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When we say we’re results-focused, we really mean it. We’re more concerned with the ‘what did I accomplish today’ rather than the ‘precisely how many hours did I spend at my desk today?’ mentality. It can definitely be an adjustment for most of our team members–the fully distributed environment and flex hours is a far cry from the standard 9-5.
Simply put, we want you to work when it works best for you. We expect excellence, but when you put in the hours (outside of our weekly meetings) is up to you. What exactly does this look like? Below are some example schedules/working styles from current team members.
My schedule varies a bit, but I usually start sometime between 11am and 1pm. I frequently take lunch breaks of 1-2 hours (or in some cases even longer) to have dinner with my family and accommodate kids’ activities. I end up finishing out my day “when I’m done” but typically before midnight. Hard to distill, I’ve kinda just jammed work around everything else in my life and this is what’s happened : )
I start around 9am (7am on Mondays for Weekly Hello), block out my time for the day with pen and paper, check slack, gmail, and sentry quickly, marking anything I need to respond to, then work on my current main assignment for 3-4 hours. Break for 60-90 minutes long lunch around 1 or 2pm. I check email, slack, and sentry again as I come back to work. At this point I either respond to the emails (usually going into the documents or GitHub threads), continue on main assignment from morning, or work on a smaller/lighter assignment. Usually I’m done by 6 or 7pm. Depending on my energy level, i.e, my ability to focus, I may extend my afternoon break to nap and/or exercise and work into the evening, in which case I try to finish by 9pm.
I tend to work from home (I have a separate office upstairs): it’s quiet, has a nice view, my desk and chair are very comfortable, and I should probably mention those 3×24 displays and one satisfying mechanical keyboard. However, I also feel the need of varying my routine and ambience too, so occasionally I also work from cafes (it’s very common in Taipei), where I occasionally catch up with other remote workers. And coffee, I catch up with a lot of coffee. I want to make sure I overlap at least 4 hours with other teammates. We never measure this, but I believe it’s over 4 hours: there’s always someone on Slack. Anyway, turns out that usually I have more time in the morning to catch up with the teammates that may have something for me. This is good, so if I need to be aware of anything, I have the rest of my day to execute what’s been agreed at the beginning of it. In the evening I can leave them some message before I call it a day. Although I make sure to be reachable, I tend to disconnect on weekends and during PTO.
We also interviewed a few parents on the team to learn more about how they approach the WFH lifestyle with kids! You can read that here.