41–50 of 81 posts
At present the idea of working 3 focused hours per day doesn't seem outrageous, but back in 2014 this would have been quite progressive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Arguably these contracts are a legacy of factory shifts in industrial revolution times. What (most) managers want is your output, irrespective of how long it will take, may be 12h or 3h. One could argue, that while working 3h or 4h one should still be available to support, help, communicate, meet with, your team and stakeholders for the remaining hours of that contract. I would not have an issue with less hours provi…
This I agree with. But I would say being available to help and support and whatever is part of the job. If you say you work for 4 hours, but still have to be available for all of the above for 8 hours, you are working for 8 hours, not 4.
The headline doesn't reflect the reality - I think what is really going on here is that 3 hours are spent doing what is considered 'work' by the outside world (sitting in front of the machine and writing the code that people believe is what the job is). However, creative stuff like programming doesn't tend to fix in such a neat box, and the preparation, or creative thinking which leads to elegant solutions to problem…
> I've never tried to average it out, but 2-4 hours of actual productive coding per day sounds about right. And how many unproductive hours of work do you spend per day? I tend to fix my working hours (productive or not) to around 4 per day. When I tell fellow engineers about it, they think it’s unethical because my contract specifies 40h/week (I’m an employee). I couldn’t care less what the contract says about worki…
And we wonder why employers want us back in the office. I mean come on.
One day, there are threads here saying $120k is considered underpaid for an entry level dev out of a bootcamp. The next day, we talk about how all the RTO companies are only doing it because managers want to feel productive. The day after that, there are threads of remote devs boasting they don't even consistently work 4 hours a day. And the day after a thread about how we're all going to unionize to protect our rights.
This is truly an interesting phenomenon. Either these anecdotes are just that, anecdotes and not representative of most people, or there's a huge misalignment between employer and employee expectations.
Edit: to be clear, I fully support the author of this blog post because he works 3 hours per day working for himself. More power to him. If you truly think you’re underpaid and overworked, do what the guy in this article is doing! Stop making excuses and become an entrepreneur. Work for yourself, set your own hours, no managers, and you’ll leverage the full earning potential of your skillset. No employment contracts to comply with!
I can really recommend that book, I haven’t adopted to many of the practices that he recommends but I am working on it and it already had a profound impact on the quality of my work but also my general mental health.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody works exactly to the contract. Except perhaps in the most monitored and hellish workplaces (e.g. Amazon warehouses).
What do you mean? As far as I know, I've always worked according to the contract. Some of my employers had flexible timekeeping, and then I would often work a bit over 40h/week so that I could take extra days off for extended weekend trips when I felt like it.
I recently read the book deep work by Cal Newport. He introduces the concept of deep and shallow work. Deep work is the part the needs focus, concentration and complex thoughts. He argues that there is a limit of about 3-4 hours that one can spend in the state of deep work. That doesn’t mean in can’t do more shallow work in addition to the deep work. But the brain also needs rest, therefore working long hours consist…
If we have to compete with AI, then we might get more pressure to spend more time doing deep work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ha! It's the opposite for me. I work productively only when the duration is open-ended. That is, at night, when I can stay up as long as I feel comfortable or over the weekend when none bothers me. A slightest deadline in sight or an upcoming meeting break the flow.
I think it depends on the kind of work you need to do. For creative stuff, I do the same, but I am also trying to reduce the number of hours at work. When being in the flow, I just let it continue without breaking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've never tried to average it out, but 2-4 hours of actual productive coding per day sounds about right. And how many unproductive hours of work do you spend per day? I tend to fix my working hours (productive or not) to around 4 per day. When I tell fellow engineers about it, they think it’s unethical because my contract specifies 40h/week (I’m an employee). I couldn’t care less what the contract says about worki…
> I tend to fix my working hours (productive or not) to around 4 per day. And we wonder why employers want us back in the office. I mean come on. One day, there are threads here saying $120k is considered underpaid for an entry level dev out of a bootcamp. The next day, we talk about how all the RTO companies are only doing it because managers want to feel productive. The day after that, there are threads of remote d…
Yes, because one can't work 4h tops while being in office... Truth is, they can't tell how much working hours this individual is putting. And maybe it's not that important.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've never tried to average it out, but 2-4 hours of actual productive coding per day sounds about right. And how many unproductive hours of work do you spend per day? I tend to fix my working hours (productive or not) to around 4 per day. When I tell fellow engineers about it, they think it’s unethical because my contract specifies 40h/week (I’m an employee). I couldn’t care less what the contract says about worki…
> I tend to fix my working hours (productive or not) to around 4 per day. And we wonder why employers want us back in the office. I mean come on. One day, there are threads here saying $120k is considered underpaid for an entry level dev out of a bootcamp. The next day, we talk about how all the RTO companies are only doing it because managers want to feel productive. The day after that, there are threads of remote d…
Yes, we are underpaid. Just look at the bank balances of Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Software engineers aren't illiterate construction workers. We have the means to build and destroy tech companies that think they can do whatever they want.
The headline doesn't reflect the reality - I think what is really going on here is that 3 hours are spent doing what is considered 'work' by the outside world (sitting in front of the machine and writing the code that people believe is what the job is). However, creative stuff like programming doesn't tend to fix in such a neat box, and the preparation, or creative thinking which leads to elegant solutions to problem…
> I've never tried to average it out, but 2-4 hours of actual productive coding per day sounds about right. And how many unproductive hours of work do you spend per day? I tend to fix my working hours (productive or not) to around 4 per day. When I tell fellow engineers about it, they think it’s unethical because my contract specifies 40h/week (I’m an employee). I couldn’t care less what the contract says about worki…
But you don't tell your management and trust your fellow engineers not to rat you out (or they are not your colleagues, just people on HN?)? Because this sounds more like quiet quitting. Or you over-perform even though you work 50%?