One-third of tech workers admit to working only 3 to 4 hours a day • Hacker News Board

Re: One-third of tech workers admit to working only 3 to 4 hours a day

#61

Post by srtjstjsj » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 1:31 PM UTC

itg wrote: post #10

I'm pretty sure I put in about 3-4 hours of real work when I was in office too. If you count meetings, answering emails, and operational work, it is hard to put in a standard 8 hours of real work. Also, the comment that the Amazon employee made is similar to what I hear across other online forums such as Reddit and Twitter. Seems Amazon has created a really toxic environment for everyone involved.

Meetings, email, and ops are working.

Playing ping pong and taking 3rd lunch and faffing on HN are not working.

Re: One-third of tech workers admit to working only 3 to 4 hours a day

#62

Post by darkerside » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 1:31 PM UTC

torstenvl wrote: post #56

ianai wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, people should be more like lawyers. Bill for that time you spent in the shower thinking about your clients case. That reads sarcastic, but in today’s workplace you really need to know the legal framework you’re working within or you’ll probably be fleeced or worse. How lawyers charge actually is instructive.

Billing time is the absolute worst thing about types of legal practice you're talking about, and absolutely nobody should adopt anything about that system. Economic pressures eventually force granularity of a tenth of an hour. There are no circumstances under which I would ever willingly return to anxiety over whether a bathroom break might take longer than three minutes.

Lawyers don't live in anxiety of that. They accept that is part of work and find ways to bill for it.

Re: One-third of tech workers admit to working only 3 to 4 hours a day

#63

Post by abledon » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

daebersold wrote: post #24

1/3 of tech workers admit to working 3 to 4 hours, while 2/3 of tech workers admit to sucking at tech work. Leaving less than 10% who know what they're doing and working full days doing the real tech work. Just ask any company.

i work with a guy who claims like 15 hours of overtime per week... his total output is prbably like 0.1x what a normal developer does... constantly adds bugs, never squashes his commits (to show extra 'work' being done'...). typicial commits for 1 day of work:

- add 3 docstring for 3 setter functions (max 10 lines each). (1 day)

- fix a codesmell, ~15 character syntax change, whose 'fix' is given freely by the analysis plugins' web app. (1 day)

- change a version number in a file (1 day)

In total I'd say he does maybe .5 hours of work a day...

I'm probably around 4-5 hours, but knowing hes claiming overtime ontop just kills me lol.

Re: One-third of tech workers admit to working only 3 to 4 hours a day

#64

Post by berrynice » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

I physically cannot make myself work more than I already am, my brain is utterly destroyed from lockdown; My memory is shot, my motivation is shot, fundamentally my ability to think has declined to the point where I'm seriously worried, and the fact this seems to be the case for everyone else isn't helping at all. Before you ask yes I tried taking a holiday and it actually made things worse.

Re: One-third of tech workers admit to working only 3 to 4 hours a day

#65

Post by waheoo » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

srtjstjsj wrote: post #53

lordnacho wrote: post #7

This isn't surprising, because devs have a tendency to focus on the hard bits of coding as being their work. Why not, right? It's probably the most satisfying too, so we forget the bits where we document, explain to colleagues, organize, etc. Don't forget that a lot of "not working" such as browsing a certain orange-and-beige website actually IS work as well: you wouldn't be updated on what's going on in the tech wor…

When people say they "aren't working" they are talking about chitchat and watching YouTube, not doing the engineering part of software engineering.

This is a very subjective claim to make.

I regularly catch myself thinking and telling my wife I've had a very unproductive day and didn't work much when I spent the majority of it working through internal memos, email, and otherwise just getting caught up on the company happenings.

It isn't really work. It's squarely in the bullshit side of "bullshit jobs".

I don't really miss label other things like documentation, research, testing or project spiking but those too very regularly get forgotten and don't feel significant to bullet point in my daily standup.

Re: One-third of tech workers admit to working only 3 to 4 hours a day

#66

Post by robjan » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

ianai wrote: post #38

lordnacho wrote: post #7

This isn't surprising, because devs have a tendency to focus on the hard bits of coding as being their work. Why not, right? It's probably the most satisfying too, so we forget the bits where we document, explain to colleagues, organize, etc. Don't forget that a lot of "not working" such as browsing a certain orange-and-beige website actually IS work as well: you wouldn't be updated on what's going on in the tech wor…

Yes, people should be more like lawyers. Bill for that time you spent in the shower thinking about your clients case. That reads sarcastic, but in today’s workplace you really need to know the legal framework you’re working within or you’ll probably be fleeced or worse. How lawyers charge actually is instructive.

I was once forced to do that by a client and the result was having to bill additional time for logging and investigating what everyone on the team was doing. It probably added an additional 10% to the billed hours for engagement management.

Re: One-third of tech workers admit to working only 3 to 4 hours a day

#67

Post by arcturus17 » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #7

This isn't surprising, because devs have a tendency to focus on the hard bits of coding as being their work. Why not, right? It's probably the most satisfying too, so we forget the bits where we document, explain to colleagues, organize, etc. Don't forget that a lot of "not working" such as browsing a certain orange-and-beige website actually IS work as well: you wouldn't be updated on what's going on in the tech wor…

> never do anything as satisfying as coding

What a narrow world view.

There are “schmoozers” who are completely satisfied and coders who dread their work lives...

There are also schmoozers who create value beyond anything many single coders could ever dream of: by raising capital, creating multimillion sales, persuading and inspiring others, etc.

And I say this as someone who switched from a management job to designing and coding because I personally find it much more fulfilling.

Re: One-third of tech workers admit to working only 3 to 4 hours a day

#68

Post by brigandish » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 1:39 PM UTC

thefz wrote: post #25

throwaway3699 wrote: post #3

3-4 hours of deep work is fairly standard I think. The rest of the time is not necessarily something I wouldn't define as "hard work" (emails, meetings, etc...) - but it's not slacking either.

The Brits have a splendid term for it: "faffing".

Some people pfaff, some people skive.

Re: One-third of tech workers admit to working only 3 to 4 hours a day

#69

Post by anti-shill » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #37

PedroBatista wrote: post #27

Is it me or the article reads as "Not everyone works what they should, look at these slackers.."? Also I don't know exactly how they measure this, but I have a feeling it might be the time people spend pressing buttons..

It's a publication oriented towards business types. Of course any salaried employee is by definition a slacker to be whipped.

yeah, thread winner here....not really surprising that so few comments here are speaking to this seemingly obvious truth...because HN is management-oriented

Re: One-third of tech workers admit to working only 3 to 4 hours a day

#70

Post by Demonsult » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 1:51 PM UTC

ianai wrote: post #38

lordnacho wrote: post #7

This isn't surprising, because devs have a tendency to focus on the hard bits of coding as being their work. Why not, right? It's probably the most satisfying too, so we forget the bits where we document, explain to colleagues, organize, etc. Don't forget that a lot of "not working" such as browsing a certain orange-and-beige website actually IS work as well: you wouldn't be updated on what's going on in the tech wor…

Yes, people should be more like lawyers. Bill for that time you spent in the shower thinking about your clients case. That reads sarcastic, but in today’s workplace you really need to know the legal framework you’re working within or you’ll probably be fleeced or worse. How lawyers charge actually is instructive.

I had a lawyers suggest I drive him to court. This turned out to be a trick so he could "justify" billing me for the commute time. It was like Uber, except the driver pays the passenger $500.