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Ask HN: What's your working day like?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#61

Post by johnward »

vidanay wrote: post #19
ryandrake wrote: post #16

Project Manager - Large tech company. - 6:30AM Awake - 7:00AM Leave home, work on transit if needed - 9:00AM Arrive at office No typical day, but typical activities. Day is divided into about a dozen 30-minute and 1-hour chunks )(so, no getting into The Zone like programming), mostly dictated by existing meeting schedules: ~60% meetings ~20% communication, solving things over E-mail when I can, hounding people in per…

4.0 - 4.5 hours of commuting every day? And I thought my 1.5 hours, 3 days per week was bad. I do not envy you.

I did the same and it's really, really stressful being in traffic for that long. Not to mention turning a 9 hour day into a 13. Working remote has really improved my quality of life now.

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#62

Post by throwaway2016a »

Profession/position: Software engineer (web) - CTO Workday:

- [6:30] Wake up and get ready

- Check my emails and schedule for anything urgent and deal with them if there is

- [7:30] Get my daughter ready for daycare

- [8:00] Drive her to daycare

- [8:30] Return to my home office

- Usually spend 15 minutes hunting HN and RSS for things that might be relevant to my business. I skim titles mostly using keyboard shortcuts in Feedly... it goes quick

- [9:00] Make sure everyone on the team has clear objectives and is not blocked

- [9:30] Create a checklist of the top 3 things I want to get done today and 2 nice to haves (sometimes it is business, sometimes it is HR, usually it is code or ops)

- Deal with the tier 2 priority emails

- Proceed to knock things off that checklist

- [12:00] Lunch

- Hacker news and RSS

- More checklist items

- Usually no more than a half hour of meetings a day

- [4:45] Daily scrum with the team. No more than 15 minutes

- More checklist items

- [6:00] Wife comes home with our daughter

- [7:00] Cook / eat dinner (my wife watches our child, I do the cooking)

- [8:00] Play with my daughter for a bit and read her some stories (she's a year and a half)

- Handle tier 3 emails if I'm feeling up to it

- [9:30] Wait for my daughter to go to sleep

- Watch a TV show on HBO or Showtime with my wife

- [10:30] Half hour workout

- [11:00] Shower

- [11:30] Bed

- Repeat

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#63

Post by SCdF »

edw519 wrote: post #39

Commercial programmer, full-time, some remote, some office. No alarm clock, watch, or cell phone. I don't know what time it is except for outlook meeting reminders or SO telling me it's time for dinner, Jeopardy, or Penguins or Steelers game. Same routine for years: - Cats wake me up when it's light. I feed them. - Bike ride on trails, 5 to 13 miles. - Shower - fresh fruit, coffee, salad, grazing off & on all day - c…

> print source code, review, & mark up in red

Can you expand on this one?

What code are you printing? Other developer's code for code review? And to be clear, you mean a printer right? That paper comes out of?

Also: I like that you only check email twice. I should look into that.

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#64

Post by modo_ »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #57

Profession: Lawyer (Telecom regulation). Workday (times after 9:15 are generally fictitious. Who knows what's going to happen at a given time on any given day.) [7:30]: Wake up. Skim news, including industry news sources like HN, and more specialized law/politics stuff like Communications Daily and Politico. [7:50]: Shower, get dressed (business casual), leave the house. [8:30]: Commute. listen to a podcast, read a b…

Very interesting. I can imagine accounting for your time at 6 minute intervals is an acquired skill.

You mentioned you work on side projects in the evening. Are those projects related to law? Wondering what something like that would consist of.

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#65

Post by jonathanpoulter »

Some of these posts are very interesting, it makes me think there would be value in defining what you would like to be able to post (how you want your day to look) and make changes to achieve that. Likely that would identify manageable and achievable goals, which are worthwhile to you.

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#67

Post by 9to5isdead »

treehau5 wrote: post #46

Profession: Software "Engineer" [06:15] First alarm goes off; [06:45] Finally wake up, get out of bed, shower, shave, make espresso for me and the wife [07:15] out the door, 30 minute commute to office [07:45] breakfast bagel at my work cafe [08:00] arrive at desk, begin contemplating work -- work on something I procrastinated on the previous day so that I can have a good standup report [9:00] everyone arrives at off…

Find remote work. You can work in solitude (as is natural) and collaborate asynchronously (as it should be).

Made the switch a year ago after moving from web developer to tech lead and having all the issues you mentioned. Now I'm just writing code again. Best decision ever.

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#68

Post by chad_strategic »

davzie wrote: post #14

Profession: Web Developer, self employed working remote with startups and creative agencies. Workday: - [08:00] Wake up in a daze and make my wife and son tea and breakfast - [08:30] Shower, get dressed and ready - [09:15] After prepping water canister and tea caddy, head to garden office. - [09:30] Procrastinate - [14:00] Realise the work day is nearly over. Panic. Cram work in. - [17:00] Finish work, make son dinne…

"Yes this sounds about right for a web developer." said another web developer.

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#69

Post by draw_down »

eknight15 wrote: post #21
draw_down wrote: post #17

I'm an engineer at one of those YC companies. I begin my morning working on a priority-sorted list of tasks. Then at some point, a 25-year-old DMs me on Slack to do something urgent and fucks up my entire day/week.

Plot twist: you're 21

Good one. I'm 35

Re: Ask HN: What's your working day like?

#70

Post by VLM »

rpazyaquian wrote: post #6
psyc wrote: post #2

Up at 6:30. 5 minute drive to the ocean. Code for 14-16 hours. Go home, unwind.

How do you charge your laptop?

Much like coffee drinkers know where all the power outlets are at their local coffee shops, I can't speak for OP but I know exactly where each power outlet is in the picnic shelters at my local county parks. I also have a pretty good idea which locations have good data reception to tether on my phone.

Unfortunately I live in a climate where the weather is subjectively "bad" 8 months out of the year, so on one hand I'm not "out there" most of the time, but on the other hand when the weather is unusually good I certainly am out there all day sometimes. Sort of like is the glass half empty or half full argument?

My open office is really, really open. It can be distracting when deer or raccoon wants my lunch. Raccoons are kinda scary, they are alpha scavengers and they know the local gun laws as well as a hunter or police.

Strange but true facts: I travel everywhere with trash bags because I need a way to get my gear home dry when there's a downpour. Also I dress up to go to the park, so rangers won't think I'm homeless.

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