

Ask HN: Saturday dilemma - abhishekdesai

Hello HN,
Recently we are going through a dilemma which I am sure you all can help us with.<p>I run a small IT service company in India along with 3 of my friends. We are 7 years old now and have team of around 50 developers.<p>We have 1st and 3rd Saturdays off and we work on rest of them in a month.<p>Inspired from following article about 40 hour work week culture in Microsoft.<p>http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmeier/archive/2010/10/21/40-hour-work-week-at-microsoft.aspx<p>We were thinking of having 40 hour work week schedule at our company too.<p>If we implement 40 hour work week, what should we do about the 2 Saturdays we are working on, assuming everyone will finish their 40 hours from Monday to Friday.<p>Should we keep those Saturdays completely off?<p>OR<p>Should we have some interesting activities, fun games, coding war games, lunch, movies etc on those 2 Saturdays?<p>What will make developers more happy?<p>1) A Saturday completely off<p>OR<p>2) A Saturday completely for their own selves for doing anything they want, for e.g. a pet project, a blog post, improving writing skills etc.<p>We want happy developers and great teams in our company so we are seeing this dilemma as an opportunity to do that.<p>Since HN community comprises mainly of programmers and think tanks of our world, I think I will get the right answer here.<p>Thank you in advance.
======
eftpotrm
I'm not sure this is a question someone outside the Indian culture can really
answer.

In the UK, we're used to Saturdays off; you'd get the most bonus here from
doing just that and giving people the day free every week.

But, cultural expectations are weird to outsiders. Maybe the staff would be
seen as lazy or less useful by their peers / families if they were at work
less; in which case I'd suggest keeping the work hours but providing a
different day pattern for them, such as more social time or personal projects.

What makes people happy in working conditions is individual and very different
in different contexts. You know your staff and your better than we do; you are
better equipped to make this call.

------
aditya
Ask your people? Most likely, everyone will want the day off. Also, 37signals
does 4 day weeks and still produces enormous revenues...

~~~
abhishekdesai
There is a huge difference between 37Signals and us form business point of
view.

37Signals is a product company having successful products in the market
already.

We are an IT service company whose revenue literally and linearly dependent on
the number of hours we work.

So need optimized solution for company and for developers.

~~~
Retric
In the short term your revenue is linearly dependent on the number of hours
worked, but in the long term it's a function of productivity. The focus should
be on creating value not putting in hours because you can always increase your
hourly rate, but you can not work 25 hours in a day. And revenue is
meaningless, the only important number for a company is profit.

PS: You can add employees but foxconn's 920,000 employees generate around ~100
million in profit per year. Google's 26,316 employees generate around 80 times
that much profit meaning they are generating ~ 2,800 times the profit per
person.

~~~
abhishekdesai
Yes so for that only, we were thinking of investing 2 Saturdays in growth of
individuals. This will require dedicated time and efforts from our side. We
are willing to do that.

Everyone has chance of improvement and we believe by investing our own time
may help individuals to improve themselves.

For e.g. Not every programmer has good writing skills or spoken english skills
which is required for communicating with overseas client. We can spend time in
improving that.

I am just arguing here to have fruitful discussion. I am just taking the
opposite side right now so that we can uncover more points.

------
raquo
I peraonally would be happy with a day off. The other option is hard to make
fun for everyone imho.

------
neutronicus
Give them the day off on Saturday, but keep the office open so that if they
_want_ to come in and work on personal projects in a familiar setting, they
_can_.

------
arthurk
Is it common in India to work on Saturdays?

~~~
abhishekdesai
Yes it is common. Things are changing recently but still you will find only 2
out of 4 Saturdays off in most companies.

~~~
acangiano
Give your employees the day off. This will be a competitive advantage when
recruiting and retaining employees.

------
cycojesus
As someone who've worked saturday mornings for nearly 3 years (in Vietnam) I
will say this: saturday is OFF.

A 1 day or a 1½ day week-end is not a week-end and I was a nervous mess after
3 years of that. To top that the saturday mornings were 95% useless because
seriously what can you possibly accomplish in such a short time in a noisy
open-space when your mind is thinking about how you'll try to relax during the
short time allowed?

As for organizing something, I think programmers are grown-up enough to take
care of themselves and decide what they want to do with their day off. You
don't have to babysit them.

~~~
abhishekdesai
Great. Though there is slight difference in your situation and ours. We at
least have couple of full weekends in a month.

I like your answer but.

------
artmageddon
Ask your people what they want. Honestly, I think having to work weekends,
whether or not it's on pet projects or workshops or whatever, is too much.
People need time away from work to decompress if they're going to be effective
developers over a long period of time. Even here in the United States it feels
like two days off is too little.

You say you have 50 developers. What's your turn-over rate?

~~~
abhishekdesai
Well let's say we have attrition rate of 20% to 40%

------
plasma
"[...] whose revenue literally and linearly dependent on the number of hours
we work."

I know nothing about your company of course; but you can take a 'step back'
and see if there is a way to get paid without having to be available so often?

Are you spending too much money, not charging enough, or need to think up some
more revenue streams / ways of making money?

------
penang2011
Try the "fun" saturday first, if you don't see any interest then offer to give
the day off. If you give the day off first and then ask people to come in, you
might not get a positive response.

Also, why does it have to Saturdays? Employees with children might like a day
off during the week, to do things which are harder to accomplish in the
weekend.

I went to primary school in Mumbai where we had Thursdays and Saturdays off. I
liked the break in the middle of the week, but I'm not sure if my sentiments
were universally shared.

------
jules
1\. Ask them. 2\. Organize an optional "do your own stuff"-saturday (or
perhaps "lets do a cool project together in one day"-saturday) and see who
participates.

------
random42
Just keep the day off. 5 days/40 hrs. a week is the norm.

------
tereno
Days off on all Saturdays would be ideal. Fun and games I think should be
random and during the 40 hours of the work week.

~~~
abhishekdesai
Well its not just about fun and games. We can also have technical exercises,
communication skills improvement during this time.

