How about meetings? I can get some really great work done in 4-5 hour stretches, but find meetings really throw off my rhythm. With limiting the work week, do you also limit meetings?
We don't really have fancy meeting rules, if that's what you're asking. Our team does a great job overall of keeping them as short as possible and staying the right amount of focused, but not too focused. It's always fun to goof around a little when you're face to face, right?
Because so many of our team members are either remote or working from home any given day, we're often meeting via Hangouts, and that helps a ton with time in meetings since you really just don't want to be on there too long.
I spend what feels like a lot of time in meetings, but it's probably like half of each day for me, and maybe only half of that is scheduled. For most of our developers and designers, though, I think it's probably a couple of 15-30 minute meetings each week tops.
Great. Your website says, "Response times from our Support team are fastest from 9am-6pm ET, Monday thru Thursday. Support requests submitted outside those times may receive delayed responses." How is the "delayed responses" part handled? Do you rotate 'on call' people, and if so, what are those hours like?
We used to rotate, but now we have one awesome person on support Friday to Monday to make sure our students always get great support with a quick turnaround.
What's the optimal amount for "computer people" to work each day, in your experience? What percent of "working time" do you think consists of actual "work"?
Do you have any opinions about optimal work spaces?
> What's the optimal amount for "computer people" to work each day, in your experience?
I think a lot of folks, once breaks and all are accounted for, probably work 6-7 hours in an 8 hour chunk, and that seems to work pretty well.
> What percent of "working time" do you think consists of actual "work"?
See above :)
> Do you have any opinions about optimal work spaces?
I like a clean desk. I like to stand more than I sit. I like to be in a spot where I can walk freely, and I go outside a good bit during the day, even in our lovely Portland rain, to think. I think the best work space is probably always the one you want, and over time what you want changes. It's iterative.
We have folks on our team that like working from home. I like working in the office. Some of our team sits on the couch at the office with their computer in their lap, and that seems crazy to me. So yeah, whatever you want.
Cool, thanks for the reply. Do you see the "6-7 actual / 8 attempted" thing to be "inevitable", like that's the maximum ratio people can reasonably sustain, or do you think that with better environment and habits, we could/should get up to 8/8? (I'm obviously not talking "eliminate lunch", though. More like "eliminate needless chichat/mindwandering/newsreading")
> Do you see the "6-7 actual / 8 attempted" thing to be "inevitable", like that's the maximum ratio people can reasonably sustain, or do you think that with better environment and habits, we could/should get up to 8/8?
I think a lot of managers on Earth spend a lot of time trying to get folks to 8/8 because that's their job, but that's not a job I'm all that interested in. There are way too many hypotheticals around it. Let's say you don't look at HN for a few and instead keep cranking. Is that extra crank time as productive?
If you were on my team I'd want you to be the most productive person you could be, but I'd bet (maybe I'm wrong) that how you communicate with others would be a lot bigger issue than your HN reading time, and we'd probably talk more about that. How you tested might be a bigger issue (I'm assuming you're a dev or designer here). Or how you shipped even though CI failed.
In my 15 years of software experience I've seen a lot of folks do a lot of weird stuff at work, but reading a website for 15 minutes has seldom been the main reason they weren't a top performer on the team.
