[imcrs]

I've already kind of made it clear here where I stand on this, but I gotta tell you, you really do sound a lot like management.

Do you really think your superstar programmers are well and truly doing intellectual work, the kind of work that produces business value, from the time they hit the coffee machine at 9AM to the time they grab their briefcase to go home at 5PM?

If you believe this, I think you might be interested in bringing the Bobs in to discuss making our T.P.S. reporting process more efficient. They have thoughts on coversheets.

[safety1st]

In Deep Work, Cal Newport posits that even the most disciplined, high performers can do work that requires really focused attention for a max of four hours per day. He's a computer science professor, not exactly "management."

And these days, for a lot of knowledge workers there's a pretty strong case that anything which isn't this "deep work" can probably be automated.

So yeah if I'm paying you a full time salary I want those four hours. Without necessarily rendering judgment on what a moonlighting clause should or shouldn't look like, if I'm not getting those four hours, I don't want you on my payroll.

[messe]

And you think you're more likely to get those four hours in an open office environment with distractions aplenty, as opposed to my effectively noise-proofed home office where I can actually focus?

[jakupovic]

First, nobody cares what you want. Second, do you pay for those 4 hours adequately, guess what if you don't? Even if you do, are you OK with 2 hours today and 6 hrs tomorrow? How about a year of 1 hour days and then a 24 hour period that fixes all the problems for last 2 years?

[lukas099]

I’ll attempt a steelman and say, no, employees are not doing deep work from 9–5, but I could see being in an office 9–5 setting the stage for a lot of deep work to be done. Moonlighting for another company I could especially see as detrimental to focus at work.

[p_l]

The nature of modern offices pretty much prevents deep work.

You're not going to get deep work when you pack people like sardines into neat rows of desks, where pretty much at any time someone within one row away is going to be in a meeting - conducted of course over teleconferencing software. Or some people will talk (honestly, being in the office mostly translated to chit-chat for me).

[rustystump]

Deep work with an open office? Dont make me laugh. Please for the love of god bring back cubicles.

The steel man is that in the office you get cross team pollination organically. Team lunches, talking about an idea with another team on how to do something better as in that moment the idea came up. This happens more often in person than remote.

Does it need 5 days a week in the office? Absolutely not. 1-2 is plenty.

[legostormtroopr]

I don't expect someone to do deep focused work from 9am to 5pm.

But at the same time, I don't expect them to spend their 9-to-5 working for another company at the same time.

As a founder, who respects the 9-to-5 and supports WFH, if I'm paying for 8 hours of work, I want 8 hours of output. Not 4 hours of output, and then you working 4 hours for another job.

If multi-jobbing becomes a thing, then WFH becomes untenable because at least in the office you can be monitored.

[croon]

To be fair, you're either paying for hours or for output, because I assure you you are not paying staff accurately for their output. You can of course sack someone who outputs notoriously little, but if you get output exceeding your average "8 hours of output", you shouldn't care if someone made it in 1 hour or 16, or at least you wouldn't be able to tell.

I'm using "output" as quoted in context, it's such a nebulous measure unless you're specifically buying a product.

[imcrs]

Do you pay your programmers hourly or on salary?

[agubelu]

How do you measure whether some output corresponds to 8 hours of work, and not 4 or 16 hours?

[rustystump]

8 hours of output? I get it but poor phrasing.

[moscoe]

I’m sorry management hurt you.

It’s not your fault.

[imcrs]

To be clear I'm having a lot of fun being snarky here.

Like everything it's a mix.

In seriousness, I do find the labor perspective sorely and quite conspicuously lacking in these discussions, both discussions about remote work and about DEI backlash.