51–60 of 99 posts
"My point today is that, if we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as 'lines produced' but as 'lines spent': the current conventional wisdom is so foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the ledger."
This isn't surprising, because devs have a tendency to focus on the hard bits of coding as being their work. Why not, right? It's probably the most satisfying too, so we forget the bits where we document, explain to colleagues, organize, etc. Don't forget that a lot of "not working" such as browsing a certain orange-and-beige website actually IS work as well: you wouldn't be updated on what's going on in the tech wor…
Yes, people should be more like lawyers. Bill for that time you spent in the shower thinking about your clients case. That reads sarcastic, but in today’s workplace you really need to know the legal framework you’re working within or you’ll probably be fleeced or worse. How lawyers charge actually is instructive.
This isn't surprising, because devs have a tendency to focus on the hard bits of coding as being their work. Why not, right? It's probably the most satisfying too, so we forget the bits where we document, explain to colleagues, organize, etc. Don't forget that a lot of "not working" such as browsing a certain orange-and-beige website actually IS work as well: you wouldn't be updated on what's going on in the tech wor…
As others have said, it all depends on what you call "work".
3-4 hours of deep work is fairly standard I think. The rest of the time is not necessarily something I wouldn't define as "hard work" (emails, meetings, etc...) - but it's not slacking either.
This isn't surprising, because devs have a tendency to focus on the hard bits of coding as being their work. Why not, right? It's probably the most satisfying too, so we forget the bits where we document, explain to colleagues, organize, etc. Don't forget that a lot of "not working" such as browsing a certain orange-and-beige website actually IS work as well: you wouldn't be updated on what's going on in the tech wor…
Yes, people should be more like lawyers. Bill for that time you spent in the shower thinking about your clients case. That reads sarcastic, but in today’s workplace you really need to know the legal framework you’re working within or you’ll probably be fleeced or worse. How lawyers charge actually is instructive.
This is a bad survey, both for questions of selection (busy people don’t do surveys like this) and the nebulous question of what constitutes real work (my guess: this is telling you who has lots of meeting, Jira, etc. overhead). My real question: is this just clickbait or is this fodder for the kinds of companies which market things like monitoring software to toxic managers? I have memories of working at a consultin…
> is this just clickbait It's ideological reinforcement for their target audience. Most managers and business types have no idea what their underlings actually do, but they have a suspicion that they are not the lean-mean-money-makin'-machine they (ideally) should be. So business-oriented publications like this pander to their fears and strengthen their resolve to whip slackers into shape.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say anything that prevents you from, for instance, browsing the internet for pleasure counts as work. Meeting in a boardroom? Work. Zoom call in which you have to regularly participate? Work. Zoom call you can basically ignore while you read HN? Not work.
That's an interesting definition. I'm not sure it's useful. Eg when I am oncall out of hours, I could browse HN almost all the time, but it is still low-intensity work, even if nothing breaks and pages on that day.
This isn't surprising, because devs have a tendency to focus on the hard bits of coding as being their work. Why not, right? It's probably the most satisfying too, so we forget the bits where we document, explain to colleagues, organize, etc. Don't forget that a lot of "not working" such as browsing a certain orange-and-beige website actually IS work as well: you wouldn't be updated on what's going on in the tech wor…
> that there's entire classes of people who never do anything as satisfying as coding during their day. All they do is communicate in some way: making powerpoints, schmoozing with customers over lunch, sitting in meetings to discuss what the business should do As someone who finds coding completely unsatisfying and who instead chose to have a career sitting in meetings to discuss what the business should do, I find t…