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

How does work allocation take place in your organisation? Does your team not decide itself who will do what work? If they do, and you are not being given any work to do, that probably reflects the level of esteem for your productivity held by the rest of your team. They aren't willing to "dob you in" to management, but they don't respect your professional ability, which would be intolerable for anyone with self-respect. If they don't, well fair enough, the problem is not really with you but with whoever in your management allocates your work and holds you accountable. In that case I don't blame you for only doing what you are asked to.

This is something I have said before: Some people just stop working after a few months. And I don't think they mean to, I just think they learn helplessness and don't do any work anymore. Motivation can be difficult to maintain.

I know someone who is "leading" an internal initiative I got STUCK on currently who is like that. Nice guy, talks a good game, but when the rubber meets the road, he has not delivered in any capacity. Not even in the technical implementation capacity, the easiest part of the project.

I saw another person at my last company who did absolutely nothing, but was VERY present in meetings and constantly battling other people who trying to improve stuff. Then you do `git blame` on the code-bases and you don't see their fingerprints ANYWHERE.

It was a problem throughout the company, to the point they introduced a ton of really strict agile processes to micro-manage points and work. Guess what? The bullshitters played that system successfully too.

It is common. And it is hard to detect from a management perspective. They don't know what ad-hoc meetings/reading/research/other work is happening, so it is hard to pin people down when they are not working.

I've actually mentioned this before in a previous comment[0].

> Are most of us secretly lying about how much we are working?

My motto is 3 good hours a day is an excellent day. You can't really realistically expect more from yourself. I consider anything over that a nice bonus.

> Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them? Have I just been incredibly lucky and every boss I have had is too incompetent to notice?

I have regularly run into people who do 0 work during their career, and I just tolerate them. One, because I have seen it enough to know it is normal. Two, because it isn't worth burning my social capital to attack that person. Like... what do I care? It's your manager's problem, not my problem. I just think it is hard to quantify.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28069689

In 20 years of doing development I can count with one hand the cases where promotions and salary increases went to the best performers. In most cases they went for those that befriended management.

I worked my ass off for almost 20 years. But later than sooner I learnt. Now I coast.

Work hard if you want, slack if you want too. The defining factor for your success is who you are "friends" with.

Long time manager here. I call this "work-shy" and it is neither ubiquitous nor rare, I'd guess about 10%-20% of all employees, and it's certainly not unique to software or even to white-collar work. You should think of this as a problem. Even if it's not for your boss or your teammates (and it will be, eventually), it is for you. It is soul-crushing to fill up the hours. Two pieces of advice:

1) The "good" solution is to find some work you actually give a shit about. If you can't force yourself to care about corporate software, work on an indie video game, or get a job at Amnesty International, or find some other way to get personally invested in your work product. If you can't find it doing software, become a chef, or build houses, or whatever. It will improve your life immeasurably to spend your day doing something you get intrinsic satisfaction from instead of websurfing.

2) The "bad" solution, more like managing the problem really, is to get good at using Pomodoro timers, to-do lists, and other crutches to force yourself to do enough to not fall behind. "Fall behind" in this context does not mean that you do so little work that everyone notices and calls you out on it, it means that you stop keeping up with new frameworks and new tools and the years march by and your skills atrophy and then your employer folds and you find pushing 50 in an ageist industry with weak skills and few options.

Hope this is helpful.

That's still an improvement, IMHO. And the degree to which you get bitten by the same problems depends on the size and culture of the company you're joining. Small, agile (usually young) companies tend to be better in this regard but you trade off other things like experienced management.