What “work” looks like • Hacker News Board

Re: What “work” looks like

#71

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 9:13 AM UTC

maest wrote: post #69

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #68

I do a 5K walk each morning. Takes most of an hour (I’m just getting up, now, and will be walking in a few minutes). I put on headphones, and listen to fairly mindless techno music, while I walk. I use it to “triage” the day’s tasks. I often figure out solutions to blockers, during this time.

Honest question (as in, I'm not insinuating what I expect the answer to be): do you think you'd be less efficient or more efficient if you triaged the day's tasks at your desk?

Maybe, but I’d be less healthy. I do the walk anyway, so I like to use the time.

Not offended in the least. Perfectly good question.

Re: What “work” looks like

#72

Post by sirsinsalot » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 9:15 AM UTC

barrenko wrote: post #64

blibble wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, while employed, have you tried to go out for an extended walk or do something else away from your computer, outside of the building you are required to work in? I'm 2 decades into my career amongst multiple different employers in different industries (including traditional stuffy ones), and I've never had anyone even raise an eyebrow at people wandering off for a few hours unannounced if you're billing the…

I've been recently reprimanded for being seen too often drinking water at the kitchen.

Quit

Re: What “work” looks like

#73

Post by rpastuszak » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 9:17 AM UTC

I agree with the sentiment, but brainstorming is a difficult skill and most teams are not really good at it.

Some things can be coached or solved with tools but 99% of the problems I experienced boil down to the people involved, team dynamics.

Some problems can be surprisingly easy to solve with a decent facilitator, e.g. the loudest voices can be balanced a little bit.

The hardest problem (imho): sacrificing creativity for the lowest-common-denominator approach (so everyone is sort-of-kinda-happy yay). In my experience this is way more common at startups than more established teams.

Sometimes I think that as much as large businesses struggle with red-tape/slow implementation, startups struggle with decision-making. I know it sounds counter-intuitive.

Re: What “work” looks like

#74

Post by thaumasiotes » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 9:17 AM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #40

eru wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The topic of bullshit jobs has been overhyped. Btw, even if they are a problem, their impact on the economy pales in comparison with restrictions on migration and construction.

> The topic of bullshit jobs has been overhyped. I think that's true and it's a shame Graeber's choice of language basically offends. Who wants to hear that their job is "bullshit"? And let's face it, sometimes we feel good name-calling all those people whose work we don't understand. Unfortunately that over-hyping subtracts from real and serious questions about why we're burning resources (human and material) doing…

> it's a shame Graeber's choice of language basically offends. Who wants to hear that their job is "bullshit"?

A very large number of people who already believe that about their job.

Re: What “work” looks like

#75

Post by hef19898 » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 9:19 AM UTC

rpastuszak wrote: post #73

I agree with the sentiment, but brainstorming is a difficult skill and most teams are not really good at it. Some things can be coached or solved with tools but 99% of the problems I experienced boil down to the people involved, team dynamics. Some problems can be surprisingly easy to solve with a decent facilitator, e.g. the loudest voices can be balanced a little bit. The hardest problem (imho): sacrificing creativ…

Having worked at two start-ups, I agree. I think the "we are all one happy family" is directly driving the "we cannot come to decissions". Both are driving me crazy at the moment.

Re: What “work” looks like

#76

Post by Phlogistique » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 9:22 AM UTC

Test0129 wrote: post #22

et1337 wrote: post #7

For the past 3 years I’ve worked in an almost 100% pair programming environment. It works wonders for a lot of problems, especially around “code ownership”. It’s much harder to get precious with your code, or point fingers at someone else’s code, when the responsibility for every line is shared by at least two people. But I found that the pressure of pairing shuts down a lot of thought. Long silences are forbidden in…

I'm shocked you made it 3 years. I did a stint trying to do what they call "mob programming" and felt borderline suicidal. I couldn't think because I was constantly vocalizing what I was doing. Nothing added up and every ticket felt like it was just a hodge-podge of different ideas with no real flow. Lord help you if someone wanted to disagree. Now you have to completely stop your worker thread and handle that. There…

I guess everyone is different and appreciates a different amount of collaboration!

I guess something ideal for me would be roughly 70% pair programming, 30% alone time - but I have not been able to test this guess because I have always worked on teams where pair programming is the exception, not the norm.

Re: What “work” looks like

#77

Post by lqet » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 9:22 AM UTC

Test0129 wrote: post #16

I've had more ideas come to me after hiding in my office to take a nap than sitting at my desk. It got to be such a gold mine of solutions that I still to this day allocate 30 minutes of my day to a nap. Non-negotiable. So many hard problems that have been brought to me, or complicated needs for architecture, etc were solved by simply turning my active brain off. When I was in graduate school I'd regularly get stuck…

The three fundamental ideas of my PhD came to while:

1.) Sitting in a park sketching solutions on a notebook.

2.) Laying at the beach on vacation.

3.) Playing Legos with my daughter.

Without these ideas, I doubt there would've even been a PhD, or even a paper publication.

(There was a period of 2 years in my life where I did not have any significant ideas, at all. During that time, I was employed at a company which offered a constant stream of urgent TODO emails and tickets. I worked until exhaustion for 2 years, but did not get any work done.)

Re: What “work” looks like

#78

Post by t43562 » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 9:26 AM UTC

I find collaborative debugging to be quite powerful. Whether it's duck debugging your own code or working with other people to solve a problem that isn't of your own making.

It doesn't mean you are stuck in a room but it does mean updating people on what you've found out and asking the questions that come into your mind. Very often someone else comes up with an idea that advances the state of knowledge until the bug is solved. What happens when you don't know all you need to know to solve a problem? Sometimes you have to involve other people.

As for "is looking out of the window work" well yes of course it can be and you do need to be alone to think often.

I just feel that when I'm stuck in my own perspective and not moving forward much, it can help to get someone else's just as it can help to do some totally different thing and come back at the problem freshly.

Re: What “work” looks like

#79

Post by layer8 » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 9:31 AM UTC

usrme wrote: post #70

lkrubner wrote: post #51

I strongly agree: "The mantra of sharing your work and involving everyone in decisions naturally leads to inviting and copying people into things that add no value to them, or you." Fred Brooks, in his book The Design Of Design, includes a section on "The Magic Power of Teams Of Two". In his opinion, large teams cannot get anything done, and most innovation comes from individuals, but Brooks feels that teams of two p…

I, personally, feel that instead of two it would need to be three to have a more diverse set of opinions and to break any stalemates. I've worked for many years with just one other person and the number of times where we had ideological differences and not enough exposure to alternatives are innumerable.

The one-on-one meetings don't always have to be with the same person. And of course, the particular person matters, some can be more of a hindrance than a benefit.

Re: What “work” looks like

#80

Post by mellavora » Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 9:31 AM UTC

Test0129 wrote: post #16

I've had more ideas come to me after hiding in my office to take a nap than sitting at my desk. It got to be such a gold mine of solutions that I still to this day allocate 30 minutes of my day to a nap. Non-negotiable. So many hard problems that have been brought to me, or complicated needs for architecture, etc were solved by simply turning my active brain off. When I was in graduate school I'd regularly get stuck…

Churchill also saw the value of the nap:

“Nature has not intended mankind to work from eight in the morning until midnight without that refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts twenty minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces… Don’t think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That’s a foolish notion held by people who have no imaginations. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one — well, at least one and a half,”

-- The Gathering Storm