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Ask HN: Is your company (job) family friendly?

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Re: Ask HN: Is your company (job) family friendly?

#11

Post by sparrish »

I was working for a company that was moving from remote work to full-time in the office. My former co-worker and I decided to start our own company so we could stay remote and close to our families. I have 7 kids, he has 8 and we both homeschool.

That was almost 6 years ago and I've never regretted it. If you value time with your family, nobody is a better boss than you. It's not unusual for me to shoot an IM over to my business partner that goes something like "Really nice weather today. We're headed to the park for an hour or two."

Re: Ask HN: Is your company (job) family friendly?

#12

Post by ioquatix »

softawre wrote: post #3

9-6 is 40 hours/week with unpaid lunch, and pretty standard in US tech jobs as far as I know. Asking the team to sometimes work 45 hours during busy times seems reasonable to me. I give my team time to learn new stuff on the job. Obviously I strive to hire smart people so that doesn't take forever. I am not sure exactly what you are asking for. Companies OK with working 35 hour weeks?

As a consultant who works from home with two (young) kids, it's hard to imagine working these kinds of hours. It seems sort of inhumane.

Re: Ask HN: Is your company (job) family friendly?

#13

Post by Danihan »

ioquatix wrote: post #12
softawre wrote: post #3

9-6 is 40 hours/week with unpaid lunch, and pretty standard in US tech jobs as far as I know. Asking the team to sometimes work 45 hours during busy times seems reasonable to me. I give my team time to learn new stuff on the job. Obviously I strive to hire smart people so that doesn't take forever. I am not sure exactly what you are asking for. Companies OK with working 35 hour weeks?

As a consultant who works from home with two (young) kids, it's hard to imagine working these kinds of hours. It seems sort of inhumane.

That's why you have one stay at home parent.

Re: Ask HN: Is your company (job) family friendly?

#14

Post by user5994461 »

softawre wrote: post #3

9-6 is 40 hours/week with unpaid lunch, and pretty standard in US tech jobs as far as I know. Asking the team to sometimes work 45 hours during busy times seems reasonable to me. I give my team time to learn new stuff on the job. Obviously I strive to hire smart people so that doesn't take forever. I am not sure exactly what you are asking for. Companies OK with working 35 hour weeks?

> Companies OK with working 35 hour weeks?

It seems reasonable to me to target 35 considering it seems reasonable to you to expect overtime.

Re: Ask HN: Is your company (job) family friendly?

#15

Post by Danihan »

sparrish wrote: post #11

I was working for a company that was moving from remote work to full-time in the office. My former co-worker and I decided to start our own company so we could stay remote and close to our families. I have 7 kids, he has 8 and we both homeschool. That was almost 6 years ago and I've never regretted it. If you value time with your family, nobody is a better boss than you. It's not unusual for me to shoot an IM over to…

You're the most successful person on HN.

Re: Ask HN: Is your company (job) family friendly?

#16

Post by derekp7 »

softawre wrote: post #3

9-6 is 40 hours/week with unpaid lunch, and pretty standard in US tech jobs as far as I know. Asking the team to sometimes work 45 hours during busy times seems reasonable to me. I give my team time to learn new stuff on the job. Obviously I strive to hire smart people so that doesn't take forever. I am not sure exactly what you are asking for. Companies OK with working 35 hour weeks?

How much work actually gets done after about 4:30pm or so? If your position is a mixture of dev and support, I can see it being a bit more productive after most of the office gets quiet. But otherwise it seems that not much really gets done then.

Now, doing a burst of work from home on a weekend or at night can be really productive. But staying up too late makes the next day at work kind of hard.

Re: Ask HN: Is your company (job) family friendly?

#17

Post by marianov »

spike021 wrote: post #6

Probably depends on your friend's location and the number of companies he's interviewing with. I'm single, but at my company (at least on my team) the start and end hours are pretty flexible as long as you're getting work done. For instance, I generally get in about 10-15 minutes before 9AM, and then I can usually leave either around 4:25PM or 5PM (depending on which train I'm taking back home) and I'll take a 30-60…

You are doing 9 to 5 and being allowed to eat. Where is the flexibility? That's normal office hours. As a manager I considre flexible to allow people in or out or WFH as long as they put some solid hours every day and deliver. If it works for the project and the company allows it I have no problem with WFH. I've met too many managers who say they have flexible schedules when they mean "sure, go home an hour early today, you can go one hour later tomorrow". Man hour accountants.

Re: Ask HN: Is your company (job) family friendly?

#18

Post by dandr01d »

beilabs wrote: post #2

I once declined a job as it wasn't a good fit. The company that I did go with had some great childcare attached with the position; Anyhow, upon declining i mentioned that we were planning on having a kid in the future and this childcare was a nice bonus. The response from the company that I declined? 'If we had known you were going to have a child then we would not have made an offer'. Bullet dodged.

I can't believe anyone would be dumb enough to say something like that, after you already declined. This is an Uber HR-tier response.

Re: Ask HN: Is your company (job) family friendly?

#19

Post by beilabs »

dandr01d wrote: post #18
beilabs wrote: post #2

I once declined a job as it wasn't a good fit. The company that I did go with had some great childcare attached with the position; Anyhow, upon declining i mentioned that we were planning on having a kid in the future and this childcare was a nice bonus. The response from the company that I declined? 'If we had known you were going to have a child then we would not have made an offer'. Bullet dodged.

I can't believe anyone would be dumb enough to say something like that, after you already declined. This is an Uber HR-tier response.

Not HR; CEO.

Re: Ask HN: Is your company (job) family friendly?

#20

Post by Ascetik »

sparrish wrote: post #11

I was working for a company that was moving from remote work to full-time in the office. My former co-worker and I decided to start our own company so we could stay remote and close to our families. I have 7 kids, he has 8 and we both homeschool. That was almost 6 years ago and I've never regretted it. If you value time with your family, nobody is a better boss than you. It's not unusual for me to shoot an IM over to…

Well done sir. I plan on doing the same, but I have 2 and another on the way. My daughter's God-father has 8 kids and works as an engineer from home and his wife home-schools. The kids are the happiest you'll ever meet and super smart.
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