Good morning or afternoon, bakers.
(Sometimes) graveyard baker here, was just checking up on bread speed last night–as usual, 5+ hours for true graveyard and about 3 hours for late evening shift directly before. Bakers that habitually took the late evening shift pre-captcha run into the big slowdown that happens after 11:30 PT and causes breads to end as late as 1 am PT. That's late for anybody in an earlier time zone.
Relief baking is helpful for evening shift; doing a "starter bake" for graveyard also helps. Purpose is to support and encourage anons so they aren't completely bakerless until one of the am bakers arrives ("the usual suspects", you know who you are!). Graveyard is a great time for news and also intelligent conversation, but it helps to have a baker with eyes on.
Idea: encouraging new bakers to do a starter bake of 1-2 hours during graveyard, where they get to collect notes and interact with anons, but without planning to actually bake. Just show them how to do a ghost handoff. That way, they don't have to stay up all night but can get a "feel" for what it's like to baker. Easy to ask anons for feedback during graveyard, plenty of time for discussion.
Any anons out there who think they'd like to give it a shot? Much easier than baking during the day; you can do everything in slo-mo. Maybe get to 200-300 and then set up a ghost bake and leave. AM baker will usually pick up within an hour or two.