I'm a senior full stack engineer that is considered a lead developer on a project usually. I spend about 20 to 30% of my day coding. The rest of the time is code reviews, pair programming, reading, and meetings.
Ask HN: How much of your time at work as a software engineer is spent coding?
21–29 of 29 posts
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time at work as a software engineer is spent coding?
#22My answer is: as much as possible! I willingly took a 50% paycut this year and left my $big_company job to invert the 80% meeting / 20% tech ratio, and it was the best decision professional decision I've ever made. On a day-to-day basis, there's always going to be a cyclical element -- I just spent two weeks writing code nine hours a day to push through a big feature, and now I expect to spend a week or two on less f…
I'm not sure why it pays less. It's a "demotion", but between a skilled middle manager and skilled developer, the skilled developer is more valuable. I actually got a slight pay rise going from mid manager in a big company to developer in a startup, albeit I had to give up the free parking, nice dinners, and free coffee/boba.
> between a skilled middle manager and skilled developer, the skilled developer is more valuable
I disagree. While the skilled developer might add to the teams output, a skilled manager will multiply the output (by 1.x) of the whole team.
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time at work as a software engineer is spent coding?
#23The overhead of Agile/Scrum/SAFe takes around 30%, other meetings take another 10-20%, other stuff probably takes another 10-20%.
So there are weeks with 30% coding and others with 50% but not much above that.
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time at work as a software engineer is spent coding?
#24>(and just justifying the work they're doing or waiting for answers).
I am curious as to what you mean by this? It sounds like you are suggesting that this work is not valid? Is that what you think?
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time at work as a software engineer is spent coding?
#25My answer is: as much as possible! I willingly took a 50% paycut this year and left my $big_company job to invert the 80% meeting / 20% tech ratio, and it was the best decision professional decision I've ever made. On a day-to-day basis, there's always going to be a cyclical element -- I just spent two weeks writing code nine hours a day to push through a big feature, and now I expect to spend a week or two on less f…
I'm not sure why it pays less. It's a "demotion", but between a skilled middle manager and skilled developer, the skilled developer is more valuable. I actually got a slight pay rise going from mid manager in a big company to developer in a startup, albeit I had to give up the free parking, nice dinners, and free coffee/boba.
Meh, you need both skilled developers and skilled managers.
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time at work as a software engineer is spent coding?
#26Here is a quote from "The Tale of J. Random Newbie" by ESR:
"He had heard in college that in industry, a hundred lines of finished code a week is considered good performance."
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time at work as a software engineer is spent coding?
#2750%, I'd say. Breakdown: - Reading code: 20% - Writing code: 10% - Debugging code: 20% - Meetings / administrata: 10% - Other productive tasks: 10% - Goofing off: 30%
I'd say less than 2%. These are ball-park-guesses...
-Reading Code: 3% -Writing Code: 2% -Debugging: 15% -Meetings/Administrata: 20% -Docmentation/Paperwork: 20% -Testing: 20% -Other productive tasks: 15% -Goofing off: 5%
Note: When I say "debugging", it's often not debugging code. Sometimes it is, other times it's user-error, hardware malfunction, mis-understanding of the spec, etc.. A good chunk of debugging time is spent eliminating software as the failure. I work on highly regulated medical devices and their connected systems.
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time at work as a software engineer is spent coding?
#28Re: Ask HN: How much of your time at work as a software engineer is spent coding?
#29I'm tech leading a small project (~5 people). How much time I spend coding varies quite a lot, usually 20-50% in a typical week. I spend more time than I would like in meetings of various kinds: interviews, 1:1s, planning for the next quarter, etc.