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Comment by twelvechairs | Hacker News Reader

I see four main tiers: 1 - 9-5 in office (business as usual), 2 - semi-remote (part of week in the office), 3 - fully remote with fixed hours, 4 - fully remote outcomes-based (no fixed hours but may also be 'on call').

The title of this article perhaps indicates a move from 1 to 3 or 4 but its content discusses 2. All the information I've seen is that business are definitely moving more to 2 than 3 or 4, though some do see this a just a first step.

Its a big difference for the future of cities as 2 is more 'coastal historic town just outside the city', 3 is more 'small town in the same part of the world' and 4 is more 'move to thailand'.

2 is still a local workforce with visas and taxation where 4 is a global workforce available anywhere with a base level of infrastructure, and little taxation for service-based business until there is greater international cooperation.

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Define fixed hours? Fixed hours sucks when people live in 4 or more different timezones.

I'm trying to figure out if my current remote job is fixed hours. Nobody has ever asked me or said anything about the hours I work, but I am expected to be present for meetings, which usually occur in the middle of the day for me. Is that tier 3 or 4?

Same situation as you here. We have our standup mid-afternoon to make sure everyone can attend.

I'd say we're 4s more than 3s. I would say that an agreed upon, regular meeting doesn't dictate your set hours--just a single obligation that you all agreed to.

In my view of the world that's closer to tier 4 than 3, but I acknowledge there's a lot of grey area between. Maybe 3 and a half. At the start of the tier 3 side (maybe I should call it 3.0) there are solid 9-5 workers who log timesheets with 8 hours per day, are expected to answer the phone between 9 and 5 but not outside, etc.

OP missed a category really. If there are any consistent sync points in the day with the whole team, that creates “core hours” where everyone is expected to be in during those, but otherwise the hours are whenever you want. Maybe call it 3.5?

Also of note: you can have in-office work with the same flexible hours schemes.

One of the teams I'm on is mostly split between US East Coast and Europe and we generally have calls ~9-11am ET which is reasonable for everyone and don't generally expect anyone to be available outside of "normal working hours." That ~6 hour delta is probably about the largest that can easily be handled without someone being up early or working late though.

Going from any of these items to 4 requires an extra special leap of faith. I personally see anything short of a full 4 as essentially being office work theater.

Our company operates as a 4 tier and I've been here for going on 7 years now. We still have to get on a daily standup call at a fixed time every day, and I still have to participate in other scheduled obligations (mainly tech calls with customers), but the rest of the time is mine to allocate as I see fit.

Also, there are consequences with "no fixed hours" that lots of humans are incapable of dealing with. The amount of discipline it requires to manage this freedom is not insignificant. This said, I am not against multitasking. If you can have something rolling while you get your work done, fuckin awesome. I don't care. I am more worried about the individual lounging on their couch, halfway through a 6 pack of IPA getting in some of that game of thrones re-watch, while the rest of the team is mopping up a shitty merge to master wondering where that individual may be at 11am on a Tuesday.

Where do you work?

Are you really worried about a co-worker drinking beer and dicking around instead of helping with a busted merge? Did you make a bad hire? That's the kind of hyperbole managers use to rein everyone in.

Yes, GP is a really disingenuous comment. What if it was a parent needing to take the child to the doctor at 11am on a Tuesday? Or they had taken vacation? Other than that, if hours are flexible and the team member communicated that they would be unavailable from 11am to 2pm and will make it up, then it is their right to do what they want with their time.

Better scenario is the worker is outside mowing their lawn at 11am or grocery shopping or something. They basically 'disappear' for an hour and nobody can get ahold of them.

> I am more worried about the individual lounging on their couch, halfway through a 6 pack of IPA getting in some of that game of thrones re-watch, while the rest of the team is mopping up a shitty merge to master wondering where that individual may be at 11am on a Tuesday.

I've had these scenarios in a 9-5 office job - eg. someone merged in some shit that broke migrations, CI takes forever to run so they don't catch it, the next day they are off and now I'm there touching systems I know little about just to revert my setup to a working state.

I think if you can't rely on people in your team to be professional/competent it's going to be shit no matter where you work. That being said managing flexible work hours is really hard, it's especially hard if you're bad at estimating how much is acceptable to deliver in some time frame. If you always give estimates based on what you're capable at your ideal 8 work hours you're going to sink a lot more time than 8 hours a day - especially if you allow yourself to be distracted. I try to give my estimates based on 4 productive hours per day.

I suspect that the "coastal historic town just outside the city" (or other pleasant location that is within a 1 to 2 hour drive of an urban metro office--which is often not actually in the city) is probably fairly sticky. Even if a lot of people in the US don't want to make the tradeoffs to live in an urban core, for all sorts of reasons they may want to live within striking distance of a US city as opposed to moving to some small mountain town much less a beach in Thailand.

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