How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week? • Hacker News Board

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#71

Post by clort » Sun, Apr 09, 2017, 7:57 AM UTC

bostik wrote: post #56

drblast wrote: post #11

I seem to be alone in this, but I actually do about 25-30 hours of actual programming work each week. And that's sit-down-and-concentrate-and-build-shit work. I'm pretty ruthless about declining extraneous meetings and I keep my door closed most of the time. I think it's reasonable to have 25% of a 40-hour week be for meetings, helping other people, eating lunch, sitting in on interviews, and learning/trying out new…

> And yeah, 25-30 hours is probably a maximum, and it needs to be done in three-hour chunks at a minimum. There's a fascinating corollary on "effective working time" research. I've seen the numbers multiple times in Finnish press, but have hard time even finding them now - and can't recall ever seeing these figures in English media. According to work wellbeing research done (at least partially) in Finland, knowledge…

I think there is a problem defining what is effective when talking about creative work.. I did some contract work a few years ago and while I worked from home and tried to be on task during working hours I was not always at the keyboard during that time. Sometimes I sat on the couch with my eyes closed, and I went for a walk on the beach regularly but I was always thinking about the way in which the code I was writing was developing, the shape of the algorithms and how best to interface to other modules. I even thought about that stuff out of hours (which was unbilled time, though I got a hefty bonus..).

When you take this concept of effective working time to the statistician who sees only the time you spent actually at the keyboard and tells the MBA that your effective time was 2-4 hours out of an 8 hour shift, and that MBA wants you to increase this effectiveness by getting it to 100% of the time that he is paying you.. then thats not going to work.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#72

Post by Qantourisc » Sun, Apr 09, 2017, 7:57 AM UTC

matthewborden wrote: post #22

If you need your employees to work 60-80 hours per week, you need to evaluate your business plan and if it's actually viable.

In case an employee has little overhead, get 2 "part-timers" and let them each work 30-40 hours per week. And cut all other distractions where possible.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#73

Post by mack73 » Sun, Apr 09, 2017, 8:07 AM UTC

drblast wrote: post #11

I seem to be alone in this, but I actually do about 25-30 hours of actual programming work each week. And that's sit-down-and-concentrate-and-build-shit work. I'm pretty ruthless about declining extraneous meetings and I keep my door closed most of the time. I think it's reasonable to have 25% of a 40-hour week be for meetings, helping other people, eating lunch, sitting in on interviews, and learning/trying out new…

Putting in 25-30 good, quality hours at work each week and then 30 more hours a week on my pet project, I would not classify an hour as good depending on if I produced code or not. A good hour too me is one where I could keep my concentration on work, thinking or coding.

It's doable, working two shifts. It takes a 30 minute walk from work to home to reset and prepare myself for shift #2. If my boss want both those shifts though I shall ask for double the money. I don't see how I could be working any more. This is my max. Both shifts require a creative and hungry mind. I'm very hungry at the moment but I suspect this is a phase.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#74

Post by grecy » Sun, Apr 09, 2017, 8:12 AM UTC

Answer:

Be in America where employees are close to slaves, and people are scared of losing their job, so you can force them to do these kinds of atrocious things.

My brother lived and worked in North America for 7 years before returning to Australia. He'd been in Australia for a few months when I asked what the biggest change was. He didn't say no snow, he didn't say driving on the wrong side of the road, food or attitudes.

He said in North America people are scared of and slaves to their jobs because of Health Care, student loans and debt in general, where-as in Australia employers are thankful to employees, and nobody is scared of their job.

I think it's a powerful statement when it's the most noticeable difference after 7 years.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#75

Post by mamon » Sun, Apr 09, 2017, 8:12 AM UTC

harrygallagher4 wrote: post #3

My first programming job (actually, just my first job) was technically a 40 hour/week job, but in the employee handbook it said something along the lines of: "The day is typically regarded as 8AM to 8PM." They didn't pay very well either. Brian is right, I totally hated my job, hated my boss, hated pretty much the entire company, and quit in 5 months. I was pretty disappointed. I'm still cautious about getting back i…

> "The day is typically regarded as 8AM to 8PM."

correct me if I'm wrong, but usually such statement means that you can choose your own 8 hour timeframe to work. So you can work 08 AM - 4 PM, or 11AM - 7 PM, or whatever. It is not expressing expectation of 12h workday.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#76

Post by tobyhinloopen » Sun, Apr 09, 2017, 8:15 AM UTC

I somewhat agree with the author, but I have some comments.

I do agree that programming is a creative profession and that creative "energy" is limited to just a few hours per day/week.

However, most programming doesn't require constant creative insights. Even if you have to be creative (IE thinking of fancy features/implementations or something yourself) the most time is spent actually writing code.

I tend to think of something (requiring intense creative energy), planning what I'll be doing and when my creative energy is lower or I have plenty of planned work, I actually execute these plans. Writing code based on earlier made plans requires little creative energy usually. Additionally, the "executing" phase usually takes many times longer than planning.

For me, for a 40 hour work week, about 8 goes into planning, 24 goes into actual programming and 8 goes into useless meetings/e-mails/blablabla. Then I have creative energy to spare on my side projects for about 20h/week.

Tbh, I did spent a lot of time figuring out how to optimise workflow privately and professionally, figuring out why sometimes I could get stuff done and sometimes I couldn't. A separation of "creative time" and "doing time" helped a lot.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#77

Post by lacampbell » Sun, Apr 09, 2017, 8:15 AM UTC

travisl12 wrote: post #18

drblast wrote: post #11

I seem to be alone in this, but I actually do about 25-30 hours of actual programming work each week. And that's sit-down-and-concentrate-and-build-shit work. I'm pretty ruthless about declining extraneous meetings and I keep my door closed most of the time. I think it's reasonable to have 25% of a 40-hour week be for meetings, helping other people, eating lunch, sitting in on interviews, and learning/trying out new…

That is so awesome... you have a door?!?

I have an office. Intermediate dev/ba.

I've gotten a taste for it now. I could reluctantly work in a small shared office with other programmers, but I would have to be desperate to ever go back to an open office. That or get paid a lot.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#78

Post by robjan » Sun, Apr 09, 2017, 8:16 AM UTC

zitterbewegung wrote: post #27

houst0n_ wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is 'they' in that case? They for me is whoever is paying us to help them with their business. If it's the contractors/team members then no. Ive unfortunately had several highly paid (4 figures uk/day) contractors who think themselves above certain tasks, or who refuse to do anything they didn't agree with who seem surprised when they get told to fuck off. You're an overpaid contract dev and you're refusing to imp…

In the United States there are strict definitions between contract roles (1099) and employees because it determines how you are taxed . I agree about the above certain tasks thing though.

Same in the UK. It's called IR35. Most contractors in the UK are Ltd companies and are structured as such to avoid a large amount of tax/National Insurance.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#79

Post by bnegreve » Sun, Apr 09, 2017, 8:16 AM UTC

lutusp wrote: post #70

Quote: "No programmers really work 60-80 hours a week, especially in a 5 day span." Wow -- this person doesn't know about hackers (granted that it's a term with multiple definitions). The problem with hackers is not getting them to work, it's getting them to stop. A true hacker will work on a project far beyond any practical termination point, perpetually thinking of ways to improve the code in ways that meet private…

His point is that developers can work a lot on their own project, but you can't get them to work that much on someone else's project.

Re: How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?

#80

Post by seanp2k2 » Sun, Apr 09, 2017, 8:18 AM UTC

hnnsj wrote: post #42

drblast wrote: post #11

I seem to be alone in this, but I actually do about 25-30 hours of actual programming work each week. And that's sit-down-and-concentrate-and-build-shit work. I'm pretty ruthless about declining extraneous meetings and I keep my door closed most of the time. I think it's reasonable to have 25% of a 40-hour week be for meetings, helping other people, eating lunch, sitting in on interviews, and learning/trying out new…

You're not alone. I, and everyone at work except perhaps our CEO, get probably 30 hours of focused programming done, with the caveat that probably around 75% of that programming is done in pairs. Which still feels like very productive programming most of the time. We do this by using the pomodoro technique and TDD (although I'm sure there are lots of other ways, and that it's mostly a combination of company philosoph…

I've always liked pairing because it ensures that you're both there to get the thing done, and generally I've found that it keeps both of us from goofing off (until the thing is done, then it's time to play). While the theoretical throughput would be 50% (two people doing one thing), it ends up being greater than if we had both tried to work on different things, since the one thing we're doing comes out better since it's getting reviewed while written + any problems which come up can be solved much much faster. Plus, both people always learn at least one little thing, typically more.

Pairing is just great. Works well for sysadmin stuff too, even if I'm mostly leading that and just bringing someone else along for the ride.