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Ask HN: What's your working day like?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#271

Post by Maven911 »

v3gas wrote: post #149
Maven911 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not a security engineer, but working at a large financial company a lot of these points hit especially 11:15 & 11:16 and 17:00 :))))

I don't get it - how can it matter that you make tons of money if you are not satisfied with your life? (legit question)

Some things to consider: -Options that aren't better (especially for non-developer role) or not entirely sure what area of tech you want to work for besides Google, Amazon but can't get in. -Work that you may like to do if you were in a better more supportive team. -It might not even be tons of money, but enough to pay bills and save a bit, and better paying then many other industries -Not ready to start all over again especially if you had a new job every 2 years (sometimes with the same company but still, the context switching is too much now) -Visa, not easy to move from company to company

But yes it does suck to question oneself all the time on whether to switch it up or not

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#272

Post by kukabynd »

patrickbolle wrote: post #160
grecy wrote: post #144

I am seeing a lot of depressing posts here (and mostly in humor, I think) Lots of talk about sleeping in, procrastinating, pretending to work, etc. etc. I used to be a Software Engineer and I can relate extremely well. Now I am attempting to be a travel writer and photographer, driving around Africa. I spring out of bed in the morning, and have some of the best days of my life, day after day. It's hard, but I love it…

Thanks for this. I'm a web developer, recent college grad. I freelance and travel a lot. It's cool, but I hate the work for the most part. I do lots of tiny UI tweaks and stuff every day. It's slowly killing me inside I think. The upside is I work from 'hpme' and can sleep in and have lots of freedom and stuff, but when it comes to work... It's destroying me. I have been living in Costa Rica for the past year and I'm…

Just open a surf shop or a tour company since you like it. Automate shit out of it and hire locals, you are your own engineer.

I don’t see why not. Diversifying is always a good idea. Web-dev is a good source of income to fund these endeavors. You have all the cards up your sleeve IMO.

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#273

Post by erikb »

nyrulez wrote: post #166
erikb wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people complain about the usual work chaos. I'm also an engineer and I don't get it. For me, having other people come and ask questions is not distraction but an opportunity to help, learn to know their point of view, learn new things. Meetings are a way to influence the direction of the company however small my influence may be. Other people talking can really distract if it's heavily on topic, but usually also…

Hmm. How about actually building stuff? For most software engineers, thats a very important part of their job/life/happiness. That requires long focus and flow. And in my personal opinion has a great sense of fulfillment attached to it compared to lot of scattered micro impacts. Ultimately you need to learn to balance both otherwise it gets very frustrating​.

Yeah, not for me. My experience with building stuff on my own: Very stressful and long winding, a lot of procrastination and unsocial habbits start to creep in after a week, solution is not really valuable to anybody since nobody is familiar with it.

The biggest, most used solutions I helped building usually happened when I cooperated with others. The same discussions that happen in your head, just that part of it is coming from another brain.

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#274

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

ryandrake wrote: post #44
mikelbring wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came to comment about that too. I use to drive 2 hours total a day. Absolutely terrible. I hope you can fix that in the near future!

Welcome to the Bay Area. I've made the conscious decision that I'm not willing to pack my family into a 1000 sq.ft. shoebox, which is all that's affordable anywhere near employers, so commute it will be.

Try to make your commute part of your workday? Even if you left at 7am, worked on the train, worked in the office till 4 then home at 6, it would make a big difference to your life.

Source: had a 1.5hr commute in London (bus, tube, train, bus). 1.5 was best case scenario. I will never forget the sheer happiness I gained from changing jobs to a more reasonable commute.

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#275

Post by jamisteven »

Profession: Support Analyst - Investment Bank - Electronic Trading

|8:00am| Wakey wakey

|8:30am| Feed Dog > Walk Dog > Shower

|9:00am| Leaving for office

|till 11:30am| Meetings - Drink much coffee - ponder existence

|11:30 - 2:30| Projects (Infra, Automation of reports, scripting etc)

|2:30 - 6:00| Release prep / Incident Response / handover work to APAC Counterparts

|6 - 7| G Y M

Rinse and repeat.

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#276

Post by swipecity »

vorpalhex wrote: post #172
majewsky wrote: post #151

I'm in a dev-ops/developer/architect role at SAP cloud infrastructure. [09:00] Alarm goes off. I'm totally not a morning person, but because the alarm is so late, I usually convince myself to get up immediately. [09:40] I leave my apartment and read a newspaper on the tram. [10:00] Upon arriving at work, I fire up my PC, but let it sit while I visit colleagues and chat with them about our progress and impediments. So…

Are you seeing a lot of benefit from daily meditation? Does having it be firmly scheduled help it become a regular habit?

My two cents : I have been meditating for one month now, daily when i Wake up for 15 min. I feel great since then, and I can actualy focus and actualy be present and listen when people talk to me. You should try.

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#277

Post by TeMPOraL »

mcjiggerlog wrote: post #157
TeMPOraL wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but in a similar situation. Believe me, I'm trying to. Unfortunately companies in my area are not too happy about remote work, and I don't feel ready yet to risk going full freelance (though I'm actively working on changing that).

But if it's remote work it doesn't need to be in your area (as long as they are willing to employ you, as opposed to contracting).

This week I'm trying to negotiate a remote work policy with my employer. Keep your fingers crossed :). The thing is, I actually like my work, and like my company. But due to mostly family reasons, I'd like it much more if I could spend at least 3 days / week out of the office. Long-term, I'll either relocate with my SO back to a major city, or I'll go freelance.

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#278

Post by lr4444lr »

mikejmoffitt wrote: post #257
lr4444lr wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profession: Another Software "Engineer" [05:00 - 06:00] Wake up with the sun, and work in bed on side projects on personal laptop; [06:00] Get myself together, spend the only waking time I have with my infant child during the week. [06:30] Gym [07:00] Commute to work [08:10] arrive at desk, have breakfast at desk while picking up on momentum from yesterday, or fixing what problem I was too mind-numbed to see through…

>[06:30] Gym >[07:00] Commute to work Serious question: How does this work? Do you work out for exactly 30 minutes and jump straight on transport / in the car / etc? 20 minutes plus a quick shower? Is there no time factored in for cleaning yourself up after working out, to be presentable at work?

Intense weight lifting, no more than 6 sets or so. Enough to get sore, not enough to break a sweat. Shower at night. Well over half the battle to stay fit is showing up to the place of exercise: even 2 sets at high enough intensity is enough to maintain and grow a fitness base. It took me a long time to optimize for it. I live in the Northeast, so if it's a hot summer's day, occasionally I do have to cut it short earlier and get in a shower. Sometimes I miss the train and have to take the next one - I try to take fewer breaks in the day to make up the lost 20 min. or so. ;-)

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#279

Post by erikb »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #250
akavel wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: http://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt-... The above comic strip absolutely perfectly shows what's it about for me. Though I agree there is stuff better done with others (brainstorming, or discussing hard problems where you're stuck; also variants of rubber-duck debugging/designing; I'd say it boosts "breadth" and "lateral thinking"). But for many people there is most certainly also stuff b…

+1, this comic strip is perfect . It describes the issue precisely , in a way rarely seen even in best comic strips. Things I have to do fall into two categories - either I immediately know how to approach them, at which point I can code while having conversations and there's little you can do to distract me - or, I don't immediately know how to approach them, at which point I need time alone and in peace to load the…

I also have that feeling, but only when coding with other people. The only time I really need to think that complex on my own is when I learn a really new topic. E.g. two weekends ago I really wanted to learn how iptables work because I was so frustrated that most SO/blog answers are not agreeing with each other, they often don't work when just copy&pasting, and nobody really explains why he chose that way and not another. [1] Then I really need to spend like 24h just reading docs and building these complex systems in my head.

With two people these complex systems often also end up in actual diagrams or code, which then can be tested or used for documentation and later lookup.

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/43375012/wrapping-ones-he...

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#280

Post by erikb »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #242
grogenaut wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have to personally write every single line of code or are you happy when the whole team builds the code?

Somebody has to do something. If everyone is running around talking to everyone else like a bunch of agitated monkeys, no real work actually gets done.

Well, have you noticed that I argued exactly the opposite?
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