5 ms·

> it could be 4 hours hard work.. "Targets" are a pretty low end way to think of such an open ended job. You can think of your job as "They asked me to do X a

by gdulli 10y ago

> it could be 4 hours hard work.. "Targets" are a pretty low end way to think of such an open ended job. You can think of your job as "They asked me to do X and I'm going to do X and after that the rest of my 40 hours don't matter." Or, "I'm going to do as much as I possibly can in 40 hours." From the start of my career I always thought of it as the latter. I don't understand the mindset of the former in a professional job. Maximize your value to your employer or you'll be the last one to get promoted and the first one to get laid off. There's always a backlog of defined tasks and there's always open-ended opportunity to make progress in ways you can think up yourself. Do you want to sit around waiting to be told what to do or engineer your own path?

theparanoid 10y ago
Most employees aren't capable of 40hrs/week of intellectual output.
- gdulli 10y ago
  There might be some technical accuracy to that but it's a lame and self-defeating thing to rest on as the basis for your career strategy. I'm sitting here at work typing this reply to you. It's not about using every hour, it's about fundamentally seeing your output as malleable instead of fixed based on your manager's "targets" and seeing yourself as responsible for your level production. Most of my time (and much of my team's time) is spent on projects that were my idea. It wasn't that way at the start of my career but I've always works towards taking control.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    what you just said is completely orthogonal to the comment you're replying to. self-directed vs. manager-directed is a separate concern from whether or not a programmer can be expected to put in 40 hours of high focus, high concentration technical work per week. in my experience getting 20-30 high focus hours in a week is a very good week. the rest of the time has to be used for things that are much less focused. like arguing about this shit on hacker news, for example. it's not even an either/or scenario. you need to do both. just like when breathing you have to both inhale and exhale.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
zzalpha 10y ago
You can think of your job as "They asked me to do X and I'm going to do X and after that the rest of my 40 hours don't matter." Or, "I'm going to do as much as I possibly can in 40 hours." The healthy answer lies somewhere in the middle. Burning out trying to overdeliver and prove your worth is no better than underdelivering and slacking off. There is a balance. Exceeding your employer's expectations is of course a good thing as a salaried employee. That's how you build a highly successful career. But one of my expectations as a manager is that you manage yourself so you're still around 3-5 years from now and don't need to take a break for mental health reasons.
- paganel 10y ago
  > But one of my expectations as a manager is that you manage yourself so you're still around 3-5 years from now and don't need to take a break for mental health reasons. You're a good manager.
dingaling 10y ago
> I'm going to do as much as I possibly can in 40 hours. However the inverse isn't true; your employer doesn't pay you as much as they possibly can for 40 hours work. They pay just enough. So why not work just enough? It's meant to be a balanced exchange.
- gdulli 10y ago
  That's a narrow view and inaccurate over the long run. I make more money than my colleagues who only do what they're asked to do. And if my company has layoffs I'm one of the last who would be let go.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >I make more money than my colleagues who only do what they're asked to do. That's not the case everywhere though, which is the observation that TFA and the parent were starting from. Obviously if you do make more it's ok. >And if my company has layoffs I'm one of the last who would be let go. You'd be surprised how many people thought that and got the short end of the stick.
    - chrisbennet 10y ago
      ">And if my company has layoffs I'm one of the last who would be let go. You'd be surprised how many people thought that and got the short end of the stick." It's a delusion that helps people sleep at night...
    - gdulli 10y ago
      Since it's both logical and fits with 20 years of observed experience it's reasonable for me to act as if it's accurate. Despite exceptions and anecdotes to the contrary. The times I've been at a company where shitty politics supersede reasonable practices, I've left. And having a resume with greater achievements makes this easier than a resume with fewer.
      - coldtea 10y ago
0x445442 10y ago
> Do you want to sit around waiting to be told what to do or engineer your own path? It can be very difficult if not impossible to engineer your own path in most environments these days. These days most devs are simply trading time for money. If the backlog board is empty, they're on retainer waiting for it to fill up. Because of the eternal effort of the enterprise to commoditize developers they're given no decision making power. So even though they continually identify work that could be done to improve product or process, they know it's a crap shoot to follow through on such work as it's more than likely to be rejected for one subjective reason or another.
- mateo411 10y ago
  In a healthy organization the engineer can suggest improvements to Product and help them prioritize the improvements.
  - 0x445442 10y ago
    Agreed, and I've worked in such environments. However, its my thesis most "dark matter" engineers in "the enterprise" are in an environment I originally described. And that's not accounting for Government organizations which I imagine are even worse.
- gdulli 10y ago
  That's not been my experience over a 20-year career. On a given day I might not have that freedom, and I've had ideas get shot down. But over the long run it's always been true that if I have extra time I can use it to my advantage one way or another. This feels like a pretty universal rule about work. If I worked at Chipotle I'm sure I could still find a way to distinguish myself over my co-workers.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    If you take the advantage you gained from being recognized, vs the time spent towards that effort (including things shot down), is it worth it? The recognition must have a high return to make up for all the time wasted on rejected initiatives.
ryandrake 10y ago
Only when working hourly with a guaranteed contract does "engineering your own path" necessarily result in extra compensation. A rational person will put in effort up to (but not past) the point where that marginal extra effort results in an a commensurate expected marginal reward. Assuming you're rational, say you're paid $P for Q output. If you thought you had a 75% chance to get $P+10% for producing Q+5% output, you'd be right to work harder and produce that extra output. If, on the other hand, you thought you had a 10% chance to get $P+100% for producing Q+50% output, you would not accept that.
gs_throwaway 10y ago
[Posting from a throwaway] You're exactly right, in an unexpected way though. I was working at a somewhat successful BigCo. (makes HN frontpage every other month or so) a few years ago. Then came the time to discuss raises that year. I did more than was required of me, helped other teams, rewrote a bunch of legacy code in languages that were not part of my job description, etc. What did I get? A sub-inflation raise in a year where the company's revenues increased by 70%. My closest coworkers received about the same. All because we worked on infrastructure, deemed a cost center. So next year I coasted and put in the bare minimum while working on side project and taking freelance work. Got average to below average marks when the special time came. Then got asked to work unpaid overtime to "fix my mistakes". I quit on the spot. It was a huge relief. Now I work for the man in the mirror and he's the best boss I could have ever wished for.

by gdulli 10y ago

theparanoid 10y ago

Most employees aren't capable of 40hrs/week of intellectual output.

gdulli 10y ago
There might be some technical accuracy to that but it's a lame and self-defeating thing to rest on as the basis for your career strategy. I'm sitting here at work typing this reply to you. It's not about using every hour, it's about fundamentally seeing your output as malleable instead of fixed based on your manager's "targets" and seeing yourself as responsible for your level production. Most of my time (and much of my team's time) is spent on projects that were my idea. It wasn't that way at the start of my career but I've always works towards taking control.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  what you just said is completely orthogonal to the comment you're replying to. self-directed vs. manager-directed is a separate concern from whether or not a programmer can be expected to put in 40 hours of high focus, high concentration technical work per week. in my experience getting 20-30 high focus hours in a week is a very good week. the rest of the time has to be used for things that are much less focused. like arguing about this shit on hacker news, for example. it's not even an either/or scenario. you need to do both. just like when breathing you have to both inhale and exhale.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

zzalpha 10y ago

You can think of your job as "They asked me to do X and I'm going to do X and after that the rest of my 40 hours don't matter." Or, "I'm going to do as much as I possibly can in 40 hours." The healthy answer lies somewhere in the middle. Burning out trying to overdeliver and prove your worth is no better than underdelivering and slacking off. There is a balance. Exceeding your employer's expectations is of course a good thing as a salaried employee. That's how you build a highly successful career. But one of my expectations as a manager is that you manage yourself so you're still around 3-5 years from now and don't need to take a break for mental health reasons.

paganel 10y ago
> But one of my expectations as a manager is that you manage yourself so you're still around 3-5 years from now and don't need to take a break for mental health reasons. You're a good manager.

dingaling 10y ago

> I'm going to do as much as I possibly can in 40 hours. However the inverse isn't true; your employer doesn't pay you as much as they possibly can for 40 hours work. They pay just enough. So why not work just enough? It's meant to be a balanced exchange.

gdulli 10y ago
That's a narrow view and inaccurate over the long run. I make more money than my colleagues who only do what they're asked to do. And if my company has layoffs I'm one of the last who would be let go.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >I make more money than my colleagues who only do what they're asked to do. That's not the case everywhere though, which is the observation that TFA and the parent were starting from. Obviously if you do make more it's ok. >And if my company has layoffs I'm one of the last who would be let go. You'd be surprised how many people thought that and got the short end of the stick.
  - chrisbennet 10y ago
    ">And if my company has layoffs I'm one of the last who would be let go. You'd be surprised how many people thought that and got the short end of the stick." It's a delusion that helps people sleep at night...
  - gdulli 10y ago
    Since it's both logical and fits with 20 years of observed experience it's reasonable for me to act as if it's accurate. Despite exceptions and anecdotes to the contrary. The times I've been at a company where shitty politics supersede reasonable practices, I've left. And having a resume with greater achievements makes this easier than a resume with fewer.
    - coldtea 10y ago

0x445442 10y ago

> Do you want to sit around waiting to be told what to do or engineer your own path? It can be very difficult if not impossible to engineer your own path in most environments these days. These days most devs are simply trading time for money. If the backlog board is empty, they're on retainer waiting for it to fill up. Because of the eternal effort of the enterprise to commoditize developers they're given no decision making power. So even though they continually identify work that could be done to improve product or process, they know it's a crap shoot to follow through on such work as it's more than likely to be rejected for one subjective reason or another.

mateo411 10y ago
In a healthy organization the engineer can suggest improvements to Product and help them prioritize the improvements.
- 0x445442 10y ago
  Agreed, and I've worked in such environments. However, its my thesis most "dark matter" engineers in "the enterprise" are in an environment I originally described. And that's not accounting for Government organizations which I imagine are even worse.
gdulli 10y ago
That's not been my experience over a 20-year career. On a given day I might not have that freedom, and I've had ideas get shot down. But over the long run it's always been true that if I have extra time I can use it to my advantage one way or another. This feels like a pretty universal rule about work. If I worked at Chipotle I'm sure I could still find a way to distinguish myself over my co-workers.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  If you take the advantage you gained from being recognized, vs the time spent towards that effort (including things shot down), is it worth it? The recognition must have a high return to make up for all the time wasted on rejected initiatives.

ryandrake 10y ago

Only when working hourly with a guaranteed contract does "engineering your own path" necessarily result in extra compensation. A rational person will put in effort up to (but not past) the point where that marginal extra effort results in an a commensurate expected marginal reward. Assuming you're rational, say you're paid $P for Q output. If you thought you had a 75% chance to get $P+10% for producing Q+5% output, you'd be right to work harder and produce that extra output. If, on the other hand, you thought you had a 10% chance to get $P+100% for producing Q+50% output, you would not accept that.

gs_throwaway 10y ago

[Posting from a throwaway] You're exactly right, in an unexpected way though. I was working at a somewhat successful BigCo. (makes HN frontpage every other month or so) a few years ago. Then came the time to discuss raises that year. I did more than was required of me, helped other teams, rewrote a bunch of legacy code in languages that were not part of my job description, etc. What did I get? A sub-inflation raise in a year where the company's revenues increased by 70%. My closest coworkers received about the same. All because we worked on infrastructure, deemed a cost center. So next year I coasted and put in the bare minimum while working on side project and taking freelance work. Got average to below average marks when the special time came. Then got asked to work unpaid overtime to "fix my mistakes". I quit on the spot. It was a huge relief. Now I work for the man in the mirror and he's the best boss I could have ever wished for.