I feel this. I am automatically suspicious of anyone who has to drop the number of hours they worked a certain day, or frequently flexes that they are still working at a late hour. Why do you need us to know?
It explains why I'm up later.
People don't work as much as they say
41–50 of 313 posts
Re: People don't work as much as they say
#42Working 80 hours a week is unhealthy and a bad idea. I don’t think there is any solid argument against that. Until recently I was a dev manager for about 20 devs (not all direct). I did work 80 hours a week, still do. I know I am unhealthy. I don’t like doing things that are not technical. I get uncomfortable and bored quickly. My work gives me complex tech problems constantly. So I feel better working. But I attribu…
Thanks for sharing. I am probably in the same boat. I feel miserable when not working. I managed to improve my situation though
- 100 km running minimum per month. I take this seriously. - Writing notes about work in a notebook. Not publishing but that's the only way I can stay away from other work and not feel bored. - Spending more time on two hobbies: hardware/circuits and cooking.
Things are improving!
Re: People don't work as much as they say
#43Valuable prospective, but (as is the gist of half my comments here): People are even more different than you think.
RescueTime wrote a similar post, but +100 data:
https://rescuetime.wpengine.com/work-life-balance-study-2019...
Look at the second histogram. The average is roughly aligned with OP’s summary, but there is huge variance. These comments have already devolved into people telling each other they are lying, or about to burn out - all I ask is humility in the face of our messy shared reality.
Thank you for listening to my TED Talk, I guess
Re: People don't work as much as they say
#44I have an extension in VS Code that tracks time spent coding, and sends me a weekly summary. While I’m unsure how accurate the time algorithm is, on my “home office with no meetings” days it says I get around 5 hours of code time, which sounds about accurate. Interestingly it claims the the global average is 52 minutes, which I can definitely get on days with many interruptions.
Can you share that?
I believe it's this one, searching online
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=software...
Re: People don't work as much as they say
#45I don't think people who say they work 14 hours a day are lying. They just count in everything that is somehow related to their job, like reading about their business in the newspaper or thinking about work in the shower. And that's the crux of the matter, in jobs that don't have clearly assigned shifts or where attendance is measured, the boundaries between work and leisure become blurred. And then again, comparison…
I can double my work if I start responding to all the pointless emails I get in my mail box.
I have more important things to do, like doing actual work.
Re: People don't work as much as they say
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
4 to 5 hours of real, focused, concentrated work is impressive. I take a long time to recover from a meeting and they're usually in the middle of my day, almost every work day, and often there's more than one. They're also exhausting so I'll have lost some vibrancy by the time I do get back in the flow of actual work.
4 to 5 hours is achievable and easy if you are aligned with your work and team and find it energizing. With a bad team, bad money, or bad product, downright near impossible to care enough for it.
Meetings themselves are the problem and what I'm suggesting are the problem. I don't think team alignment is related to the disruptive havoc caused by meetings. We have a lot of evidence that it takes a long time for a mind to refocus on a task once disturbed.
I say it's impressive you can crank out that level of focused work because I can't get a long stretch of uninterrupted time that you can. Maybe you have fewer meetings?
Re: People don't work as much as they say
#47I have an extension in VS Code that tracks time spent coding, and sends me a weekly summary. While I’m unsure how accurate the time algorithm is, on my “home office with no meetings” days it says I get around 5 hours of code time, which sounds about accurate. Interestingly it claims the the global average is 52 minutes, which I can definitely get on days with many interruptions.
How do you measure if you are coding in the extension? I wonder if it counts activity (keystroke, mouse) or uf having the window focused (while grabbing a quick coffee, for instance) counts.
I'm not the parent you're replying to, but get similar stats on the average. I use RescueTime together with Neovim, and it works by activity. So if I leave for a coffee it stops logging the time I spend, and the window needs to be in focus. I also have the browser extensions setup, as to separate the time spent in editor compared to in browsers. The git repository is also logged, so I can see how much time is spent with what repository (normally use multiple repos at the same time). Not affiliated with RescueTime in any way, just a happy user.
Re: People don't work as much as they say
#48I think it varies by person a lot but how little people work in general affect people expectations in the workforce. Especially in a market where firing people is hard (because hiring them is expensive) there is going to be a certain leniency towards performance.
When I work for myself I can literally code all day, if I'm working for a client I'll work as much as it's reasonable to hit deliverables, keep the managers happy and keep a good reputation in the company. My prices when working per projects were always too cheap because I found features to be simple to implement; I then switched to what's expected in the industry and charge per day and I make way more, working way less.
Similarly, I know people who can work all day and some who can't and will burn out if they do. The 10x developers exist, but you won't find them at big corp making bank (or if you find them, they'll likely slack like everyone else), they'll be building their own startups and making bank with that.
We're all wired differently.
Re: People don't work as much as they say
#49I'd add a 4th point: accept a wider definition of work when counting your hours.
A lot of us are lucky enough to have knowledge based jobs, which require mental tasks of solution design and decision making that are hard to quantify. I regularly get ideas when walking, cooking, driving, etc... and then spend time thinking through a work problem and taking notes. Several times a day I go for a short walk to clear my head of distractions and regain focus, That would be hard to quantify to a theoretical bad manager who wanted you to count hours but for many it is an essential part of knowledge work.
Re: People don't work as much as they say
#50Is this true for everyone or is this a special specimen "Most days I can do somewhere between one and two hours of hard thinky work."? 5 - 10 hours of deep work per week required to get a Phd from Imperial. That's impressive.
PhD studies can be very different. Wet-lab students who do experiments can spend 12 hours a day in a lab cutting mice. But that’s somewhat mechanical work where you repeat the protocol. PhD students are also less experienced and spend a lot of time making mistakes and learning. When I got my fist full-time developer job I spent day and night working as well. After 5-7 years, I was something like the author because I could do non-trivial tasks quickly. It felt like the code was writing itself in the back of my mind while I was drinking coffee or browsing HN.