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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?

#131

Post by mack73 »

grecy wrote: post #124
mack73 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Yes, in Sweden we have laws that protect the employer to a much higher degree and we also have a very static work force. You can easily go this route: learn something, get a job, don't steal or do anything criminal, keep that job until you die or get replaced by a robot. And many do. And get very anxious at the prospect of ever changing occupation because of their mortage. I job-hop alot though (without anxiety, because I'm in demand).

I thought the American system would at least to some degree make job-hopping a non-issue, giving you a much more flexible work force, not anxious, since the fact that you can get fired and have to leave the same day goes both ways. But perhaps that worry comes from not having any type of security nets where we have at least a few. So sure, I see where you come from when you say an American employee is a slave to the corporation that gives him health insurance. He can hop only to other employers with health insurance. He will have less options than me.

We are healther in Sweden, perhaps, but slaves to the money system like everyone else.

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

#132

Post by douche »

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…

My problem is typically that I'll have my work day planned out at the beginning of the day, around the known interruptions. Then I'll get in and there's an urgent problem report from some customer. Then that turns into an hour-long internal meeting scheduled before I actually get to look through the diagnostics, and then an hour or two with the customer, mostly placating, because there's been no time yet to actually do anything. Then it's 3:30, I'm burned out and grouchy, and whatever I thought I was going to do gets pushed back, while I try to figure out and fix up whatever the firedrill of the day was.

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

#133

Post by rorykoehler »

aerovistae wrote: post #98
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…

It's true. I love the US, but our student loans and healthcare systems just flat out suck. As a country we've slowly-but-surely gotten so many things right, but we have a god damned long way to go, and it just feels like we're crawling. I guess with a population of 320 million it's kind of like trying to turn the Titanic.

Exceptionalism is a strange beast. Thinking this way only hurts society at large.

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

#134

Post by rorykoehler »

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…

The problem with this is it creates many dead weights who work to rule as the rule if even that. I can't wait for basic income so finally only the people who want to work do. There is nothing more frustrating than working with someone who doesn't cooperate because they know firing them isn't worth it. Europe and Australia have plenty of these cases.

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

#135

Post by barry-cotter »

rajathagasthya wrote: post #114
barry-cotter wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In India slightly over a quarter of the population are illiterate. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India The World Bank, in 2011 based on 2005's PPPs International Comparison Program, estimated 23.6% of Indian population, or about 276 million people, lived below $1.25 per day on purchasing power parity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India

What's your point? They are talking specifically about students a.k.a people who are literate and have a degree. How's citing literacy or poverty statistics relevant?

India has real problems. Needing to take out a large loan to get a tertiary education when you have completed secondary education in a country where a quarter of the population are illiterate is not a problem.

The money that is spent on making education free for students at a tertiary level could be spent on improving primary education and it should be. No state in India is as rich as Ireland was in 1970. That's around when Ireland made secondary education free to students. To spend money on what is almost entirely a subsidy for the middle class when it could be used to help the wretchedly poor is an abomination.

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

#136

Post by mal808 »

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…

I do this with running from time to time. It's a great way to solve problems. Stuck on something for a few hours? go for a run! I'd usually have some sort of solution by the time I get back.

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

#137

Post by akinalci »

dwd wrote: post #111
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 have a door: there's your 50% productivity boost.

You have a door?! Is your company hiring?

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

#138

Post by psyc »

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…

Do your worst, skeptical HN, but I swear on my life I've been maintaining more than 80 hours of ridiculously productive, focused coding time per week, for about a year. It so different when you love and believe in what you're working on. I literally can't wait to get out of bed and start working, and the entire day goes by before I notice. The thing I'm working on is a sheer joy to work on, and the conditions are ideal. I'd wager the inability to focus for N hours is related to the stress of having to force yourself to focus on something you wouldn't be focusing purely for the sake of it.

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

#139

Post by scottlocklin »

aerovistae wrote: post #98
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…

It's true. I love the US, but our student loans and healthcare systems just flat out suck. As a country we've slowly-but-surely gotten so many things right, but we have a god damned long way to go, and it just feels like we're crawling. I guess with a population of 320 million it's kind of like trying to turn the Titanic.

"Usura rusteth the chisel. It rusteth the craft and the craftsman."

There were a few decades the country wasn't a glorified sheep shearing operation, but those days are long past.

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

#140

Post by barry-cotter »

mkagenius wrote: post #113
barry-cotter wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In India slightly over a quarter of the population are illiterate. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India The World Bank, in 2011 based on 2005's PPPs International Comparison Program, estimated 23.6% of Indian population, or about 276 million people, lived below $1.25 per day on purchasing power parity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India

> In India slightly over a quarter of the population are illiterate. Most of them still aren't homeless. They somehow have a house to live in. Most illiterates still don't go for a loan to educate their kids, they try to educate with hard cash although they do not get very good education but loans are a big no no(mostly)

I recently read an excellent book on the lives of the extremely poor, Poor Economics, Abhijit Bannerjee and Esther Duflo. The authors are development economists at MIT. If you think that poor people don't borrow money you should really read it. Anybody who's secure enough to make it a blanket rule not to borrow money is well above the kind of insecurity that those living on less than a dollar a day deal with.

As far as homelessness goes a homeless shelter in the first world is better than a lot of people's homes in the developing world. There will be clean drinking water, a toilet, almost certainly hot and cold running water, a sufficiency of reasonably nutritious food. One of the facts about the lives of the extremely poor I learned by reading that book is that it's common for migrant labourers in India to sleep on the street or where they're working rather than pay for accommodation. Mostly at work does not mean dorms, it means on a building site or on the floor in a store room.

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