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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?

#321

Post by abledon »

dasmoth wrote: post #193
davzie wrote: post #14

Profession: Web Developer, self employed working remote with startups and creative agencies. Workday: - [08:00] Wake up in a daze and make my wife and son tea and breakfast - [08:30] Shower, get dressed and ready - [09:15] After prepping water canister and tea caddy, head to garden office. - [09:30] Procrastinate - [14:00] Realise the work day is nearly over. Panic. Cram work in. - [17:00] Finish work, make son dinne…

whilst contemplating an entire career change To anything in particular?

Probably something outdoors since he's watching 'parcs and rec' lol

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

#322

Post by therealdrag0 »

raamdev wrote: post #253
monkmartinez wrote: post #31

Profession: Firefighter - Full time Workday (kind of, nothing is typical at the firehouse): - [06:00]: Wake up - get dressed covertly and slip out of the house - [06:30] Arrive at the station - Get coffee! Find my "relief" which is the similarly ranked person on the off going shift. - run 911 calls - [07:30] Have "line up"; Where we discuss what drills we have planned, eat some breakfast... drink more coffee. Talk ab…

I've been a software engineer for the past 20 years but I'm really looking at changing things up and doing something totally different—I just can't stand spending so much time in front of a computer anymore (I find myself looking for excuses to do physical activity away from the screen). This sounds exactly like the sort of thing I'd enjoy, and I'd get to learn lots of useful skills and serve my local community at th…

Consider: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/02/24/467984297/episo... There's a lot less fires than there used to be, might not be the best career to change into.

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

#323

Post by ChuckMcM »

abledon wrote: post #314
ChuckMcM wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I left NetApp (single office) and joined Google (quad cube) it was quite a shock and very disorienting. However, since it was the way Google wanted to do things I practiced non-listening, which is to say keeping my focus on my screen and project and ignoring my ear inputs. Oddly the best tool for practicing was 'World of Warcraft' as it provided a continual level of required attention so it was easier to practic…

wait... did Google let you play WoW at work to practice this new arrangement?

:-) At the time Google was pretty reasonable about people doing what ever it took to become more productive. And it wasn't exactly 'hard core' playing, it was simply a tool that provided the necessary engagement motivation.

Not unlike processing all of the works of Shakespeare into bags of words and n-gram vectors and correlation maps to get a handle on how you can slice and dice documents for search. Nobody expected the time spent slicing and dicing Shakespeare would generate useful work product, but it did help train you so that you could generate useful work product.

And like the Shakespeare exercises, once the benefit was realized you moved on.

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

#324

Post by maverick2 »

georgespencer wrote: post #299
maverick2 wrote: post #223

Profession: Business Analyst / Product Owner [2:00] - Wake-up, coffee, and eat fresh fruit. [2:30] - Personal projects, read tech news in between. [5:00] - Exercise. [5:30] - Personal projects, read tech news in between. [6:45] - Write diary on some days. [7:00] - Morning Walk. [7:20] - Make Lunch, have breakfast and get ready. [8:15] - Drive to Office. [8:30] - In Office. Each day is different 50% Meetings with Devs…

Bed at 1830hrs and up at 0200? This is amazing! Why?

A couple of reasons for it.

I was wasting my time in evenings on useless stuff and was mentally drained to do any productive work.

I need to change the type of industry I work in, so I feel the solid block of time in the morning with a fresh mind is the best time to learn new skills.

Also, I am single and got divorced last year. I found myself wasting time, contemplating mundane things, reading psychology forums in evenings. It was not helping me get out of the hole I was in. So I changed my schedule.

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

#325

Post by rattray »

wwwwwwwwww wrote: post #83

Profession: "Security" Engineer [08:00] Wake up [09:05] Arrive at work a little after 9 to fight the power [09:15] Coffee. The daily pilgrimage to the Mr. Coffee is the highlight of my day. [09:25] Go to meeting scheduled by demon. I don't need to be in the meeting and nod my head whenever they look at me. [10:05] Check email to find a customer figured out my email and started emailing me on how to figure out their w…

Genuinely curious: why not implement the fixes you mentioned yourself? Would that count as "stepping on toes" and anger dev teams?

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

#326

Post by gmcerveny »

erikb wrote: post #264
gmcerveny wrote: post #135

Profession: Music Tech Developer - Freelance, Remote 6:30am : Wake up, sit (meditate > 10min) 7:00am : Make tea/coffee and breakfast for my wife, eat together, she leaves 7:30am : Quick exercises 8:00am : (Sometimes 9a, 11a, or a combination) Meeting to plan the days priorities with either clients or my associate developers 9:00am - 12:00pm : Making things (researching, writing code, testing, taking screen shots / re…

Most healthy life plan I've seen so far. How did you get there? E.g. what brought you to meditating or taking a walk every afternoon.

Thanks for the note.

About 5 years ago I asked my friend to regularly sit with me. Mainly I just wanted the brain benefits of meditation. We looked up info online but then later visited some meditation centers in town. I happened to like the soto zen style the best and have adopted that practice since.

I work from home and although I'm on the edge of the city, there's not much near me except this awesome 7 mile paved greenway. So I mainly walk just to get out of the house. It's a nice time.

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

#327

Post by dejv »

abledon wrote: post #320
dejv wrote: post #148

Profession: Farmer (growing wine and winemaker) - about 20 - 30 hrs week, owner, single employee (For the rest of my time I write software as a single contributor/freelancer) [6:30] Wake up, light breakfast [7:30 - 10:00] commute to the village where is my farm, there is no need to rush. I take tram to train station, get some coffee, read emails on train commute, then switch to bus, read some book, then 4 km walking…

Sounds awesome! How'd you fall into this lifestyle? Did you use capital from a previous career in Software to purchase the farm, or Family/Relative related?

I was born into wine making family (with history going back few centuries). The land I am farming on was purchased by myself, using money from my software development days, and it is separate entity with very different approach to rest of my family. They like to play it safe, I am trying to farm organically, I am focusing more on premium side, they are more into bulk wine and so forth.

It is tough business, the investment required is huge and you should expect that your money will be returned in decades (if ever). I didn't have huge pile of money, so the winery is build in very tiny steps and it will take a lot of time to actually make it work, but I feel like this is something I should do and writing software on side will keep me safe financially.

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

#328

Post by samsonradu »

uranian wrote: post #190

Reading the comments I have to consider myself very lucky in a way. I work full-remote. - I never use an alarm, normally waking up around 8:30am - I often start coding right away when I wake up, in these first 2 hours I am often exceptionally productive - eat something, coffee, reading, relaxing - do some more coding till I feel my focus drops - repeat the last two steps When I feel tired I try not to code if possibl…

Same here, except that I need the alarm. Also exercise after work.

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

#329

Post by wwwwwwwwww »

rattray wrote: post #325
wwwwwwwwww wrote: post #83

Profession: "Security" Engineer [08:00] Wake up [09:05] Arrive at work a little after 9 to fight the power [09:15] Coffee. The daily pilgrimage to the Mr. Coffee is the highlight of my day. [09:25] Go to meeting scheduled by demon. I don't need to be in the meeting and nod my head whenever they look at me. [10:05] Check email to find a customer figured out my email and started emailing me on how to figure out their w…

Genuinely curious: why not implement the fixes you mentioned yourself? Would that count as "stepping on toes" and anger dev teams?

The dev team is very territorial about their code. They're virtually in a separate business unit - I don't even have read access to the source code.

To make things worse, the dev lead's boss always defers to his team's knowledge about the issues, so getting certain security issues fixed can require getting upper management involved.

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

#330

Post by sourc3 »

lr4444lr wrote: post #278
mikejmoffitt wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>[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 ear…

Living in the suburbs and having a similar 1 hour 20 min train ride to work, I ended up setting up a small workout space with a treadmill, weights and a rowing machine. It does the job but no substitute for a fully equipped gym. I applaud your disciplined schedule though. I still find it hard to work out consistently.
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