
At some startups, Friday is so casual that it’s not even a workday - petethomas
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/at-some-start-ups-fridays-are-so-casual-everyone-can-stay-home/2015/02/06/31e8407e-9d1c-11e4-96cc-e858eba91ced_story.html
======
Jemaclus
Back when I first got into the start-up scene, I used to work long hours
because everyone else did. At some point, I realized that literally nothing
has to be done RIGHT NOW OH MY GOD RIGHT NOW. Almost everything can wait until
tomorrow morning. Sure, there are some high-priority bugs that are breaking
the site that need to be fixed ASAP, but during normal operating procedures,
once that clock hits 5pm, I should start wrapping up my work so that I can
pick it up fresh in the morning.

I don't take my work home with me, I don't check my work email when I'm at
home. It's just not worth the stress to me.

I love my job, I love my work, I feel like I'm contributing to making the
world a better place -- it's just not 100% of who I am. I have a dog, a
girlfriend, a handful of close friends, a few engaging hobbies, and a ton of
books to read and miles to run. I'm more than my job, and once I can pay the
bills, the rest of the money is just a nice to have -- but not nice enough to
give up my health and sanity.

Then again, I'm extremely lucky to be in this situation, and a lot of people
aren't. Some of my coworkers work long hours still, but they seem happy about
it. As long as that's true,... well, whatever floats your boat, right?

~~~
somedudethere
That's why I love the start up I work at. We work 9-6 M-F. No weekends. No
long nights.

I feel like places that have a "show up at 10 and work till its late" are
immature and fooling themselves thinking they have gains in productivity.

Properly managing your time is a skill and one that management should help you
develop. I shouldn't feel pressured to stay late because everyone else was
fooling around all day. It also sets clear expectations of how hard and long
you should work. There's no "Oh if I don't stay till 9 tonight will my manager
think I'm not working hard?" Everyone is on the same page.

Before I started working there I was one of the people that would stay up all
night sometimes to finish something. come in groggy the next day and get
nothing done for that day. When in reality if I spent 8.5 hours the first day
working on it and 8.5 hours the second day, I would have had full mental
clarity when working on the project and the added bonus of mental and physical
well-being.

~~~
arjie
I can't disagree more. Working 9 AM to 6 PM in San Francisco now will mean you
get sunshine two hours from 7 to 9 (and that's assuming you get ready for
work/play instantly). All the lovely daylight hours are wasted indoors.

~~~
selter01
Wait, what? So what do you propose? Work until 3 pm?

~~~
hobs
I like 10-7.

------
falcolas
If you're getting your work done, on time, and to the quality specifications,
who the hell cares how many hours in the week you work?

We're working on computers, doing work which does not benefit from typing for
N hours straight; there is no meaningful correlation between quality/quantity
and hours worked.

I wish more people realized this.

~~~
bdowling
If you are hired as a full-time, salaried employee of a company, the default
expectation is that the company is trying to buy ALL of your professional
output. They expect that you treat your position not just as a job where you
work so many hours or do just the tasks that you are asked to do, but that you
take more personal responsibility for doing the very best job you can,
improving your own productivity, and making the company function better and
more efficiently. Your work for the company is not just a job, it is a part of
your career. You're not just an hourly assembly line worker, you're part of
the team, an insider, and remember, "We're all in this together."

The company managers don't care about you and your work/life balance, only the
work they can get out of you. And in terms of efficiency, that means paying
you the smallest salary and benefits that you'll accept. And it means telling
you whatever is necessary to get you to be as productive as possible. If they
can get you to inprove processes or something, even better.

Also, with pretty much everything in life, including software development,
there IS a correlation between hours worked and quality/quantity. All other
things being equal, the one who spends 40 hours working, not just typing, but
thinking about the problem, fixing bugs, finding new ones, improving
performance, refactoring to improve structure, et cetera, will produce work
output that is higher quality or in grater quantity than the one who puts in
30 hours. And I know you're the special snowflake who can do a better job in
30 hours than that other guy can in 40, but that's irrelevant. They are paying
you a complete salary, so they can demand that you put in complete effort. The
good news is that once you can prove that you're producing more in your 40
hours than the other guy is, you can demand a higher salary or take your
talents elsewhere.

Edit: Fixed grammatical error.

~~~
obstinate
>They are paying you a complete salary, so they can demand that you put in
complete effort.

They can "demand" whatever they want. They can demand a pony for all I care. I
provide what I want, and that's not always 40 hours a week. If it's still
worth it to them to employ me, then they may continue to do so. That's all
there is to it.

Let's not grant the corporation too much moral high ground. They routinely ask
people for more than forty of those hours. Let's not pretend someone is a
reprobate for granting fewer.

It's pointless to act like they have a moral right to a specific number of
hours simply because that's the convention or because that's what they wrote
in an employment agreement that grants you nothing in consideration for your
concessions. I work, you pay me. If you don't like my work, fire me. I'll do
my work in as many or as few hours as I please. Those are the terms I'll abide
by.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the incredible luck I have to be able to
operate this way. Only the strength of the seller's market that is software
labor, and my own financial prudence, allows me this freedom. But it is a
freedom I feel no reluctance, moral or otherwise, to exercise.

~~~
morgante
This is why I love working at early-stage startups: it aligns incentives.
Nobody is pushing me to work those extra hours: I'm doing so because I
genuinely believe that they will materially increase the value of the company
(and thus my stock).

Honestly, I genuinely don't understand how the classical employment model
(salary alone) ever worked for any professional employers/employees.
Incentives are diametrically opposed, and in 90% of situations someone is
getting at least partially shortchanged.

~~~
jazzyk
Your stock options? The whole 0.01%? Unless you own > 3% (and there is little
dilution), or the company is the next Google, then you may be in for a
surprise...

------
not_a_test_user
I can't believe how negative the article's comments are. Is everyone so
addicted to work?

I would understand if I could work at top performance 10-12 hours a day, 5
days a week but that's just not possible for me. In the end driving developers
to exhaustion is worse for everyone, with subpar code that'll probably require
refactoring Monday morning.

~~~
Disruptive_Dave
Yes, everyone is addicted to work. This is what we've been conditioned to
know/believe/live. I'd also venture to say "fear" is the foundation upon which
many managers/motivators operate, at least here in the U.S. Remote work has
the same challenges; "if I can't see my employee at his desk, he's probably
screwing off somewhere!". It's lazy, but it's what most know.

~~~
fsloth
"Remote work has the same challenges; "if I can't see my employee at his desk,
he's probably screwing off somewhere!"

This should not be a problem in a sane software development shop because there
should be a way to track a) code reviews done b) tickets implemented/code
merged /etc.

LOC/hour is a crappy metric for software development but averaging these over,
say, six months should give some indication if someone is slacking off. Or
just working in a different project than anyone else but task based variances
ahould be accounted for. It does not give a "perfect metric" that could be
used for perf evaluation but should be a sufficient safe guard against total
slackers.

~~~
iopq
I've implemented 300 tickets. All of them typo fixes. You've only implemented
100 tickets like Bitcoin payment integration and the DB migration. I should
get a raise.

~~~
fsloth
Could you please re-read my last sentence in the message you responded to :)

------
jstoiko
I feel like some people have built this fantasy that working at startups is
like vacations.

These people probably work their ass off during their 40, 60, or maybe 80 hrs
on the job. So they dont understand when they ear that startups' work schedule
is more relax because they cannot relate to it. However, when they leave their
desk, it's over, they're up to something else and they probably even force
themselves not to think about work anymore.

Startups take a relaxing approach to work hours because the (right) person who
works there lives and breathes startup 24/7.

It's easy to say when you're a founder (disclaimer: I am one). But it is
something I have witnessed in (good) startup employees as well. They think
about it all the time.

@falcolas is right, who the hell cares how many hours in the week you spent
executing your tasks? Shouldn't the time "thinking" about work be valued as
much as "executing" the work? Don't we all "think" better outside of execution
time?

~~~
BadassFractal
If you're a pre-PMF startup then you better be working all the time, because
the clock's running out and your "dream" will be in the dumpster once there's
no more money.

Early stage startups are a sprint, startups like Treehouse have a proven
business model and are now basically dealing with scale and optimization, they
can go into a well-deserved "regular job" mode with weekends and family time.
If you want a 9 to 5, do not do a startup, unless you have something
absolutely incredible in your deck that will allow you to bypass the "work
crazy" stage.

Also early startups aren't all about coding. There's a lot of other extremely
beneficial work that can be done once you've reached your coding quota for the
day.

Nobody wants to hear this, everybody wants to work 4 hours a week and be
billionaires, so this inaccurate mythology gets propagated.

~~~
enjo
_shrugs_

The clock isn't ticking that fast. I have some experience here . I was the
second technical hire at a company that went on to sell for nine figures. I
founded an unsuccessful company. My second startup (as a founder) went on to
be a successful and ongoing thing (revenue in the 7 figure range). For the
last two years I've been with a nicely growing early stage startup.

I'm throwing out my resume to establish that I'm coming at this with nearly 15
year of startup experience.

I've rarely put in more than a 40 hour week at any point in my entire career.
While I understand the idea that you are racing to product market fit.. I've
never bought into the idea that effort is the thing that drives it. You need
to be focused. You need to work _hard_ , but you also need to keep your mind
and body fresh. It's more important to produce great work at a reasonable
speed, rather than bad work really quickly.

Those pre-PMF days aren't a sprint. They are most definitely a marathon, just
one with a clear finish line. When I think of great early stage teams I don't
think "high output", but instead I think "methodical" and "relentless". They
are constantly analyzing the problem they want to solve. They are clever about
soliciting feedback. They build prototypes leveraging every useful shortcut
they can. However, few of them (again this is my experience) approach these
early days with 60 or 70 hour work weeks. The benefit just isn't there.

------
blahedo
Two things in the article that I found interesting but were not highlighted:

> _" But he soon found himself working that same intense pace until his wife
> asked him why he was working more and making less. She suggested taking
> Fridays off."_

So the central concept of this workplace format, around which this entire
article is based, was the idea/inspiration of Ryan Carson's wife, whose full
name is not even mentioned. (Her first name is Gill, but is her last name
Carson? Unclear from the article.) Not that it's a purely original idea---
other companies have done four-day workweeks before---but it was obviously one
that hadn't occurred to this particular founder. Three cheers for Gill
possibly-Carson!

> _" With Treehouse, Carson said he hopes to, again, buck conventional start-
> up culture, and not cash out by selling the company, the brass ring for most
> start-ups, but continue to run it as a sustainable business."_

Let's hope that also starts a trend. I'm so heartily sick of companies
building a great product and actively recruiting user bases to use and love
that product, only to shutter it and throw all the users under the bus when
the founders achieve their real goal, which is getting the attention of Google
or Facebook or whoever and getting acquihired or otherwise bought out. I know
that individual founders and other startup workers will often (indeed almost
always) say that they really do care about their users, but as a collective
structural pattern in the way that SV startup culture seems to work, it sure
doesn't look that way from afar. So three cheers for (the currently-stated
intentions of) Ryan Carson!

~~~
commondream
> Her first name is Gill, but is her last name Carson

Yep, Gill Carson. It does suck that they didn't give her more credit. Gill's
had a lot of positive effect on Treehouse.

------
ripberge
Treehouse is actually in a very luxurious position right now. They've raised a
bunch of VC and this is a fairly new niche they operate in and more and more
of society is recognizing how valuable these skills are. They can work minimal
hours, see a lot of growth and everyone is happy.

Fast forward five years from now. There are going to be a ton of tough
competitors in this space and eking out revenue growth month over month is
going to be much harder. However, in five years they probably have the added
pressure to start thinking about something called profitability.

The going is going to be a day of reckoning here when the harsh realities of
cut throat competition set in. That just hasn't happened yet.

~~~
commondream
> However, in five years they probably have the added pressure to start
> thinking about something called profitability.

We don't talk publicly about finances, but let's just say that's something
that's been thought about already and that bit of what you're saying doesn't
scare me.

> There are going to be a ton of tough competitors in this space and eking out
> revenue growth month over month is going to be much harder.

Codecademy (free), Code School, Pluralsight, Lynda, Udacity, Coursera, Udemy,
free online content. Things are already tough, and they get tougher every day.
We have an amazing team that works like crazy, 32 hours a week, because we
believe we're uniquely situated to work on this problem. So the competition
thing won't magically appear. It's already here.

~~~
pi-err
Refreshing. After a burnout, I set to work 25h a day (program management
role). I realized soon enough that I was crazy more efficient. I was also less
stressed, less verbose, left all frustration behind, and started to see people
change the way they saw me (= they started to like me).

It's a competitive advantage to offer less hours and more intensity.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
I think you mean 25h a week, not day.

~~~
commondream
Or they're a unicorn or thunder lizard or whatever they're called these days.

------
commondream
I'm Treehouse's CTO and cofounder. I'll try to answer anything I can.

~~~
adregan
How about meetings? I can get some really great work done in 4-5 hour
stretches, but find meetings really throw off my rhythm. With limiting the
work week, do you also limit meetings?

~~~
commondream
We don't really have fancy meeting rules, if that's what you're asking. Our
team does a great job overall of keeping them as short as possible and staying
the right amount of focused, but not too focused. It's always fun to goof
around a little when you're face to face, right?

Because so many of our team members are either remote or working from home any
given day, we're often meeting via Hangouts, and that helps a ton with time in
meetings since you really just don't want to be on there too long.

I spend what feels like a lot of time in meetings, but it's probably like half
of each day for me, and maybe only half of that is scheduled. For most of our
developers and designers, though, I think it's probably a couple of 15-30
minute meetings each week tops.

------
morgante
While I certainly commend them for being able to make this work (we need more
innovation in management practices across the board), it does seem like
there's a bit of a holier-than-thou trend in this comment thread.

As the founding engineer at my current startup, I have tremendous flexibility
in setting my own hours but I willingly and intentionally work 60+ hours a
week. Not because any manager pushes me to. Not because I even have to. Simply
because I genuinely enjoy it.

Indeed, work is probably the most enjoyable thing in my life. On a given
Friday, I'd rather be building products at work than watching a movie or
engaging in some other leisure activity. Some of us don't have wives,
children, or friends—we just want to spend our time executing.

Would Treehouse be accepting of that? If not, they're just choosing to enforce
a different paradigm of work rather than giving their employees true freedom.

~~~
kaiuhl
Nobody is stopped from working longer hours, but the expectation culturally is
that you should probably be doing something else instead of working on Sunday.

~~~
morgante
Not working on Sundays (few professionals do) is pretty different from the 32
hours the article describes. Which is it?

~~~
kaiuhl
Sunday was just an example. Nobody is stopped from working if they're
movitated to do so, but we generally discourage each other from working
overtime unnecessarily. I personally work 32-hour weeks regularly and still
contribute meaningfully.

And then, I go backpacking or bike-riding or something that tends to be
demanding physically and relaxing mentally—I find it helps me keep a healthy
balance. I know there are plenty of people that don't crave that reprieve
though, and that's totally okay as well.

There's weekends where I'm working on a particularly interesting problem where
I'll work through the weekend because I want to. The big difference is the
extrinsic pressure is missing. Nobody _has_ to.

------
woodchuck64
Fatigue is such a killer of creativity and innovation. When I'm tired I feel
my brain deliberately shying away from anything but the familiar and rote. How
many great ideas have been sacrificed to stay an extra hour at work instead of
using that hour for rest and replenishment?

~~~
commondream
It's a balance though, right? Sometimes I'm still tired at 6AM when I wake up
and I have to get out of bed and do things anyway. Then other times I'm tired
at 4PM and I just give up and go home. I think you've got to do the work, but
being flexible around the margins is great.

------
heynk
At my last job and now at my current job, I negotiated from full time work to
less than full time work. Last time, I didn't work Fridays and now I work 20
hour weeks. In each case, I am absolutely more productive (per hour) that I
honestly don't know if I get any less work done. On top of that, I have much
more creativity and energy. From this experience, I'm always on the side of
pushing for less work hours per week as a standard.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
I know that I have roughly 5-6 hours worth of productive programming time in
any given day. If I had a job where I was required to be on-site for eight
hours a day, I'd get roughly the same amount of work done. Maybe even less,
since I'd practice sitting at my work desk not doing things for 2-3 hours per
day. I'm a huge fan of the whole "notice you're not accomplishing much -> go
home" plan.

------
xivzgrev
I've been waiting for an article like this. There really is an ethos of
working yourself to death, and on surface it can make sense. If you put in 80
hours per week and your competition puts in 60, you'll win because you'll
learn more quickly than your competition. But I don't think that accounts for
efficiency. If you work 80 hours per week, is every hour equally productive?
And if so, are you working on the most valuable things? (Eg can you delegate,
outsource, etc?). People like to think so but it's far from a universally held
belief. On the flip side, if you work 32 hrs per week, you're pretty much
forced to be focused and productive. You'll still have same goals, how do you
achieve them in half the time each week? You cut out things. I just graduated
from one of the many bootcamps, and about half of students "worked" about 45
hrs per week, vs other half who worked 60+ hrs. And there's been zero
difference thus far on who has gotten jobs more quickly. Ok I'm done with my
soapbox but I wish more people in valley would consider worldview espoused in
this article. Also with the Michael Arrington comment, I don't think most
investors give two shits how long you work as long as you are delivering that
up and to the right growth.

------
unimportant
Some startups are so casual, that work is not considered work and more of a
paid hobby, with unpaid overtime being insisted upon...

------
stillsut
Pretty simple: if a developer can be 10x-100x as productive than the average
developer, you don't really worry about only getting 80% of their required
time.

So if this perk gets Treehouse talent that is +30% more productive, even if
they lose -20% of productivity from Fridays off, they still win.

One caveat, so much of programming is loading things into your head, I think
three days off every week would be difficult for anything sophisticated being
developed.

------
vjeux
> These days, on Fridays, he gets his two young sons off to school and spends
> the day hanging out with his wife, Gill. “It’s like dating again. We go to
> coffee shops. We read books together. I really feel like I’m involved in my
> kids’ lives and my wife’s life,”

This assumes that your wife is not working. I've tried taking some days off
like this and, in the middle of the week everyone works, so you don't get to
hang out much

~~~
commondream
Yeah, my wife's back in school, so we go to lunch but beyond that we don't get
to spend our whole Fridays together. When we were getting started Ryan would
go on adventures with his family on Fridays, but my kids were already in
school. YMMV on the family aspects of having Fridays off.

But I'm no martyr. If you think Friday with your family is awesome, you should
try having Fridays with almost no responsibility sometime. It's pretty great.

~~~
socialist_coder
For me, the biggest thing about having Fridays off is you actually get a day
for yourself. My weekend is 100% spent with my wife and kids, so having a
Friday where I actually get to unwind and do my own thing (hacking on Arduino,
playing games, programming for fun, whatever) is crucial to my well being.

Before I had kids, this wouldn't have mattered since you already have 2 days a
week you can do whatever you want. Having 3 free days a week vs 2 is not
really that different. But after kids, and working 5 days a week, I had 0 free
days a week for myself. Going from 0 to 1 free days a week is a _HUGE_
difference.

------
epberry
"...as a thunder lizard, the tech world’s name for the tiny handful of start-
ups that actually become $1 billion businesses." I thought we were calling
these unicorns? Maybe I'm behind the times terminology wise.

~~~
commondream
I thought unicorns were people who can do anything. I'd never heard the
thunder lizard thing either, though.

~~~
terravion
No, you're not behind, it doesn't seem that anyone on this thread has heard of
a thunder lizard. I wouldn't trust the Washington Post to have this kind of
tidbit right either.

------
colmvp
> “As far as I’m concerned, working 32 hours a week is a part-time job,”
> Arrington, said in an interview. “I look for founders who are really
> passionate. Who want to work all the time. That shows they care about what
> they’re doing, and they’re going to be successful.”

Efficiency is key, not some arbitrary limit of working hours.

Chances are yes, as a founder you aren't going to work just 32 hours a week.
But it also depends on the state of the company.

And quite frankly, sometimes you can't solve problems by sitting at your
computer or even talking to others in the office. Sometimes it involves taking
a break and chilling out or exercising.

------
bdcravens
I really don't get much "work" done in the office; most of my work gets done
at 2am or on the weekends. (We talk alot and strategize, so technically that's
work I suppose, but the actual coding usually happens elsewhere)

------
kvcrawford
I, for one, immediately checked for Treehouse's open positions. In a world
where retention and recruiting are huge challenges for tech, a strong work-
life balance policy is very powerful.

Too bad they don't have a need for a front-end engineer right now. I would be
all over that.

Keep up the good work, guys!

~~~
locahost
+1. I'll keep checking that jobs page as well.

In my fifteen years of tech work, the _only_ occasions I had to work overtime
were those when somebody screwed up. It was often because somebody didn't say
no to requests for: CYA meetings; last-minute scope changes; mandatory "butts
in chairs" policies.

Thirty-two hours a week doesn't give lousy management enough time to take
root. Like kvcrawford, I can't overestimate how appealing that is when it
comes time to recruit.

------
AndrewKemendo
My question is, what do you tell customers that demand responses Friday
through Sunday? I mean if something breaks I am sure people come in/do remote
work, so that's not the cases I am talking about. I assume this only works for
companies that have non-critical or fully automated products where users don't
have any person to person interaction built in anywhere.

I ask because I would love to implement something like this, but we get
requests for service or user questions every day - and a three day turn around
time on a user issue is terrible customer support - especially if they have
other work riding on it. I realize treehouse is different in this respect.

It seems like the more employee focused you are the less responsive to
customers you can be.

~~~
commondream
We have a support person who works his four days over the weekend to make sure
it's covered.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Sounds like lonely work. Sacrificing one for the tribe!

We did this in the military and would rotate who had Watch/CQ/duty[1]...

[1][http://terminallance.com/2013/08/15/terminal-
lance-286-duty-...](http://terminallance.com/2013/08/15/terminal-
lance-286-duty-ii/)

~~~
commondream
He works on Mondays with the team to help with that aspect, but yes, it'll be
great when we've got two weekend support folks.

------
itbeho
Interesting how the companies discussed are outside of SV.

~~~
commondream
I think there have been pros and cons of us being outside of SV. I'm
personally really glad that we're not there. I love Portland and think it's
been a really good place for my family. I know we have folks who wish we were
more present there too.

~~~
beat
I'm in Silicon Valley right now for conferences (SaaStr and Startup Grind),
enjoying soaking up the culture, but I've had at least a half-dozen people
advise me to move here. No, no, no! As much as I love it here, and as useful
as it is for business, I'd rather live in Minnesota.

------
cubano
Wasn't there a thread recently here that discussed how everyone was expected
to work 60-hour weeks by their managers or face heaps of wraith?

So what is it...32 or 60?

The only answer can be "it shouldn't matter!", if you work in an industry
where you can just as easily work from home as work from your desk.

I am speculating, but I would think that most of the IT developers at
Treehouse work well over 40 hours a week.

~~~
copsarebastards
> The only answer can be "it shouldn't matter!", if you work in an industry
> where you can just as easily work from home as work from your desk.

Huh? How many hours I work has very little to do with whether I can work from
home. If I'm expected to work 60 hours/week and have the option of working
from home for all of them, that's definitely still a problem.

~~~
nothrabannosir
He means that working from home implies quantity of work is less important
than quality. Nobody knows how much time you put in, but yourself. One way or
another, you will be judged on what you deliver, not how much time it took
you.

Some managers (or even people hiring contractors) think they can get around
this, but, ultimately, you can always do in 4h what they expect you to do in
8h and get paid for 8h. Not saying it's moral, but it is the reality. The
conclusion is inescapable: working from home implies that the only important
metric is the quality of your work (and the deadline), not how much time you
spend on it. Because you can "simulate" one with the other.

Some people don't realize this, yet. Doesn't make it not true.

EDIT: PS: I'm talking about project where the "deadlines" are reasonably far
apart and predictable. Say, no more than a few times a day. If your work
includes being on-call and responding to incoming requests, that's a different
story.

~~~
copsarebastards
> Some managers (or even people hiring contractors) think they can get around
> this, but, ultimately, you can always do in 4h what they expect you to do in
> 8h and get paid for 8h.

I _can_ do that, but I won't. I value my integrity. So to me, it definitely
does matter if I'm expected to work 8h as opposed to 4h, even if I can work
from home.

------
arturnt
An average work day isn't filled with 100% development. You have breaks for
lunch, coffee, people asking you questions, meetings, ping pong, etc. For a
good workplace a chunk of your time is a social experience like any other.
That means if you spend about 2-3 hours a day total socializing, then the 5
hours a day you spend working. For startups, sometimes you have time sensitive
releases so that number goes from 5 to 10, but it's still only about 50 hours
of actual development per week even though it's 65 with all the other stuff
included.

Treehouse has managed to make a 4 hour week work since everyone is working
remotely, so that social aspect is not as prominent and consumes less time.
For people who have kids spending time for the kids becomes more important
than the social experience at work as it should. The 4 day work week all of a
sudden makes sense since they have bundled those 3 hours / day of a work
social time into one day of a kids time.

------
rajacombinator
I love reading about work style experiments like this and think they're great
in some situations. But they make more sense for serial founders who have
cashed out before or established cash cows like Google/Apple/Facebook. New
founders who are all in on a business can't afford to work 4 days a week
because the clock is ticking.

~~~
BadassFractal
Yup, that's exactly what I mentioned as well. Nobody who's hungry and trying
to break through can afford to slack off and expect massive success.

------
fndrplayer13
Its good that places like this exist. My experience thus far has shown me that
different developers might go through different phases of their careers in
terms of how much they like to work. I think the article touches on this a
bit, noting that most of these people are married and have families. I'm
married, but I still totally feel the urge and drive to work on software all
the time. And its not that I love work, its that I love writing software. I
could see that drive tailing off with kids and those kinds of deep
commitments, though.

------
free2rhyme214
This is a nice way for Treehouse to differentiate itself for talent but this
is blown out of proportion like Tim Ferris's 4 Hour Work Week.

Employee culture is important but to be honest I only care about how well the
founders are executing their original vision then all the yoga classes, free
food, Friday's off, beer pong, maid service and other things companies are
offering.

32 hours a week is nice for some but that doesn't always equate to marketplace
monopolization.

Then again since Treehouse is competing with others this may not be their goal
anyways.

------
spiritplumber
We work five days a week, one of which is shared so we can talk. Which five
days is up to the person.

Of course since I'm a cofounder I work pretty much 24/7 but such is life...

------
Sir_Substance
The stories vary in quality and details, but as far as we can tell the 40 hour
week was implemented by Henry Ford in 1926, after careful record keeping and
analysis revealed that the ratio of worker output per week to wages paid per
week peaked at about 40 hours per week of work.

Now, that's fine for factory work, but as far as I know, relatively little
effort has been put into testing that theory in knowledge jobs.

------
varunjuice
This is just recognition of the fact that productivity is divorced from # of
hours at the office, or # of hours spend "working'

------
sandworm
In my work (legal) i often find myself overdressed and overstressed about
decorum and timetables. But corporate decorum, working 9-5 m-f, has a place.

I remember one incident where a thursday meeting at a startup was canceled
because a department head wanted to turn an already long weekend into a 4day
holiday. I put my foot down. Fridays are not weekends. If they are, then
thursdays become fridays and you'll start skipping them too. That meeting
consisted of me in a suit, in an empty office, talking to two people via
skype. I call that a victory because the meeting at least happened. (The truth
is that all the low level employees on the first floor were there and working.
They cannot afford to skip out on work.)

Casual is all well and good until it creates unpredictability and disorder.
Contrary to popular myth, things actually get done in meetings. Not every
decision can be made while scaling the in-office climbing wall. Some decisions
require people sitting down at a table to hammer through a series of points.

Does that thing that happened last night on the server qualify as a breech? I
don't care that tomorrow is a friday. Neither will your backers, nor the FBI,
when they haul you in to explain why you couldn't be bothered to take a
decision until after your ski weekend.

------
zaroth
I wonder if they pay part-time salaries to reflect the work hours. Certainly
an interesting trade-off. If you have kids and a stay-at-home spouse I can
certainly understand the appeal! Otherwise, perhaps not so much...

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "I wonder if they pay part-time salaries to reflect the work hours."

It's only 8 hours less than the average work week so I'd expect the salary cut
to be minimal.

~~~
jqm
Would you consider 20% minimal? because that's the hours from a 40 hour week
that are cut.

~~~
k-mcgrady
True but if they are actually productive in those 32 hours it could work out
the same. How many hours per day do startup guys waste playing ping pong and
browsing HN? Maybe if they have the Friday off they would procrastinate less
during the 32 hours and output would be the same. Personally I think a shorter
work day would be more effective than a full day off as regards to
productivity.

Also, look at the number of companies that do/have done 20% time. If giving
employees 20% of the week to do whatever makes them happy result in better
productivity it would be fair to keep the salary the same.

~~~
jqm
That's a good point. I'm all in favor of people spending less hours at work
and more of it working productively and getting paid the same.

It's not just startups. In my experience, most people spend a good portion of
their time playing around, chatting, doing stuff that doesn't matter to appear
busy, etc etc at work. Then they come home tired. It doesn't really make
sense.

I think the fear is, if hours were reduced, people would still would tend to
do the same types of things. So, it appears the standard setup is underpay,
overstaff, keep everyone there more hours than they need to be, and assume at
least some of the people are working some of the time.

------
JohnLen
Productive works that matters. Not the working hours.

------
monsterix
Now this could be an early sign of a bubble in the making. Here's why:

1\. The bay believes that _solofounders_ are a bad deal - mostly - because
starting a company is a lot of work. And so it is - a lot of work!

2\. Now here we have a handful of _startups_ that confess there's isn't enough
work to keep everyone in the nimble team up on toes for even forty hours a
week! This contradicts with 1.

Sure it means team happiness and all that. Fine.

3\. For each _startup_ that has confessed situation at 2. there should be at
least 'X' times the number of start_ups who do not accept this reality. I
don't know what that number 'X' would be but let's take it 10.

Which means what - a bubble?

[Left open]

~~~
divegeek
> here we have a handful of _startups_ that confess there's isn't enough work
> to keep everyone in the nimble team up on toes for even forty hours a week

I don't think they said anything of the sort. There's no claim they don't have
enough work for 40 hours; I'm sure like most of us there is no end to the
work, and it can and will consume all the time we're willing to give it.

They're just not willing to give it as much. It's possible that will put them
at a disadvantage to their competitors. It's also possible that they may be
sufficiently more creative to overcome that disadvantage.

~~~
monsterix
Yeah, but negative vote is a perfect example of how stupid this community has
become. Not even able to digest even the slightest counter-thinking, and the
recoil is never short of abusive.

Look at the moron below who calls "up on toes" as corporate slang. NO. It's
not a corporate slang, rather a pursuit of a start_up to beat the rest.

Hopeless! This site used to be quality. Now it's full of sheep with one-track
mind. My last note here. Go ahead vote it down, enjoy your dumb echo-chamber
and live through your satisfaction.

Bye.

~~~
iopq
You got downvoted because your post doesn't make sense.

