1 in 5 Canadians late for work once a week

[Mr. Analog]

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Canadians+late+work+once+week+Survey/4331621/story.html

So, I saw this article today on the ol' news aggregator and it made me laugh a little (well, now that I have flex time anyway). But it made me think of a few things:

1. Are more people late now than say 10, 20, 30 years ago?
2. Does it matter?

Thoughts?

[Melbosa]

Although I don't know about #1 I can say that my job isn't time sensitive, so #2's answer is No.  I'm not on a hourly wage, and I'm not on any type of time schedule (my operations is 24/7, not an open or close time slot or hard support window).  I'm expected to be available between 8:30 AM and 5:00 PM, and after that if on call or during extra work requirements (after hours fixes and such). The only time it really matters is when I have a scheduled event (meeting, maintenance window, etc). And with technology today, I really don't have to be in the office to do my work (for the most part - hardware replacements are sure hard to do remotely), but my employer still feels I should be here.

Now this is my thoughts, and Management in various locations may feel otherwise.  It all depends on what your company considers important in your role, and how much they trust their employees to do their job.

I try not to be late, but I do have a good distance to travel. The longer the distance, the more likely something will delay me.  On a good day I can be at work in 25-30 minutes.  I leave the house with 45-50 minute window.  Sometimes I don't make it in by 8:30 AM.  But then again, sometimes I'm at work till after 5:30 PM and don't expect my employer to compensate me based on a give and take.

So really, I don't know what to say about the subject.  Being late in my current role is really subjective.  I think that being married to a schedule in my line of work is a sign of old management methodologies.  But then again, how does a company explain my salary wage in terms of man hours?

[Mr. Analog]

Being someone who rides transit I can identify with this, I can try my best to be at work early or on time (if say 8 AM is "on time") but there are days where things are just slow for no reason or I miss a connection. Now, if it happens once a week there's probably something i can do about it, but should I?

I mean it doesn't matter now, but I've been in support situations before where I had to be available between 8:30 AM and 4:30 PM (with extra time sprinkled in for special cases like you say) generally this wasn't a problem but once in a while someone would (after hours) schedule a meeting that started at 8 AM the next day and be genuinely surprised that no one showed up.

Personally (and I'm sure most of you share this opinion), I think that unless you need to sync up with others at a specific time it shouldn't matter how you spend your time as long as you get your work done.

I just can't help but wonder if the whole "being in on time" concept is warped old school thought or warped manager thought?

[Darren Dirt]

I voted "yes".

This week has been abnormal for me.

I got here early 2/2 days so far.

[Thorin]

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Canadians+late+work+once+week+Survey/4331621/story.html

So, I saw this article today on the ol' news aggregator and it made me laugh a little (well, now that I have flex time anyway). But it made me think of a few things:

1. Are more people late now than say 10, 20, 30 years ago?

I don't have the statistics to support an argument in either direction.

2. Does it matter?

That really depends on the job.

Any job where you're manning a counter or performing physical labour, where you're replacing someone else who is doing that same job until a certain time on the schedule, yes it matters.  If you don't show up on time for your shift at McDonald's or the factory or the nursing station at the hospital, other people have to stay later.  This might cost the employer extra money due to overtime having to be paid.  Or you might be the person that is supposed to open the store, and if you're late then they might lose out on sales.

If you have a job where you're not causing someone to stay longer if you show up at different-than-8-5 hours and you're not potentially causing a loss of sales, then no it doesn't matter.  If you don't show up until an hour after the office has opened, but you don't need to interact with customers, then there is no associated cost or potential cost with what time you come in.  Instead, the cost or potential cost is associated with how quickly you get your work done.  People work harder during certain parts of the day - some are morning people, some are afternoon people, some are evening people.  If you force them to be physically at work during certain hours, you aren't necessarily getting the most productive work out of them.

Thoughts?

Well, here's an insightful comment from that article:

glistens1
10:10 AM on February 23, 2011

nb. if it doesn't matter if a person is late re. a job, but a supervisor is on the persons's case for that and doesn't praise something done well, then the attitude in the place of business is often poor, very negative. The supervisor often wants power and to control others rather than let them be.

I have had a couple of bosses in my software developer career now who think that physical presence during a set timeframe is the best indicator of how of a worker I am.  I believe that in software development physical presence is not required to do a good job - I think about code day and night, on the drive home, at the rink, while watching Jon Stewart late at night, I sometimes even dream about it.  The funny thing is, with both these bosses I was miserable and stopped working hard, forced myself not to think about code outside of work, took much longer to get things done, and stayed at the job less than two years.  We all know that it's pretty costly to replace developers, yet these bosses didn't care.  They cared more about controlling the employees like puppets.

Back in my pizza delivery career, I was never late as I knew it was a job that did require a physical presence during a set timeframe.  When I switched from delivering the pizza to running the pizza store, I made sure to show up before the store was supposed to open so that I'd be ready to do sales from the moment it opened.  That just made sense.

Oh, and I voted "Flex Time", as that is what's in my contract now.

[Darren Dirt]

I wish I could go home 2 hours early when I put in a hardcore day after 5 or 6 hours and know I've got nothing to be ashamed of in leaving "early". But I can't, for the same reason as why it's more important I am at my desk in front of the monitors early, even if I don't really get much done for that first hour.

I really love the tone and direction of this thread, it makes me feel hopeful for future generations of workers. However I think too many of you guys are more fortunate than most of the workforce, in terms of the time freedom of your current and past jobs.

The sad fact is that in certain office environments, it matter more if your ass is in the chair when [important company position person] walks by and looks, then if you get actual work done, or get it done quickly.

Think of that Seinfeld episode where George's car was in the parking lot for 24 hours, and his boss thought he was "first to arrive, last to leave". Think of Thorin's story of his jacket hanging and what a certain dictator thought it meant. Heck, think of Office Space, and Peter's honest description of his work environment.

Sad, but true -- for most of the populace, still, today (including at my organization).



/rant

[Thorin]

Darren, one of the reasons I'm on my sixth job in eleven years is that I actively look for not just higher wages but also environments that suit me better.  The office environment you describe, I've been there, and within a year of getting hired I was looking at job ads to see if I could find a better environment.  Of course, you have to be willing to take some risks to do that.

At my previous job, the one I just left, I would simply come in at whatever time I came in.  They tried to complain, but my answer was that 1) during the interview I was told it was flex hours and 2) I was getting all of my work done and helping the other developers improve.  When they told me that "the team" needed me there, I went and asked the people I worked with if their job would be easier/better if I came in at 8am instead 9:30am.  To a person, they all said it wouldn't make a difference.  So clearly, "the team" was not the team.

The only thing I find more annoying than managers telling software developers they have to be at work at 8am sharp is software development company owners that show zero knowledge of what software developers do.  Try asking this question of your boss: "What software can I create for you that will help this company succeed?".  If they can't answer that question, if they don't understand that at the heart of it developers are creators, if they don't even think of software as a useful commodity, then why in the nine hells are they running a software development company?

And thus ends my rant

[Darren Dirt]

I woulda been so outta here years ago, if it weren't for the fact that there is literally ZERO watching-over-shoulder, nobody telling me HOW the job has to be done, not even (for the most part) how FAST. I really enjoy the freedom here, to choose my approach, sometimes wasting time trying one thing that turns out wrong, not having to log every single hour in some system justifying the time spent on billable tasks (like it was at IBM, when I was the guy my company put in the chair to fill the subcontract).

I have something on paper saying I "agree" to be here at 9am, and thus can leave at 5:15pm ... but it is so rare that I leave before 6:00, let alone 5:30, that I have a clear conscience coming in between 9:05 and 9:25 virtually every day. Lately I had urgent tasks or meetings, so I wanted to get here even earlier ... but normally I just goof off a bit more during the day to balance out the frustration, essentially saying without words "you value a chair being filled over an employee being efficiently productive, fine -- I'll phone it in some of the time, since if I put in 100% for a full day I would usually be burned out by the afternoon!"



I definitely plan on learning dot net this year, though, so I can consider getting out there again, sounds like flex time, Scrum, etc. are all very appealing responses to the typical 1950s-1980s mentality still abound in many offices.

[Mr. Analog]

The whole control vs need thing is an interesting conversation. I mean people who work McJobs or shift work or anything that requires hands on teamwork to do (building stuff, etc) absolutely need to be there on the job site together. Professionals very often do not need to be anywhere near each other to get their respective jobs done and I think this is where the whole "people with control issues" part comes into play.

I think we've all seen that type of manager that absolutely must have people together in a room for no good reason, in fact I find that sort of behavior condescending. Like we are all little children and we need constant monitoring, that was the vibe I got from my old manager. It was one of those irritants you learn to live with mostly and the last manager I had never really pushed the culture but you just knew it bothered her to see an empty seat at 8:30 AM (never mind I'd worked 12 hours on the Sunday previous 5 AM - 5 PM ha-hah)

Where I'm working now the management is almost completely hands off, we set goals and have roadmaps but in general they don't care how I get to a solution as long as I get there and have the resources I need to do it. With that kind of trust (and mutual respect) I feel motivated to get more done because *I* am the owner. No longer just going through the motions.

Darren, we had a great conversation about Scrum at Christmas, I'm wondering if you followed up with any of the reading we recommended?

I think it would be a very good thing for you to set "Create an ASP.NET MVC Application" as a personal project goal and then break that down into stories and then work at it in sprints. The first story could be set up a development environment at home which could break down into a bunch of tasks like "install Visual Studio 2010" (etc, etc). At some point you can set up stories for doing other things toward completing your project like learning how to write unit tests and use TFSBuild.

Even sitting down and watching the getting started videos is a good first step. I think you could get yourself up to speed rather quickly by making time for the learning and doing things in baby steps.

[Lazybones]

Even on average with flex time I am not late .. flex generally meaning I am there and leave within about a 1 - 1:30 hour window each day and I generally shoot for the middle and notify my team if I am going to be a little later than usual.. Typically it is a transit failure that causes me to shift time unexpectedly and if I have an early important meeting I try and buffer the chance of that out by taking an earlier bus to be safe.

If you are late on average once a week (late being not there when needed) you really need to evaluate where you live, how you get to work or something to fix it.

[Darren Dirt]

If you are late on average once a week (late being not there when needed) you really need to evaluate where you live, how you get to work or something to fix it.

^ "it's not that I'm lazy... it's just that I don't care..."

Darren, we had a great conversation about Scrum at Christmas, I'm wondering if you followed up with any of the reading we recommended?

I think it would be a very good thing for you to set "Create an ASP.NET MVC Application" as a personal project goal and then break that down into stories and then work at it in sprints. The first story could be set up a development environment at home which could break down into a bunch of tasks like "install Visual Studio 2010" (etc, etc). At some point you can set up stories for doing other things toward completing your project like learning how to write unit tests and use TFSBuild.

Even sitting down and watching the getting started videos is a good first step. I think you could get yourself up to speed rather quickly by making time for the learning and doing things in baby steps.

top of my ToDo list, now that I'm nearly done setting up the new place.

also, on my performance review thingie I just wrote up with my supervisor, I actually mentioned Scrum as part of what I want to incorporate in my future plans.

was a great talk, for sure... don't remember the specific books though, but wikipedia article has a good starter summary of a bunch of terms/ideas anyway.

[Lazybones]

If you are late on average once a week (late being not there when needed) you really need to evaluate where you live, how you get to work or something to fix it.

^ "it's not that I'm lazy... it's just that I don't care..."

Didn't say you where lazy, however you clearly admit that the reason is within your control.

[Melbosa]

If you are late on average once a week (late being not there when needed) you really need to evaluate where you live, how you get to work or something to fix it.

This is very subjective and can even be dangerous to moral if delivered by Management to employees without better explanation, in terms of people whom aren't tied to a job task requiring physical presence.

I have a Manager whom would deliver this statement verbatim to us employees, and the result would be no one sticks around to fix a problem that shows up 5 minutes to end of day, or their lunch break.  They won't have their phones on during anything but work hours, and if gone to an sanctioned appointment will shut it off until the appointment is done and they are back at their desk.  I've seen it before, and will see it again.  This Manager sometimes leads with emotion before common sense, but knowing this both themselves and us as employees, we are able to work around it in most situations.

Now I come to the term "needed".  I sit in a very similar job to Lazy.  Sure our technologies and infrastructure may differ, but we both hold very key positions for support, knowledge, troubleshooting and crisis management.  Now this is very definable by company; your companies work type, schedules, employment standards, unions, prior president, mind set, management practices, etc.  You as employee decide what work type and employer work best for you.  My availability to my current employer is well beyond my 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM "standard work day", and it doesn't necessarily mean I need a computer to be available.  This is because of the relationship between us and the definition of my tasks and responsibilities.  The days of 9-5 being the absolute are well gone for IT.  Our business may peak these hours, but most of us live in a 24/7 or at least 20/7 world for support of IT based systems (I mean you have to sleep sometime ).  If a server goes down while I am at the doctors, and you need me, am I also "not there when needed"?  What if I am reachable by phone?  Is it my knowledge you need or my hands (or both)?

Why am I more available may you ask, and why without a computer even? Whether I am at my desk, at home, in my car, or on a volleyball quort; my knowledge is half, if not more, my worth to my employer than anything else.  I can walk a Manager/Peer/Subordinate through fixing a system if I can properly diagnose the problem, have experience with the solution and am confident in the response.  I can decide if something can wait 10mins for me to get to work, or if I need to VPN to look myself.  I can decide to fix a problem at 11:00 PM at night so that the morning is easier for 20+ employees on the helpdesk, or stay that extra 25 minutes to finish off documentation for a 9:00 AM meeting.  See all the I's here?  Because I can decide this with trust that I can make informed adult decissions, and still help my employer meet their operational needs or excell beyond them, I feel more compelled to better the work I do and better the employee I can be.  Being beaten with a time stick is not for me - been there done that, even in IT - and I got out.

Now this is all within reason.  My employer expects a decent 36.25 hours of work out of me (calculated by my standard hours per week (minus lunch allotment) * 5), and if I am not providing that based on my daily, weekly, monthly tasks or any stretch of deadlines by any means of IT work, then the why needs to be evaluated.  If I am not "available" when my employer needs me (barring exceptions, not excuses), then there is a problem.  Not being at my desk at 8:35 AM when they come looking for me to answer a quest, but being available on my phone at the exact same moment while stuck in a traffic jam, or being at a meeting but able to respond to an email, is a minor difference.

So I try and be at work on time, as there are things I need to be here for.  And those days that I absolutely have to be here for a 8:30 AM meeting or other requirement I leave my house with 1.5 hours to get to work instead of 45 minutes.  But one of my employment musts was that work would never define where I live or how I commute, within reason (not going to live two provinces away when my job is here - not the nature of the work I do).

Even on average with flex time I am not late .. flex generally meaning I am there and leave within about a 1 - 1:30 hour window each day and I generally shoot for the middle and notify my team if I am going to be a little later than usual.. Typically it is a transit failure that causes me to shift time unexpectedly and if I have an early important meeting I try and buffer the chance of that out by taking an earlier bus to be safe.

If you are late on average once a week (late being not there when needed) you really need to evaluate where you live, how you get to work or something to fix it.

Hopefully your company isn't too beating stick with this.  But if this works for your choice of employment, great.  I hope we all can find jobs that we are 80-90% happy with in our years of work!

[Lazybones]

The when needed part was more on the lines of really WHEN YOU HAVE to be there IE meetings, to man the phones etc. As a previous example, if you are physically needed to be there as part of your duties, IE shift workers, factory, IT doing a scheduled duty.

You are not LATE if you are not needed or expected to be there. However hitting an average of once a week seems REALLY high to me and I don't even follow a ridged arrival schedule. Kids, traffic, weather, transit, bad alarm clock happen, but once a week?

What bothers me is managers that can't accept kids, traffic, weather, transit, bad alarm clock happening... I once missed a day to bad weather (RCMP advised against travel) and I was handed a notice by my boss that I exceeded the office average of two missed days in a year... Ya out of 5 people in the office that all lived much much closer to the office.

[Mr. Analog]

I was going to say, there's a big difference between being "on-call" and having someone expect your bum to be in a seat at a prescribed time. I know we used to call it "face time" at one of the places I worked, there it was humorously transparent though and somewhat easily manipulated (like George with the car, or the "steaming mug of coffee" gag).

I think it's fair to say that the concept of "core hours" is melting for IT people, generally collapsing into either:

A. It just doesn't matter what time of day you are doing your job.

-or-

B. Your work is related to incidents that can occur at any time rather than more traditional goals