Last updated · 15 February 2024

Working hours and location

Working hours.

We want a balanced, healthy work and life blend for every team member. Partly, that’s why we are so adamant in our Office-first policy. Also, we do not encourage working beyond 8 hours per day. We want you to take much-needed breaks and enjoy your free time with your cat.

Everyone’s hired to work up to 40 hours per week, except the cleaning lady. She does 15 hours only. As you know, we follow a Maximum freedom, maximum responsibility motto, so managing those hours is up to you. And in all honesty, if you manage to accomplish all your goals in less time, good for you! You are dismissed, go home. If you love the silence and you prefer to work mostly at night-time, be our guest. If you love the sound of the chirping birds, and you prefer to work really early in the morning, you’d be an unicorn but our guest still! This is the “freedom” bit of the motto.

The only policies in place are the following:

Check with the team to figure out if they need you in person.

Make it easy for them to know how and when to contact you should they must.

Be sure to have a good internet connection and ensure there's a decent overlap with our core working hours in the office, from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, Portugal time.

But that’s pretty much common sense, right? If someone is depending on you or has expectations about your delivery, you should either make yourself available or let them know your schedule in advance so you can all coordinate affairs between yourselves. This is the “responsibility” bit of the motto.

Overtime.

Weekends, public holidays, and extra-hours are not meant for work. They are meant for partying hard if you’re single or putting up with your kids if you’re a parent.

If you find yourself working overtime, please report to Management or your Project Manager so we can look at easing your workload. Or we may try to pump-up your productivity so you can deliver more in less time. Clearly, the latter one was a joke, alright?

However, at very rare times, there are urgent deliveries that may require extra time, either on the weekends, public holidays, or pure extra-hours on a working day. Even though we try to limit these as much as possible, and even though it hasn’t happened in years, it may happen, and we may have to ask you to give us a little extra time. If this happens, we’ve got you covered with a pretty fair Time-off in lieu policy.

Time-off in lieu policy.

Sounds French, sounds fancy, and here’s how it works if you have to work on a weekend or public holiday:

Up to 4 hours, you get 1 full-day to hang around your cat.

From 4 to 8 hours, 2 purr-fect days off in return.

2 days of a weekend and/or public holidays, you get 4 paw-some days with Mr. Whiskers.

Keep in mind, Maximum freedom, maximum responsibility. We won’t be droning you to track exactly how long you’ve worked extra. This is fully determined by trust.

The Time-off in lieu policy only applies when you are asked to work beyond the expected working hours, either by Management or your Project Manager. You cannot simply decide to work extra hours, weekends, or holidays to get time-off in lieu in return.

In scenarios of extra work, don’t forget to log your time-off in lieu on Calamari.

Working location.

The bottom line, you can work from wherever you see fit. Want to go to the Maldives for a while and get those code lines jotted down with an ocean breeze? Wait no more, off you go! Would you rather be in London and get inspired by Cats the musical every night? If you can afford it, the keyword above was “for a while”, be our guest.

Just never forget the overlapping hours mentioned above, nor our Office-first policy. In a nutshell, the policy says we are an office-first company that privileges and pushes activities and resources towards nurturing an office culture, even though you are free to work from anywhere. It also says we value human contact and the serendipity of the “being there” (or here, which is where I am writing from), which results in great moments that can’t be matched with an all-remote culture.

Lastly, it also says that based on your living distance from the office, you are encouraged to pay us a visit a number of times per week, even though you can just ignore it and you won’t be punished for it. Yeah, it's a bit contradictory at times. But that's the gist of it: the human mind is full of those. Just embrace it.

On a separate policy, but one that kind of intertwines with the Office-first policy, we reimburse all public transportation expenses.