Ask HN: Productive after-hours? How do you collaborate and work during the day?

1 points by therealchiko 7 years ago | 2 comments

I am a software developer and I get insanely productive / focused just as everyone is knocking off, around 4-5pm and can work until the wee hours of the morning.

Even though I work remotely and have daily standups in the afternoon, I actually get work done when everyone else is finished. This sometimes affects me at that I have to work during the day so I can collaborate but it will be a bit difficult as I won't be at my peak. How does this affect collaboration for you and is this something you have communicated with co-workers? I am curious to know how people have managed this kind of work routine.

lm28469 7 years ago |

If you can't convince your manager that it's in their interest for you to have a custom schedule just stick to the mandatory schedule and call it a day. If they don't care about your productivity certainly you shouldn't care either (that's obviously different if you're self employed)

Tech workers are the new factory workers, don't make it more complex than it already is, do your job, go home, enjoy life.

arcticwombat 7 years ago |

There are two kinds of "Productive".

There's my personal productivity, and there's the team/company productivity.

When working on a team, you have to figure out what produces the best output for the team as a whole, not yourself.

I function best when I get up at about 8am in the morning, and get to work at about 10am.

Doing that, when others leave in the evening I get several hours of high productivity.

My personal productivity soars when following this.

However, it means I'm much less available for the team, and depending on the project my being available has more impact on the team output than my direct personal productivity.