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

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

#521

Post by int_19h » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 11:05 PM UTC

throwaway1777 wrote: post #113

batmaniam wrote: post #22

The same could be asked about upper management. They earn 10x our pay, so their output is 10x more value than our work, and they work 10x harder, right? In our normal 8 hour work day, they must work 80 hours. Except a full day is 24 hours. Why is the onus always on the bottom workers to be honest? Why are we trying to feel guilty about our working hours vs how much we're paid? Because it's clear salary is not tied to…

The whole point is the compensation is not based on how hard you work but the value you provide and what the market will support. Of course upper management works roughly the same hours as everyone else, but they also have far more responsibility.

Compensation is based on how much economic rent the employer can extract from the value that its employees produce. Thus, roles who produce the same amount of value can still receive drastically different compensation. Furthermore, in case of upper management, the value produced is negative in many cases - numerous examples of companies run into the ground, with the people responsible still getting their golden parachutes etc.

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

#522

Post by novok » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 11:05 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #212

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…

> However! I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health. Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life. Agree with everything you wrote except this part. I have worked jobs where I truly believed in the mission, worked hard, was paid a lot, achieve…

We spend a lot of our limited lives at work, we should strive to make work enjoyable for ourselves and others. Making work enjoyable can be many things, from changing careers, reducing hours, changing how it's done or changing your personal beliefs about it.

It's a miserable experience for you and the people around you to have constant low level subconscious resentment for working. It leaks out into your personal life and your working life.

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

#523

Post by echelon » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

oakfr wrote: post #305

medvezhenok wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is to embrace minimalism / the FIRE lifestyle and hopefully skate by long enough to not have to work by the time the company folds and live off of investments -> then into retirement). I think most "underwork" on the job is a motivational issue and stems from one of a few overlapping reasons: 1) No way to promotion/advancement (dead end job) 2) Overqualified and bored 3) Unclear goals, no feedback, an…

I've read about the FIRE theory time and again. For some reason, I don't buy it. I fail to believe in the plan that consists in building enough FU money to then "be free". Free to do what? What was the plan originally? I think the real meaning of life is to do what you care about today, _with the constraints you have today_.

How large should your earnings be for FIRE?

250K? 1M? 4M?

How can you model stock investments in a way that your capital does not diminish as you withdrawal?

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

#524

Post by littlestymaar » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 11:08 PM UTC

cvwright wrote: post #275

paxys wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However! I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health. Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life. Agree with everything you wrote except this part. I have worked jobs where I truly believed in the mission, worked hard, was paid a lot, achieve…

Just wanted to point out that this > I truly believed in the mission, worked hard, was paid a lot, achieved great things and was overall very satisfied. and this > used to leave at 5pm sharp are not mutually exclusive. We have this weird thing in tech where we think that, to be passionate, you have to work yourself into the ground. But this is stupid. There's organizational psych research going back decades showing t…

> Just wanted to point out that this

> > I truly believed in the mission, worked hard, was paid a lot, achieved great things and was overall very satisfied.

> and this

> > used to leave at 5pm sharp

> are not mutually exclusive.

For some people it is actually. I'm an evening person and my personal productivity starts increasing during the afternoon. If I leave at 5pm, I leave right when I reach the peak. So when I care about my job it's really hard for me to live before 7pm, and if I didn't have a family I'd probably work until 9 or 10 every night (I still occasionally enjoy staying up until 2am or later every once in a while when I'm on a really interesting subject). A good recipe for a burn-out in the long run I guess.

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

#525

Post by khazhoux » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 11:11 PM UTC

xvector wrote: post #518

khazhoux wrote: post #513

Yes, your bosses have been too incompetent to notice. Yes, if you only put in 5 hours, you are not delivering at your full potential. You are very unlikely to be delivering "10x Developer" work. I have no idea what your company size is, but I would wager that the top developers at my workplace land 10x as much code as you (and solid, well-tested, and efficient code). Yes, you are lazy. I don't know what else to call…

Eh, I've had multiple managers and all of them have been happy with the bare minimum. I would not call that lazy. There is literally no reason to work more. Rather, I would call working more "passionate." Let's normalize not selling your soul to your employer out of some misplaced sense of pride.

> Let's normalize not selling your soul to your employer out of some misplaced sense of pride.

That's a bit dramatic, I'd say.

The reason people can get away with working one hour a day is simply because software development is so abstract, that it can never be estimated or tracked accurately. This guy takes advantage of that, by giving his co-workers the impression that he's actively solving problems, when he's just kicking back and doing something else all day.

And respectfully, I suspect your managers were either not actually happy with someone literally delivering the least they could, or they were incompetent.

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

#526

Post by gxt » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 11:12 PM UTC

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…

>Through most of that time I have averaged roughly 5 - 10 hours of actual work a week

>This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion.

If you are expected to engage for 40h/week and only show up for 5-10, this is unacceptable. It's literally theft.

If you have to spend 30 out of 40h/week in meetings, etc when it's part of your role as senior or architect etc it is acceptable.

If you have to spend 30 out of 40h/week in meetings, etc when it's not part of your role and you don't attempt to raise the issue that your time is not spent fruitfully, this is unacceptable. You're expected to be autonomous and paid handsomely for it, if this is acceptable wtf is wrong with this industry.

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

#527

Post by soneca » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 11:12 PM UTC

jjav wrote: post #455

soneca wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they said they don’t do anything some days and bullshit their way to the next standup. It is clear to me where they stand at.

> Well, they said they don’t do anything some days and bullshit their way to the next standup. It is clear to me where they stand at. But it's the agile standups that force the bullshitting. If you spent a day background thinking of best ways to achieve the goal while resting in your backyard hammock, there's no way you can say that out loud at the standup. So you're forced to come up with some random bullshit to fil…

> ” If you spent a day background thinking of best ways to achieve the goal while resting in your backyard hammock”

There is absolutely no part of OP that warrants this charitable interpretation. My interpretation is that they just spent the day playing video game or something like that. You are reading things that are not there

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

#528

Post by kerneloftruth » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 11:13 PM UTC

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.

I would suggest that you keep studying life. From what I've learned: life was never promised as being fair. Civilization is a thin veneer over the Jungle, but it does try (without ever achieving 100% success), to provide fairness. One can debate where in the world Civilization is thriving vs. struggling (it's mostly struggling). Meritocracy does exist and does work, except where it is undermined (i.e. "Equity", or assigning merit based on immutable physical traits like race and gender).

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

#529

Post by rcthompson » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 11:13 PM UTC

Just as one data point, I work 100% remotely, and I put in pretty much a full 40 hours every week (and generally not any more than that). It probably helps a lot that my work is interesting, challenging, and unambiguously impactful. (Specifically, I do bioinformatics research on COVID-19.)

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

#530

Post by soneca » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 11:15 PM UTC

blitz_skull wrote: post #468

soneca wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they said they don’t do anything some days and bullshit their way to the next standup. It is clear to me where they stand at.

Which is where? If they deliver X, and the expectation is X; OP may call it "bullshitting" but his point is that he's delivered expectations and now he's coasting which is totally fine. He delivered on expectations.

> ” If they deliver X”

What make you think they deliver? Certainly not the OP.

I think everyone is reading OP as an “anti-agile champion”, a “hero against meaningless jobs”, but the way I read it they are just a lazy person lying their way around to trick companies into paying them for work that they are not doing. At all. Not even willing or trying to do. Just lying to people.