A programmer can usually average ~4 hours of focused highly productive work where they are not on Hacker News etc per day. Fewer people can do that kind of focused effort for ~8 hours a day regularly. I have never met someone that can do that kind of highly focused effort for ~12 hour days. That does not mean highly focused effort is the only valid type of work. But, it is very valuable for most programming jobs. Fur…
Modern day programming is so much more than just opening up your IDE and churning out code. You have to collaborate, talk, review other people's work etc. There is also a meta aspect to it to improve you productivity at work by looking at your own work from a level above. You also have to keep learning new bleeding edge stuff to not be out of business in a few years. Plus doing a lot of side projects and extra work,…
Effective leaning also takes focus.
Pick up a programming book in a new language and start reading. You will have similar limits around how much you can really learn in a given day.
That's not to say you can't be productive for longer periods but the sustained intensity decreases.
I can definitely believe that. But in my line of work I'm expected to bill at least 8 hrs/day to the client regardless of my personal productivity.
> Pfft. A man-hour of labor is a man-hour of labor > I'm expected to bill at least 8 hrs/day I bet you're capable of far deeper, more intellectually stimulating and rewarding work than you're doing now.
I'm stuck in the billable hour purgatory as well. It seems to be a trend that becomes more and more pervasive.
For my next job I'll move to an inhouse position, hopefully things will be better in a setting like that.
> To be fair, I would expect people to 'check in' on vacation as well. Your expectation is unwarranted. If your company can't let employees off for a week or two without checking in, I suggest the management style and staffing levels be checked. Your employees need these breaks to attend to mental stress, and adding to their stress by expecting availability during their time off should be re-evaluated.
Responsibility is not a magic switch you can turn on and off. You can't 'exit a system' if you have responsibilities, in a situation wherein that machine could break down in your absence. If 'reading a few e-mails' is 'stressful' - then the person has issues working in a professional environment. 'Checking in' should not be stressful. It's just that - popping your head in to see what's up. In reality - there is absol…
That's why you have teams, I was on the senior level team. We shared the responsibility; thus, I shouldn't have to check-in. Other senior engineers went on vacation during my tenure there without looking at a single email or picking up the phone, so why should I have to be held to a different standard?
To add to this, I recently got let go from my job 2 weeks ago . With that said, my boss routinely tried to guilt trip me because I didn't want to work more than 40hrs a week. I have 2 very small children and my wife is pregnant, I can't spend all my time working, nor do I have any desire to. There were a few times I put in a couple of 60hr weeks, but that was only to appease him, not because I felt it was necessary.…
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To add to this, I recently got let go from my job 2 weeks ago . With that said, my boss routinely tried to guilt trip me because I didn't want to work more than 40hrs a week. I have 2 very small children and my wife is pregnant, I can't spend all my time working, nor do I have any desire to. There were a few times I put in a couple of 60hr weeks, but that was only to appease him, not because I felt it was necessary.…
I hope you find a saner work environment. These are not healthy expectations from your boss.
I often think about Arthur Rubenstein, the phenom mid-century pianist, for whom a lot has been written about his mission in early life to "practice as little as possible." There's a lot of hyped up romanticism in these quotes and anyone who plays at his level has spent a lifetime playing piano, period. Regardless, his guidance about spontaneity, creativity, and the relationship to practicing too much, which I equate…
my favorite insight about balancing putting in the hours vs deliberate practice comes from a Super Hexagon tutorial:
the moment it starts to feel like grinding, you should stop.
One of my past employers wouldn't pay me what I felt and showed was fair market value for my skills and what I do for them. So I counter offered to work 4 days a week for the same salary. A year of 3 day weekends did more for my life and relationships than a raise ever could have.
The idea is great but at many places I worked it would breed so much resentment amongst the rest of the team. Did you have issues with that?
> Getting paid for 40 hours Do salaried jobs always specify a number of hours in their contracts? Otherwise you aren't being paid for 40 hours - you're just being paid to get the job done aren't you?
In India, most employment agreements in the software industry mention an average of 40 work hours per week. They usually also have a disclaimer that mention that one may have to work more than 40 hours per week without any additional compensation. That's just a legal disclaimer. In reality though, in every software company (except Oracle) I have worked for overtime was rewarded with free pizzas for the extra hours we…
I make enough money that I can buy my own pizzas whenever I want. Trading an hour of my time is not a good deal for pizzas, much less 3 or 4.
good post. its funny, im a musician too. i decided the conservatory could fuck off after 1 year. ive found gypsy jazz a breath of fresh air personally... wonderful people and spirit, tons of gigs, technical virtuosity to the extreme, AND even some truly creative players. i do agree the paralells are strong esp between jazz people and swe. i dont know, you probably are further on your musical journey, but, i feel like…
> i decided the conservatory could fuck off after 1 year. Yes and no. Remember Picasso: "It took me four years to paint like Rafael, but a lifetime to paint like a child". Being patient enough to acquire the mountains of knowledge, the sound bases achieved by generations before yours, pays great dividends later in life, no matter the field. It's truer for some fields than others, of course. There are some surprising…
who is Mika? As to knowing Richter and Beethoven to play the blues...I think it would be difficult for someone who has the money for piano lessons and a conservatory style education with hours to practice on a Steinway in a climate controlled practice room at Juilliard ... i really think it's hard for those people to play rhe blues properly. Not to get all snobby about the blues (joking here) but I do think the player who understands how to do that might come from a different background. Also, they tend to be black, for obvious reasons. Not to say that people from other races don't experience hardships on that level, it is just that the blues is really a particular language and pathos from a group of tragically oppressed people in a particular time in the United States, who didn't get to attend Juilliard or the like, or eat most days. You know, it's part of the Afro-Cuban tradition that created jazz, which has its roots in the African-American community in the United States. Old European and Euro-descent men only wish they knew something about it, which is why they tried to imitate it (Ravel a conservatory drop-out btw, Stravinsky, Bernstein, Gershwin...)The only one who kinda succeeded in reaching back into that ethos from his Juillard practice room was Miles Davis-- and he dropped out too, btw) rich kidz at Juilliard, eastman, the New Scool, and other conservatory jazz programs spend their life trying to understand what it means to be that oppressed. I know, I've heard hours of blues, or should I say "blues" played by the white children of the rich. Beethoven and Richter don't get it. And schoenberg doesn't either. Frankly, very few educators at conservatory have any idea how to teach musicians. That is because they are supposed to get out of the way and help them teach themselves. This rarely happens, because artistry doesn't have a path. It finds its own- conservatory pretends there is a path, which brings us to where we are now with homogenized music. is there something that can be gained here with respect to programming artistic development? I think so, it just seems that the field is so insular and mono culture (just like classical music and jazz) that it can't learn from other pedagogical and culture mistakes the arts have already made. Namely, there is no "path". Thatmight help. but definitely check out Brushy One String. He is a modern blues guy who gets it-- again, hes from an impoverished island background not unlike the Mississippi Delta back in the day-- no Beethoven and Richter for him-- just poverty, drugs, crime, and oppression.