Ask HN: What's your working day like? • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by davzie » Mon, May 08, 2017, 8:55 PM UTC

dasmoth wrote: post #193

davzie wrote: post #14

Profession: Web Developer, self employed working remote with startups and creative agencies. Workday: - [08:00] Wake up in a daze and make my wife and son tea and breakfast - [08:30] Shower, get dressed and ready - [09:15] After prepping water canister and tea caddy, head to garden office. - [09:30] Procrastinate - [14:00] Realise the work day is nearly over. Panic. Cram work in. - [17:00] Finish work, make son dinne…

whilst contemplating an entire career change To anything in particular?

Haven't a clue, I don't like working with clients anymore, and running a SaaS is out of the question since everyone wants to do it and it's not as dreamy as it sounds. I'll figure something out for sure.

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

#352

Post by dalml » Mon, May 08, 2017, 9:01 PM UTC

Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh heh - and, uh, after that I just sorta space out for about an hour.

Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.

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

#353

Post by patrickbolle » Mon, May 08, 2017, 9:12 PM UTC

sockgrant wrote: post #232

patrickbolle wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this. I'm a web developer, recent college grad. I freelance and travel a lot. It's cool, but I hate the work for the most part. I do lots of tiny UI tweaks and stuff every day. It's slowly killing me inside I think. The upside is I work from 'hpme' and can sleep in and have lots of freedom and stuff, but when it comes to work... It's destroying me. I have been living in Costa Rica for the past year and I'm…

The grass is always greener. You're (theoretically) making more money than them and most likely have a more flexible schedule. They're also tied to location. You can get bored of Costa Rica and move tomorrow if you want. There's nothing to be jealous of. You can start a surf shop if you think they have it better than you.

For sure! I totally agree with that.

I love my current position in life because of that flexibility and freedom, just the work is so-so :)

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

#354

Post by patrickbolle » Mon, May 08, 2017, 9:12 PM UTC

kukabynd wrote: post #272

patrickbolle wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this. I'm a web developer, recent college grad. I freelance and travel a lot. It's cool, but I hate the work for the most part. I do lots of tiny UI tweaks and stuff every day. It's slowly killing me inside I think. The upside is I work from 'hpme' and can sleep in and have lots of freedom and stuff, but when it comes to work... It's destroying me. I have been living in Costa Rica for the past year and I'm…

Just open a surf shop or a tour company since you like it. Automate shit out of it and hire locals, you are your own engineer. I don’t see why not. Diversifying is always a good idea. Web-dev is a good source of income to fund these endeavors. You have all the cards up your sleeve IMO.

That's what I've been considering for sure. I'll (hopefully) always have web dev as a fallback to make some extra cash on the side if something falls through.

Thanks.

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

#355

Post by patrickbolle » Mon, May 08, 2017, 9:16 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #183

patrickbolle wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this. I'm a web developer, recent college grad. I freelance and travel a lot. It's cool, but I hate the work for the most part. I do lots of tiny UI tweaks and stuff every day. It's slowly killing me inside I think. The upside is I work from 'hpme' and can sleep in and have lots of freedom and stuff, but when it comes to work... It's destroying me. I have been living in Costa Rica for the past year and I'm…

> Some of the locals are living their dream. Less stress than me, 10x happier. It's incredible. I see this every day in West Africa. People spend huge time with their families, people build their own houses, and grow their own food. Sure, it can be hard manual labor, but certainly virtually everyone has money for a bottle of beer (or 10) every day. We have a lot to learn from the "undeveloped world"

Seriously, been reading your blog this afternoon and love it man. Maybe I'll stop by in Africa next year! Hah.

I 100% agree.

Maybe I just wasn't built for the tech field, but something about sitting on the computer all day feels wrong.

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

#356

Post by wakkaflokka » Mon, May 08, 2017, 9:18 PM UTC

msadowski wrote: post #340

elbrian wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely curious: what's your sleep (quality, schedule) like? I've recently begun waking up at 5:45am and have had a tough time adjusting. I find myself ready for bed at ~8pm more often than not.

Not op but I started waking up at 6:00 starting with this year to work on personal projects in the morning for up to an hour. My sleep quality got much better, I'm usually in bed around 23:00, the biggest difference I noticed is that I'm falling asleep in less than 10 minutes after I lie down. As a side note: I noticed that having proper supply of Magnesium seems to help me a lot to wake up in the mornings.

I've had horrible sleep my entire life, teens to adulthood. Started taking magnesium citrate supplements at night, using earplugs, and keeping a 100% hard wake-up time at 6:15 am. It's changed things drastically for me - I don't have to have a solid "bed time", I just go to bed when tired (usually 11pm). I fall asleep in 15 minutes compared to an hour. As long as I stick to waking up at 6:15am, I'm golden.

Learned this by doing CBT-I, where the therapist would start me off by forcing me to get 4 - 5 hours or less of sleep, and record how long it took me to fall asleep. Then I'd gradually go to bed earlier and earlier until I hit an 'optimal' point.

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

#357

Post by patrickbolle » Mon, May 08, 2017, 9:18 PM UTC

bodger250 wrote: post #318

grecy wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some of the locals are living their dream. Less stress than me, 10x happier. It's incredible. I see this every day in West Africa. People spend huge time with their families, people build their own houses, and grow their own food. Sure, it can be hard manual labor, but certainly virtually everyone has money for a bottle of beer (or 10) every day. We have a lot to learn from the "undeveloped world"

this is EXACTLY my goal here ....pushing myself into getting started... we CAN live comfortably without the gut wrenching feeling everyday ...for me it started with the garbage warrior... a house that provides all your energy, food, water, waste treatment... combine some of these excellent ideas with automation and ...your house takes care of you - only problem is - everyone doesn't have their own little chunk of dir…

Wow, never seen/heard of that movie. Really cool!!

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

#358

Post by agumonkey » Mon, May 08, 2017, 9:28 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #113

treehau5 wrote: post #46

Profession: Software "Engineer" [06:15] First alarm goes off; [06:45] Finally wake up, get out of bed, shower, shave, make espresso for me and the wife [07:15] out the door, 30 minute commute to office [07:45] breakfast bagel at my work cafe [08:00] arrive at desk, begin contemplating work -- work on something I procrastinated on the previous day so that I can have a good standup report [9:00] everyone arrives at off…

Profession: software "engineer" too. [08:00] First alarm goes off; [10:00] I'm starting to wake up [11:00] Some quick HN checking [12:00] Ok, off to office. [13:00] At the office; talking with customer if needed, otherwise desperately trying to get some work done amidst noise and distractions, including but not limited to people occasionally playing board games for a break. [18:00] All my cow-orkers in the room have…

I remember having a similar 6pm alone with the walls bliss in my last mission. Absence allowed me to fill the room with ideas and motivation. Very nice and very odd at the same time.

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

#359

Post by nibs » Mon, May 08, 2017, 9:28 PM UTC

Senior individual sales, full-time, in person, 2000+ person company.

[07:30]: Wake up naturally. Shower, shave, get dressed.

[08:15]: Walk 5-minutes with wife to work for breakfast.

[08:30]: Standup over breakfast with team, very boring.

[09:00]: Start working on new business outreach. Phone meetings and remote demos all morning in succession in large open space full of around 40 desks. I like the energy of the environment. I occasionally book a room if I want some space to work but mostly like the intensity.

[12:00]: Catered company lunch with buddies and/or wife

[12:30]: More work, same as before except more existing deal outreach and internal meetings in afternoon. Mostly go to a breakout space to get things done, peak energy during this time. This part is the most fun generally.

[17:30]: Walk 5 minutes home with wife. Sometimes take the long way.

[18:00]: Start and eat dinner, go for a walk again or to the gym.

[20:00]: Work on side project for 1-2 hours if time allows.

[21:30]: Read nonfiction with wife for an hour or two before bed.

[23:00]: Head to bed and hang out chatting before dozing off.

I do this everyday and would not change a thing with the exception of removing all formal training and most internal meetings and adding kids. Same as when I had a company except the part about nonfiction, side projects and standups was just grinding away instead.

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

#360

Post by lloeki » Mon, May 08, 2017, 9:42 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #235

squeaky-clean wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoy helping when people come up to me with legitimate questions, for all the reasons you mention. It feels like half the time, I'm being bugged not for any real reason, but because the person couldn't bother to put some effort in first. For example, I've become known as "the regex guy" at the office. I know regex really well as well as the ins and outs of the regex engines of languages we use. I don't mind when I…

Well of course people are gonna keep calling on you, you're known as the guy who will cross the building to fix their work for them! What incentive does anyone have to borrow your copy of Mastering Regular Expressions when their problems can be fixed with a simple email to you?

Sometimes you really have two NOOP choices:

1. Give them a quick answer and point them to the book but they'll never read it and continue to interrupt even if you told them to not interrupt for trivial matters. On and now you're so much of patronizing dork. Back to square one.

2. Don't give them the answer, and point them to the book. Now you're the smartass jerk that doesn't socialize. Plus they won't read the book and invent some crazy solution to get shit done and later when you have to fix the mess the WTF/min ratio goes through the roof. Back to square one.

Which leaves you with three possible actions: DealWithIt, RageQuit, or RageFix, only one of them being a long term fix but things don't happen in a vacuum and you're not always in a position to do so.