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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?

#561

Post by Apocryphon »

politician wrote: post #422
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…

> Unclear goals, no feedback, and/or undiagnosed ADHD This makes me wonder how many people who secretly believe they may have undiagnosed ADHD are actually suffering from unclear goals and no feedback.

My theory is that ADHD exists on a spectrum, and a lot of people have it, and at the lower levels it's not difficult to be high functioning. But still suboptimal and leads to other issues and distress.

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

#562

Post by dgfitz »

dennisy wrote: post #542
ConfessionTime wrote: post #227

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. You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race. This is where my comment about remote work comes into p…

> I can't imagine ever returning to an office in which there is more pressure to spend 8 hours a day sitting in front of my computer. But this is what you are paid for. Do you not feel that this is what you should be doing in the time you are contracted to work?

Personally most of job happens in my head, which half the time is not at work. I should probably get paid for ~15 hours a day instead of ~8. I cant tell you how many times I had a eureka moment about a work problem on a Sunday afternoon idling away at a hobby.

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

#563

Post by rodmena »

I have been there few times. The amount of incompetency will result to self doubt. It will kill you mentally. I suggest you talk to your boss and tell this story exactly as you described it here, if you are lucky, they will guide help you find your way, and if not, you will be fired and will do good for your mental health.

Once upon a time, when I was in that situation, I requested a salary cut for myself. (They promoted me instead).

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

#564

Post by somethoughts »

condorito wrote: post #546
somethoughts wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a SW developer you provide two benefits to the company: - the build phase: develop spaghetti code - the maintain/insurance phase: maintain the spaghetti code and keep it up to date with the software package dependencies required by the spaghetti code In the long term its easier/cheaper to have the person who originally wrote the spaghetti code be around to maintain and add one off small feature improvements to it…

In my experience if the system is important enough, once you ship a couple of features to production you can coast there until the system is replaced. If the features were core the better. I don´t like it but after 2 decades of coding I have come to accept it as it is.

I think a good way to frame the role of a SW developer is you are in a sense a manager of a new "team".

But instead of developing new hire training material and recruiting/managing people to do the new task, you're developing/training/creating/deploying software programs/scripts/bots to do what needs to get done for the organization.

While infinitely easier than dealing with HR problems that humans bring along, your team of programs/bots still needs some manager.

And just like a traditional manager, if you set up your "team of bots" just right and handle all the corner cases in the training manuals, a good managers job will actually ideally not be that hard day to day - particularly since the meatspace problems have been abstracted away.

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

#565

Post by zarkov99 »

I know many talented but not exceptional Engineers that made their way to middle management and above at a FAANG company and are now happy to work a couple of hours a day while collecting close to million dollar salaries. I also know equally talented people that worked their tails off for decades in startups that did not work and that now have trouble supporting their families. So, it depends, but for sure if you optimize for work-life balance software development in the US is likely the best gig in the world.

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

#566

Post by Zvez »

I'm shocked how many support or at least 'it is ok' comments here, so I won't go to tell my opinion about OP or if this is acceptable in general. Instead just my personal answer. Yeah, I lie about how much time I put to work, when I for some reason decided to put some of my personal time to solve some problem, or improve something, or simply experimenting. I'm not proud of it, but it happens.

Anyway, I never was in a team where such behaviour OP described was acceptable. Maybe it is cultural thing (I'm not from the western country), or just social (you try to be closer to people with the same values). Yes, you probably won't get fired immediately. But it is all clear and visible if person work so little. Visible to teamlead and other team members. You won't get promotion or bonus. And eventually your direct manager will try to remove you from the team. Even i firing is not so simple, there are usually ways to rotate him to different team. And if person gets the same 'recognition' in the next team, his case usually goes to HR and they would find they to 'let him leave'. I still agree that it is ok to work just as much as you are required for your pay. But if developer simply wants to work as little as possible, he eventually is asked to go work somewhere else. Because it is simply more enjoyable to work with developers who give a shit.

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

#567

Post by tharkun__ »

waynesonfire wrote: post #462
taswellian wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race. How? I find satisfaction in many things, but none of those things pay the bills or put food on the table.

> >You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race. This is asking the wrong question. A few weeks ago I ran into quote on hackernews... [1] “Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a ki…

I read that one (and still do) as:

Before you know how you do something it just looks like what it is on the surface. Might even look easy for most things.

Software development is easy right? Bunch of for loops and ifs to tell a computer what to do!

Then you start learning. What do you mean 0s and 1s? That are actually different voltages somewhere on a tiny piece of silicon and metals? Assembler? Compilers? Machine code? A gate? What's an Adder? What's a program counter and what does that have to do with that German dude? (von Neumann ;))

You finally master all this and it becomes second nature or you figure out where you can 'ignore' and still be productive (I remember how I learned how multiplication is actually done on a simple computer and all that but I no longer actively need to know in my day to day work). This just an example but this applies on many many levels and one reason I see all the time for why people get stuck on a problem is because they can't ignore or figure out what to ignore. A very simple one is the ability to just read a stack trace. They simply get lost in the parts I instinctively fly over and don't even fully recognize to find the important part.

And that's when it's just a punch again. It's second nature. Don't even need to actively think. Your subconscious is doing it for you.

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

#568

Post by mech422 »

thow-58d4e8b wrote: post #469
somethoughts wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a SW developer you provide two benefits to the company: - the build phase: develop spaghetti code - the maintain/insurance phase: maintain the spaghetti code and keep it up to date with the software package dependencies required by the spaghetti code In the long term its easier/cheaper to have the person who originally wrote the spaghetti code be around to maintain and add one off small feature improvements to it…

There's one more reason - the one I use to rationalize my idleness to myself: in addition to our work output, the corporations are also paying us to be a part of their "reserve army". We might work 3-4 hours a day, but when things escalate, the company taps into its reserves to get stuff done. Having doldrums about that is like soldiers worrying they only spend 3 hours a day in combat

I used to work in Operations...there were 2 of us on shift for a 1 man job.. The extra was 'insurance' :-)

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

#569

Post by amichal »

Similar job here. Except I’ve been a consultant billing through to our clients mostly by the hour. I’ve run a key logger on myself for over a decade. While my start and stop times vary wildly I spend between 30 and 45 hours doing something on my computer during a nominal 5 day work week. The app I use for this (RescueTime) classifies the sites and applications I use according to my judgement on if they are productive or distracting. It ranks me consistently in the top quartile of its user base on productivity (type of activity) and slightly above average on hours worked for software dev users.

Despite my addiction to HN meaning that it’s 3 key strokes max from anywhere. And that the logs say I visit this site and others dozens of times a day, the actual time spent is maybe 20 minutes. Email and slack is 1-2 hours. Meetings/discussion collaboration 1-2. Coding/design/specs 3-4. This has been roughly the same for years. Some days I get 8hrs of coding in and feel like I actually did work that day. Most days I feel like I only worked a couple of hours productively and the interruptions and lack of focus feel real but the key logger shows I was indeed working away I just don’t remember it that way.

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