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It's also perfectly OK to not write code at all, that's what the vast majority of people do. Which isn't to say if you're not writing code in your free-time you
by jdoliner 7y ago
It's also perfectly OK to not write code at all, that's what the vast majority of people do. Which isn't to say if you're not writing code in your free-time you should quit altogether. It's just to say that what's "OK" isn't a terribly high standard.
I've always felt guilty if I'm only coding at work, because I've always felt that if my employer is willing to pay me X dollars an hour to code, then they must be getting at least X dollars of value out of my work, and likely they're getting much more. So I felt like I was letting myself down if I wasn't also using this skill in a way where I could capture all of the value I was creating, rather than sharing it with my employer. Unlike with most professions where you can't really do the work outside of a larger corporate setting, programming all by yourself can actually produce very valuable things, that you can reap all the rewards of for yourself.
But not everyone thinks this way, and making progress on programming projects by yourself is very hard, especially if you also have a full-time job. So I agree with the author about the ok-ness of not doing it.
- abtinf 7y agoThe value of the work you do at home is a small fraction of the value you produce at work. Employers risk a lot of money on engineering, but even more on marketing, sales, product management, support, vendors, operational processes, legal, infrastructure, and more. Each of those areas acts as a multiplier on the value produced by everyone in the organization.
- rjzzleep 7y agoIs it? I'd wager most human beings can't just turn off their head when the clock hits 6 pm. So you will think about work, think about problems at work and your mind will inevitable work on issues you experienced at work when you sleep. Sure, none of it visible, but I find the way we think about productivity highly questionable.
- abtinf 7y agoI meant my comment in the context of the person I was replying to, who was considering working on something at home that is unrelated to their day job.
- jdoliner 7y agoIn my case the work I did at home eventually turned into my company which now has all of the things you're describing to better leverage it. But it all started with high leverage work that I did all by myself.