This is the frame of time when I get substantially more done at my job. Well, for me it's more like 5am to 9am. It's a sweet four hours of no interruptions, no meetings, and no BS. I still work for the remainder of the day, but things are much more relaxed because I'm always able to accomplish something during the early 4 hours. In contrast, if I were to start work at 9, there's a good possibility that my productivity will get swallowed up by spurious questions, standup, meetings, meetings that suddenly appear on my calendar, @here, bug reports from customers, HR insisting I fill out yet another sentiment survey, maybe a 1-on-1 with my manager, careful rebasing after someone merged a humongous PR, deployments being broken because someone pushed a change to the configuration, and so on. Friends and family are either asleep or getting ready for their day, so my phone isn't frequently buzzing. I can't go back to working normal hours; work sucks when the day ends and you didn't actually get any measurable unit of work done.
I can see how that would be the perfect time window for working on some other project while still having a day job. Although these days I don't have the will to take on that much programming work.
Like, the full remainder of the day, until 5-6pm? I like your approach if the company in onboard and accepts that it means I might not be reachable for the same amount of hours during the day.
Not working but having to be reachable doesn't count either
I get what you're saying, though I don't mind being around and reachable. The company expects my time around similar hours to other engineers, so I'm not changing that deal. For me personally, extra hours starting at the buttcrack of dawn is worth it in terms of stress relief and feeling accomplishment. Everyone's different, and that's a good thing because if everyone did what I do then the positive effects would be totally nullified.
Granted, yes, I would be glad to always sign off around 2pm. Maybe this is something I should negotiate with my next company someday.
What is the point of working on something if you're missing out on when your friends are doing stuff and hanging out in Discord?
It can also be a sacrifice, something that people forsake while they work to get their personal project off the ground, because that’s what they really care about, even if spending time with friends would be more fun in the short term.
