I wonder if they have any employees in the southern hemisphere, and if so, are the summer hours flipped for them, or do they just get winter hours instead?
Why Basecamp CEO Jason Fried Believes 40 Hours Is Plenty
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Re: Why Basecamp CEO Jason Fried Believes 40 Hours Is Plenty
#12We encourage developers to work 20 hours a week. Our experience is any engineer worth their salt is as productive in 20 hours as they were in 40 --- if anything, they're more productive. We also have an unlimited vacation policy, but we enforce a minimum of two weeks a year, which has really helped ensure people actually use their vacation time.
How do you enforce the minimum, and also how do you make sure people don't mistake the minimum for the expectation?
Re: Why Basecamp CEO Jason Fried Believes 40 Hours Is Plenty
#13We encourage developers to work 20 hours a week. Our experience is any engineer worth their salt is as productive in 20 hours as they were in 40 --- if anything, they're more productive. We also have an unlimited vacation policy, but we enforce a minimum of two weeks a year, which has really helped ensure people actually use their vacation time.
I can second this for personal projects. When I had two hours per day to work on personal projects I accomplished more than when I moved to work part time and thought an extra 3 hours would be beneficial. They were the opposite.
Re: Why Basecamp CEO Jason Fried Believes 40 Hours Is Plenty
#14We encourage developers to work 20 hours a week. Our experience is any engineer worth their salt is as productive in 20 hours as they were in 40 --- if anything, they're more productive. We also have an unlimited vacation policy, but we enforce a minimum of two weeks a year, which has really helped ensure people actually use their vacation time.
> if anything, they're more productive
I cannot count the times that I've spent the whole Friday on some problem just to have the solution occur to me out of nowhere at some moment during the weekend.
Re: Why Basecamp CEO Jason Fried Believes 40 Hours Is Plenty
#15[deleted]
Re: Why Basecamp CEO Jason Fried Believes 40 Hours Is Plenty
#16We encourage developers to work 20 hours a week. Our experience is any engineer worth their salt is as productive in 20 hours as they were in 40 --- if anything, they're more productive. We also have an unlimited vacation policy, but we enforce a minimum of two weeks a year, which has really helped ensure people actually use their vacation time.
Could you please update your HN profile. Usually a member checks it to get in touch. Interesting policy and I do agree that qualified engineers should be able to deliver within a reasonable time frame. That said, the time spent on the problem isn't the best measure to gauge productivity. Each person approaches problems differently and usually well knit teams solve problems faster than geniuses in isolation.
Re: Why Basecamp CEO Jason Fried Believes 40 Hours Is Plenty
#17We encourage developers to work 20 hours a week. Our experience is any engineer worth their salt is as productive in 20 hours as they were in 40 --- if anything, they're more productive. We also have an unlimited vacation policy, but we enforce a minimum of two weeks a year, which has really helped ensure people actually use their vacation time.
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Re: Why Basecamp CEO Jason Fried Believes 40 Hours Is Plenty
#18We encourage developers to work 20 hours a week. Our experience is any engineer worth their salt is as productive in 20 hours as they were in 40 --- if anything, they're more productive. We also have an unlimited vacation policy, but we enforce a minimum of two weeks a year, which has really helped ensure people actually use their vacation time.
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Re: Why Basecamp CEO Jason Fried Believes 40 Hours Is Plenty
#19At Voxy we have a 40 hour policy for our engineers, it's been in place for about 15 months. Before that it wasn't unusual for engineers to work 12 to 14 hour days. It's increased our engineer satisfaction tremendously, productivity is actually up 40% with fewer hours and we haven't had a single engineer leave in over a year. Would do again 10/10.
Re: Why Basecamp CEO Jason Fried Believes 40 Hours Is Plenty
#20Why not 35 or 30 hours or even 25 hours? That last hour or two or three at work are near worthless for me and just about everyone I know. Having parents leaving between 2-4 means they'll be able to pick up their kids directly from school or limit "latch key" alone time. Non-parents will certainly enjoy less time at work and more sunlight and time for physical activities while its still light out. Seems to me, the dom…
Well done on mentioning non-parents; a subset of the workforce usually overlooked in these conversations.