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

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

#151

Post by CSSer »

sethammons wrote: post #79
jeffalbertson wrote: post #47

you're not alone. I probably work the same amount as you. I ship stuff the org feels customers love, I get promotions, and get paid well. I could grind so much more but I like to spend my day in other ways. I like to read the news in the morning, clock out at 5 etc. We have the ability to "work" this little and still be valuable because writing code has a very high barrier to entry. That 5-10 hrs of work took years o…

A man approached a street artist making amazing paintings and asked for one. About 2 minutes later, the artwork completed, and the artist asked for the fee. The man balked at the price. "What!? This only took a couple of minutes!" "No," replied the artist, "this took me my whole life."

Also see the parable of the plumber and the water heater: http://www.readersadvice.com/mmeade/musings/plumber.html

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

#153

Post by cheschire »

wsc981 wrote: post #59

I am a freelance dev and I only bill the hours that I work. But I am quite sure a lot of freelance devs just bill 8 hours of work a day, even if they only work 3 hours. My conscience wont allow me to do this in a remote work situation. Back when I worked in the office as freelancer, I did bill 8 hours a day, since I was expected to sit in the office 8 hours a day, regardless if I performed or not. In the past I worke…

I am inferring from your message that some other freelance devs are less conscience-driven than you are. Perhaps that's not what you intended to imply with your statement "my conscience wont allow me..."

If that was your intention though, imagine if another freelance dev has performed justifiable calculations that determine their 3 hours of work should be billed at 2.5x your 3 hour rate. How could they possibly compete with you?

What if the deliverable was the same? What if the other devs just billed on deliverable instead of hours with strong renegotiation clauses? Would that be more acceptable to you than playing games with the hours just to get passed bean counters?

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

#154

Post by anikan_vader »

If you can get your work done in 10% of the time, great for you! Unless this lack of productivity is due to a lack of motivation that translates across disciplines in your life. Or if it's because you're running away from your work.

If it is due to a lack of motivation, I would recommend WOOP, a science-based way to increase motivation and help people achieve their goals. Meditation, sleep, and exercise are all helpful too of course, as is cognitive-based therapy.

But again, if you're just cruising through your job as a means to an end and you enjoy goofing off on the clock, then I genuinely think all the more power to you. Just make sure that whether you are productive or not is an intentional decision.

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

#155

Post by Ardon »

pvarangot wrote: post #70
byoung2 wrote: post #5

Imagine a security guard at an office building. 90% of the time might be sitting in a booth watching monitors. The other 10% of the time is buzzing people in or making rounds. But that 90% of the time when they are sitting around is important, since they are on call. So you are like a security guard. Your employer gladly pays you for the 90% of the time you are doing nothing, because they need the comfort of having a…

I think if that was his situation he wouldn't have to "bullshit through standup". Just say "nothing showed up" or "having a creative block" or whatever and then either get help or something. It's not like the security guard at all, the security guard is not lying or consciously giving a false sense of what his contributions to the team are.

Part of the problem is that 'the company' accepts this 90% downtime, but managers running standups are paid to maximize productive output of their staff.

So you'd be lying to your managers with the end goal of behaving as the company expects you to.

This kind of internal tension is normal in lots of organizational structures. It's better if no one has to lie but it isn't (in my opinion) a disaster or anything.

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

#156

Post by pmulard »

cattown wrote: post #132

I've been a software engineer and managed software engineers for 20 years and worked in all kinds of businesses. This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion. Doing just as much work as your employer requires and no more is way less of a problem than employees who actively steal, commit fraud, bring drama and distract other team members, or are introducing defects because they've faked their…

Just curious, but what career did you switch to? Also, congrats on finding more happiness :)

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

#158

Post by f6v »

paxys wrote: post #139
bradlys wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why so much work? Understaffed orgs and exceedingly high expectations of engineers. A lot of management has no social life or life outside of work - so they expect the same of their subordinates. I’ll move on after a year or two. I just wanted some name brand recognition and to give the company a chance. I was tired of going with unknown places.

Not why so much work, but rather why do you put up with it? I've never understood how companies like this can still exist in today's job environment. Does everyone get paid significantly more than market rate or have equity doubling in value every quarter or something?

The parent said how. I know a company where people are forced to come on weekend, get underpaid, and work on patents filed under someone else’s name. Just because it’s a well-known company and looks good on the CV.

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

#159

Post by agagrgar »

paxys wrote: post #130
Kranar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who worked at both Microsoft and Google... you can get await with doing little work at those companies for maybe a year, two years at most, but after that you're gone. The expectation at those places skyrockets after the first year.

At Microsoft at least that wasn't my experience at all. I knew several people there who hadn't done any real productive work for the last 7-10 years, probably longer.

I've been in Azure and GCP. IDK how anyone would get away with it. You constantly have customer issues, people from other teams pinging you, needing help with something. I don't see how it would be possible just to do nothing and survive.

Maybe in some team that is further removed from customers?

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

#160

Post by hogFeast »

W0lf wrote: post #82

I think we should rather talk about the (history) of working the typical 8 hours a day, which doesn't make much sense for software people if you ask me. IIRC the concept of working 8 hours is more than 100 years old and was considered an optimal value to minimize the number of work accidents and burnouts (for factory workers) and allow for three shifts per day. Hence, 8 hours was (is?) considered to give optimal effi…

The working day was 10-16 hours for most of the 19th century. But work then was totally different: a lot of it was piece-rate work, most factories didn't directly employ anyone, etc. (this was also true of proto-industry which is often used as some kind of proof that working conditions can be different).

This came down to 8 hours per day as the labour movement grew stronger. The concept of burnout makes no sense outside of the present, it was just politics. The move to 8 hour days was faster in countries that had tighter labour supply and/or greater political representation for working people (i.e. Australia and the US).

The structure of work has rarely been determined by efficiency. There is a greater context of norms, other obligations that people have, economics, politics, etc. Even within the developed world and within individual countries, there is significant variation. Indeed, the only limits within most countries is at the extreme i.e. an employer requiring 12 hours of labour without a break or something.

The most "efficient" kind of work is piece rate. Some people do this today but I think that most people chose not to do this because it is inconvenient.

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