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

Maybe you should do less 'work'

johnwhiles.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 431 posts

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#131

Post by wins32767 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #118
toomuchtodo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find better bosses and employers. They are out there.

I've had great bosses, all the way up the chain... but they were all held captive to the "efficiency" measures of the time-tracking system. Everywhere I've ever worked has implemented a methodology that, regardless of what they called it (XP, Scrum, Kanban, whatever) boiled down to: write down everything you're going to do, write down how long it's going to take, and I'm going to measure how accurately you predicted…

You're performing a local optimization rather than a global one. The reason predictability of delivery matters is that the rest of the company needs to do a bunch of work for the set of features you're delivering. Support needs training, marketing needs to send some emails, the sales team needs to update their demos, etc.

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#132

Post by yahn00 »

pm90 wrote: post #47
yahn00 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I’m not a big fan of the term IC since you’re rarely delivering anything truly individually (on the average, yes there will be outliers). IMO “software engineer” is just fine as a role.

No post body was provided.

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#133

Post by sna1l »

I think the main point this article is missing is that having to work extremely hard (10-12 hrs+) usually implies there is something structurally wrong with the team. Your team is criminally understaffed, you aren't getting enough time to fix tech debt, etc. While understaffed, there are times that you just have to work hard to keep things together, but if you don't surface these issues up the chain then you will for sure burn out.

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#134

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

giantg2 wrote: post #66
TameAntelope wrote: post #49

I agree with the content of the article, but I don’t agree with the premise that these things aren’t also “work”. Engineers tend to obsess over, “focused work” like it’s the only way to be productive, and anything that’s not “focused work” is wasted time. That is a surefire way to burn out. Instead, finding ways to “riff” on your job by doing work with longer time horizons of payoff keeps your job fun. It’s all “work…

Well, the bosses usually only care about work the helps produce value. They might like the fact that you know some new tech that they can use in their latest assignment, but they weren't giving you credit while you were learning it the year before just for fun.

I think for going from junior to senior, this is true, but for going from senior beyond, it’s the opposite.

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#135

Post by caffeine »

You are the boss of a company of one. Your company sells labor to the labor market, it makes investments in assets, it borrows funds, etc.

It’s your job to decide how that company is run. It’s your job to decide what investments that company needs to make to get good returns.

It’s also your job to interpret the contracts your company enters into and decide what is acceptable, and to appropriately risk-manage legal hazard, reputational hazard, etc.

There is nobody else to run this company. It does not have a right to a good outcome. A lot of companies fail. Your company of one WILL fail if you make poor decisions.

When you truly internalise that last fact is when you become an adult.

(Edit: clarified that the last paragraph refers to the previous one specifically)

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#136

Post by Consultant32452 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #79
giantg2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the bosses usually only care about work the helps produce value. They might like the fact that you know some new tech that they can use in their latest assignment, but they weren't giving you credit while you were learning it the year before just for fun.

Find better bosses and employers. They are out there.

I have different advice. Focus less on what your bosses want and more on what you want. Doing what your boss wants is a cost you pay, do as little of that as possible so that you can do the things that you want.

This is an exchange in a market. If Best Buy wants $500 for that new TV, would you go in and offer them $750 for it? If Wal-Mart will sell you the same TV for $400, consider going there isntead.

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#137

Post by powvans »

caffeine wrote: post #135

You are the boss of a company of one. Your company sells labor to the labor market, it makes investments in assets, it borrows funds, etc. It’s your job to decide how that company is run. It’s your job to decide what investments that company needs to make to get good returns. It’s also your job to interpret the contracts your company enters into and decide what is acceptable, and to appropriately risk-manage legal ha…

I think this is a great way to look at things and would just like to add that when you have a spouse and children, aka additional stakeholders, it's not exactly a business of one.

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#138

Post by adwn »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #93
0des wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're wrong. These concerns, in many forms, have been present for years, however we were once instilled with the instinct to overcome, but now frailty is more valued because even in failure you can not criticize those who are less able. Those appearing less able while still managing to overcome, even when due to random chance, results in more peer accolades and ironic fanfare in the face of adversity or some other d…

> These concerns, in many forms, have been present for years, however we were once instilled with the instinct to overcome, but now frailty is more valued because even in failure you can not criticize those who are less able. Actually I think you are totally off base here. I know in my cohort of age 30+ millennials there is a strong sense of doom. Many people have the attitude of "why should I have kids when they'll…

> boomerisms

Kind of ironic, given that "boomers" lived under the 4 decades long threat of total nuclear war. Frankly, as an instance of those "age 30+ millenials", that would instill a far stronger sense of doom in me than the rather gradual, rather benign (compared to WW3 between the US and the USSR) effects of climate change.

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#139

Post by srveale »

caffeine wrote: post #135

You are the boss of a company of one. Your company sells labor to the labor market, it makes investments in assets, it borrows funds, etc. It’s your job to decide how that company is run. It’s your job to decide what investments that company needs to make to get good returns. It’s also your job to interpret the contracts your company enters into and decide what is acceptable, and to appropriately risk-manage legal ha…

> When truly internalise that fact is when you become an adult.

Implying that everyone who runs a company is mature and makes responsible decisions, which is not true.

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#140

Post by tonyedgecombe »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #16
0des wrote: post #5

Getting my task completed at my own pace makes me feel good. Often that is fast and on time. In my heart, when I touch the keyboard, I feel like a greyhound dog with a little Bob Ross afro - it can be a race, a competition, but it is also an expression of my art. This article makes me feel bad because in the authors world, people like me are relegated to worker bee monkies trying to please the bossman due to patholog…

> A bit off topic but as of late there is this creeping normalization of intentionally subpar or less optimized results I'm noticing in our industry but also general society. > When did we become so not only complacent but also discouraging of any genuine effort? And these same people are going to expect nothing short of the best of the best from surgeons / plane pilots / car manufacturers / etc. So they can slack of…

>And these same people are going to expect nothing short of the best of the best from surgeons / plane pilots / car manufacturers / etc.

Going under the knife of a surgeon at the end of a 12 hour shift would worry me. I'd like think the pilot of any plane I was on was well rested as well.

Post reply on HN