Emails are work, meetings are work, discussions are work. I'm not a developer anymore, when I was I did maybe 2-3hrs a day of coding and testing. Now I might do a couple of hours a week.
Assuming these are work, I do maybe 7-8.5hrs/ day
Ask HN: In your average ~8h workday, how many hours do you *actually* work?
21–25 of 25 posts
Re: Ask HN: In your average ~8h workday, how many hours do you *actually* work?
#22A lot of people fooling themselves here.
Look, no one likes to feel like they're wasting their time, but with modern jobs, with the common "butts-in-seats for 8 hours" rule, we do waste a lot of time - much of that time is spent not working. It's dishonest to say that it's all spent working and I believe it does damage to a potential future where the "butts-in-seats for 8 hours" rule ceases to exist. If we value our time, let's start being honest, because then maybe that silly 8 hour rule can go away some day.
Re: Ask HN: In your average ~8h workday, how many hours do you *actually* work?
#23A lot of people fooling themselves here. Look, no one likes to feel like they're wasting their time, but with modern jobs, with the common "butts-in-seats for 8 hours" rule, we do waste a lot of time - much of that time is spent not working. It's dishonest to say that it's all spent working and I believe it does damage to a potential future where the "butts-in-seats for 8 hours" rule ceases to exist. If we value our…
I think this very much depends on your definition of "working" and "wasting time". Participating in this debate on Hacker News is not "wasting time" if I get something out of it. Regardless of whether my employer profits from it or not. I believe the meaning of the verb "working" should be reserved to mean "full-filling your part of an employment contract with an employer". And that I'm doing right now. Other activities that may or may not be related to "working", such as writing code, should be called "coding", "programming", "hacking", etc. So it is true that I'm not "coding" eight hours per day, but it is true that I'm "working" eight (or more) hours per day.
Re: Ask HN: In your average ~8h workday, how many hours do you *actually* work?
#24On average 3-4 hours. But the variance is large. Sometimes I work 10 hours straight and sometimes I barely work for 1 hour.
Re: Ask HN: In your average ~8h workday, how many hours do you *actually* work?
#25A lot of the time I am not writing code, but I am working all the time. My job is not to write code, but rather to come up with solutions, do research. A lot of the job is just thinking things through.
So you never waste a few minutes to an hour doing not-work things such as browsing Hacker News, Facebook, trash talking Elon Musk with your coworkers at the watercooler, etc? (not saying you don't, just curious, I know some rare individuals on Earth are like this)
Not speaking for anyone else, but breaks are important. I am more productive working a cycle of 50 minutes “work” then taking 10 minute breaks. I would count my walking outside to get fresh air (or decompressing with some HN) work as it’s helping me solve problems.
But then again, sleep is super important to being productive but I wouldn’t call that work either.