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How a Technical Co-Founder Spends His Time

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Re: How a Technical Co-Founder Spends His Time

#51

Post by jdleesmiller »

lusen wrote: post #49
jdleesmiller wrote: post #44

(Author here.) It's great to see my write-up on HN, and I'm glad to see it generating good discussion here. Since several people have asked, I have now made my 'metime' tracking app open source: https://github.com/jdleesmiller/metime Being in London, I have just woken up, so I will now be more able to answer any questions!

Hi author. Small nit: consider changing your title to "their" time rather than "he" since you talk about " a technical co-founder". There's no need to use gendered language in the general case, and gendered language needlessly encourages gendered based identification. Imagine if you included your race and ethnicity and sexuality in the title - that'd feel silly, right? It would limit the audience who found the piece…

Thanks for the feedback on the title. I've changed it to "their", which still works fine for me.

For the avoidance of doubt, I do say in the article that:

> The CTO role is a very diverse one, and I don’t expect that the results here will be true in general. This is just my story. I hope it is an interesting one, and it is uniquely backed by data!

So, the subject is me, and I am a male. I did not intend to exclude anyone by using "him".

(I can't change the title on HN myself, but if someone who can wants to do so, please feel free.)

Re: How a Technical Co-Founder Spends His Time

#53

Post by Xcelerate »

glossyscr wrote: post #39
bluetwo wrote: post #16

The biggest thing I learned when analyzing my time, which I wish I had recognized earlier, was that I can have two types of productive days: I can have days where I do a million small things and hop quickly from task to task. Or, I can have days where I work on big issues and should not be interrupted by small issues. But, if I think I'm going to have a day where I work on a big thing and it turns out I get interrupt…

I have also two types of days: - I am ultra productive or... - I am procrastinating the entire day

I wonder what causes this type of bimodal "quality of work" distribution.

Re: How a Technical Co-Founder Spends His Time

#54

Post by forgotpwtomain »

lusen wrote: post #49
jdleesmiller wrote: post #44

(Author here.) It's great to see my write-up on HN, and I'm glad to see it generating good discussion here. Since several people have asked, I have now made my 'metime' tracking app open source: https://github.com/jdleesmiller/metime Being in London, I have just woken up, so I will now be more able to answer any questions!

Hi author. Small nit: consider changing your title to "their" time rather than "he" since you talk about " a technical co-founder". There's no need to use gendered language in the general case, and gendered language needlessly encourages gendered based identification. Imagine if you included your race and ethnicity and sexuality in the title - that'd feel silly, right? It would limit the audience who found the piece…

> Imagine if you included your race and ethnicity and sexuality in the title - that'd feel silly, right?

Historically it has been correct English to use the masculine pronoun where it could refer to either sex. I understand the reasons to prefer a different construction ( I also find "their" or "one's" to be preferable) but comparing standard English to explicitly calling out ethnicity or sexual preference is virulent.

Re: How a Technical Co-Founder Spends His Time

#55

Post by glossyscr »

Xcelerate wrote: post #53
glossyscr wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have also two types of days: - I am ultra productive or... - I am procrastinating the entire day

I wonder what causes this type of bimodal "quality of work" distribution.

Very good question, I thought many times about this and could think that probably the beginning or how you start the day determines the rest of the day.

Re: How a Technical Co-Founder Spends His Time

#56

Post by mxuribe »

jdleesmiller wrote: post #44

(Author here.) It's great to see my write-up on HN, and I'm glad to see it generating good discussion here. Since several people have asked, I have now made my 'metime' tracking app open source: https://github.com/jdleesmiller/metime Being in London, I have just woken up, so I will now be more able to answer any questions!

Kudos on the write-up!

Re: How a Technical Co-Founder Spends His Time

#57

Post by harperlee »

Xcelerate wrote: post #53
glossyscr wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have also two types of days: - I am ultra productive or... - I am procrastinating the entire day

I wonder what causes this type of bimodal "quality of work" distribution.

It might just perceptual: it might be the case that days very into on of the two types are easier to recognize, tag and remember, whereas mixed days are not so vividly remembered.

I surely stop after a day of lots of little tasks and say "phew! What a day!" or after a big task is done "yeah! look at this cool feature you built today!" And even play with it a little. Normal days are not so reflected upon...

Re: How a Technical Co-Founder Spends His Time

#58

Post by JamesBarney »

wwalser wrote: post #26
cup wrote: post #6

The notion that a 130h work week is admirable, desirable, sustainable or useful is ridiculous and should be criticised every time it's raised. Unless you're working for yourself or working in a job where your contract compensates you by the hour then investing such huge swathes of time I think is destructive. There is a reason workers united, fought and were martyred for the 8 hour work week and the creeping clawback…

While I agree with your statement for the most part, I also understand that there is some context to it. That specific context is Marissa Mayer and other early Google employees. I find it hard to convince myself that those people and especially Mayer, were not or are not compensated in some way that takes those huge swathes of time into consideration. She was paid $36MM in 2015 and raised the market cap of Yahoo! by…

I was under the impression the majority of the change in stock price for Yahoo(if not all) was related to them owning a large share of Ali Baba stock which has skyrocketed in value. And this purchase was made before Marissa Mayer took over.

Re: How a Technical Co-Founder Spends His Time

#59

Post by djhn »

Awesome project! I'm a big fan of using econometric methods in Quantified Self -type analysis.

A couple of thoughts on your regressions:

Keeping holidays in the data seems counterintuitive. I'm fairly sure just from eyeing the graphs that the increase in your work week might reach statistical significance if you were to use a regression method more resistant to outliers, like Least Trimmed Squares.

Another idea - in microeconometrics it's standard to use some type of Poisson regression four count data, which this could potentially qualify as.

And furthermore, I would have loved to see some sort of distributed lag model of the timeseries (or at least a scatterplot of all activities against each other) to see which ones tend to co-occur.

Re: How a Technical Co-Founder Spends His Time

#60

Post by syntex »

AznHisoka wrote: post #50
syntex wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My max was 48 hours/week ( but this is an exception ) For living I build e-commerce solutions and backend stuff. And in free time I play more with a frontend. Recently with react/redux and in the long run with every possible new technology on the horizon. I guess I waste a lot of time doing this as most of these things isn't immediately related to client work. ( but over time It helps me to sell to them a few ideas f…

But do you bill considerably more than the 10-15 hours you actually work? If so I would find that unethical

I don't need to.

I live in Warsaw and live here is a lot cheaper than in Western Part of Europe. My clients are Canada / UK based and I charge between $50-$70/h so even 10-15 hours a week is enough to make living over here.

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