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Ask HN: Is it possible to have a structured work day in software dev?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to have a structured work day in software dev?

#31

Post by bamboozled »

Discount everything I'm going to say if:

* You're meetings go later than midnight or 1am, I think that's unreasonable.

* You're working more than 8 hours a day.

I also used to complain to myself about this a lot, then I became resentful and I became kind of grumpy / surly in the meetings. I complained to my managers about it and then I realized, for them, meeting attendance was more important than anything else. So I just adapted my schedule to that aim and it was a success.

For me it wasn't late night, it was early morning meetings that were a problem, I'm a night owl, I understand everyone is different, there you might like working early mornings for example.

Anyway I still struggle with the meetings, but I realized that I used to get up early and commute, and I also realized I have a very flexible life and I even have some of my meetings from bed if I'm extra tired, just turn off the camera.

After a while looked around me and saw that there are truck drivers, who drive all night, they are away from family for long periods of time. Pilots have to do all sorts of weird hours. I guess nothing is perfect, but at least once your meetings are done, you're off to a comfortable bed.

TL;DR: While it seems bad, is your situation really that bad, can you somehow make it work for you? Can you take most of the day off and work evenings? Can you be more flexible yourself?

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to have a structured work day in software dev?

#32

Post by bamboozled »

Rygian wrote: post #16

I work a strict 9am–6pm schedule from western Europe, and interact with both Asian and American colleagues. I simply decline all meetings that are outside of my work window, and it would probably be against the law for my management to expect me to do otherwise ("right to disconnect"). I do know, however, that some of my colleagues in Asian countries feel an non-official pressure to accept late-evening meetings so th…

I think your attitude is unreasonable in some ways. With remote work, you can (I'm assuming) plan your day, work your hours that suits your team. This includes taking your kids to the park during daylight hours, then working from say 5pm - midnight.

The right to disconnect feels more about letting people disconnect "after hours". But this depends on your hours.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to have a structured work day in software dev?

#33

Post by suction »

cinntaile wrote: post #21
Rygian wrote: post #16

I work a strict 9am–6pm schedule from western Europe, and interact with both Asian and American colleagues. I simply decline all meetings that are outside of my work window, and it would probably be against the law for my management to expect me to do otherwise ("right to disconnect"). I do know, however, that some of my colleagues in Asian countries feel an non-official pressure to accept late-evening meetings so th…

In a sense you outsourced your pressure to a country where it is less socially accepted to refuse I guess?

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to have a structured work day in software dev?

#34

Post by fleischhauf »

cinntaile wrote: post #21
Rygian wrote: post #16

I work a strict 9am–6pm schedule from western Europe, and interact with both Asian and American colleagues. I simply decline all meetings that are outside of my work window, and it would probably be against the law for my management to expect me to do otherwise ("right to disconnect"). I do know, however, that some of my colleagues in Asian countries feel an non-official pressure to accept late-evening meetings so th…

In a sense you outsourced your pressure to a country where it is less socially accepted to refuse I guess?

its still possible to do meetings (timewise) between europe and asia at for both acceptable hours though,societal pressure aside

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to have a structured work day in software dev?

#38

Post by jmfldn »

I don't have it that bad compared to you but I do suffer from v complicated days.

* Several meetings including standup. These vary massively from low level tech discussions, planning sprint work at more of a 'product' level, and some big picture company strategy type stuff. I go though lots of big context shifts basically.

* Ad hoc calls helping people out with problems.

* Mentoring

* Fire fighting occasional production issues.

* Answering questions from the wider business / tech community.

* Sprint work.

The main issue for me is time fragmentation, all of the above can lead to a lot of context switching. My ways of coping are as follows:

* First thing. Write a new todo list. Catch up on lower priority slack messages, emails and so on.

* Decline meetings where they're not useful.

* Split burden of attending certain meetings between teammates eg. we don't all have to be at everything.

* Mute Slack and work for 30 minute periods. Focus on one thing. Do not multi task. After that period, see if there's anything important to reply to. Repeat.

* Try to do the hardest earlier in the day. Admin and lower complexity tasks are best left to end of the day.

This is just what works for me, hope some of it is useful. I frequently don't do all of this. It's just an ideal that I try to strive towards however imperfectly. I'm OK with failure and I don't expect to ever really nail this. That's just another source of stress. A structure with rules really helps lower the cognitive burden for me though.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to have a structured work day in software dev?

#39

Post by marcinzm »

My current company has teams in NA and EU but they tries to avoid having many meetings across large time zone differences. Even then there are set hours designated for it which keep the time reasonable for everyone. My team is pretty much 9-5 in their time zone (+/- 2 hours per individual preference) and on-call is fairly rare (both in how often you're on call as it's department level and how often an actual alert goes off). The company generally values WLB although I do now some teams are less good about it.

To answer you question. Interviews are a two way street and it's on you to ask questions to figure out the WLB of the team. Don't ask "how is the WLB" but ask specific questions such as "how many time the last month were there meetings after 5pm" or "how often did pages go off the last few months and what is the rotation schedule."

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to have a structured work day in software dev?

#40

Post by sidlls »

High availability doesn’t require constant in-person vigilance. And on-call rotations should be brief: 1-2 weeks every quarter or so for any reasonably sized team. Even that is objectionable: the company should have dedicated SRE staff that do that work.

9-5 is possible even at really good paying tech companies. Your manager/org just sounds to be in quite a poor state. I’d suggest looking elsewhere or, if you’re bold, looking at how things can be improved and either spearheading that change possible or making recommendations for it

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