Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

#1

Post by zzaip » Sat, Sep 29, 2018, 11:39 PM UTC

I'm a relatively junior software engineer, a little over a year out from university, with a cushy remote job working for big-co. And I never know how much work to do on a given day.

Right now, my daily rule of thumb is to try to have my butt in the seat for ~8 hours. I clock out at 6 and stay disciplined so I don't end up overworking as many remoters do. The main disadvantage of this strategy is that it just doesn't align with the reality of the job. Some days I work on something complex and want to work more hours, while others I'll knock out a few small things and want to call it early.

Strategies I'd like to use but can't:

- Show up and leave with my coworkers. We're a remote team, and have a few serious workaholics on the team (not to mention the issue of timezones).

- Leave when I've done my tasks. This might work if we had actual sprints. Our reality is an endless stream bugs and features for us to work on before we launch our product, and we just grab tickets as they come. Hopefully this improves after launch.

What do you do? I want to do enough work to feel good about myself, without burning out. I have very little supervision from management, my coworkers seem to respect and like me, and I am generally productive. Help me, HN.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

#2

Post by sbinthree » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 12:09 AM UTC

I generally try to get as much work done (in life) as I can. Some projects I can work for 12 hours a day on, others I'm tapped out at 6, so I just maximize output. If output is below the debugging cost of that code or something, I stop. Could be 2pm or 10pm.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

#3

Post by chrisbennet » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 12:20 AM UTC

Once I get 5 billable hours in the rest is just gravey. I’m a consultant though so I get paid by the hour.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

#4

Post by zzaip » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 12:46 AM UTC

sbinthree wrote: post #2

I generally try to get as much work done (in life) as I can. Some projects I can work for 12 hours a day on, others I'm tapped out at 6, so I just maximize output. If output is below the debugging cost of that code or something, I stop. Could be 2pm or 10pm.

Do you think this approach applies if you’re trying to save energy to work on side projects? I feel like if I work as hard as I possibly can at my day job, at the end of the day I’m not left with much juice left to work on the things I actually care about.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

#5

Post by danielvf » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 1:04 AM UTC

I always stop at 5pm. I take some kids for a walk to decompress. Around 9pm, after kids go to bed, then I’ll do another hour if I’m working on something fun.

I love coding, and I would be coding if no one was paying me, but there’s more to life than just that.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

#6

Post by arandr0x » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 2:26 AM UTC

What's going to happen to your life is you're going to learn what other people's natural speeds are, what yours is, and what is needed for your specific job, and you're going to have a much better barometer for that. That's going to happen naturally over the next 2-3 years.

In the meantime, you can:

* Try to incrementally improve. Keep a daily log (wish I had started this my first year), write down your stupid mistakes, false starts, other things. Re-read entries sometimes. Try not to make the same mistake twice and to be doing more complex tasks over time.

* Do the "butt in seat" thing without beating yourself up. A good one is to try to work ~40h a week (even 35), except if you can see an immediate career benefit not to by working the extra hours on a side project or stretch assignment. It doesn't have to be 8 hours every day it can be 12 on one day then 4 the next. Log your hours (remote people should always do this) and note patterns. For example, if you are consistently working less than 40h, try working harder, more than 40h, reconsider your approach or appeal to your manager.

* Ask for feedback. You can set up a meeting with someone (for example lead, manager or just someone more senior you work with) and ask "what do you think I should do to be more useful to the project?". Alternately you can wait until a more social occasion or a lull when working 1:1 with someone and just ask "so how do you think the project is going?" If they think you have a time management issue, they'll tell you, if not, you're good. Side note, you may hear stuff like work on your soft skills, have better work life balance. It doesn't strictly mean "work less" but it means your coworkers think you're too focused on individual achievement.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

#7

Post by cimmanom » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 2:39 AM UTC

How strict is your employer about butt-in-seat schedule?

If you have full flexibility, I’d suggest aiming to hit 40 hours on a weekly basis rather than 8 on a daily basis. That gives you the flexibility to work, say, 10 hours one day because you’re really on a roll, and to stop at 6 hours the next afternoon when you’re tired and distracted without feeling guilty.

Don’t go over 40 hours on a regular basis. That’s a recipe for burnout. A week of crunch time every 3 months is one thing. But regular 50-hour weeks aren’t sustainable for most people.

I’d also suggest setting goals in the morning for what you want to accomplish in a day. Put down your work when you reach the goal, unless you’ve got several more hours in the day. In that case, set another goal for the remaining hours. If it becomes clear that you won’t reach your goal within a reasonable number of hours for the day, put your work down whenever you hit a stopping point close to the time you’d planned to wrap up for the day.

More experience should help you make increasingly accurate estimates of what you can accomplish in a day, so you’ll hone this process as time passes. Plus it’s great practice at estimating, which is a difficult and valuable skill.

It’s unusual to hire junior engineers fully remote in part for this reason: more experience in a “typical” work environment give you more context for these sorts of judgement calls.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

#8

Post by Ninjaneered » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 3:01 AM UTC

I own a small start-up and struggle with work life balance. I'm a night owl and generally not terribly productive in the morning, but once I hit my stride in the afternoon/evening, my productivity continues to increase and I often find myself plugging away at 3-5am. I have found that it's in my best interest for throughput to continue when I'm "in the zone", but it does create some friction with the spouse.

I'm very interested in how to define the "enough work for the day" question. Or we could just listen to Dan Reeder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNWhiXxdbWk

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

#9

Post by thrower123 » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 3:25 AM UTC

When the clock hits 4pm, I have a daily standup meeting. About half the time, this meeting occurs, and I go home afterwards immediately. If it doesn't happen, a quorum of people had something better to do. If I don't have anything actually urgent or interesting, I tend to bail with the others. Otherwise, I work away until maybe 5:15, then I go home.

I'm basically paid to be on-hand 9-5, so that's what I do. I don't check email outside work hours as a rule. If there's something technically interesting, or is important to do but cannot be done within the constraints of a business workday (basically, anything that involves deep thought, concentration, and sustained effort), I may choose to do it when that's convenient for me. And I know things; I remember, and I've been around long enough to know the whys and wherefores and sequences of events that led up to the present state of things.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

#10

Post by annywhey » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 3:32 AM UTC

What you are looking for here is primarily a feedback mechanism issue. This is something that is a hard problem, since good, useful feedback is never quite as simple as just asking someone. Employees are looking for it. Managers are looking for it. Executives are looking for it.

With respect to work time and workload there's always an element of presentism - if "enough" surfaced activity happens over the course of each week and the work is not obviously deficient, then most managers won't ask questions. And you already know that much, since you had many years of school to get that idea in your head. And when it's on-site, it's simple to get to that level - if you're in the office, you're at work, even if it isn't time-on-task.

But there is always going to be a level beyond that, of taking on tasks that are a good combination of "builds up a career" and "builds up the company" - stuff where you can act more independently, and likewise fail independently. You can easily fall into work that does neither or only one of those things, or convince yourself into workaholic behavior and sacrifice everything else. Nobody can offer a clear bright line of "this is the best possible course of action". But there is a "better" out there somewhere!

So if you can measure yourself by whether you did something of both career and company and other life things each day, then you already have a more balanced self-measurement than "quantities of issues" or "lines of code" or "hours in seat".