Hacker News Reader

Comment by janesvilleseo | Hacker News Reader

My employer, a F500 non FAANG company, has been doing something similar for a long time. During the summer they have what they call summer hours. It’s usually from June through August. Friday’s are mostly off. That is if your work is complete then you can leave early. We have a large remote workforce so I assume quite a few of those remote workers don’t work at all on Fridays. It is a nice perk and I do hope it continues. It does not seem to impact our ability to hit our targets in any negative way. No idea if they ran any numbers to see if it impacted them positively, but we all like it and we have been hitting our numbers for the most part across the company.

View on HN

>We have a large remote workforce so I assume quite a few of those remote workers don’t work at all on Fridays.

Funny that this is the assumption. I think they would be more likely to work since they are not bothering with the daily commute to work.

Right, I am remote and I actually work most Friday’s. This because I partner with our sales force and they work every day since they are 98% commission based.

But on the rare occasions I try to get ahold of people who are strictly salary on these Friday’s can be a challenge. But it’s usually not a huge issue either. In an emergency we can get ahold of someone who can help.

I work remotely, and I bet that probably the remote workers are working on Friday exactly because some people have this kind of prejudices. In mixed companies, remote workers generally have to work harder than co-located ones just to overcome this bias.

My sister used to work a 9/9 shift in biotech (9 9 hour shifts, every other Friday off). It meant she had plenty of time for all-day experiments and could have a day for errands and shopping during normal business hours.

> "if your work is complete then you can leave early"

What happens if your work is complete before Friday during non-Summer hours?

Work is never complete :D

I don't think I've ever worked somewhere where I could exhaust the work items. There's always vastly more work to be done.

It's not surprising this wouldn't cause problems for most companies' productivity. I've worked in retail, warehouses, and now an office. Unless there's a crunch (big order needs shipped, an important presentation is coming up), most people mentally "check out" for the last hour daily and all Friday afternoon.

They're not really working (many in the warehouse would walk around to avoid suspicion before meeting in a different aisle to chat), so letting them leave would cost nothing but gain employee happiness.

We have every other Friday afternoon off during the summer. It’s a nice perk and as far as i can tell no productivity is lost. People seem happier though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com