81–90 of 183 posts
OMG, another man with ideas rooted in Taylor's books. Measure everything, be a robot and at the end realize a fact you don't know anything new because you never had 30min slack time during the workweek to think differently
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the rat-race idea got baked deep into SV largely because of the setup of the post-1970 economy, and specifically California's rules: every startup had to be "fast" and "hit the ground running" not just because of literal business pressures, but because implicitly, everyone intends to exit and move on to the next thing immediately, so a slow-moving part-time effort would be a no-go. That derived just from mund…
I’m fascinated by who is downvoting you without an explanation.
Suffice it to say, the comment is not rooted in any reality of what Silicon Valley was like, it is pure uninformed speculation, salted with a heavy dose of facile anti-capitalist talking points. It's lazy and factually incorrect.
First, things weren't that fast in the past. They were more fast relative to the old system of being employed for life. You know, that system of hierarchy where even the office furniture you were allowed to have was spelled out in a corporate handbook that assigned levels to everyone and created a rigid hierarchy. So who broke that system? It was the treacherous eight. They broke it, and they started Silicon Valley.
Second, it was about empowering the worker. When the treacherous 8 left Schockley's Lab, they were told they would never work again because you don't go and quit your boss because you don't like him or disagree with his technical roadmap. You are supposed to be loyal and stay. They called and wrote to hundreds of businesses begging them to invest in their idea and couldn't find anyone until Fairchild took a chance on them. Their success changed that old system of workers being morally obligated to stay with their boss, and the boss being morally obligated to find something for them to do.
Third, workers were actually empowered with stock options. Something unheard of at the time. It was called communism. That investors and entrepeneurs would give a share of their company to their workers. That system originated in SV during this period, and it led to a lot of churn as start ups began to try to outbid each other and established companies for workers, draining talent from those companies that refused to play along and give stock options. Yes, this led to an emphasis on speed and higher employee turnover. But it was because firms kept outbidding each other to lure away workers by dangling stock options in front of them.
This is why Noyce left Fairchild semiconductor - not because he wanted stock options, he was already wealthy from the buyout, but because he couldn't retain his best employees, and Fairchild was morally opposed to the idea of stock options. All these workers leaving and staring their own companies and then luring away their coworkers led to skyrocketing wages rather than all the wealth leaving Silicon Valley and being distributed back to shareholders in Wall Street. A lot of that wealth was put in the pockets of workers for the first time. This is what led to the price of a bungalow in Palo Alto costing three million dollars. That's what happens when you dump so much money on workers.
I could go on and on actually talking about the history, but what's the point when someone reads a pamphlet about how unfair capitalism is, and decides to go on a rant about how oppressed SV workers must have been in the 70s. The 70s in general were bad for capital, great for labor, with rising wages and rising inflation, as well as massive investment -- extreme levels of investment. The 60s were a boom time for corporate profits, but not the 70s. Anyway, this is all part of basic econ history people should know before waxing about how workers were being abused, etc. So in most cases people just downvote statements like the GPs post and move on, without refuting each misconception in detail.
If you want to know more, check out the American Experience episodes on Silicon Valley. They are pretty good.
Seems to help me work fairly quickly, and fairly well.
I write good code, quickly.
I’m not at all interested in comparing myself to, or competing with, anyone else.
I can get the job done to my satisfaction, and in a timeframe the I consider acceptable.
The problem I have with discussions about “productivity” (including 10x engineer chest-beating) is that no one ever defines what they mean by the word. Is it lots of lines of code? Is it clean design and architecture that’s easy to maintain and extend? Responding quickly to business needs? Making a lot of money in a short time? Too often, people arbitrarily choose what they’re good at, or what someone else they admir…
Note: I only skimmed your comment, so consider this about something else. Programmers protest too much about 10x programmers. Saying there isn't a 10x programmer is the same as saying nobody could possibly work hard and improve enough to be that much better at something. But we know that every single activity we can objectively measure has far more than a 10x variation in performance. Why is there someone 10x better…
OMG, another man with ideas rooted in Taylor's books. Measure everything, be a robot and at the end realize a fact you don't know anything new because you never had 30min slack time during the workweek to think differently
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Design docs take _much_ longer than you think. Code reviews take longer than you think also." I work in medical devices and this is so true. A thorough design doc or a thorough code review takes a very long time. It actually may take as much or more time as the actual coding. Somehow we never account for this time in planning so either things are rushed or the project will be delayed significantly. Add to that the f…
Try actually tracking the time using a free service like Harvest. You'll be surprised just how much longer some things take objectively than subjectively. I'm not saying do retrospectives every week or whatever, but do at least a few, then take note of time sinks and weigh their utility against the time they take. I don't think one can build awareness of this without measurement, something the essay also alludes to.
If you want to go fast and call that being productive, go fast and be productive. But don't gate-keep and turn personal preferences into "should" and "ought". There's a lot of world out there and not everyone wants to organize their lives around work.
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…
In practice, if you improve your productivity at work, it's going to be mostly for your employer's benefit (other than bragging rights and some personal satisfaction).
Gaining time back is not always possible, and that is the core desire for most people (as your OP quote suggests you could do): incentive to improve significantly is not there in a job (even Luu acks this in his blog).
But GP is making a point that it should be perfectly acceptable to not want to (significantly) improve at work while meeting the bar for staying employed.
Not that GP and OP are not really in opposition: Luu is arguing for why it's ok to work on your speed/performance with deliberate practice, GP is arguing that it is ok not to. And I agree with both.
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…
Nowhere did I see any judgement for those who don't agree with them: they merely proclaim what you can easily achieve with deliberate observation and practice and how it matters to them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is only a limited amount of time in life. It matters on what you spend it. Given that the way programming in industry is done is generally fucked up, working super hard at becoming super fast at doing that brand of programming can be a waste of time. Of course that depends on what your goals are.
Interesting POV. Can you elaborate on an alternative to the way of industry programming? Or more simply, list some of the ways in which industry brand programming is flawed?
> An idea that's become increasingly popular in my extended social circles at major tech companies is that one should avoid doing work and waste as much time as possible, often called "antiwork", which seems like a natural extension of "tryhard" becoming an insult. The reason given is often something like, work mainly enriches upper management at your employer and/or shareholders, who are generally richer than you. I…
If you really are not comfortable with the consequences your personal labor you should probably leave your job or not take it in the first place. Oh really? I don't think you're going to get anything like sort of "ethical" behavior until there's something like UBI implemented. Until then, people are going to hold onto high paid jobs they don't like, especially if they can slack off at them.
And so naturally, one must be at a very privileged position to be comfortable with the consequences of ones personal labor.