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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?

#671

Post by dixie_land »

Freak_NL wrote: post #133
what_is_orcas wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 time needed to produce the deliverable of that work. I would say that I do this too. There's a lot of stuff I can more or less do on autopilot and stuff that requires actual attention and finesse , for lack of a better word. I feel like management thinks that I'm good at my job for all of the a…

Or just go and have a shower in the afternoon. It's the best remedy to an afternoon dip I know and one of the major benefits of working from home. It's a great place to solve problems before getting down to coding. Doing the dishes is indeed a good one too.

I root caused so many hard to debug issues in the shower! Including some obscure bug in Darwin kernel implemented in assembly. Not that I take my laptop to the shower but exactly like the parent thread mentioned, the problem is still background processing in your head.

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

#672

Post by ryanschneider »

i_dont_know_ wrote: post #18

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…

Rich Hickey’s “Hammock Driven Development” talk largely agrees with this view: https://youtu.be/f84n5oFoZBc

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

#673

Post by goodpoint »

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…

> Why is the onus always on the bottom workers

Power imbalance. The same reason why *essential* workers often get poverty salaries.

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

#674

Post by goodpoint »

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…

> ... jobs where I truly believed in the mission ... I was also massively burned out

This can be true but being in alienating jobs that you don't care about is also a cause for burnout. Both extremes are dangerous, it's well established.

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

#675

Post by 20after4 »

ww520 wrote: post #662
i_dont_know_ wrote: post #18

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…

Absolutely. Sometimes for the whole day I remove code because of dead path or rewrite part of the code because of wrong initial design. Am I adding negative productivity?

At a previous job, the boss awarded praise, and "points" each week for the developer who removed the most code from production. Counted as lines of code deleted according to git.

(Points were redeemable for schwag from the company shop. They were highly desirable and nearly cash equivalents).

Deleting code is arguably the most valuable work you could be doing.

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

#676

Post by authed »

i_dont_know_ wrote: post #18

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…

any non-physical work should be paid for 24-7?

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

#678

Post by moneycantbuy »

Kind of hilarious to see the comments from those who are shocked and offended upon the realization that a lot of us work less than 40 hours a week and get away with it. My unsolicited suggestion is drink less kool-aid and realize your company's mission statement is simply propaganda. No, your ad-based web app is not making the world a better place. Stop pretending that your unwavering devotion to your corporate overlord in terms of hours clocked is somehow a virtue.

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

#679

Post by datavirtue »

H8crilA wrote: post #336
BbzzbB wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is IC? Google tells me Interstitial Cystitis, but my hunch tells me it's something else.

Individual Contributor. Means that you're only writing code, not managing people at all. It's the opposite of a (pure) Engineering Manager, who only manages and writes no code / produces no design. Most mid level people (for example L6-L7 at Google/Facebook) are simultaneously managers and engineers, thus somewhere between IC and EM. Almost all low level people (L3-L5) are ICs, almost all high level people (L8+) are…

I was working at a fairly enlightened (said all the right things) corporation that had a principle engineer track--or whatever it was called--that fooled engineers into thinking they could be a bad ass developer/mentor/architect without being responsible for managing staff. When I left the managers were using these guys to drive (as in micromanage the fuck out of them) the troops. All they were doing was staring at vulnerability reports that would make your eyes bleed and nagging people in slack for one of their five daily 1-on-1 updates. Everyone they were doing this to were top grade devs--a few left for Google and AWS.

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

#680

Post by vl »

oceanghost wrote: post #112
ckaygusu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of the best ideas I've had in my career were in the shower before work. The problem is making that a regular occurrence.

There is even a story in one of the productivity books about how one of the most productive employees requested shower to be installed in his office since he was most productive in the shower.
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