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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?

#411

Post by [deleted] »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #235
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.

> What you've said is clearly resonating with a lot of readers, even if they may not say so in the comments. The way it resonates with me specifically, is that I am curious how does one get a job like this. Is this company hiring? Do they allow work from home? Don't get me wrong; I am a lazy person. If I had an opportunity to work like this, I probably would do it, too. But I don't know how. For example, it happens t…

[deleted]

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

#412

Post by TigeriusKirk »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #381
oakfr wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am with you on most of your points, but definitely not on the "normal and mostly acceptable". The truth of our domain is that you can get great work done in 3-4 hours a day (I am referring to deep work here, not meetings). In fact, most of us become much less productive beyond that. The remaining hours can/should be spent on useful meetings, reading, learning new things, chatting to people about things, etc. Coasti…

> I am with you on most of your points, but definitely not on the "normal and mostly acceptable". The "normal" part is easy to disprove: If everyone was doing near zero work and lying their way through standup about it, nothing would ever get done. That may be normal in certain zombie organizations, but those organizations can't last forever without people doing actual work. Somebody is doing the work, even if the OP…

> those organizations can't last forever without people doing actual work.

Maybe not no work, but very little work, they can last a very long time.

>This doesn't mean the work disappears.

It may have never existed in the first place.

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

#413

Post by paxys »

jollybean wrote: post #330
wonderwonder wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If OP is considered valuable by the organization and everyone is satisfied by their output then they are providing the value they are being paid for. If they feel they are overpaying OP for for the output he is providing then they would PIP him or at the very least say something. OP though has received promotions so they must feel he is doing a good job.

Yes - it's perfectly fine if OP isn't stressed or not doing a lot - if their 2-hour genius contributions are worth $200K to the company that's perfectly fine. This however, is probably not the case. The common case is that due to lack of proper oversight and bloat, people just coast and do nothing. It's incredibly hard to have 'true oversight' in software, which frankly is 'just fine' if everyone does their jobs prop…

> This however, is probably not the case.

That's obviously for the company to judge. If they continue to pay him and promote him, why is the takeaway that he is committing fraud by not working an arbitrary 40 hours a week?

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

#414

Post by BTCOG »

abledon wrote: post #67
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 first was driven mad by people like this... 5 days work and 2 lines of java code committed modifying class visibility etc. then I slowly became them after realizing busting my ass everyday for a corporation was not worth it. (also reading gervais' piece on losers/clueless/sociopath triad in orgs)

"Chaotic-neutral I'm always fuckin' coastin'"

It's first best to realize sociopaths drive from the top in the same fashion. NO employer gives a damn about you, they control you in ways to squeeze the value out of you and will dispose of you at the very drop of a dime.

Those of us that "fail up" within companies and update resumes and move on, throw the ball back in their court by also manipulating them.

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

#415

Post by lordgrenville »

julianlam wrote: post #142
celticninja wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I used to think I was like OP, coasting in between being quite productive. One day I took a bath, ended up thinking about my ticket, got out of the bath and did the ticket in an hour. The thinking time was definitely work just not in the traditional sense. And yes I could have done the ticket without the bath, it may even have taken the same time, but the code wouldn't have been as clean and there would have…

Well, not only was the code clean, I imagine you were clean too!

Nah, showering makes you clean, a bath is just marinating in your own dirt. Very pleasant though.

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

#416

Post by arpanetus »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #298
2-718-281-828 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well put! I work in consulting for a large corporation and they pay for me more than 1000 Euro per day. I don't see much of that money but I can't really complain about my salary. It's pretty good (not SV-good, though). Now on average I'd say I work no more than 4 hours. Some days even less. Occasionally I feel proud of that and even brag about it to friends. But deep down I feel how this is just not making me happy.…

"My g/f earns about a third of what I do while actually working a tough, stressful job in full time" There is only one thing i learned, life is deeply unfair, meritocracy is a myth, and noone knows why most things are the way they are.

well, if someone is a janitor, and the other one is a software developer, can you actually compare them properly?

if so, then training somebody to become a SEng involves more costs, than training smb to mop a floor.

the guy u responding didn't mention the job his gf does, thus assuming that she's the same software dev, would be a wrong thing to do, i believe.

besides that, she even may obtain the same level, the same set of skills as he does, thus she also has the same opportunity as he does.

that being said there is nothing to discuss about meritocracy, yet i agree with the fact that things are not that meritocratic as we want them to be. why? because there is always an asymmetry in a market, and contracts may always have some flaws (for e.g.: lemon market).

i perceive the case of him since he's not that tired as his gf is. that's just the basic compassion that one wants to feel, and even empathy.

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

#417

Post by sophacles »

jollybean wrote: post #247
cattown wrote: post #132

I've been a software engineer and managed software engineers for 20 years and worked in all kinds of businesses. This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion. Doing just as much work as your employer requires and no more is way less of a problem than employees who actively steal, commit fraud, bring drama and distract other team members, or are introducing defects because they've faked their…

" This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion. " It's definitely not acceptable. It's a form of White Collar / 1st World Corruption. Taking money from people with expectation of value, while not providing that value is Fraud. Just because we don't always have great oversight, does not abnegate our responsibilities towards trying to do a good job. This notion of 'I Can Get Away With It' and '…

If I go to widgetco and purchase a widget for $100, but it only costs them $50 to make that widget (including all salaries, marketing etc), what do we call that?

That's right profit. They provided me the thing I wanted for a price I agreed to, and they did so in a way that generated some extra $ for them.

Why is it Fraud then when a worker is asked to provide KPIs in exchange for $salary, and meets them in less than the expected time? Wouldn't that be profit also?

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

#418

Post by jonchurch_ »

ckaygusu wrote: post #52
i_dont_know_ wrote: post #18

I think there's also something to be said for passive processing. Sometimes I'll know I need to write some code or some function and I'll just think about it in the back of my head while doing other things, sometimes for a whole day or two. Then I'll sit down and write it in like 20-30 minutes. Did I work 20-30 minutes, or have I been working for a day or two? I would say a day or two, and the 20-30 minutes was the t…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9 > He never spent a long time on a problem since he believed that the subconscious would continue working on the problem while he consciously worked on another problem. This is definitely a thing. Intellectual labor just isn't physical labor.

Interestingly, that point is listed in the wiki article under his "shortcomings". (According to Édouard Toulouse, his contemporary and a psychologist who wrote a book about Poincaré)

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

#419

Post by jjav »

bartread wrote: post #86
pydry wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large companies have a tendency to throw up all sorts of impediments to actually getting shit done. Simple tasks can take 3 weeks because there are 7-9 dependencies throwing sand in the gears. This not only provides plenty of cover for not getting stuff done it also saps the motivation to get it done quickly. Like, if X team sits on your request for a week that prevents Y feature from getting out are you really gonna…

Wow. A mere 3 weeks to get something done. I worked somewhere once where it took 8 months to implement a two page sign-up process, and I counted about 60 people involved. A colleague said I didn't know the half of it and that there were actually more than 100 people involved. I didn't last very long.

At a previous employer we had an extremely urgent escalation from a very large customer which had made its way even to the CEO given the visibility. Meeting is scheduled with customer, problem reviewed, initial action items identified.

Also, the next sync up meeting is scheduled by the customer... for about 5 month later! So much for urgency.

OTOH, there's great life balance when everything isn't a mad rush to complete everything by tomorrow. A lot to be said for a sustainable pace of work that can be maintaned for an entire career, instead of the agile sprint model where you're expected to be running at 100% mental utilization forever. Which isn't sustainable by any human, so just leads to burnout in a year or three.

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

#420

Post by aembleton »

BbzzbB wrote: post #301
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…

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