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Ask HN: What's your working day like?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#51

Post by dheera »

- [05:30-06:00] breakfast

- [06:00-07:30] random.choice([bike riding, work on side projects, hiking, reading/studying])

- [08:00-11:30] solid coding hours

- [12:00-13:00] lunch

- [13:00-17:00] try to get work done, but because people have a tendency to interrupt me every 5 minutes, work never actually gets done during these hours http://www.freelancing.ph/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Program... >

- [17:00-18:30] squeeze in some more coding time, maybe

- [19:00-20:30] dinner

- [21:00-23:00] random.choice([piano practice, work on side projects, reading/studying, night hiking, house chores/laundry/maintainence, additional work time if necessary])

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#52

Post by johnward »

monkmartinez wrote: post #31

Profession: Firefighter - Full time Workday (kind of, nothing is typical at the firehouse): - [06:00]: Wake up - get dressed covertly and slip out of the house - [06:30] Arrive at the station - Get coffee! Find my "relief" which is the similarly ranked person on the off going shift. - run 911 calls - [07:30] Have "line up"; Where we discuss what drills we have planned, eat some breakfast... drink more coffee. Talk ab…

I really liked 12 hour shifts when I was in tech support. Working 3 on and 3 off was amazing.

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#53

Post by c0l0nelpanic »

Profession: Part-time remote software engineer small company

Workday:

[6:30] Wake up and read stuff on my phone

[7:00] Make coffee eat breakfast

[8:00] Open laptop and work on prioritized list of tasks

[10:30 or 11] Stop Working

[11:00] Lunch

[12:00 to 3:00] Un-fun personal stuff (chores, bookkeeping, laundry, etc..)

[3:00 to 3:30] Nap

[3:30 to 7:30] Exercise - Surf, Mountain Bike, Run, Hike, etc...

[7:30] Dinner

[8:30 to 11] Movies, read more stuff, etc...

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#54

Post by loarake »

trequartista wrote: post #37
loarake wrote: post #34

Medical Physics 4th year PhD student Workday: - [Variable] Wake up, shower, make coffee, read news. - [10-11 AM] Take the subway to work (15 minutes) - [11 AM to 5-6 PM] Work on Monte Carlo simulation or optimisation code / write paper if it's one of those days - [6-9 PM] Eat dinner with GF while watching something on the computer - [9 PM - 1 AM] Do some more work (most common option) or play piano or play Rocket Lea…

Could you elaborate on what does studying medical physics entail? This is the first time I'm hearing about it and I'm curious since this appears to be at the intersection of two unbelievably complex fields (to me at least)

In general, the field is split into imaging research (MRI, CT, Ultrasound, optical imaging) and radiotherapy research. It's a very applied field, the fundamental physics has been figured out a long time ago except for some really niche areas. For example, some people are trying to model particle transport inside DNA itself at the nanometer scale, where the transported particles have very low energies. There's still some physics work to be done there, but it's pretty marginal and the lack of theory in those areas is mostly due to theoretical physicists losing interest rather than the theory being too difficult.

I personally work in radiotherapy, making simplified (faster) Monte Carlo particle transport algorithms for use in treatment planning, and also finding more "modern" optimisation techniques to handle the many degrees of freedom available on radiotherapy linear accelerators to produce higher quality treatment plans compared to what we can do right now. It's hard to define what a high quality treatment plan is without a lot of background, but basically we try to find ways to put more radiation in tumours while sparing the healthy tissue all around the tumour. My "research" is like 95% programming.

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#55

Post by galfarragem »

vidanay wrote: post #19
ryandrake wrote: post #16

Project Manager - Large tech company. - 6:30AM Awake - 7:00AM Leave home, work on transit if needed - 9:00AM Arrive at office No typical day, but typical activities. Day is divided into about a dozen 30-minute and 1-hour chunks )(so, no getting into The Zone like programming), mostly dictated by existing meeting schedules: ~60% meetings ~20% communication, solving things over E-mail when I can, hounding people in per…

4.0 - 4.5 hours of commuting every day? And I thought my 1.5 hours, 3 days per week was bad. I do not envy you.

I got a non-STEM degree like that: 5 years with 4h of daily commute. I wouldn't wish it to my worst enemy if I had one.

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#56

Post by david-gpu »

monkmartinez wrote: post #31

Profession: Firefighter - Full time Workday (kind of, nothing is typical at the firehouse): - [06:00]: Wake up - get dressed covertly and slip out of the house - [06:30] Arrive at the station - Get coffee! Find my "relief" which is the similarly ranked person on the off going shift. - run 911 calls - [07:30] Have "line up"; Where we discuss what drills we have planned, eat some breakfast... drink more coffee. Talk ab…

Most interesting. As a layperson I have trouble understanding what happens 17:00 to 06:00 the next day. What does it mean to "flag down" if you are still running 911 calls all night?

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#57

Post by pdabbadabba »

Profession: Lawyer (Telecom regulation).

Workday (times after 9:15 are generally fictitious. Who knows what's going to happen at a given time on any given day.)

[7:30]: Wake up. Skim news, including industry news sources like HN, and more specialized law/politics stuff like Communications Daily and Politico.

[7:50]: Shower, get dressed (business casual), leave the house.

[8:30]: Commute. listen to a podcast, read a book, or on busy days (or on days when I'm feeling highly motivated) read some work-relevant thing (an FCC document, industry whitepaper, you name it. There's always something.)

[9:15]: Arrive at office. Catch up on email, if there are any I missed on the commute. (Of course, I'm generally reading, and trying to respond to, email at all times, whenever I'm awake and my inbox isn't empty.)

[9:40]: Write. This is usually some sort of regulatory comment or letter.

[12:15]: Lunch with a bunch of coworkers.

[1:30]: Conference call with a client to share intelligence on the status of an issue we're working on. (Usually this means the status of a regulatory proceeding at the FCC, but not always.)

[2:30]: [On good days] Conference call with a client to strategize about a some new issue they're concerned about. This involves the client explaining what their current problem is, and a little on the spot thinking about how I can help them to it under the FCC's regulations. Either they have a new product/service they want to launch with some possible regulatory issues, or have longer term regulatory ideas they want to start looking at (think, for example, Net Neutrality, TV White Spaces, etc.).

[3:00]: Back to writing. Most writing projects take a day or two, so I won't typically finish writing anything on a given day.

[4:00]: Research. Look into legal issues, technical background, or other types of information relating to a new project. Try to become an expert on whatever that thing happens to be.

[6:15]: Record time, in 6 minute increments, all the time I spent working for every client that day.

[6:30]: Head home.

[7:15]: Arrive home. Eat dinner.

[8:00]: Mop up things I forgot to do while I was in the office.

[8:30]: Play video games, read, watch TV, work on side projects.

[10:30]: Read in bed.

[11:30]: Sleep.

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#58

Post by salesguy222 »

antisthenes wrote: post #41
salesguy222 wrote: post #22

Profession: Sales (software and hardware) at a massive IT conglomerate Day consists of sitting at a desk waiting for a customer to ask for something. Otherwise I play games and wait to get fired. Collect random commission checks and salary whenever possible

Great to see some variety!

Haha my pleasure!

That's what we do. Especially for inside sales.

Outside sales is mostly the same thing, unless you have great accounts. Only difference is you sit at your house and not your desk.

And you also do fake travel and bill it to your credit card for points, and wait to be reimbursed by your company, who think you are out like actually visiting customers lol

Some people do great work and are very skilled but the rest of us are benchwarmers

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#59

Post by ohstopitu »

UseofWeapons1 wrote: post #45
ohstopitu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one become a Management Consultant (and how much experience would one need to become one) ? Is it something you enjoy?

There's two major entry points to management consulting, straight out of college and post-MBA. I did an internship after my junior year, and took the full-time offer. Most firms also hire out of business school. There's certainly exceptions to this rule, especially when firms are seeking industry expertise, but those make up the majority of folks. My level of enjoyment varies based on the cases I'm on. It's generally…

What sort of skills would come in use for such a position?

I'm a Software Engineer (graduated in 2016) and considering a full time MBA (2 yrs) next year. This sounds like something I'd enjoy - just wanted to get more info from someone in the field.

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#60

Post by wjh_ »

vidanay wrote: post #19
ryandrake wrote: post #16

Project Manager - Large tech company. - 6:30AM Awake - 7:00AM Leave home, work on transit if needed - 9:00AM Arrive at office No typical day, but typical activities. Day is divided into about a dozen 30-minute and 1-hour chunks )(so, no getting into The Zone like programming), mostly dictated by existing meeting schedules: ~60% meetings ~20% communication, solving things over E-mail when I can, hounding people in per…

4.0 - 4.5 hours of commuting every day? And I thought my 1.5 hours, 3 days per week was bad. I do not envy you.

3 hours of daily commute for college.

Can confirm. Not fun.

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