Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 1001 posts

Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?

#111

Post by tingletech »

abledon wrote: post #67
syspec wrote: post #55

> Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them? Yes exactly this, especially at larger companies. I know a few of those developers, and they sit right near me... They find a way to make any task take forever... If it was a smaller company they would be called out, but at my [very, very] large company - its very hard to get f…

I first was driven mad by people like this... 5 days work and 2 lines of java code committed modifying class visibility etc. then I slowly became them after realizing busting my ass everyday for a corporation was not worth it. (also reading gervais' piece on losers/clueless/sociopath triad in orgs)

interesting, thanks for the reference to https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?

#112

Post by oceanghost »

ckaygusu wrote: post #52
i_dont_know_ wrote: post #18

I think there's also something to be said for passive processing. Sometimes I'll know I need to write some code or some function and I'll just think about it in the back of my head while doing other things, sometimes for a whole day or two. Then I'll sit down and write it in like 20-30 minutes. Did I work 20-30 minutes, or have I been working for a day or two? I would say a day or two, and the 20-30 minutes was the t…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9 > He never spent a long time on a problem since he believed that the subconscious would continue working on the problem while he consciously worked on another problem. This is definitely a thing. Intellectual labor just isn't physical labor.

Most of the best ideas I've had in my career were in the shower before work.

The problem is making that a regular occurrence.

Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?

#113

Post by throwaway1777 »

batmaniam wrote: post #22

The same could be asked about upper management. They earn 10x our pay, so their output is 10x more value than our work, and they work 10x harder, right? In our normal 8 hour work day, they must work 80 hours. Except a full day is 24 hours. Why is the onus always on the bottom workers to be honest? Why are we trying to feel guilty about our working hours vs how much we're paid? Because it's clear salary is not tied to…

The whole point is the compensation is not based on how hard you work but the value you provide and what the market will support. Of course upper management works roughly the same hours as everyone else, but they also have far more responsibility.

Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?

#114

Post by pg_1234 »

syspec wrote: post #55

> Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them? Yes exactly this, especially at larger companies. I know a few of those developers, and they sit right near me... They find a way to make any task take forever... If it was a smaller company they would be called out, but at my [very, very] large company - its very hard to get f…

My reaction to these situations is - if someone will me for half days, spend the other half shopping for higher pay for actual full days. You're not going to get anywhere near double, but don't settle, use the time to pursue something better.

Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?

#116

Post by t-3 »

Freeboots wrote: post #37

I think about this every time i see someone talking about how their particular workflow is great because they have a hotkey that saves them having to lift their pinky to a different key, saving them almost 1 second per day. There probably are people like that out there but i strongly suspect they're very much the minority.

I don't think productivity improvements like that are good because of the time saved, but the mental energy. Remembering and recalling all the various keymaps and interfaces to the many pieces of software encountered on a daily basis is not a trivial task, even though it feels effortless.

Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?

#117

Post by p_l »

bartread wrote: post #86
pydry wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large companies have a tendency to throw up all sorts of impediments to actually getting shit done. Simple tasks can take 3 weeks because there are 7-9 dependencies throwing sand in the gears. This not only provides plenty of cover for not getting stuff done it also saps the motivation to get it done quickly. Like, if X team sits on your request for a week that prevents Y feature from getting out are you really gonna…

Wow. A mere 3 weeks to get something done. I worked somewhere once where it took 8 months to implement a two page sign-up process, and I counted about 60 people involved. A colleague said I didn't know the half of it and that there were actually more than 100 people involved. I didn't last very long.

One of the reasons I left a company recently, despite it getting better, was how it took over a year before I could start working on SSO (despite it being critical, super-duper-high priority item) because it took 3/4ths of a year before we started getting user data necessary, then I spent fixing stuff that atrophied due to similar issues.

We were also over a year into "how do we setup direct access between on-prem and cloud" where I stopped attending meetings because within two or three meetings we always got back to starting point, whereas I joined the first meeting with reasonable, implementable solution.

Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?

#120

Post by sq_ »

oceanghost wrote: post #112
ckaygusu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9 > He never spent a long time on a problem since he believed that the subconscious would continue working on the problem while he consciously worked on another problem. This is definitely a thing. Intellectual labor just isn't physical labor.

Most of the best ideas I've had in my career were in the shower before work. The problem is making that a regular occurrence.

For me it's often in the shower after work. Which is a pain because then I've gotta remember them until I get out and then find a way to remember them until the next day.
Post reply on HN