631–640 of 1001 posts
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…
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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.…
It appears we live much of the same life. I work 3 to 4 hours a day at best, and part of that is the standup. Wife works hard for 8+ hours a day and makes a third of my salary. I want to be productive but I just cant seem to do more hours than that. Even those hours of work are broken up. "his mental state comes with an inability to use the rest of the work day. I spend it procrastinating - which is actually more tir…
I've noticed people bullshitting at stand ups and I've done it myself at the one somewhat toxic place I worked at that mandated them. But never consistently over a longer stretch of time. I think occasionally this is normal, and as a (now) CTO I accept it, we're not macnines. That said, I had a similar feeling once, and then I actually started tracking my time, just for myself. Even reading HN I counted as "personal…
Personally, and this is indicative of my contributions, I believe we work in waves, having periods of high and low productivity.
My current organization pays for both my median level of productivity and deep project knowledge. I wish my contributions could be boiled down to 5-10 hours each week, but alas, I’m more of a 25 hour performer.
I 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…
Adding my voice to this one. I think a lot of work 'normal people' i.e. the PMs the non-technical management, the sales people etc. really don't get how we techies work. Because they have to do 'active' work all day long to keep on top, they think everyone is like that, where in reality we are really efficient in short bursts. I can ponder a deliverable for days and then just churn it out over a few hours, only takin…
Come on guys. Plenty of software devs are actually working during the day.
What are you guys doing if you're not working? Reading articles? Playing Halo?
I'm literally about to get fired from Google for this, possibly today (HR is calling wondering where I am). Dumb thing is, I've been working like crazy on my 20% project. I just can't stand the other one, got an NI on my first (and presumably last) review cycle so pretty much killed any chance of a transfer. I've never outright lied, though certainly hemmed and hawed. And occasionally blatantly "I haven't done anythi…
I have been having success with narrative conversational therapy.
At my best, especially on projects I care about, I’m a high performer. At my worst, I’m slow and mediocre. In the end, most of us are simply average.
I actually want to work harder, but working with a team, there's a lot of syncing, waiting, accounting, bookkeeping, whatever.
Software development isn't a matter of sitting down and generating a fixed amount of code per hour. The rate of writing code is hugely variable. It's not unusual for most of my "productive" (as in typing actual code) time to be concentrated in a few particular days in a month. The time not spent typing (or being in meetings, doing admin, etc) isn't actually "unproductive" though. It's mostly spent solving problems, a…
> Software development isn't a matter of sitting down and generating a fixed amount of code per hour. The rate of writing code is hugely variable... The time not spent typing (or being in meetings, doing admin, etc) isn't actually "unproductive" though. All true statements, but that's not what we're talking about. OP recognizes that he works 5-10 hours a week, and effectively blows the rest of the day off. Reminds me…
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…
But, when you have the opportunity to work under an excellent CEO or CTO you will learn that they do bring 10x or even 100x the value you bring to the team.
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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…
> This method is not very scrum friendly, because in truth I'm actually brain-working all of my tickets at the same time, but I haven't shifted any electrons, just neurons. This really highlights why I hate agile so much. Intellectual work doesn't lead itself to reporting status on completed tickets every single day.