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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?

#751

Post by icedchai »

echelon wrote: post #523
oakfr wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Look into the 4% rule. Once you have 25 to 30x your yearly expenses invested, you’ll be in the right ballpark.

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

#752

Post by laichzeit0 »

jesuis_14 wrote: post #200

In the last year or two, I have not "worked" more than 1-2 hours a day on average--some days for a grand total of zero hours. The quote/unquote is not there by accident. I manage a team and some projects, and most of the time I let other people do the technical work while I get to chat with higher ups or give some general direction on where the work should go. I consider myself very competent in my field even though…

> I consider myself very competent in my field even though I stopped doing purely technical work some time ago, but there are a lot of very good coders out there, but not enough "lazy pragmatists" like me.

I have found many times that junior developers really love to write code (I did too early in my career). Most of my time is spent stopping people from writing more code. As in, why are you doing this instead of using this library? Why are you even thinking about writing code to do date/time manipulation? Why are even thinking about doing something custom when it’s security related?

I guess it’s because modern development is actually mostly boring so anything that looks challenging people love to think they can finally apply that algo/leet code shit they’ve been prepping for. In NormalCorp you can forget about it. It’s my job to actively make sure no one is trying to be clever by writing unnecessary fun code.

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

#753

Post by bern4444 »

I don't think I work more than 2 or 3 hours a day if that at a large - but not evil - social media company.

I've been amazed. My previous job was much more involved - easy to hit 6-9 hours of work every day.

It depends a lot on the company, pace of work, expectations etc.

If you're happy with this, enjoy it and ride it out. It's the best deal possible. If you're unhappy with not having enough work then it may be worthwhile trying to find a job at a smaller company or one with more active projects.

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

#755

Post by icedchai »

cheradenine_uk wrote: post #258
pydry wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large companies have a tendency to throw up all sorts of impediments to actually getting shit done. Simple tasks can take 3 weeks because there are 7-9 dependencies throwing sand in the gears. This not only provides plenty of cover for not getting stuff done it also saps the motivation to get it done quickly. Like, if X team sits on your request for a week that prevents Y feature from getting out are you really gonna…

This is spot-on. I'm used to small, get-things-done environments (startups, small dev shops). Transitioning to working within a much more "corporate" environment (not that the actual dev team is any bigger) I struggled with the endless gatekeeping and bureaucracy because it was impeding us ... getting stuff /done/. Once you realise they're not optimising for that goal, I feel less frustrated and have scaled back my e…

I’m struggling with exactly what you describe. I literally LoLed at your code-janitor and pointless meeting comments. Something that would take a day at a small shop takes a week. It’s sad. I can’t do it for much longer.

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

#756

Post by aguasfrias »

Everyone knows you're a slacker, except management. Because management sucks. It's pretty much an axiom at this point.

>Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them?

There are other ways to reason about this. My favorite pet theory is that slackers are useful for offloading schmoozing duties. If a hard worker befriends a social butterfly, that worker no longer has to directly socialize as much.

But everyone around you who does your exact same job knows exactly how worthless or worthy you are. Don't kid yourself into thinking you're some master con artist.

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

#757

Post by issa »

I imagine this is quite normal in the non-startup world. At most "established" companies, as long as you are in charge of ONE THING that saves other people some trouble, it is hard to get fired. The expectations at a lot of jobs are just really, really low.

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

#758

Post by synergy20 »

For me the productivity can be super high in some weeks, but when my hip slow pain occurs(painful enough to make me feel listless) I can not do techie job as efficient as I want to be, sometimes it last for weeks, which is really bad, that really bugs me as it happens quite often these days. exercise might help but so far it did not help, Doctors do not know much either.

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

#759

Post by dilyevsky »

sz4kerto wrote: post #9

I don’t think that what you’re doing is very common, but it’s not uncommon either. What you need to do this is to work in an environment where not being productive is not harmful. There are plenty of environments like this. For example, not doing any work but still getting paid doesn’t do any harm at Google. The company is making money anyway. At a small startup that’s under immense pressure people would realise what…

I’ve had coworkers like op almost in every team that I worked for and google was one of the only places where some folks like that got walked out so may not be the best advice ;)

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

#760

Post by BirdieNZ »

noduerme wrote: post #324
wonderwonder wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My regular work is similar. Some days I don't work at all. At most, 3-4 hours. But I think this is because nothing I'm working on is particularly urgent. I'm well ahead of deadlines. When I really get into my own side projects in code, the last of which I got heavily into about six months ago, I literally forget to eat or sleep and can go on 24-hour marathons - compulsively, without intending to, because I need to ma…

You should learn a bit about adult ADHD and see if it sounds like you, and perhaps get a psychiatrist to see if you match an ADHD diagnosis. It changed my life to find out I was ADHD, and what you said has some correlation.
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