I fundamentally disagree with the idea that a software development team should be constrained to working 9 to 5. Most software developers don’t even have that luxury, working overtime to compensate for all the mistakes people like Fred Brooks told us about some decades ago. In this post, I’d like to pretend more of us are treated and behave as being further to the left of the scale that starts with “Factory Worker” and ends in “Knowledge Worker”, while fully understanding it’s a whole different world “out there”, for whatever definition of “out there” is that invalidates this particular rant.
It seems funny to me that we enthusiastically build highly informative and interactive environments for teams to play in (and I use the word play in the context of a project as a game), and then treat the human beings whose minds are supposed to be completely focused on delivering business value to a customer as machines that clock in, are amazing for 8 hours… and then punch out, go home and resume their personal lives.
And this is where I want to have my cake and eat it, too. The fundamental disagreement I have with the concept of working 9 to 5 (or any other 8-hour period of the day) is that creativity, enthusiasm and logical reasoning can’t be switched on and off by the magic powers of a commute—and mine these days include walking past the Camden Lock and Market, so it’s pretty close to that. And I mean it in a good way: it’s great that developers don’t just switch off when they go back home. It’s why we have so many great open source projects coming out of what seems like pure cognitive surplus.
In fact, the very existence of a cognitive surplus tells me that I actually go through all these good ideas throughout the day. It just so happens they are sprinkled all over it, as my brain happily responds to outside stimuli, which could be an information radiator telling me something’s just happened, or the taste of my favourite local ice cream from the shop down the road. More and more, I want my work to be a part of my life, not a slice of it. As Erin Brockovich, who once allegedly yelled,
Not personal!? That is my work, my sweat, and my time away from my kids! If that’s not personal, I don’t know what is!
If you ask your parents, or maybe grandparents, perhaps you’ll get the same answers as I did. They told me my job is my job, and I have to do it so I can put food on the table. It’s left to my imagination that very few people in my group a generation or two ago had the pleasure of working because they truly like what they do and believe what they do is both positive and meaningful to society.
I think I’ve moved up the pyramid a little bit, that I shouldn’t feel or be embarassed by thinking about “work stuff” for extended periods of time when I’m about to go to bed on a Saturday morning. In fact, that’d get me labelled as someone who’s “focused” and, nowadays, even praised as a workaholic. But if I’m caught talking and thinking about something else entirely for similarly extended periods of time while in the middle of my 8-hour journey, I’m slacking off.
Why?
Fabio Nascimento | 08-Aug-08 at 1:51 pm | Permalink
Concordo com você em gênero, número e grau.
Nós desenvolvedores somo como artistas, e a veia artística não é estimulada por horários e sim por algum devaneio de nossa mente em um momento qualquer.
Mas isso está longe de acontecer em nosso mundo.
Tenho certeza de que nunca colocaram horário para que o Michelangelo pintasse a Capela Sistina…
Enfim, jogo duro esse.
Ótimo texto.
Bruce Snyder | 08-Aug-08 at 2:23 pm | Permalink
Isn’t corporate cubicle life grand?! I do agree that this is at least a contributing factor to the large amounts of open source available today as opposed to five or even 10 years ago. But I also think that there is another element to consider about open source.
That is, the un-corporateness or no-bullshit attitude that seems so pervasive in open source. Consider how much time we spend on tedious bullshit in corporate life. Then compare that with the general demeanor of open source. Granted, some of the bullshit is necessary in business to make money, but most companies just simply have way too much of it. And when you’re required to tend to so much bullshit all the time as a standard course of the day, you begin to find other ways to spend that cognitive surplus. Enter open source ;-).
Domingos Neto | 08-Aug-08 at 10:42 pm | Permalink
Couldn’t agree more, I feel like that myself. Being a team lead, it is harder for me to be able t ’slack off’ or have flexible work hours, but I don’t see this as a problem for the members of my team, I actually encourage it. Maybe it helps that I was one of them as little as 6 months ago
BTW: I just didn’t get the dog
Ulisses Montenegro | 11-Aug-08 at 12:40 pm | Permalink
After having tried both the cubicle and do-your-own-schedule approaches, I am definitely biased towards the first for a very simple reason — big projects require a (whatever size fits you) team, and it is way easier to exchange ideas and criticism when everybody is at the same place at the same time.
I know there are lots of communication-enabling tools for distributed teams, and that good management can really alleviate the need for physical presence of all team members, but after working with the same team for about 3 years now, I think we would probably gain next to nothing if we went the flexible work hours way, and would miss a lot of our face-to-face (including standup meetings/daily scrums).
Recent Faves Tagged With "cognitivesurplus" : MyNetFaves | 24-Oct-08 at 5:35 am | Permalink
[...] public links >> cognitivesurplus About the Death of the Working Hours First saved by kriskr3w101 | 1 days ago 2005 anticipates the end of the institution First [...]
Recent Faves Tagged With "brucesnyder" : MyNetFaves | 03-Nov-08 at 5:06 am | Permalink
[...] public links >> brucesnyder Comment on About the Death of the Working Hours by Bruce Snyder First saved by Mayani325 | 1 days ago Barnhouse's Bottom 25: Utah State First saved by [...]
User links about "slack" on iLinkShare | 06-Apr-09 at 1:03 pm | Permalink
[...] by yoz 19 days ago1 votesDon’t slack, smack and attack>> saved by fiatvera 30 days ago3 votesCarlos Villela: About the Death of the Working Hours>> saved by anoopjohnson 31 days ago4 votesDate!>> saved by chadonline 31 days ago3 votes365 Days of [...]