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Work only 3 hours a day, but everyday (2016)

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Re: Work only 3 hours a day, but everyday (2016)

#61

Post by meiraleal »

cj wrote: post #58
meiraleal wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The devs "boasting" (that is your perspective, not the reality) are probably the ones generating more revenue for those companies wanting "us" back in the office (are you a SWE?). There's a reason the biggest tech companies hire the best (and others who might not be considered the best) for significant sums - they are worth it. Yes, we are underpaid. Just look at the bank balances of Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Sof…

> There's a reason the biggest tech companies hire the best [..] for significant sums - they are worth it. No. The amount they pay is a function of supply and demand of workers and the necessity of filling the position within the company. > Software engineers aren't illiterate construction workers. Construction workers have the ability to build and destroy buildings probably more easily than SWEs can build or destroy…

> No. The amount they pay is a function of supply and demand of workers and the necessity of filling the position within the company.

And juniors are getting paid above 100k usd. Deal with it.

> Construction workers have the ability to build and destroy buildings probably more easily than SWEs can build or destroy companies.

Sure but they would go to jail. The programmers that destroyed companies by creating better open source alternatives not only didn't go to jail but managed to build multi-million dollar businesses. Which then becomes too big at some point and ready to be disrupted again.

Re: Work only 3 hours a day, but everyday (2016)

#62

Post by cj »

meiraleal wrote: post #61
cj wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a reason the biggest tech companies hire the best [..] for significant sums - they are worth it. No. The amount they pay is a function of supply and demand of workers and the necessity of filling the position within the company. > Software engineers aren't illiterate construction workers. Construction workers have the ability to build and destroy buildings probably more easily than SWEs can build or destroy…

> No. The amount they pay is a function of supply and demand of workers and the necessity of filling the position within the company. And juniors are getting paid above 100k usd. Deal with it. > Construction workers have the ability to build and destroy buildings probably more easily than SWEs can build or destroy companies. Sure but they would go to jail. The programmers that destroyed companies by creating better o…

> The programmers that destroyed companies by creating better open source alternatives not only didn't go to jail but managed to build multi-million dollar businesses. Which then becomes too big at some point and ready to be disrupted again.

I’m not sure what your point is.

Isn’t this a good thing? Lots of opportunity for you to leverage the full value of your skillset to maximize your earning potential by starting a company, being your own boss, set your own work schedule, etc.

(Re: junior devs, $120k is fine for junior, I was recollecting a thread with people saying $160k is more appropriate for juniors which IMO is absurd.)

Re: Work only 3 hours a day, but everyday (2016)

#63

Post by Lacerda69 »

abm53 wrote: post #5
Lacerda69 wrote: post #3

Working less seems like reasonable advice all around. To be honest I rarely have more than 3-4 productive hours in a day, where I actually get hard stuff done. Sure on special days I can be productive 8+ hours; but those are rare.

For me the open question is if you decided up-front to only work 3–4 hours, would you be as productive as you are in those 3–4 hours out of an 8 hour day? Highly job and person dependent I suspect.

I would have to try it but my feeling is I would be just as productive.

Of course this is related to creative work, like coding, writing, design etc.

Less creative work like kitchen work, or manual labour in general I can do until my body gives up (16h shifts used to be no problem but I'm getting older...)

Re: Work only 3 hours a day, but everyday (2016)

#65

Post by Sai_ »

meiraleal wrote: post #57
Sai_ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A software engineer can create but can they sell? Can something you create be worth a billion dollars without selling it? Even the highest selling piece of art tops out at a few dozen million dollars... I fear you may have a very skewed sense of a software engineer's place in the world.

Why do you believe that software engineers can't sell? Many programmers have created billion-dollar companies, more than any other profession. The world's largest companies today were founded by software engineers. There's no inherent need for a designated "business" person within a tech company. And we didn't even talk about FOSS and indie development which are both as big as big tech and driven exclusively by progr…

The original comment seemed to imply that every software engineer is deserving of more by virtue of being a software engineer in a trillion dollar company. That seems very questionable to me which is what I was calling out.

I’m sure there are a handful of Zuckerberg type people (let’s be extravagant and say there at 10k such developer/entrepreneurs who have built unicorns by dint of their software skills) but the software engineering discipline is orders of magnitude bigger than 10k.

Edit - Since the original comment was focused on dollar value created by software engineers, we can discount much of FOSS where value has been captured by the likes of AWS and RedHat, not the FOSS community.

Re: Work only 3 hours a day, but everyday (2016)

#66

Post by meiraleal »

cj wrote: post #43
tkiolp4 wrote: post #20

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…

> 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!

Your edit makes more sense than the original post, which sounds like you are resentful because many SWEs know their worth.

Re: Work only 3 hours a day, but everyday (2016)

#67

Post by distances »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #45
distances wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you working right now?

Why would I be working now? It's Sunday.

Re: Work only 3 hours a day, but everyday (2016)

#68

Post by raydev »

Paul-Craft wrote: post #59
hereonout2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed! As a more senior programmer at a large corporate, I'm lucky if I only have three hours of meetings per day.

But are those meetings "work" in the sense he's talking about? I would guess that for most people, most meetings are not "work."

Meetings require some base level of focus on the meeting, so it is still work. Some people might get away with playing games or reading Twitter or whatever during meetings, but it isn't actually a restful break.

Re: Work only 3 hours a day, but everyday (2016)

#69

Post by hereonout2 »

Paul-Craft wrote: post #59
hereonout2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed! As a more senior programmer at a large corporate, I'm lucky if I only have three hours of meetings per day.

But are those meetings "work" in the sense he's talking about? I would guess that for most people, most meetings are not "work."

Most meetings are not coding but they are all work. No chance I would be attending without getting paid and by the same token I'd likely get sacked if I failed to attend.

I can't imagine a solo indie dev has those meetings though. So their definition of work is somewhat different.

Also I guess the three hours is a consequence of them having a successful product, which is somewhat akin to winning the lottery. I can't imagine if they were struggling to make rent they'd down tools at 11am for an afternoon of reading and walking.

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