[salmon30salmon]

For those who live in our Ivory Tower of the software industry that may be true, but the 9-5 concept is not outdated for a vast majority of working humans on the planet. Lets not project our reality onto the rest of the world.

[rtpg]

Here's a fun thing though:

Japan adopted the 9-5. But Japan is on solar time, and thus the sun comes up at 4 AM during the summer in Tokyo. Japan also doesn't do DST. So 9-5 is actually 11-7 in "equivalent sunlight"

The idea of time zones is to keep people in sync, but most of the world is not even on a "12PM=Solar Midday" schedule! So when the sun comes up at 4, if feels weird, because it doesn't match what you see elsewhere on the same longitude.

[acqq]

Are you sure you got it right?

If I understood correctly, Akashi is the "standard" (as in, fixed from Greenwich) reference in Japan, some 270 miles west of Tokyo, that means that the Sun is at the highest point just some minutes before 12 in Tokyo, which is not significantly different from what happens in London when the DST is not active? England sees the highest Sun at around 1 pm when the DST is active, but that's only one hour, give or take the minutes of seasonal variations from the real solar time, and that really only when DST is active, and Japan, as you say, doesn't do DST, and has the similar seasonal variations.

Therefore I don't understand your "11-7" equivalence.

[majewsky]

I think his error is in assuming that the zenith should correspond to the midway point of your workday. Which is entirely not true: Our society is organized around getting to work first thing in the morning, and having some sunlight left after work hours for social activities.

[rtpg]

My point is that 9AM in Tokyo and 9AM in Madrid or Virginia are vastly different in terms of "position of the sun", despite being the same longitude.

http://blog.poormansmath.net/images/SolarTimeVsStandardTimeV... <-- this map shows the difference between clock time and solar time. Western Europe and much of the US is 2 hours behind solar time compared to Tokyo.

So Tokyo is set to a 9-5, but if they want to follow the same strategy of getting to work first thing in the morning, then they should be doing 7-3, or even a bit earlier due to DST non-observance.

Main point is that 9 AM means vastly different things, even counting for longitude. Standard time has become standard, in setting when people wake up, but it's far from the locally ideal situations.

[acqq]

Thanks for the picture, nice. I see it's from

http://blog.poormansmath.net/the-time-it-takes-to-change-the...

As the picture shows, Spain and the parts of France are the extremes in the Europe, in the rest of Europe the Sun is closer to being at 12:00 (not counting DST) not too different to Tokyo.

Yes, the map you link shows is that some parts of the world have wider time zones than it would allow all the people living there to have the Sun very close to 12:00. But your "Tokyo sunrise" argument is still not a good one. All the areas (and cities) in the map that are "relatively white" have Sun at the highest point around 12:00 noon. Tokyo is "relatively white." New York and LA are also "relatively white." So I still don't know what is your perspective for Tokyo being strange. Can you please explain? The dramatic example would in fact be Spain or even Argentina.

[acqq]

I see even bigger error in his argument based on when "the Sun comes up" since it's dependent on the latitude even in the same time zone. He should ask somebody living close to the North pole.

http://geography.about.com/od/physicalgeography/a/longestday...

"Reykjavik, Iceland Earliest Sunrise: 2:55 a.m. from June 18th through June 21st." (Reykjavik is 64° N)

"London, United Kingdom Earliest Sunrise: 4:43 a.m. from June 11th through June 22nd." (London is 51° N)

"Tokyo, Japan Earliest Sunrise: 4:25 a.m. from June 6th through June 20th." (Tokyo is 36° N)

[TheOtherHobbes]

When I lived in London the seasonal variation in sunrise was just one of those things you lived with.

Everyone gets wrenched by the start and end of BST, but generally if someone says "5pm" or "17:00" you get a seasonal sense of how much daylight that implies. I can't imagine the US - or anywhere else - being different, except possibly close to the poles.

Absolute sun position matters a lot less than the felt relationship between clock time and sun position. That sense changes slowly but reliably over the year.

The obvious benefit of time zones is that virtually everyone you interact with daily has the same subjective time sense. Everyone knows that midday is going to be bright, midnight is going to be dark, and the rest is going to vary with the season.

A single universal time would lose that.

[zentiggr]

I've thought occasionally about a clock standard that has 0800 be sunrise every day, and run the rest of the clock until whatever time necessary to reach the next day's 0800 point... unworkable for blatant reasons but it would do away with the dissonance of waking up in darkness or post-twilight morning depending on seasons.

[vidarh]

Yeah, I grew up in Oslo, Norway, and found his idea that the sun rising around 4am in summer was something unusual very strange. To me, sunrise occurring well before I wanted to wake up in summer was the norm.

But then we also have far longer periods of sunlight during the summer.

What's annoying me even now in London is that sunset still comes too early during the summer (during the winter, on the other hand, I definitively appreciate the longer days here vs. Norway)

[grey-area]

the 9-5 concept is not outdated for a vast majority of working humans on the planet. Lets not project our reality onto the rest of the world.

On the contrary, the 9-5 concept has never applied to the vast majority of working humans on the planet (agriculture, health, factories, sales, even most offices don't keep those hours). With growing communication across time zones, their difficulties have only recently become more obvious, previously this sort of communication was rare, now it is becoming commonplace.

The solution to not being sure if someone is working at a given hour is to schedule a call, preferably using a sane shared timekeeping standard which doesn't change hours at the whim of politicians.

[majewsky]

> the 9-5 concept has never applied to the vast majority of working humans on the planet (agriculture, health, factories, sales, even most offices don't keep those hours)

Also, reproductive work (nursing children, taking care of the sick and elderly, cleaning the house).

[wott]

You really think so?

[wsinks]

So far you have the most levelheaded comment I've seen (out of 4... not a big sample size), but just wanted to agree.

We all need to get off our high horse and be more specific, at the risk of smaller readership. For global teams that are making software, GMT / 24 hour clocks are great. But lets not project our reality onto the rest of the world. I love that comment!

[cyberferret]

The opposite is also true - don't imagine a 1930's production line factory or bank clerk as the reality of a majority employee population working day.

Farmers, truck drivers, pilots, bakers, hospitality workers, nurses, street sweepers, security guards and a thousand other jobs are NOT bound to a 9-5 working time. Indeed, outside of government or large corporations, I struggle to find many professions that ARE bound (or have to BE bound) to these hours.

[emodendroket]

I think first, second, and third shift are pretty much just as rigid if not more so.

[hrktb]

I think this could be a good impetus to get rid of that. Right now the concept of 9-5 is often adopted by pure inertia even when there is no reason to do so. The day we'll have to all translate the current '9-5' to a different number, it will be a serious chance to reevaluate if that's appropriate.

For instance my place has a requirement on being there around 9:30 in the morning even though we should be part of the "Ivory Tower" club you mention since we actually work day in day out with people on different time zones.

Same with public services opening at 9h an ending at 18h, forcing everyone else to open holes in their schedule to get there.

[mhenr18]

Don't forget that the people working in said public services also need to open holes in their schedules to access the services that other companies provide.

What kind of hour staggering were you thinking about to try and solve the scheduling problem?

[JBlue42]

In the US, try 9-6, unfortunately.

[jlj]

I am in the US and try to do 9-5, plus or minus an hour on the start time, sometimes leaving at 4pm. And while I am usually among the first to leave the office, I don't feel guilty about leaving by 5 any longer considering the occasional odd hour conference call and late night work that pops up.

I miss out on time with my family if I leave later than 5, and I prioritize that over looking busy in the office. After 5 my mental capacity and productivity is dwindling anyways.

Would love to stay on DST and never go back. Kids don't sleep in an extra hour. It makes for a rough week.