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What “work” looks like

blog.jim-nielsen.com

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Re: What “work” looks like

#131

Post by wrycoder »

trashtester wrote: post #117

> Load my brain with all the context of a problem. It's easy to overlook this part of the article. The loading of the brain is essential for me. That part may actually look like work. It may involve discussions, meetings drawing sketches or prototyping code. Those things may actually look like work, but the purpose is not necessarily to produce the final product (unless it turns out to be trivial), but to build under…

Seymour Cray dug a tunnel to nowhere from his basement out into his backyard.

He claimed that’s where he got his best ideas.

Re: What “work” looks like

#133

Post by postalrat »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #125

Look how many comments here are something like: "Well, of course leisure is good - because it helps me work harder!" It's sad. It's that "work-is-noble" ethos. These people are effectively saying that they are at-lesiure in order to work better - they have it backwards! I don't know about you, but I work in order to be-at-leisure; I am only ever not-at-leisure in order to be-at-leisure. Refreshing and recharging is g…

Some people honestly enjoy work. I enjoy making stuff for myself and for others.

Re: What “work” looks like

#134

Post by jdthedisciple »

blibble wrote: post #53
hrbf wrote: post #42

Back when I started as a freelancer, I initially copied the 9-to-5 rhythm of „working“. That, despite having viewed this forced window of work as one of the biggest annoyances that come with a job. Over time, I could overcome this „weird“ feeling of not sitting at my desk while working. It went quite a bit like the author describes: - Load up on context and information. - Start outlining the problem. - When stuck, tr…

> 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 never had anyone even raise an eyebrow at people wandering off for a few hours unannounced

wandering off for *a few hours* he said ...

Wow, you must be one lucky sir.

Re: What “work” looks like

#135

Post by pcurve »

d0m3 wrote: post #100

That's why remote work is so liberating. You don't have to stay at your desk but you can move your body and free your mind as much as you like. When I get back to the office I feel stuck. Physically and mentally.

I never felt constrained or locked out even at office. I would go for a walk. I would space out at desk. I would chat with people. No one got offended. Of course it probably helped that mg boss was not in the same states.

Re: What “work” looks like

#137

Post by michaelrpeskin »

bstpierre wrote: post #97
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…

It often feels like “teams” of 1.5 work really well. Basically this is one person doing the work, with one other person who is very much in the loop but not actually on the hook. The worker is getting the job done, and the consultant is offering ideas, questioning some decisions, reviewing WIP, and generally supporting the worker. Having been on both sides of this, I think that the little bit of distance that the con…

Great insight! I always look back at my high-school internship at a real software company back in the 90's. I spent at least half my day sitting in the cube of the old unix greybeard (literally) just watching him code and once in a while asking what he was doing. It seemed like a waste of time, but 1) I became a really good c programmer from multiple summers of watching an expert, and 2) since I really wasn't in charge of typing, I had a second stack going in my head and when he would ask "what was the query we just sent to the database" or something like that, I'd remember and keep him going. So I think I helped him as much as he helped me.

I often try to recreate that with interns and juniors at my current job, but everyone is so anxious about not typing or not submitting commits they don't stay and watch me work. Plus I think I'm less comfortable with silence than my old mentor was. He didn't care if I was sitting beside him for a hour while he was quietly hacking away. I tend to feel the need to explain a bit too much about my thought processes.

Re: What “work” looks like

#138

Post by mxuribe »

mmcgaha wrote: post #119
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 started working from home four years ago and I have less ability to step away from my desk now than I ever had working from the office. It got even worse in 2020 after most of the office started working from home. Not to mention that teams snitches on me if I am away from my computer for five minutes.

> "...Not to mention that teams snitches on me if I am away from my computer for five minutes..."

When you said "teams", did you mean the Microsoft Teams app, or like your actual co-workers? Because if its your co-workers; damn, sorry to state it, but that's pretty toxic environment.

Re: What “work” looks like

#139

Post by mmcgaha »

mxuribe wrote: post #138
mmcgaha wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started working from home four years ago and I have less ability to step away from my desk now than I ever had working from the office. It got even worse in 2020 after most of the office started working from home. Not to mention that teams snitches on me if I am away from my computer for five minutes.

> "...Not to mention that teams snitches on me if I am away from my computer for five minutes..." When you said "teams", did you mean the Microsoft Teams app, or like your actual co-workers? Because if its your co-workers; damn, sorry to state it, but that's pretty toxic environment.

Sorry I should have said Microsoft Teams.

Re: What “work” looks like

#140

Post by mr_gibbins »

lqet wrote: post #77
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 o…

Snap. Whenever I sat down to cast about for ideas on how to develop the initial form of my PhD, nada, zip. Deliberate concentration on one thing was a shortcut to procrastination.

The 'big idea' came when I was on campus, standing outside smoking. Hit me like a bombshell. I literally ran to see my supervisor, blurted out IT'S JUST A F**G MOLECULE, cleared off his whiteboard and spent the next hour sketching out what turned out to be another 5 years of work.

Those eureka moments are where true creativity turns up, I find it impossible to solve problems through dedicated, stare-at-the-screen thought, but I'll get a brainwave at e.g. the gym and nearly drop the weights on my head.

Companies need to promote creative problem-solving spaces, and I'm not talking about a beanbag area with free lattes, but a sit-and-think, light, non-social way of working that promotes this kind of thing. No idea how this could be done in practice, though.

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