Do you know what is a great productivity boost? Muting all slack notifications.
A connection between after-hours work and decreased productivity
101–110 of 133 posts
Re: A connection between after-hours work and decreased productivity
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
> make things easier for working parents. During the (now semi-aborted) back-to-office push at my employer, several of us pointed out that a 9-5 in the office is impossible for those of us with children and a commute. - 8:00am - earliest free drop-off time at school. - 8:12 or 8:20 - next bus or train to the city. I can probably make that from the school, if I fully sprint for at least half that journey. (Taking a ca…
When I was a kid, I would get dropped off early for “before school programs at school” and stay at “after school programs” at school and get picked up late because both of my parents worked full time. Do they not have those anymore (which sound like less money than “hiring childcare”)?
They do. But they both cost money. My child is already enrolled in the after-school program, from 2:30 until 6:00.
Re: A connection between after-hours work and decreased productivity
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> make things easier for working parents. During the (now semi-aborted) back-to-office push at my employer, several of us pointed out that a 9-5 in the office is impossible for those of us with children and a commute. - 8:00am - earliest free drop-off time at school. - 8:12 or 8:20 - next bus or train to the city. I can probably make that from the school, if I fully sprint for at least half that journey. (Taking a ca…
In this case it just makes sense to have RTO at reduced hours. Make the standard work day something like 10-4. I never understood why people throw the baby out with the bathwater on things like this.
I think in our case it was driven by the company's new owners not being based in our area, and not understanding that our commute and living situations are vastly different from theirs.
Re: A connection between after-hours work and decreased productivity
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Working smart vs working hard. Also - optics. Notice how even if you are an early bird and in the office by 9, you are a lazy slacker when you leave at 5? Then someone rolls in at 11 and leaves at 7 - same number of hours. HARD WORKER. People are shallow, visual, and have no attention spans (especially now). You need to be aware of the optics and play them. No, you are not gaming the system - you are getting to the e…
> Notice how even if you are an early bird and in the office by 9, you are a lazy slacker when you leave at 5? Then someone rolls in at 11 and leaves at 7 - same number of hours. HARD WORKER. So I generally agree with your post, but is this what constitutes early riser these days? I get having kids and missing the key 7-9am time slot, but is an 11am start time a Usual Thing?
Yeah I'm weirded out by that as well. On our platform engineering team, the "early rising" crew is usually up and working at 7 - 7:30. Some guy needed the afternoon hours for personal reasons and started working at like 6:30 for two or three months.
Personally I like to start working around 8, so I can triage the monitoring while the brain runs through the last boot processes and unit activations so I can use those (for me) very productive hours between 9 and 12.
Re: A connection between after-hours work and decreased productivity
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree with some of this. I think if you work with international teams, half of the time of day stuff is in play no matter what. But in general I sort of agree that we should all try to work slower/work fewer hours, for the good of society. But we shouldn’t harass those who have more time and interest in the work they’re doing and want to work more, or those who might need more breaks or work most optimally at a…
Fully agree. If you have international teams, they shouldn't be working on the same project, if it can be avoided. Having teams with different working hours work the same project sabotages communications.
I have to disagree vigorously based on my current experience. My team, working on a single project/product, is globally distributed. There are team members in APAC (New Zealand), Europe, and America, and (IMO) we do very well at communicating and producing solid results.
It does take specific effort, mainly expressed in written communications in tickets/issues and other more ephemeral channels (Slack in our case). You have to think carefully about what information must be shared and how to do so. You can't just drop a random comment and hope for a good interpretation. There needs to be a "call to action": a question, a request for specific activity/response, or a suggestion (or several) for possible next steps. There also needs to be trust built between team members, which takes time and similar effort.
But when this is unlocked to its fullest potential it becomes an absolute super-power. The problem you were facing when you finished the day? Fixed by your team-mates when you start the next day, some more progress (hopefully), and they hand back the next problem to solve. Apparent velocity goes through the roof and personally I find it incredibly satisfying.
Mind you, this is all coming from an all remote/all async company. I can potentially see problems if you had two part-teams in separate time-zone separated offices with minimal overlap. Then you'd potentially run into the usual human tribalism and culture drift, and communications aren't necessarily going to solve that.
Re: A connection between after-hours work and decreased productivity
#106> Three out of every four desk workers report working in the 3 to 6pm timeframe, but of those, only one in four consider these hours highly productive. It’s nice to see some data on this. A lot of people talk about a 4-day workweek, but personally I think a 6-hour work day would be better. At least in white-collar jobs, I think most people could fit the same amount of productivity into fewer (focused) hours. Plus a d…
> make things easier for working parents. During the (now semi-aborted) back-to-office push at my employer, several of us pointed out that a 9-5 in the office is impossible for those of us with children and a commute. - 8:00am - earliest free drop-off time at school. - 8:12 or 8:20 - next bus or train to the city. I can probably make that from the school, if I fully sprint for at least half that journey. (Taking a ca…
well, sure if you live so far away that you spend 3 hours a day commuting...
I would just work on the train and arrive late /leave early.
Re: A connection between after-hours work and decreased productivity
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Making that much money I would expect that you can take almost any career risk you could imagine. I understand that you're basically millionaire at 35 years old, you're basically set for life and can focus on doing things you find more interesting, such as learning about robotics without any monetary pressure. That's a pretty luxurious and safe situation! Maybe take some time off can help you realize how insanely far…
Somehow that doesn’t work. For most people retirement money (or “can take any career risk” money) goal post keeps changing. Often involuntarily.
Lifestyle inflation is definitely a thing, especially with a partner and kids. You're not going back to living in a crappy apartment with non-related roommates if you have a choice. And you don't want to give up nice trips and meals out.
Stepping off a well-paid career trajectory is also hard to do even if you're pretty sure you have enough savings to comfortably cover your annual living expenses. It can be hard to get back on if things don't go as planned. I've definitely known people who ended up pushing semi-retirement out a bit because work wasn't getting in the way of life too much and why not stash some more money away while the stashing is good?
Re: A connection between after-hours work and decreased productivity
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was a kid, I would get dropped off early for “before school programs at school” and stay at “after school programs” at school and get picked up late because both of my parents worked full time. Do they not have those anymore (which sound like less money than “hiring childcare”)?
They do. But they both cost money. My child is already enrolled in the after-school program, from 2:30 until 6:00.
How much do those cost these days compared to say, day care programs (per hour)?
Re: A connection between after-hours work and decreased productivity
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
The secret is automation that does things while you're doing other things. Parallel not series. I've even seen people secretly hire foreign virtual assistants to do their low value tasks for pennies while the employee focuses on the higher value tasks.
So I'm assuming that your comment is in reference to me casting doubt on the usefulness of automation in meetings, emails, and other forms of communication. The point is that there's plenty of high level, technical, and nuanced communication that can only happen between experts. The expertise isn't documented anywhere (unless you count previous email exchanges), it's not somehow represented in a database, and often t…
I'm honestly not sure what I would use an admin for if you gave me one. A lot of what an executive admin does is dealing with the calendars of people who have far more demands on their time than they have time. And getting the status on various projects from people. Generally speaking, other than travel sometimes, I don't really have a lot of "Make it So!" tasks that I could delegate to an admin/assistant.
There are things that I'm not good at that I'm better off not spending time hacking at to do a mediocre job--e.g. web stuff generally or design--but that's really something else.
Re: A connection between after-hours work and decreased productivity
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
11 or 12 EST is common for west coasters obviously… then if their boss is east coast and an idiot they value them being there “late”
Why does that make them an idiot? To see value in overlapping work hours?
I’m saying if they favor the person who happens to be on later due to time zones, when everyone works the same hours.