, how can I trust you with other aspects of self-discipline?

Added in edit: A lot of other commentators are saying "asses in seats is a dreadful policy" which is true, or "Provided you get your work done, who cares?", which is true. But once you are a member of a team, even if you don't formally interact with people in the code you're writing, you still have knowledge and experience that other people might want or need to tap into. If you're not there, you're depriving them of the ability to interact with you. Interactions in a team are not limited to formal meetings and formal pairings. In the best teams, it's the informal interactions that are the hardest for management to understand, the hardest to foster, and yet give the greatest rewards. If you're always late, you can break that.

On the one hand you can say it's an overreaction.

On the other hand meeting commitments is a pretty basic life skill, and probably one you should learn. It is no harder to be places at 9:00 than it is to be there at 9:06. Being late often signals to the other people involved that you do not respect them or their time. Whether that is true or not, whether you mean to say that or not, that's the signal that is received. It's even used in power games, where the more powerful person intentionally makes the other person wait for no reason.

Oh yeah. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_Ot1OEfk9I

It's all well and good for every bold young man to think that he is a unique and special snowflake, the "One" who can see through illusions, take the red pill, and become a superhero who saves the world.

In reality, you aren't that special and you have to work with others.

You could go work somewhere else with more flexible hours and still have problems because you're always late to work, late for meetings, late for calls. You'll still have trouble with partners, your family, their families, and acquaintances because you're always late for dates, late for planned events, late for family gatherings. Some people won't care, but some will find it disrespectful and think less of you for it. It's a habit I would break for personal reasons.

Company cultures are all different. Some are more traditional and value consistent hours. If there is no expectation of working longer hours and you can peace out at 5pm without a thought, then some people are ok with the understanding that they need to be in on time.

However as you advance in your career, odds are you will find you prefer flexibility (because life rarely runs on schedule), and more importantly, you will likely value working somewhere that pays you to get a job done, not fill a seat.

One of my biggest requirements now is having that flexibility--once you have it, it becomes VERY hard to go back. More importantly, it is increasingly common for companies to want you to be there at a fixed time in the morning, but then work unknown late hours. That seems a bit off to me for many reasons.

In any case, it is worth a discussion with your boss as to their expectations and reasons for needing you to be present at a certain time. Don't do it in a way that comes off as questioning their direction, but try to do it in a way to help gain perspective on where they are coming from.

Personally, my brain doesn't switch on before ~10-10:30am, so that's wasted productivity. I learned that I do well at companies that treat their employees like adults who can manage their time and work when they will be productive. As a result, I tend to get in ~10am or a little after, and leave around 6-7pm, and then typically wrap some things up from home for an hour or two at night if needed. I put in the late nights and weekend when it is necessary, and the flexibility my company offers means I don't have to worry about punching the clock or marking a time card...I can simply focus on getting my work done to the best of my ability to deliver the results they pay me for.

In my opinion, the punishment doesn't fit the crime. A simple warning, written or otherwise would have sufficed.

With regards to your own habit of being late, to echo what others here have said, it is something that you should fix. At one point I fell in to a pattern and I was constantly late for everything, it took a concerted effort to fix it and I think it was quite necessary.

Generally, being late is seen as disrespectful and an inability to keep your word. I've had people in my life at certain points who would show up up to 20-30 minutes late for some events. At that point I was too rattled by their tardiness to even want to interact with them. I am sure the same can be said about others towards me when I fell into a habit of being slightly late for everything.

Take yourself out of the equation and think about how your behavior makes others perceive you.

No, it's not OK. It's never OK to be "running late" according to however that is locally defined.

Even at a place that says, "We don't care when you come in or work at home, just as long as you're on site once a week on Wednesdays from noon to 3 pm," if you show up every Wednesday at 12:30 pm instead of at 12:00, your boss will get annoyed with you.

If there was a particular reason why you needed to come in at 9:05 instead of 9:00 every day, for example a bus schedule, that is a reasonable thing to negotiate.

The correct professional behavior (in ANY industry) is almost never to just ignore what your boss asks you repeatedly to do. The best thing when confronted by something like this is to openly discuss and negotiate the issue.

If you were sent home for the whole day, that sounds like a last warning at the end of a long series of failures to follow the customs of that particular company. If you don't come in on time on Monday, I suspect you will be fired immediately.

Time to move on. For two reasons: one is that the habit of running late is tied the place it was developed, the other is that it has been blown out of proportion [1] at your current employer. In addition, if they sent you home for the day, then do they really need you?

Is punctuality useful? Yes, if it accomplishes something. Plenty of business meetings always start late because everyone is always running late. Other meetings always start on time, and running late is unproductive. Factory production lines also come to mind. But in an ordinary professional workplace the important thing is getting the work done.

Finally, Your boss sent you home for the day, you aren't getting along well. So again, it's probably time to move on.

Good luck.

[1] There are circumstances where running late a few minutes is unprofessional, e.g. a critical meeting, but not an ordinary one.

Do you have a good reason (aside from habit) for being late to commitments? If not, fix the behavior -- it's annoying and disrespectful in US business norms.

If you have a good reason, explain it to your boss. I managed someone who lived a 40 minute drive away (that was variable) and absolutely could not leave earlier (because of a private issue) -- we had a daily scrum in the morning and he was always late -- he explained the issue and we accommodated.

Or --- get a job that doesn't care when you show up (there are A LOT of tech jobs like this).

This sounds like a maturity issue. Grow up. Show up on time.

If they want you there at 9, get there at 9. That's not unreasonable.

It really depends on the company and how much the company trusts you.

I'm an employer and if a new employee who has not gained by full trust continually comes in late, then yes it is horrible.

But I do have employees that I really trust. I know they are 100% committed to the business and committed to helping it succeed. They have proven over time that the company is always on their minds. In this case, I could care less if they come in late, work from home, etc. But it does take time.

Also, it is worth noting that losing trust is a lot easier than gaining it.

From all indications it looks like OP's boss and coworkers have zeroed out all trust in him. They're watching the door to mark when he's coming in. When people have earned a certain level of trust, this just doesn't happen.

Either that or you're so incredibly valuable and irreplacable that you can afford to take a fuck-this attitude. But I don't know a lot of 21 year-old junior devs that qualify for this. In fact, nobody really qualifies for this anymore, unless it's your name on the door.

Yeah most dev jobs are flexible about when you come in as long as you work hard and make the meetings. I am shocked he sent you home for the day. That is crazy. And don't get me wrong I am really annoyed by people who are late.

"...and partially because he knows I could go work anywhere else and make more money."

This kind of thinking is the bigger problem. You COULD get hired and you COULD make more money...until you were always late and get fired.

Grow up.

I have a tendency (which I think I've overcome) to keep working on something until the last minute so I can sympathize.

There are plenty of times when being late isn't a big deal. When others have to wait for you however, you are signalling that you don't value their time. It is perceived as selfish. I'm not saying that you are selfish, it is just that it can be perceived that way.

If you're lucky, people will start telling you that the meeting is at 8:45 just to get you there on time. Some places lock the door when the meeting starts. I had a friend who would always be late to our lunch appointments. When we instituted "late guy pays", things improved. ;-)

You can try to find a job where your problem doesn't effect others but you would be better served if you just learned how to be on time - at least until "habitually late" becomes a protected class. ;-)

At least in the Valley, hours tend to be flexible, at my current position, people walk in between 8 and 11. My team's stand up is at 11 so the rule is be in the office before them, but even then sending an email saying that traffic was bad, or Bart is dumb, or you're waiting for Fedex is okay (the assumption being you'll join the standup remotely and get some work from from home).

With the large companies that have shuttle's the flexibility is because they need to stagger all their busses.

It really depends on the culture and the type of environment though, much more "corporate" positions and cultures would require better on-timeliness, but being told to take the day off for being 6 minutes late seems odd for a developer position.

Depends on the company - I had a tech lead who once tried to mandate that all engineers on the team be in by 9:30 here in the Valley at a startup. I laughed when he told me that and said "Good luck getting that to happen" to him. He quickly learned that nobody was going to listen to him on that.

It's not even that I was against going in early - I'm typically in around 7-8 am. I just knew other engineers typically wouldn't.

Go find a new job that pays you enough that you're willing to be there on time.

Lateness is often considered rude because it shows you don't care about something. If this is a situation where that assumption is correct, then it's time to move on to a new job.

Late for meetings makes you a jerk. If you get your shit done and show up later than some arbitrary "start time" at work... your boss has a right to be like "c'mon dude" but not to penalize you. That's childish and petty, and another reason to move on.

I can relate to your situation. My wife, like you, seems to have some sort unshakeable predisposition to be late all the time. I on the other hand am always 5-10 minutes early. You can imagine my grumblings.

Getting up earlier is a question of motivation. Even my wife gets up at the crack of dawn if we are going somewhere special on a holiday. So I would guess that you are not motivated enough to make the effort of getting up 15 minutes earlier. You could fix the source of that problem. A bit of psychotherapy might be all you need.

As per @dropit_sphere, you might be under-motivated because you are under-paid and you probably chill out on the low-pressure environment.

Reading the other comments, you have options:

1. Take a job where you can set your own hours.

2. Take a job where you get paid a lot more, challenged and motivated to change for the better, including being on time.

3. Get your lateness behaviour dealt with.

4. Don't do anything, wait till you get fired then re-consider 1-3 above.

I have the same problem. I've come to learn that my issue is not that I am late all the time because I am lazy or disrespectful or whatever else one may think, but that I don't have a good sense for estimating how long things actually take. And, I am optimistic when estimating.

My solution is to become aware of how long things take throughout the day in an effort to make better efforts at planning. How long is my shower? How long does it take me to get dressed? How long does it take to get to my car and my actual commute, etc. With some real numbers, you can start to be realistic about what it takes you to get to work and so you can work backwards from there to make sure you leave on time. Works for me. I don't miss my train anymore.

I developed the same habit in high school. It was really annoying to pretty much everyone I ever had a meeting with (or a class or a date or whatever). I lost a couple of really good jobs because of it. You really just need to change your habits. It's totally doable, too, if you convince yourself that you need a few minutes before the meeting starts to gather your thoughts or whatever.

Just set expectations appropriately and meet them. Show up when you say you're going to, and if you don't, have a damn good reason why you didn't. I have no idea why so many highly paid professionals are saying something other than that.

In every single job I have, there is an unwritten rule that you can show up at anytime in the range 9-10:30am as long as you make up for the time. The only exception would be a meeting or something but that it was rare.

If you show up late and leave early then expect to get some pushback. If you show up late and then stay late I find most companies don't care.

I generally get to the office at 10:30, but then work a ten hour day.

should I be trying to fix this ~6 year behavior of running late?

Yes, really, you need to. From the subtext of your post, you seem to be late all the time and unable to fix your behavior. Your boss may be doing you a favor, to force you to reconsider that behavior. If you don't improve, I would expect you'll get fired eventually.

If I run a weekly meeting at 9am and you have been late every single time for the last 6 months, I'm going to be very unhappy. This has nothing to do with whether you do a good job the rest of the time.

Not a day goes by without an article about the redundancy of daily standups and about the fact that as a creative worker you can only work best at certain times and in certain environments.

Your problem is not that you're late. Your problem is that you lack respect for other people's time.

If you really think there's no need for you to be there at 9am, talk to your employer about it and try to get flexible time. Although I suspect you'll end up pushing it to the limit. In any case, please be aware that people shouldn't be waiting for you and that's highly disrespectful to not show up on time.

Being late sometimes is ok but every time for ~6 years ?

When people ask you to come at a certain time they are asking you if they can trust you to be here at that time. By arriving late deliberately you have abused their trust and been dishonest.

This is not a professional problem that you are having, it is a human problem : it is disrespect.

Set your clock back 10mins.

go back in on Monday, and from now on your start time is 8am. when you get there at 8.06 you're 54 mins early.

relax, walk around and say hi to folks, grab coffee and settle in.

they're sending you a harsh msg, but you're not fired. respect it, yourself and them and get your shit together.

keep going in at 8am until you move on to another company ...then reevaluate in that context.

edit: ps I've had similar problems over the years and it's a struggle. keep trying to get better at respecting other's time.

Any programming job that cares about you being consistently 5 minutes late to a 9am start time is not one worth keeping.

> Are there many programming jobs with more time flexibility that would fit me better? Is running late OK in the industry? Or should I be trying to fix this ~6 year behavior of running late? Has anyone dealt with similar issues?

Yes.

Yes, there are programming jobs that aren't nearly as strict on getting to one's desk at a specific time. This tends to be more the case with small businesses and startups (and big businesses that started off as stereotypical "startups" - i.e. the "unicorns" of lore) because of the proliferation of an attitude that how much (or little) time spent at one's desk is irrelevant so long as the employee in question gets his/her work done.

Yes, running late is OK in moderation, depending on the circumstance. Running late to a meeting is generally a bad idea (especially if the meeting is non-routine), but a lot of programming positions in particular aren't exactly strict about getting to one's desk on time. However...

Yes, you should be trying to fix this. Regardless of whether or not you're expected to arrive at work before a specific time, punctuality reflects well upon you, and will give folks who interact with you (not just employers, but also friends, spouses, and other peers) an impression that you value their time.

Yes, I've dealt with (and still deal with) similar issues, since I have the same tendency.

A trick I learned from my dad (who - according to my mom, at least - shares my tendency to procrastinate) is to internalize that "if you're not 15 minutes early, you're late". Try to be 15 minutes early to everything; if you had adopted this philosophy today, for example, you would've arrived at work at 8:51 - plenty of time to leave your things at your desk (proving that you are, in fact, at work), grab some coffee from the break room, and even read an HN article or two. If you can't get into the habit, then turn off the "sync clock with internet server" functionality of all your networked devices (phone, computer, etc.), roll all your clocks forward by 15 minutes, and then still try to aim for being 15 minutes early to everything according to your own clocks.

As briefly mentioned, this trick has tangible benefits beyond brain-hackery. If you're walking or biking to work (or some other engagement), it gives you some time to catch your breath. If you're driving, it gives you more time to make sure that you got all your things out of the car. In any case (as mentioned above) it might give you time to grab some coffee or a bagel or something from the break room before starting your shift, or smalltalk with the cute guy or girl three desks over from yours, or - at the very least - get an early start on the transition from not working to working (which tends to take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour; this is one of the reasons why pretty much anyone who isn't in a management position absolutely despises meetings, since the interruption causes an abrupt transition from "working" to "not working" (whereas for supervisors, the meeting itself is a transition from "not working" to "working", since their job is to manage their subordinates)).

Your employers are idiots.

Today I showed up at 9:06 and was told to go home for the day, and to come back on time on Monday.

Get a new job.

If what you say is true, and you can find work elsewhere, do so. If they're silly enough to throw away 7 hours of productivity over a 6 minute delay, fuck'em.

For a customer-facing position, your happy ass should be in a seat and smiling fifteen minutes before the client shows up.

For development work, though, especially if you aren't coordinating with other people, you should be able to focus on producing quality work quickly.

The time fetishism I've seen is something I mostly see in folks older than their 30s--basically, they don't get that time isn't the big factor it used to be, especially for developers.

Yes and no.

Sending them home for being 6 minutes late is totally overkill (unless it's something that has occurred many times, and there have been warnings).

Quitting for being sent home for a day also seems like an extreme reaction, though, especially if you like the job otherwise.

I wouldn't call it time-fetishism, and I wouldn't say it's something limited to "older folks," that seems particularly unfair. I'm 24, and when people couldn't be bothered to show up on time, I was bothered by it as well. And I'm a developer. I know that it's not vital that "you be in by x-o-clock or no work will be done for the day," but it definitely creates a stigma toward the individual who roles in later than the rest of the team.

Teams where it's a stigma, especially when we all know that time is fluid and productivity varies widely, even in spite of product shipped are bullshit and are getting eaten, slowly but surely, by flexible companies, remote workers, and Stuff-as-a-Service.

Burn your timesheet, and focus on shipping.

EDIT:

There's literally no good reason, if you aren't facing customers, to sweat time variations, especially if doing so comes at the cost of developer productivity. Just because somebody is used to a bullshit time system tracing directly back to the factory shifts of yore doesn't mean that more enlightened folks should stick with it when better options are available.

I'm not arguing for time sheets, or even any form of time tracking. Just that as a team, if we agree to show up to the office at a time, and someone isn't there then, you'll have feelings about it.

The part about teams that operate via timesheet is a bit of a stretch, imo. At least in larger orgs, I don't see the "need" (read: keeping middle-managers employed) for time tracking ever going away.

While I agree with the sentiment that time tracking is pretty useless, I don't think it's going to stop.

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