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

Developer work should almost exclusively be measured on "did you get that thing done we needed done on time?", with the limit that you shouldn't be required to work extra hours to make that happen (with rare exceptions).

I've had weeks where I do nothing, and then have two hours of real insight and solve a problem my team has had stuck in the backlog on for month/years in an afternoon.

I've had mornings where I browse HN, then take a shower, and suddenly realize the solution to a problem that ultimately brings my employer potentially millions in revenue.

At the same time, I can't perform these quick moments of brilliance for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

I've also had weeks were I put in long days quickly building a prototype needed to test out a new product idea, it's hard work but the results impress important clients and help everyone look good. But I can't keep up weeks like that for long without burnout.

The most import things:

- are you getting the things done you and your team agree are important, on time

- when you're involved with other people, where do the find you on the "oh god no" -- "oh thank god!" scale

If your team is on track solving the problems that need to be solved, and whenever someone pings you with a question or in need of help they leave feeling like you saved them a ton of time, it doesn't really matter if you work 5 minutes a day.

The inverse is also true. If people find that adding you to a project is a time suck, and things never seem to work right, it doesn't matter if you are putting in 70 hour work weeks.

That seems pretty productive for an IC. If you are spending half of your time writing code, that's pretty good. You seem to be driven and a self starter, which is why you feel like garbage when you don't hit deadlines that you've set for yourself. It's a good way to keep yourself motivated, but try to keep things in the right perspective.

> The biggest obstacle to this for me is poor planning upstream, missing/bad requirements, missing APIs that are presumed finished, etc.

This is the best reason to go into management or take on role where you spend more time on this part of the process. If you do go into management, I recommend positioning yourself as a player/coach.

This varies a lot on the job. I can guarantee you’d spend more time at my current place. In fact, half of that time you’re currently spending would be at least on interviewing people - and another half would be on the mandatory meetings.

You’d easily spend a lot more time on the projects. Many of my coworkers work nights and weekends. It’s not uncommon to see people starting around 8-9am and logging off around 7pm for a regular schedule. And then pressure hits and weekend work starts showing up too.

It’s gonna vary so much by your place of employment. I’m gonna guess you don’t do any project work or significant projects and management is entirely disengaged.

I’ve worked at a small startup and find this to be untrue. If you’re working with people 10-100x worse than you, you can be sandbagging as hard as you can and still be miles ahead and look like a paragon of productivity.

Now, will that particular startup succeed? Probably not in the way their investors would like.

I know several developers just like yourself. None of them are on HN.