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

fastcompany.com

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

#91

Post by kthejoker2 »

jksmith wrote: post #84
jjk166 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But can I write off my shower as a home office tax deduction?

I wrote a whole sqlite wrapper while in my hot tub carrel. I call that time "meditubbing." I read a story somewhere a thousand years ago about Gustave Flaubert's work habits. As I recall, at a dinner party: Woman: "Was your day fruitful?" Flaubert: "Yes, very." Woman: "How many words did you write?" Flaubert: "None."

You can find the same passage and line of thinking in every great author's memoir: small, consistent, disciplined, focused effort and writing, no matter what the result; buoyed by long bouts of thinking, living, experiencing, observing - to find the "peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet", as Flannery O'Connor put it.

> “The time we have alone, the time we have in walking, the time we have in riding a bicycle, is the most important time for a writer. Escaping from the typewriter is part of the creative process. You have to give the subconscious time to think. Real thinking always occurs at the subconscious level.” - Ray Bradbury

> "When the manuscript had lain in a pigeon hole two years I took it out one day and read the last chapter that I had written. It was then that I made the great discovery that when the tank runs dry you've only to leave it alone and it will fill up again in time, while you are asleep -- also while you are at work on other things and are quite unaware that this unconscious and profitable cerebration is going on." - Mark Twain

> ‘I didn’t stir out yesterday, but sat and thought all day; not writing a line; not so much as the cross of a t or the dot of an i. I imaged forth a good deal of Barnaby by keeping my mind steadily upon him; and am happy to say I have gone to work this morning in good twig, strong hope and cheerful spirits. Last night I was unutterably and impossible-to-form-an-idea-of-ably miserable.’ - Charles Dickens

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

#92

Post by LockAndLol »

arcturus17 wrote: post #90
LockAndLol wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're taking one single phrase out of context and getting bent out of shape. Just assume the people you're writing to aren't all idiots. If you really think OP meant what you thought, ask them.

They completely - and I mean completely - changed the comment from what I read this morning. The original quote or calling non-coders “schmoozers” (their words, not mine), are in fact, no longer there as far as I can see. It wasn’t taken out of context, there was not that much nuance to the sentence I quoted.

Ah, I see. I had completely forgotten editing comments was possible.

Apologies.

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

#93

Post by grep_name »

Causality1 wrote: post #6
ceejayoz wrote: post #2

“How many real hours of work do you put in each day?” Am I supposed to count meetings I didn't need to be on, or that could've been an email, or that get rescheduled at the last minute for 15 minutes later than originally?

I'd say anything that prevents you from, for instance, browsing the internet for pleasure counts as work. Meeting in a boardroom? Work. Zoom call in which you have to regularly participate? Work. Zoom call you can basically ignore while you read HN? Not work.

Disagree. I may be on HN right now, but if I were not at work I wouldn't be on HN. I wouldn't be on my computer at all, in fact. Right now I am available, which provides value to my employer at my personal expense.

Not using part of my life in the way I see fit because I need to make a living? Work.

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

#94

Post by danielrpa »

Why do we care about how many hours people are working? Good looking people make tens of thousands of dollars for showing up at a party for 1-2 hours. Influencers make thousands for recommending a product in a few minutes.

Tech workers have a valuable and, in the grand scheme of things, rare ability that is immensely useful to Humankind. Perhaps some very talented people can do top quality work for a couple of hours a day, but deliver immense value in these two hours. Is this a reason for concern?

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

#95

Post by paulcole »

torstenvl wrote: post #60
paulcole wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that there's entire classes of people who never do anything as satisfying as coding during their day. All they do is communicate in some way: making powerpoints, schmoozing with customers over lunch, sitting in meetings to discuss what the business should do As someone who finds coding completely unsatisfying and who instead chose to have a career sitting in meetings to discuss what the business should do, I find t…

Meetings with people who have no visibility on the brass tacks actual work constitute "communicating well"?

Yes!

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

#96

Post by eru »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #59
eru wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting definition. I'm not sure it's useful. Eg when I am oncall out of hours, I could browse HN almost all the time, but it is still low-intensity work, even if nothing breaks and pages on that day.

Oncall is a bit special, usually counted as partial time work for time spent not responding to calls, or with overtime rates for time actually called in.

At Google SRE we had a flat ratio regardless of whether you had a page or not.

The idea was two-fold: reduces paperwork, and incentivizes the SRE team to reduce alerts that have to be dealt with.

In any case, my main point was that anything that prevents me from having a beer or going bungee jumping is 'work' in my books. Though, obviously, there are different levels of intensity.

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

#98

Post by Causality1 »

grep_name wrote: post #93
Causality1 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say anything that prevents you from, for instance, browsing the internet for pleasure counts as work. Meeting in a boardroom? Work. Zoom call in which you have to regularly participate? Work. Zoom call you can basically ignore while you read HN? Not work.

Disagree. I may be on HN right now, but if I were not at work I wouldn't be on HN. I wouldn't be on my computer at all, in fact. Right now I am available, which provides value to my employer at my personal expense. Not using part of my life in the way I see fit because I need to make a living? Work.

It's not a binary solution set. People locked in a jail cell are not working either.

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

#99

Post by darkerside »

tiahura wrote: post #74
darkerside wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Try billing 2000 hours a year in .1 increments. It’s not so much the bathroom breaks that lead to anxiety, it’s things like: kids’ soccer games, doctor’s appointments, and anniversaries.

This is a much better argument than bathroom breaks. I do think it still comes down to an ability to self manage, which is going to vary widely by individual.
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