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TheSleepyProgrammer

Once upon a time, there was a sleepy programmer named Samuel who overslept every morning. By his own admission Sam wasn't good in the morning. In the afternoon and evening though, Sam was an excellent programmer. His manager, Pamela, liked Sam and respected his work. Pam accommodated Sam. She never scheduled team meetings earlier than 10AM and, most importantly, she always gave Sam a wake up call before a morning meeting. Sam appreciated Pam's schedule and her wake up calls. Both Pam and Sam were happy with this arrangement.

One day Pam left the company. Sam's new manager, Jacob, is a morning person. He is methodical and his former employees say that he has a rigid but effective process for managing projects. His standard routine is to have his team meet every Monday and Thursday at 8AM to status the project.

Jake knows about Sam and how Pam treated him. Jakes thinks the idea of waking up Sam is ridiculous. "My God.", he says, "Sam is grown man.".

You are a colleague and friend of Jake's who knows Sam as a great programmer. One evening, over an out of town dinner, Jake asks for your advice about dealing with Sam.

What would you say?

SteveSmith 2002.09.07

Another class of treatable problems relates to amino acid imbalances. If you don't have the right levels of the right amino acids, your body won't have the right raw materials for building nifty stuff like neurotransmitters. I have this problem. After it was diagnosed, and I started using the right supplements, the difference in how alert I was in the morning was significant.

Coffee is another problem for some people. As we age, we respond to caffiene differently. Past a point, we need more just to stave off withdrawal symptoms. I felt a lot better in the morning after I kicked the caffiene habit (and I had fewer headaches). This is a tough one, since may companies run on caffiene.

There are other factors. The point being that it's worth examining possibilities before accepting a "not a morning person" label. I'm still not a morning person -- I'll never spring fully awake from the bed at 6am like my wife does, but I can reliably make 9am meetings (traffic permitting).

In the situation Steve lays out above, Pam's behavior, though it "worked", strikes me as co-dependent. Adults shouldn't need wake-up calls. That's what alarm clocks are for, even if you have to use multiple of them.

DaveSmith 8 Sep 2002

Is this office one that "Furniture Police" would take pride in? All little cubes, all in a row, so the manager can survey his fiefdom easily? A "Voice of God" PA system blaring meaningless messages, phones ringing all the time, no way to block noise and interrupts?

See DesksRoomsAndEquipment

This is all conjectures, but depending on the problem(s) we actually want to solve, Jake could improve the availability of programmer privacy features or facilities, or he could ask Sam about the nature of this "morning aversion" as Dave describes. From my experience at a corporation that had flexible hours, I'd recommend Jake establish "core times" that staff are expected to be able to meet together, usually 10:00 to 2:00 allowing them to carve up the remainder of the day as works best for them. 8:00 status meetings with (some of?) the team virtually asleep would be nothing more than strokes for Jakes ego. It would seem wise to either meet each other half way or try to place Sam with a more congenial group manager.

-BobLee 2002.09.09

Insisting on an 8AM team meeting seems rather arbitrary to me. Perhaps Jake has some rules about getting up at the crack of dawn.

It sounds like the team has an implicit "core hours" policy now, why not make it explicit and hold team meetings within core hours?

As for Pam's wake up calls, unless she is Sam's mother, and Sam is under age 18, it is not her job to make sure he is up and on his way to where he's supposed to be.

EstherDerby 090902

What I will do is say, "I need you to behave in this way. Can you do that?" For something as seemingly arbitrary as start time, I would probably explain why we needed a meeting.

However, Jacob is a manager, and is the person who is supposed to look at the consequences of his actions and decisions. If he wants to have a meeting on M and Th at 8am, could he consider alternatives? If everyone except Jacob is working late, does Jacob know? Why not meet at lunch? Why not meet T and F at 4:30pm? Jacob has numerous alternatives, and 8am is an arbitrary time. Jacob should ask what outcomes he wants, and then decide on a course of action.

I would ask Jacob:

• What do you want to have happen?
• What are you willing to pay to have that happen?

-- JohannaRothman 2002.09.09

Adults shouldn't need wake-up calls. (wrote DaveSmith). Sounds to me as if several of us are suggesting that Jake needs a wake-up call. Not to cast the first stone : I have often needed one myself - figurative but also literal (in at least one professional situation that I recall).

With Dave, I'm inclined to treat labels with suspicion. I often sleep late, usually for one of two reasons :

• I've worked late the previous night;
• I feel little motivation to go to work.

Maybe Jake can recall occasions when he has slept late. If it turns out that one or more of these is the case for Sam, quite a number of different solutions might suggest themselves.

Of course, it's quite possible that sleeping late isn't the problem. I'd want to know how the arrangement between Sam and Pam developed in the first place, or why Pam left the company, or whether any particular incidents have yet developed between Sam & Jake. Maybe it's the mind of a frenchman at work, but I can readily imagine how the whole story might be reframed if we inject the assumption that Sam & Pam had some sort of relationship, for instance.

-- LaurentBossavit 2002.09.09

1. essential that I get 9 or 10 hours of sleep at night
   
2. extremely difficult to perform well for the first few hours of the day.

I really appreciate my clients and colleagues who adjust their schedules so that they can benefit from my really effective performance later in the date, and often late at night. Of course, I told them about my situation, and asked them if they would help.

In other words, things work best with real human beings if both parties come more than halfway toward the other (psychologically, of course, not physically - in which case they would collide). - JerryWeinberg 2002.09.15

In Jacob's shoes, I'd be asking the team to agree on the meeting time that works best for everyone to accomplish what needs to get accomplished. On my most recent project, my entire test team liked to start by 7:00 am. It was great. The team got some serious testing in before I arrived at 9:00, we had some 'core hours' overlap time to share information and talk about strategies and issues, then they all went home and I got several hours uninterrupted time to think and do the other things I needed to do. We would have found some other accommodation if some of the team had preferred late hours. I don't get why people have to get all self-righteous about personal differences in working style.

I have a sort of related issue around moralistic attitudes with food. I need to eat at regular intervals or I become shaky, vague and/or bad-tempered. I always tell project managers and customers up-front and make sure I have food on hand. But I've been astonished at the number of project managers who grimly carry on meeting right through lunch or dinner and think those of us who leave to get food are insufficiently committed to the project or some such. Ain't people funny. FionaCharles 16-Sep-02

Maybe Jake just needs certain information by certain times, and he can adapt.

Maybe Jake is a better project manager at 8AM, just like Sam is a better programmer late at night.

Maybe Jake is a control freak, and loves making programmers uncomfortable in any way possible.

Maybe it is time that the company hires a project manager who is not the supervisor of the project staff.

Regardless, Jake needs to understand his own motivations and the principles behind his own rules before he tries to influence the group to do something new or different.

DaveLiebreich 16-Sep-02