Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

danluu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 183 posts

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#111

Post by crate_barre »

rlewkov wrote: post #13

I think they do matter from the p.o.v. of the people footing the bill for the results. I have yet to work on a product/project where mgt doesn't care about when it gets done and how much it will cost. Call it productivity, call it velocity, but the people paying care and someone always pays.

But do they really care? Some of us work in processes and workflows that would alarm others. Imagine you say ‘I care about my son’s education’, yet everyday you watch this child have to sharpen their pencil with a razor, and walk blocks to a Starbucks to get free internet for research. You can solve it or look into, but you don’t. You could even say ‘I get how hard this is for you’, but instead you call the person lazy. We grow fatigued.

That’s many of our shitty codebases and Agile workflows that besiege one’s cognitive capacity. Couple that with a constant ‘what have you done for me lately’ expectation, and you have a recipe for apathy.

Subconsciously, the kid will internalize that and it’ll show. Your failure as this analogous business father is that at the every end, you blame the kid for not doing enough.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#113

Post by rlayton2 »

Rainymood wrote: post #112

Is there any version of Dan Luu's website with just a hint of css? Plain HTML is unreadable imho, content is usually great but I struggle to get through it because it's so damn hard on the eyes.

On Firefox, reader view made it look quite nice and readable.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#114

Post by xupybd »

Any tips on how to get faster?

I find I'm always trying to learn the new code base or tech it's built on. I hate the hours wasted trying to find out how to do something I already know how to do in another stack.

Then there is the time wasted trying to learn git after mercurial and then Docker.

As for typing after loads of intentional practice I seem to have plateaued at 60-70wpm. No idea how to get beyond that.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#115

Post by agent327 »

graperapist1480 wrote: post #63
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.

"Energy constrained" doesn't mean he lacks sugar, it means his brain isn't letting him do the work anymore because it is in the process of burning out.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#116

Post by agumonkey »

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…

Now there may be bio/psychological differences here, you (and I) seem to enjoy physical activity. Some might very well not.. I'd say it mostly depend on how the activity fits the person too (speed, effort, balance of type of efforts, sense of improving skills and not just mindless sweating).

I like computing work, but it depends the context, if it's grinding through obscure and unreliable program semantics .. it's less fun. Unless you approach it mathematically (like scientific inquiry trying to discover how it may work), it's gonna be grinding.

If you have simple building blocks and you can just unleash creativity.. then it's different, it's pleasurable. You're the only limit.

Now even in that case, my best days is when I can alternate thinking hard, and sport. 20 min of jogging whenever I'm stuck on a feature branch helped me a lot getting stuck mentally and emotionally.

And in a way, thinkers rarely sit down, they move around, it's vibrant.. it's not just grinding on a keyboard.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#117

Post by cuddlecake »

sureglymop wrote: post #91
cuddlecake wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recording oneself is also a common strategy for improving musicianship. When I was drumming, it sometimes helped me see exactly where my movements where improper, hesitant, or superfluous/exaggerated. When I look over junior developers' shoulders while they code, i kind of do something similar, where I point out small improvements in their "movement from one state of code to another", like IDE functions for refactori…

That honestly sounds exhausting.. like, just thinking about it, what if they have set their own keyboard shortcuts? I feel like ones "workstation" or "setup" is always too individual (and that's good). Who are you to know that they don't know about a certain editor feature and just don't like to use that in their workflow? And why does one even need to know vim at this point in time? Don't get me wrong, i know and us…

I am mentoring Junior Developers, working students, trainees and interns who are at the very beginning of their career, they don't have _their_ setup yet. I watch them do something very tedious, and then I point out that there is a shortcut or IDE function for that. They have always been grateful, so far.

> And why does one even need to know vim at this point in time?

I was thinking about this a lot last night. I have learned drumming, bass guitar, guitar and I am learning piano now, so I may not be an authority on practicing, but I know that practice usually leads to a certain degree of improvement.

And very early in my career, I also practiced coding, more specifically I practiced using the IDE, and later I practiced using vim.

Both of these things give me confidence in the "writing and editing" aspects which let me focus on the other aspects of coding, like the abstract/ideas and the stack.

So I don't think it's important to know about vim, but it is important to at some point have deliberately practiced with the tools one uses daily for years to come.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#118

Post by Zababa »

porknubbins wrote: post #68
Jensson wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I feel the same way, but I also think that in all of the time I've spent thinking about it, I could have learned a bit of Vim or better typing, or something.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#119

Post by Graffur »

jdlshore wrote: post #8

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…

It's measured by tweeting, github social actions and giving talks at conferences

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#120

Post by Graffur »

agumonkey wrote: post #37
friedman23 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be amazed wondering how people claimed to work 12 hours a day until I realized they consider writing emails and talking to people on the phone work (which it is). But of course me being a software engineer I imagined for some reason when they said work they meant something like coding which after 6 hours has me drained.

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.

None of that experience translates to programming work imo
Post reply on HN