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

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

#161

Post by gryn »

macu wrote: post #107

I work 7-hour days, but I might work 2 or 3 hours during that time. A lot of the time I find the work unbearable and can only bring myself to do it in short intervals. When the task is interesting, involves my skills, and I'm making progress, I can work for hours with almost no breaks. It really is an emotional thing. I won't force myself to do anything that is really painful because it ruins my mood for the whole da…

work from home has been great for me in that I can compress work into non 9-5 bursts.

instead of slacking trough 8hours per day with an effective 2-3 hours of work for 5 days I take the 1 day(and/or night) were I work full concentration until exhausted (with small breaks) and take next day "off" (I'm connected still reachable in communication tools) to do personal stuff, side projects, watch TV, exercise, or just chores.

My overall productivity and mood are much better than when I was working from the office, but I'm afraid it's soon coming to an end unless I find a new job that's Ok with being remote.

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

#162

Post by DevKoala »

mylons wrote: post #135
DevKoala wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past I’ve hired engineers on a per hour basis; we agree on the hour count while we plan the tasks. Sometimes it takes them more hours than we planned, sometimes less, but our contract stays the same. There is nothing moral/amoral around them being efficient or padding their estimates IMHO.

i think project based billing is more fair so the last sentence doesn’t have to happen.

Estimating hours for a project is essentially project based billing, it is just more granular.

I don’t think the developers who only work 3 hours a day when they are employed full time are being amoral. If they can do it, more power to them.

I often work 6-8hrs a day with meetings taking 40% of my time. During crunch, I work far more. I don’t think there is anything amoral when the system doesn’t work for me either.

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

#163

Post by DevKoala »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #94
DevKoala wrote: post #77

Check threads here: https://www.teamblind.com/ It is a way of life at FAANG, Uber, etc. Don’t feel guilty. These companies will eventually realize they need to change, or perhaps they are okay with it.

Why would they change if they print money?

I wasn’t arguing for these companies having to change. In fact, I am glad it suits the life of people who enjoy that lifestyle. I was arguing that whatever imbalance will fix itself.

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

#164

Post by tmnstr85 »

Einstein spent the better part of three years wandering around the Princeton campus before he presented his theory on relativity. During that time he was mocked by his peers for not "working hard". In retrospect, Einstein noted the time he spent ambling the campus allowed him the space required to finish his postulation.

Focus on you. Don't look at the other animals in the cage to try and measure yourself.

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

#165

Post by sackerhews »

borski wrote: post #150

Read up a bit on ADHD. That 'hyperfocus' that occurs either with deadlines or on a passion project is a symptom, as is the inability to get excited about projects you simply don't want to do - especially given your otherwise positive reviews and your ability to clear your mind and hyperfocus near a deadline, it's something to consider. I was diagnosed at 33, and it changed my life infinitely for the better. YMMV, and…

Second all of that.

Driven to Distraction or Delivered From Distraction. But not both, they're effectively the same book.

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

#166

Post by hanniabu »

borski wrote: post #150

Read up a bit on ADHD. That 'hyperfocus' that occurs either with deadlines or on a passion project is a symptom, as is the inability to get excited about projects you simply don't want to do - especially given your otherwise positive reviews and your ability to clear your mind and hyperfocus near a deadline, it's something to consider. I was diagnosed at 33, and it changed my life infinitely for the better. YMMV, and…

Besides reading this books, what else do you do that helps? Are you taking medication as well?

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

#167

Post by temp8964 »

salixrosa wrote: post #16

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…

It's better to spend free time on your own, actually. Managers don't like you to spend free time to dig around. I learned it hard way.

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

#168

Post by vegancap »

I'm very similar, or was. I was diagnosed with ADHD aged 30. If I'm working on something I enjoy or find interesting, I'm all in on it, obsessed. If I find it slightly dull or tedious, I'll have to fight with myself to get it done, just turns into relentless scrolling through hacker news, or get distracted with other things.

The trick, I've found, is to either find ways to enjoy what you're working on if you don't enjoy it. For example, gamifying it or finding some other challenge in it. Or try to insist on specialising on what you do enjoy working on more.

Read the following as well (if, of course you haven't already): - Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Deep Work by Cal Newport - Hyperfocus by Chris Bailey

Oh, and don't beat yourself up for not feeling 100% productive or enthusiastic all the time. Most of this expectation is a tech culture thing and it's just silly. Most jobs don't expect this, most jobs people assume you're sat around talking and eating biscuits several hours a day. Our brains aren't designed to work in well defined, lengthy chunks of time, it's absurd we expect that.

As a few others haven't mentioned as well, it's worth getting screened for ADHD if you haven't already, the meds can really really help. They were a revelation for me anyway.

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

#169

Post by somethoughts »

salixrosa wrote: post #16

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…

I think there's a tremendous value in having insurance/redundancy for supporting existing critical SW projects/infrastructure.

So while day to day there might not be immediate obvious work, much like a fire fighter or life guard; if the servers go down or coworkers leave there needs to be some ballast that can steer the ship.

That said, if you don't actually know much of the companies code base other than stuff you've directly written, you could very much be providing only perceived insurance versus actual insurance.

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

#170

Post by uh_uh »

borski wrote: post #150

Read up a bit on ADHD. That 'hyperfocus' that occurs either with deadlines or on a passion project is a symptom, as is the inability to get excited about projects you simply don't want to do - especially given your otherwise positive reviews and your ability to clear your mind and hyperfocus near a deadline, it's something to consider. I was diagnosed at 33, and it changed my life infinitely for the better. YMMV, and…

Isn't it just rational not to get excited about boring stuff that is rewarded by a fix monetary ceiling? Economically it completely makes sense: why put more energy into something that yields the same result either way? Or maybe I have ADHD too.
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