This is problem with flex time. Companies love to advertise flex time, but when you come in at 7am and leave at 3, you get tons of looks and even the odd comment.
I recently had a chat with my direct supervisor. I told him I would like to start working flex time 8AM to 4PM and cut my lunch break to 30 minutes, eventually working 8AM to 4:30PM. He had a talk with his boss, gave me the O.K., I requested it in a written e-mail.
Since then, I come in at 08:00AM every morning, I get two and a half hours of productive work until people start coming in and the meetings start. Then I eat lunch and work for 3 more hours and I head for home. I never care about the looks I get from other people because I CMA.
What I want to say is that, as long as you have a Cover Your Ass document, you shouldn't care about how others negotiated their position.
I also requested extra days instead of a pay increase. Should I feel bad about that also?
This. Whenever I tell people to get stuff in writing to cover themselves, they think I'm just being a stickler and that doing so would just set a bad mood in the working relationship. But I've never found this to be true. Just be professional in negotiations and make everything crystal clear, because you can be sure that anything fuzzy or muddy is coming back in your face later, one way or another.
Also this:
> I also requested extra days instead of a pay increase.
If your extra days are paid (I'm assuming they are given the latter part) then it may well be a smarter deal fiscally even without the pay increase, particularly if your marginal tax is high.
You're extracting more value by working less, freeing your time up to do other things. Those other things may well end up netting you more money over time (working on your own company, for instance.) As well, depending on where you live and work, you may also end up paying a different tax rate on holiday pay over regular pay. If so you may be able to accrue those holidays and eventually receive a lump sum payout that is in effect "cheaper" than regular pay. The difference can be significant, particularly if your income is in the upper brackets.
This happened to me in my first job. I'm definitely a night-owl, but I was tired of coming in at 10-11 and leaving after dark, after everyone else including my boss had left, so I decided to change my routine and get up early and get to work by ~7-8. This worked great for about a week, until my boss started complaining about me leaving so early. So I switched back to my old routine of coming in really, really late, after everyone else did, and then leaving late after everyone else (but only barely, I'd just wait until everyone else was gone and then take off), but still only working 8 hours (maybe). Suddenly I was seen as a "hard worker" again.
Complaining might be a strong word, but I would definitely have a pithy comeback ready at the first sign of criticism, eg. "Ok, Mr. StartsAtEleven…", "early to bed, early to rise..", etc.
The tons of looks and odd comments bug the shit out of me. Being an engineer, my job is to produce, period. Don't worry about where it happens, just know that every time you pick up the phone and promise something that doesn't exist to someone else, the fact that it suddenly, magically, exists for you to show them is because people like me are plugging away around the clock. Dev work isn't 9-5. It's 24/7 and whenever the light bulb goes off.
well.. yes and no. you aren't developing in a vacuum unless you're the only dev in the company, and even in that case you'd have some coordination to do.
drives me nuts when I need to run something by a dev and he's gone at 2 pm and I need to wait till he gets into the beer-induced code rage mode at 10 pm and even then he might be on slack or maybe not :)
Just wondering what would you do if you need to run something by a Dev at, say, 5PM. Or 7. Or 10 in the night?
Or at 2am, when Asia woke up to a big change-request/bug/whatever?
It my case, things went beyond odd looks. You're technically obeying the company policy, so they can't punish you officially, but there are lots of ways to punish you unofficially for violating an unwritten social convention. In my case, suddenly I wasn't trusted with working on anything more complicated than the most basic bug fix.
Most companies I've dealt with had some sort of "core hours" policy in place.
Typically 8am - 4pm unless your job requires you to work with ppl in different time zones on a regular bases.
Anything outside of that would require your manager's approval. 7-3 is typically not a major issue with the exception that you'll stay later if need be for meetings/P1s (although that's a different can of worms) etc.
I thought the idea behind core hours was supposed to be less than 8 hours, as it's time everyone is guaranteed to be there, with wiggle at the beginning and the end, not just 'these are your hours'.
Like at a previous job, core hours was 10:00am to 4:00pm. Some people came in at 7:30am and left at 4:00pm, some people didn't get in until 10:00am and left at 6:30pm. But from 10 to 4, everyone was supposed to be there.
you're right. I should've went with 9-4 vs. 8-4. 10-4 is pretty generous, I personally never encountered a company with core hours officially starting after 9. That's not to say that I haven't encountered individuals showing up around 10 on a regular basis :)
Maybe I'm just insanely lucky, but having worked with a "biased-early" schedule for a number of tech companies in and out of Silicon Valley, I've not once witnessed looks or comments about when I go home. Now, if someone's strolling in at 11AM and leaving at 4PM (which I have seen often), they shouldn't be surprised if that behavior raises a few eyebrows.
That's not a problem with flex time, it's a problem with company culture. Flex time works where I work. We have people who come in early and leave early and we have people we regularly come it around lunch and stay until the lights go out.
And it's a strange thing in that it can be enforced via normal social interaction:
See you tomorrow.
Oh, is it that time already?
Leaving so soon?
Bye now.
And it may not be intentional, but it comes thru that way.
The easiest way to leave is to not say anything. Just grab your things and head out, which can come across as antisocial, but it avoids the awkwardness.
I always said something like "I came in late, so I'm leaving early." People usually didn't know what to do with that.
I've been working remotely for about 11 years. But my situation changed and I'll be commuting again. I'm actually looking forward to being in an office again.
