Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Feeling guilty for doing the bare minimum at work

news.ycombinator.com

81–90 of 415 posts

Re: Ask HN: Feeling guilty for doing the bare minimum at work

#81

This sounds like it might be good thing for the company. Having employees who have extra capacity is incredibly important for an organization that wants to get things done; if you're constantly hard at work on something important, when something else comes up (someone has a question, there's a bug or an outage, whatever), you either have to delay the thing you're already working on, or delay the thing that came up. T…

Eliyahu M. Goldratt has some great books explaining in great detail why this is the case: https://www.amazon.com/x/dp/0884272079 https://www.amazon.com/x/dp/0884271536

Re: Ask HN: Feeling guilty for doing the bare minimum at work

#82

This sounds like it might be good thing for the company. Having employees who have extra capacity is incredibly important for an organization that wants to get things done; if you're constantly hard at work on something important, when something else comes up (someone has a question, there's a bug or an outage, whatever), you either have to delay the thing you're already working on, or delay the thing that came up. T…

Also, extra time is where new ideas and new projects come from.

Re: Ask HN: Feeling guilty for doing the bare minimum at work

#83
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I’m your boss, sitting next to you and in full view of your screen, and I’m there for 8 hours working, will the average person work a real 8 hours?

If you're my boss and doing this, then you're getting none of your own work done.

If you're my boss and doing this, then you're going to see me leave the company.

Re: Ask HN: Feeling guilty for doing the bare minimum at work

#84
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADHD and WFH have basically been a death sentence for me in regards to my output and velocity. Some days are good, some days are horrible. As someone who received their ADHD diagnosis at 22 (well after I fumbled through a CS degree wondering if I was a moron, while also working part time at startups) it changed my life. Ignorant people will say "nobody needs stimmies" but 5mg Adderall has legitimately changed my life…

Good thing you live in , I guess you would have been screwed if you lived in a society before Adderall and ADHD existed, eh?

They might have been perfectly okay in the Manhattan Project doing varied but unplanned fast-paced research, as a WWII fighter pilot, doing subsea welding for the oil industry, being a scout in any number of military forces, being a professional athlete on the bleeding edge of rock climbing and so on.

I think the rise of ADHD as a common impediment correlates very strongly with a society that has few good career options for people who have these neurological variations.

Re: Ask HN: Feeling guilty for doing the bare minimum at work

#86
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From the feedback I got, I wasn't much more productive working more hours I've had this feedback too and I feel like it is likely not true. Really what it is is that your managers aren't paying much attention to your output and have sort of written you off for promotions, raises, etc. This was feedback I got a couple of months after I had been working my ass off trying to impress management and then a couple of wee…

No, I'm pretty sure it's true. I had to spend a ton of time explaining what I did and its values to my managers, like writing "ELI5" docs and then suddenly when they "got it" they paid very close attention to my work, and formed a team around me and established scope and got headcount. This is the messaging I got every single quarter: """David, your work is very good. All the people you work with say you're great and…

> you need to spend more time finding metrics that demonstrate that value and improving those

I have always had trouble with this type of nebulous goal.

Re: Ask HN: Feeling guilty for doing the bare minimum at work

#87
You sound exactly like me. I've mostly just accepted the fact that this is the best way for me to work. I can buckle down and grind out a full day of work some days but not for many days in a row.

I've come to the conclusion that I am usually as productive/more productive than those around me and I tend to think it is _because_ of the way I work rather than in spite of it. When I do sit and do some work I am less stressed and can use a couple hours of motivation to knock out a days work in 2-3 hours usually in the morning. The rest of the day might be meetings/exercise/reading/social media/youtube and perhaps an additional 30-60min of work.

Ultimately I've found that the reason not to "slack" so much is less because I am not productive enough and more because when slacking I often lean on high dopamine activites like social media/youtube etc. that ultimately make me less happy than being with friends/going for a walk/learning something new.

I will also say I have done the "grind" for months at a time and looking back I know that I would have gotten the same amount of real work done at my current pace. The issue is the added stress makes it harder for me to think, I often end up working on the wrong problem as I am trying to move too quickly, and having too many pending tasks makes it harder to make decisions/prioritize.

I've also worked with those that grind and I've noticed they don't always work on high priority tasks. Often they are too focused on grinding they might not be able to step back and realize they could use their time better.

Re: Ask HN: Feeling guilty for doing the bare minimum at work

#88
post #20

At 3 hours a day, you work as much as everyone else does. [0] [0] https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-aver...

I did an HN poll, how many hours per day do you work including meetings and etc, and the answer was a normal distribution around 6 hours a day. https://imgur.com/qdSltlM The left axis is years of seniority.

i don't think you have enough data to be linking this as if it has meaning. N=104 is not a large sample size.

Re: Ask HN: Feeling guilty for doing the bare minimum at work

#89

At 3 hours a day, you work as much as everyone else does. [0] [0] https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-aver...

If I’m your boss, sitting next to you and in full view of your screen, and I’m there for 8 hours working, will the average person work a real 8 hours?

if you're doing this I'm quitting and going to work in one of the thousands of firms where this doesn't happen, and potentially for better pay?

Re: Ask HN: Feeling guilty for doing the bare minimum at work

#90
I think a lot of people could get their work done in ~3 hours a day if they were actually focused for that long. I think a big chunk of folks are in your shoes and just don't recognize it or they think of all of those other things you do as part of work.

I know people who "waste" a huge amount of their time talking to people in the office and probably do less than ~3 of real work a day. They also distract others. But they would call that team building.

Post reply on HN