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Having worked at a company that did a four-day week, I'll chime in that it was both amazing and eye opening. I say that as someone who had read Tom DeMarco's now-classic book Slack[1] long ago, after a lot of up-close and personal with the antipatterns described therein. Intellectually, I expected something(??) good but the reality was even more suprising. With a four-day work week, I was able to complete (solo!) a production website application upgrade (Rails 2.x to 4.5) in a very reasonable timeline, and less than I'd heard competent teams failing the same task elsewhere. This wasn't because of any "10x developer" nonsense - it was clearly because I had a /three-day weekend/ every week and came in on Monday clear headed and ready to HIT IT, BABY.

Let me be clear: I later realized that this project would have been a soul-draining death march at many other places I'd worked in my career. Exhausted just a few weeks in, with management hounding the team for schedule estimates that can't possibly exist because management failed to fund maintenance for years.[2] (There were actually rational reasons for this, in this case. tl;dr the project got renewed interest and investment due to a new business case.)

To those who lament on this topic about "devs (in country X) just aren't motivated these days" or whatever, let me suggest something. If you have poor clarity of purpose, poor giving-a-fsck about humans, or a number of other culture failings then yes, you may encounter problems. Your solution is still not to tie your knowledge workers to their desks. You need to fix the root causes of your underlying productivity debt, not pave over them with an overwork-butts-in-seats mentality which just makes things worse in the long run (<--- read DeMarco).

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Effici...

[2]: Pro tip: "evergreen" ecosystems, especially young and rapidly changing ones like early-mid Ruby/Rails and a lot of current npm/JS-based stuff, often have a wickedly non-linear cost curve if/when maintenance and dependency updates fall off. Some of the most expensive I've encountered of this ilk is when /test infrastructure/ incurred a lot of past churn that wasn't tracked, but suddenly (cough) needs to be updated.

The article can be summed with with a link to the book it itself links:

https://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Effici...

Tom Demarco wrote Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency[1] back in 2002. It talks about how keeping slack in human systems makes them more resilient and humane. I first heard about it from Joel Spolsky, who started Trello and Stack Overflow[2].

Slack is a great read for those responsible for managing software teams and illustrates that there are no new ideas under the sun; there are just repackaged ones.

[1]-https://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Effici...

[2]-https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/11/22/reading-list-fog-c...

⬐ etaerc

Oh boy, the rabbit hole. Check out this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slackware

Yep, a linux based on the idea of Slack, developed '93.

And just as there's the Spaghetti Monster, there's also even a religion around Slack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_SubGenius

developed '79, short quote from wikipedia: "the group holds that the quality of "Slack" is of utmost importance—it is never clearly defined"

⬐ yellowapple

I've been using Slackware as my primary OS for a few years now (even my work computer runs it). In retrospect, Slackware fits the article's mentality remarkably well; instead of the approach taken by most Linux distros (where everything is neatly and tightly integrated with a dependency-resolving package manager and dependency-resolving init system and all that jazz), I instead work with a system that sure, maybe some of the pieces don't fit together perfectly, but they're readily adaptable to all sorts of different situations. It's a less fragile system specifically because it's built around accepting the components for what they are instead of trying to patch them to "perfection". And of course, the conservative component choices certainly help, too.

⬐ bena

That's exactly where my mind went as well.

You want some amount of inefficiency in your system to accommodate sudden changes.

This seems like an opportune time to mention "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency" by Tom DeMarco (DeMarco is better known as one of the co-authors of Peopleware).

https://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Effici...

If you've read and liked Peopleware, you should read Slack as well. If you haven't read either one then you should.

http://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Efficie...

Hi there, I'm quite new to engineering management as well, with approximately one year of experience. I've had some great mentors, as well as a reading list passed down to me. I'll highlight those I found as having the most impact for me.

At the top of the list is "Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager" by Michael Lopp[1], which was recommended to me by a manager who helped me get my start in engineering management. This book touches on a lot of the nuances in dealing with people and, as an introvert, I found this really helpful. The same author blogs under "Rands in Repose[2]" which has much of the content from the aforementioned book available for free.

While in the people category you'll also get a lot of recommendations for "Drive!" by Daniel Pink[2], which is a book about intrinsic motivators (autonomy, mastery, purpose) and how they are more important and effective than extrinsic motivators (e.g. money), particularly for knowledge workers. My personal advice, however, is to watch his TED talk[3] which is a great summary of basically the entire book. In this same category I could also recommend "The Great Jackass Fallacy" by Harry Levinson[5].

Now on the wall between people management and engineering/project management is "Slack" by Tom DeMarco[6], which is about how organizations and managers tend to run their staff at 100% capacity. As the book points out, however, this is a good way to not only burn people out, but it also sends response times through the roof (from queuing theory), and stifles change ("too busy to improve"). You can read this one on a plane. For some shameless self promotion, I've also written a tiny blog post relating Slack and the need for upkeep (software operations and maintenance)[7].

Next, fully in engineering/project management, I have to recommend "Waltzing with Bears" by Tom DeMarco and Anthony Lister[8], which is specifically about managing risk on software projects. The authors highlight the common practice of project/engineering managers communicating their "nano date", which they point out is typically the lowest point on the uncertainty curve. In other words, the project has the lowest possible chance of shipping by this date when you look at the possible timeline as a probability distribution. This book changed the way I talk about projects and the way I manage my team's various risks and I have been more successful as a result.

One final recommendation I'll make, since you're in the midst of a transition, is "The First 90 Days" by Michael Watkins[9]. It's a wonderful book that outlines how and why one should develop a transition plan in order to hit the ground running - and in the right direction. For my last engineering management opportunity, developing a preliminary 90 day plan as part of a "starter project," was a major factor in being given the job.

I believe that a subset of these will give you a great start. After that, you should read on the areas you feel the need for the most amount of help with or the areas that interest you. If you are avidly interested in project management, for example, you should read books on various methodologies, particularly the one that you or your organization practice.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Humans-Humorous-Software-Engi...

[2]: http://randsinrepose.com/

[3]: http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates...

[4]: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation?language=en

[5]: http://www.amazon.com/Great-Jackass-Fallacy-Harry-Levinson/d...

[6]: http://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Efficie...

[7]: http://www.charleshooper.net/blog/on-slack-and-upkeep/

[8]: http://www.amazon.com/Waltzing-Bears-Managing-Software-Proje...

[9]: http://www.amazon.com/The-First-90-Days-Strategies/dp/159139...

I think Tom DeMarco makes the same point in the book Slack: http://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Efficie...

He didn't - IIRC - talk about "20% time" specifically, but Tom DeMarco wrote a whole book about the importance of "slack" time at work. One point he makes is that if everyone is too busy doing the routine stuff 100% of the time, then the firm can't adapt quickly, because nobody has time to learn anything new, do exploratory / speculative work, etc.

His book Slack is a fascinating read, and I'd recommend it to any HN'er who hasn't read it yet:

http://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Efficie...

⬐ codinghorror

damn, I totally should have mentioned that in the post. I'll add it via an edit.

http://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Efficie...

"Slack" is also a great read: http://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Efficie...