Working on Fridays?

garv221

I have a general rule that my dept stays away from making changes, configuring or implementing hardware/software to servers and networks on Friday unless something is down. Does anyone else live by this? I think in the future I will make people aware I will not be in the office Fridays unless I have paper work or calls to make, but will be on call for emergencies.

DirtySouth

I have never heard of a company doing that, but I think its a great idea. I'm sure your employees appreciate that too.

Olajuwon

Good for you. I am not in a position to make those calls.

JDMurray

I prefer the rule that no project deadlines will be made from the third week in December to the second week in January. I really hate artificial business deadlines ruining the Winter family holiday seasons.

blargoe

jdmurray wrote:

I prefer the rule that no project deadlines will be made from the third week in December to the second week in January. I really hate artificial business deadlines ruining the Winter family holiday seasons.

I like that one. Past two holidays I've been banned from vacation because of stuff like this and ended up showing up to work to do nothing.

Mondays are a bad time too just because of the nature of monday, users trying to get caught up on everything, and mondays are just mondays. I try not to do anything potentially intrusive then.

RussS

heck - I work every day if it is needed. I try to do server installs on Tuesdays to allow plenty of time to sort things before the weekend and rarely schedule anything for a Monday morning as usually there are a bundle of issues that arise in our weekly staff meeting. I do however remote into a lot of clients and install updates and such on Saturday morning. That allows me to go there and undo things if they turn to custard without effecting them in busines hours.

Webmaster

Interesting change management decision. At most of the large companies I've worked at, there weren't enough days in a week to allow the changes they wanted, and not doing it on Friday meant more work on Monday. It sounds like a good idea if you can afford to delay the change and obviously don't want people to work in the weekend. 'If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it on Friday'.

sprkymrk

Where I work, we are required to guarentee a certain amount of uptime, and this usually means that major upgrades or changes have to take place during non business hours. I prefer to schedule this stuff for Friday evenings or Saturday mornings to allow for the unknown. I make liberal use of comp time on these occasions so it's no big deal.

garv221

I like JD Murrays suggestion as well. I, like alot of you are on call 24x7. My vacations are considered work away from the office. I am it, when it hits the fan I am in the loop or the last resort but not getting a phone call is unheard of. I have alot of users who still work through the weekends including retail stores and their equiptment. I work all kind of hours and crazy times of the night and day. I think making big moves on any day when IT staff is not going to be onsite the following day is bad move.So, I stick with the plan, no last minute changes on Fridays. We schedule major changes for late night weekends and support it, this way you can expect calls and schedule your personal life around it.

mikey_b

Change Management here is like a freight train at full tilt! But luckily I do not implement changes myself, but rather I find problems/solutions which requires someone else to initiate the change. As for Fridays, my feet are up on my coffee table and I work in my housecoat, drinking my coffee, eating my food, watching my crappy daytime soaps. God, I love working from home on Fridays! Makes for a more relaxing office experience when part of the staff are gone throughout the week (some people WFH every other day, some 3 days a week, some as much as 5 weeks from home, 1 week in the office). I have Monday - Thursday to do real work and spend my Friday doing reports or training or documentation or quality evaluations. Nice and relaxing!

/usr

Eh, that DOES sound nice. Working from home never really feels like work. Not like it does in the office.

garv221

mikey_b wrote:

Change Management here is like a freight train at full tilt! But luckily I do not implement changes myself, but rather I find problems/solutions which requires someone else to initiate the change. As for Fridays, my feet are up on my coffee table and I work in my housecoat, drinking my coffee, eating my food, watching my crappy daytime soaps. God, I love working from home on Fridays! Makes for a more relaxing office experience when part of the staff are gone throughout the week (some people WFH every other day, some 3 days a week, some as much as 5 weeks from home, 1 week in the office). I have Monday - Thursday to do real work and spend my Friday doing reports or training or documentation or quality evaluations. Nice and relaxing!

Exactly. Are you salary? I am more and more convinced I need to work for myself. Computers or not, I hate being on a schedule. I like doing what I want when I want. The freedom of getting up and leaving and not worrying about what someone will say.