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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?

#301

Post by BbzzbB »

syspec wrote: post #55

> Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them? Yes exactly this, especially at larger companies. I know a few of those developers, and they sit right near me... They find a way to make any task take forever... If it was a smaller company they would be called out, but at my [very, very] large company - its very hard to get f…

What is IC? Google tells me Interstitial Cystitis, but my hunch tells me it's something else.

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

#302

Post by sneak »

bigbillheck wrote: post #53
bradlys wrote: post #25

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 fo…

You and your co-workers are working too hard and need to press back against it.

"working too hard" is an individual decision, and these people have lots of job mobility - they have opted in to this particular circumstance.

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

#303

Post by digianarchist »

syspec wrote: post #55

> Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them? Yes exactly this, especially at larger companies. I know a few of those developers, and they sit right near me... They find a way to make any task take forever... If it was a smaller company they would be called out, but at my [very, very] large company - its very hard to get f…

I had a coworker at a government job that clocked in doing no work for 6 months. They were going to PIP him when I left but he's still there now.

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

#305

Post by oakfr »

medvezhenok wrote: post #214
ineptech wrote: post #168

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…

The alternative is to embrace minimalism / the FIRE lifestyle and hopefully skate by long enough to not have to work by the time the company folds and live off of investments -> then into retirement). I think most "underwork" on the job is a motivational issue and stems from one of a few overlapping reasons: 1) No way to promotion/advancement (dead end job) 2) Overqualified and bored 3) Unclear goals, no feedback, an…

I've read about the FIRE theory time and again. For some reason, I don't buy it. I fail to believe in the plan that consists in building enough FU money to then "be free".

Free to do what? What was the plan originally?

I think the real meaning of life is to do what you care about today, _with the constraints you have today_.

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

#306

Post by workthrow320948 »

geijoenr wrote: post #274

Long time manager here as well. I am fully aware of the amount of work developers do and never expect more than 50% of their time to be spent in full focus. But this amounts to around 20h per week. The kind of behavior you describe amounts to me as medium-low performance, but as some other people mentions; there are other types of behaviors that are much more problematic because they disrupt the proper functioning of…

Long time manager, and I agree with all of this, but I also identify with OP and also get only a handful of hours of work done every week and I've wondered the same thing.

I get high marks (high to superlative performance) consistently, but it's usually because when I deliver, it's with high quality outputs and effective delegation. Otherwise I don't really do much but wonder whether I'm really under performing if all my reviews are as strong as they are, or if I just do the work more quickly than most others.

edit: I'm fine with this comment being dead, honest. less people see it and less risk of me being identified on my main. don't vouch. I'm using tor so that's why

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

#307

Post by zitterbewegung »

medvezhenok wrote: post #214
ineptech wrote: post #168

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…

The alternative is to embrace minimalism / the FIRE lifestyle and hopefully skate by long enough to not have to work by the time the company folds and live off of investments -> then into retirement). I think most "underwork" on the job is a motivational issue and stems from one of a few overlapping reasons: 1) No way to promotion/advancement (dead end job) 2) Overqualified and bored 3) Unclear goals, no feedback, an…

I actually think that other than underwork you might have to hire people that you have enough "burst" performance but regularly don't have to do much.

There is a real example with global markets like the stock market. Most trades are done electronically but, if those electronic systems fail you can activate an automatic backup system which is a bunch of traders on a trading floor.

Hypothetically the recent Facebook outage could have been minimized by just having a security guard that could open and close a door. I know that DNS propagation would have still fixed it and yes the AS systems would had to have time to propagate but it still would have been a better solution.

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

#308

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

01100011 wrote: post #204
DarrenDev wrote: post #93

58 minutes after posting, your post has 134 points and sits at the top of Ask HN. I think that answers your question a lot more clearly than the comments themselves. What you've said is clearly resonating with a lot of readers, even if they may not say so in the comments.

Yes, but they're upvotes from people browsing HN on a work day. Don't think of it as a particularly random sample of programmers.

Some of us (me) are on lunch.

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

#309

Post by kittiepryde »

cvwright wrote: post #275
paxys wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However! I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health. Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life. Agree with everything you wrote except this part. I have worked jobs where I truly believed in the mission, worked hard, was paid a lot, achieve…

Just wanted to point out that this > I truly believed in the mission, worked hard, was paid a lot, achieved great things and was overall very satisfied. and this > used to leave at 5pm sharp are not mutually exclusive. We have this weird thing in tech where we think that, to be passionate, you have to work yourself into the ground. But this is stupid. There's organizational psych research going back decades showing t…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30793826/

Do you happen to know of good studies to back up --- organizational psych research going back decades showing that teams who work 40-hour weeks will quickly outperform teams working 60 hrs / week --- I've heard this before, but, I've never seen the studies talked about.

I found this study via Googling, it took a little longer than I would like to admit. (I'm probably using the wrong search terms)

It definitely paints a more complicated picture - from a manager perspective, they could say that more hours equals more work - except they should be measuring worker engagement according to the study I linked, because it's more heavily associated with productivity than total hours worked - but they could say this is hard to do, it's just cheaper for the company to make everyone work more? That kind of company is definitely a place I would not want to work, but more studies, might make it easier to justify a change if you find yourself in one of these organizations?

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

#310

Post by sneak »

vlunkr wrote: post #278
ghostoftiber wrote: post #172

> Are most of us secretly lying about how much we are working? Yes, but I would venture it's the other way - most of us are probably working our butts off and thinking we make a decent wage for 40 hours a week when we're putting in 60 hours a week. I didn't really notice this until I had a family and started bumping into family activities. At first, I was really pissed off that something was getting in the way of wor…

> putting in 60 hours a week I would just get a new job. Unless you're volunteering for it and getting paid overtime, that is unacceptable.

A lot of workers in technology are getting paid in equity. For many, it makes it more than acceptable. It's not really anyone's place to tell someone else that the way they're making money is unacceptable without knowing all of the details.

I put in 60-70 hour weeks routinely. I work at companies I founded and own. I don't make overtime. Is my work schedule unacceptable?

What is the percentage of equity between 0% and 100% that makes working above 40 hours per week "acceptable"? Who picks?

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