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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?

#761

Post by 10hr »

gxt wrote: post #526
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…

>Through most of that time I have averaged roughly 5 - 10 hours of actual work a week >This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion. If you are expected to engage for 40h/week and only show up for 5-10, this is unacceptable. It's literally theft. If you have to spend 30 out of 40h/week in meetings, etc when it's part of your role as senior or architect etc it is acceptable. If you have to spe…

I'm approximately a millionaire in my late 20s and have only really built 1 little thing since 2017...

Might it catch up to me this year? Perhaps, but that's when I will go get an unrelated masters and change to my "retirement career"

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

#762

Post by 10hr »

gxt wrote: post #526
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…

>Through most of that time I have averaged roughly 5 - 10 hours of actual work a week >This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion. If you are expected to engage for 40h/week and only show up for 5-10, this is unacceptable. It's literally theft. If you have to spend 30 out of 40h/week in meetings, etc when it's part of your role as senior or architect etc it is acceptable. If you have to spe…

Pretty much my only skill is leetcode easy/med + basic sys design and knowing some SRE principles. I almost wish the interview wasn't as gameable so I could move on with my life in a new field

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

#763

Post by blitz_skull »

soneca wrote: post #530
blitz_skull wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is where? If they deliver X, and the expectation is X; OP may call it "bullshitting" but his point is that he's delivered expectations and now he's coasting which is totally fine. He delivered on expectations.

> ” If they deliver X” What make you think they deliver? Certainly not the OP. I think everyone is reading OP as an “anti-agile champion”, a “hero against meaningless jobs”, but the way I read it they are just a lazy person lying their way around to trick companies into paying them for work that they are not doing. At all. Not even willing or trying to do. Just lying to people.

All I can speak from is observation and experience. And in both, I have never worked under a manager so stupid that they can’t spot laziness.

To be honest, if you’re a manager who can’t spot incompetence or laziness, then you deserve every bit of it. Same with upper management who hires managers who can’t spot incompetence. It’s really not hard at all. I don’t get why OP is the bad guy when he literally meets ALL expectations per their manager’s own words.

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

#764

Post by 10hr »

repomies69 wrote: post #314
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…

> It is a huge pay cut. I also am happier than I have ever been in my adult life because I'm learning something challenging and helping people instead of While I congratulate your career move and I am very happy for you, I want to point out that there are tons of jobs in Software Development that genuinely help people and make society go forward.

They don't seem particularly easy to find. Perhaps you could name some?

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

#765

Post by kranzky »

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…

For sure, we need to collectively recognise how much real work takes place in this mode.

I once collaborated with a colleague to design and implement a data sync framework. For six weeks we chatted about it during our lunch break, while walking from the office to a Japanese takeaway and back again. We'd propose ideas and find weaknesses and flaws in them, and would spend our evenings thinking hard to come up with solutions to get around these issues.

Our boss saw none of this, but it easily consumed about three weeks of person-hours (i.e. around 120 hours).

One day, walking back from lunch, neither of us could find any problems with our proposed solution. We walked into the office straight into a meeting room, spend 30 minutes drawing diagrams on a whiteboard, then returned to our desks and coded up a working proof-of-concept in a couple of hours.

From our boss's perspective, we had implemented a new technology in an afternoon. He's the kind of non-technical person who equates productivity with typing code into a computer. But I think more places need to equate productivity with sitting on a sofa staring into space, or going for long walks, or whatever it happens to be that works for the developer in question.

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

#766

Post by Imagenuity »

hindsightbias wrote: post #729
oceanghost wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Steve Jobs had a theory that hot water on the blood vessels in the back of the neck increased blood flow to the brain.

Interesting. Tried to search for a source for that theory, but couldn't find anything.

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

#767

Post by khazhoux »

swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #749
byoung2 wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

By "everyone would want to move faster" I mean: ship your product, whatever it is, at a high level of quality, sooner rather than later.

I'm not sure I'm familiar with any software project were people were glad it took as long as it did.

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

#768

Post by 10hr »

neilk wrote: post #84

Please indulge my curiosity. This might be wildly unrelated but... how attractive are you, physically? Are you thin? Are you taller than most people in your peer group? Do you more or less resemble the "dominant" demographic where you live? That is, the same gender presentation, ethnicity, etc. as most of your government and business leaders. Are you a citizen of the country where you live?

I'm not OP, but I am similar to him in that I cheated/got carried through CS, have produced very little, and now have ~$900k in my 20s.

I'm short, male, not physically attractive, but not overweight. People enjoy having me around on the team; I'm a citizen of the country, so not worried about getting kicked out if I'm canned

I've also never stayed somewhere 2+ years

I almost exited the industry this year, but I'm going to give it another go and perhaps up my productivity.

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

#769

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

I just look at what my KPIs are (key performance indicators) and maximize those. Management won't tell you what they are, but it's usually the same between companies

- making managers look good by stakeholder demos - making sure your a team player - being active in core hours - unblock peers in PRs - not abusing pto time, just state your working and do your own thing so long as works done - delivering high visibility features - delivering value in planning sessions

When I get my actual work done and how long it takes for me to do it is irrelevant. What I do make sure is that I'm also outperforming some of my peers

I usually do all my work is one shot somewhere in the afternoon everyday. We also have to put comments on tickets everyday so I just have enough to write a paragraph and use that for standup. That takes me 2 hours of coding everyday give or take. most days I don't work more than 5 hours. This doesn't include the time I spend thinking about the problem though

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