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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

I'm nitpicking on a small detail here, but

> • Autonomy-oriented employees may need the ability to work from home, or simply slip on their head phones to tune everyone else out.

It's 2013. Are these really special perks to make a certain kind of person happy? Maybe I'm weird, but to me a company that doesn't allow me to tune out with headphones one or occasionally work elsewhere is like a company that tells me what to wear or tracks office presence hours. Do these, in our field, even exist anymore? (barring Yahoo)

For "Autonomy", I'd rather expect something like having a very large say over what an employee is working on and how she does it.

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> Do these, in our field, even exist anymore? (barring Yahoo)

Company dress codes and time tracking? They are pretty common outside of the startup culture. "No shorts and a collared shirt, please track your billable hours".

Really? (I'm assuming you mean to include "in the US"). I'm starting to understand the appeal of Valley startups.

There is no software-heavy company that I know of in the Netherlands that does this.

Sure, it's common that companies ask you to keep track of how many hours you worked on which project, but clocking in and out of the office? I've never seen it.

That is what tracking your billable hours means....

Clocking in and out is, however, common for hourly employees.

Much of it depends on the background of a company. If you are writing software for a large financial institution, chances are the HR department will ask you to wear business casual (or worse). In my experience in the east, middle-sized companies can go either way--some mandate business casual, others don't care. Again, in my experience, this is often related to whether clients are often visiting the offices.

My current employer, with its tech leadership drawn from the Valley, has been incredibly flexible about most things. But we were recently acquired by a more established, traditional company based on the east coast. There are rumors that I'll have to start wearing something other than shorts and t-shirts at the office, but nothing has been handed down yet.

This article is hilarious. I guess I should not take my headphones for granted :-)

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