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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?

#51

Post by tetha »

> With this on-call culture thanks to the 99.99 uptime thats become the de-facto industry standard for most companies, I wonder whether such companies exist anymore !

A lot of companies have terrible on-call processes, bad infrastructure and not enough cost-pressure to fix the infra.

We do offer systems with 24/7 99.9 uptime in SLAs - yet, people are happy to take on-call for a week. They do, because a normal week has zero, or one incidents going on out of hours. Two is considered a lot. At three interrupted sleeps, rotation is offered. At four, rotation is forced and at that point, we usually start to go through full post mortems for all pages to squash this problem.

On top, a long escalation at night means the person is legally not allowed to work usually until noon the next day or longer (10 - 12 hours of mandatory rest). The latter alone is a very good incentive for the company to fix technical issues or processes causing these incidents, because all of a sudden, a person pretty much isn't working for a week. Besides them being effectively drunk after 3 interrupted sleeps, just without the fun.

And similarly, evening work is usually planned 1-2 weeks ahead so we can batch 2-3 hours of evening work together. The person then in turn doesn't work the regular day.

With measures like that, even us as the ops-team can have normal working hours from 8-10 to 16-18 usually. Unplanned work after 20:00 is very rare.

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

#52

Post by another-dave »

Hold on, so you raised to your manager that you're getting burnt out my late night meetings & his solution was to move you to a role where late night meetings are inevitable?

To be honest, he doesn't sound very good — I'd either try to change manager or change company.

To your wider point — there are still companies that have a more traditional dev vs ops/sysadmin separation. Especially bigger, more traditional businesses (non tech start-ups) that still do their own software dev in-house.

Otherwise, you could get a role where the quality of tooling & support while on call is better. There's a difference being 1st line support in a place where things are always on fire and being 3rd line support in a place where the only time you're getting a call is once in a blue moon and there's a postmortem afterwards to work out how it could've been prevented.

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

#53

Post by plaguepilled »

Structure and boundaries in a workday is less a function of the industry and more of manager competency. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, I've seen both sides of the coin.

Preemptive reply: yes, it also applies to 100% uptime services. The trick is to have redundancy at all stages - which is what managers are paid to ensure.

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

#54

Post by lancebeet »

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?

The way I see it, the pressure has been "outsourced" to the employer rather than being an implicit pressure on the employee. Western European companies can also require workers to be on pager duty or work outside normal working hours, but it needs to be treated as actual work, adhere to the regulations, and be appropriately compensated. Prohibitive costs may convince the employer not to exercise this option and instead "outsource" the pressure to employees in areas with more lenient regulations. This is the choice of the employer, not of the employee working in the western European country.

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

#55

Post by [deleted] »

Rygian wrote: post #48
bamboozled wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I fail to see what is unreasonable in my attitude, you give no explanation in your comment. My "team" is composed of around 700 people across Asia and Europe. My kids are in school during work hours. My 6pm—midnight slot is strictly private life and there is no reason for it to be otherwise. So, your last line contradicts the rest of your own comment.

[deleted]

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

#56

Post by PeterStuer »

"Is it even realistic to have a 9-5 kind of structure in IT/software dev field?"

Yes, it is even the norm outside of the more exploitative environments. Most stable are the in-house dev teams in non-IT industries like financial services, retail, logistics etc.

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

#57

Post by vladvasiliu »

fleischhauf wrote: post #34
cinntaile wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It can be, but people have to be a bit flexible on both sides.

The most extreme example I have is myself, in France, having calls with people in New Zealand. That's an 11-hour difference. Basically, we'd have them at 8 AM CEST, which is 7 PM NZDT.

8 AM is somewhat early by Paris standards (usual office day begins at 9 - 9:30, with many people coming in around 10) but it's still feasible. I don't know how the day is organized in NZ, but I'd assume being done at 8 PM is a bit late but still tolerable.

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

#58

Post by csunbird »

tetha wrote: post #51

> With this on-call culture thanks to the 99.99 uptime thats become the de-facto industry standard for most companies, I wonder whether such companies exist anymore ! A lot of companies have terrible on-call processes, bad infrastructure and not enough cost-pressure to fix the infra. We do offer systems with 24/7 99.9 uptime in SLAs - yet, people are happy to take on-call for a week. They do, because a normal week ha…

An American company recently rescinded an offer that they made to me because I mentioned the mandatory rest hours between oncall procedures in the interview.

I felt like I dodged a bullet.

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

#59

Post by shultays »

What kind of timezones are we talking about here? Unless your partner is on the other side of the globe, ie 12 hours time difference, you should be able to find a reasonable time for both of you by shifting your work hours a little for the meeting day. Even a 9 hours difference means that one side can have it on 8:00 - 9:00 while other one is 17:00 - 18:00.

Even at 12h difference, otherside can have it on 20:00 - 21:00 (or one hour earlier if you are ok with 07:00 - 08:00) which I wouldn't call late night

A late night meeting implies the other side is not having a similar compromise.

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

#60

Post by samatman »

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?

You can't argue with the clock.

When I was living in Hawaii I was up at the crack-end a few times a month, pounding coffee, trying to ignore the roosters.

Social acceptability had nothing to do with it. It wasn't a great hour for Brussels either.

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