Core Hours Is Not Nine To Five

From FlexTimeAndXp,

Personally I would reject any job or any methodology that didn't allow me to control basic aspects of my life. Otherwise you might as well work in a factory where they tell you when you can poop, how long it will take, when to eat, how long it will take, etc. You are asking for a lot of sacrifice for the group. Too much.

Definite StrawMan here. Please step back and consider the actual problem rather than the imagined one.

Please actually address the comments. It's not an imagined problem at all if you have been part of these work hour discussions. If you say I must work 9-5 then I can not control my time. Deciding when I work is very important to me. It may not be to other people and they may not care. I did not say everyone should feel this way, I said personally. The assumption in some of the previous sections is that 9-5 are the "normal" work hours and everyone should be willing to work these hours. This is simply not true. It's like asking a straight person to become gay or vice versa.

Asking people to work 9-5 is like telling you when you can poop? When you call the cops, do you expect them to answer? When you go to KMart, do you expect them to be open? When you arrive at the hotel at 1 AM, do you expect them to let you check in? When you burst from not pooping when you were told, do you expect people to be at the emergency room?

Let's get real. No one has to accept a job if they don't want to, and if flex time is important, then by all means choose work when you can work flex. But it's no sin to ask people to be there at core hours.

No, requiring people to work 9-5 is like telling me when I can poop. Cops often don't answer. Kmart has been closed when I've gone there. The emergency room will be open but I'll wait 5 hours before they can see me. And core of hours of 9-5 kind of challenges the concept of what core means.

I, for one, work in what I consider to be a unique situation. I can work whatever hours I want, unless it's my turn to open or close the support line, in which case I have to either be there at 5:00am for East Coast callers, or stay until 6:00pm for West Coast callers. It is very important that those servers run properly during business hours; if they don't, we can't do business. We go on a weekly rotation, and our time on the extreme shifts buys us a lot of slack the rest of the time.

''It seems that personal freedom and working with others may conflict. In order to work with others, you need to agree on a schedule. If you want the freedom to change your mind at any time, you might even resent following a schedule today to which you agreed yesterday. Some simple do not have a problem with making an agreement and following it. Others really do resent being told what to do by their past self. We can probably leverage this difference is we think about fit. What person should have what job?''

I think there are two very different scenarios here. If your place of work demands you work a certain schedule due to outside constraints (e.g., the store needs to be open 8-10, you need to communicate with the stock exchange) that is perfectly reasonable. On the other hand, if a workplace demands you attend 9-5 for no other reason than some PHB wants you to, that is an abuse of the power structure. Smart management doesn't do this. Of course, mandatory attendance of necessary functions (e.g. meetings) is another thing.

It is a similar issue with dress codes. If you are interacting with those outside the company, fine. Otherwise, it is a bad idea.

Comments like these disturb me. I really don't care what people wear, and I don't care when people work except insofar as they need to interact with others. But I'm disturbed by people who get all weird about work hours when they haven't been asked as yet to adhere to any, and who get all weird about dress code when they haven't as yet been asked to wear any clothes. It just seems like such people are worried about stuff that isn't going to fit well with a team trying to accomplish some business purpose. They seem so uptight about personal freedom that I conclude they have no space in them for the team's goals, and the boss's goals.

Fair enough, on the surface. But one need not be 'weird' about something to be concerned about it. I once worked at a company that had many, many, inane rules - they were poster children for micromanagement and political infighting. The end result: although the work was interesting, the work environment was insane. In the end, it just wasn't worth it, so I left. Now when a company and I are interviewing each other, I ask a bit about the work environment. If something is expected in order to accomplish some business purpose, that is one thing (and quite reasonable). On the other hand, if there is no rational business justification (and manager so-and-so likes it that way isn't justification) for certain policies that is something else entirely. Like a code smell, this is a sign of problems, at least potential problems. I don't really care about dress code or work hours, what I care about is the underlying structures. Managers that insist on irrational actions in one area are likely to do the same elsewhere. Or perhaps they just have that certain type of immature personality that likes to exercise power/leverage simply because it can. Either way, it is bad news, and in my best interests not to accept an offer from this company....

In a realistic and people-friendly development shop, the compromise was reached that set core-hours to be 10AM to 3PM. For XP, Stand-up meeting around 10AM, and customer available 10 to 3 should work. Earlybirds and night-owls pair before and after the core, and overlap during it. Rush hours were avoided, families attended to, and no insistence on exactly when the non-core hours got fulfilled meant early takeoff on Friday could be compensated by doing longer Tuesdays for instance. Don't let PHB's use XP as an excuse to claw back the flextime deal.