Ideas do not wait for office hours
The story of office hours began from the time when industrial revolution started, somewhere in the 1800s, the time when the concept of factories and assembly line was established.
To get the most efficient production, there was a need for all workers to be in the factory at the same time, handling multiple parts/functions of giant machines. Obviously all needed to be in the same place where these giant production machines were placed. How do we make this more efficient? Answer: Fixed office and fixed office hours. This was the first time when people got familiar with "going to office". That played out very well, production rose and economic conditions of workers rose. The lifestyle of most people changed from working at fields to working in factories, going to offices and earning more.
Fast forward 200 years, look at the kind of jobs we have right now, they are totally different. More and more jobs are knowledge based jobs. We need only one tiny computer to get work done. Colleagues are also working on computers. Using internet, we combine work with others' work(that too done on computer) and there we have a huge output as a team. For most of the functions of our jobs, we do not need to be at the same place, at the same time.
A great example is how software engineers work. There was no such job in the 1800s, now it is the most prominent job role each company has and pays decent amount of money because the goals that a business can achieve with software engineering skills are huge and makes the organization highly efficient. This is how a software programmer works
- Discuss requirements with customer facing team
- Design systems and code them on computer
- Combine the code written by other programmers
- Upload the code to a remote computer through their own computer
Does a software engineer really need to be at office to work effectively?
Does a software engineer really need to work in specific time windows?
We will get to the answer in a moment!
Software engineering is a type of work which is knowledge based and requires creativity. A software engineer needs lots of creative ideas to design systems that work efficiently, ideas to solve those bugs, ideas to turn customer requirements into code. If you don't come up with these ideas or do not implement them, you can't do your job at all. Being a developer myself, I can say most of these ideas come anywhere, anytime. In the shower, eating food, travelling, in the office. The sooner I can work on an idea, the faster I can move. The more I try to search for ideas, the tougher it gets. So the best strategy that works is to be flexible. When you have ideas, be ready to work on them. Do not put constraints of place or time to work, it only slows you down. You can work from anywhere, anytime if you have access to your computer, electricity and internet. You don't need to go to office for that.
It is time to embrace the remote work culture, this is the next revolution we are experiencing. We have all the right elements needed for this now.
I woke up at 3:30AM, had the idea of writing this article and in the next 1 hour, I was finished with it. At Invide, we encourage everyone to work from anywhere and anytime. Work from home, coworking space, park, mountains wherever you feel creative and productive. Work according to your time, whenever you get ideas and feel excited about them, just do it. If you haven't done so before, you wouldn't imagine the quality of work and life all Inviders have.
Does your job need an office and office hours? Let me know through
Tweet to @Invide_Labs
Say #NoOfficeHours
Member discussion