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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?

#481

Post by marktangotango »

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…

> However, we do expect that everyone is putting in similar amounts of effort to their peers.

I think there's a distinction here between two types of "work" (at least). Work that moves the product/business forward in tangible ways, in addition to just adding features (decrease down time, reliable repeatable deployments, reproducible, easy to understand configuration, fast bug remediation) and work that doesn't.

I think we've all experienced teams who switch frameworks and libraries at a whim, or worse yet, adopted entirely new languages "just because". They usually don't ask permission, or if they do the sell the decision makers on some hula balu about "increase productivety" or whatever when they really just want to use new cool X. Or howabout the frontend teams that switch naming conventions, and never rename the old stuff before starting another naming convention?

The point being there are a lot of developers who waste a lot of time "working" on things that just don't matter. The business never asked for it, it serves no purpose or real need other than to scratch someones itch (or build their resume). I maintain if wasting time doing nothing is "stealing" from the company, then so is this.

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

#484

Post by flatiron »

hotz wrote: post #467
geekbird wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I will backburner a ticket for days, then when what I need to do comes together I will sit down and bang it out in an hour. It's to the point that I will deliberately review a ticket and code segment every day, even if I'm not actively working it, just to have the pieces come together in my mind and crank out the ticket. This method is not very scrum friendly, because in truth I'm actually brain-working all of…

I operate in exactly the same way. I wish more people would understand that process.

Here I am thinking I’m the only one. Tossing and turning in the middle of the night for hours just to bang it out for 15 minutes the next day for everyone to go “oh that was easy” no it wasn’t!

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

#485

Post by Retric »

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…

This isn’t about dead beat team members, this is about not having enough work to do which can happen for various reasons. Sometimes companies just want redundancy and don’t care if that costs real money. Other times a team is built and just gets less work than expected and or people are simply more productive. And of course, if you actually want to make important deadlines you want be conservative in how much work the team takes on.

Finally if you get a 10x person but don’t have 10x the stuff to do they often spend a lot of time twiddling their thumbs. You could keep giving them a larger share of work, but that’s hardly fair and you don’t want to reduce staff in case that person quits.

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

#486

Post by kelnos »

notJim wrote: post #103
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 know a few of those developers, and they sit right near me... In fact, this is so common that I can name the exact people at several jobs I've had. And I could mention them to my coworkers and they'd know exactly what these people's reputation are. Our feeling toward them is a mix of being impressed and being embarrassed. Impressed because there's something to be said for someone who works the system to their adv…

> but it's that getting something cool done is rewarding in its own right. Why don't they want that feeling… ?

I mean it just... depends? I've been on both sides of this. Sometimes getting something cool done is super rewarding even without getting a raise, bonus or promotion. But I'm at the point now where if someone is going to tell me what to do, and force me to be "at work" for half of my waking hours, the compensation bit far outweighs the "this was cool to work on" factor for me.

Don't get me wrong; when it comes to personal projects, I find plenty of reward there. But for those I get to decide exactly what I do, how it gets done, and when it gets done.

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

#487

Post by ConfessionTime »

greggman3 wrote: post #442
egypturnash wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied, “only a little while.” The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The M…

This parable is completely unrelated to the topic at hand unless you add in some catch like > The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. > I don't catch them. I just go to one of the other fisherman's boats from my company and take a few of their tuna. That way they get up at 5am and work there asses off and all I have to do is carry a couple of their tu…

People are taking the one extreme example I gave of a day of not working as my typical day. That isn't the case. I do put in work. Maybe not as much as my coworkers, but I ship features, I close tickets, I do everything that everyone else does. I never try to pass anyone's work off as my own. The only dishonest part is that I'm not truthful about how much time it takes me to do the work that I do.

I don't take fish off other people's boats. I tell people I was fishing for 8 hours when I was really fishing for 2 and maybe blame the weather for why I didn't catch more.

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

#489

Post by raducu »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #195
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…

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.…

I used to work about 4 hours a day, sometimes not at all and felt terrible inside about myself.

Then I got diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Concerta. The focus is not what I want, but the reduction of impulsivity is doing wonders.

I started seeing the incompetent, manipulative and rude pieces of shit colleagues that I kept attracting (because of self immage and guilt) and that kept leaching on my time, interrupting me when it was obvious I had nothing to do with their problem(I do backend stuff and a coeague insisted I help her fix frontend stuff that doesn't work after the frontend did a deploy, the same for another system).

I realize how I tolerated bullshit from low level management,how I caved in to their frowns and how I turned into their saviour tech wizard which only compounded my problem.

How I tollerated their endless ramblings in meetings upon meetings where they decided nothing or bitterly protected their vagueness to kafquesques proportions.

How I tollerated other peoples indecision and became indecisive myself, because I thought I could not do stuff without them.

How I've ignored my own emotions and needs and played it all logical when people were playing emotional games.

And now with my impulsivity under control, I work a lot longer and stress free, because I can control my impulses so I'm not affraid to answer ironically but still professionally to an agressive email, or to say "guys I have no taks" ... "guys, I asked you for a task yesterday and guess what, I got it by telling your superior that I asked for work and you did not have any, he was delighted to get me in contact with this product owner who has a full backlog".

This makes me so glad and so sad at the same time. This explains why other people were cold and "mean" to these people.

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

#490

Post by lta »

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #41

I have never done what you describe, except perhaps in times of illness when it was understood that working less was a reasonable accommodation (in that particular case, I had leftover brain fog from general anesthesia). I've never heard of any colleagues doing it either. I would never snitch if it happened, but I would certainly consider that person untrustworthy or think that they have an undisclosed condition that…

I'm happy to finally read a comment that say this isn't a good or normal thing. I was starting to feel a bit of despair. I don't think I've done that much more that you seems to do but I've certainly seen a lot of people do it and it's always been pissing me off. I've always wondered how the world even works when I consider how much I've seen people do that at every level and at every kind of job.

Dear original post author, you really need to start doing something that you enjoy or that motivates you. You can also try to structure your life in a way that allows you to not work when you don't feel like you can or will be efficient. This is one of the very reason I'm freelancing: I work when I want/can, and do not pretend the rest of the time. But when I'm working, I'm trying to stay as close as possible to 100%. I charge a premium rate for those very focused session, and do not pretend the rest of the time. There are times when I work a lot, a d times when I don't accept new projects because I need time off (usually 4 months a year)

I'm really wondering how healthy is, psychologically, all this pretending.

Anyway, I don't think you're alone in your situation but I don't think it's a good thing either

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