4 ms·

Is this work in lieu of your regular tasks? If not, clearly you don't have enough to do. If so, that's grounds for dismissal. Unless, you got permission...

matthewmacleod 8y ago
You must work at an awful organisation.
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  Wait, there's organizations that let devs spend hours on a prototype in lieu of their normal work?
  - Harvey-Specter 8y ago
    Wasn't Google famous for giving devs 20% play time to work on whatever passion project they wanted?
  - weavie 8y ago
    That is my normal work. Our manager doesn't have a clue how systems work, so it's up to us to find the best way. I know the various areas we need to develop to push the system forward and it is up to me to find the best way to do it. If I learn something new that makes me rethink something, then I am more than welcome to revisit it and try out some new things. If it ends up with a better system then we all benefit. At the end of the day the work that needs to get done does get done. Obviously I do have to use my judgement to allocate time appropriately. If there is a customer screaming at accounts because they were overcharged or whatever, then it is quite obvious I need to resolve that issue rather than work on a new way to style our buttons, but for the majority of the time it is up to me. I do also spend quite a lot of my own time working on various things where it is a bit ambiguous as to whether it is 'proper' work or not. I enjoy the work I do because I don't feel like I am working in a sweat shop.. Maybe I'm just lucky to have always found a job where management trusts the developers.
  - matthewmacleod 8y ago
    Yes! I would be really surprised if an organisation didn't expect that to happen! When solving pretty much any problem that I don't have an existing cookie-cutter solution for, I do some prototyping as part of the process of figuring out how it works. Sometimes I do this for arbitrary things that are irritating me, or that I think might be worth looking at. Nobody is sitting over my shoulder looking at everything I do and I'd be right out the door if that was ever the case. I'd expect professional software engineers to spend at least a bit of their time working on this sort of stuff!
    - JustSomeNobody 8y ago
      > When solving pretty much any problem that I don't have an existing cookie-cutter solution for, I do some prototyping as part of the process of figuring out how it works. Sometimes I do this for arbitrary things that are irritating me, or that I think might be worth looking at. Well, of course this is how normal development works. This is the work I am talking about that would _not_ get done because the OP was working on a prototype to solve some _other_ problem.

matthewmacleod 8y ago

You must work at an awful organisation.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago
Wait, there's organizations that let devs spend hours on a prototype in lieu of their normal work?
- Harvey-Specter 8y ago
  Wasn't Google famous for giving devs 20% play time to work on whatever passion project they wanted?
- weavie 8y ago
  That is my normal work. Our manager doesn't have a clue how systems work, so it's up to us to find the best way. I know the various areas we need to develop to push the system forward and it is up to me to find the best way to do it. If I learn something new that makes me rethink something, then I am more than welcome to revisit it and try out some new things. If it ends up with a better system then we all benefit. At the end of the day the work that needs to get done does get done. Obviously I do have to use my judgement to allocate time appropriately. If there is a customer screaming at accounts because they were overcharged or whatever, then it is quite obvious I need to resolve that issue rather than work on a new way to style our buttons, but for the majority of the time it is up to me. I do also spend quite a lot of my own time working on various things where it is a bit ambiguous as to whether it is 'proper' work or not. I enjoy the work I do because I don't feel like I am working in a sweat shop.. Maybe I'm just lucky to have always found a job where management trusts the developers.
- matthewmacleod 8y ago
  Yes! I would be really surprised if an organisation didn't expect that to happen! When solving pretty much any problem that I don't have an existing cookie-cutter solution for, I do some prototyping as part of the process of figuring out how it works. Sometimes I do this for arbitrary things that are irritating me, or that I think might be worth looking at. Nobody is sitting over my shoulder looking at everything I do and I'd be right out the door if that was ever the case. I'd expect professional software engineers to spend at least a bit of their time working on this sort of stuff!
  - JustSomeNobody 8y ago
    > When solving pretty much any problem that I don't have an existing cookie-cutter solution for, I do some prototyping as part of the process of figuring out how it works. Sometimes I do this for arbitrary things that are irritating me, or that I think might be worth looking at. Well, of course this is how normal development works. This is the work I am talking about that would _not_ get done because the OP was working on a prototype to solve some _other_ problem.