For some companies, for some types of work, for some contexts, fine. But I'm getting really tired of people assuming that their limited experience in their limited world applies universally.<p>More importantly - be intelligent about your policies. Consider what the work is, and how people work best. Give them the power and the responsibility to get things done. Allow them to take control, and make sure they are well informed about what you're trying to accomplish, and what the various external forces might be.<p>But don't tell me not to set hours for my employees. I've consulted with them, we've worked together, and for our context, with our customers, with our work, and in our marketplace, we, together, have concluded that regular hours in the office are the best way to work as a team and get the job done.<p>Your context will be different - be intelligent about your choices.
"It’s time to bring your company into the 19th century."<p>The 40-hour week isn't "a fossil" from the era of production lines; it exists because workers fought for it.
The author, Ilya Pozin, has worked in exactly 1 company that he founded for 13 years. This is not a ad hominem attack, I just don't think it's possible to make such sweeping generalizations with such a narrow range of experience.<p>There's two reasons hours are useful, internal and external teamwork. Nobody works alone, if you have somebody in 7-3 and somebody 11-7, there's a significant period without overlap. This can be even more problematic if your team doesn't have regular hours at all so that you can't even plan for this.<p>For external parties, your clients, customers, etc., you want to be responsive to their needs. Most companies work 9-5, though timeszones can make this tricky.
Yet another article asking for the abolition of the 40 hour week. It's very telling that the article stresses disadvantages of the 9-to-5 model for the enterprise or for getting the work done, but it doesn't list the effect, disadvantageous or not, on employees.<p>And then he slips this: <i>After all, during a big project it’s important your employees don’t feel inclined to exit as soon as the clock strikes 5 p.m.</i> Very telling; and also note that time crunching is most often caused by bad planification than by lack of productivity.<p>As for the points explained, I strongly disagree with the first, the second and especially the fourth (not only it doesn't promote teamwork, since not every one is in the office at a given time: also, it can quickly devolve into a race to the bottom where everyone tries to do the highest amount of hours, which is the real productivity killer via burnout). I find the third point dubious, although it's worth discussing.
Not to be terse, but a pretty dumb sentiment, one that generally only applies well to small teams on small projects in office environments.<p>The larger the team, the greater the need for interaction between the members. And that doesn't mean an email response 2 hours after the initial one was sent because you just woke up.<p>In some very real ways, 9-5 is archaic. But it serves a purpose today - it puts everyone in the office at the same time during hours where there's someone to take care of children.<p>It's more about consistency and reliability than history.
5. I pay these people, so they shouldn't get to have lives outside the salary i've bestowed upon them.<p>My employees don't understand that if i wasn't for their lazy asses we'd be the next instagram, or reddit or whatever. the only thing standing between me and striking a huge payday is my employees desire to not constantly be working.
I look forwards to the day that shops open whenever someone happens to be around to unlock the door and there's someone in who can work the till. That'll work out great for everyone.
"during a big project it’s important your employees don’t feel inclined to exit as soon as the clock strikes 5 p.m." That statement belies so many things about Mr. Pozin's outlook on employees.<p>1. The reason employees bolt for the door is because they have things to do. Believe it or not employees have lives outside of work. I can't think of any project that would be "big" enough to miss a daughter's soccer game or son's concert. And if that means I need to leave the office at a certain time to do so, then so be it.<p>2. By offering flexible hours, employers seem to be able to demand employees work long upon demand. No thank you.<p>3. Working long hours to crunch for a big project is shown time and time again to not be effective. Why not fight the cause instead of accommodating it with flex time?<p>All that said, I'm convinced the best, long-term answer is to not be an employee. Instead, freelancing will continue to become more and more common.
For purely "creative" positions, we don't care how, where and when the employee works. Especially when working on challenging features I understand that some people like to somehow "retreat" to think (I work like this).<p>You like to work in the middle of busy café? No problem.
You like to work from home? No problem.
You like to work from 9 to 5? No problem.
You like a variation of the above depending on your mood? No problem.<p>The only thing we ask is to keep the communication open, ie, don't fall into an autistic "I never show up" way of work.<p>Which leads me to the following.<p>When there are meetings, when we're at a customer or when there is any kind of external constraint we have absolutely no tolerance for lateness or approximation.
If the point is that fixed in stone "arrive at work a 9, leave at 5" hours don't make sense, sure. Even some of the most regressive government bureaucracies recognized that in the 80's and have some degree of flexibility.<p>If the point is that modern work is so special and creative that it is more of an artistic creation, and thus requires "passion" (translated as work 60 hours a week), than no, that is a ridiculous assertion and a work practice that should be illegal.
I have to say, I'm more interested in the job titles of the majority of the commenters on this article. So LinkedIn is only full of managers, consultants and recruiters.
It's a very short article, with a list of benefits. Any potential problems are very briefly mentioned.<p>But these problems could be significant, and a discussion of them could have made the article much more useful and interesting.<p>For example: people do compare their performance against that of their colleagues. People do steal credit for work done by other people. How do managers deal with this? There's the potential for significant ill-will if Ann is picking up Bob's slack, but not getting the recognition for it. And if Bob is getting recognition for the work that Ann is doing it's worse. And if Ann's work is suffering, and she's told people and been ignored, and she's losing out, then it's even worse.<p>Management advice often feels superficial. It'd be great if people writing this advice started making more use of good quality research. I guess it'd be good if more good quality research was available too.
The main problem is that most employers with expectations around work hours enforce the start time but don't adequately support a reasonable end time.<p>This is our fault, as we've basically let this happen. I've personally told developers on my teams to go home on time and I get excuses like "well I'll just end up watching TV or wasting time."<p>To this my response has always been "save that energy for when the project really needs it, because it will. When things are calmer, go have a life."<p>Unfortunately, I think most business leaders are ignorant about the urgency of work, or they take the attitude of "push until they push back". This leads to the burnout, apathy, and overall lack of commitment over time from their employees.
Plus, if you don't have set hours, and focus only on goals -- then you can expect your employees to work 50, 80, 100 hours a week in order to accomplish their goals (which were probably set by you not them), whatever it takes.
I would have a hard time partnering with an organization that allows random & inconsistent business hours.<p>This article's points are great in theory, but in a business world it creates a barrier.
When it comes to IT, I can buy it. However, ask yourself how you would run a manufacturing plant when you didn't know when people would be there? Or, how would customer service work if there was no one to answer the phones?
Great idea.<p>However, is such a policy implementable at a large corporation like Google or Microsoft? It is certainly within reach of startups that have a dozen or even a couple of hundred employees.