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

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

#261

Post by neuroma » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 7:17 PM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #106

neuroma wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm many doctors work insane hours, which are hard to even imagine for people who do office jobs. The notion that you can only do 4 hours of productive work a day is frankly a luxury. If you have 10 hours of work to do, all of which is essential for people's immediate wellbeing, you find ways of being productive.

Doctors are highly specialized mechanics for the human body. The reason they can work the hours they do is because most of what they do is not creative and can be done on basically autopilot. MDs also work in a profession with a fairly unique quality: you always get paid more for doing more work, and the work is more or less completely prepackaged into self-contained units for you - i.e. a GP seeing patients more or…

Not exactly. Only some are paid per session, as this is typically private medicine, which is not the normal in most of the world. Publicly funded medicine accounts for the great majority of work done, and these doctors around the World are paid the same regardless of their workload. USA has a very unusual system, internationally.

Also, only part of the job is autopilot, much of it is difficult and taxing. Experts will manage their attention and energy throughout busy days.

The point is that humans can and do work hard and at difficult tasks for long periods day after day. The cost is eventual burnout though, hence why so many doctors quit or go part time.

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

#262

Post by toomuchtodo » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 7:19 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #256

_n_b_ wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Time to find a better role at a new org.

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

#263

Post by neuroma » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 7:20 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #110

neuroma wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm many doctors work insane hours, which are hard to even imagine for people who do office jobs. The notion that you can only do 4 hours of productive work a day is frankly a luxury. If you have 10 hours of work to do, all of which is essential for people's immediate wellbeing, you find ways of being productive.

I've never seen a convincing explanation for why doctors work these long hours that didn't boil down to 'the doctors union restricts the supply of new doctors and limits the tasks that can be delegated to non-doctors'. As a result, the regular mention of their long hours generally just makes me angry at them rather than grateful to them, but I guess I'm in the minority.

Whilst I agree that there must be better ways for healthcare staff to work than at max capacity until they burn out... it seems odd to be angry at them for this. Most would prefer a healthy work life balance, and patients would surely prefer a well rested clinician.

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

#264

Post by maccard » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 7:21 PM UTC

redisman wrote: post #258

maccard wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> You’re ruining your life and halving your normalized hourly rate.

Agreed.

> Why do it though?

It was a boiling frog situation. When I joined, things were good. 35-40 hour weeks, interesting work, great coworkers. The team grew, and all of a sudden I was a knowledge holder in areas. It started with an occasional message from a co worker who had a deadline, and then the deadlines were every 2 weeks, and it wasn't just one coworker, it was multiple coworkers. Then it was other people working late nights and me replying on saturday mornings to their issues because I wasn't really working, it was just a slack message. Then it was me fixing issues on a sunday morning because it was the only time my mailbox wasn't bursting. Around that point I realised what was happening, so I scaled things back to working hours, and started getting negative feedback and comments about "not trying as hard as others" from other managers (not my manager though). My annual review came back as negative because other teams were reliant on me being available, so i went back to being always on for about a year before I got another offer and left on good terms.

It genuinely took me about a year afterwards to realise how bad things had gotten (everyone checks their work email precautionarily at 11pm on a saturday night so they can sleep without worrying, right? That's normal.) I'm much better off now.

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

#265

Post by deltaonefour » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 7:21 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #256

_n_b_ wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can assure you that much of underperformance is a perception and miscommunication issue. If the employee is motivated and not stupid then if he's underperforming it's because objectives were not communicated or the manager failed to realize that the assignment was impossible not to underperform due to missing some challenging detail.

Many managers don't realize this. Even managers that have a ton of experience, all they do is fire or have harsh conversations with people who "underperform." The truth of the matter is a good manager is rare. 1 out of 10 literally and it's not an experience issue. A good manager is one who is highly highly unbiased and people are generally not like this.

The person you replied to is not a good manager. Based on his reply he is actually below average.

Basically for these managers good employees are those that can predict what the manager wants and how he thinks. If the person is able to guess and predict what his manager wants on a consistent basis, then objectives are more clear to this employee and as a result he can achieve them. These people are then perceived as "good employees".

Due note that a good manager makes objectives for each task unambiguous and crystal clear. A bad manager leaves a lot of room to fuzzy concepts like "quality of work" because he himself isn't clear about what he wants.

I have seen it many times. Employees who are basically geniuses fired because the manager wasn't able to realize how smart the person was. Instead the manager left the employee with vague instructions and expected him to just "get it." The manager didn't know that the employee is an expert in infrastructure and deployed him on writing algorithms...

This is an unwise and inefficient deployment of resources. It is the managers job to determine what each of his employees like and what they are exceptional at and deploy resources accordingly. It is also the managers job to understand in detail the nature of the assignment given to an employee so tasks can be handed out efficiently.

Bad managers tend to throw random people at random tasks without fully understanding the task or the person. In these cases there is an element of luck involved. How hard the task is versus if the person assigned to the task is suited for that task. An employee who handles the task well or is able to temper the expectations of the manager through communication is perceived as "good."

These managers are easily recognizable. I will tell you how to identify them. They perceive the world as employees who are "underperformers" and those who are not. The person you replied to put the world in 3 tiers lol. The world is very nuanced and it is impossible to divide people into three buckets like this. He is the quintessential example of "bad manager."

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

#266

Post by ivraatiems » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 7:27 PM UTC

brabel wrote: post #18

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.…

Interesting! Thank you for responding.

What's striking to me is that if we break it down, it seems like for you by category it'd be:

Hard task/"brain" time: 2-3.5 hours depending on that last section

Light task time (including wakeup time): 2-3 hours

"Active availability" time: ~1 hour?

Personal time: 1.5 hours

and for me by category it'd be:

Hard task/"brain" time: ~2.5 hours depending on my after-lunch section

Light task time (including wakeup time): 3 hours

"Active availability" but not working time: 1 hour

Personal time: 1 hour

So even though it's distributed differently, the amount of time we spend on the types of tasks are pretty similar.

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

#267

Post by lifefeed » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

bandyaboot wrote: post #211

tardigr8 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another study here that uses an estimate for productivity. https://ftp.iza.org/dp8129.pdf His models show peak productivity between 5 and 6 hours a day. In my own experience, I have found productivity more related to sleep and exercise than anything else. Getting 7 hours good sleep (which means winding down for at least 30 minutes before sleep, a stretching exercise or meditation), and enough exercise every day to ge…

I’m impressed that you can produce any code at all on 2 hours of sleep.

In college I learned that after 36 hours I was coding in circles. A fix to package A broke package B. Fixing package B broke package A. Repeat.

I went through the loop three times before I recognized the pattern, and decided it was a good time to pass out.

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

#268

Post by deltaonefour » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 7:48 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #257

geoduck14 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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.

The earlier guy you replied to was a "bad manager". This guy you just replied to is a good one. He gets it. Note how I said a good manager very much assigns the right task to the right people.

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

#269

Post by sulam » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 7:55 PM UTC

ahelwer wrote: post #227

sulam wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your imagination is very far from the reality of what managers do. I’ll give you a run-down of my day: 1) reading emails. These emails generally consist of a few categories of things — stuff I need to be informed about, questions, asks for permission (a special form of question), documents (generally decision and decision docs, or stuff from Product), and meeting requests. 2) meetings. These meetings generally consis…

You are mistaken, this is literally - word for word - my imagination of what managers do.

Well then you are mistaken in your characterization of this not being work.

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

#270

Post by deepsun » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 8:15 PM UTC

> Despite having over 10 years of experience, some of my colleagues feel the need to explain basic concepts that I already know. I'm assigned the easiest tasks. No one comes to me for help, although I'm the most knowledgable. No one takes my opinions into consideration.

I'm a white straight guy with 18 years of experience (although Slavic), but exactly the same things happen all the time in office. Not saying his story might be different, but often people attribute struggles to race/gender/nationality, while it's actually just competition or just how things are.