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

Since, however, moving into the embedded systems space, I rarely see this kind of scenario, anymore. I see it as the effect of the commoditization of IT skills, coupled with the mundaneness of the kinds of software produced in typical IT shops. It's a sign of maturity (which to me had the stench of death).

I'm grateful to now (10 years+) working with deeper-skilled engineers, and getting to work on truly new products and technologies.

My advice is to embrace the discomfort you're feeling about yourself -- change is definitely indicated. Seize the day.

I've never had this issue with the projects I've managed.

Create a doc/Jira for the project, including timelines and tasks. Allocate tasks to all teammates. Daily/weekly go through those tasks, updating progress. If timelines are being held back by someone, I'm going to make management aware because I'm not taking the fall. If they're not then I don't care.

* The more internal hurdles in place to prevent a developer from solving a programming problem the less of a hurry that developer will be in to solve such problem. Hurdles may describe additional tools, build steps, security provisions, dependencies, processes, manual steps, and so forth.

* Some developers actually know what they are doing. Sometimes they appear to be 10x developers. They don't work necessarily harder, but just get things done. Getting more done in a shorter period of time leaves of idle time comparative to their peers.

* Lack of productivity is typically reinforced by the environment despite all their claims and agile methodologies. For example consider how many hours a day you are in meetings not writing code.

* Most lost productivity appears to be a result of poor choices of technology and/or training misalignments. It appears that Java turns any software authoring process into slow moving tar, for example. On the other side some developers won't even attempt to write code unless they have a favorite framework and a bazillion tools/dependencies. The excess extraneous bullshit chokes delivery into a coma.

* Most bad technology decisions appear to be deliberate around people concerns. Nobody wants to invest in dedicated formal training, so instead employers deliberately make choices around lowing hiring costs opposed to lowering delivery costs. Why should they invest in training when the average developer will stick around for less than 2 years? So instead seniors get paid more to do the same beginner work as everybody else, but likely get it done in a fraction of the time with nothing else to do.

The point I'm making is that some people in our profession think they are slacking when they're not, for the reasons I described. OP's description doesn't convince me that they necessarily are. In particular the comment at the end about having spent the years prior to the pandemic "pretending" to themselves that they were working hard sounds to me like somebody who's never really understood their own mental processes and has encountered a different perspective by doing the job in a different environment. I might be wrong, but that sounds more likely to me than that they have been getting away with minimal contributions throughout what they describe as a 20 year career. Your report didn't get away with it - the evidence is always there in the commit history, and the 2-5 year job length OP mentions is, contrary to their assessment, plenty of time to judge a developer's productivity.

Another hint is the fact that this person is seriously proposing the idea that everybody else is slacking off and lying too. This indicates that they don't think their actual output is less than other developers'.

As I say, I may be wrong. I don't know this developer - these are just some thoughts based on what they've posted. Unlike some here I'm not assuming I know the truth.

I work for a Fortune 100 company. Everyone reading this knows the company.

In my entire time at the company (>5 years, I think), I've written maybe 30k lines of code.

I'm terrible at responding to e-mail. Whatever you think this means, I'm worse than that.

I skip meetings all the time. Sometimes I just don't dial in. Sometimes I say I have a conflict, sometimes it's true. I probably attend a total of 4 hours of meetings in any given week.

Not too long ago, I had 3-4 weeks in a row where all I did was attend those few meetings.

I have ADHD. I dick around a lot. I spend hours and hours reading/watching random stuff. 60% tech stuff, 40% random Youtube rabbit holes. Very little of it is applicable to my work.

I take naps and often sleep in. Some days I don't show up for work at all.

For the most part, what I do is review people's stuff and tell them why it won't work as well as they hope. Occasionally, I'll tell them what to do instead but with a lot of hand-waving. I believe it's called "being an architect".

However:

I'm at the highest individual contributor level the company has. It's a tech company, btw.

I get consistently stellar reviews. My boss says she hears great things about me all the time, so "I shouldn't not even bother asking around" when we do 360 reviews.

I've gotten off-schedule, totally unexpected stock grants as thanks for "all my good work".

I make $15k/year more than any of my peers and $100k+ more than some of them. Some of that is due to regional differences (I'm in the Bay area), but it's all the US.

This year, we weren't even supposed to get bonuses. 2020 had been a shit year. The board decided to give us bonuses anyway, but "no one would get their full bonus". I got 120%.

If I ask if I can attend a conference, I've never gotten a "no". My boss even suggested a few more I should attend.

None of this would make any sense, were it not for those (on average!) 2-5 hours a week of good, actually productive time I have. The ADHD means I can't do it on command, but when it hits me, it's apparently gold.