{"id":210,"date":"2008-11-25T09:20:17","date_gmt":"2008-11-25T09:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blackcompanystudios.co.uk\/blog\/?p=210"},"modified":"2011-07-18T18:16:56","modified_gmt":"2011-07-18T18:16:56","slug":"fixed-working-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackcompanystudios.co.uk\/blog\/fixed-working-hours\/","title":{"rendered":"Fixed working hours"},"content":{"rendered":"

I posted this in a discussion on TheChaosEngine<\/a> forums, but it sums up my position on overtime\/fixed-working-hours quite succinctly, so I thought I’d re-post it out here in the real world. For reference, our team tries to work office hours of 9-5, rather than a flexi-time arrangement. This is, it seems, quite unusual in the games world, and there was a spirited discussion on TCE about whether or not it stifled creativity and\/or leads to making the unpaid overtime situation worse.<\/p>\n

[in reply to the implication that really good employees are the ones who work extra and late to deliver over and above expectations]<\/em><\/p>\n

While I heartily acknowledge that it’s daft to just up sticks and leave at some arbitrary time and break your flow, I think that its still going to be the exception rather than the rule. You don’t always hit your peak productivity at 4:30 only to have to leave at 5. Certainly there are some days when I’m just getting going when I really should be going home – I find a good point to shelve it and go home. And when I come back in the morning, I’ve had a whole night to ponder the work and generally do a better job of finishing it up than had I just forged ahead.<\/p>\n

That said, I don’t want my team feeling like more hours = better work. The only way I want to see productivity improved is for people to work smarter and harder for those 8 hours. I want people to go home feeling like they achieved lots, but still get home at a sensible time that leaves them free to enjoy their own time. I want people to come in and focus, so we’re all in that intense zone of getting s&*^ done at roughly the same time.<\/p>\n

We all spend time during the day surfing the web, emailing others, etc., and it eats productivity, and doesn’t necessarily improve the creative atmosphere. I don’t want people staying late to get their stuff done because they have only done 5 hours of effective work in the 9-5 period. Then they end up getting home late, and blame the job for sucking up all their free time.<\/p>\n

I want a team that burns bright during their work day, and finds that balance between producing volume, and feeling the creative spark that gets them producing quality. If the only way I can improve the team’s productivity or quality is to increase the hours worked, then I’ve failed. If we’re really at our peak productivity in that 8 hour day, then I’m due to hire someone else. I’m pretty damn sure that if we every got even close<\/em> to that zone we’d be one of the most effective devs around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I posted this in a discussion on TheChaosEngine forums, but it sums up my position on overtime\/fixed-working-hours quite succinctly, so I thought I’d re-post it out here in the real world. For reference, our team tries to work office hours of 9-5, rather than a flexi-time arrangement. This is, it seems, quite unusual in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5],"tags":[89,12,90,106,105],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pg1JR-3o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcompanystudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcompanystudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcompanystudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcompanystudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcompanystudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blackcompanystudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":620,"href":"https:\/\/blackcompanystudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions\/620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcompanystudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcompanystudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcompanystudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}