I recently had a chat with my direct supervisor. I told him I would like to start working flex time 8AM to 4PM and cut my lunch break to 30 minutes, eventually working 8AM to 4:30PM. He had a talk with his boss, gave me the O.K., I requested it in a written e-mail.

Since then, I come in at 08:00AM every morning, I get two and a half hours of productive work until people start coming in and the meetings start. Then I eat lunch and work for 3 more hours and I head for home. I never care about the looks I get from other people because I CMA.

What I want to say is that, as long as you have a Cover Your Ass document, you shouldn't care about how others negotiated their position.

I also requested extra days instead of a pay increase. Should I feel bad about that also?

This happened to me in my first job. I'm definitely a night-owl, but I was tired of coming in at 10-11 and leaving after dark, after everyone else including my boss had left, so I decided to change my routine and get up early and get to work by ~7-8. This worked great for about a week, until my boss started complaining about me leaving so early. So I switched back to my old routine of coming in really, really late, after everyone else did, and then leaving late after everyone else (but only barely, I'd just wait until everyone else was gone and then take off), but still only working 8 hours (maybe). Suddenly I was seen as a "hard worker" again.

People are stupid.

The tons of looks and odd comments bug the shit out of me. Being an engineer, my job is to produce, period. Don't worry about where it happens, just know that every time you pick up the phone and promise something that doesn't exist to someone else, the fact that it suddenly, magically, exists for you to show them is because people like me are plugging away around the clock. Dev work isn't 9-5. It's 24/7 and whenever the light bulb goes off.

It my case, things went beyond odd looks. You're technically obeying the company policy, so they can't punish you officially, but there are lots of ways to punish you unofficially for violating an unwritten social convention. In my case, suddenly I wasn't trusted with working on anything more complicated than the most basic bug fix.

Most companies I've dealt with had some sort of "core hours" policy in place. Typically 8am - 4pm unless your job requires you to work with ppl in different time zones on a regular bases. Anything outside of that would require your manager's approval. 7-3 is typically not a major issue with the exception that you'll stay later if need be for meetings/P1s (although that's a different can of worms) etc.

Maybe I'm just insanely lucky, but having worked with a "biased-early" schedule for a number of tech companies in and out of Silicon Valley, I've not once witnessed looks or comments about when I go home. Now, if someone's strolling in at 11AM and leaving at 4PM (which I have seen often), they shouldn't be surprised if that behavior raises a few eyebrows.

That's not a problem with flex time, it's a problem with company culture. Flex time works where I work. We have people who come in early and leave early and we have people we regularly come it around lunch and stay until the lights go out.

I always said something like "I came in late, so I'm leaving early." People usually didn't know what to do with that.

I've been working remotely for about 11 years. But my situation changed and I'll be commuting again. I'm actually looking forward to being in an office again.