5 ms·

> 10 minutes of lost productivity a day and yet not every developer not using a tiling windowmanager is fired on the spot for wasting company time. "productiv

> 10 minutes of lost productivity a day and yet not every developer not using a tiling windowmanager is fired on the spot for wasting company time. "productivity" (or what people think of as productive activities) is overrated. Shiny new hardware makes employees, especially technically oriented ones, feel important and appreciated. That's about the gist of it. Nothing wrong with that, but let's not blow up egos with claims of "productivity".

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
sephoric 8y ago
Productivity is one of those things that I think should be motivated with reward for increasing it instead of punishment for decreasing it. I love the nice feeling I get when I use my own custom window manager to shave another 3 seconds off a thing I commonly do. It's an amazing feeling, it makes me feel like Tony Stark, building my own personalized JARVIS, a program that automatically does exactly what I would have done manually. That's a big part of why I built my window manager and why I want to share it with people, because I want them to feel that same excitement and joy of directly improving your own quality of life, even in a tiny but very real way. I would open source it and give it away for free if I could do that and still keep the lights on.
- jungler 8y ago
  My reaction to customizations that shave off seconds is: "so what, it'll be blown away the next time the tech stack changes." I do automate, but there's a subtle difference in goals. If I automate my personal toolset, I follow the same procedure I use around automation anywhere else: don't start off doing it to save time, do it to increase reliability. I will write small scripts, sometimes one-liner scripts, sometimes largish hundreds-of-lines scripts. But the outcome I am aiming for is that I have a procedure that is documented and puts all the configuration in a place where I can see it, so that when the situation changes, it is fixable. A productivity boost is a frequent byproduct of successfully automating, but it's usually a side component to "reliable and documented". The boost is perceived as reduced friction and increased conceptual integrity: fewer things to check or to accidentally get out of sync, and thus less stress involved. Focusing on UI being both shiny and fast is likewise often missing the point - which is the case when discussing new hardware. There are order-of-magnitude thresholds for human attention that are important to keep in mind, but hitting a lower attention threshold usually doesn't solve a productivity problem. It creates a case of "wrong solution faster", drawing the user into a fast but unplanned and reactive feedback loop. See for example the case of writers who like the Alphasmart, a device that makes doing editing so tedious that you don't do it, you just write the draft and edit later.
  - mcny 8y ago
    I work with .NET and that used to mean you have to be on a Windows® computer. At a place I used to work at, I had an HP elite book Windows 7 laptop with i7 processor, 8GB RAM, and a spinning hard disk. That by itself is not the problem. The problem is there is an "asset management" software installed (I assume by default) that is overly active which when combined with a antivirus with "real-time protection" meant a subversion checkout can take a long time. This definitely degrades employee morale I think.
Bodet 8y ago
I would fire explorer/finder etc. programmers on the spot
- RussianCow 8y ago
  What does that mean? You would fire anyone who opens up Finder ever? As opposed to what? Doing everything from the command line? This sounds ridiculous without clarification.
- millstone 8y ago
  Alternatively you could watch them and learn some new tricks.

deleted 8y ago

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sephoric 8y ago

Productivity is one of those things that I think should be motivated with reward for increasing it instead of punishment for decreasing it. I love the nice feeling I get when I use my own custom window manager to shave another 3 seconds off a thing I commonly do. It's an amazing feeling, it makes me feel like Tony Stark, building my own personalized JARVIS, a program that automatically does exactly what I would have done manually. That's a big part of why I built my window manager and why I want to share it with people, because I want them to feel that same excitement and joy of directly improving your own quality of life, even in a tiny but very real way. I would open source it and give it away for free if I could do that and still keep the lights on.

jungler 8y ago
My reaction to customizations that shave off seconds is: "so what, it'll be blown away the next time the tech stack changes." I do automate, but there's a subtle difference in goals. If I automate my personal toolset, I follow the same procedure I use around automation anywhere else: don't start off doing it to save time, do it to increase reliability. I will write small scripts, sometimes one-liner scripts, sometimes largish hundreds-of-lines scripts. But the outcome I am aiming for is that I have a procedure that is documented and puts all the configuration in a place where I can see it, so that when the situation changes, it is fixable. A productivity boost is a frequent byproduct of successfully automating, but it's usually a side component to "reliable and documented". The boost is perceived as reduced friction and increased conceptual integrity: fewer things to check or to accidentally get out of sync, and thus less stress involved. Focusing on UI being both shiny and fast is likewise often missing the point - which is the case when discussing new hardware. There are order-of-magnitude thresholds for human attention that are important to keep in mind, but hitting a lower attention threshold usually doesn't solve a productivity problem. It creates a case of "wrong solution faster", drawing the user into a fast but unplanned and reactive feedback loop. See for example the case of writers who like the Alphasmart, a device that makes doing editing so tedious that you don't do it, you just write the draft and edit later.
- mcny 8y ago
  I work with .NET and that used to mean you have to be on a Windows® computer. At a place I used to work at, I had an HP elite book Windows 7 laptop with i7 processor, 8GB RAM, and a spinning hard disk. That by itself is not the problem. The problem is there is an "asset management" software installed (I assume by default) that is overly active which when combined with a antivirus with "real-time protection" meant a subversion checkout can take a long time. This definitely degrades employee morale I think.

Bodet 8y ago

I would fire explorer/finder etc. programmers on the spot

RussianCow 8y ago
What does that mean? You would fire anyone who opens up Finder ever? As opposed to what? Doing everything from the command line? This sounds ridiculous without clarification.
millstone 8y ago
Alternatively you could watch them and learn some new tricks.