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?

#741

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 4:32 AM UTC

derekp7 wrote: post #730

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…

The way I explained it to my boss, is to give him a list of numbers to add up in his head and come up with a total. He looked at the list for a couple minutes, then gave me the answer (I framed the whole thing as a riddle). I then looked at him and said it looked like he wasn't working on the problem for the last couple minutes. He replied that he was thinking during that time. My reply back is "That is what I have t…

[deleted]

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

#742

Post by seph-reed » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 4:39 AM UTC

Are you good looking?

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

#743

Post by raducu » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 4:46 AM UTC

xupybd wrote: post #534

raducu wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work about 4 hours a day, sometimes not at all and felt terrible inside about myself. Then I got diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Concerta. The focus is not what I want, but the reduction of impulsivity is doing wonders. I started seeing the incompetent, manipulative and rude pieces of shit colleagues that I kept attracting (because of self immage and guilt) and that kept leaching on my time, interrupting…

How did you find out you had ADHD? I often suspect I have something along the lines of ADHD or Dyslexia ( very mild ) but have no idea how to look into it. I've done a few online tests but end up very border line on most.

It was a long journey and my ADHD is not that severe so perhaps that's why it took so long.

I took hard stimulants before I even contemplated I had ADHD, I treated them just like brain steroids (which I don't advice anybody does).

The first time a psychiatrist offered an ADHD questionair was when I was diagnosed with BPD (mostly resolved since, in part due to age and in part psychotherapy and in parth ADHD treatment) because 25% of people diagnosed with BPD also have ADHD. I really doubted myself and I got a score of 6/9 on both inattentiveness and impulsivity and the psychiatrisy said I needed 7/9 but she was willing to prescribe concerta or atomoxetine (I can't remember which) but I stupidly declined since I had access to hard stimulants and I did not see the benefit at the time.

I gave up illegal stimulants after my daughter was born but I kept using modafinil and nicotine as a cruth whenever shit got real at work; my psychoterapist kept asking me why I don't want to see a psychiatrist colleague of hers that's open minded about ADHD.

Eventually I did, and to my surprise the psychiatrist did a very thorough interview and concluded I most certainly do have ADHD and prescribed Concerta.

I still doubt I have ADHD sometimes, until I take a break from the meds, that's when reality kicks in and I'm sure I have ADHD again :)

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

#744

Post by khazhoux » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 5:10 AM UTC

byoung2 wrote: post #739

khazhoux wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like most analogies, this one fails completely. It's well-understood that the security guard does nothing but stay alert 99% of the time. He very explicitly needs to "do nothing" for long stretches of time. Software development operates largely on trust that everyone on the team is putting in real effort. The manager trusts that when it takes you a week to finish a task, it's because it actually took a week of work,…

everyone at the company would almost certainly like to move faster Not necessarily true. This is certainly the case at a startup, but at a more established BigCorp, things move slowly, and the ability of an engineer to work at a slower pace is an asset. You may be waiting on legal approval for weeks or months, or a software review from infosec, signoff from finance on integration testing for a new payment processor,…

> you will have times where a week goes by and you haven't written a single line of code, and that is exactly what the job requires.

OP is not saying that sometimes he's idle. Of course there are times when things move slowly.

OP is saying that in his entire software development career, he works 0.5-1.0 days a week, and never more.

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

#745

Post by gandutraveler » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 5:12 AM UTC

Before covid I would count all of my 8 hours/day as work hours whereas now with work from home my actual coding+meetings work is around 14 hours/week but my productivity has improved significantly. And that is because now I code when I'm in zone which produces at 5x more output than when I worked at office.

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

#746

Post by mempko » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

Lines of code is not a good metric, but log lines of code is probably useful. The most product team ever recorded in a study was the Borland Quadro Pro team. They averaged 1000 lines of code per developer per week. To put that into context, the industry average rate is about 1000 lines of code production code by a developer in an entire year at a large company.

5-10 hours a work per week? That sounds average to me. That sounds like an average developer at a large company.

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

#747

Post by Wonnk13 » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 5:17 AM UTC

agagrgar wrote: post #73

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…

Whoa. timeout. If I'm reading your post correctly your manager gave you a NI as a noogler (first review cycle)?! WTF. Do NIs make it harder to transfer? sure, but it's not impossible.

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

#748

Post by aredplug » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 5:18 AM UTC

jayceekay wrote: post #733

ploxiln wrote: post #717

> Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them? Have I just been incredibly lucky and every boss I have had is too incompetent to notice? Do I have imposter syndrome and I am actually a 10x developer whose laziness makes them a 1x developer? Lazy developers don't really bother me, if you do a couple hours of high-quality wor…

so many of us are patting ourselves on the back right now :\

Perhaps quotes that make people feel bad are less likely to survive.

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

#749

Post by swaggyBoatswain » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 5:20 AM UTC

byoung2 wrote: post #739

khazhoux wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like most analogies, this one fails completely. It's well-understood that the security guard does nothing but stay alert 99% of the time. He very explicitly needs to "do nothing" for long stretches of time. Software development operates largely on trust that everyone on the team is putting in real effort. The manager trusts that when it takes you a week to finish a task, it's because it actually took a week of work,…

everyone at the company would almost certainly like to move faster Not necessarily true. This is certainly the case at a startup, but at a more established BigCorp, things move slowly, and the ability of an engineer to work at a slower pace is an asset. You may be waiting on legal approval for weeks or months, or a software review from infosec, signoff from finance on integration testing for a new payment processor,…

Or demoing to stakeholders, gathering business requirements, communicating new content that needs to be received etc. Those are all important reasons to go slower too

Moving too fast doesn't benefit anyone

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

#750

Post by viceroyalbean » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 5:23 AM UTC

wonderwonder wrote: post #640

jjav wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I absolutely hate having to do a daily stand up. I'll have my tickets done by the end of sprint, just not before that though.

I agree that there is that implicit pressure, but really it should (as in the ideal case) be fine to just say "I've been thinking about A, B, and C" and leave it at that. That still gives you the room to say that issue C has blocker X etc if it needs to be resolved in the team.