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Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

danluu.com

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Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#61

Post by bcrosby95 »

handrous wrote: post #51
agumonkey wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

after doing a few kinds of jobs: - food retail: producing hundreds of sandwiches an serving hundreds of customers back to back, teaches you about productivity - landwork: 8000 picks per day teaches you about work maybe i'm masochistic, but whenever I see people relaxed at work, neither doing much nor thinking much, I consider it's not work. There's no difference between what they do and me at home chilling.

I've done tough physical labor, and repetitive physical labor. They may wear out the body (or may invigorate it, depending on the load), but the mind is fresh even after 8+ hours, in my experience. And it feels good . After six hours of typey-typey in front of a screen I feel used up . Worthless. Dead. And that's a very good day—four is more typical for "how long can I do computer work before I just want to curl up a…

I've always had a somewhat weird work process. I probably spend a large amount of time just plain fucking around. But it's interspersed with exploring solutions to the problem.

The fuckaround time is important. It lets me re-evaluate the problem with a clearer mind.

Oftentimes this looks like I'm doing nothing for a day or two. Then by day 3 I just write everything that needs to be written in an hour or so.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#62

Post by sumnole »

handrous wrote: post #51
agumonkey wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

after doing a few kinds of jobs: - food retail: producing hundreds of sandwiches an serving hundreds of customers back to back, teaches you about productivity - landwork: 8000 picks per day teaches you about work maybe i'm masochistic, but whenever I see people relaxed at work, neither doing much nor thinking much, I consider it's not work. There's no difference between what they do and me at home chilling.

I've done tough physical labor, and repetitive physical labor. They may wear out the body (or may invigorate it, depending on the load), but the mind is fresh even after 8+ hours, in my experience. And it feels good . After six hours of typey-typey in front of a screen I feel used up . Worthless. Dead. And that's a very good day—four is more typical for "how long can I do computer work before I just want to curl up a…

I'll add that it's different when I'm coding and have full autonomy - I could practically go all day on personal projects.

When I have to yield to hierarchy, maintain "agile" processes, and put up with other bs, it drains the work drive and gets tiring real quick. It's not just toll from hard mental labor but also from bad environments - which can exist in any industry.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#63

Post by graperapist1480 »

minihat wrote: post #30

The actionable advice in this post: 1) Track where you spend your time 2) Apply deliberate practice to improve where you are weak/slow I am typically energy constrained rather than time constrained, as I imagine is the case for many working in engineering/science. Yet, the author's advice remains useful. Deliberate practice should provide gains to both time and energy costs of tasks. For me most productivity advice,…

Energy constrained? That’s odd. Just eat more? CICO after all. Maybe guzzle some lard? It’s very dense.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#64

Post by renewiltord »

dochtman wrote: post #5
renewiltord wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first thought was that people were linking related stuff. But the two posts were written within a day of each other. Perhaps one was inspired by the other or perhaps the authors know each other. Dan Luu is a pretty prolific blogger / tweeter about engineering and this one is the later blogpost. I find it unlikely it was a "repurpose".

Both bloggers know each other (this is pretty obvious if you read some of their online stuff), so Dan Luu probably reviewed the other post early and thought it interesting enough to add his own take.

Yeah that makes sense. Sounded like the most likely explanation honestly.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#65

Post by graperapist1480 »

cratermoon wrote: post #21
saeranv wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He literally discusses all your points in the first paragraph: > The top reasons I see people say that productivity doesn't matter (or is actually bad) fall into one of three buckets: 1. Working on the right thing is more important than working quickly 2. Speed at X doesn't matter because you don't spend much time doing X 3. Thinking about productivity is bad and you should "live life" Here's his argument for your la…

Yeah but he doesn't recognize that his entire argument is personal choice elevated to moral imperative. > an easy way to do that is to be more productive at work and spend less time working Why is need to be more productive at work framed as a prerequisite to spending less time working? Just spend less time working. His moral stance, which he never reflects on, is that working is good, and relaxing is predicating on…

every moral imperative is also a personal choice. And honestly, if being a better coder saves 100k people a few hours in wasted time once, that’s ten person years - coming close to moral imperative! If your productivity tool’s new feature enables some engineering collaboration that builds a new bridge in Kenya, that saves a thousand person years?

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#66

Post by graperapist1480 »

cratermoon wrote: post #32
Jensson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will get fired if you don't get enough done at work. Higher productivity means you can accomplish enough tasks to not get fired in less amount of time.

But that's just taking the moral argument another level deeper. Why should a person's leisure be subject to the whims of employment? > you can accomplish enough tasks to not get fired in less amount of time. And how many employers will look at the work you got done in less time and tell you to go home for the rest of the week because you've finished everything assigned?

> Why should a person's leisure be subject to the whims of employment?

Even the leisure time of fish and rabbits are subject to eating leaves and kelp. Time is useful. Your work may give 100x more leisure time to thousands of people. And even if it doesn’t, it’s still necessary - who will maintain the back ends for the porn sites? The mind reels to think of what would happen if Netflix’s sysadmins became simple bumbling 1xers. So many kdramas unwatched! One slip up in 2010 and million basic whitegirls not knowing be soft touch of The Office!

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#67

Post by vymague »

I was going to ask how to identify the "hotspots". But I guess, for most people, the mentioned learn how to touch-type fast and editor shortcuts are good enough first steps. And of course there's the obvious improve your programming knowledge and skills.

One of the linked HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22253893 post has an interesting advice. Record yourself when you're coding. Watch them and identify possible improvements. Reminds me of James Woods' lawyer character in the TV show Shark. He did the same thing.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#68

Post by porknubbins »

Jensson wrote: post #39
hardwaregeek wrote: post #31

I suspect the dissenters and Dan are not as far apart as one would expect. What I see in the dissent is a rejection of the specific brand of Silicon Valley rah rah productivity cult. There's a lot of mysticism in SV style productivity, whether it's the new hottest app or the latest lifestyle craze. It's also almost always directed at squeezing more work out of someone who's already working far too much. What Dan's pr…

> Too many people are extremely static in their assessment of their skills. They make overarching claims like "oh I'm just not good at cooking" or "I just can't type very fast", when they can remedy these issues with practice. The people with the biggest blockers are those who argue along the lines of "learning skill X isn't even important, no learning skill X actually makes you worse!". That is the perspective so ma…

I wish I could identify a finite set of tasks at which to practice and get much faster. The tradeoff between getting faster at one thing and learning a new thing that could potentially improve my productivity even more is never really clear to me. Someone can have perfected their craft in X and then something better comes along and replaces the whole paradigm.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#70

Post by throwawaygh »

jeffbee wrote: post #35
es7 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Productivity: If you need an X, how quickly can you implement an X at a high level of quality? If your product manager asks for a new widget or api, can you implement it without any major bugs in 1 hour? Or will you take three days because you don't understand your programming language, your codebase and your requirements? Will the widget/api be free of major bugs, or will it fail on a variety of edge cases that coul…

Eh, there are two archetypes in this industry: One who pounds out the solution in an hour, is not smart enough to perceive its flaws. One who takes three days because they understand their language, codebase, and requirements.

There are also a freaking ton of mediocre programmers who take three days to pound out flawed solution.

See: the recent story about Missouri revealing SSNs of teachers.

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