40-45 hour work weeks

[iamb55]

After open sourcing the handbook, this was by far the item we got the most feedback about, and I think with good reason. We really believe the research that more hours worked does not lead to more productivity, and at Clef we want to give folks time for the rest of their lives. This change better reflects the work hours we keep and expect at Clef.

This is not meant to be the final word on this issue, this is a small update to better reflect how things are today.

[sarahmei]

Hi folks, @jessepollak invited me to comment on this on twitter...so here I am. :)

As a bit of background - I read the handbook and really liked the tone throughout. You are clearly trying to align the goals of the company with the goals of your employees, and you've thought a lot more about what that means than many other similar-sized companies I've worked with. So that's 👍 for sure.

In light of that, this part (in its original form where you had 45-50 hours physically at the office as the standard) seemed really off-tune. I know that when companies write down their policies, they start by basically just codifying what they do now. (I'm in the process of that now, so ha ha! right there with you.) I assume that's what happened here - all y'all spend slightly over full-time physically at work.

To be honest I love working at an office. Some folks can be productive at home, particularly if they have things to do that are solitary, but so much of building a good product comes from the creativity of group in-person communication. I love working like that, and on communication-heavy teams (meaning, when you're building something new) having everyone in-person means you can go at least an order of magnitude faster than when you're distributed. For most small companies, not wanting to lose that creativity, and wanting to move faster than other teams is what drives their in-the-office policy.

So my problem isn't the policy itself - just the number of hours. I'm a single parent with two school-age kids, and there is no way I could physically be in an office 45 hours a week (even if 5 of those hours were lunch). That's not to say that I don't work 40-45 hours - they're just not all at the office. I spend an hour or two doing email, writing (hi!), or filing expense reports most nights after the kids go to bed. When I'm in the office, I try to focus that time and use it for communication-oriented work, and leave the other stuff for when I'm at home. It works pretty well.

At DevMynd we're going to try having core hours from 10-4. People are still expected to work full time, but only be physically in the office between those hours. I think it will benefit everyone, not just the parents. It also widens who we can recruit. Now we can talk to folks living in communities that are further away, folks with elder care responsibilities, folks with daily doctor appointments, etc., and be able to assure them that we can work with their schedule.

Amazing people come with all sorts of lives.

[zspencer]

Hey @brennenbyrne + @jessepollak;

First off, I totally get the 'we work 50 hour weeks, let's be up front about it' bit. There's a couple concerns I have with this:

1. 40~45 hours a week is likely to be seen as a minimum. This is reinforced by the bit about how many of the team hosts/participates in events after hours. It's human nature for people who are emotionally invested in being good workers to go above and beyond the minimum, even if it's unhealthy.
2. This is further exacerbated for those under the shadow of stereotype threat. I can't tell you the number of non-white dudes who I see working themselves to death in this industry because of the old "we have to work twice as hard for half the recognition" trope :/.
3. Finally, hours worked is a poor measure of value generated, especially in a creative workplace. As an alternative, consider quality of effort and attention. I go so far with this as to track the quality of attention when I log my time against client projects. As an added bonus, reflecting on the quality of your attention is a really great introspective practice, at least in comparison to "have I worked 8 hours today?"