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Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

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Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#221

Post by vinceguidry »

edw519 wrote: post #19

For developers building something, the following are often true: Tweeting != Work TalkingAboutWork != Work Blogging != Work DoingSomethingInYourIDE does not necessarily = Work DoingSomethingInGithub does not necessarily = Work ThinkingButAppearingToBeDoingNothing may = Work Meetings != Work CodeReview may = Work Testing usually = Work DeliveringBuiltSoftware(AndItsPrerequisites) = Work HackerNews definitely != Work

If I'm at work, I'm working. Doesn't matter whether I'm writing code, flipping through HN, eating lunch, (preferably at my desk) or taking a walk around the building to stretch my legs.

I used to try to "become more productive" by cutting down on some of these things to do more actual coding. But I found that my actual productivity "metrics" didn't increase. I might write more code, but I also introduce more bugs.

Developers don't give enough credit to the cerebral aspects of development. Modern dev is such that you have to do design while you're coding, you don't separate them anymore. Design requires an exceptionally fresh mind. Doing random things to decompress throughout the day keeps you in this productive state of mind and lets you proceed with fewer of the sorts of bugs that necessitate ugly rewrites/redesigns.

Another thing not taken seriously enough by devs is refactoring. It's part of the project, just because your non-technical boss/clients might not quite get why refactoring is important, doesn't mean you can just let them tell you not to. Grow a pair and spend the time and do it right.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#223

Post by reledi »

rfnslyr wrote: post #14
jmduke wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, I think there's an ideal that lies in between "work the bare minimum to support yourself" and "work your entire life to the exclusion of other activities." If I was in your position, I would have tried to get a raise instead of lingering in my mainly automated position -- ideally into another position I can automate. I don't want work to vanish from my head as soon as I leave my office, because that means it did…

The work I did does not even remotely tie into what I am doing now nor did it warrant a second thought beyond the office. It was a contractor position. I had to import data sets into excel from other documents. All I did was export the previous doc into a CSV file and write a script to import it into excel. It was piss easy. Then I shipped off that data set to whatever team needed it. That's all I did. It was menial.…

> Last night I worked all day on an isolated beach

Do you typically get a lot done working like this? I'd like to give it a shot, but I'm worried that it's not productive at all.

How'd you work all day on battery power? Did you have an internet connection? Did the sunlight make your screen unreadable? Did you have a good and comfortable work posture? Did sand get in your devices?

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#224

Post by corresation »

RHSeeger wrote: post #137
corresation wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that if you worked 50 vs 35 hours at the same job But isn't that, in many ways, the point? We need to optimize every hour of our life, because life (and in particular youth) really is short. If I choose to spend my life cutting grass with a pair of nail clippers, I can absolutely get more done spending 60 hours versus 35 hours. But you know, I'd rather pull out the driving lawn mower. That should be all…

> If I choose to spend my life cutting grass with a pair of nail clippers, I can absolutely get more done spending 60 hours versus 35 hours. But you know, I'd rather pull out the driving lawn mower. That should be all of our goals. That's a bit of a straw man there. Yes, you can get more done using a riding lawnmower compared to the folks using clippers. However, once you're using a riding lawnmower you can get more…

That's a bit of a straw man there.

It isn't a strawman, though you may be interpreting the comment in a different manner: Proudly boasting about excessive work if you haven't optimized your efforts is not something to consider an accomplishment. Yet it is absolutely common throughout the Western world.

I've always been a "slacker" in the sense that I like to live a varied life. That means when I work I accomplish the most with the least. Many, many people make no such attempt: Thinking back to coworkers back when I was an employee sort, the sorts that did the heroic hours and had the endless late nights by and large accomplished very little, because the metric that they were rewarded on -- at least in their own self-evaluation -- was effort.

So the guy cutting the grass might boast about clipping his yard with nail clippers, just as the developer talking about their 90 hour work weeks spends 88 of them surfing Reddit. This is endemic, and the result is very low productivity because the results aren't measured, the perceived effort is.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#225

Post by corresation »

Shivetya wrote: post #93
corresation wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that if you worked 50 vs 35 hours at the same job But isn't that, in many ways, the point? We need to optimize every hour of our life, because life (and in particular youth) really is short. If I choose to spend my life cutting grass with a pair of nail clippers, I can absolutely get more done spending 60 hours versus 35 hours. But you know, I'd rather pull out the driving lawn mower. That should be all…

The blog post was built on a bs argument. Apples and Oranges. Desk job versus physical labor. I guess we could argue since someone who works as a developer makes more per hour than someone at McDonalds they are making better use of their time. You pull your own hyperbole as well. Being successful does not make you a workaholic, and being a workaholic does not make your successful. I know more than enough workaholics…

I think you will find discussions on boards like HN more fulfilling if you avoid trying to personalize every statement. I don't argue against the hard working meme for self-interest -- I'm a rather successful independent software developer / consultant, and I spent half my day today enjoying coding while lying in a hammock.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#227

Post by jacalata »

nether wrote: post #173
antitrust wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or time to talk with the boss' boss and remind him that time is money, and you can save him money. The incompetence of the people around you isn't your moral responsibility.

That'd be the president of the company (we're a small mechanical engineering firm), and he's even worse. He vetoed the request from my boss to upgrade to MS Office 2013. We're on a mix of XP/2003 right now, and Excel+Word are the lifeblood of our work.

So your manager just suggested that you upgrade all your machines from XP to windows 7, and upgrade office from 2003 to 2013? That's not necessarily kneejerk stupidity - did your manager include a list of benefits from upgrading, against a cost analysis, and allow for a test run of trying to run all your existing spreadsheets (presumably more complex than just a few numbers!) on the new system, or just say 'hey we should get a new version of everything we use, it won't cause any downtime' and the boss said like hell it won't? I think upgrading is probably a good idea, but it's definitely not a no-brainer 'ok do it tomorrow' idea.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#228

Post by ilyanep »

general_failure wrote: post #226

Well, stop glorifying 'free time'. Many of my friends spend practically all their free time drinking beer and 'chilling out' watching TV. Yeah, I am sure that's more healthy than we working hard learning something new.

I spend eight hours a day in the office, then I go home and read some textbooks, follow an online class, read a paper, write a blog post, go to the gym, practice saxophone, or hang out with friends. While I find the stuff I do at work enjoyable, I wouldn't do another 6 hours of it a day at the expense of giving up all that other stuff, because it's the other stuff that gets me through the more tedious weeks at work. Fortunately, my employer understands the necessity of doing those other things.

Yeah, lots of people waste their free time. I don't think that working 60 hours a week is any less of a waste for those people.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#229

Post by Aqueous »

general_failure wrote: post #226

Well, stop glorifying 'free time'. Many of my friends spend practically all their free time drinking beer and 'chilling out' watching TV. Yeah, I am sure that's more healthy than we working hard learning something new.

socializing is important. it is vital to your health. obviously as with anything there's such a thing as too much, but as someone who has been missing work-life balance i can tell just how much i miss hanging out with friends, drinking beer and watching tv.

Re: Stop Glorifying Hard Work and Long Hours

#230

Post by [deleted] »

yourapostasy wrote: post #202
nether wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I worked at a large corporation, I nearly automated all of my work and I was called lazy. I'd do about an hour work a day, customize an existing script to process new data, then read for the remaining 6 hours. Co-workers called me a lazy nerd and proceeded to copy paste words into excel for 8 hours. Oh my god, I'm dealing with this now. I made a Python program that automated a lot of our Excel work. It reduced…

The likely real reason you got such a frosty reception from your manager is because your automation directly threatens his position by making redundant his headcount. My default advice (because I've seen this more than just a few times) in situations like these is to wait 2-3 weeks, then go back to the manager and say, "Hey Boss, remember that automation I showed you the other week? Your experience proved you right;…

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