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

People don't work as much as they say

drmaciver.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 313 posts

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

#231

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

austincheney wrote: post #222
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…

> I couldn’t work on my own projects (because I was on paid work time) The only problem here is an employer claiming ownership of a personal project, assuming the personal project isn’t interfering with employee product delivery and isn’t violating employer security policies. My solution to this is dual employment. My secondary employer has trouble differentiating work time from personal time so they end up with the…

It was that (my employers had very good lawyers -especially wrt IP), but also, I felt a great deal of Responsibility towards my company. I know that my attitude is often derided in this crowd, but it was what it was. I did a great deal of work on the side. The job wasn't super-demanding, and I often spent time at my "day job," thinking about the side work; though not actually tapping on a keyboard. Technically, that was a Bozo no-no, but no one got hurt. In fact, a great many people, all over the world, benefitted from it.

I was careful to keep my side work to stuff that did not interfere, or compete, with my corporate employer, so there was never a problem.

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

#232

Post by dosethree »

BatteryMountain wrote: post #156
Klaster_1 wrote: post #71

The article resonated with my experience as as software developer. At my first place, a small outsourcing shop, employees were required to log daily activities so hours per day roughly fit to 8 and 40 per week. From the beginning and unlike most of coworkers, I measured my time precisely with https://github.com/Klaster1/timer-5 and soon understood that doing 8 hours per day doesn't happen much and often involves stay…

What happens if you have a peer that clocks 14 hours per day and work weekends too, for some reason? At our place they started comparing everyone to him. I work like at half his total speed. He often break things or have to redo things or are late to standup and don't really partake in conversations. We've all asked him to slow down and not burn out but he keeps going.

management should make it clear that working off hours or overtime shouldn’t be done

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

#233

Post by thorwawayrus53 »

_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…

> As a manager, your main job is to make your ICs effective at doing their work.

Its a lie manager making dev's effective at their job. All a manager needs to do is communicate the requirements properly most preferably in a written document. That is the only useful thing. Everything else like motivating are just BS which has become very clear in the post covid WFH situation.

Now looking back i can feel the needless interference by managers that slowed down the progress of work. The other sad thing is they assume they have power to fire people to some extent which usually junior engineers believe for the first few years.

Before concluding i had a bad manager, let me say i have had over 10 managers in the past 20 years and its not manager's fault its the job that's BS.

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

#234

Post by vasco »

yodsanklai wrote: post #76

There are definitely people who can work and focus for 8+ hours a day. I can think of my dentist and family doctor. Waiting room is full from morning to evening. Some of my colleagues work hard. I can see their screen in the open space. They are machines. Never a distraction on the screen. The article should be "some people don't work so much, I'm one of them".

Even in normal office jobs. Everyone gets distracted but if I'm having 1-on-1s with direct reports, at 30mins each that's at least 4 hours of calls filling in a morning, plus another misc few calls, like interviewing candidates or whatever, 1 or 2 random fires and you got 8 hours of constantly happening things, and we didn't even look at email or done any actual work yet. I wish I knew wtf these managers with nothing to do are talking about.

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

#235

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

flyinglizard wrote: post #160
BatteryMountain wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if you have a peer that clocks 14 hours per day and work weekends too, for some reason? At our place they started comparing everyone to him. I work like at half his total speed. He often break things or have to redo things or are late to standup and don't really partake in conversations. We've all asked him to slow down and not burn out but he keeps going.

Speaking as a manager, I’d flag this dev as a concern. Very few people can work at this rate without one (or more) of three scenarios playing out: 1. They burn out and clock out mentally or leave altogether 2. They develop psychological issues and destroy their personal life, leading to an unbalanced and unsustainable situation 3. They expect something from the org in return, which normally the org can’t/won’t match…

Often times people who work a lot are avoiding serious problems at home/family too, so even ordering someone to go home might be ordering them to go back to an abusive partner or something. I know more than one person who used “oh, my job takes so much of my time!” As a socially acceptable reason to avoid interacting with abusive people in their life.

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

#236

Post by austincheney »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #231
austincheney wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I couldn’t work on my own projects (because I was on paid work time) The only problem here is an employer claiming ownership of a personal project, assuming the personal project isn’t interfering with employee product delivery and isn’t violating employer security policies. My solution to this is dual employment. My secondary employer has trouble differentiating work time from personal time so they end up with the…

It was that (my employers had very good lawyers -especially wrt IP), but also, I felt a great deal of Responsibility towards my company. I know that my attitude is often derided in this crowd, but it was what it was. I did a great deal of work on the side. The job wasn't super-demanding, and I often spent time at my "day job," thinking about the side work; though not actually tapping on a keyboard. Technically, that…

My primary motivation now for personal projects is a silent anti-Dunning/Kruger.

As a JavaScript developer everybody wants to tell me how it’s done, what the right way is, and so forth. It’s not worth arguing over because the most incompetent developers tend to be the most vocal ones.

I have been writing JavaScript full time for almost 15 years and most corporate JavaScript I see is complete garbage. How do you know what excellent code is? Numbers. Code size, execution time, maintenance time, defect resolution time, test automation capabilities, new feature delivery time, and so forth. For example if your app takes 4 seconds to load and mine takes 50ms I will just assume I am less wrong, but you can’t advocate for that because will cry about code style and frameworks and other bullshit. So silently I write my personal project.

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

#237

Post by Daishiman »

emptysongglass wrote: post #46
Daishiman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Meetings themselves are the problem and what I'm suggesting are the problem. I don't think team alignment is related to the disruptive havoc caused by meetings. We have a lot of evidence that it takes a long time for a mind to refocus on a task once disturbed. I say it's impressive you can crank out that level of focused work because I can't get a long stretch of uninterrupted time that you can. Maybe you have fewer…

It's two 2-hour work blocks a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Yes, you have to aggressively block other activities. Working in small teams with similar goals and prescheduled sync points has helped a lot.

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

#238

Post by rahimiali »

thorwawayrus53 wrote: post #233
_n_b_ wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> As a manager, your main job is to make your ICs effective at doing their work. Its a lie manager making dev's effective at their job. All a manager needs to do is communicate the requirements properly most preferably in a written document. That is the only useful thing. Everything else like motivating are just BS which has become very clear in the post covid WFH situation. Now looking back i can feel the needless i…

Let’s say that’s the manager’s only job. But “communicating requirements in a written doc” is serious hard work, the same way “typing code in a text editor” is a lot of work. To do the former requires negotiating with other teams, understanding the limits of the audience, estimating effort, and basically developing a rough sketch of the solution in your head to make sure the request is reasonable.

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

#239

Post by soldeace »

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…

I have a blast being a senior data scientist, and I've recently turned down a manager role precisely because of the points you raised, despite the better pay. Your comment made me glad of my decision.

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

#240

Post by dls2016 »

faet wrote: post #229
dls2016 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are unions responsible for doctors’ long work hours? According to a quick google there are very low rates of unionization and it seems to be a recent phenomenon (I didn’t know there were any.) Downvotes for asking a Q?

>For the past quarter-century, the American Medical Association and other industry groups have predicted a glut of doctors and worked to limit the number of new physicians. In 1994, the Journal of the American Medical Association predicted a surplus of 165,000 doctors by 2000. Most residencies are paid for my Medicare funds. The 1997 Balanced Budget Act capped the number of residencies that Medicare funds, which led…

The AMA is not a union, nor is the American Bar Association, nor is the Society of Actuaries. These are professional organizations. They aren't involved in collective bargaining and they don't call strikes (putting aside for argument's sake the ethical issues with doctors going on strike).

Here's a document from the AMA itself stating their stance on unions (implying they don't consider themselves a union): https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/advocacy-issue-brief-p...

Post reply on HN