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It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

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Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#41

Post by engagthe »

goostavos wrote: post #35
greymalik wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More code isn’t better. As an engineering manager I don’t want 5x as many lines of code. I want the code you work on to be solving the right problems. Figuring out what the right problems and solutions are and making sure everyone on the team understands them is why you’re in meetings.

I don't think more meeting are the solution here. Most meetings are a complete and utter waste of time. They meander, they lack focus, and beget more meetings as a result. I am obsessive about correctness, I want to build the right thing, but meeting culture is fundamentally broken. It's faux productivity. Humans getting together on a call -- often many of whom have no real stake in the game -- is just about the slow…

I agree!

I do think if you cut ALL meetings, you may miss out on some important relationship building stuff that is helpful when necessary conflict arises. Formalizing business requirement gathering may help reduce conflict, which is great, but you inevitably will have some.

That said, I don’t think meetings are a good way to build relationships or trust, and there are more efficient and enjoyable ways to do that!

If in person, at least go for a walk, get some food together, talk about hobbies, etc. Give some freedom to “waste time” just getting to know people, especially if the relationships will come in handy later! If you kill unnecessary meetings, you should have plenty of time for this!

People need down time to de-stress, and to recharge, but meetings are not the way.

Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#42

Post by sph »

slily wrote: post #38
mym1990 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, 250k a year to go to work 8-5 is “modern slavery”. On a bit of a high horse there.

Seriously. I'll take that job any day. I am in the same boat for <$150k and consider myself blessed when I'm not reading HN commenters bragging about their salary. At least you have a shot at retiring early in exchange for a set of responsibilities that plenty of people share for much less money.

It was a figure pulled out of my ass. I've never earned half that, and these days I'm eating ramen because I am not accepting the status of modern society and trying to spend all my time and mental energy to find a third way. Hence this rant.

I am not prescribing anything to anybody. It is just sad that criticising the status quo is seen as proof of privilege. It is ungrateful of me to entertain the idea that life can be much more, as I have at times enjoyed the fruits of our modern society... Seems like a convenient ad hominem.

Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#43

Post by mlsu »

wonderwonder wrote: post #8

Its the lack of consecutive days off, 2 is not enough. 3 would really be a change. I bet I would accomplish just as much during the week as I do now, workplaces would just have to reduce the number of useless meetings. I spend 4 - 5 hours a day in meetings and am still expected to deliver actual code. Kill the meetings, my code generation would be through the roof. There are several things wrong with the American kno…

My theory is that most people don't actually want to get anything done, they just want to hang out. Meetings is how you just hang out.

They want to just hang out at work because work is a very convenient and structured social apparatus with very well defined rules, boundaries, and hierarchies -- in a world where such things are becoming more and more rare.

Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#45

Post by capitalsigma »

sph wrote: post #20
JohnFen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that I would much prefer to work 4 10 hour days than 5 8 hour days. I want to have as many days in a row as I can that I don't have to give to an employer.

Hear me out. 40 hours dedicated to your employer, however you slice them, is modern slavery. Why the hell are we creating all this technology to slave even more, with only energy to drool in front of Netflix and repeat the next day? People should have the time to explore their passions, projects and families more than a couple hours every day. Not dedicate half of their waking life , their mental and physical prime,…

Would you prefer subsistence farming?

Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#46

Post by Chris_Newton »

I like the saying “slow is smooth and smooth is fast” as applied to software development. For all the talk of Agile processes and breaking creative work down into bite-sized chunks and prioritising collaboration and team productivity over individual contributions, ultimately our work is about thinking and fundamentally it requires that each individual doing the work understands what needs to be done. Not investing enough time in gaining that understanding early on means wasting far more time later.

IME, a huge amount of rework in modern software development results from diving into the implementation before the requirements were properly understood, a reasonable design was created and both were recorded in some useful form and reviewed by the relevant people to make sure everyone was on the same page.

We seem to have gone from one extreme to another with our processes. We realised that waterfalls that start with months of requirements capture followed by months of BDUF aren’t a great idea. But now we often seem to have one-paragraph tickets, maybe spend a few minutes thinking of some class names that look about right for each one, and then dive into coding. And then a week later we find that two developers working on three tickets have implemented the same concept four different ways and each of them was a different 75% of what the customer actually needed.

Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#47

Post by closeparen »

greymalik wrote: post #15
wonderwonder wrote: post #8

Its the lack of consecutive days off, 2 is not enough. 3 would really be a change. I bet I would accomplish just as much during the week as I do now, workplaces would just have to reduce the number of useless meetings. I spend 4 - 5 hours a day in meetings and am still expected to deliver actual code. Kill the meetings, my code generation would be through the roof. There are several things wrong with the American kno…

More code isn’t better. As an engineering manager I don’t want 5x as many lines of code. I want the code you work on to be solving the right problems. Figuring out what the right problems and solutions are and making sure everyone on the team understands them is why you’re in meetings.

This almost never happens in official scheduled meetings or in the presence of any kind of manager. Instead it takes place randomly around the office, in Slack chats that escalate to ad-hoc Zoom calls, in documents and their comment threads, in putting eyes and hands on the actual product (underrated!), or in deep-diving data.

Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#48

Post by jamies »

Chris_Newton wrote: post #46

I like the saying “slow is smooth and smooth is fast” as applied to software development. For all the talk of Agile processes and breaking creative work down into bite-sized chunks and prioritising collaboration and team productivity over individual contributions, ultimately our work is about thinking and fundamentally it requires that each individual doing the work understands what needs to be done. Not investing en…

I love that you quoted “slow is smooth and smooth is fast” -- I learned it as a volunteer firefighter! It's a great saying, and can be applied to just about anything.

Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#49

Post by sarkhan »

srackey wrote: post #39
great_psy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe work became the central piece in people’s lives because they don’t have time to devote to other things. It’s a 40 hour work week, but add in commuting and chores and decent sleep and you’re left with a few hours left for other things. Hard to build an identity around a few hours of something else.

But we used to work more and this wasn’t as much of an issue?

We don't just work more, we spend rest hours that we are not working think about the work. In short, we never stop working.
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