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

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

#81

Post by bostik »

clort wrote: post #71
bostik wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 writin…

> 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[...]

I worked from home for 7 years, and during the brief summers I took 1-2h biking breaks during the day when I was stuck and felt like my mind was grinding to a halt. Often enough I would get unstuck, or at least have lots of new ideas.

On the flipside, I also learned that one of the most valuable pieces of equipment in these circumstances is a lightweight dictating machine. Or a phone capable of recording on a keypress. The ideas would come and go, and if I didn't record them when they popped up, I would spend quite a lot of time trying to find them again.

Taking notes is underrated.

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

#82

Post by mack73 »

grecy wrote: post #74

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 att…

Nobody outside of NA are scared of loosing their jobs, is what you believe, because of how enslaved to the system Americans are?

Households in Sweden take on heavy debt. If we loose our jobs here some of us fall back for a while on a (voluntary) system which from an angle looks like a basic income but that cover only a fraction of that household's mortage, enslaving us to a system in the same way Americans may seem enslaved in their.

I always though Americans were used to and didn't have a lost sence of security when job-hopping, the way their employment system is designed.

Edit: clarified the opt-in nature of such an insurance

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

#84

Post by chrisdone »

dbg31415 wrote: post #34

> No programmers really work 60-80 hours a week, especially in a 5 day span. That is a 12-16 hour day, 5 days a week. Who works only 5 days a week? Saturday... sure take the day, but many of us end up working Sundays to get everything ready for Monday mornings. Making sure all the issues are prepared, reports for the past week have been written, all of our tasks for the week are defined and prioritized... 8-10 hours…

You're (presumably) being paid for 5 days a week at 8 hours per day.

If you cannot manage your time reasonably within this period, consider doing some research into that. If you can and yet your employers expect more time, then you're probably being exploited.

Either way this is not normal.

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

#85

Post by spacelizard »

This article also leaves out:

- waiting for compiles

- waiting for the CI server to finish running tests

- waiting for network transfers

- waiting for VMs to spin up

- waiting for slow algorithms to process data

- et cetera

Even if it were physically and mentally possible to problem-solve 16 hours a day, we are still not at the point where our processes and machines can keep up with us, and we probably never will be. The dev-test cycle in itself is very time-consuming and repetitive. I don't know any way of solving this that doesn't involve spending even more time writing a lot of unit tests.

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

#86

Post by simion314 »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #76

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 o…

Also a lot of time is spent on investigating issues and fix those.

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

#87

Post by tener »

lacampbell wrote: post #77
travisl12 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Good headphones work to some extent too.

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

#88

Post by mack73 »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #80
hnnsj wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I like pairing for those reasons as well. Also, I can keep my concentration up more easily when there is a requirement for me to do so, e.g. when I'm intercommunicating. It's when I talk to myself that I get distracted the most.

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

#90

Post by marcus_holmes »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #76

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 o…

If your plans work first time, sure. Mine never do.

I'll spend half an hour working out how I'm going to solve this problem, write code for 15 mins, decide that the solution won't work, try another approach, experiment with that other thing I read about, get something working, then clean it up and write some proper tests, etc.

I need real focus and concentration for a few hours to make this happen, even if it's just implementing yet another login system that I know the logic for completely.

YMMV

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