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9-5 Is Out. Try the 1-6 Instead

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Re: 9-5 Is Out. Try the 1-6 Instead

#61

Post by watwut »

nitrogen wrote: post #24
davehtaylor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the ideas aren't necessarily generalizable, but what if we shifted to an idea that people's individual schedules reflect when they specifically are most productive. Someone else who replied said they were most productive in the morning. Great! Let them have and earlier start time. For me, I'm completely useless in the morning. Sure, I can be in the office at 8:00am, but you're not getting any meaningful…

...if they want to come in a 8:00pm and work until 2:00am, why not? Part of the "why not" is a deeply ingrained belief in at least American culture that morning people are just "better" than night people. It's so ingrained that we mostly forget to talk about it and it's just assumed. "Early bird catches the worm" and all that. I once saw a workplace where there were night-person-friendly policies and schedules. Then…

In tech it seems to be opposite. Staying late make you seem like hard workers, but nobody cares if you come soon.

Re: 9-5 Is Out. Try the 1-6 Instead

#62

Post by GuiA »

crispyambulance wrote: post #51
Apocryphon wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also an argument that's been made that kids go to school too early in the day and school start time should be postponed to later in the morning, because they need more hours of sleep.

They need a solid 6-8 hours of sleep, like other humans. I suspect the problem is that teens just stay awake FAR LONGER than is advisable perhaps to maximize their free unstructured time at night and to minimize the crushing grind of the mornings? I expect that if the school start time was shifted to 9am, the kids would just stay up until 5AM instead of only 3AM.

Most adults need 6-8 hours of sleep. Kids need more than that.

https://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Childrenssleep/Pages/howmuchslee...

Re: 9-5 Is Out. Try the 1-6 Instead

#63

Post by sekou »

As many have said, there's more to this than just one type or the other. It might be worth considering taking a more intentional look at organizing teams around similar circadian rhythms. Some of the most productive work I've done was with a team that really started gaining momentum in the afternoons and sometimes into the evenings. I think many who deviate far from the "norm" self-select into late-night service industry positions. There are a lot of misconceptions around "early birds" or "late workers" that could be explained by varying sleeping patterns.

Re: 9-5 Is Out. Try the 1-6 Instead

#64

Post by krylon »

nitrogen wrote: post #24
davehtaylor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the ideas aren't necessarily generalizable, but what if we shifted to an idea that people's individual schedules reflect when they specifically are most productive. Someone else who replied said they were most productive in the morning. Great! Let them have and earlier start time. For me, I'm completely useless in the morning. Sure, I can be in the office at 8:00am, but you're not getting any meaningful…

...if they want to come in a 8:00pm and work until 2:00am, why not? Part of the "why not" is a deeply ingrained belief in at least American culture that morning people are just "better" than night people. It's so ingrained that we mostly forget to talk about it and it's just assumed. "Early bird catches the worm" and all that. I once saw a workplace where there were night-person-friendly policies and schedules. Then…

It is more complex than that. I do not own a car, so I have to use public transportation to get to work, and that dries up outside the main working hours.

Another issue is that it often makes sense for people that work together to be in the same place at the same time.

The implicit assumption that it is somehow morally better to get up early in the morning is very prevalent in Germany, too. I think it's a protestant thing, or at least a Christianity thing - getting up late in the morning implies sleeping in which implies laziness, which is a deadly sin. In fact, I remember listening to an interview with a neurologist (or a biologist whose focus was the nervous system), who said it was absurd to force children to get up as early in the morning as the adults, because for the first one or two lessons, their ability to learn would be impaired anyway.

There is one thing to be said, though, in favour of uniform working hours - it is that you do not need to worry about when your friends are free or working. During my Zivildienst (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zivildienst) I worked in a hospital in shift work. Working the early shift meant I could not go out the evening before, because I had to get up at 05:00, so I had get to bed early; working the late shift meant that I only got off work when it was already evening.

Re: 9-5 Is Out. Try the 1-6 Instead

#65

Post by EpicEng »

nitrogen wrote: post #24
davehtaylor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the ideas aren't necessarily generalizable, but what if we shifted to an idea that people's individual schedules reflect when they specifically are most productive. Someone else who replied said they were most productive in the morning. Great! Let them have and earlier start time. For me, I'm completely useless in the morning. Sure, I can be in the office at 8:00am, but you're not getting any meaningful…

...if they want to come in a 8:00pm and work until 2:00am, why not? Part of the "why not" is a deeply ingrained belief in at least American culture that morning people are just "better" than night people. It's so ingrained that we mostly forget to talk about it and it's just assumed. "Early bird catches the worm" and all that. I once saw a workplace where there were night-person-friendly policies and schedules. Then…

part of it, yes, but unless you work in a complete vacuum people will need your input throughout the day. They may need support, or your attendance at a meeting, or maybe the just need to ask a simple question. I couldn't support one of my devs asking for hours completely opposite everyone else as it would slow the entire team down.

Re: 9-5 Is Out. Try the 1-6 Instead

#66

Post by EpicEng »

davehtaylor wrote: post #34
dictum wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then one insanely morning person joins and wants to leave at 3:30 every day. Suddenly all of his scheduling preferences were presumed valid Why wouldn't their preferences be presumed valid? It's as hard for the morning person to deal with night-person preferences as it's hard for a night person to deal with morning-person preferences. (Disclaimer: I'm a morning person and I'm not American.)

I think it's because people think "morning person" is the default, and correct, way of being. And that not being a morning person makes you odd or lazy. So when someone comes in challenging late-friendly scheduling, they're assumed to be the correct one, and that the workplace has somehow been in error by allowing later schedules.

But morning really is the default; it's our biological default. Most people wake up in the morning and go to bed at night naturally. Many people have small children, good luck remaining a night person with a 1 year old in the house. There are real reasons here, it's not just some arbitrary decision.

Re: 9-5 Is Out. Try the 1-6 Instead

#68

Post by krylon »

core-questions wrote: post #58
logfromblammo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the Ben Franklin Poor Richard's Almanac thing: "Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." He was also the buttmunch that gave us daylight savings time.

I used to be really against DST, but honestly, it's the only thing that actually lets me see the damn sun at all in the winter, so now I'm a fan.

But DST is in summer, isn't it? At least that is what I have been told: In summer, days are so long and start so early that we might as well move the whole day back by an hour, so get up early, finish work early and still have a couple of hours of daylight left.

Full disclosure: I am not a fan of DST, but I do not expect the current situation to change. In Europe, almost(?) all countries use it, so if just Germany (where I live) abolished DST, we would be out of sync with the rest of Europe for half of the year. Dealing with dates and times as a programmer is already confusing enough; if DST was to go, all countries would have to drop it simultaneously, or else the resulting patchwork would be too much of a pain. And I do not see that happening anytime soon.

Re: 9-5 Is Out. Try the 1-6 Instead

#69

Post by travisjungroth »

cat199 wrote: post #48
dictum wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then one insanely morning person joins and wants to leave at 3:30 every day. Suddenly all of his scheduling preferences were presumed valid Why wouldn't their preferences be presumed valid? It's as hard for the morning person to deal with night-person preferences as it's hard for a night person to deal with morning-person preferences. (Disclaimer: I'm a morning person and I'm not American.)

> Why wouldn't their preferences be presumed valid? I'm guessing OP doesn't mean 'presumed valid' but 'preferred in decisions' despite previous practice and ostensibly minority position..

It's like everyone missed the second half of that sentence! Morning was presumed valid and night wasn't. That's the point.

Re: 9-5 Is Out. Try the 1-6 Instead

#70

Post by krylon »

crispyambulance wrote: post #51
Apocryphon wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also an argument that's been made that kids go to school too early in the day and school start time should be postponed to later in the morning, because they need more hours of sleep.

They need a solid 6-8 hours of sleep, like other humans. I suspect the problem is that teens just stay awake FAR LONGER than is advisable perhaps to maximize their free unstructured time at night and to minimize the crushing grind of the mornings? I expect that if the school start time was shifted to 9am, the kids would just stay up until 5AM instead of only 3AM.

There may be something to it. At least, when I was young, I could accumulate a lot more sleep-debt before there were consequences.

These days (I am 37 now), when I go to bed an hour later than usual, I will feel it all day. Might not be a huge deal, but I notice it.

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