3 ms·

If the author wants to use his lunch break to work on his side projects, then, more power to him. Personally, I like to segment my free time by month, rather th

If the author wants to use his lunch break to work on his side projects, then, more power to him. Personally, I like to segment my free time by month, rather than hour, but I realize a lot of people do not have the freedom to do that. I would rather have an 8 month contract job during which I work 60 hours a week, and then I have 4 months to work on my own projects. It takes me days to get my mind into a new project, and I am my most productive when I spent all of yesterday on the project, and I know I will spend all of today and all of tomorrow on the project. However, whatever project I'm working on, I prefer to use the meals as meetings. Since everyone has to stop for a meal at some point, they seem like useful points to gather people around and regroup.

HackyGeeky 16y ago
"I would rather have an 8 month contract job during which I work 60 hours a week, and then I have 4 months to work on my own projects." That sounds interesting, is this kind of schedule widely prevalent among contractors ? Maybe I've been working at a job for too long to know this...
- wallflower 16y ago
  Most contractors I know end up spinning plates (like in that circus trick) when they have periods of too much work - they usually don't like turning down certain jobs because it is revenue. And have periods of downtime (not necessarily voluntary). Of course, if you are an elite bespoke developer, you can turn down work and always have work. I met a guy who installed sprinkler systems in rich people's lawns. He worked all Spring/Summer/less during the Fall and took off to Barbados or Jamaica for the remaining 3-4 months of the year.
- lkrubner 16y ago
  Partly it depends on the business cycle. From 2003 to late 2008 I was offered far more work than I could accept, so I felt free to turn down whatever I wanted to, confident there would be more. And in that situation, I preferred to overwork for stretches, and then claim whole months for personal projects. That was a personal preference of mine. Since the onset of the recession, picking up work has taken slightly more effort, though I've been lucky in that corporations seem more interested now in developing with some of the web frameworks that became available for PHP, and I have a track record with frameworks like Symfony.

HackyGeeky 16y ago

"I would rather have an 8 month contract job during which I work 60 hours a week, and then I have 4 months to work on my own projects." That sounds interesting, is this kind of schedule widely prevalent among contractors ? Maybe I've been working at a job for too long to know this...

wallflower 16y ago
Most contractors I know end up spinning plates (like in that circus trick) when they have periods of too much work - they usually don't like turning down certain jobs because it is revenue. And have periods of downtime (not necessarily voluntary). Of course, if you are an elite bespoke developer, you can turn down work and always have work. I met a guy who installed sprinkler systems in rich people's lawns. He worked all Spring/Summer/less during the Fall and took off to Barbados or Jamaica for the remaining 3-4 months of the year.
lkrubner 16y ago
Partly it depends on the business cycle. From 2003 to late 2008 I was offered far more work than I could accept, so I felt free to turn down whatever I wanted to, confident there would be more. And in that situation, I preferred to overwork for stretches, and then claim whole months for personal projects. That was a personal preference of mine. Since the onset of the recession, picking up work has taken slightly more effort, though I've been lucky in that corporations seem more interested now in developing with some of the web frameworks that became available for PHP, and I have a track record with frameworks like Symfony.