I’d really like to know where OPs working, I’m guessing a FAANG or similar, if so my next question would be how common is this at FAANGs
Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
51–60 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#52I 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.
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#53This 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.
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#54> Are most of us secretly lying about how much we are working?
How much are the heirs collecting dividend checks from the wealth I create working? Should I crawl at the boots of some St. Grottlesex graduate, telling them I could have worked harder, trying to gain some Stakhanovite hero of labor award from them?
If you have time to spare, which apparently you do, study CS so that you can be an L5, L6, L7 etc. at some FAANG. That benefits you and them.
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#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 fired. So what happens is that they are just given what is essentially remedial work.
As a fellow IC, it will in no way make my life better to call this person out.
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#56i monitor my work using a plugin and usually get 2-5 hours of code a day... and i have to do all kinds of communication work as well (JIRA, investigation, prepping QA test cases, documenting PRs) i looked back and was getting 1k lines merged every 2 weeks on average. nothing crazy I know but theres much more then just coding to my job, thats just reality. Days/weeks where i dont get a certain amount of code done i fe…
1k lines per week sounds like quite a lot. I'm a dev whose role is mainly supporting legacy systems and sometimes I write probably ~50 lines in a week and feel incredibly productive due to the issues I've resolved.
50 lines on a legacy system is much harder to write than the equivalent just jamming out new stuff. Also it's hard to compare lines cause it's not a language agnostic measure.
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#57I'm a pretty useless developer who does about the same amount of real work as you per week. I also often don't understand the technical details other developers discuss in meetings.
I am generally quite open about my lack of aptitude, as I result I've never really been promoted, I've just bounced around between different junior roles. It always seems obvious that I'm the most junior member of any team I'm on, but I'm starting to wonder if that's all in my head.
Your post kinda makes me wish I'd tried a bit harder at bullshitting. Maybe I could've at least made a bit more money.
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#58I got a bad rating this year for being slow. We have about an average of 4 hours of meetings everyday. I'm not sure when they want us to get work done. I'm tired of working hard and not it not paying off. I work, but don't go too fast. So I have been called out and punished for it.
> We have about an average of 4 hours of meetings everyday.
That would be the entirety of my workday. You should complain about this, meetings are incredibly costly to a company and must have a limit.
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#59I am a freelance dev and I only bill the hours that I work. But I am quite sure a lot of freelance devs just bill 8 hours of work a day, even if they only work 3 hours. My conscience wont allow me to do this in a remote work situation.
Back when I worked in the office as freelancer, I did bill 8 hours a day, since I was expected to sit in the office 8 hours a day, regardless if I performed or not.
In the past I worked at large and small organizations and I did see it’s generally much easier to slack in large organizations.
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#60Modern management techniques rely heavily on peer pressure to motivate employees. That works on most of us because we feel shame when we disappoint. You seem to have been born with an undersized shame sensor. You lucky, lucky bastard...