This is not a place where anyone with a choice would want to work.
> * Each workday has a team standup meeting. We choose 9 a.m., because it sets the tone for the day.
> * The workday has core hours when we expect people to be together. We choose core hours 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in our team's main time zone, because these are typical business hours for typical offices.
> * Beyond the workday core hours, we expect people to do their own schedule
Can you refresh the repo page now and see if it is more helpful and clear? Thank you!
For example, the item about 9-5 core hours actually comes from a bank that has tellers, call center operators, and an IT staff that needs to be onsite and available for helping with physical hardware. Again, the point of the ground rules isn't the hours per se; the point is that the team writes its expectations so everyone has a good understanding.
You are lucky if you think 10-12 hour work days don't exist in software development. You might also be forgetting about flex schedules, core hours may include the entire working day and may be a signal that substituting 9-10am for 5-6pm is not acceptable because you were hired to do a job that depends on your presence when others are also there. There are multiple legitimate reasons that core hours exist in 8 hour blocks in some places.
And that's all moot since the specific hours in this discussion are unrelated to the point @jph was making, which he already stated kindly and clearly.
Many managers are completely oblivious to federal labor laws, unfortunately.
But, I worked in a very well known Hollywood film studio that had mandatory 10 hour work days with an 8 hour core window, not including crunch times. They factored overtime pay into the schedule. This meant that all employees were being paid some 1.5 time, that double-time would hit sooner than you'd think, but also be a lower rate than what you might expect. It was all documented and reported on my tax forms, and within the bounds of California law AFAIK.
Exempt and non exempt status are very clearly defined. One gets paid hourly, the other a salary. If you are on any kind of schedule, you are usually non exempt unless really a manager.
That this law is broken often is in no doubt, but all it takes is one complaint to the DOL to set things straight quickly. At the very least, if the core hours are documented, it should be fairly easy to make a case for whatever overtime was worked.
I don't think this is true. And it's irrelevant to my point that there are legit reasons for 8 hour "core hours" windows. That discussion was already irrelevant to the point @jph was making: that communicating team expectations by writing them down, making them explicit, and communicating them is a good idea.
Anyway, I just looked up exemption status, and here's what some lawyers have to say about it. I'm certain that the studio I was working for was not breaking any laws by having 10 hour work days with core hours. The way they accounted for it was a tad surprising / misleading to me, but it was in no way illegal.
'An exempt employee has virtually "no rights at all" under the FLSA overtime rules. About all an exempt employee is entitled to under the FLSA is to receive the full amount of the base salary in any work period during which s/he performs any work (less any permissible deductions). Nothing in the FLSA prohibits an employer from requiring exempt employees to "punch a clock," or work a particular schedule, or "make up" time lost due to absences. Nor does the FLSA limit the amount of work time an employer may require or expect from any employee, on any schedule. ("Mandatory overtime" is not restricted by the FLSA.)'
http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html
> The job duties of the traditional "learned professions" are exempt.
> Professionally exempt work means work which is predominantly intellectual, requires specialized education, and involves the exercise of discretion and judgment.
Generally meeting anybody from West Coast meant I had to stay late, for some reason I was never able to organize meeting that would have more than one US West Coast person come early to work
Either way, your incredulity is perhaps misplaced. You always have the power to choose the job & hours you want. It might affect how much money you make, what you do, or how other people perceive you, but it's not hard to guarantee you get paid for 40 hours and never work more than 40 hours.
Personally, I don't love working at places where people are obsessively concerned with getting paid for every minute worked and with clocking out at 5pm sharp. By all means, we should have lives outside of work, but I'd rather be working on something fun where the people around me are engaged and are so involved we sometimes don't even notice it's 5:45 than a place where people count down the minutes until they can leave. That's just how I feel now, and I might change my mind. It's a certainly balance, it can go wrong in both directions.
Back to the real topic of this thread: explicit communication of expectations at work is better than not communicating, or unspoken desires or vague rules, right?
That’s the royal “we” isn’t it?
Can you try reloading the repo page and see if it makes better sense now? Thanks for the feedback!
To keep ground rules at front of mind, each teammate is responsible and self-directed.
* I have a teammate who likes to write the core rules on the whiteboard before each meeting, and point to them when he starts the meeting, and each time a participant needs reminding. This is amazingly effective with a good sense of humor.
* I have a teammate who uses chat private messages to coach people. This is especially effective for things like video calls when we want to try the team sign language ground rules.
* I have a teammate who does weekly one-on-one meetings with every direct report, and monthly one-on-one meetings with skip level reports, and discusses the ground rules along with OKRs (objectives and key results) and KPIs (key performance indicators).
I'm always open to learning new aspects, and also to trying new ways of working. Feedback is very welcome.
> * I have a teammate who likes to write the core rules on the whiteboard before each meeting, and point to them when he starts the meeting, and each time a participant needs reminding.
Are you working with school children or professionals?
For example the Executive Director was deaf, a significant number of client staff were hard of hearing, and there were 100K school students, including special needs students, and many recent immigrants who were starting to learn English.
All online materials were provided in accessible formats, and all public presentations had a sign language interpreter. A typical classroom meeting, district meeting, or videoconference, could have 20-80 participants.
I can point you to the National Association for the Deaf (NAD) which is an excellent advocacy group. NAD works to improve accessibility, equal access, and equal opportunities. Sign language in the workplace can be a big help to some people.
For people who are stepping into existing teams, I suggest writing ground rules.
Ground rules are clear explanations of team expectations. Ground rules can be simple, bottom up, and help improve teamwork:
https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/ground_rules
I agree fully with the author about writing objectives.
Objectives can be sophisticated, top down, and help improve planning. I suggest knowing "Objectives and Key Results" (OKRs) as at Google and Intel:
https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/objectives_and_key_re...