People don't work as much as they say • Hacker News Board

Re: People don't work as much as they say

#11

Post by beebeepka » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 8:36 AM UTC

Eh, I know it's just an expression but I automatically distrust awfully presumptuous stuff like "as much as you think". The author doesn't have the slightest idea what I think, yet he proclaims to know better and tries to correct me.

Rant aside, it is my experience that the vast majority of people are useless bums. Pretty sure that's nurture as opposed to nature, though. If it weren't learned behaviour, people wouldn't be performing all these rituals in the hopes of obscuring their very uselessness.

That said, I manage 4-6 productive hours a day. Used to be half that at the start of my dev career. Sometimes I do 10, even 12 hours if I have the energy and motivation.

Re: People don't work as much as they say

#12

Post by andrei_says_ » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 8:37 AM UTC

register wrote: post #8

I worked really too much today. I had 10 meetings!!

Somehow I count meetings as … meetings and not work. More like pauses between productive work efforts.

Same with communication.

Only when I produce something tangible I feel that I’m working.

I know this is kind of silly but I feel like sitting in a meeting and getting paid is like cheating. Or replying to an email.

In no way I’m suggesting that time and attention are not valuable - it’s just that these activities feel trivially easy compared to the cognitive load of coding.

Re: People don't work as much as they say

#13

Post by morsch » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 8:41 AM UTC

"The details of this are somewhat career specific, and my experience is mostly with a mix of software development, writing, coaching, and consulting."

Somewhat career specific is a colossal understatement.

Re: People don't work as much as they say

#14

Post by watwut » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 8:46 AM UTC

andrei_says_ wrote: post #12

register wrote: post #8

I worked really too much today. I had 10 meetings!!

Somehow I count meetings as … meetings and not work. More like pauses between productive work efforts. Same with communication. Only when I produce something tangible I feel that I’m working. I know this is kind of silly but I feel like sitting in a meeting and getting paid is like cheating. Or replying to an email. In no way I’m suggesting that time and attention are not valuable - it’s just that these activities fe…

Write down notes from meeting for yourself and try to remember what was said - the tl;Dr.

It will make you feel more like working. But also, I found that actually useful in the long term. I did that as experiment and then then some months later I found myself using all that stuff. Not everything was useful, but a good chunk of it was.

Re: People don't work as much as they say

#15

Post by zriha » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 8:50 AM UTC

ivraatiems wrote: post #4

I can quibble with the specific hours, but this resonates a lot with me. My average day looks something like: Hour 0-0.5: Get ready for the workday - messages, email, write standup report, take a shower. Hour 0.5-1: standup meeting + offline meetings. Hour 1-2: meetings or brain work Hour 2-3: mealtime, active availability Hour 3-5: active availability, light work, meetings Hour 5-7: brain work (I do my best brain wo…

I have the similar schedule like you do. I even plan a short 0.5 - 1h training between morning and lunch. And like you, I am more productive in the afternoon, at the end of the day.

Re: People don't work as much as they say

#16

Post by Daishiman » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 8:52 AM UTC

emptysongglass wrote: post #9

Daishiman wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you define as "real" work? In most productive days of coding I get 4/5 "real" hours of focused, concentrated work. Very, very rarely would I get more than 6 without finishing the day mentally exhausted. Meetings? Doing more than two back-to-back, hour-long meetings is an ordeal if you want a productive meeting. You can sit there and stare into space for far longer, or just keep minimum attention. But intellig…

4 to 5 hours of real, focused, concentrated work is impressive. I take a long time to recover from a meeting and they're usually in the middle of my day, almost every work day, and often there's more than one. They're also exhausting so I'll have lost some vibrancy by the time I do get back in the flow of actual work.

4 to 5 hours is achievable and easy if you are aligned with your work and team and find it energizing. With a bad team, bad money, or bad product, downright near impossible to care enough for it.

Re: People don't work as much as they say

#17

Post by nnoitra » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 8:53 AM UTC

Is this true for everyone or is this a special specimen "Most days I can do somewhere between one and two hours of hard thinky work."?

5 - 10 hours of deep work per week required to get a Phd from Imperial. That's impressive.

Re: People don't work as much as they say

#18

Post by brabel » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 8:53 AM UTC

ivraatiems wrote: post #4

I can quibble with the specific hours, but this resonates a lot with me. My average day looks something like: Hour 0-0.5: Get ready for the workday - messages, email, write standup report, take a shower. Hour 0.5-1: standup meeting + offline meetings. Hour 1-2: meetings or brain work Hour 2-3: mealtime, active availability Hour 3-5: active availability, light work, meetings Hour 5-7: brain work (I do my best brain wo…

Let me try as I think I am almost your opposite.

Hour 0-0.5: get back to whatever I left the previous day... most productive 0.5 hour of the day with a fresh mind.

Hour 0.5-1.5: meetings, status updates, syncing with others...

Hour 1.5-3.0: more intense coding. May be bug hunting, new feature, more testing...

Hour 3.0-4.0: lunch.

Hour 4.0-5.0: typically helping other team members or discussing bugs/new features etc. Or doing "research", keeping up-to-date reading whatever (software related), including HN.

Hour 5.0-5.5: coffee break, thinking about personal stuff usually, have a little snack or something.

Hour 5.5-7.0: more coding. Much lower productivity though, typically leave things to finish in the 0.5 hour I am most productive the next day. Might read news and non-work related things to give my brain a little break every now and then.

Re: People don't work as much as they say

#19

Post by jcun4128 » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 9:02 AM UTC

ivraatiems wrote: post #4

I can quibble with the specific hours, but this resonates a lot with me. My average day looks something like: Hour 0-0.5: Get ready for the workday - messages, email, write standup report, take a shower. Hour 0.5-1: standup meeting + offline meetings. Hour 1-2: meetings or brain work Hour 2-3: mealtime, active availability Hour 3-5: active availability, light work, meetings Hour 5-7: brain work (I do my best brain wo…

I do the hardest thing first thing in the morning, that fresh zest.

If I'm not feeling it (motivation) will try blasting music/getting pumped then start to slowly get into the flow. Usually works.

Re: People don't work as much as they say

#20

Post by mkl95 » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 9:04 AM UTC

I spend a significant part of my day working synchronously (engineering / product / etc. meetings, mandatory unplanned calls to fix some crappy system that is failing in production...) as opposed to working asynchronously (reviewing someone else's PR while they work on something else, reading some spec, etc.).

I work as much as it seems, but I do it in a wildly inefficient way due to my employer's work-hard-not-smart culture. The fact we work 50 hour weeks to do things we could do in 35-40 is hilarious and infuriating at the same time.