121–130 of 313 posts
I have a suspicion that the amount of healthy and productive work depends much on the work environment, the agency and social relationships one has there.
If you’re a well paid wage slave then you have different engagement than an autonomous, respected worker. Excuse the platitude but you get the drift.
Discipline is freedom and empathy is purpose.
I’ve been reading some variant of this, for many years. One of the reasons that I hated being a manager, was because the job involved a lot of sitting around, waiting for stuff to happen. I couldn’t work on my own projects (because I was on paid work time), and it would have been irresponsible, in the extreme, to put myself into the critical path (because it was no guarantee that I would be able to reliably work). I…
I’ve been reading some variant of this, for many years. One of the reasons that I hated being a manager, was because the job involved a lot of sitting around, waiting for stuff to happen. I couldn’t work on my own projects (because I was on paid work time), and it would have been irresponsible, in the extreme, to put myself into the critical path (because it was no guarantee that I would be able to reliably work). I…
Experienced this on multiple occasions especially recently and it does indeed hurt - especially when you know what a difference it could make to users or fellow developers and it’s ignored or ignored and then some higher up miraculously suddenly invents an identical idea several months down the line.
Bonus points if it’s a whole team effort for almost two years that gets more or less scrapped despite the obvious need for it as a dependency for multiple teams.
It is possible in crunch time to work harder on difficult problems, but not for longer than a few weeks at a time followed by a few weeks of rest. Regardless how you account for the time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
how about i leave for my office 10 Am and return home 9-10-11 pm ? usually no sundays. 10 minute commute each side.
Just because you are at the office, doesn't mean you are actually working. Just like me sitting at my desk at home isn't actually working. The difference is that in the office people pretend to be working.
If you work for an agency, and sales is having a tough time closing a deal so there's no work for you today, but you have to be there anyway, ready to work or finding other things to do, maybe upgrading your tools, practicing/learning, then that's still work time. It's not leisure time.
Just because you don't achieve 100% uptime cranking out widgets non-stop at full productivity doesn't mean you're not working. We're people, not industrial factory machines.
You can say 'people are pretending' or 'that's not actually work', but it is. And saying that it's not is just denying reality by casting a moral judgment on it like that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't share your sarcasm. Working with your body and working with your mind aren't that different, it's just that the mind gets tired quicker. It's very hard to be doing concentrated thinking for 6 hours straight.
Exactly, but if it has to be an us vs. them kinda thing, I’d like to throw in: people who’re working with their body at least have the luxury of being able to remove themselfs from work when they get home. Leaving work as a developer, researcher, whatever, means that your stupid brain brings problem home and distracts you when you should spend time with your family.
I may be wrong, but looking from the outside it looks to me like they are improving themselves as a person and earning a living at the same time.
I need to set aside time to improve my social and physical well being, outside of working time.
Don’t get me wrong I work with interesting people that I love, but we don’t improve our social abilities together
There are definitely people who can work and focus for 8+ hours a day. I can think of my dentist and family doctor. Waiting room is full from morning to evening. Some of my colleagues work hard. I can see their screen in the open space. They are machines. Never a distraction on the screen. The article should be "some people don't work so much, I'm one of them".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can confirm many doctors work insane hours, which are hard to even imagine for people who do office jobs. The notion that you can only do 4 hours of productive work a day is frankly a luxury. If you have 10 hours of work to do, all of which is essential for people's immediate wellbeing, you find ways of being productive.
I've never seen a convincing explanation for why doctors work these long hours that didn't boil down to 'the doctors union restricts the supply of new doctors and limits the tasks that can be delegated to non-doctors'. As a result, the regular mention of their long hours generally just makes me angry at them rather than grateful to them, but I guess I'm in the minority.
https://www.benwhite.com/medicine/the-private-equity-model-i...
Now with surgery? Again there’s some capitalism but also surgery is hard. Extremely hard. Here’s a link to a common surgery for orthopedics for example. They have to memorize these procedure steps and be very quick. Time on the table for the patient matters for money and for anesthesia (more dangerous for longer GA cases).
https://www.orthobullets.com/knee-and-sports/12234/acl-recon...
Anyways you can be mad about moats and artificial supply constraints for things like dermatology but for surgery and family practice? Not really.
Another factor is geography. Can you imagine doing 12-14 years of school and low paid training, have 250-500k in debt and then move out to a rural area to practice? Many doctors don’t want to do that, so the ones that do are paid well but are usually extremely busy.
Anyways, there’s just a lot of factors that limit supply, it’s not the nefarious doctors union trying to squeeze every last drop.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can confirm many doctors work insane hours, which are hard to even imagine for people who do office jobs. The notion that you can only do 4 hours of productive work a day is frankly a luxury. If you have 10 hours of work to do, all of which is essential for people's immediate wellbeing, you find ways of being productive.
I've never seen a convincing explanation for why doctors work these long hours that didn't boil down to 'the doctors union restricts the supply of new doctors and limits the tasks that can be delegated to non-doctors'. As a result, the regular mention of their long hours generally just makes me angry at them rather than grateful to them, but I guess I'm in the minority.
Again, this isn't my wheelhouse at all. I'm just repeating something I hear often when this topic comes up.