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How Does a 9/80 Work Schedule Work Out?
cellocgw writes "My company is in the process of implementing a version of '9/80,' a work schedule that squeezes 80 hours' labor time into 9 business days and provides every other Friday off. I was wondering how this has been implemented in other companies, and how it's worked out for other Slashdot readers. Is your system flexible? Do you find time to get personal stuff done during the week? Is Friday good for anything other than catching up on lost sleep? And perhaps most important, do your managers respect the off-Fridays, or do they pull people in on a regular basis to handle 'crises?'"
You get every friday or monday off depending on the stagger. The idea of 9/80 bothers me. There is a point of no return for employees. If you are going to work like that, you should make sure and take two one hour breaks a day.
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If your manager pulls you in to cover a crisis, you need to demand flex time (a different day off next week) or overtime.
Or, send them an invoice from your consulting firm for about six times whatever your daily rate is.
While it is not a bad idea in and of itself, changing work schedules to some bizarre non-standard system is usually a sign that the company management is trying to squeeze more work out of you. First they change the schedule to give you more work per day, then they will ask you to work more days.
In this economy, they know you don't have anywhere to go, so unless you fight back against this or leave for a new job altogether, you're going to get screwed. Ask them if they've been considering offshoring the IT department. I'd be willing to bet that within the next year they are looking to thin the local IT staff to a skeleton crew and then migrate the servers over to India where they can do your job for a third of the cost.
Pros:
Cons:
9/80 is best when paired with a flex time schedule so that you can move around hours when you need to. The off friday gives you an option to tell your boss "i'll work more these days or just come in friday" if you want to take a different day off instead of the off friday. Coming in on the off friday usually means the office is dead. That can be good and bad. Some people like not having anyone around because they normally get interrupted too much when people are at the office. Other people hate it because there's nobody else to kick the bucket with.
If you find you are normally working more than 8 hours everyday, 9/80 is actually a good option because you will have a decent excuse for not coming in on the off fridays and you will have to work 9 hours most days anyway. If you find you are working even on the weekends, 9/80 will have no impact on your hours.
As a single guy, I prefer 9/80. But I do know some family types that prefer the 5/40 since they really need the consistent 8 hour days to keep their family schedules synced. At first you will loath the 9 hour days because that extra hour is bigger than it looks. After a while though 9 hours will seem like nothing and the working fridays will seem really short.
Seriously though, does anybody actually work only 40 hours a week?
Apparently, your job sucks.
I work 40 hours, an hour lunch break included, and do .NET development work at a major company. This isn't to say that there aren't deadlines where you might work longer, but they're pretty rare. I find that I get more done with the 7 hour workday than I do with a 10 hour day. I'm more focused and not pissed about all the time I'm wasting at work.
not baffling, depressing. That working through lunch has become a standard...
Under!? Over! It's closer and easier to get to! When it's under, it's right against the wall and harder to grab at. Plus, it's easier to roll down than up, so if you can't see the end, you can get it easier.
Seriously, what's this world coming to?
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Leave the computer and phone off, if you're going to take the day off, especially if you've notified people in advance. I say if you're taking the day off, take the day off.
I'm self employed and have often worked 12 hours / day. While the idea of taking 3 days / week off is appealing (and I've done it), I find that when I work 12 hours / day my productivity goes down the drain incrementally with each hour. I get extremely tired by the end of the shift and my brain turns to mush.
I get way more work done doing a standard 8 hour work day with weekends off. Of course that's just me, though.
Hope it's worth it. That sounds miserable.
80 on a usual week, 100 on a bad week and 60 on a good week.
80 hours for nine days? Slackers."
OUCH!! Why would you (or anyone else) do that to themselves? I hope, at least, you are getting paid at least straight time for every one of those OT hours...??
If not, you are just killing yourself and robbing yourself of valuable hours of your life.
That's why I will ONLY work hourly....put it in a contract, I will work when needed...but, I will not work an hour for free. My time is valuable, and I will get my bill rate for every hour worked wherever I work. Doing this way...makes them also think twice about asking if they need you or not for OT. This way...I also don't have a problem with working hours around personal time off. Even if W2 hourly, you just usually have to get avg. 8 hours a day for the pay period, so if you need a day off...swing hours around the rest of the days in the billing period.
The best is when doing corp to corp 1099...where you work as you wish generally. Don't wanna work 40 hours that week? Don't. Want to work 60 the next...ok.
Seriously...I just have to believe salary is for suckers. They expect you to work over if 'needed'...but, do they happily let you leave early when your work is done? Hmm....I didn't think so.
And you can do it W2 too....with benefits if you just know to negotiate it up front with them...if that is the route you'd rather go.
I'll never work for free again...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You have absolutely no idea how the US tax code works.
Nobody knows how the US tax code works.
This is simple.
Person A makes $50k a year. Let's say they pay 15%. They pay $7.5k per year.
Their apartment costs $800 per month. Their car costs $400 per month. Their food costs $300 per month.
At the end of every month they have about $500 left over for spending money.
Person A gets a 50% raise. They now make $75k. Let's say their total tax burder is now 20%. They now pay $15k in taxes a year.
They buy a house with their new found fortunes with a $1800 a month mortage. They ea tout more and their food costs $500 a month. They get a nicer car and their lease is now $500. Now they have a net debt of $200 a month.
Suddenly they're broke. Obviously the government is holding them down. Before their raise they had money to spare. After their raise they are out of money. Taxes are to blame.
They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.
- Kahlil Gibran
exactly, they wouldn't let you beer it up during work ours, so don't let them put your work during your beer hours!
Ya I guess, but I dare you to try and keep that up for another 15 years. Or try and have a significant personal relationship working like that...
There is no life to be head with 66% of your time at work.
So, unless that is *literally* the only thing you like... do yourself a favor and find some balance.
Right. That worked so well in France.
There's something to be said for putting some focus on quality of life as opposed to simply maximizing income.
It's kind of nice to notice in France that grocery stores aren't normally open 24/7 (more like 10/6 or less), so no one has to work those shitty shifts. I moved to France a few years ago; I never noticed how weird the US was until I was back on business and managed to get a haircut at 10pm on a Sunday night. WTF, America? Yay, jobs created. But they are so shitty and so poorly paid that mostly they just prevent the employees from having the time for education, family, friends, or even searching for a better job.
Not that France had the ideal balance at all (or even that they took the best approach to "enforcing" quality of life) but I think the base idea is a very good thing.
Frankly, I don't believe you.
Telecommuters like to count as work every minute they have their PC.
Executives count in any minute they're awake, cause even running around with a cup of coffee or having a chat on the toilet is "work".
Regular employees count the sheer presence, regardless of standing outside smoking, drinking coffee with others (that's called meeting), or just browsing slashdot (called recherche).
If you start logging what you really do in those 60/80/100 hrs you most likely will notice that you get done no more than the average worker, eventually even less.
The only people I believe being truly working those insane hours are doctorate candidates in their final year and/or before conference deadlines.
This highlights an unfortunate truth. Employers have an economic incentive to decrease the quality of their employees' lives. I could come up with a dozen different plans involving scheduling, benefits, and workplace amenities that would help to make employees happier and foster a richer national culture. Each and every one of them, however, can and would be countered by businesses as promoting inefficiency. As a society, we've decided that being being productive and successful is all the culture that we need. That makes me pretty sad.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
I want to mee-too the part about errors on long shifts. 12 hr. shifts are great if you're generally sitting around not doing anything real complex, but if it's something that requires a lot of mental concentration for the whole 12 hrs, you're asking for trouble because your brain will turn to oatmeal. The sleep deficit thing is quite real also. I am a ... long time ... shift worker at the big atom smasher's main control room. (not the one that blew up). I know whereof i speak.
The key word here is occasionally. I'm fully aware that there are situations where you just have to kick in the overdrive and get something by insane working hours. BTDT, and more than once. It usually is, however, a sign of bad company management because they either have too much work for too few people or acquired a too big project. Bad planning in both cases. Only emergency situations justify such insane overload.
If you continue that overdrive you'll sooner or later burn out and/or start doing nonsense. Especially sleep deprivation is not exactly known for improving your work performance. Raised stress levels may lead to a temporary productivity boost, but that boost comes at a price.
Unless, of course, your job has a recreational effect on you, which is probably anything but the norm. I know a lot of people who really like their jobs (being one of them myself), but doing some hobbyist stuff, even if somewhat work-related, is something completely different than work. And neither is a replacement for sleep.
It indeed is. Usually the quote of productive work per day is much lower, about the range of 5h.
You mentioned that it's the monotony that kills concentration. True. Zombie work kills. On the other hand, you also need a certain time to adjust to a new task and get that going smoothly. Too frequent task changes (being the norm today with telephone, email, and slashdot interrupts...) will make you feel utterly busy, but in the end being highly unproductive.
If someone needs to work 80 hours a week on average then I would say that their life doesn't have much quality to begin with. Unless by "maintain our quality of living" you mean "paying off the luxury goods and services you've purchased". But then again, as your work load stops you from benefiting from them, I seriously doubt that they do much good.
Materialism and all that keeping up with the joneses is a bitch, isn't it?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Sounds like you're one of the most unproductive workers I can imagine.
The first thing that comes to my mind when I hear about people working these long hours is that they're wasting a lot of time.
Couldn't agree more. A solid day's work is a noble thing but this "80 on a usual week, 100 on a bad week" is for the birds. I have no pity whatsoever unless it truly is the only job you can get or you absolutely have to have it (pays the extra $5k you need for your kids' medicine).
I've as much sympathy for the OP as I do for lawyers who put in similar hours for 10 years in order to make partner. Enjoy the $$.. you'll have no soul at the end... huh, that explains a lot.
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
Well, some of us [work 80-hour weeks] to maintain our quality of life in these wonderful times.
I hate to break it to you, but if you're working 80- or 100-hour weeks, you don't have any quality of life.