What I have observed in software development companies is that there is no limit where one can say, "My work is done". When one task is complete, there is another one ready to pick up. So, the only way to stop working for a day is to track your hours and say, "I have worked for 8 hours today and I will pause the work until tomorrow".

What field and role are you working in, where you can roll in whenever you want and leave whenever you want and yet complete your work in fewer than the total assigned work hours per day?

> there is no limit where one can say, "My work is done"

I'm a couple years into my first software job, at Google. We don't do performance evaluations relative to whether you're doing as much work as you're capable of in 40 hours. You're evaluated against a fixed rubric corresponding to the job level. In other words, if you're capable of doing a Software Engineer N's worth of work in 40 hours and your title is Software Engineer N-1, you can either put in the 40 hours and get promoted to Software Engineer N eventually, or you can work less and still be perfectly productive relative to your current role's expectations. Plenty of people make that latter choice and work well under 40 hours.

I don't know about Google, but Facebook and I presume some other big companies has an up or out policy. If you come in at Software Engineer N, they expect you to get promoted to SE N+1 in X years, and if you don't, they'll start evaluating you at that level anyway, and assuming you continue to put in level N work, you'll get a performance improvement plan, and then probably fired. There's some level which is considered ok to be 'terminal', you can be promoted above it, but they're also ok with you sitting at that level forever.

Just trying to say be sure to sniff around and make sure you understand the actual expectations.

At Facebook the first terminal level is L5. At Google it is L4.

This is my impression at where I work as well. If you work at a company like this you can effectively already work 4 (or less) days a week. If you currently work at a company that you feel tracks your time then if you do somehow “win” a 4 day work week you’ll probably still be expected to put in 40 hours OR take a 20% pay cut. Either way it doesn’t seem like being told you now only work 4 days a week is materially changing anything.

Also you have some days where you feel super productive and get loads done and some where things are difficult or you are tired and not a lot gets done. If you leave early on the productive days, would you stay back longer on the days you aren't doing so well?

And how do you know if you were actually very productive one day and not that the task was overestimated and actually very easy? Would you want to be on the hook for underestimated tasks? For me its easier to just say "I tried my best for x hours" and leave at the same time every day except in times of urgency.

> If you leave early on the productive days, would you stay back longer on the days you aren't doing so well?

No, I do exactly the opposite. I work longer when I'm super productive, and I cut out early when I'm not having a good day. It seems obvious that you'd try to optimize for working the hours when you are most effective.

> And how do you know if you were actually very productive one day and not that the task was overestimated and actually very easy?

I think that comes with experience - sometimes you just know when the ideas are flowing and the code seems to write itself, and then other times you recognize that you've spent hours banging your head against something only to realise you overlooked something trivial.

But why? What benefit do you get from giving your best days to the company and not use them for yourself? Usually you don’t get anything in exchange for working hard.

Sometimes I have days where I'm just really focused on work problems.

Sometimes I have days where I'm killing it in the gym or on the track.

Sometimes I have days where I just want to work on my garden, or sit and read, or spend 4 hours on an awesome dinner.

I assume most people have rhythms or cycles like this.

Thankfully I have a job that doesn't measure daily output, but instead looks at productivity over a longer period of time, so I can work towards a life where I'm always doing the thing I'm best at, at that moment.

A day where the work I've been doing just comes together like magic isn't transferable to a personal project.

> Usually you don’t get anything in exchange for working hard.

A nice paycheck at the end of the month?

But pay does not depend on how hard you actually work.

Sure it does. My employer notices when I work hard. Since they want to retain me as an employee, they compensate me accordingly. Similarly, I were to _not_ work hard my employer would certainly notice and want to reduce my compensation.

Working hard is not the same thing as working long hours or giving extra of myself. Working hard simply means working intelligently, thoughtfully, and to the best of my abilities.

We have tasks assigned for a two week period. If I finish roughly as many of my tasks as my coworkers finish of theirs I count it as "My work is done".

> My job is such that I roll in whenever I want, leave whenever I want. As long as I get my work done, nobody cares how long I actually work each day

Most of my tech jobs have been flexible hours.

However, it helps to have core working hours. For example, one of my favorite companies didn't care when or where you worked most of the time, but we all had to be present for an 11AM meeting every day and available for a few hours after that. Some people worked early and left early. Others showed up right at 11AM and then worked into the evening. We could always schedule necessary meetings around lunch, or just go to lunch together because we were already together.

Companies that get too flexible with schedules turn into a communication mess, unless they really do have units of work that can be done asynchronously and in isolation.

We track hours at my job but it’s not anything super granular. We have to bill clients for hours, so we track them ourselves but it basically comes down to getting 40 hours-worth of work done each week. I basically just figure out what percent of each day I spent on each project and apportion my timecard appropriately.

While it’d be nice to not track, it works well enough. I make hourly but can work as much (or as little) as I want each week as long as most is spent on billable work.

> We have to bill clients for hours, so we track them ourselves

You do not need to track hours to bill clients for their hours. This myth is awfully demotivating for so many people I hate that it still is the default.

> I basically just figure out what percent of each day I spent on each project and apportion my timecard appropriately.

And you've basically figured out the better way on your own.

As Tippett figured out and published in 1934, if you want to know how much time is spent on something, you don't record every hour for every person. That's insanely expensive and demeaning. Not to mention that self-reported hours are very biased toward what's perceived as important work.

Instead, you do work sampling/snap counting. Have a person show up at random times and record what's going on at that time. The portion of times an activity was recorded corresponds to the portion of time spent on that activity.

(The more tech friendly version might be an email or instant message asking what you just worked on, sent at a random time and meant to be answered just as you finish up something and move onto the next thing.)

I don’t find it demeaning at all- in fact it gives me more flexibility than I’d have most other companies. I’m still a college student, so I’m not full-time all year, but my position doesn’t change at all. All I have to do to go “part time” is bill fewer hours since I am allowed to work as few or as many hours as I want.

And it’s not like I have to clock in/out or anything. It’s just a simple form I fill out at the end of my day that lists out hours per task on each project (and each “task” corresponds to a role, so it’s only one line-item per project).

The alternatives you proposed sound awfully like micromanagement though.

I officially work 9-5, however I'm in a remote team and I'm the only one in my timezone (1 hour offset to the rest of my team). Usually I start around 9:30, and finish around 5:30, but it really depends. Sometimes I wake up earlier, sometimes I wake up later. Sometimes it gets to 4pm and there is no point starting the next task, other times I'm working until 7pm because of meetings (part of our company is 9 hours different from me). Most members of our team has kids, so sometimes we need to take time off for appointments or such, in that case we will work late or sometimes Saturdays to make up for it.

We don't track hours, we just trust everyone to put their effort in. We are a small team who have been working together for a few years, so you know when someone is slacking. I expect if we did track hours we'd all end up working much longer than the 9-5 we are paid for.