Why Does Work Start At 9 A.M.?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larissafaw/2012/01/18/why-does-work-start-at-9-a-m/

by FluidDjango • 15 years ago

26 40 15 years ago

girishmony2• 15 years ago

Not all work starts at 9 A.M!

seqastian• 15 years ago

Confirming. This week I am round 10 last week I managed to pull off getting here before 8 two times. Flextime is great. Tomorrow I am gone at 3pm.

secoif• 15 years ago

> For instance, it’s well-established that men perform more effectively under routine and structure.

- Citation needed.

Blaming "men" for the 9-5 workday is easily one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard. Come on.

caw• 15 years ago

I agree, there was a whole lot of "citation needed" in that article. The underlying assumption with that statement, is that women do not work best in rigid structure. Now we have 2 pieces of really dubious information. There's no data for either.

And wasn't 9-5 a banker thing? There are a lot of professions that don't work 9-5 that were established a long time ago, like farming. They don't start at 9am, they start when it's light out so they can stop when it gets hot and resume later.

And the 2 weeks notice? That's because it's reasonable to find a McD's employee in 2 weeks after they post a "Help Wanted" sign. I hear tech employees can and will give longer notice in order to ease transitions.

sce• 15 years ago

In Norway the standard hours are 8-16 (8am/4pm) which includes half an hour lunch. I believe that in Sweden it's 8-17 (8 hours work, 1 hour lunch).

It's also normal to have three months of notice (and it's not optional for the worker). It's not uncommon that they'll let you leave with a shorter notice if you ask for it, unless they really need you during that time (for e.g. training new staff).

brador• 15 years ago

Another case of author trying to gain article agreement through use of perceived truths.

Usually means the article is link bait and not based on facts throughout. It's Forbes, so the new content strategy they have in place would align with this conclusion.

girishmony2• 15 years ago

Yes most of the things written in this article is not based on facts. Your guess might be true.

nodata• 15 years ago

Experts agree with this.

See http://www.tomscott.com/warnings/

wofser• 15 years ago

Is 9 - 5 (9-17 for me) common?

Are lunch and breaks included in that?

9 - 5 is 8 hours and a normal workday is 8 hours?

ghaff• 15 years ago

No--really sloppy article. I'm not sure when and how the "9 to 5" phrase entered the lexicon but, wherever I've worked, the "official" workday has always been 8-5 or 8:30-5 with an hour or half-hour respectively for lunch.

peacemaker2• 15 years ago

In the UK and most of Europe it's usually 9-5. The US likes to stretch out the workday to get more out of its wage slaves :)

GnomeChomsky• 15 years ago

I've only had two salaried jobs in the US, but both had an eight-hour workday in total with 30-60 minutes for lunch.

i.e. 9-5

I do pity fellow Americans working 8-5 or 9-6.

AndrewDucker• 15 years ago

35 hour working week where I am at the moment. I've also worked a 37.5 week and a 40 hour week.

Looks like average is 37.5 in the UK. Some stats about Europe in this article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/2795641/Britons-w...

plam• 15 years ago

Same as why everyone is using QWERTY keyboard when there's no scientific evidence that this particular keyboard setup is king.

The benefit of everyone using Qwerty, though, is apparent.

So same with 9am starts. So that the team is together at around the same time, for example. This can be overcome with proper communication channels as in a remote worker setup, but that's a special case.

Sometimes the effects can justify the means.

cobrophy2• 15 years ago

It's also not just about internal communication it's about other companies and partners you deal with being available at the same time. While email can allow people to offset communication due to its asynchronous nature, a lot of businesses are still run primarily over the phone.

If you're a service provider, there's a big advantage in being available at the same times as your clients.

cobrophy2• 15 years ago

> Who decided 14 days is the proper amount of annual vacation time?

Worth noting that this is a fairly uniquely American standard and would be illegal in most of Europe.

iconfinder2• 15 years ago

In Denmark it's 42 days ~ 6 weeks:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/lab_vac_min_vac_tim_aro_th...

koopajah• 15 years ago

Same for the two weeks notice before leaving. In France it can be up to 3 months notice.

knz2• 15 years ago

Adjusting to two weeks of vacation/sick leave was a challenge when I immigrated to the US. After five years with my current employer I now get four weeks.

It's a symptom of the belief that "you should feel lucky to have a job" - you should be grateful to have two weeks of leave, not expect more like most other OECD country. I am also constantly amazed at how many coworkers don't use the small amount of leave they get.

It'll be interesting to see if changes in employment patterns will eventually push the US towards a mandated number of vacation hours.

yummyfajitas2• 15 years ago

I am also constantly amazed at how many coworkers don't use the small amount of leave they get.

Perhaps two weeks of vacation is standard because many Americans want additional money more than they want additional vacation.

You know, it's even possible that many people from other OECD nations would prefer more money and less vacation - they just don't have the option to make that tradeoff.

endersshadow• 15 years ago

It's not a symptom of the belief that you should feel lucky to have a job. We're talking about the same country where people who go to college expect jobs to be handed to them.

Instead, it's a complex cause rooted in a country built on entrepreneurship and a strong belief in the "free market" (whatever that means). This is why it's not regulated by any government (federal, state, or local). The US has a lot of factors that lead to its vacation policy, but, "You should feel lucky to have a job" is not one of them--that sentiment is a more recent attitude.

savramescu• 15 years ago

Actually this is something that I've ran into with my girlfriend. We both work in multinationals that have offices close to each other so we leave and come together.

Her boss is in another country and doesn't enforce a starting hour for her schedule. But I'm having trouble convincing her to start earlier (I want 8 AM) in order to leave at 5 PM. Her reason: she doesn't want that the other girls in her department (Recruitment) mistakenly consider her a slacker behind her back. She thinks that sometime down the road, when asked, somebody will answer that she doesn't work hard enough because she's leaving earlier than 6 PM without mentioning that she's coming in earlier.

peacemaker2• 15 years ago

I hit exactly the same problem in an old job I had. We had flexi-time and most people would work 10am - 6pm or so yet I decided to work 7am - 3pm.

The same hours, the same amount of work but you should see peoples faces when you walk out the office at 3pm...

bahadden• 15 years ago

My experience is the opposite. Our department recently changed flexi-time start from 7am to 6:30am, leading to moaning in other departments where they want the same (mainly because the car park is full by 7am).

atirip• 15 years ago

At Artemy Lebedevs Design Studio work starts at noon.

fleitz• 15 years ago

tl;dr: the patriarchy.

For the real reasons you'd want to look to the industrial revolution and Taylorism.

PS. Women we're allowed to work when we standardized start times so everyone would arrive at their station at the right time. You can't run a mill with only half the workforce, so during the industrial revolution it was extremely important for everyone to show up on time. That's the real reason and it has nothing to do with men's inputs and everything to do with the needs of the means of production. Before that you started work as the sun rose because we had no need for standardized start times.

The 9 to 5 thing is more an evolution of a whole bunch of inputs, the final input being primarily Henry Ford and the 8 hour day / 40 hour work week that finally allowed everyone to actually consume all the goods they were producing. That is up until now when production has again outstripped consumption.

PPS. I really get annoyed with revisionist feminist history.

lolcraft• 15 years ago

Um. So, I've read the article. My TL;DR:

There is no scientific research on the adequacy of the current working schedule, as it was adopted arbitrarily by managers. Furthermore, it was established by men for men, without asking women for input, which makes juggling family, career, relationships... difficult for women.

Yeah, there's a wonkish phrase in the middle of it, which reeks of pseudo-evo-psych. I'm talking about "it’s well-established that men perform more effectively under routine and structure." So what.

FluidDjango• 15 years ago

"it’s well-established that men..." [weasel words]

I prefer: "In God we trust. The rest show data."

sp332• 15 years ago

which makes juggling family, career, relationships... difficult for women.

Working 9-5 makes this hard for men too.

yummyfajitas2• 15 years ago

I'm not sure the claims of the article really stand up to scrutiny. For example: They [women] aspire to different goals — relationships over status; they communicate differently — collaborative over top-down; and thrive in different work environments — open-air over individual cubicles.

If true, women should flock to tech startups and academia and avoid big banks/corporates/government. In reality, the opposite occurs.

Similarly, consider the "routine and structure" that men supposedly require. It seems that stereotypically female professions (teaching, HR) have lots of structure and thrive on enforcing it, while stereotypically male professions (programming, sales) are characterized by an individualistic "get shit done" attitude. The article more or less agrees with this - it's women, not men, who work hard at squashing changes and making the system remain as rigid as a 1900's factory.

Overall, this is a fairly weakly reasoned article that should at least acknowledge where it differs from reality.

aeeeee• 15 years ago

> If true, women should flock to tech startups and academia and avoid big banks/corporates/government. In reality, the opposite occurs.

Maybe you missed the part where she said she comes in a little before 9am and leaves by 5. :)

batista• 15 years ago

It's called the "8-hour day", and it was the result of decades of struggle (including a lot of deaths after police/national guard intervention) from overworked factory workers and employees, in many countries.

It was established to be 9-17, historically in most countries.

There had to be some compromise, in order to co-ordinate a lot of things: the start/end of the school day. The start of services such as buses and the subway. 9 o' clock was a nice compromise.

Probably it also had something to do with, well, electric light not being available at the time (not everywhere at least). And people of course has to wake up before 9 o' clock in order to go from their home to work.

The 8 hour day was before idiocies such as "my work is my life/passion" were uttered by mere employees. It was a time that people struggled to work less and have a more balanced life.

Hackers are especially bad at understanding this, because they tend to have little personal life (citation: judging from a lot of people I know, hacker's blog posts, the typical stereotype --which must have some basis--, and most hacker's cultural artifacts), and because they work with interesting problems tend to think that everyone must equally strive to work as much as they can and that "if you love your job, you won't have to work a day in your life".

Well, it doesn't hold for most people, the very people that provide all the infrastructure you use everyday. Few ticket collectors in theaters want to work more. Few burger flippers. Few mailmen. Few policemen. Few grocery store employees. Few gas station attendants. Few pilots. Few truck drivers. Few farm workers. Few nurses. Few iPhone or Android phone builders. Few accountants. Few office workers. Few garbage collectors.

Hominem2• 15 years ago

I work 11-7. Oddly, everyone thinks you are working your ass off when you send out emails at 7pm and never even realizes you are never around before 11.

knz2• 15 years ago

The downside of this is when people only see you coming in "late" and never see you still working at 7pm.

Hominem2• 15 years ago

Well, I am in a cube farm, my "team" is distributed so I am lucky that nobody every sees me.

Besides, you ever notice the more important the person the later they come in? None of the SVPs at my company are ever in before noon.

jaequery• 15 years ago

things must be going real slow over at forbes these days :/

sopooneo• 15 years ago

My biggest issue with all of this is the very notion that you can make policy decisions "scientifically". Having a study to back up every major corporate standard is neither realistic nor even advisable. Many of these things are too nuanced, and include way too many variables to pretend you can get an outcome that is "right" based on data.

zeroonetwothree• 15 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordination_game

Why Does Work Start At 9 A.M.?

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