I’m a software developer working from home, and I work 4 purely focused hours per day (using pomodoro technique). I haven’t told my employer this.
I keep getting told I’m doing a good job, and I know I’m getting promoted soon.
I refuse to believe I’m a 10x engineer, so what I’m left to believe is that either everyone else at my company is doing the same, or they are working 8 hours without focusing.
Yes what matters is productivity. It is better than sitting 8 hours in your miserable cube in the office , spend 2 hours in commute and get stressed at that and not able to focus properly and churning out low quality code than you can do in 4 hours of quality focused time.
Ive found that there are days when I can’t do more than 2 hours without struggling, and some days where 10 hours go by without too much effort. Like you, I probably average 4 hours a day, but I don’t want to artificially limit it if I’m in a groove.
At my old team - in a fairly well known non-Faang software company - we planned sprints assuming 4 productive hours a day, so the 4 hour figure is probably not too extraordinary.
10x engineer is the most atrocious bullshit I have heard about. It can be only said by people who are not developers. I don't believe there is a meaning behind 10x programmer.
If you talk purely about coding throughput, I know quite a few. Ayende Rahien/Oren Eini being one. That guy does most complex shit you can imagine, and does it well and fast.
If you talk about an 10x in any profession, You can see that in many walks of life, not just engineering. On many occasions, people find ways to do 10x impact with 1x work.
It can be closing a large sales, it can be avoid doing 6 months of work by 50 people by pulling 5 people for 3 month and approaching the problem much differently. Or it can be acting as a force multiplier by building tools to do grunt work etc.
So yes, 10x exists. even 50x probably possible to find, you need to stop thinking about 10x lines of code and start thinking about 10x impact. That can be your way to get to 10x.
10x the burgers grilled. 10x the items picked. 10x the dogs walked. 10x the street corners busked. 10x the instagram posts. be the change you want to see!
I used to be one. I’ve also been a 1/10x programmer.
Knowing and mastering your tool chain, language, editor infrastructure etc intimately; can have tremendous productivity gains.
Having zero personal life also helps tremendously.
Features and products just flow out of you.
Personally I found having a family has many benefits, but I also lost that edge. Health issues also take away a lot.
Kids getting old enough to not require constant attention is allowing me to regain some of that.
There are almost certainly 0.0x to 0.1x programmers. What percentage of the people working as programmers are in that realm is subject to some debate, but I've absolutely worked with programmers whom I would put into the "obviously 10x more value-creating than the median" camp.
(Some, but not all, were also abrasive personalities who didn't work well in teams.)
My email is in my profile. I'm happy to make those referrals, but will note that most of them have landed in places that make them appropriately comfortable and engaged, so they're hard to dislodge (don't think I haven't tried every so often).
Oh they definitely exist. If you can manage the ego/personality issues that come with the package they can do to your company in 2-3 months what a team of 20 would take a year+ for.
I don't know, the smartest programmers I've ever met have also been the most helpful ones, willing and able to explain incredibly complex concepts patiently and clearly. They make everyone around them better.
If you can manage the ego/personality issues that come with the package
The only genuine 10x programmer I have ever met was the nicest, most humble guy you could imagine. He didn’t just crank out code, he saw patterns in things that no one else could until he pointed them out, and then it seemed obvious because he explained it so well.
But I have met many 1.1x programmers who act like the worst stereotypes of a 10x, and when the dust settles and someone has to maintain their rockstar code they have the net effect of a 0.1x.
Having to do so is a drag on everyone else's productivity. If it's bad enough, you'll end up also having to deal with a higher turnover - another productivity drag. Is all this a still a net gain?
I don't know, the smartest programmers I've ever met have also been the most helpful ones, willing and able to explain incredibly complex concepts patiently and clearly.
What does 10x refer to? If it's the spread between min and max, then it's obviously true.
If it's the spread between median and max, then it's easy to sympathize with it being true. The median startup has 0 or negative economic contribution. Similarly, there's a lot of programmers that create tech debt or low value, so 10x that isn't so outrageous.
What about CEOs? Whats the difference between a median CEO and the best CEO ever? That's got to be way more than 10x.
I agree. The job is difficult enough without this ambiguous notion that you're supposed to be doing 10x the work or spend all of your free time shlepping code in order to be considered "good."
Like "rock star" or "ninja," this concept needs to die.
They do exist but it's a social thing, not a technical/skill thing. They get the big multiplier by making other team members more effective, not through their direct work efforts.
I saw it all the time when I was consulting. I would visit a client with ten or twenty programmers and find that one or two of them did the bulk of the work.
There was recently some attention about an Airbnb engineer in NYC that whipped together a covid vaccine reservation utility site in a day or two that put the official NY government site to shame.
In the NY Times article about it, some of the reader comments was "NYC should hire this guy!" or "He should come work for the city!".
To which people more familiar with SWEs replied "that will never happen, he probably makes several times what a government (or gov contracted) SWE makes, and that's why he can do this while the government team cannot."
i'm thinking i can eventually get to just working TWTh at the intensity you describe and nobody will notice. that's a tipping point where i have more non-workdays than workdays.
In years to come we will look down on the 5 day working week in the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the industrial revolution.
It absolutely blows my mind that 99% of office roles are still 5 days / week, Monday to Friday - why is there basically no variation on this model?
> It absolutely blows my mind that 99% of office roles are still 5 days / week, Monday to Friday - why is there basically no variation on this model?
probably because most people don't want variation? if you have to work forty hours a week, you might as well work the same forty hours as your partner/friends/family so you can easily schedule non-work tasks and social events in the evenings or on the weekend. if you have children that need to be shuttled to/from school, 9-5 aligns well with that.
ah I see from your website that you are questioning the forty hour workweek to begin with. I'm sure most people would happily work eight hours less for the same pay, but I'm not sure how much interest there is in 80% time for 80% pay. also going back to my previous point, the value of that extra free day is diminished somewhat if it doesn't align with activities you want to participate in or availability of people you want to spend time with. I guess you could just treat it as a "chore day" to free up more time on the actual weekend.
> probably because most people don't want variation?
I suspect this claim is not borne out by the evidence. There might be cohorts that enjoy this routine. Here are folks that might enjoy substantial variation, but often get "squashed" by institutional momentum:
- parents (especially moms)
- athletes (professional or amateur)
- community-minded/service-oriented persons
- caretakers of aging parents (this group happens to be the currently 30-50 year old crowd, who theoretically are the most appropriate for a 40-hr-week schedule.)
I have available to my mind many instances of persons who would _vastly prefer_ 80% pay for 80% work, myself included. (er, feels like I should mention I'm a business/customer-oriented software developer who loves RoR and growing teams, open to work arrangements)
Heck, I could provide a list of a dozen very strong engineers that would drop almost everything to investigate a 4-day work-week.
Are you a company who wants to hire the best of the best? Give your employees some of their time back, treat them with respect, and advertise that you work four days a week.
You've now solved your hiring problems. You're welcome.
you're right, I totally pulled that claim out of my ass. I think it's a reasonable assumption though, if only because most people can't actually afford to take a 20% paycut, unless it somehow offsets another significant expense (eg, childcare).
The idea is to work less than 40 hours a week, not to spread those 40 hours into various off-hours.
People are proven to be more productive when they work less than 40 hours a week, so I'm not sure why they'd take a pay cut. If anything, they should get paid more for producing more value.
Also not mentioned: when you work less, you burn out less and are less likely to quit your job. Yet another argument for a < 40 hour work week.
A lot of offices solve this issue with “core hours” where everyone is available. I recall doing 10-3pm and beyond that everyone decided when they wanted to work.
Spend some time working a variable schedule and see how far you get before you long for the 9-5 again. Yeah, traffic a sucks, and grocery stores & restaurants are slammed on the weekends. But it is really, really nice to be able to schedule time with friends and family without needing to sync schedules.
I'm actually pretty early in my career as a 9-5 employee after years of working in restaurants, where the hours are both unpredictable and very likely to fall on the nights when your friends want to hang out. I wished I worked a 9-5 for a long time, and now that I'm here, I'm a little surprised to see people complaining about it. still, it's good to ask why things are the way they are and if they could be improved further once in a while.
You've gone from one environment in which you have little to no control over your hours to another environment in which you have little to no control over your hours. That one is sporadic and the other is static is true, but both are still outside of your control.
Yes, that’s my point. The person I was responding to wrote that Mon to Fri schedules for everyone are nice since they don’t have to sync schedules with friends and family, but that luxury of not syncing obviously doesn’t apply to people who have to work Fri afternoon to Sun night (and holidays).
I'm sure most people would happily work eight hours
less for the same pay, but I'm not sure how much
interest there is in 80% time for 80% pay.
I would gladly work 3 days a week for 60% of my "full time" pay. And plenty of leisure activities I'm interested in do not depend on my friends/family/others having free time in exactly the same time I do (reading book, playing computer games, watching movies, going on a bike ride, hiking).
I’d expect something on the order of half of people are probably down for 80% pay for a four day work week (I’d guess the majority of folks making at least 125% of their area median income plus a smattering of others). At that point it’s trading 20% of pay that will leave you still comfortable in return for an extra 50% of free days. That’s a huge amount of extra life in your own terms.
Given that productivity has skyrocketed in the past few decades it should be totally unacceptable to need to accept a 20% pay cut for only working 32 hours.
If we ever figured out a system where prices like rent weren’t set by the most that people are willing to do, maybe we could finally get more leisure time from our productivity increases. In the meantime, everything is an auction :(
actually it's a little (tiny) bit offset by paying less taxes proportionally. So your net income would be like 84% instead of 80%. Doesn't change your overall point, though ;)
> I'm not sure how much interest there is in 80% time for 80% pay
I would take it immediately!
The last time I kept asking about this possibility at job interviews, the best offer I got was 80% time for cca 50% of my market salary. Even then the company felt like they were doing me a huge favor.
> the value of that extra free day is diminished somewhat if it doesn't align with activities you want to participate in or availability of people you want to spend time with
On the other hand, the value is increased if you want to avoid people. For example, shopping is better when there are fewer people in the shop. Generally, less standing in the line anywhere.
Looking from the company perspective, it would likely be 20% of the fully loaded cost for an employee (of which pay is just a part) - I think fully loaded cost can be closer to 1.5x pay in some cases, so maybe 80% time for 70% pay makes more sense.
I'd say there's two types of "variation" here that should be discussed separately. One is not working an average of 40 hours a week, and the other is being able to vary the times one works while still working full-time. The latter doesn't violate the concerns you list.
There are people who want or need the full pay but need flexibility. An example is parents, like wonder_er mentioned. At my work, there is a flexible work schedule option where you have to hit 80 hours biweekly and need to work the core hours of 10-2 at least eight days during that period, but other than that you are free to work whenever. This option is super popular with parents because random things come up with kids all the time where you need time in the morning or afternoon but can easily make it up on the other side or another day. It's also popular with younger folks because they can work a bunch at one side of the two-week period and take a three or four day weekend (or even longer if you plan back to back biweekly periods right) without burning any vacation time. They like lots of time off but want full-time pay and are fine with longer hours some days to make up for it. That's variation in schedule even though it's still 40 hours a week on average. All these examples are people still aligned with their connections. In fact, the variation produces more opportunity to shuttle kids to school, participate socially, etc.
To your point, the type of variation where you work less and aren't aligned with the schedules of others in your life is definitely not desirable for anyone with others in your life. I was in the military and worked these schedules for about five years on a 24/7-staffed watch floor. The schedule format changed every time someone new came in and took over, so we probably changed structures every year or so during that time. I can say with surety it wasn't a particular shift schedule but just the off-normal-schedule part of them that made it hard. One that stands out as particularly bad was 12 hours on, 12 hours off (midnight-noon or noon-midnight), three days on, three days off. That was brutal for everyone. Your first day off was a recovery day where you tried to back on normal schedule, and your first day back to work was about trying to not fall asleep as you adjusted back. It switched later to 12 on/12 off, three on four off, but having more time off a week still didn't help. Everyone spent their first day trying to recover so they could do stuff with people in their lives. Later we went to three shifts a day, and workers on the midnight to 8am shift kept that up, but the number of days off til the next shift were fewer, making it worse. The best I figure out to do working that for a few years was stay up when the shift was done and try to sleep at like 4-6pm, but that only was successful because she wasn't working.
"5 day working week.. Monday to Friday - why is there basically no variation on this model?"
This also double screws you due to crowding. When do people drive to work? Same time you do. When do people go to USPS? Same lunch time you do. What time can you go to the fancy restaurant? Same Friday night everyone else does. Traffic, parks, grocery stores are all crowded at the exact same time.
There’s an easy solution to this. Instead of continuing to expand roads, implement variable rate tolling where prices rise sufficiently such that sufficient number of people are dissuaded from using the road at certain times so that there is no congestion.
That only works with flexible workplaces. If you make the congestion tax really high but most workplaces don't give people flexibility with work schedules, all you're doing is forcing people to take longer, roundabout commutes.
In the DC Metro region we have congestion-based tolls and it seems like it has shifted commuting times a bit, but it also causes a lot more congestion on the secondary traffic arteries.
Thankfully I think the pandemics has sort of disrupted employer ideas about flexibility. It's clear more workplaces are offering remote work and flexible schedules and I think that change will last.
> If you make the congestion tax really high but most workplaces don't give people flexibility with work schedules, all you're doing is forcing people to take longer, roundabout commutes.
Then the tax is not high enough. There exists a number where people will say this job isn’t worth it. And you can even toll all roads since license plate scanners are relatively cheap.
Right now, the unpaid externalized costs of everyone driving to work at peak times is diffused across so many people’s inconvenience and time sitting in congestion. Not to mention the environmental costs of making a road 8 lanes wide for 4 hours of traffic out of the whole day.
It’s generally already the wealthy who have maximum flexibility in their schedule. So sure, they can duck out at 3pm for the cheap roads but sounds like those who are on shift based schedules (majority of the working class) will end up having to pay to use these variably tolled roads.
This was in reply to people who are doing things like running errands at the USPS and eating at restaurants, right? What does an employer have anything to do with that?
For me it seems like the 40 hr work week was constructed not for productivity but as the max amount of workable time where a worker would feel like they still have some sort of life outside of work (weekend + 2-3 hrs a weekday of free time). Even then you can be constantly exhausted.
Anything higher and you basically accept you have no life.
Anything lower and you become dangerously involved in the real world. There is a reason why work hours started trending up after the upheaval of the 70s.
I feel you. I just started working for a smaller company where I can work 4 days. And I have to say, my midweekend(Wednesday off) is amazing.
Still able to pay the bills, but I'm working to live, not living to work. I really hope this option is possible when I decide to go for a new challenge in a few years.
I really like what you try to achieve with the platform. Will keep an eye on it.
Sarcasm aside, there actually is a metric we can use as a society to decide these things. If we track productivity gains since the 40 hour work week was established in law, we can determine how many few hours we can work without lowering our standard of living. The magic number appears to be about 12-15 a week.
Or, we can track how many hours people actually spend working. Most office workers will (anonymously) self report that they work roughly 3.5 hours a (edit) day; the rest is spent doing non-productive things. Assuming a five day week filled with only work, that gives us about 17.5 hours a week.
Sure. But personally I’d be pretty happy to trade all the improvements in our living standard for an extra 20 hours a week of my life back. What’s a smart phone compared to the most precious thing we have, time?
I’d also assert that a lot of pointless work is getting done. If workers are self-reporting that they work ~3.5hrs a day, then perhaps we wouldn’t even need to give up any quality of life if we just eliminate the need to fake being busy for 40hrs a week.
When it gets to 3 days / week, it will be easy to introduce variation: have people work in shifts.
First three days -- shift A; second three days -- shift B; one free day for all together. You want more time together? Synchronize with your family members to work the same shift, and you get four free days together.
there’s plenty of variation. most people who work do not work 40hrs/5 days a week. this is actually a luxury compared to the majority of people working in the world today
A result of hyper-capitalism which includes regulatory capture and the lack of adequate social safety nets like UBI, so you aren't forced into work at an unfair wage.
Honestly it's worth pointing out that these figures are based on employee surveys. Basically employees who have more flexible work accommodations are more likely to rate themselves as high performers compared to employees who don't.
Also when you try to actually click on the links to follow up on the claims made in the article, see the methodology and raw statistics well surprise... surprise... the links are either dead or just go to some corporate page.
I found this line in the article more interesting (and more disturbing) than the headline: "The number of skills employers are looking for has risen dramatically — our analysis shows that companies listed about 33% more skills on job ads in 2020 than they did in 2017."
Three years ago there was already an issue with employers being overly specific in their job ads and making it look like basically no one (except maybe the person who just quit) is fully qualified for their position. This just gives even more room for companies to claim there's no qualified individuals and they have 'no choice' but to pursue H-1Bs or contract work (who also will in no way fully match the giant laundry list, but at that point they always seem to be less picky).
I remember my first entry level job out of college 20 or so years ago. The job description said I needed to know C and x86 assembly. That was pretty much it. During the interview I found out I'd be writing display drivers and working with the Windows kernel, so between the time I accepted the job and started, I grabbed a book on writing Windows drivers and crammed. They did not expect me to have "3 years of experience with their stack" for an entry level job. Those were the days!
Companies going full remote also means they can completely avoid work visas. It's even cheaper to directly hire someone in a poorer country directly, and not even pay for office space or a relocation allowance...
you need to maintain a presence in the country you hire. this is not free and different countries have different requirements. you may avoid visas but at minimum you pay taxes and need to discover and set policies to follow local laws and regulations. this impacts more than finance, a lot of eu countries have specific on-call rules for example
only if you insist on having employees and not contractors. there is absolutely no problem to send someone money and have them do work for you. taxes is the contractors responsibility
Yesterday I was rocking my baby to sleep for his mid-day nap, and at the same time reading up on documentation for a new library I’m using.
His room is dimly lit and very quiet, only some faint bird chirping out the window. The warmth of his body on my chest, the sweet smell of his head, and the quiet atmosphere made for the best documentation reading of my life.
> Gartner research shows that 74% of employees expect their employer to become more actively involved in the cultural debates of the day. I believe CEOs will have to respond in order to retain and attract the best talent.
the best talent won't be attracted to those companies long term. they'll seek companies focused on what they are building, focused on a well defined mission.
why? because they will get the most done and be more successful than anyone distracted by the day to day Twitter drama.
this is not the experience i have in a large san francisco based company. i think these things are distractions and retarded waste of time. however i am not representative of others who view this involvement as critical to working at the company. or even a reason to apply in the first place. it’s important for hiring and engagement. it has a real impact on people. so you have to be involved or your risk losing a good employee / candidate who falls in this category
I disagree. Everyone is interested in shaping the world we live in. Driven people probably more-so than average.
I'm already seeing my CEOs responding to cultural changes to attract and retain talent. They are reaching out to local government officials to petition for social change (for example, banding together with local business to have the mayor ban the use of chokeholds by the police). We have a third party audit salaries to ensure there's no gender pay differentials. Maternity & paternity leave is generous and equal. Etc.
The way to solve an issue, for example local police behaviour, is to either go into politics or the police (depending on how exactly policing works in your country)...to go directly at the problem. A CEO asking police to do X or Y is literally meaningless. Why are local business people involving themselves in day-to-day policing? That shouldn't happen (and btw, in places where this does happen...it doesn't have good outcomes).
Company policy like pay or maternity pay isn't a cultural change. Offer it, don't offer it. Again, people don't realise that this creates a wonderful situation for current management: oh, the last management was terrible, they didn't give you this thing, I am giving it you, I am woke...what a letoff. Cultural change isn't about free goodies, and giving your staff maternity pay doesn't mean you care. If you care about maternity pay as an issue in itself, go into politics.
> A CEO asking police to do X or Y is literally meaningless. Why are local business people involving themselves in day-to-day policing?
Not sure if you're aware, but America has a serious issue with abuse by police, especially against black Americans. A few months ago, events in the news caused many people to take a serious look at what is going on. Many of my colleagues are black, and wanted to share their personal stories.
As a result, we all got together and brainstormed ideas for how we could tackle these issues and make our world just a little bit better for everyone. That was one of several suggestions and it worked. The idea comes from a list of proven ways to reduce police-related deaths (I don't recall the author, but I believe it was shared on HN).
> It sounds like you are in the wrong job.
I'm very happy to work for a company that dedicates time and money to improving our world. You might see business as only business. I don't. I think companies should use some of their profits to help those who are less fortunate, and charitable contributions and general social awareness are things I consider when job hunting.
The best talent is not 75% of the work force. In this day and age having a rainbow flag or blm whatever is the equivalent of being 'a Christian company' in the 70s and 80s. All I hear is 'we will pay you less because we will make you feel better, then outsource your job the second it takes 1 cent less to do so'.
I used to be a "40 hours of focused work a week isn't even doable guy".
After working at a startup, I believe this is incorrect. I think personally I have a capacity of 55-60 focused hours, and some people might have more, maintainable indefinitely.
Looking back I say F** that, what a waste of my youth.
I could've worked half and accomplished just as much, maybe more in different areas had I taken the time to explore not just more of the world but myself.
While I'm sure this is true, it really depends on whether it's your business, how much of the product is 'yours', etc. Most people however work for a salary and don't feel like hours invested equals return on investment. The latter is one of the main causes of burn-out; forcing yourself to spend hours and energy on something that does not have good return on investment. Setbacks weigh more heavily.
I think that in a few years your opinion may change again. Until then, I hope you're getting good ROI, and I'll admit that I'm a bit jealous as well.
I think the question is not if you *can* work that many hours but if you *should* do it.
Ofc there will be a minority of people that perhaps even enjoy it, but the vast majority is gonna suffer serious mental health issues.
Not to mention that, as others pointed out, some people like to have a life outside of work.
If you work 60 hours a week you either don't sleep much or your life is just working and sleeping.
Yeah from what I've read, people who work longer feel more productive but in reality they're less productive. I would guess it's from your stress hormones constantly being engaged.
This also jives with my experience noticing colleagues. The least productive people I've worked with have worked the longest hours.
I think that depends a bit on personality, place/time in life, etc.
I could easily pull those hours in my early 20s,etc but nowadays I have family and other things so if I do those hours I'll be behind with other things so in addition to needing a bit of extra rest as I'm older, I'll also be in a "todo-deficit" that needs to be caught up with making for more stress in the near/middle term.
Yup, also, as someone who's done sustained 60+ (maybe even a month of 80+), there's very little room for creativity. It works ok for pursuing the solution to that one clear, looming problem.
I much prefer 5hrs/day of focus, arriving at the office refreshed, excited, and creative.
>I think personally I have a capacity of 55-60 focused hours, and some people might have more, maintainable indefinitely.
I think you hit the nail on the head about it being a personal situation. I'm the type of person that has trouble relaxing when things are not "complete" and I have the capacity to go deep and lose myself when working. As a result, I've had no problem with getting 8+ hours of focus time in a workday. I'm able to either find a quiet spot in the office and/or put on my headphones and block out the world to get stuff done. I derive huge satisfaction from being able to do that. Since moving to management, my time is much more meeting-heavy, but when time is available, I've been able to go deep and still get 20+ hours of deep focus a week.
Fast forward to WFH, and I'm having performance issues for the first time in my 20+ year career. Instead of quick hallway conversations that are over and done and held on an ad-hoc basis, meetings have to be scheduled or work done in longer-running messaging threads. On top of that, having a teenager with ADHD struggling through school is a constant source of interruption, and I'm lucky to get 8 hours of focused time in a week. I'm miserable and will be the first one back when my office opens.
You can work 55 hours a week indefinitely, but after about 8 weeks the loss of per hour production and increases in mistakes will obliterate any advantage that the extra hours might have conveyed.
Don’t underestimate the social value of being busy as compared to actual, measurable outputs. In a lot of high paced environments the former is more important than the latter.
I mean, I could do 60 hrs a week with stimulants, but not without. Some people just have a lot more natural capacity, but who knows if it's trainable or even worth it to maintain for someone that doesn't naturally have it.
I could probably manage that for something I really cared about for a short term amount of time, but the average job as a wage slave I just don’t care about that much.
Total side note, but the chair pictured really reminds me of the aluminum folding chairs that were ubiquitous in backyards when I was growing up. I'd love one like that for the (home) office!
>Employees’ desire to work for organizations whose values align with their own has been growing for some time.
Weird.
I or We, here in Eastern Europe do not talk about politics in work "seriously", just sometimes more or less random thoughts, it'd be viewed as unprofessional to talk about stuff like this unless you're very close with your co-workers who are very fine with some banter.
Our lives are already full of politix I don't want it at my job.
You may argue that politics is still there, indirectly at big companies, but it's still indirectly.
> The gender-wage gap will continue to increase as employees return to the office.
Does it though? I have some coworkers who I used to be able to just walk next door and talk to. Now I ping them on Teams and they might not respond for hours.
> I have some coworkers who I used to be able to just walk next door and talk to. Now I ping them on Teams and they might not respond for hours.
I've found that team members who did that were actually interrupting those coworkers. It takes time to digest questions and comments. Now those coworkers have an opportunity to respond with a fully reasoned discussion instead of being obligated, by a verbal conversation, to respond immediately without fully thinking.
...unless they just don't monitor their work communication channels when they should be available to that. But that's a different kind of problem.
> I have some coworkers who I used to be able to just walk next door and talk to.
I have different experience - I had people sitting at the next door who were always on the phone with $important_customer and I needed to wait 15mins meanwhile they can answer me <1min on _chat_
Much of Eastern Europe is ruled by dictatorships or a very homogeneous culture and political views. Wouldn't surprise me if one only talks about social issues with close co-workers out of fear of workplace retaliation than due to professionalism.
That said, almost all the Russians and Ukrainians I work with are very happy to discuss politics among one another and even with me and they have very strong opinions about the political situation where they emigrated from.
>Wouldn't surprise me if one only talks about social issues with close co-workers out of fear of workplace retaliation than due to professionalism.
Not really, I never felt like I'd be kicked for talking about politics, but it's just not productive, very often relies on emotions, full of difficult to verify informations and causes biases.
So, don't force* people to do politics, being proficent in politics & tricks requires a lot of effort.
You'll have to excuse me if I don't exactly believe that someone who advocates for fair hiring practices in terms of racial, gender, religion and sexual orientation won't face workplace retaliation in a region of the world that still has a relatively poor human rights record on such issues.
It's easy to not discuss politics when most people in the workplace have a very homogenous view of said politics, and when anyone who might disagree with company policy that could adversely affect people on the basis of social issues are kept out of the office.
Then again, Eastern Europe is fairly big and it's not fair for me to paint the entire region with a single brush stroke. Where specifically in Eastern Europe do you have most experience with?
In most of Europe you can't just fire someone for no reason, and their political views is not a valid reason to fire someone no matter if it is right wing or left wing.
> almost all the Russians and Ukrainians I work with are very happy to discuss politics among one another and even with me
Are they discussing politics at work with their peers, or do they also feel comfortable when their bosses are present?
For me, this would be a huge difference. With some colleagues, I am comfortable discussing politics. With others, I am not (either because their opinions seem to crazy to me, or because they seem too obsessed). But debating politics with a boss... I probably wouldn't feel safe to express my opinions at all.
And "companies will adopt stances on current societal and political debates" seems like not only bosses will be involved, but essentially the company will tell you what is the correct opinion, end of debate. Thank you, people above 40 in Eastern Europe already had an experience with this, and probably didn't like it.
I am their boss and they don't really give a damn whether I'm there or not. There is a rift between the older guys and the younger guys, the younger generation hates Putin but the older generation admires him, even though they acknowledge his flaws.
I am fairly certain that in many parts of Eastern Europe, you'd be lucky if the worst thing that happened to you was you lost your job for speaking the way these guys do.
As an outside observer it seems that workplace retaliation is very much a part of companies that vocalize their politics. In other words, only right-think is approved lest you be on the wrong side of history.
I also live in Europe, this view is becoming more common but it is totally incomprehensible to me. I don't need to know about the political views of people I work with, it isn't important. I don't need my employer to agree with my values. It just isn't relevant. Americans always discuss politics, it is divisive.
Politics is inherently divise, that is why we have a political system to mediate it. Very old organisations (the Freemasons is one) have rules about not discussing politics. It will utterly tear society apart. Be blunt: we are saying that companies should declare themselves Democrat or Republican, and then only hire people who are idelogically pure. It is amazing, although not surprising historically, that people view more bias as the solution to bias.
Btw, Europeans understand this is the wrong road because we went down it. The archetypal society governed entirely by politics was Germany pre-Hitler. It doesn't end well.
There is also an irony in someone saying that it must be because Eastern Europe has so many "dictatorships"...my days, this is why people don't want to hear it (most of Eastern Europe is in the EU ffs).
The change that’s being described here is going FROM what you’re saying TO the realization that “politics” is not some separate thing that you can choose not to talk about, but actual issues that affect the lives of employees. People are tired of trying to ignore things that shouldn’t be ignored.
Conversations about politics in the workplace only seems to be acceptable if you share nearly identical political views with those around you in the office. There is no true desire for diversity of thought. To me it feels like a way to reinforce groupthink.
"For many organizations [upended priorities] included responding to the social justice movements...
"2. More companies will adopt stances on current societal and political debates.... Gartner research shows that 74% of employees expect their employer to become more actively involved in the cultural debates of the day."
Ugh! I don't share woke beliefs, and no others seem to qualify to be worthy of non-derisive attention. I hardly want employers to promote these beliefs. (Worse is that they may feel fake in doing it. If there were an organizations authentic beliefs, that might be slightly different.)
> Gartner’s 2020 ReimagineHR Employee Survey revealed that only 36% of employees were high performers at organizations with a standard 40-hour work week. Organizations that offer employees flexibility over when, where and how much they work, see 55% of their work force as high performers.
I'll wait until a more independent institution conducts a study and pass on these "re-imagined" numbers.
I haven't read the whole thing but stopped at this sentence:
> So if men are more likely to work from the office, and managers retain a bias towards in-office workers, we should expect to see managers over-rewarding male employees at the expense of female employees
This is frustratingly wrong in at least 2 different ways.
1. If an employer over-rewards a group of employees, it's at the expensive of the employer, not the other employees.
2. Even if you believe that other employees are responsible for paying the wages of the over-rewarded employees, then if the over-rewarded employees are those who work from the office we'll just see managers over-rewarding in-office workers at the expensive of from-home workers. A woman who works from the office would be over-rewarded, and a man who works from home would be paying. To say that men will be over-rewarded at the expense of women is to throw away a high-quality signal in favour of a lower-quality signal.
None of what you are saying actually contradicts the sentence. More men would be over-rewarded, because more men work from the office. This is bad for the employer, but it is also bad for the under-rewarded employees (they would be missing out on the normal rewards which should go to them).
It's been very explicit some places I've worked. I was given an allocation of X thousands pounds of raises and Y share options. This was allocated based on a certain percentage of the current remuneration of the overall team, and combined with a set of guidelines for how to allocate it based on team performance.
If I wanted to go above my allocation, I'd have to justify it a couple of management levels up, and if approved they'd recoup it by adjusting someone in another team in my group down.
I don't agree with your argument. Salaries are paid largely from a finite pool. If a group of people gets a larger slice of that pie, for any reason, legitimate or not, then that leaves less money for raises and salaries of other groups.
That's a zero sum view of a person who probably contributes little to the bottom line. I've worked on projects where I was directly responsible for landing client deals worth millions and I got compensated accordingly.
In the vast majority of companies at some level (generally the project or department) there is a fixed pool that managers get to spend on things including salaries.
Your position was either not at all that of a programmer, or the structure of your company was exceptional.
The view of the person you replied to is the view of a person who has information generally considered "above your pay grade"
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Also generally your comment doesn't make sense, what does "compensated accordingly" even mean? How does it rebut the idea that compensation comes from a pool?
If anything it affirms it, you're saying the deal was worth millions, do you think your employer just had a check for the millions of dollars and was prepared to divy it up for bonuses?
Or do you think they budgeted a certain percentage of the cashflow for retention to ensure it landed smoothly? Like any competent business would?
Umm I've worked in high growth companies where there's almost always more opportunities than the ability to capitalise and I would work out a deal in advance to pull off things most people weren't able or willing to - the total revenue increased and so did my compensation - there was always money preallocated for growth opportunities.
The only time I saw the "fixed pie" mentality is on my first job in newspapers back in the early 2000s right at their collapse to the internet.
Your comment has so many words that don't really say anything...
Honestly your first paragraph just sounds like you work at companies that can't afford the talent they want on an ongoing basis... so they're willing to pay extra conditionally for when they need current talent to step up to the level they're looking for.
That's a hell of a deal for the company (especially a growing one!) and as you can see it does wonders for retention since giving everyone a carrot isn't as appreciated as hiding the carrot behind your back until they "earn it through exceptional work". The latter approach also really plays egos... and ego is what gets a 10 gallons of work out of a 9 gallon bag.
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Maybe early in my career I would have been on with that?
But yeah, if a place is only going to pay me what I'm worth contingent on finding specific opportunities to negotiate it why would I take that?
Instead I can go to a place that understands I can do things others can't, hires me for that reason, and pays me accordingly by default?
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That's not a "fixed pie" mentality either, it's a "fixed self-worth" mentality. Also known by the moniker of "f*ck you, pay me"
My worth is not contingent on if the deal fell through.
My worth is not contingent on how much revenue this project is going to make.
I'm not going to get shorted on pay compared to the guy working on a project for a sales deal just because I'm working on the boring maintenance parts that will come afterwards and that's not as sexy or the optics aren't as bright.
I'm worth what I'm worth, and if they can't pay it they can't have me. In other words "f*ck you, pay me".
I've worked on projects where I was directly responsible for landing client deals worth millions and I got compensated accordingly.
I bet you didn't. I've known people who've done the same sort of thing (technical architect in pre-sales), and their bonuses were about 1/20th of the salesperson's bonus for the same deals. Unless you've negotiated a bonus structure where you're compensated based on what work you land you never really get the sort of cut you should.
Whilst completely ignoring common second-order effects that have been shown time and time again to be true.
The point made is 100% valid: men are more likely to work in the office than women, and if there's a systemic bias toward office-workers, that's very definitely a systemic bias against women. Not as the first order problem, but the second order problem.
Equity vs equality - equality has it that women should therefore work from the office. Equity questions why you're not actively seeking to address a bias that disproportionately affects a demographic.
I keep getting told I’m doing a good job, and I know I’m getting promoted soon.
I refuse to believe I’m a 10x engineer, so what I’m left to believe is that either everyone else at my company is doing the same, or they are working 8 hours without focusing.