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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

#301

Post by ahelwer »

sciprojguy wrote: post #296
ahelwer wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replying to emails and sitting in meetings thinking of the best way to tell other people how to do the actual work isn't work, no. Oh I forgot - we give the people who do this control over the employment of the people who do the actual work. Very weird system.

Former manager here - you'd be very surprised at how much effort it takes to act as a human shield for your developers to keep the interruptions to a minimum and keep their roadmap stable. It's work, and it can be delicate. Try running interference with a company president who wants to bother your developers when they're trying to get something out the door, or trying to make sure stupid ideas die before they become…

Why do people keep saying that managers solve the problem of existing in the same company as other managers as though that’s a compelling point?

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

#302

Post by dpark »

walnutclosefarm wrote: post #294
dpark wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the doctors they worked with routinely worked 12 hrs/day, often 5 days per week, and then spent part of their 2 "off" days working as well. I have a lot of trouble believing this. You’re claiming that 60 hours minimum was standard for doctors yet somehow the nurses had enough sway to get away with 36 hours. Ignoring how much of that as “active work”, I have trouble believing they are even in the facility for that m…

Nurses are hourly employees and their employment terms are strongly influenced by the fact that many of the nurses in the employment area were unionized. The fact that they are hourly means there is a compelling financial incentive to limit their work time to 40 hours per week or less. The prevalence of unionized nurses in the market means that even non-union hospitals had to approximate the terms of the unionized on…

You might be right. Some quick searches show several resources saying doctors work an average north of 50 hours/week, with some passing 60.

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

#303

Post by [deleted] »

_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…

[deleted]

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

#304

Post by mbrodersen »

tamrix wrote: post #56
vorhemus wrote: post #40

I don't think people who say they work 14 hours a day are lying. They just count in everything that is somehow related to their job, like reading about their business in the newspaper or thinking about work in the shower. And that's the crux of the matter, in jobs that don't have clearly assigned shifts or where attendance is measured, the boundaries between work and leisure become blurred. And then again, comparison…

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

I never understood people who bragged about working long hours. Why on earth do they believe that working long hours is something to be admired? I care about what people achieve. Not how many hours they spend achieving it. People can be super busy, spinning their wheels, without achieving much. I see that all the time. I call it “being incompetent”. Not something to be proud of.

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

#305

Post by mbrodersen »

mkl95 wrote: post #20

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…

Seriously find a better job.

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

#306

Post by gompertz »

ahelwer wrote: post #191
flyinglizard wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each hour put in as a manager is many times the return of you as an IC (for better or worse). As technical work is an endless pit of time, it’s very difficult to be a hands on manager that’s effective.

Very entertaining to read a thread of managers telling themselves they shouldn't do any work, and then simultaneously describing not doing any work as "many times the return of you as an IC" (presumably counting themselves not interfering with the people doing the actual work as equivalent to doing the sum of that work).

No kidding... We got managers here saying they don't know a lick of Python their "IC's" [1] work on, or they can only contribute by ordering pizza when their team is working hard. Seriously...talk about textbook Dunning-Kruger. It use to be people got promoted to manager from becoming experts in the task they would now manage... Now they are spawned from business school, I guess. It's fine to be a manager and manage a team, set goals, deliverables etc etc... yes, it's a real job. But damn you for not being able to roll up your own sleeves and put pen to paper with the rest of your team to achieve those goals.

[1] This business jargon term has seriously got to go. It's bullshit and oddly demeaning.

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

#307

Post by gompertz »

ahelwer wrote: post #203
caseysoftware wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think "hands on keyboard coding" is the primary/only form of work that matters, then you've missed out on a lot. Of the best managers I've worked for, one of the most obviously important things they did was keep other teams off our backs. Constant interruptions, shifting priorities, "just a quick question", and the like do more to destroy a team and its progress than anything else. Their name doesn't get attac…

If you want that then hire someone to stand outside your office with a stick and reply rudely to emails. We don't need to give them hiring/firing/promotion/rewards authority.

Completely alarming this comment is being down voted. It's 100% true.

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

#308

Post by gompertz »

ahelwer wrote: post #274
sulam wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Replying to emails and sitting in meetings thinking of the best way to tell other people how to do the actual work isn't work, no. Oh I forgot - we give the people who do this control over the employment of the people who do the actual work. Very weird system.

I'm not sure what's more unsettling to me: That we have managers here who believe that reading emails and sitting in meetings is considered contributing and making an actual difference... Or that HN has this many managers on it who apparently really cannot code or directly contribute alongside their team; yet are posting on a more technical forum, on a regular basis. Strange. Guess it's like a hockey fan who watches every game but has never laced up skates themselves.

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

#309

Post by inglor_cz »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #298
inglor_cz wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there is any country in the world where doctors work for 40 hours, regardless of the economic model. The world of human disease places some limitations on what can be done. Many people either do not have the grit or the stomach to become doctors (I could easily learn the theory, but I couldn't cope with all the blood, pus, vomit and frequent feeling of helplessness). People develop critical problems at…

Medical school application rates beg to differ. There's at least 10x more people that want to be doctors than get to be doctors.

They apply, but that does not necessarily mean that they would be able to finish the training. Being a doctor is prestigious and unsuitable candidates might be drawn to the golden haze.

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

#310

Post by labawi »

gompertz wrote: post #307
ahelwer wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want that then hire someone to stand outside your office with a stick and reply rudely to emails. We don't need to give them hiring/firing/promotion/rewards authority.

Completely alarming this comment is being down voted. It's 100% true.

I guess it depends on what the person is doing. A guy with a stick won't be negotiating timelines and requirements, explaining why things can't / won't / weren't done, dealing with fallout or shifting the requirements / timelines of others based on teams productivity.

Do they need to be the one with hiring/firing/promotion/rewards authority? I don't know.

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