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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

#251

Post by potions »

drran wrote: post #155
denton-scratch wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with timesheets is that they must add up to the hours you're paid for (full-time salaried work, not hourly consulting). That more-or-less guarantees that timesheets are made-up. My first salaried job was as a salesman; we incurred expenses, which we could claim back. It was explained to us that the system was there to ensure that we weren't out-of-pocket; claims didn't have to actually be true , but you…

8 hours of sleep can undo less than 4 hours of problem-solving activity. Our large brains are already consuming too much body resources. I have CO2 monitor, which I use to estimate is my brain working or not: when I'm working, CO2 level raises quickly above 1000ppm, so I need to ventilate my room often; when I'm idling, e.g. by playing a simple game, CO2 level is at about 740-790ppm without ventilation for whole day.…

wow. is this room particularly small?

Does this track w/ respiration rate or heart rate?

I've never thought about this - it seems like it would be hard to measure w/o a more intense face mask vo2 max testing type setup.

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

#252

Post by twistedpair »

Funny, I find the opposite. Maybe it's a desire to feel efficient, but if asked "how long did that take you", I feel like saying ⅔N hours rather than N hours. Then again, I'm a full time employee, so I'm not billing by the hour, like lawyers that get $100 for responding to your email.

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

#254

Post by thorwawayrus53 »

rahimiali wrote: post #238
thorwawayrus53 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> But “communicating requirements in a written doc” is serious hard work

Precisely. Hence managers delegate this to devs to figure it out themselves and make documentation easy enough for them to understand on a higher level so they can make it look like they understand whats going on. This is what been exposed with WFH.

The important thing that pisses me off is the salary of manager is about 50% higher than IC's. IMO it should not be 70% of IC's salary considering the skills it requires. Manager does not have more responsibility than IC. Manager never takes responsibility for projects failure, its always blamed on IC. Its easy for a manager to get away because usually about 5 IC's will be in a project and one or two failure to deliver features are tolerated. Combine this with attrition its so easy for a manager to not take any responsibility.

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

#256

Post by giantg2 »

_n_b_ wrote: post #250
giantg2 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"trying to improve uneven performers" How do you do that? Apparently I'm an inconsistent performer now.

It’s hard. At least for me, this is the hardest classes of employees to manager—-it’s much easier to get rid of somebody who is clearly failing or reward and further develop a high performer. When I say uneven, I’m thinking of somebody who either: (a) is excellent at certain key aspects of their jobs but clearly below expectations in others to the point that it’s an issue, or (b) somebody who performs well but doesn’…

Thanks. Basically I'm told that some stories I complete quickly while others drag out. I'm on a team that works with multiple systems (10ish), multiple languages, multiple stacks/architectures, and am expected to be full stack.

The "improvements" I've been told to make is to document why stories are slow - mostly context switching from prod support, context switching from my role as ASC, and of course just being slow when working with a system or language that I haven't worked on in a while.

So my perspective based on the feedback is, this isn't a performance issue (if it was it would be under communication instead of speed). It solely addresses visibility of the switching. I have requested consistent work, like being full stack in a single stack. The whole point of specialization of labor is to increase speed and quality, yet it seems this management tenent is wholly missed by my organization. You want consistent speed? Give me consistent work.

The best part is I got a 4.5% pay cut, yet they say they want to retain me. All while the company is talking about across the board increases (which I won't be eligible for) and having trouble filling roles that typically stay open for 6 months. Which is it - do I suck, or do you want to keep me?

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

#257

Post by giantg2 »

geoduck14 wrote: post #205
giantg2 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"trying to improve uneven performers" How do you do that? Apparently I'm an inconsistent performer now.

>"trying to improve uneven performers" >How do you do that? Apparently I'm an inconsistent performer now. I'm unsure if you are asking for advice on how to improve because your current manager marked you as inconsistent or if you think GP is calling all people "who are trying to improve as inconsistent" I'm a manager. I want to improve ALL of my team. To rephrase, I want each of my members to work on things that bene…

I was marked as inconsistent.

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

#258

Post by redisman »

maccard wrote: post #61
underwater wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80 hours a week is the equivalent of 8am to 10pm six days a week. That sounds completely unrealistic. Either the work is trivial, you're destroying your health, or you're over estimating the time you're actually spending.

it doesnt matter if the work is trivial, youre still working. if im dealing with slack pings at 9pm, thats work, even if they just need a thumbs up. > six days a week. Anecdotally when I was doing that much work, it was 7 days a week. When I woke in the morning my phone was full of emails slack pings and build issues, and it was closer to midnight when it stopped than 10pm. There is no down time whatsoever in an envi…

Why do it though? You’re ruining your life and halving your normalized hourly rate. There are plenty of companies where 40 hours of effective work is a top performer and things aren’t breaking every week

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

#259

Post by redisman »

tardigr8 wrote: post #118
treszkai wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it's easier to code all day long than how easy it feels to improve your life. Especially if one excels at work and lacks a social network in life.

100% agree. If you are good at coding, then you code for a day and create something you are proud of. +1 to self worth. You send it for code review or deploy and you get positive feedback. +2 to self worth. A junior dev in house or browsing your open source project loves your code and asks for advice. +3 to self worth. Compared to. Go out to a social event for lunch, struggle through the social interactions. Maybe dr…

If it’s so painful to hang out then you could do something else. Go for a run/bike/hike, woodworking, gardening, gym, learn a new skill, etc. heck so drugs and play video games. It’s good to have something other than work in your life or one day you’ll have a crisis when things go poorly with work

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

#260

Post by deltaonefour »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #176
_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…

Yeah, well...the consensus seems to be that I was a decent manager. I hated the job, but they kept me for 27 years, so I guess something went well. Glad it's behind me, though.

Many managers are bad but can keep the job for a long time. This is because it's not the people that you are managing that judge your performance. So you can very well be a bad manager and still keep your job. The key here is that you only need to be a manager that delivers results. You don't need to be a manager that is good.
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