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People don't work as much as they say

drmaciver.substack.com

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

#161

Post by aprdm »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #87

I’ve been reading some variant of this, for many years. One of the reasons that I hated being a manager, was because the job involved a lot of sitting around, waiting for stuff to happen. I couldn’t work on my own projects (because I was on paid work time), and it would have been irresponsible, in the extreme, to put myself into the critical path (because it was no guarantee that I would be able to reliably work). I…

As a manager I feel my days are always short, I work in a big company and have 1:1s with other departments to develop relationships, to try to influence other team’s roadmaps , to check how other people are doing that used to be on my team and how can I help, to talk with end users, to mentor junior developers… I can pick and choose what I feel has more impact on above.

I also have a vision of where I want the team and the company to be and try to get strategies to achieve it. For example, increases pay bands justification, promotions, career ladder, more training budget, paying for software, approve open source usage requests that are blocking someone etc.

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

#162

Post by aprdm »

analog31 wrote: post #134
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #87

I’ve been reading some variant of this, for many years. One of the reasons that I hated being a manager, was because the job involved a lot of sitting around, waiting for stuff to happen. I couldn’t work on my own projects (because I was on paid work time), and it would have been irresponsible, in the extreme, to put myself into the critical path (because it was no guarantee that I would be able to reliably work). I…

As a manager, I quickly realized that trying to be a technical contributor was a subtle and insidious form of micromanagement. Also, I could give myself my pick of the coolest tasks, which was unfair.

I pick boring tasks that have been sitting on the backlog for a very long time usually .

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

#164

Post by convolvatron »

Ntrails wrote: post #148
analog31 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a manager, I quickly realized that trying to be a technical contributor was a subtle and insidious form of micromanagement. Also, I could give myself my pick of the coolest tasks, which was unfair.

The alternative is you give yourself the low priority low probability work. The 'noodle around this nasty thing nobody wants to touch' work that delivers tech debt reduction or a velocity win. It can be very fulfilling, but no critical path, no OKR or delivery date etc etc

this is right. no, you don't get the big win. but you do get to put in that cleanup that everyone is always talking about. and you get to actually write the tests that no one else has time for.

you kind of have to do this. idk how I could function effectively if I didn't have a reason to be looking at the code all the time.

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

#165

Post by gonehome »

_n_b_ wrote: post #152
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #87

I’ve been reading some variant of this, for many years. One of the reasons that I hated being a manager, was because the job involved a lot of sitting around, waiting for stuff to happen. I couldn’t work on my own projects (because I was on paid work time), and it would have been irresponsible, in the extreme, to put myself into the critical path (because it was no guarantee that I would be able to reliably work). I…

As a manager, your main job is to make your ICs effective at doing their work. That means you need to be dealing with poor performers, rewarding with outstanding performers, trying to improve uneven performers, managing expectations from your management and shielding your team from the vicissitudes of your bosses as much as possible, fighting for things your team needs while shielding them from the demoralizing reali…

Yeah, I agree with all of this.

Doing this well also requires building relationships with the team and trust. Recognizing little things like how people can be afraid of a project (and that fear can lead to spinning), and how to break things down/prioritize.

In software I think there are also system changes that can make individuals happier (often stuff described in books like the Phoenix project and working effectively with legacy code). A lot of which enable the things you described.

People are happy when they’re productive and goals are clear/make sense (and they have the space to focus on the work for them) and they get recognized for it.

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

#166

Post by dpark »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #137
orzig wrote: post #43

Valuable prospective, but (as is the gist of half my comments here): People are even more different than you think. RescueTime wrote a similar post, but +100 data: https://rescuetime.wpengine.com/work-life-balance-study-2019... Look at the second histogram. The average is roughly aligned with OP’s summary, but there is huge variance. These comments have already devolved into people telling each other they are lying,…

I’ve logged my work time (automatically with time tracking apps) for over a decade. I’ve also done a significant amount of hourly-rate consulting where I’m very careful to only bill for actual working time. When I was younger, one of my early challenges was that I had been misled to believe that only time spent in the editor, writing code counted as “working”. There’s a somewhat pervasive idea among devs that meeting…

> Some of the laziest, least productive people I've worked with are the same people posting on LinkedIn on Sunday morning about their 80 hour grinds every week.

In my experience, people who claim to regularly work 60-80 hours/week are completely full of it. Yes, there’s this “thought about work for a second, that’s another hour” mentality. But there’s also just a ton of people outright lying about the amount of time they actually sit at a desk.

I worked at Yahoo for a while and nearly everyone told me they worked long hours, like 10 hour days, every day. The vast majority of them were working at most 8. People would talk about working late but they came in even late, too. Showing up at 11am and leaving at 7pm is not a long day. The people claiming to work until 7 were also not actually stating that late typically, because if I stayed until 6 the place was a ghost town. There legitimately were a few people who were working long days, but they very much seemed to be the exception. There was an unhealthy culture of pretending to work absurd hours, though.

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

#167

Post by bloqs »

No, the productivity pareto principle here is very clear, 20% do 80% of the work. This is unbelievably consistent across human organisations. This percentage applies roughly to many things, including sexual partners at college, money earned, academic success, and health issues.

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

#168

Post by mywacaday »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #87

I’ve been reading some variant of this, for many years. One of the reasons that I hated being a manager, was because the job involved a lot of sitting around, waiting for stuff to happen. I couldn’t work on my own projects (because I was on paid work time), and it would have been irresponsible, in the extreme, to put myself into the critical path (because it was no guarantee that I would be able to reliably work). I…

Well done, sounds like a great setup you've created for yourself. I'm a manager and looking for a financially viable way out/back. I haven't coded since I left college and and have some small ideas for some side projects, has anyone here hired offshore coders for small projects like an addin for outlook etc?

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

#169

Post by ghiotion »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #153
tamrix wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost anyone that brags to others about how many hours they work typically count checking their emails while watching TV as work.

That is working though.

Exactly. I spent a decade plus in a job where emails came in routinely until 9-10 at night and often the CEO would send out something on the weekend. Even if I wasn't required to respond or the response was short, this is _absolutely_ work. Over and above that, spending a decade being literally unable to get away from work in that way is like arsenic poisoning. It was like "I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm dead." It's insidious and terrible.

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

#170

Post by drakonka »

I am sure this is true for many people, but it doesn't resonate with me at all. I usually end up working way more hours (focus working, not browsing HN or Reddit between PRs) than I'm supposed to. It is so easy for me to get sucked into a task and not be able to put it down until I'm done, and then get sucked into the next task even if it it's after-hours. And once I have momentum it is very difficult for me to stop until I feel some sense of completion, even though the task is expected to be spread out across several days. I think it is a sign of workaholism and it's something I am trying to work on.
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