> I have to say I'm a bit surprised at the positive reaction to this here. This person admits that they're contracted to work 40 hours/wk but they they only do 20-25 hours when working from home.

In all seriousness: The people putting in the most focused hours are less likely to be discussing their work deep in the HN comment section during daytime hours. The people who think procrastinating for half of the day is the norm are going to be over-represented in the HN comment section. And yes, I realize the irony of posting this comment.

> I know work gets tiring, but I find it hard believe anyone can really do great solid work for half a day and then can't possibly get anything productive done in the second half.

It's a common trope on internet comment sections, but I haven't seen it nearly as much in the real world.

Sustained work and focus aren't exactly the easiest thing in the world, but people can and do learn how to put in 6-8 solid hours of work per day all of the time. It's one thing to subtract meetings and e-mail from your count of productive hours, but it's strange to hear so many people claiming that they can't physically work more than 20-25 hours in a week.

In my experience, I've noticed this thought becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in some of our junior hires. If people arrive at the workplace with preconceived notions that no one works more than 3-4 hours per day or that focusing for 8 hours is physically impossible, they don't even try to improve their ability to focus and be productive. Pairing them up with more productive coworkers usually fixes this misconception very quickly.

>but people can and do learn how to put in 6-8 solid hours of work per day all of the time.

This isn't true. It depends on whether the work is cerebral or not. Certain workloads are limited to as little as 2 hours per day, for 2-4 hours of real knowledge work per day. The rest of it is either extremely suboptimal or of a different class.

Something semi-mechanical like translation or categorization that isn't obviously mechanical could probably occur for a full workday.

Ah come on thats still bullshit.

I have and had plenty of full days of coding smart solutions where, when i was in the flow, would even forget that i hit 8h work.

If i really hit my head against a wall because i literaly have an issue i can't figure out right now, i will still try to find different angles or take a walk but i will not just close my laptop after 2-4h of work oO?!

If you're working 8hr straight I'd guess you're following up on work you previously invested a lot of time into.

I don't really see "coding" as productive work. The entire point is the write as little as possible. Most of my day is full of reading and thinking about the problem. The actual coding part is quite small.

It's possible to focus 8 hours every day, you just have to sacrifice some more of your time to rest afterwards.

It's just not worth to throw your life away for someone else. Especially if your peers don't do it, and you won't get rewarded proportionally for doing it.

It's definitely a mindset and is self-fulfilling, once I started working in a restricted area (no internet, cell phones, other electronics allowed) I stopped feeling like I was having trouble working 8 hours a day.

Yes, I write software.

> And yes, I realize the irony of posting this comment.

Well, you posted it around 8pm my time, so...

The person does the same amount of work at home that they do in the office, because when being in an office there is a normal background level of distraction, socializing, breaks etc that interfere with the person’s work, causing them to only be productive for 5 of the 8 hours. But those “unproductive” hours were paid as part of the expected 40. They are still in essence paid as part of the 40. This person’s output for the company is the same (if not better). Lost time from friction caused by office life is restored. BUT spending that restored time on work can be suboptimal. Eg if I push too fast, I sometimes make subtle mistakes that are time consuming to undo. Or I get out of step with coworkers and have to find a way to cool my heels anyway. People are positive about this because the worker is happier and more effective at the job, whilst reclaiming some hours, and contributing at the same level as always, which deep down is what the company is buying with their forty hours - a certain contribution of work per week.

People are paid to be available to do 40 hours a week of work, not to actually do 40 hours of work a week. Sitting around waiting for a meeting to start etc still counts as work because you’re on the companies time not your own.

That’s also where the expectation to go above and beyond comes from. In many office environments actually getting stuff done requires time outside of normal business hours. Paychecks are about hours, promotions are about accomplishing something.

Most companies do a very poor job of accurately measuring employee productivity/output on an individual basis. It seems to me that “40 hours per week” made sense for physical jobs where output was a multiple of hours worked, and then was adopted by newer firms as a low friction, culturally accepted placeholder for “give us your best effort and don’t have another full time job at the same time”.

It is simply impossible to accurately measure knowledge worker productivity on an individual basis. Any attempt to do so causes serious unintended consequences where employees attempt to game the metrics instead of doing the right thing for the business.

I think it's possible, but usually non-cost-effective because it has to be done on a 1:1 basis and therefore doesn't scale well. For example: I can intensively audit a developer's code for a couple weeks (in real time) and usually get a good feel for the blend of skill/time/effort being invested. But it's so time intensive for me to do that, that it's reserved for extreme situations.

Writing code is only a small part of a developer's job. If you focus on that then you'll miss a lot of other key productivity factors, such as contributions to team design discussions, code reviews, defect root cause analysis, etc.

So in short no, it's not possible to accurately measure developer productivity even if cost isn't a factor. Employee evaluations are necessarily subjective and we simply have to accept inaccuracy.

> “give us your best effort and don’t have another full time job at the same time”

Unless you're Jack Dorsey!

Paid salary, work hourly? There's no sense in that for the employee.

Get your work done. That's what Salary used to, and should mean. Takes you 20? Good. Takes you 60? Too bad; get it done.

The trouble is that this assumes pre-determined quantity of work. The reality I've seen most in places is that there's no end of stuff to do. The work is never "done."

What there is instead is an expectation of how much work you're supposed to get done per unit time (albeit calendar time in shops that have things more together). But this is in turn informed by how much time you are expected to devote to work vs other parts of your life.

> contracted to work 40 hours/wk

That's not how salaried positions work in the US. If you work 60 hour weeks you don't get paid overtime (but if that helps you perform beyond your peers, you might get promoted faster).

What matters is performance, not hours.

Not universally true, I am salary and get paid overtime. In fact, of all the software jobs I've had I did unpaid overtime only a couple times a year at most, never most years. I absolutely wouldn't do unpaid overtime regularly - paid overtime is fine, if I were expected to do unpaid overtime regularly I'd leave. Overtime has always been at base pay, not time-and-a-half like hourly employees.

Every salary job I've ever had (I've had 4) required everyone to do their own timekeeping ever day, no working six hours a day and calling it "full time" unless you charged the time off or I guess lied.

I was going directly off what the comment I replied to says, which is "My contract says I have to work 40h/week."

So USA doesn't have anyone working and getting pay for something like a 4 day workweek? ...

Companies typically don't pay for hours worked but fo the value that is delivered. It's common to see people work a lot more than 40 hrs a week as well without overtime, and this is legal as per most employment contracts.

If you are a freelancer billing hours, then yes, I agree it would not be ethical. But still it's somewhat of a gray area. In theory, you should be able to raise your hourly rate to compensate for the fact that you can get more done in less time. But in practice, you might not get any clients if you advertise a higher than usual hourly rate, at least until you build a reputation.

Most companies pay based on market rate, not on value delivered.

Right, otherwise there wouldn't be cost of living adjustments depending on the home address of fully remote workers.

Sure, doesn't change the argument much though.

If my company could lower the cost of its product by half and still make the same yearly revenue, it would. And all the executives would get huge bonuses.

I think I've expressed myself wrongly. I'm not a contractor, just a normal fulltime employee. This normally means (at least in Europe) 8h/day 5 times per week, hence 40h/week. I'm not being payed by the hour.

Yours is a different account than the one I was replying to. Are you the same person as danny_sf45?

Most HN readers probably regard the concept for being contracted to work for a certain number of hours (rather than achieving certain outputs) with inherent contempt anyway so they're not going to be upset about turning one into the other.

Are you a programmer?

He works as a games developer in New Zealand. His prospective might be very different.

Yes