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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?

#61

Post by shultays »

shultays wrote: post #59

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:…

Also my assumption is such meetings are at most weekly. I don't think it would be reasonable otherwise

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

#62

Post by SXX »

PeterStuer wrote: post #47
SXX wrote: post #14

I'll be completely honest: I work at small indie game dev studio with friends. This means we have to crunch for release, work every day and stay at night sometimes. Nobody force me to do it, but it happens. I love this job, but working like that is bad for long-term performance and will inevitable cause burnout. As others have said you are being overworked by your employeer. It's not only mean they dont care about yo…

Freelance certainly does not have to be 12 hrs a day to be successful.

That's can work once you have established profile and clients for long-term support - true. Before you reach this moment you really have to work a lot on your profile / getting customers.

Also it obviously gonna depend on what is your speciality. I guess some RoR / Java developer will more likely to find long-term contract.

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

#63

Post by denismi »

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…

0900-1800 CET is 1900-0400 AEDT. How would that work?

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

#64

Post by inglor »

I'm in a large corporate (Microsoft) and in my new'ish team (under Office) we have very few meetings (compared to before, approx 1h a day) and no late-night ones.

It really depends on what you do - one of the reasons I'm an IC and not a manager is to reduce the number of meetings (when I managed, even at startups it was always a lot of meetings which were needed/required).

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

#65

Post by jrumbut »

bamboozled wrote: post #31

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…

Yeah, figuring out what you've really been hired to do is so important to happiness.

We all have our own idea of what excellence in software engineering looks like, but sometimes we're actually working as chairsitters, other times we're email account managers, sometimes we were only hired so our name/expertise/certifications can be listed on the "About Us" page.

Most of us would say an engineer can still be excellent with a flexible start time, but a chair sitter absolutely can't have that. However it would be fair for a chair sitter to get on the clock time to devote to upstream open source projects or to experiment with new database systems that might be useful for scaling.

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

#67

Post by spaetzleesser »

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?

I do that too. I am not giving into the pressure set up by the company and it’s up to the other people to refuse too. Otherwise the company sets up abusive systems and workers play along. We all need to resist this abuse.

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

#69

Post by janee »

Yes! I'd say avoid:.

- industries that have serious consequences for errors, e.g. finance, health.

- high volume client facing systems, e.g. high tps b2c (think large e-commerce).

- companies not yet in a mature phase, e.g. 10 years or older.

Start there in terms of simple rules of thumb to filter out potential jobs. Then when doing interviews dig further. Lastly don't take leadership positions.

In the end of the day it's definitely possible to find something fulfilling but not all consuming, just take your time to find a place...I'm sure it's out there

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

#70

Post by fma »

PeterStuer wrote: post #56

"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.

I think it's YMMV...I am an in house dev in somewhat of retail and manufacturing and we have major product launches every few months and there's crunch time....then supporting our marketing and retail websites can require off hours support.

We have teams outside the US, mostly business teams (non-IT) that we interact with....China, Israel, Ireland.. Even within the US in Phoenix is a 3 hour timezone difference from me on the East coast.

Another commenter said...find a company that only services the US.

Unless my company clones me (i.e. hire a part timer who does what I do, but only in Asia and west coast) I just become reasonably accommodating knowing we all work together and in the same boat to find hours that work without interfering with my life.

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