[danny_sf45]

The only reason for me to not go back to the office is: fixed working hours. Sure, my contract says I have to work 40h/week, but I just can't. If I'm at the office, I would probably work (focused) around 4 or 5 hours. The rest is "wasted" with: chat with other coworkers (non-work related stuff), breaks... but I have to be there for 8 hours no matter what. At home, I can work those 4 or 5 hours (focused) and call it a day. I don't have to pretend I'm working, I just close the laptop.

Same outcome (for the company), less (wasted) hours for me. This is impossible to achieve if one has to go to the office. (can you imagine entering at 9am and leaving at 2pm while telling everybody: "hey, I cannot work anymore, I'm only able to work focused 5 hours per day. See you tomorrow!".)

[hinkley]

I have basically stopped eating lunch.

I'm not saying that's a good thing (it really isn't, and my QoL improved when I forced myself to take a lunch break every day), but it does change how much time my butt is in the seat between 9 and 5.

What I am definitely missing out on is small talk with coworkers. Small talk builds rapport. Rapport de-escalates engineering disputes. I expect a year from now we'll all be complaining about how nasty everybody is when everybody is working remotely.

[freehunter]

I started on a remote-only team about 6 years ago. For half of that time our only chat system was a 1-to-1 and you could do group chats but had to explicitly invite people and they had to accept. When we switch to Slack (although Teams or Riot or open source would have worked too) and had always-on chat rooms, things changed dramatically.

Prior to the change, I only “knew” coworkers I had traveled to clients with and spent time with in the same room. Now I “know” everyone who regularly participates in the water cooler chat. We have our serious chat room, our water cooler room, rooms for other teams so we can ask questions, DMs, gif support, everything. It’s really brought us closer together as a team. I couldn’t imagine working remote without a watercooler, all-team, anything-goes chat room.

[janesvilleseo]

100% agree. Working remote for about a decade. When we added slack before the company had teams for our group it completely changed the dynamic for the good. The company added teams right before COVID hit and it’s been a blessing. It has forced the entire company to adapt and adopt it quickly. It worked. I connect more frequently to nearly anybody I need to. I have more water cooler talks then ever.

[Izkata]

Oddly, our shared social chatroom was most active when we were all in the office. Over the past few months it's tapered off to the point where now there's a week gap between conversations.

[ralph84]

Ours has also tapered off over the last few months, not because people are remote, but because they're afraid of being called out for not being sufficiently woke. Easier to remain silent than try to appease the cancel mobs.

[chillwaves]

What would you possibly say at work that would get an accusation?

I've worked in plenty of jobs and this has never remotely been a concern for me, including for higher ed where Title IX is strictly enforced.

Just to be clear, you are claiming that not just you yourself, but also your coworkers are silent out of fear of reprisal?

[oblio]

If I'd have to guess, a bunch of these people were jerks and they hate being silenced...

[notadev]

I don't talk about politics, religion, money, and most current events. Still have alright conversations.

[freehunter]

Yeah it’s easier to not say hateful things than it is to try to “appease the mobs”. So I guess that means if you’re not talking to your coworkers anymore, the only thing you could contribute to the conversation before was hateful things?

My team has very nice conversations about the weather, our pets, even video games we’ve played or movies we’ve watched. Nothing “woke” about it. If you’re worried about being canceled, maybe try saying something that has nothing to do with politics?

[rdtsc]

After 5 years or so working remote I noticed a few of the same things:

* Lunches got shorter, I eat then quickly go to the home "office" to read something or respond to someone.

* Time I spend working went up on average. It's somewhat hard to stop working in the evening.

* The home "office" is right there so sometimes it's too easy to not go in and finished a few things. Two or three hours later, I am still there finishing a few things.

* Not as much small banter with the coworkers.

All that said, it is still a lot better than working in the office. I can focus better, I can turn off the messages and notifications if I need to force interactions to be asynchronous. Not need to burn gas and time and nerves commuting. I don't see myself going back to working in an office environment.

To fight the temptation to do a "little bit more work", I shut everything down, turn the laptop and the displays off. Shut the door to the office closed and that's it. It's a small thing but it helps.

To build rapport with coworkers, find one or two coworkers who you enjoy talking to and engage in some small talk. See if they want to chat a bit about a pull request but then ask about their day. If they are not interested or busy you should be able to tell, but if they want to tell you about a crazy thing that happened the other day or share something, it might be easier if it is initiated as a work call then build on that.

> I expect a year from now we'll all be complaining about how nasty everybody is when everybody is working remotely.

There is more coldness, no doubt, however, if the company is already all remote it just becomes the new baseline. And being kind and assume the best from people is something to work on and put a bit of extra effort into. Sometimes inserting silly "ah"s, "hmms", and emojies here and there in the conversation might seem unprofessional but it helps make things more informal and it substitutes for non-verbal communication to some extent.

[kerkeslager]

You recognize the problem, now fix it.

Make a habit, each week, of spending 15 minutes making small talk with every member of your team. As them how they're doing, how work is going, how the family is, whatever. If you have 8 people on your team, that's 2 hours. That's a very small cost to pay for a happier, healthier team that works smoothly.

As a contractor I think it would be totally justified to bill for this because of the value it provides, but I've never had the guts to try billing for it. Still, I don't feel resentful about doing it for free because I don't just view it as part of my job, I view it as part of my responsibility as a human as well. We've gotta look out for each other.

[jovdg]

Funny - there was no problem, but now you created one (in assuming he should work from home).

And you create artificial solutions. I don't understand.

[jovdg]

Sorry, wrong thread

[t-writescode]

I strongly recommend ‘random’ rooms in your shared chat messenger, or a way to make random rooms in whatever communication infrastructure you have. They’re vital for maintaining social interactions

[Balgair]

Virtual Happy Hours also help. They don't have to be booze focused.

[Corrado]

Or look at another solution - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23928666

My team was becoming more and more remote even before the Covid-19 lockdown and a constant, real-time connection is something that we were exploring.

[schwartzworld]

I struggle to think of something I'd like to have in my home less than an always-on camera.

[codazoda]

Can you explain random rooms for those of us that are not familiar? Just rooms for random chatter, like watercooler?

[phamilton]

My favorites (company of about 100 people):

  #random
  #hot-takes
  #woodworking
  #home-improvement
  #pictures-and-videos
  #eli5-tech

And many more.

[draebek]

I like these channels a lot. I have to ask, though, doesn't #hot-takes end up getting people in trouble? Like HR trouble? Or at least stuff like starting political flame wars between colleagues?

[phamilton]

#hot-takes is pretty fun. Some recent examples:

"The imperial system is awful compared to metric, but Farenheight is a better temperature scale for humans than Celsius."

"soft-close hinges/slides are a worthless and annoying novelty in modern cabinetry. they feel worse to open and closing a drawer without slamming it isn’t that hard"

"Cartoon Network was way better than Nickelodeon in the 90s-00s. Both of them win over Disney Channel any day"

"email should be banished, just like faxes and cheques. it’s an extremely inferior and unsuitable medium for how we communicate online these days"

"cucumber is an overrated and is only good in gin and tonics"

Basically, nothing is actually of consequence there, but people get fired up and have strong opinions. It's a fun interaction.

[ace32229]

Hot takes don't have to be political. Sport (X team deserve to win more than the current leaders), food (flats are better than drumsticks), etc.

[swensel]

Why not just chat with your coworkers on Slack or whatever your company's messaging platform is? I'm still having the same conversations online that I would in person.

[ghaff]

When not traveling, I've been remote for quite a while. I do tend to take some sort of mid-day break. But I don't typically do a lot for lunch as a meal. (Unless I occasionally drive out and get takeout and have a lighter dinner.)

[griffinkelly]

One of the biggest QoL improvements for me has been not traveling. I enjoy visiting a new city every once and a while and meeting new people for work, but now in retrospect, my overall work life balance has significantly improved with no business travel.

[hinkley]

If they did a better job of making sure you got a chance to see the city instead of the inside of a hotel, a taxi, a convention center, and office, then I think it would be different. Young people get suckered into it because they don't know yet that they're in for something worse than not going at all; being moment's away and not being able to take advantage of it.

My coworker got sent to 'back home' to do an install for a big customer. He was planning to take an extra week to see extended family, and he asked if he should take it before or after the install. I pushed him to do it before, but he opted for after.

He spent two weeks sitting in a server room trying to sort out problems and barely saw any family. If he had seen them first, we would have extended his stay to get the customer sorted out.

[ghaff]

If you have the control and are in a position to spend the time (which may well depend on family situation), it's partly a function of making the time. Which I've usually done when practical. The timing is not always practical but, in normal times, I've made a point of tacking on personal time to work trips. At the moment, I'm sorry I didn't extend one or two of my early 2020 trips more, but who knew?

[ghaff]

Traveling a lot is what I really miss--for all that I complain about it. I was hoping that I could at least do personal travel relatively freely in the fall but that seems a non-starter. I definitely need to figure out a Plan B if, at some point, I can reasonably travel for myself but events are all still shut down.

[simlevesque]

I did this very often for a long time.

[Fishysoup]

I think the need for an office depends a lot on the type of work that needs to be done. If you're working in R&D or science, for example, it's really (really) hard to make much progress alone, without people bouncing ideas around, showing you how things work, whiteboards, etc.

Sure, you could do some of that on zoom, but the psychology of it is very different, and the spontaneous component of it is gone completely. It's awkward to slack someone with "hey do you want to talk about some ideas i have, using the awkward zoom annotation tool?". They'll probably say yes, but then other people who might have something interesting to contribute (or learn) will not be present. Also the feeling of interacting with people via videochat is weird, especially if you're new to the workplace.

Also, for many people it's vital to have a) a workspace that isn't your home; b) human beings around you who work on similar things; and c) a sense of community. I realize that many workplaces are toxic and don't offer any good versions of b) or c), and working remotely could be better then (though a better idea would be to find a new employer if you can). But, though many people are thriving in this new work-from-home environment, equally many or more are suffering.

Also, regarding the 4-5 hours of productivity a day: yeah! There's been a lot of studies on this, and some countries/companies have been experimenting with 4 day work-weeks or shorter workdays. There's definitely progress to be made there.

[PragmaticPulp]

> Also, for many people it's vital to have a) a workspace that isn't your home;

This is easy to forget when you don't have any children at home. Many parents with young children at home are struggling with the work from home situation.

Even among people without kids at home, having a dedicated office space can make a huge difference. When I managed remote teams, the people who carved out dedicated office spaces for themselves always seemed to do better than those who tried to work where they also played video games, for example. It's important to be able to context shift into and out of work mode.

Going into a physical office is the biggest context shift, but even at home you can create this context shift by having a dedicated work space. It doesn't have to be big or even permanent, but it's helpful to have some spacial cues that you're in work mode vs. home mode.

[minerjoe]

> context shift into and out of work mode

I find that dressing the part also helps. Something about trying to be a professional engineer in my shorts and britney spears t-shirt doesn't seem to motivate.

[neutronicus]

I emphatically do not.

Hey, my balls aren't sweating and I waste a third of the time I used to on showering! Go me!

[allenu]

You're right that the spontaneity is missing. Everything has to become formalized in some capacity to ensure everyone knows what's up as well.

Just recently I noticed that my coworkers were all jumping into a slack thread. It was a thread that was active hours earlier but that I missed out on, so I couldn't put in my input. If this was in the office, the fact that everyone was having a big conversation would be a signal to turn around and engage in it, but in the virtual world, someone has to specifically @ you to have you join, or else create a formal meeting to discuss it.

The small connections that grease the wheels of communication are gone or are more challenging when you have to do them over Slack or video call.

[sktguha]

For that maybe a setting can be there in slack that if too many people in a thread please notify me

[dasudasu]

I really don't understand this. In a cubicle farm environment, you'd walk over their desk, interrupt whatever they are doing, and ask them to follow you to a separate meeting room to use the whiteboard? And how are other people supposed to contribute if you close the door in order not to disturb anyone in the radius of this meeting room?

I found that it's much less awkward to hit them up on collaborative tools. Meetings are also much easier to spin since you don't have to herd people into a single room and convince them as hard to use their limited time on this meeting since they can just do something else in the background if they're not in another one.

[Fishysoup]

Well, in my workplace for example, there'd be spontaneous questions that would move to the whiteboard, and ideas could be fleshed out and developed there. Also, research meetings and journal clubs would be lively and full of debate. Since WFH started, none of this has been the case.

Again, i think it really depends on the people and the workplace. Some people are really content working from home, others are losing their minds.

[tomc1985]

Text chat is amazing. Maybe growing up in the heyday of chat services has made it feel natural to me, but I don't understand these complaints about how people don't feel like they can connect emotionally etc etc.

Do you need to do these interactions over Zoom? Or is it habit?

It's like, if you can connect with a book, you can connect over chat. It's just words.

[Fishysoup]

This just varies from person to person and workplace to workplace. Many people are fine without in-person interactions. Others go insane without them.

[mc32]

The most productive workers barely scrape 50% productivity; however, idle, chat, socialization and other “wasteful” time isn’t wasted. You learn things about the needs of other groups, colleagues, the politics and all sorts of things you’d never pick up on working remotely.

[baron_harkonnen]

> all sorts of things you’d never pick up on working remotely.

When people say these things I seriously question if they've ever worked remote before. Yes if being remote makes you atypical for your workplace, then you'll probably be left out. But if you're working for a remote-first team the it's completely different. Nearly all of my closest coworkers I've met have been at remote companies.

I have had tons of interesting conversations, brainstorming session and just generally fun discussion while remote.

Honestly, I have personally found the amount of more toxic conversations also drops when remote. The problem with in-office socialization is that you have to socialize with people you might not particularly like (working with people you don't like is fine, but having to have conversations with them, go out for team drinks with them etc is another thing). This leads to generally more toxic behavior, since you have to put more energy into those social interactions.

[PragmaticPulp]

> The problem with in-office socialization is that you have to socialize with people you might not particularly like

This is actually a problem with remote companies.

It's really easy for teams to silo themselves away in private chat channels and form exclusionary cliques. It's fun for those in the inner circle, but it's miserable for newcomers and anyone else trying to get work done without being part of the in-group for a particular project.

Obviously the same dynamics can play out in a real office, too, but it happens much more frequently when it only takes a few clicks to make it happen. People are much more likely to be mean to each other when it's just a screen name on your computer rather than the real person you have to see every day.

[greedo]

How is this any different than office based companies? My team has multiple cliques; the coffee bros and the vape bros. The Windows admins and the *nix admins. The sports fans and the sportsball haters. The desk lunch people and the restaurant eaters. Some of these overlap, but not always.

Now that we're remote, it's much easier. None of the high school bullshit. If you're on a project, you're assigned work and have project team mates if you get blocked. With daily standups (even for non-programming roles), it's pretty easy to see who's struggling with a story, who might need some help, and who's rocking just fine.

[Polylactic_acid]

I have actually spoken more to my coworkers while remote than at the office where its one big open plan room where having a conversation will bother 20 other people.

[rightbyte]

Political power play doesn't work out as easily remotely. Social manipulations is harder. That is my observation.

[PragmaticPulp]

Interesting, because my pre-COVID experience managing remote teams was just the opposite.

The toxic people were much more likely to play politics or manipulate people when they were just a screen name in Slack than when it was Jim from down the hall with a wife and two kids. The office politicians were always hiding away in private Slack channels or even separate invite-only Discords that they created for the in-group to talk separately from the rest of the company.

In fact, one of the quickest ways to defuse politics and toxicities was to fly everyone to a location for a few days of meetings. The context didn't matter so much as just getting people in the same room.

It's the same phenomenon that drives people to be friendly and civil in person, but then tear each other apart on Facebook or Next Door. In person communication is more human.

[rightbyte]

Hmm strange ... I guess I was lucky or that it varies widely? Or maybe the effect I am noticing is eg. that is easier to ignore "office politics" when you literally can mute a meeting.

[oblio]

We're pretty much hardwired to react to other people, live. There are even studies for this.

Heck, even crossing the street is safer if you look the drivers in the eyes: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/motr/safe-crossing...

Stereotyping, I know that HN is a bunch of introverts, but we were built for actual, face to face, human contact. That can't really be replaced with anything modern technology can offer us. Maybe in 10-20 years...

[foobiekr]

Where I work now is olympic-level politics, and .. I strongly disagree. If anything kingpins are more powerful in the current state of affairs.

[zwayhowder]

Would love to read any research that backs that number. (I'm not saying you're not right, I just like reading research papers).

[dijit]

This one says we are only productive about 40%, which is in-line with other stuff I've read:

https://www.inc.com/rebecca-hinds/new-research-says-workers-...

[PragmaticPulp]

That's not exactly what the study says.

The study claimed that people spend a lot of time doing "work about work", dealing with apps, and so on: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191017005053/en/Asa...

The time spent on distractions and procrastination was around 1 hour per day:

> On average, the research shows that knowledge workers waste one hour and four minutes each day due to distractions and procrastination

So to be clear, people were working for more like 80% of their day, but not 100% of that time was considered core work or productive meetings.

People don't simply socialize and mess around on the internet for 50% of their work days at most companies. I've been at companies where people get away with that level of messing around, but I wouldn't say it's the norm.

[JackFr]

> On average, the research shows that knowledge workers waste one hour and four minutes.

Just minutes? No seconds? Garbage study.

[katbyte]

I'd rather spend that time on other things tbh

[phendrenad2]

Also some teams practice "watercooler-based development". Requirements and coding standards are passed by word-of-mouth. Being remote in an environment like that effectively means you're cut off from key knowledge required to do your job.

[ericmcer]

Also going by parents idea that completing a task is the end of your workday, any socialization is eating into your free time. The entire thing has added stress as you race towards completion each day

[throwaway894345]

I would be very interested to hear more about these claims if you can share a link.

[danny_sf45]

I agree that the socialization part is not actually "wasted" time and I would love to do it as much (or as little) as I want per week (ideally one or two days, instead of five days per week on a forced basis).

[Nition]

I have to say I'm a bit surprised at the positive reaction to this here. This person admits that they're contracted to work 40 hours/wk but they they only do 20-25 hours when working from home. I've always tracked my time even when working from home to make sure I'm doing the amount of hours I'm getting paid for.

If this person was contracted to achieve a certain amount of work done I'd totally understand, but they're contracted based on time. Kinda surprised how positive the Hacker News crowd is towards skipping work for up to 50% of contracted time. I know work gets tiring, but I find it hard believe anyone can really do great solid work for half a day and then can't possibly get anything productive done in the second half.

[PragmaticPulp]

> I have to say I'm a bit surprised at the positive reaction to this here. This person admits that they're contracted to work 40 hours/wk but they they only do 20-25 hours when working from home.

In all seriousness: The people putting in the most focused hours are less likely to be discussing their work deep in the HN comment section during daytime hours. The people who think procrastinating for half of the day is the norm are going to be over-represented in the HN comment section. And yes, I realize the irony of posting this comment.

> I know work gets tiring, but I find it hard believe anyone can really do great solid work for half a day and then can't possibly get anything productive done in the second half.

It's a common trope on internet comment sections, but I haven't seen it nearly as much in the real world.

Sustained work and focus aren't exactly the easiest thing in the world, but people can and do learn how to put in 6-8 solid hours of work per day all of the time. It's one thing to subtract meetings and e-mail from your count of productive hours, but it's strange to hear so many people claiming that they can't physically work more than 20-25 hours in a week.

In my experience, I've noticed this thought becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in some of our junior hires. If people arrive at the workplace with preconceived notions that no one works more than 3-4 hours per day or that focusing for 8 hours is physically impossible, they don't even try to improve their ability to focus and be productive. Pairing them up with more productive coworkers usually fixes this misconception very quickly.

[R0b0t1]

>but people can and do learn how to put in 6-8 solid hours of work per day all of the time.

This isn't true. It depends on whether the work is cerebral or not. Certain workloads are limited to as little as 2 hours per day, for 2-4 hours of real knowledge work per day. The rest of it is either extremely suboptimal or of a different class.

Something semi-mechanical like translation or categorization that isn't obviously mechanical could probably occur for a full workday.

[hanfsi]

Ah come on thats still bullshit.

I have and had plenty of full days of coding smart solutions where, when i was in the flow, would even forget that i hit 8h work.

If i really hit my head against a wall because i literaly have an issue i can't figure out right now, i will still try to find different angles or take a walk but i will not just close my laptop after 2-4h of work oO?!

[R0b0t1]

If you're working 8hr straight I'd guess you're following up on work you previously invested a lot of time into.

I don't really see "coding" as productive work. The entire point is the write as little as possible. Most of my day is full of reading and thinking about the problem. The actual coding part is quite small.

[the_gipsy]

It's possible to focus 8 hours every day, you just have to sacrifice some more of your time to rest afterwards.

It's just not worth to throw your life away for someone else. Especially if your peers don't do it, and you won't get rewarded proportionally for doing it.

[astura]

It's definitely a mindset and is self-fulfilling, once I started working in a restricted area (no internet, cell phones, other electronics allowed) I stopped feeling like I was having trouble working 8 hours a day.

Yes, I write software.

[Izkata]

> And yes, I realize the irony of posting this comment.

Well, you posted it around 8pm my time, so...

[themarkn]

The person does the same amount of work at home that they do in the office, because when being in an office there is a normal background level of distraction, socializing, breaks etc that interfere with the person’s work, causing them to only be productive for 5 of the 8 hours. But those “unproductive” hours were paid as part of the expected 40. They are still in essence paid as part of the 40. This person’s output for the company is the same (if not better). Lost time from friction caused by office life is restored. BUT spending that restored time on work can be suboptimal. Eg if I push too fast, I sometimes make subtle mistakes that are time consuming to undo. Or I get out of step with coworkers and have to find a way to cool my heels anyway. People are positive about this because the worker is happier and more effective at the job, whilst reclaiming some hours, and contributing at the same level as always, which deep down is what the company is buying with their forty hours - a certain contribution of work per week.

[Retric]

People are paid to be available to do 40 hours a week of work, not to actually do 40 hours of work a week. Sitting around waiting for a meeting to start etc still counts as work because you’re on the companies time not your own.

That’s also where the expectation to go above and beyond comes from. In many office environments actually getting stuff done requires time outside of normal business hours. Paychecks are about hours, promotions are about accomplishing something.

[nugget]

Most companies do a very poor job of accurately measuring employee productivity/output on an individual basis. It seems to me that “40 hours per week” made sense for physical jobs where output was a multiple of hours worked, and then was adopted by newer firms as a low friction, culturally accepted placeholder for “give us your best effort and don’t have another full time job at the same time”.

[nradov]

It is simply impossible to accurately measure knowledge worker productivity on an individual basis. Any attempt to do so causes serious unintended consequences where employees attempt to game the metrics instead of doing the right thing for the business.

[nugget]

I think it's possible, but usually non-cost-effective because it has to be done on a 1:1 basis and therefore doesn't scale well. For example: I can intensively audit a developer's code for a couple weeks (in real time) and usually get a good feel for the blend of skill/time/effort being invested. But it's so time intensive for me to do that, that it's reserved for extreme situations.

[nradov]

Writing code is only a small part of a developer's job. If you focus on that then you'll miss a lot of other key productivity factors, such as contributions to team design discussions, code reviews, defect root cause analysis, etc.

So in short no, it's not possible to accurately measure developer productivity even if cost isn't a factor. Employee evaluations are necessarily subjective and we simply have to accept inaccuracy.

[Stratoscope]

> “give us your best effort and don’t have another full time job at the same time”

Unless you're Jack Dorsey!

[PenguinCoder]

Paid salary, work hourly? There's no sense in that for the employee.

Get your work done. That's what Salary used to, and should mean. Takes you 20? Good. Takes you 60? Too bad; get it done.

[zenhack]

The trouble is that this assumes pre-determined quantity of work. The reality I've seen most in places is that there's no end of stuff to do. The work is never "done."

What there is instead is an expectation of how much work you're supposed to get done per unit time (albeit calendar time in shops that have things more together). But this is in turn informed by how much time you are expected to devote to work vs other parts of your life.

[klipt]

> contracted to work 40 hours/wk

That's not how salaried positions work in the US. If you work 60 hour weeks you don't get paid overtime (but if that helps you perform beyond your peers, you might get promoted faster).

What matters is performance, not hours.

[astura]

Not universally true, I am salary and get paid overtime. In fact, of all the software jobs I've had I did unpaid overtime only a couple times a year at most, never most years. I absolutely wouldn't do unpaid overtime regularly - paid overtime is fine, if I were expected to do unpaid overtime regularly I'd leave. Overtime has always been at base pay, not time-and-a-half like hourly employees.

Every salary job I've ever had (I've had 4) required everyone to do their own timekeeping ever day, no working six hours a day and calling it "full time" unless you charged the time off or I guess lied.

[Nition]

I was going directly off what the comment I replied to says, which is "My contract says I have to work 40h/week."

[hanfsi]

So USA doesn't have anyone working and getting pay for something like a 4 day workweek? ...

[raz32dust]

Companies typically don't pay for hours worked but fo the value that is delivered. It's common to see people work a lot more than 40 hrs a week as well without overtime, and this is legal as per most employment contracts.

If you are a freelancer billing hours, then yes, I agree it would not be ethical. But still it's somewhat of a gray area. In theory, you should be able to raise your hourly rate to compensate for the fact that you can get more done in less time. But in practice, you might not get any clients if you advertise a higher than usual hourly rate, at least until you build a reputation.

[nradov]

Most companies pay based on market rate, not on value delivered.

[humanrebar]

Right, otherwise there wouldn't be cost of living adjustments depending on the home address of fully remote workers.

[raz32dust]

Sure, doesn't change the argument much though.

[whyhow]

If my company could lower the cost of its product by half and still make the same yearly revenue, it would. And all the executives would get huge bonuses.

[dakiol]

I think I've expressed myself wrongly. I'm not a contractor, just a normal fulltime employee. This normally means (at least in Europe) 8h/day 5 times per week, hence 40h/week. I'm not being payed by the hour.

[Nition]

Yours is a different account than the one I was replying to. Are you the same person as danny_sf45?

[Mvandenbergh]

Most HN readers probably regard the concept for being contracted to work for a certain number of hours (rather than achieving certain outputs) with inherent contempt anyway so they're not going to be upset about turning one into the other.

[peteretep]

Are you a programmer?

[wolco]

He works as a games developer in New Zealand. His prospective might be very different.

[Nition]

Yes

[Polylactic_acid]

I feel the same. For the last 3 hours of the day I just state at my screen in zombie mode. With wfh when I start to feel braindead I just lay in bed for 15 minutes and when I come back I feel refreshed for the rest of the day. With no pressure to look like you are constantly working you can do what works best since no one can see more than your output at the end of the week.

[wil421]

Someone I heard recently phrased it very well:

“I don’t want to spend 2 hours driving a day to do 4 hours of work.”

[orwin]

Yes, i'm the same. And if you're like me, i suppose sometime, in high pressure situation, you can easily work 10 hours straight. Doing this at the office is impossible, doing this home is easy (if it stay exceptional). I'm more productive home than i was at the office, and this is really surprising for me ( i assumed i was just a slacker).

[cuddlecake]

I've had one of the most productive days yesterday, because my internet went off.

Went on a berserk coding spree from 1PM to 1AM with some small breaks in between. Completely cut off from any distraction, I was able to concentrate.

Willpower and discipline are nice, but real restrictions that are impossible to circumvent are better, at least for me.

[alluro2]

I'm genuinely curious - would you be so kind to share what kind of coding do you do, and for how long have you been doing it, when you can code for 12 hours not needing to look up how to do something online (syntax, example for a best way to approach something etc)? I'm asking because this is one of my worst fears - how genuine of a senior, experienced developer am I, if I probably wouldn't be able to do 2 good hours of progress without the internet...

[minerjoe]

> without the internet

I've been forced to work without the internet for large swaths of time. In the beginning its a pain, but once you get all the resources you need local, you can speed up past what you can do with the internet.

The key, for me, is to work without the internet, keeping a list of things you need and when you hit a hard snag, go online, grab all the things you need, repeat. This allows you to slowly accumuate almost everything you need local.

Now you have the ability to full-text index the entire shebang and when you get to the point of real-time responsive full-text search on all your manuals and all the source code (libraries included), you'll be kicking yourself for not getting to that point much sooner.

It was truly a game-changer for me. Googling for answers and filtering through the crap is a huge time sink.

[neverartful]

It depends on what it is. If I'm doing something in C, it's much less likely that I use the internet for anything. C and Unix grew up before the internet. Man pages are installed on local system for quick and easy reference.

If I'm doing something in a less familiar language, library, or framework (or even new techniques), then I fully expect that I'll rely heavily on internet to find code samples, reference, and documentation.

[wolco]

Practice. Don't look up anything, if you must do it on a phone so you have to manually type anycode you use.

It will force you to really learn whatever you are doing.

[ghaff]

I do a lot more writing than coding. But, while I used to be able to do stuff surrounded by books, absent an Internet connection, I'd have to work through something with lots of [need to check], [flesh this out when can look up], etc. if I tried to do anything in the absence of an Internet connection.

[cuddlecake]

I'm a software developer of 2.5 years, am developing an Angular SPA since two years.

I mainly did refactoring on that day, so I had to make decisions by myself, anyway.

[hesdeadjim]

Guess I must be wired differently, but I look at that extra time and think “what more could I do?”, rather than “I’m convinced this is the output required of me, thus I will do no more with my new found time.” shrug

[danny_sf45]

Sure, if you can do more go for it. I just can't: my brain is tired, my eyes hurt, I cannot produce any productive output/outcome.

[hinkley]

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Everything you produce once you are punchy, you will have to re-do tomorrow morning during your productive hours, at which point you have to keep working later to get done what you had planned for today, and now you're in a never-ending loop of reworking your code.

It's a milder version of the Red Queen Problem.

[antisthenes]

> I look at that extra time and think “what more could I do?”

If I don't have equity in the company, my interest in that is exactly 0.

[Aeolun]

I think it’s generally more related to a lot of time that’s wasted having ad-hoc conversations with people.

[birdyrooster]

I don’t tell my coworkers when I do this but at Apple we are adults and can go to the bathroom without permission. You can come and go as you wish, that notwithstanding the waste of colocating with and/or commuting to an office. I want virtual reality so I can be in shared spaces for impromptu conversation and coworking.

(Edit: I really don’t miss my boomer/genx coworkers jamming out to hair metal)

[nmjohn]

FWIW, for a long time I've worked roughly 11 to 4 and have not caught any flack for it, as I get my work done. It entirely depends on the company you work for. (I'm not saying my situation is common, just that it does exist.)

[war1025]

Figured I'd chime in and say that I'm basically in the same situation.

I get to the office somewhere between 10 and 10:30 and leave somewhere between 4:30 and 5, with a generous lunch in the middle.

My mantra is "Do one useful thing a day"

Sometimes I get several useful things done, but as long as you get at least one useful thing done every day, it adds up into accomplishing quite a bit.

The actual "working hours" part is mainly valuable, in my opinion, for being available for random questions or issues that come up. Basically, when can I reliably get a response from you if I need something.

[mavelikara]

> chat with other coworkers (non-work related stuff)

> ...

> Same outcome (for the company),

What if the company cares for those non-work stuff - for example, some of those chats being a mentoring conversation?

[Koshkin]

A mentoring conversation is actually (or should be seen as) work stuff.

[mavelikara]

The company does consider it so; the people involved might not.

[modzu]

then there are those of us with kids and so's around. i can barely get a bloody thing done and for one can't wait to go back!

[mac01021]

I can't get any work done with my kid around either. But the difference is not that I'm home instead of at the office. The difference is that she's at home instead of at school.

[jameshart]

When kids go back to school some of the work from home conflicts will end, but kids still get home from school early afternoon, and schools typically only open 180 days a year - whereas most officeworking adults have to continue working into the late afternoon, and show up for about 240 days of the year. If you continue working from home after schools reopen, you're still going to have days like these lockdown times...

[mac01021]

Well I'm fortunate to have a six-figure income and a job that affords a reasonable amount of flexibility. So throughout the school year I work 9-15:30 and then make up the last hour or two after my kid's bedtime. In the summer she can go to camp for hundreds of dollars per week and I keep a similar schedule.

This summer, we're foregoing camp due to safety concerns.

[dijit]

Not sure why you're being downvoted, being without children (or having a dedicated space outside of the home) is important.

Kids don't understand time or space boundaries very well, and will interrupt your focus, your meetings, your work in general.

I have a colleague with kids and he was the first to volunteer back to the office.. I am without kids and I never want to go back.

This works out decently well, because he's alone: thus, safer than if we all came back.

But the issue is if there was more people in the office, then they would make decisions which the rest of us are not privy to.

[iso947]

I have kids at home 5+8), and have no problem with them trying to come in to the study.

I’ve worked from home their entire lives though.

[alluro2]

Same here - I don't have a separate room for work (never needed it) and have 2 pre-school kids at home. Average period without interruption: 10 minutes. I do so little "real" work during the day, that I need 4-5 hours at night to catch up...My wife doesn't work for a longer time now, so there's not a lot of understanding from her side - if I complain, I'm considered a drama queen and I only care about work...If this keeps up, I'll have to rent another small apartment or find another solution.

[y2bd]

Isn’t this more of an issue of school being out? Would your kids going back to school solve this issue?

[Koshkin]

Looks like nobody else wants to admit that.

[ericmcer]

I have been struggling with this a bit. It is kinda like the “unlimited PTO!” phenomenon where it is honor system based but can trick more work out of people. It is difficult to prove 8 hours of engineering work so the stress of my week can vary wildly based accuracy of estimates and how desperate I am to prove my skills haha.

[cel1ne]

I have worked for many years as a software-developer and found that more than 5 effective hours per day are impossible or at least not sustainable.

30-32 hours per week is perfect. More is just useless.

I have heard that this seems to be true for most intellectual work that requires concentration (5 hours daily max). No sources on that, though.

[ashtonkem]

One of the best realities for WFH is that one doesn’t have to pretend to work after burning out for the day.

[schwartzworld]

I'm a developer and pre-covid typically only stayed in the office until 2pm most days (lunch with the team, work for an hour then leave). I would tell everybody that I was going to work from home the rest of the day. Nobody ever cared. this is the future I dream of for all of us.

[jermaustin1]

This is basically the same for me, plus the commute. The office manager doesn't get in until 8-9am and he was the only person who could unlock the office, and would leave around 5:30pm, meaning if you want lunch away from the office, you aren't going to hit 40 hours per week.

Where as now, I start my day around 6-7am (I wake up "early" every morning), I try and quit around 4pm, and take a 1-2 hour lunch sometime between the two. This schedule is only possible working from home. I now hit 40 hours per week week every single week that I work all 5 days, where as before I would hit 30 hours. And even weeks where I only work 4 days, I still hit ~35 hours after shrinking my lunch.

[rafaelvasco]

I feel exactly like this. I can work , focused at most 4 hours every day. After that, I want to stand up and go running because my legs are killing me. So home office is heaven. When I'm done I'm done.

[bargl]

But the outcome isn't the same for the company.

I go to lunch, and chat with co-workers. They tell me about their project and I tell them about mine.

Then I get a requirement that I have to build something that interacts with their project and I have a rough idea of how it works because we've been talking about it a little bit. So instead of starting from nothing I'm starting from some knowledge.

Even though that part of the conversation was 10 min of a 30 min conversation there are useful parts that happen in the office.

I've been trying to replicate that at home more.

[everly]

I think I understand the point you’re making and I agree that there can be some synergy that comes from working together in person but it can also go the other way. Office environments can also be toxic and decrease productivity/morale.

Plus, the situation you describe consists of the company extracting extra value from me during a time that is supposed to belong to me, not a time that they are compensating me for, which also makes your point ring hollow.

[bargl]

I wasn't clear, I meant when I'm socializing with co-workers while I'm on the clock, such as gathering around the cubicle. Not at home or a bar. Edited: for clarity.

The OP mentioned they work 4-5 hours a day and are distracted the other 3-4 when at work (in the office).

I was saying during those 3-4 hours you have multiple side conversations (on company time) that it makes sense to the company to encourage. Not just cuz co-workers who get along have a better work environment, but that it makes a more interconnected environment.

> Office environments can also be toxic and decrease productivity/morale.

This is a good point.

[systematical]

Or actually work the full 8-ish hours a day Mon-Thurs and call it an early Friday by noon.

[ipiz0618]

Glad to see I'm not the only one..I wrote a script that records (manually) how much time I am able to focus each day, and it averages around 5 hours. On the days when I have to work overtime, it'd be around 6.5 hours.

[alexashka]

I can easily imagine being judged based on my output, not my etiquette.

It'd reveal most people to be largely about etiquette, largely useless if not outright harmful in terms of output if contemplated a little.

Most software jobs are re-implementing the same shit another company has already done. It's worse than useless - sipping tequila on the beach would actually be a net benefit for humanity - it'd alleviate stress, tension, traffic, hubris, carbon footprint among other things.

If contemplated a little more - most jobs are enabling this insane rat race and the immense infrastructure around it, which nobody individually is really that interested in continuing.

It's like religion or circumcision - we do and believe things and we don't even know why - most would be better off not knowing and not believing - just give them tequila and a beach :)