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Unpopular opinion: Weekdays/weekend split isn't for everyone

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Re: Unpopular opinion: Weekdays/weekend split isn't for everyone

#51

Post by fatnoah »

chillacy wrote: post #42
peruvian wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So another way to filter out or alienate older employees or those with families.

I wish people stood up for night owls when I had to suffer the sleep schedules of the elderly or 9-5 schedule in public school.

When I was VP of Engineering org for a startup, it was a group of about 30 Engineers at all stages of life. Some were young w/no obligations, some had families, a couple were single parents, and there were even a couple folks in the starting to have grandkids phase. I didn't particularly care what schedules people kept as long as work got done and they could be predictably reached.

As a result, there were people that worked 6am to 3pm(ish), 10-3, followed by 7-10 in the evening, 11-8, etc. I had a young child and handled school dropoff, so my hours were roughly 9am - 6pm. My boss, the CEO, was a workaholic who arrived around 10am and worked to whenever. I spent an amazing amount of time dealing with "where is everyone?" sorts of questions, despite the team running fairly efficiently and still completing work on aggressive schedules.

Re: Unpopular opinion: Weekdays/weekend split isn't for everyone

#52

Post by marketingPro »

watwut wrote: post #34
amelius wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More cons: - the company restaurant closes at the normal time (or all good stuff is taken) - you still get that condescending look from early-birds

In tech, it is people who work late who act superior. Early birds have it rather harder as they are seen as leaving early even if they objectively done more work.

I am an early bird and there's definitely a weird expectation to stay later than 8 hrs plus lunch.

I definitely never got any bonus points for being at work before my boss.

Re: Unpopular opinion: Weekdays/weekend split isn't for everyone

#53

Post by travmatt »

dqv wrote: post #43

Whenever I hear people propose "radical" ideas about work shifts and weekends, I always wonder how they expect it to work at e.g. nuclear power plants and 911 call centers. Most people, given the opportunity, would opt to take the day off whenever they felt like it and come in and leave work as they please. Creatives seem to propose these ideas as universal, but never give even a passing mention about work that is ne…

I assumed this argument was restricted those industries that have 9-5 and weekends & holidays off as the status quo: most b2b and some b2c.

I can see how this issue would come up for creatives though. Some jobs have their hours or shifts dictated by the complexities of the profession: for doctors and nurses, handing off patients to new caregivers can be complex and it’d be easy to lose information in the process: the marginal utility of keeping the same person in charge vs the marginal risk that they’re too tired and would make a mistake is something that’s being studied. For creatives, the 9-5 seems to be much more akin to a vestigial organ than a system driven by first principles.

Re: Unpopular opinion: Weekdays/weekend split isn't for everyone

#54

Post by saberdancer »

User23 wrote: post #13
tolbish wrote: post #5

That is an unpopular opinion in the same way that saying "The 40 hour work week isn't for everyone" is an unpopular opinion.

Especially since it's observably true that for knowledge workers, almost nobody actually spends even close to a full percentage of their work hours doing the work in their job description. The productivity loss from requiring say 30 hours a week a week instead of 40 would be significantly less than a 25% decrease. In fact I wouldn't bet against a gain in total productivity.

I wouldn't be surprised if % of effective hours remained the same, regardless if you are working 40 or 30 hours a week. I especially doubt it would increase total productivity, I could accept that it would improve efficiency.

Any short term study will observe effects of people wanting to "reward" shorter working week and aren't really representative. This type of change needs a long "stealth" study period.

Re: Unpopular opinion: Weekdays/weekend split isn't for everyone

#55

Post by skohan »

Freak_NL wrote: post #33
skohan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Wednesday off is not so bad for this; 2 vacation days and you're looking at a 5 day holiday

That goes for any weekday though, so not really a benefit except that you can have a five day holiday with only two extra days off that can include any specific weekday in it, but this holds true for Monday and Friday as the fixed day off as well. Only if you have Tuesdays and Thursdays off you won't be able to get a contiguous five day holiday with only two days extra off that can include any weekday (e.g., with a f…

Yeah the best thing about Wednesday for me is that you can only accumulate so much stress in 2 days

Re: Unpopular opinion: Weekdays/weekend split isn't for everyone

#56

Post by Volundr »

dqv wrote: post #43

Whenever I hear people propose "radical" ideas about work shifts and weekends, I always wonder how they expect it to work at e.g. nuclear power plants and 911 call centers. Most people, given the opportunity, would opt to take the day off whenever they felt like it and come in and leave work as they please. Creatives seem to propose these ideas as universal, but never give even a passing mention about work that is ne…

Well, I can say as someone who supports flexible scheduling and has run a team that way it's not so much that I ignored or didn't think about jobs where it didn't work so much as different jobs have different requirements.

I ran a team of software developers, system administrators, and a help desk. The software devs had near complete freedom of scheduling, the sysadmins had a little less, and the help desk had almost none since they needed to be there when the people they were helping were. Everyone had as much flexibility as their job allowed and it worked great. It sucked that the help desk didn't have the flexibility, but they understood why, and I tried to find ways to provide other perks. Plus on the flip side they'd never find themselves trying to resolve an outage at 1 in the morning on a Sunday.

Re: Unpopular opinion: Weekdays/weekend split isn't for everyone

#57

Post by erikerikson »

awinder wrote: post #24

Beware of history when mucking with weekends: https://www.history.com/news/soviet-union-stalin-weekend-lab...

What are we to beware? Most of the discussion here is about how increase individual choices over work time. That article details how individual choices was eliminated to increase control over workers.

Re: Unpopular opinion: Weekdays/weekend split isn't for everyone

#58

Post by ghaff »

franciscop wrote: post #46

I commented on this before and I will again. The popular alt schedule shared in a reply (Wed off) is great if your life's purpose is to maximize your work performance in detriment of personal time. That is, if you don't have a work-life balance already. It is not surprising then that people who try to maximize their work come with schedules that are worse for personal time. Instead, especially in our more privileged…

Wednesday off wouldn't be for me; I'd prefer long weekends. But comments about how Wednesday off is great because it limits the stress buildup in the course of a week really makes me think something is off. If things are so bad that you can only work two days straight before crashing, something's wrong.

Re: Unpopular opinion: Weekdays/weekend split isn't for everyone

#59

Post by boulos »

I’m currently shifting my schedule to work Saturdays and take off Mondays (I don’t have children, and my partner is flexible). Before the pandemic, I tried to block off time for deep work by booking multiple hours on my calendar each day.

The shift to Saturday has been mostly great. I get a full day of deep work when nobody else is willing to work (Saturday), and neither Monday nor Friday had meetings I cared much about. Being able to walk around on a Monday is way nicer during the pandemic. Again, I get that others can’t replicate it if they have other commitments — importantly, both partners would need to have this flexibility, and most children’s’ schools probably wouldn’t be up for it :).

The main thing as many are highlighting below is about overlap (and predictability for recurring meetings). I mostly work with people in US/Pacific, but also US/Eastern and somewhat less often Europe (London and Warsaw) and Sydney. So that’s already unschedulable anyway. People have been reasonably receptive to “oh, I see, yes you don’t work that day” though a good chunk ask “Do you really work on Saturday?” (to which I not only really work on Saturday, I probably get the most useful things done on that day).

Re: Unpopular opinion: Weekdays/weekend split isn't for everyone

#60

Post by malux85 »

peruvian wrote: post #39
Zhyl wrote: post #9

This was the topic of a video [0] posted by CGP Grey on the 25th August. Not mainstream, but I think the idea has been popular for a while [1]. >6.4 >A manager went to his programmers and told them: "As regards to your work hours: you are going to have to come in at nine in the morning and leave at five in the afternoon." At this, all of them became angry and several resigned on the spot. >So the manager said: "All r…

So another way to filter out or alienate older employees or those with families.

And what about us who are night owls and are non-functional until about 12 / 1-2PM, the current system filters out all of us.

The solution was literally “come in any time you want as long as your projects get done” - what’s your objection? That everybody who wants to come in at lunchtime, and work until the small hours force themselves around your schedule because you have a family?

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