71–80 of 163 posts
Over the first 15+ years of my career as an engineer and engineering manager, I've repeatedly surveyed colleagues and friends in engineering roles about this question. I've asked it of people I consider low-performing, all the way to folks I'd consider 10x developers. I have never met a single software developer who, when pressed to give an honest assessment and when "working" is defined along the lines of "actively…
Developer here. Going by my time Rescuetime logs, 62.5% of my time is spent outside of the IDE or any other work related application. I do not enjoy this work and spend a lot of time walking around/thinking about the problem/surfing non work sites.
It is an interesting question which, in my opinion, hinges entirely on a fairly puritanical notion of 'work.' One of my 'problems' is that I can't "not work" in the sense of a laborer who is no longer building widgets. As a person who is asked to solve complex problems with a high degree of dimensionality inside of an arbitrarily constrained solution space, much of the 'work' I do consists of turning the problem over…
Interesting. So despite the apparent success, your manager put on paper that you were "goofing off and not working"? Did he mention that verbally one or two times beforehand? How did you react? Once things hit paper, I generally start interviewing. Not sure whether that was right. But looking back over my career, I usually should have left earlier rather than later in those cases.
And for what its worth, I took it to mean that I wasn't communicating how I was spending my time well enough and suggested ways that would work for both of us. I expect that had I stayed at Intel it would have been fine.
Throwaway for maximum honesty: I am pretty sure I spend at least 75% of my time "at work" not working. HN, Reddit, messing around with side projects or learning a new language or framework. This has been the case for my entire working life. I seem to get as much done as other people (sometimes better) so part of me wonders if I'm not as unusual as I feel. Part of me wonders if I should get evaluated for ADHD, since I…
It's probably not as unusual as it feels
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While it isn't work, reading technical articles regularly on HN can be very beneficial. In fact, the first thing I tell aspiring developers is to start reading HN on a regular basis if they already aren't. It confers a sort of broad awareness of various stacks and ecosystems over time that's hard to obtain otherwise.
Depending on what articles one is reading, this activity could fall within "sharpening the ax" (which is also beneficial for the company).
I try to keep my distractions to a minimum level but I've often encountered comments and articles on HN that have been of great benefit to my work and my clients. Things like a service I've never heard of, a library being used in a way that I haven't seen before or even just personal experiences.
Hell I even use HN to minimize distractions such as reading only the comments section about some new product Google/MS/Apple released(or is killing) just to get an idea of what's out there in the market and if it is of any use to me.
Throwaway for maximum honesty: I am pretty sure I spend at least 75% of my time "at work" not working. HN, Reddit, messing around with side projects or learning a new language or framework. This has been the case for my entire working life. I seem to get as much done as other people (sometimes better) so part of me wonders if I'm not as unusual as I feel. Part of me wonders if I should get evaluated for ADHD, since I…
The best way to describe ADHD is: The TV is always on, but you don't get to choose the channel . Some things are easy to focus on—I can sit down to program for a bit and lose track of time for 5 hours. On the other hand, if something is boring, it's mind-numbingly boring . It was the worst while I was in school, since teachers and professors just thought, "oh, he's unmotivated" when in reality it was more along the l…
Some days almost the entire day. I'll read, watch videos, do some tutorials. But its offset because usually when I do this it's because I'm hung up on something and it just isn't going to get solved unless the ole brain has time to do its subconscious thing.
Letting the subconscious work through a hard problem while doing something else is a truly underrated trick. Taking a shower or going for a walk also works wonderfully.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Work for a startup, preferably one that is already somewhat profitable. I have worked for this type company my whole career and this "devops vortex" you speak of is a foreign concept. I run a small IT dept and we have one 30 min staff per week plus a one-on-one for each dev. And they code and solve other problems all day, and of course surf the web or socialize to break up the day too.
I'm already in talks with two well known pre-IPO startups ( Edit: I've talked with many in my professional network and they describe similar meeting loads (~1 hr/week) as you do. I'd estimate I spend on average 3 hr/week in meetings. And most of these meetings don't result in action items. They're essentially pointless.
When it occurred to me that things are not going to change in my lifetime even with all the promises of upper management, I started creating side projects where I am in control of the full direction. When that wasn't enough, I also started looking for a new job. Joined a startup as a CTO/Lead Dev and was happier.
I'd like to see where people are from if they're replying to this thread. I wonder how cultural norms affect effectiveness (do Americans work less at work because of the work-oriented culture which requires them to stay at work longer for no reason?)
I don't think US workplace culture is extreme in that regard. I usually look at East Asian work culture when it comes truly weird workplace norms and traditions.
My family lived in Japan for a short period, and my father told me that he and his colleagues had to wait for their boss to leave every night before they could leave work. Now that's extreme.