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

brianknapp.me

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

#121

Post by hexointed »

grecy wrote: post #109
mack73 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

> Nobody outside of NA are scared of loosing their jobs, is what you believe, because of how enslaved to the system Americans are? I didn't say nobody , and I didn't say everywhere outside America. Don't exaggerate what I said. I used an example that Australia Vs. America is a vast difference. In my experience (and that of my brother), Americans not having maternity leave, sick leave, decent holidays etc. and having…

I'm currently studying in Sweden. I think mack73 comment was slightly exaggerated.

- Health care insurance is not (as far as I know) provided by your employer.

- If you take the maximum amount of student loan from CSN (http://www.csn.se/en/2.1034), you'll end up whith ~70 000kr debt per year

- Swedish law mandates 25 day of paid leave per year for a full time employee. https://lagen.nu/1977:480 (in Swedish)

- We have parental leave with some compensation for 480 days, you can find more information here: (http://preview.tinyurl.com/ktgsyyg)

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

#122

Post by skrebbel »

Qantourisc wrote: post #72
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.

I'll never work in a place that considers 40 hours "part time".

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

#123

Post by jkgjgkjh »

jpatokal wrote: post #118
jkgjgkjh wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the homeless in Stockholm Swedish or Roma? EDIT > EDIT: Almost all the homeless people you see in Stockholm are Romani people. They are one of the five officially recognized national minorities in Sweden, along with Jews, Sami, Sweden Finns and Tornedalers ... Please refer to my post below replying to this same assertion from another poster.

Those are not mutually exclusive options: there are plenty of Roma who have been in Scandinavia for centuries.

Yes I know, but to pretend that the number of Roma begging in city centers in some parts of Scandinavia has not increased by orders of magnitude in the past decade is pointless.

My point is that the OP was attempting to construct an argument about the supposed failings of a social structure based upon an anecdote about people that were never part of the social structure in the first place.

(NB I never said that they aren't welcome to join the society just that they haven't done so.)

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

#124

Post by grecy »

mack73 wrote: post #116
grecy wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody outside of NA are scared of loosing their jobs, is what you believe, because of how enslaved to the system Americans are? I didn't say nobody , and I didn't say everywhere outside America. Don't exaggerate what I said. I used an example that Australia Vs. America is a vast difference. In my experience (and that of my brother), Americans not having maternity leave, sick leave, decent holidays etc. and having…

>Don't exaggerate what I said Alright then. >When one does lose their job in Sweden, what happens when you break your leg next week? or get cancer? Care for children is always for free in all clinics except private ones. Care for the rest of us cost 30 EUR, no matter if you have a job or not. There is an upper roof of how much your yearly medical bill is. This roof stays the same if you have a job or not. I have it t…

Thanks for the detailed reply, I appreciate it.

As a thought exercise, answer all of my questions above for the USA, comparing the answers to those you gave for Sweden.

Now you know why I said workers in the USA are akin to slaves compared to high-performing OECD countries.

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

#125

Post by wellboy »

Good article but disagree with one of the main arguments that programming is creative work.

Maybe 10% of programming is the creative part,if you're not building artificial intelligence, but for instance consumer apps or UI.

20% is reading the technology API doc to understand how it works, 50% is writing the code down and the rest is bug fixing, so not so much creativity.

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

#126

Post by mcv »

mamon wrote: post #75
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.

That's how I would take that too. It sounds like it's okay to come in at 11 as long as I work until at least 7 pm.

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

#127

Post by hnnsj »

skrebbel wrote: post #119
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…

What kind of business are you in that the entire company except the CEO is programmin full time?

Online productivity tools. No investments, profitable, linear but steady growth, minimal marketing, small team size, close to zero process. Works great for us programmers. And the CEO does a lot of programming as well, if I'd venture a guess I'd say about 40-50%.

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

#128

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#129

Post by codr4life »

tvmalsv wrote: post #57
codr4life wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you get run over by a bus.

I guess the alternative is to learn very little, have fun, run up huge debt, because why not, you're going to get run over by a bus tomorrow. But, then you don't. Well, crap.

Go ahead and postpone life then, no one will stop you; life still doesn't give a shit about plans. You should try being close do dying a couple of times, that will align your perspective with reality in no time at all.

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

#130

Post by auvrw »

spacelizard wrote: post #85

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.…

provided there are a few tasks to handle at once, some of the time under the general "wait for compute" heading can be reduced by switching between tasks ... just recently (my dumbfoundedness over why i didn't think of this sooner being the main reason i'm posting) i realized "hey, why not clone the local repo into _another_ local repo?". the thing to figure out is how to decide whether waiting for compute or context switching will be more boring (or "less productive").

while i'm blathering, this too:

"good programmers are lazy." -- anon

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