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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?

#821

Post by DeathArrow »

I tend to work as much as I being motivated to. Motivation is not only a factor of money, but also working environment, people's relations, tooling and the atractivity of what I am tasked to do.

I don't care if team mates are highly productive code churning factories as long as this does not impact me negatively. I do not care if team mates are lazy as long as this does not impact me negatively.

If I would be a manager, I would strive for equilibrium and moderation towards amount of work being done. I wouldn't like to see no work being done and I would like to have my developers burned out. I would pressure towards a good working environment, where people have built good relationships and trust. I would pressure on getting the most important things done. I would pressure on a good architecture and a good pipeline and tooling.

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

#822

Post by some_chap »

dixie_land wrote: post #671
Freak_NL wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds like we should ban you from the shower, then.

(Amusing to see “root caused” == “diagnosed” and != “caused”.)

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

#823

Post by Dave3of5 »

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…

Always found that quote interesting as is not really correct. Everyone is a percentage of those traits. No one is universally clever and never does anything stupid for example.

It's putting people in a box which people love to do.

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

#824

Post by shinryuu »

mrozbarry wrote: post #169
omnicognate wrote: post #39

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…

I think this 2-question test is very accurate. To add to this, even if for a time, you can increase your productivity, sometimes that's not sustainable. There's nothing wrong with having ebbs and flows. On days when you have a larger workload of smaller tasks, you may find yourself to be incredibly productive, and days when you have smaller workloads, or larger tasks, and you may be less productive. The thing is, if…

It's certainly not your boss's job to ensure that you are compensated fairly.

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

#825

Post by loup-vaillant »

zachthewf wrote: post #719
bandyaboot wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t even count the number of times that I’ve had to give up on a problem after banging away at it for an afternoon only to solve it in 20 mins the next morning. Almost never fails.

Taking a break and going for a run sometimes does this for me as well.

However, banging away at a problem for an afternoon is often needed for the solution to magically pop into our head next morning. The break helps, but so does the work itself.

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

#826

Post by say_it_as_it_is »

I suspect you're not a real person but an archetype created by someone who is trying to create an interest in a surveillance product (Drata?). I joined this thread when there is over 800 comments already and 1349 points. So, it seems that your mission is accomplished. You've planted the seed of a lazy, overpaid developer exploiting his position and working remotely.

If in the chances I am wrong, please accept my apologies but the effect remains.

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

#827

Post by meigwilym »

fernandotakai wrote: post #125
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.

ha! my wife once asked why i was speaking english while showering. i told her that 1. i can only think in english when thinking about work and 2. saying stuff out loud helps me organize my thoughts and this is specially easy while showering because i don't really have to concentrate.

Interesting! What is your first language? Do you speak any others? Was learning English a natural part of growing up, or was it formally taught to you?

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

#828

Post by abyssin »

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've met people like you, some as employees, but most as coaches. I believe their role is somehow religious, priest-like: they are able to occupy a spot between leadership and workers to embody the ability to believe in what the company is doing. I think your role is perfectly summarized by your last sentence. You role is to be the person who says: "I'm enjoying the splendid world we are lucky to live in."

I envy your ability to see the world as splendid in the context of work. I see exploitation, destruction of the environment, abusive relationships, boredom, meaninglessness. I believe most of your/our bosses feel the same way.

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

#829

Post by throwaway934876 »

I wouldn't say people like us are lazy, I'm like OP but I feel like I'm rather good at peaking when needed and then identifying useless things nobody ever asks about anymore and just not doing them and getting away with it.

I have a pretty rare skill set, combining deep genomics knowledge, system administration (from my hobby) and software development/data science. This means I often understand our full stack which is super rare as a biologist/bio-informatician, at least where I work. Just by interest I listen to a lot of tech podcasts. So I have an informed, strong opinion on how things could be, and it's easy to fake it until I make it by echoing the podcasters whom I respect a lot.

Sometimes I feel like somebody is on to me which is uncomfortable, but it may just be imposter syndrome. I mean I did build nice things that I'm proud of and at the rare times that I am really engaged with what I'm building I find it difficult to stop and even relaxing to work on. So maybe at those time I make up for it? I spend a lot of time avoiding boring stuff and seeking out fun things. Also I do a lot things around the house during work times (laundry, taking a shower etc). I just can't focus for very long when I consider something to be not fun. When we were still in the office I used to take pretty long walks or go and talk to people in other offices around campus.

I'm also a huge procrastinator, ie, for my bachelors and my PhD theses I skipped 2 nights (or slept 1-2 hours) in the weekends before they needed to be finished and I just wrote non-stop. Pretty stressful.

I get very good reviews, and I like to think that it is because I indeed do the most useful things at the right time and provide direction and vision where needed. Also in about half or less of the time my boss thinks I work. I start a lot of new things but hardly ever finish, but one of my previous managers said they like that, they had a lack of new ideas and enough people to grind it out. So there's that. I find it easy to call people in my company in other departments and get them to do things or set something up together, that doesn't really feel like work, I think that also helps, most of my colleagues hate doing this. But if someone did something remotely similar to what I am about to do they can save me a lot of time that I can spend not working.

Recently I started working with someone who I feel like is like me, but does work 100% (or maybe it only appears that way!). I find it a bit jarring how well he can estimate my productivity and skills. Then again, maybe he really does underestimate me and I'm having some imposter syndrome, I've never not-delivered when it mattered.

Btw, nice topic, I often felt like starting something like this.

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

#830

Post by necovek »

i2shar wrote: post #819
derekp7 wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you have to explain that to your boss, you are working for the wrong person. We are in a creative field, he shouldn't have to be explained this.

As long as they are willing to learn, I think that's fine.

I like to make parallels with sports: when I am on the court, I am so much dumber about what's going on. Suddenly, when I am on the sidelines, I can see patterns, strengths and weaknesses for each team and so forth. It's not that I was dumb while on the court, it's just that your brain is in a different mode of operation (focusing on your own performance in this particular case).

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