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Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
831–840 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#832I've worked at a company in the past where I was earning 2.5x my previous senior developer salary. It was also the least productive I had ever been in my career and I contributed the least value to society (negative value, in fact).
I only stayed 4 months; couldn't even finish my 6-month contract because it was too boring and mediocre. I got an offer from a YC-funded company and my employer allowed me to get out of my contract early.
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#833Earlier quoted context omitted.
Adding my voice to this one. I think a lot of work 'normal people' i.e. the PMs the non-technical management, the sales people etc. really don't get how we techies work. Because they have to do 'active' work all day long to keep on top, they think everyone is like that, where in reality we are really efficient in short bursts. I can ponder a deliverable for days and then just churn it out over a few hours, only takin…
And, ironically, much of the work that the "normies" do is something tech guys could to hundred times faster. It's stuff like manually copy-pasting numbers from a crappy proprietary software A to a crappy proprietary software B or entering numbers from some system to Excel while it could be done by just directly pulling the numbers from the database the system uses. Seriously, modern work is all about knowing what to…
I can never do tedious work quickly. As soon as I notice work that should be automated, I start cursing at the developer of the tool I am using for not offering an easy interface for me to plug into and just automate it, instead of having to rewrite the whole thing from scratch if I want to have it automated (and that's usually too time consuming, so I don't do it). So I'd be constantly unhappy doing it, which is a recipe for avoiding it, ergo being slow at it.
That's why I am a huge fan of free software (and I've spent years on it too).
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#834Earlier 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.
Walking also increases blood flow to the brain and is amazing for problem solving (in case you don’t have access to a shower while at work).
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#835The 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…
I'm not upper management. Most upper management gets paid way too much for the value they bring. But, when you have the opportunity to work under an excellent CEO or CTO you will learn that they do bring 10x or even 100x the value you bring to the team.
They are also capable of causing 10x as much damage. Their job is to make correct decisions because they supposed to have the permission and responsibility to make larger decisions.
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#836I 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…
Very common. It's hard to quantify the mental work done, so we only measure kilos of code written.
I do think though that anyone that has written code should be able to understand that it's not as simple as sitting down and typing fast.
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#837Software 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 see myself very much like the person in the original question. For me, I try to do put in sheer effort on a regular basis. It is just that more day than not, I just can't bring myself to do it. I end up spending more time berating myself for not working, slacking off, writing this answer on HN, etc, than actually working. The sad (or perhaps enlightening?) thing is that it has always been like this. Since school, I…
Same here, I really recognize this. There are times I really peak. Most times I really don't do much. I don't lie in startups really, maybe I'll say I'm working on something when I just opened a doc and glanced at it. Which is lying, ok... But I do often finished the work in time, but just in very intense sprints.
I recognize a lot in this thread.
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#838> Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them?
Yes.
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#839Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't disagree, but I never said there was no such thing as slackers or that OP definitely isn't one. I provided a test to tell if they really are one or not. The point I'm making is that some people in our profession think they are slacking when they're not, for the reasons I described. OP's description doesn't convince me that they necessarily are. In particular the comment at the end about having spent the years…
I am in a similar position as OP. I do 15-20 hours of work and watch Twitch or YouTube the rest of the time. I am a lead dev at a startup and developed one of their main products. I have always implemented every feature in a few days or less. Bug fixes usually take 30-45 minutes. Meanwhile another lead dev, who handles the development of another product, takes at least 2 days to fix a simple bug, and 1-2 weeks to imp…
Yeah, that's the common mindset. You feel that you're slacking off, and you feel "guilty" about it, but you have a successful career and describe the prospect of doing more than you do as being "overworked" to the extent that you may have to quit.
There's nothing noble about burning out.
Re: Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
#840> Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them? Yes.
The awkward thing can be that you don't know if they're lazy or not competent. I've had coworkers that took days to accomplish what I was able to do in less than an hour. I always thought they were lazy (like me), but it turned out some of them were just so bad at understanding problems and solving them that it took them that long working on it full time. For example a bug fix can be done within seconds if you immediately see where the bug must be just from the error message or the observed behavior. If not, you might have to debug thousands of lines of code.
Not saying these people were less smart, but certainly less suitable for the job they were doing.