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I'd be interested to know if other software developers feel their current working hours are good/positive? From feedback I've had I'm generally regarded as pre

I'd be interested to know if other software developers feel their current working hours are good/positive? From feedback I've had I'm generally regarded as pretty good at my job and highly productive but my current working hours leave me completely drained, to the point I go home and collapse on the sofa, make dinner and go to bed. And that's off an 8.5 hour day. It's at the point now where it's extremely likely I'll leave software for good. Software to me is extremely mentally demanding and draining, it requires short burts of extreme concentration, but what is more draining is making up the remaining 4-5 hours looking busy. My experience of software work is that it doesn't scale linearly with number of hours. Unless you reach flow which is extremely rare in a business setting (thanks open-office / scrum) you can get the work done very quickly and then have large periods of unproductive time. It's my experience that at most 2-3 hours is productively spent, the rest is wasted. I meet software developers who advocate for, or don't mind, 8, 9, 10 hour days and I simply don't understand it, it's alien to me. Are they being productive all that time? Edit: to clarify (since I've posted on this topic elsewhere today) the 8.5 hours include a 1 hour lunch break and Fridays are slightly shorter.

ChuckNorris89 7y ago
Yeah, I also see this issue. It's made worse by Agile/Scrum that assumes during the planning poker meeting that every dev has 8 hours per day available of constant flow while the real value being maybe 5-6 if you're lucky so you end up cutting corners or burned out due to the stress of meeting the target velocity.
- Lewton 7y ago
  Not an inherent agile/scrum problem, we assume 6 hours availability per day during planning in my team
  - JulianMorrison 7y ago
    Which is still about 3 more than reality
  - Chris2048 7y ago
    We assume 4 hrs, that not only accounts for meetings, breaks etc, but also allows people time to help each other with unscheduled support/help/discussion.
- dtech 7y ago
  Your planning system is bad. This was the original origin of using story points instead of days, because the designers of extreme programming found that the work of 1 "ideal day" (8 hours of uninterrupted productive coding) could be done in about 3 days. And don't get me started on measuring velocity, especially across teams. Your environment sounds like its poisoned by middle management.
  - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
    It's not my planning system but it was broken indeed even though they brought in a licensed scrum master as a consultant but he was more interested in running things the way middle managers wanted it as that guaranteed his job security. Anyway, thank God I left, but from what I hear from other mates in the industry it's not better in other companies in my area since they're all run by middle managers. Maybe it's a problem specific to Germany where managers are always right and their authority is unquestionable.
    - majewsky 7y ago
      That's not specific to Germany. Middle managers are politicians inside a company. Their ultimate goal is almost always to accumulate power.
  - cassianoleal 7y ago
    Agree. From the agile manifesto's principles [0]: > Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done. > Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely. If either of these requirements are not met, you're not being agile. [0] https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
- matwood 7y ago
  > planning poker meeting that every dev has 8 hours You shouldn't be talking about hours at all. Points and team velocity help to account for all the overhead in a sprint. Once a team has a consistent velocity, they can talk about items in retro to speed up that velocity (drop a meeting, etc...). I once had a manager who tried to break tasks down into 15 minute increments. There was a task that he argued was a 15 minute task. And yes, he was right assuming my computer was open, the right editor was up, the right project was pulled and up to date, the project was properly building, there were no updates to apply, and the list goes on. Hours is just a bad way to plan. Unfortunately those who bill by hour are forced to plan that way.
random_kris 7y ago
I don't know that either. I can be REALLY productive for 2-3 hours a day but rest is socializing with other devs, answering emails etc... I try to structure my day so that I learn some stuff in those 8 hours, do some personal stuff (pay bills, call doctor, arrange stuff after work). I am regarded as quite productive but sometimes I feel really bad for not putting 100% in all those 8 hours but I find it impossible. I have problems with my legs when i sit for long periods of time so I am must productive in the morning till 12:00 after that it just so I have enough hours clocked in
- UglyToad 7y ago
  I think it's maybe partly that the jobs I've tended to work have no real socializing/email answering/meetings aspect. I've tried to get more onto that side just to preserve my sanity but it's been very much "go through tickets for 7-8 hours a day". I can't remember the last time I needed to respond to an email. And they've all been very different jobs/industries - consultancy, startup and large company. Maybe part of it is the tech (C# .NET) or the location (England) but from talking to my friends in the industry the experience seems to be similar.
  - random_kris 7y ago
    I am working for a relatively small consultancy company. We are team of 5 programmers working on various small programs for government. It gets crazy coordinating between different people trying to get to know where to get data etc... I am changing to a pure backend java job next month. I can't wait to see how other programming jobs look like. (working at this consultancy is my 1st job as a programmer and I've been here for past 3 years)
  - cableshaft 7y ago
    Grass is greener... I miss the days when I could just sit down in front of a program, and just program for 6+ hours out of the day. I did that when I worked for a small startup. I talked to a boss for 30 minutes to an hour sometimes, but otherwise I was left to myself to build software. Right now I work as an Architect/Support/Developer combo, and it feels like I get nothing real done most days. I'll have meetings at random times throughout the day, half of them status meetings, I'll get pinged at random times in the day by the business side asking to look into various things (I maintain the phone systems for three call centers, and various things don't happen the way they expect and they need us to look into it...we used to have a dedicated support guy for this, but he quit and they won't replaced him, it's been six months now). And then I need to look into our codebase for any of seven different internal phone applications I'm responsible for, figure out how to add the new enhancement requested by the business, and then write precise instructions for our offshore dev team of else it won't be done correctly (might as well have done it myself, half the time). There are some days in which outside of the meetings, I'll fix a couple of tickets requested by the business side, and then feel like I have no mental energy for anything else. Every once in awhile I get a taste of what it used to be like when I was productive when I work on projects at home, but even that has lots of distractions between my spouse and attention seeking dogs. I don't mind those distractions quite as much though. Usually. :) I probably should find a small developer to work for again, where I can just be expected to code, but at my age I'm almost afraid to do that, since I know ageism is going to start limiting the dev jobs I can get before too much longer, and I could make a lot more money just embracing the management roles....but my brain wants to build cool things, not people.
magnamerca 7y ago
I'm not a software developer, but basically a structural engineer / project engineer. I just wanted to say that my job is exactly like yours in some ways. Most of my quality work gets done in less than 2-3 hours; the rest of the time I'm either doing menial/repetitve tasks or talking to people / in meetings. I guess I'm just trying to point out that I think this isn;t exclusive to software jobs, but it's the same trend for any mental labour job. Getting into, and staying in, a state of flow requires a high cognitive workload, and getting back into it once you're kicked out is almost impossible some days. It often takes me at least 30 minutes to get back into that state, if at all. I think our society needs to re-think how we spend our time at work,but unfortunately that'll require government regulation, unless companies that are bold enough to switch to a 6 hour workday actual start making more money than their competitors.
- UglyToad 7y ago
  It's interesting to hear that this is not just peculiar to software. I have no real understanding of what other jobs involve but I can well believe there's a similar experience in other mentally (and physically!) demanding jobs. Flow is one of those things that I think is related to interest in the task at hand but is also, as you point out, difficult to recover once disturbed. It's also highly unpredictable. The 2-3 hours I spend productively might not be in a continuous block but also the time spent giving the appearance of productivity makes it harder to (re)enter flow. If work was structured such that you could work when productive and take care of life admin when not, rather than a discrete chunk of time every day, I feel like it would significantly improve mentally demanding labour. Ultimately I'd like to see everyone work less [0] for which I think the driving force has to be regulation (companies demanding these hours are just more-or-less rational actors in the system), the productivity gains are there but we seem to be busier than ever - we've thereby created new fields of work (TaskRabbit, Deliveroo, etc) for people to work in, but at little benefit to people or society. [0]: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
probablybroken 7y ago
I find I tend to write bugs after around 7 hour's work, and during the first four, I can throw myself at a new task in a way that at the end of the day I'd be utterly incapable. I think shorter office days would benefit most mature developers. ( I say mature here because I've worked with people who only manage to get things done through many hours extended foot dragging and procrastination. If you can focus, short days can be beneficial. )
markus_zhang 7y ago
For people advocate 10-hour days, it's possible that they are plagued by meetings/etc. so can only work efficiently during certain hours. If you look at the sum of high productive hours it could be just like you: 2-3 hours. I think 3 hours of high productivity is maximum for me too, the thing is it is very difficult to reach really high productivity, so I can wrap up my work in maybe 4-5 hours writing SQL and report (exclude the meetings and break/etc.) and still have energy to write code in my spare time for around 1-2 hours. How and when to achieve high productivity and enter the flow are pretty random for me. If you can reach high productivity for 3 straight hours a day I'd envy you, because you probably achieve more than people (like me) who work 5-6 hours in sub-prime conditions. I'd rather to work full of energy for 3 hours during the morning, take break in the afternoon, and come back for another 1-2 hours. Much more enjoyable. BTW I found that useless meetings drain energy really FAST.
- therealx 7y ago
  I know the science has been semi-debunked, but I can't help but feel that the idea that you start your day with a fixed number of attention units is real. Meetings use up a higher number of units, and, once gone, you don't get them back that day.
r34 7y ago
Another phenomenon that makes most programmers unable to achieve flow state is technology diversity - brain can get into flow state only when one is using familiar tools - and than happens rarely, at least for me (I work on a project for 6-12 months and ten move to other and tools and main technologies aren't chosen by me usually).
- cableshaft 7y ago
  Work on one project for 6-12 months? Sounds wonderful. Try context switching between 7 different application's codebases with different technology stacks / system architecture in a single iteration (well, sometimes just 3 or 4). Our department was eviscerated and software that had dedicated people on them all got put in my lap to maintain and support. I have to reboot in my head how each application works a couple times a week at least.
  - r34 7y ago
    Yup, maybe 6-12 moths is wonderful comparing to what you have to deal with, but still not enough for me to get into flow. I consider myself average programmer, so in your environment I'd feel like in hell ;)
    - cableshaft 7y ago
      I used to only work on one project at a time at certain previous jobs. I really miss it. I felt a lot more productive then.
skocznymroczny 7y ago
10 hour day would be great, because if I am already at work, it doesn't matter much if I stay for 8 or 10 hours. But I'd rather work 4 x 10 than 5 x 8. That one extra day would go a long way.
yodsanklai 7y ago
For me, it tends to be "all or nothing". I may be totally obsessed by my project, from the moment I wake up until I go to bed. I want to see it working, or complete a last feature, or a cool refactoring. I agree it's draining and not healthy but I feel I don't get much done if I only work a few hours. Besides, sometimes it takes time to warm up, and I don't want to break the flow. Alternatively, I can be disinterested and I will be slacking for some period of times, could be weeks. I would add some doc here and there, fix a few bugs, discuss with colleagues, learn about new techs. But then, I feel guilty and anxious and overall not happy. I wish I was able to be motivated everyday, work 7 hours of productive work and call it a day. I haven't found a working mode where I feel productive and motivated for long period of times.
ckosidows 7y ago
I feel the exact same way. I come home and exercise and make food and I feel just beat. All I want to do is sleep by 9pm. I wish I had a few extra hours a day to study or spend time on leisure activities. As it is I study or read until it's time to sleep and if I want to spend time with friends something has to fall off my schedule even though I sit at work and try to look busy most days. Once my work in a sprint is done my anxiety increases because now I don't know what to do and I'm considered lazy if I can't come up with some fascinating thing to produce. That's the most mentally draining aspect for me.
- brixon 7y ago
  As a Scrum Master the final comment bugs me. The Sprint is a team effort, you might have been assigned user stories, but if your velocity is higher than others then you need to improve your estimations and you need to help others finish their user stories. Your scrum team does not sound like a team, but a collection of individuals.
  - ThalesX 7y ago
    So... what does the scrum master do then? If the developer needs to figure out how to work things out so he aligns with the rest of the team?
    - brixon 7y ago
      It depends. For me it's a 20% role, I focus more on the sprint flow. We have a System Engineer and they do most of the Product Owner cat wrangling that I would assume a lot of Scrum Master's have to handle. The scrum team should be acting as a team and the developer should work with the team to figure out how he aligns. That is part of the "Self Forming" stuff. The Scrum Master is not their boss and does not weigh in on the project implementation. They are more of the advocate for the team and the advocate for Agile/Scrum. e.g. Dealing with the Product Owner when they try to add stuff to the current sprint or Management saying everything is top priority. Technically we call that coaching the Scrum process, but I'm going to make sure my team has steady/predictable work and are not going to burn out.
ascar 7y ago
It's very similar to me. Not only on a daily basis but sometimes even a week worth of nearly nothing and then a day worth a week. The problem I see is that reducing working time per day doesn't necessarily keep the same productivity. If I'm 3 hours productive in a 7 hour workday, I won't spend 3 hours productively in a 5 hour workday. My productive time is mostly random. For me the solution is not feeling guilty about slacking 50% of the time, because it's mostly normal, and having a manager that understands that. As a manager in the future I definitely want to keep this attitude and want to be understanding myself and protect my developers. Also in a 1hour meeting that felt completely unproductive for you, you might make a single comment that turns out very productive for the project overall. And reading up on new tech or watching conference videos on YouTube might feel like slacking, but it also improves your worth to the company.
jshowa3 7y ago
I feel the same. The problem is, companies use this heightened productivity to pile on more and more work. So I struggle to get things done, even on time, when I'm context switching a lot. Part of this context switching is self-distraction, part of it is work distraction. People are known to not be good at gauging their actual work hours. So, when people say they work so much, I'd be skeptical of those claims.
nickjj 7y ago
Is it only related to software development where you feel drained after doing something mental for an extended period of time? For example, what if you play a complex video game that requires skillful choices and mental effort? You might be making split second decisions many thousands of times over an 8 hour time frame. For me, it all boils down to being genuinely interested in what I'm doing (and you can't fake this). If it's a programming gig that I really enjoy, then I will want to do it from the moment I wake up until I goto sleep and this might be 16+ hours (with reasonable breaks for food, etc.) but there would be multiple productive 4+ hour stretches in that 1 day. The same could be said for a video game that I like. If anything I feel less drained at the end of those programming sessions because it feels like you accomplished a lot, and you look forward to the next session (it's all positive feedback). It's almost like getting some type of runner's high, except for your mind. I only find myself feeling drained when it feels like I have to force my way through the work. I have no idea how low level chemicals work in your brain but just based on personal experience I would guess it takes a lot more mental effort to do something you don't enjoy for many hours a day. If your day is filled with mostly negativity, that's going to be very draining. It's might be similar to how if you hang out with someone who does nothing but complain or has a negative spin on everything you end up feeling drained. I struggled with that for a long time (being the negative one). It helped to become mindful of these things so you can reprogram yourself and make decisions that avoid feeling that way. Just based on what you wrote, you're saying you only work a few hours a day but then waste the rest of the day away in meetings and trying to look busy. I'm no psychologist but it sounds like you're spending a majority of your day in a stressful / negative mindset. It would really suck if you had to "fake work" for 4+ hours a day to look busy so you don't draw suspicion while also being constantly interrupted every time you try to start something. I'm 100% sure I would be drained if my work environment was the same as yours.
dustinmoris 7y ago
> Software to me is extremely mentally demanding and draining, it requires short burts of extreme concentration, but what is more draining is making up the remaining 4-5 hours looking busy. Well said! I haven't met a single software engineer who hasn't described something similar to me. I'm the same, I like to wake up early, enjoy my first coffee and then I feel the most productive for the first 4 hours of the day. In those first 4 hours in my morning, often exactly between 8 and 12 I get a shitload of work done. I get so much done that it feels like a real milestone every day. The feeling of being contend afterwards makes it really hard to get into the same focused mindset back again after lunch. After I had my lunch meal I often spend no more than 1-2 hours just doing minor post-real-work tasks, email replies, etc. before mentally signing off completely and calling it a day. Asking a software engineer to work a certain number of hours per week is useless. It's better to agree on a certain scope of work that one would like to see get done and then let them off the hook as soon as it's done. Some people can do a 3 day burst of 8 hours, but then are so destroyed on a Thursday or Friday that they won't get ANY work done. Others like me are productive every day, but only for ~4-5 hours. Either way, only a fool will think that they will get more out of an SE than they are actually able to focus on. They will just say that something took longer, a bug was holding them back or whatever. Moreover, the salaries which SE get are so high that an employer isn't paying for the time anyway. They pay for the skill which is being applied during that time, so what's the point in making them commit a certain amount of time. Absolutely useless... well... hopefully one day things will change..
- scroot 7y ago
  The future struggle for people in these kinds of jobs is to get the wider culture to admit to itself that the latter 4 hours are unnecessary and even detrimental to workers.
  - nostalgk 7y ago
    I think it's rougher for people to understand that aren't in this industry, and there are so many jobs that _do_ benefit from this in a numerical way, i.e. more parts per hour, more accounts created, sales made, etc.
rajacombinator 7y ago
If you’re interested in the work it’s definitely possible to work more hours productively. But it’s not optimal. Maybe if employers escaped the gulag mentality and paid wages more proportional to value created it would make sense. But as is, any intelligent dev will find ways to minimize their output.
muzani 7y ago
At my workplace we do recognize that there's a lot of unproductive time. The best programmers seem to watch YouTube a lot, the least productive ones seem to come early and leave late. The company culture has sort of spotted the correlation and we're more or less free to do what we want at work. There's just enough pressure to not spend the day on DoTA and social media, which is probably the optimum pressure. Some of the team goes for two tea breaks a day. Some go for long prayer breaks. Some sleep at their desks. The CTO doesn't use agile; we just tell each other what we want, and poll them on it after 2-3 days if it's not urgent, or the CTO just reads git commits to watch progress. We still go to work 8.5 hours a day, because it's in the contract, but it's quite relaxing. Best job I've had so far.
barefoot 7y ago
After you collapse on the sofa for a few minutes you then get back to work keeping yourself current, right? A reasonable measure of what it takes to stay current and relevant in this industry is twenty hours of dedicated reinvestment per week. Often times this reinvestment time is not afforded at work and as much as employers want to provide this as a benefit to developers, few offer the resources or time to allow developers to get anywhere close at work alone. Therefore, that time is likely your sole responsibility at home. If you're like most developers you should be budgeting four hours each day M-F (or three if you include the weekend). I know many that push for even more. Since our jobs tend to be sedentary and it's probably helpful to budget at least an hour for the gym a day to help mitigate the severe health effects of working a desk job, don't forget to factor time at the gym in your scheduling. Also, if you're like many developers I know you're likely on call and answering e-mails at home as well which is easy to forget about when calculating available time. This then quickly becomes a challenging schedule even for eight hour days. Those selecting ten hour days are probably not reinvesting as much as they should and will potentially burn out or become irrelevant in the long term. I've attempted a sustained schedule of 12 hour work days with 4 hour reinvestment and an hour at the gym and found it unworkable in the long term.
- UglyToad 7y ago
  Haha, yes, I recognise a lot of myself in this description. My previous job was a start-up and I was working maybe 8.30-6.30 most days with 20-30 minutes lunch and also working on open source software in the evenings (I still do the open source stuff and it's one of the few things I actually enjoy). I also attended regular exercise classes and the job came with crunch periods. Despite switching jobs a year ago to an 8.45 - 5.30 schedule I'm now so burnt out I'm taking 4 months out and will probably try to change fields. Software is well renumerated but it's a gilded cage, I am under no illusions other people are better off or other jobs are without stress, but trying to be a good programmer has reduced me mentally and physically to the point I can't face the thought of working.
  - spraak 7y ago
    It really seems to depend on the company culture (which itself depends on the actual product) and office setup. E.g. I work remotely, spend time throughout the day relaxing and always done by 3pm and very well compensated
mkane848 7y ago
Reading this makes me feel less bad, I tend to think I'm making excuses for myself and/or just being lazy. Especially because I also have to do some tech support stuff, side meetings, etc, while trying to work on (at least one) project simultaneously, the actual programming part suffers first. Some days I just can't get the programming wheels turning, and a lot of the time it's just because I keep getting interrupted or can't focus with noise around me. God forbid I work from home when I have a hard deadline so interruptions are at a minimum...
wes-k 7y ago
Before leaving software, give freelancing / contracting a chance! I’ve managed to get great clients for years+ working 20hrs/week. I’m briefly doing 40hrs/week right now and am definitely finding it draining! One neat benefit of freelancing is that if you don’t feel like working, don’t! It’s a win win. You don’t work when you feel drained and the company doesn’t pay you for your least productive hours. Best of luck!
- theflyinghorse 7y ago
  > if you don’t feel like working, don’t! Man, I got bills to pay, gotta save up for retirement, save up for a house, my car is on it's last wheel. I can't just not work
wuliwong 7y ago
My experience has been highly variable. It's just my experience, I'm a pretty weird person and tend to be an outlier. But I do think the observation of the variable effect of different job situations in my life is pretty interesting. I had a period of time where I worked entirely on my own "startup" for about 12 months. I worked nearly 7 days a week for (what I recall as) a lot of hours but I honestly don't know how many. This work was SO much fun. It was definitely still work but I don't think I've ever had more exhilaration than created and launching the projects I did in that year. I then worked at a startup where we worked a solid 6 days a week for about 10 hours a day. That really consumed my life and wasn't very rewarding in my opinion. I learned a lot and made some really great connections to silicon valley investor types but the job consumed so much of my life and the startup wasn't successful at all. The next stage in my life was the time I coded the most. I worked for one of the huge silicon valley software companies and they fostered a good work-life balance for the employees. We generally worked 8 hour days and no weekends ever. Also, the work environment was pleasant. I became good friends with my coworkers. I say that because I think that all contributed to the 8 hours not feeling extremely draining. I had a lot of energy left after work. During those two years I launched two websites in my spare time that were pretty heavy undertakings. I also dabbled in other projects. I worked a lot of nights and weekend on top of the corporate job. I could go several weeks without a single day off. After that I worked at a startup for 2 years and another quasi-startup for 2 years after that. I really disliked both of those jobs and seemed to have very little drive to work on anything on my own time. I actually started playing and recording a lot more music in those years, even started a podcast. :) I recently switched jobs to a larger company with an established app and it has a similar feel of the other big-corp job I held. Generally, I work 8 hour days, a little bit of weekend and night work but only around releases and deadlines. I also get along with the people in my office very well, it's fun to be at work. I consider myself as an "emotional" developer. I kinda say it sarcastically but there is some truth to it. When I feel good about what I'm doing, I can lock in for many hours straight and it doesn't drain me that much.
Aeolun 7y ago
Working in an enterprise environment, and currently working probably 8-9 hour days, I think I can shed some light on this. All hours between 10 and 6 are basically unproductive hours, because they get taken up by useless meetings and interruptions. Any extra hour I work outside of that time, is worth basically 3 or 4 inside it. So working 10 instead of 8 hours practically triples my output.
cosmodisk 7y ago
I'm not a full time developer but have to spend some days purely on dev work(literally programming from 9 to 6). It is extremely mentally draining,yet rewarding.In any other field, with such a level of business value created, would result in compensation being many times higher than any developer would ever make...
cc-2 7y ago
I've begun to think most software engineering should be done remotely. Easier to get into a flow state, no need to look busy, and you can work at times when you are most focused. I transitioned to full time remote, and routinely work 5 hour days, and get more done than when I was working 8-10 hr days
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  Or we just need better offices. I hate working from home and don't want to have to rent a separate office space on my own dime. Luckily for me I work somewhere where I have a real office (with a door!) and no one cares in the slightest when I come and go or whether I look busy when I'm there. If you like remote work, that's cool, but your complaints are with shitty offices, not something inherent to onsite vs. remote work.
  - spraak 7y ago
    > I hate working from home Why do you hate working from home? I hate working in an office and will never do it again. > and don't want to have to rent a separate office space on my own dime. Also, most companies will (and should) pay for remote workers to have an office outside of their house, if that's what they need. That's been my experience for the past 5 years anyways. > your complaints are with shitty offices, not something inherent to onsite vs. remote work. For myself and many others I've read accounts from, it's so much more than a 'real office'. It means no commute, no office drama, being able to talk with my wife in person during the day, make my own lunch... For people passionate about remote, it's more than a specialized office, but a whole different way of working.
2sk21 7y ago
I wish I could upvote you a hundred times. I get at most about 3 hours of intense concentration per day. The need to show constant progress on daily scrums is what made me quit my job recently.
deevolution 7y ago
I intentionally show up to work around 11 and leave around 4 or 5 precisely because I know I won't be productive for the full 8 and would prefer to use those last few hours to go climbing or workout, which helps to relieve stress and prepare me for the next day
- spraak 7y ago
  Do you work remotely or in an office? I do about the same (9 to 3) but remotely, so the visibility of hours in an office is what I'd worry about, though I have no plans to work in an office.
musicale 7y ago
> It's my experience that at most 2-3 hours is productively spent, the rest is wasted. That sounds about right for most workplaces I've been in, and it's probably a fairly sustainable pace for work that requires careful thought and concentration. I remember reading about a consultant who advised struggling graduate students to spend no more than 18 hours a week working on their dissertations; on this schedule most of them finished in 6 months or less.
croh 7y ago
exactly. pretending being busy 4-5 hours eats lot of energy. Also sometimes, you spend weeks doing nothing and then your idiot manager wants to deliver something quickly over weekend. what a waste of life. My biggest regret wasting limited time of life on these stupid things and people.
meuk 7y ago
> you can get the work done very quickly and then have large periods of unproductive time. Totally agree, but I've also worked in codebases where I spend a huge effort and don't get anywhere (these are usually codebases with dark corners which no one knows anything about).
cambaceres 7y ago
I have similar experience as you, and what I concluded was that it was the 4-5 hours of looking busy that really made me tired, usually I was surfing the internet, switching to a new page every minute. A better strategy is to work 15-30 minutes and then take a few minutes break where you meditate.

ChuckNorris89 7y ago

Yeah, I also see this issue. It's made worse by Agile/Scrum that assumes during the planning poker meeting that every dev has 8 hours per day available of constant flow while the real value being maybe 5-6 if you're lucky so you end up cutting corners or burned out due to the stress of meeting the target velocity.

Lewton 7y ago
Not an inherent agile/scrum problem, we assume 6 hours availability per day during planning in my team
- JulianMorrison 7y ago
  Which is still about 3 more than reality
- Chris2048 7y ago
  We assume 4 hrs, that not only accounts for meetings, breaks etc, but also allows people time to help each other with unscheduled support/help/discussion.
dtech 7y ago
Your planning system is bad. This was the original origin of using story points instead of days, because the designers of extreme programming found that the work of 1 "ideal day" (8 hours of uninterrupted productive coding) could be done in about 3 days. And don't get me started on measuring velocity, especially across teams. Your environment sounds like its poisoned by middle management.
- ChuckNorris89 7y ago
  It's not my planning system but it was broken indeed even though they brought in a licensed scrum master as a consultant but he was more interested in running things the way middle managers wanted it as that guaranteed his job security. Anyway, thank God I left, but from what I hear from other mates in the industry it's not better in other companies in my area since they're all run by middle managers. Maybe it's a problem specific to Germany where managers are always right and their authority is unquestionable.
  - majewsky 7y ago
    That's not specific to Germany. Middle managers are politicians inside a company. Their ultimate goal is almost always to accumulate power.
- cassianoleal 7y ago
  Agree. From the agile manifesto's principles [0]: > Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done. > Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely. If either of these requirements are not met, you're not being agile. [0] https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
matwood 7y ago
> planning poker meeting that every dev has 8 hours You shouldn't be talking about hours at all. Points and team velocity help to account for all the overhead in a sprint. Once a team has a consistent velocity, they can talk about items in retro to speed up that velocity (drop a meeting, etc...). I once had a manager who tried to break tasks down into 15 minute increments. There was a task that he argued was a 15 minute task. And yes, he was right assuming my computer was open, the right editor was up, the right project was pulled and up to date, the project was properly building, there were no updates to apply, and the list goes on. Hours is just a bad way to plan. Unfortunately those who bill by hour are forced to plan that way.

random_kris 7y ago

I don't know that either. I can be REALLY productive for 2-3 hours a day but rest is socializing with other devs, answering emails etc... I try to structure my day so that I learn some stuff in those 8 hours, do some personal stuff (pay bills, call doctor, arrange stuff after work). I am regarded as quite productive but sometimes I feel really bad for not putting 100% in all those 8 hours but I find it impossible. I have problems with my legs when i sit for long periods of time so I am must productive in the morning till 12:00 after that it just so I have enough hours clocked in

UglyToad 7y ago
I think it's maybe partly that the jobs I've tended to work have no real socializing/email answering/meetings aspect. I've tried to get more onto that side just to preserve my sanity but it's been very much "go through tickets for 7-8 hours a day". I can't remember the last time I needed to respond to an email. And they've all been very different jobs/industries - consultancy, startup and large company. Maybe part of it is the tech (C# .NET) or the location (England) but from talking to my friends in the industry the experience seems to be similar.
- random_kris 7y ago
  I am working for a relatively small consultancy company. We are team of 5 programmers working on various small programs for government. It gets crazy coordinating between different people trying to get to know where to get data etc... I am changing to a pure backend java job next month. I can't wait to see how other programming jobs look like. (working at this consultancy is my 1st job as a programmer and I've been here for past 3 years)
- cableshaft 7y ago
  Grass is greener... I miss the days when I could just sit down in front of a program, and just program for 6+ hours out of the day. I did that when I worked for a small startup. I talked to a boss for 30 minutes to an hour sometimes, but otherwise I was left to myself to build software. Right now I work as an Architect/Support/Developer combo, and it feels like I get nothing real done most days. I'll have meetings at random times throughout the day, half of them status meetings, I'll get pinged at random times in the day by the business side asking to look into various things (I maintain the phone systems for three call centers, and various things don't happen the way they expect and they need us to look into it...we used to have a dedicated support guy for this, but he quit and they won't replaced him, it's been six months now). And then I need to look into our codebase for any of seven different internal phone applications I'm responsible for, figure out how to add the new enhancement requested by the business, and then write precise instructions for our offshore dev team of else it won't be done correctly (might as well have done it myself, half the time). There are some days in which outside of the meetings, I'll fix a couple of tickets requested by the business side, and then feel like I have no mental energy for anything else. Every once in awhile I get a taste of what it used to be like when I was productive when I work on projects at home, but even that has lots of distractions between my spouse and attention seeking dogs. I don't mind those distractions quite as much though. Usually. :) I probably should find a small developer to work for again, where I can just be expected to code, but at my age I'm almost afraid to do that, since I know ageism is going to start limiting the dev jobs I can get before too much longer, and I could make a lot more money just embracing the management roles....but my brain wants to build cool things, not people.

magnamerca 7y ago

I'm not a software developer, but basically a structural engineer / project engineer. I just wanted to say that my job is exactly like yours in some ways. Most of my quality work gets done in less than 2-3 hours; the rest of the time I'm either doing menial/repetitve tasks or talking to people / in meetings. I guess I'm just trying to point out that I think this isn;t exclusive to software jobs, but it's the same trend for any mental labour job. Getting into, and staying in, a state of flow requires a high cognitive workload, and getting back into it once you're kicked out is almost impossible some days. It often takes me at least 30 minutes to get back into that state, if at all. I think our society needs to re-think how we spend our time at work,but unfortunately that'll require government regulation, unless companies that are bold enough to switch to a 6 hour workday actual start making more money than their competitors.

UglyToad 7y ago
It's interesting to hear that this is not just peculiar to software. I have no real understanding of what other jobs involve but I can well believe there's a similar experience in other mentally (and physically!) demanding jobs. Flow is one of those things that I think is related to interest in the task at hand but is also, as you point out, difficult to recover once disturbed. It's also highly unpredictable. The 2-3 hours I spend productively might not be in a continuous block but also the time spent giving the appearance of productivity makes it harder to (re)enter flow. If work was structured such that you could work when productive and take care of life admin when not, rather than a discrete chunk of time every day, I feel like it would significantly improve mentally demanding labour. Ultimately I'd like to see everyone work less [0] for which I think the driving force has to be regulation (companies demanding these hours are just more-or-less rational actors in the system), the productivity gains are there but we seem to be busier than ever - we've thereby created new fields of work (TaskRabbit, Deliveroo, etc) for people to work in, but at little benefit to people or society. [0]: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

probablybroken 7y ago

I find I tend to write bugs after around 7 hour's work, and during the first four, I can throw myself at a new task in a way that at the end of the day I'd be utterly incapable. I think shorter office days would benefit most mature developers. ( I say mature here because I've worked with people who only manage to get things done through many hours extended foot dragging and procrastination. If you can focus, short days can be beneficial. )

markus_zhang 7y ago

For people advocate 10-hour days, it's possible that they are plagued by meetings/etc. so can only work efficiently during certain hours. If you look at the sum of high productive hours it could be just like you: 2-3 hours. I think 3 hours of high productivity is maximum for me too, the thing is it is very difficult to reach really high productivity, so I can wrap up my work in maybe 4-5 hours writing SQL and report (exclude the meetings and break/etc.) and still have energy to write code in my spare time for around 1-2 hours. How and when to achieve high productivity and enter the flow are pretty random for me. If you can reach high productivity for 3 straight hours a day I'd envy you, because you probably achieve more than people (like me) who work 5-6 hours in sub-prime conditions. I'd rather to work full of energy for 3 hours during the morning, take break in the afternoon, and come back for another 1-2 hours. Much more enjoyable. BTW I found that useless meetings drain energy really FAST.

therealx 7y ago
I know the science has been semi-debunked, but I can't help but feel that the idea that you start your day with a fixed number of attention units is real. Meetings use up a higher number of units, and, once gone, you don't get them back that day.

r34 7y ago

Another phenomenon that makes most programmers unable to achieve flow state is technology diversity - brain can get into flow state only when one is using familiar tools - and than happens rarely, at least for me (I work on a project for 6-12 months and ten move to other and tools and main technologies aren't chosen by me usually).

cableshaft 7y ago
Work on one project for 6-12 months? Sounds wonderful. Try context switching between 7 different application's codebases with different technology stacks / system architecture in a single iteration (well, sometimes just 3 or 4). Our department was eviscerated and software that had dedicated people on them all got put in my lap to maintain and support. I have to reboot in my head how each application works a couple times a week at least.
- r34 7y ago
  Yup, maybe 6-12 moths is wonderful comparing to what you have to deal with, but still not enough for me to get into flow. I consider myself average programmer, so in your environment I'd feel like in hell ;)
  - cableshaft 7y ago
    I used to only work on one project at a time at certain previous jobs. I really miss it. I felt a lot more productive then.

skocznymroczny 7y ago

10 hour day would be great, because if I am already at work, it doesn't matter much if I stay for 8 or 10 hours. But I'd rather work 4 x 10 than 5 x 8. That one extra day would go a long way.

yodsanklai 7y ago

For me, it tends to be "all or nothing". I may be totally obsessed by my project, from the moment I wake up until I go to bed. I want to see it working, or complete a last feature, or a cool refactoring. I agree it's draining and not healthy but I feel I don't get much done if I only work a few hours. Besides, sometimes it takes time to warm up, and I don't want to break the flow. Alternatively, I can be disinterested and I will be slacking for some period of times, could be weeks. I would add some doc here and there, fix a few bugs, discuss with colleagues, learn about new techs. But then, I feel guilty and anxious and overall not happy. I wish I was able to be motivated everyday, work 7 hours of productive work and call it a day. I haven't found a working mode where I feel productive and motivated for long period of times.

ckosidows 7y ago

I feel the exact same way. I come home and exercise and make food and I feel just beat. All I want to do is sleep by 9pm. I wish I had a few extra hours a day to study or spend time on leisure activities. As it is I study or read until it's time to sleep and if I want to spend time with friends something has to fall off my schedule even though I sit at work and try to look busy most days. Once my work in a sprint is done my anxiety increases because now I don't know what to do and I'm considered lazy if I can't come up with some fascinating thing to produce. That's the most mentally draining aspect for me.

brixon 7y ago
As a Scrum Master the final comment bugs me. The Sprint is a team effort, you might have been assigned user stories, but if your velocity is higher than others then you need to improve your estimations and you need to help others finish their user stories. Your scrum team does not sound like a team, but a collection of individuals.
- ThalesX 7y ago
  So... what does the scrum master do then? If the developer needs to figure out how to work things out so he aligns with the rest of the team?
  - brixon 7y ago
    It depends. For me it's a 20% role, I focus more on the sprint flow. We have a System Engineer and they do most of the Product Owner cat wrangling that I would assume a lot of Scrum Master's have to handle. The scrum team should be acting as a team and the developer should work with the team to figure out how he aligns. That is part of the "Self Forming" stuff. The Scrum Master is not their boss and does not weigh in on the project implementation. They are more of the advocate for the team and the advocate for Agile/Scrum. e.g. Dealing with the Product Owner when they try to add stuff to the current sprint or Management saying everything is top priority. Technically we call that coaching the Scrum process, but I'm going to make sure my team has steady/predictable work and are not going to burn out.

ascar 7y ago

It's very similar to me. Not only on a daily basis but sometimes even a week worth of nearly nothing and then a day worth a week. The problem I see is that reducing working time per day doesn't necessarily keep the same productivity. If I'm 3 hours productive in a 7 hour workday, I won't spend 3 hours productively in a 5 hour workday. My productive time is mostly random. For me the solution is not feeling guilty about slacking 50% of the time, because it's mostly normal, and having a manager that understands that. As a manager in the future I definitely want to keep this attitude and want to be understanding myself and protect my developers. Also in a 1hour meeting that felt completely unproductive for you, you might make a single comment that turns out very productive for the project overall. And reading up on new tech or watching conference videos on YouTube might feel like slacking, but it also improves your worth to the company.

jshowa3 7y ago

I feel the same. The problem is, companies use this heightened productivity to pile on more and more work. So I struggle to get things done, even on time, when I'm context switching a lot. Part of this context switching is self-distraction, part of it is work distraction. People are known to not be good at gauging their actual work hours. So, when people say they work so much, I'd be skeptical of those claims.

nickjj 7y ago

Is it only related to software development where you feel drained after doing something mental for an extended period of time? For example, what if you play a complex video game that requires skillful choices and mental effort? You might be making split second decisions many thousands of times over an 8 hour time frame. For me, it all boils down to being genuinely interested in what I'm doing (and you can't fake this). If it's a programming gig that I really enjoy, then I will want to do it from the moment I wake up until I goto sleep and this might be 16+ hours (with reasonable breaks for food, etc.) but there would be multiple productive 4+ hour stretches in that 1 day. The same could be said for a video game that I like. If anything I feel less drained at the end of those programming sessions because it feels like you accomplished a lot, and you look forward to the next session (it's all positive feedback). It's almost like getting some type of runner's high, except for your mind. I only find myself feeling drained when it feels like I have to force my way through the work. I have no idea how low level chemicals work in your brain but just based on personal experience I would guess it takes a lot more mental effort to do something you don't enjoy for many hours a day. If your day is filled with mostly negativity, that's going to be very draining. It's might be similar to how if you hang out with someone who does nothing but complain or has a negative spin on everything you end up feeling drained. I struggled with that for a long time (being the negative one). It helped to become mindful of these things so you can reprogram yourself and make decisions that avoid feeling that way. Just based on what you wrote, you're saying you only work a few hours a day but then waste the rest of the day away in meetings and trying to look busy. I'm no psychologist but it sounds like you're spending a majority of your day in a stressful / negative mindset. It would really suck if you had to "fake work" for 4+ hours a day to look busy so you don't draw suspicion while also being constantly interrupted every time you try to start something. I'm 100% sure I would be drained if my work environment was the same as yours.

dustinmoris 7y ago

> Software to me is extremely mentally demanding and draining, it requires short burts of extreme concentration, but what is more draining is making up the remaining 4-5 hours looking busy. Well said! I haven't met a single software engineer who hasn't described something similar to me. I'm the same, I like to wake up early, enjoy my first coffee and then I feel the most productive for the first 4 hours of the day. In those first 4 hours in my morning, often exactly between 8 and 12 I get a shitload of work done. I get so much done that it feels like a real milestone every day. The feeling of being contend afterwards makes it really hard to get into the same focused mindset back again after lunch. After I had my lunch meal I often spend no more than 1-2 hours just doing minor post-real-work tasks, email replies, etc. before mentally signing off completely and calling it a day. Asking a software engineer to work a certain number of hours per week is useless. It's better to agree on a certain scope of work that one would like to see get done and then let them off the hook as soon as it's done. Some people can do a 3 day burst of 8 hours, but then are so destroyed on a Thursday or Friday that they won't get ANY work done. Others like me are productive every day, but only for ~4-5 hours. Either way, only a fool will think that they will get more out of an SE than they are actually able to focus on. They will just say that something took longer, a bug was holding them back or whatever. Moreover, the salaries which SE get are so high that an employer isn't paying for the time anyway. They pay for the skill which is being applied during that time, so what's the point in making them commit a certain amount of time. Absolutely useless... well... hopefully one day things will change..

scroot 7y ago
The future struggle for people in these kinds of jobs is to get the wider culture to admit to itself that the latter 4 hours are unnecessary and even detrimental to workers.
- nostalgk 7y ago
  I think it's rougher for people to understand that aren't in this industry, and there are so many jobs that _do_ benefit from this in a numerical way, i.e. more parts per hour, more accounts created, sales made, etc.

rajacombinator 7y ago

If you’re interested in the work it’s definitely possible to work more hours productively. But it’s not optimal. Maybe if employers escaped the gulag mentality and paid wages more proportional to value created it would make sense. But as is, any intelligent dev will find ways to minimize their output.

muzani 7y ago

At my workplace we do recognize that there's a lot of unproductive time. The best programmers seem to watch YouTube a lot, the least productive ones seem to come early and leave late. The company culture has sort of spotted the correlation and we're more or less free to do what we want at work. There's just enough pressure to not spend the day on DoTA and social media, which is probably the optimum pressure. Some of the team goes for two tea breaks a day. Some go for long prayer breaks. Some sleep at their desks. The CTO doesn't use agile; we just tell each other what we want, and poll them on it after 2-3 days if it's not urgent, or the CTO just reads git commits to watch progress. We still go to work 8.5 hours a day, because it's in the contract, but it's quite relaxing. Best job I've had so far.

barefoot 7y ago

After you collapse on the sofa for a few minutes you then get back to work keeping yourself current, right? A reasonable measure of what it takes to stay current and relevant in this industry is twenty hours of dedicated reinvestment per week. Often times this reinvestment time is not afforded at work and as much as employers want to provide this as a benefit to developers, few offer the resources or time to allow developers to get anywhere close at work alone. Therefore, that time is likely your sole responsibility at home. If you're like most developers you should be budgeting four hours each day M-F (or three if you include the weekend). I know many that push for even more. Since our jobs tend to be sedentary and it's probably helpful to budget at least an hour for the gym a day to help mitigate the severe health effects of working a desk job, don't forget to factor time at the gym in your scheduling. Also, if you're like many developers I know you're likely on call and answering e-mails at home as well which is easy to forget about when calculating available time. This then quickly becomes a challenging schedule even for eight hour days. Those selecting ten hour days are probably not reinvesting as much as they should and will potentially burn out or become irrelevant in the long term. I've attempted a sustained schedule of 12 hour work days with 4 hour reinvestment and an hour at the gym and found it unworkable in the long term.

UglyToad 7y ago
Haha, yes, I recognise a lot of myself in this description. My previous job was a start-up and I was working maybe 8.30-6.30 most days with 20-30 minutes lunch and also working on open source software in the evenings (I still do the open source stuff and it's one of the few things I actually enjoy). I also attended regular exercise classes and the job came with crunch periods. Despite switching jobs a year ago to an 8.45 - 5.30 schedule I'm now so burnt out I'm taking 4 months out and will probably try to change fields. Software is well renumerated but it's a gilded cage, I am under no illusions other people are better off or other jobs are without stress, but trying to be a good programmer has reduced me mentally and physically to the point I can't face the thought of working.
- spraak 7y ago
  It really seems to depend on the company culture (which itself depends on the actual product) and office setup. E.g. I work remotely, spend time throughout the day relaxing and always done by 3pm and very well compensated

mkane848 7y ago

Reading this makes me feel less bad, I tend to think I'm making excuses for myself and/or just being lazy. Especially because I also have to do some tech support stuff, side meetings, etc, while trying to work on (at least one) project simultaneously, the actual programming part suffers first. Some days I just can't get the programming wheels turning, and a lot of the time it's just because I keep getting interrupted or can't focus with noise around me. God forbid I work from home when I have a hard deadline so interruptions are at a minimum...

wes-k 7y ago

Before leaving software, give freelancing / contracting a chance! I’ve managed to get great clients for years+ working 20hrs/week. I’m briefly doing 40hrs/week right now and am definitely finding it draining! One neat benefit of freelancing is that if you don’t feel like working, don’t! It’s a win win. You don’t work when you feel drained and the company doesn’t pay you for your least productive hours. Best of luck!

theflyinghorse 7y ago
> if you don’t feel like working, don’t! Man, I got bills to pay, gotta save up for retirement, save up for a house, my car is on it's last wheel. I can't just not work

wuliwong 7y ago

My experience has been highly variable. It's just my experience, I'm a pretty weird person and tend to be an outlier. But I do think the observation of the variable effect of different job situations in my life is pretty interesting. I had a period of time where I worked entirely on my own "startup" for about 12 months. I worked nearly 7 days a week for (what I recall as) a lot of hours but I honestly don't know how many. This work was SO much fun. It was definitely still work but I don't think I've ever had more exhilaration than created and launching the projects I did in that year. I then worked at a startup where we worked a solid 6 days a week for about 10 hours a day. That really consumed my life and wasn't very rewarding in my opinion. I learned a lot and made some really great connections to silicon valley investor types but the job consumed so much of my life and the startup wasn't successful at all. The next stage in my life was the time I coded the most. I worked for one of the huge silicon valley software companies and they fostered a good work-life balance for the employees. We generally worked 8 hour days and no weekends ever. Also, the work environment was pleasant. I became good friends with my coworkers. I say that because I think that all contributed to the 8 hours not feeling extremely draining. I had a lot of energy left after work. During those two years I launched two websites in my spare time that were pretty heavy undertakings. I also dabbled in other projects. I worked a lot of nights and weekend on top of the corporate job. I could go several weeks without a single day off. After that I worked at a startup for 2 years and another quasi-startup for 2 years after that. I really disliked both of those jobs and seemed to have very little drive to work on anything on my own time. I actually started playing and recording a lot more music in those years, even started a podcast. :) I recently switched jobs to a larger company with an established app and it has a similar feel of the other big-corp job I held. Generally, I work 8 hour days, a little bit of weekend and night work but only around releases and deadlines. I also get along with the people in my office very well, it's fun to be at work. I consider myself as an "emotional" developer. I kinda say it sarcastically but there is some truth to it. When I feel good about what I'm doing, I can lock in for many hours straight and it doesn't drain me that much.

Aeolun 7y ago

Working in an enterprise environment, and currently working probably 8-9 hour days, I think I can shed some light on this. All hours between 10 and 6 are basically unproductive hours, because they get taken up by useless meetings and interruptions. Any extra hour I work outside of that time, is worth basically 3 or 4 inside it. So working 10 instead of 8 hours practically triples my output.

cosmodisk 7y ago

I'm not a full time developer but have to spend some days purely on dev work(literally programming from 9 to 6). It is extremely mentally draining,yet rewarding.In any other field, with such a level of business value created, would result in compensation being many times higher than any developer would ever make...

cc-2 7y ago

I've begun to think most software engineering should be done remotely. Easier to get into a flow state, no need to look busy, and you can work at times when you are most focused. I transitioned to full time remote, and routinely work 5 hour days, and get more done than when I was working 8-10 hr days

0xffff2 7y ago
Or we just need better offices. I hate working from home and don't want to have to rent a separate office space on my own dime. Luckily for me I work somewhere where I have a real office (with a door!) and no one cares in the slightest when I come and go or whether I look busy when I'm there. If you like remote work, that's cool, but your complaints are with shitty offices, not something inherent to onsite vs. remote work.
- spraak 7y ago
  > I hate working from home Why do you hate working from home? I hate working in an office and will never do it again. > and don't want to have to rent a separate office space on my own dime. Also, most companies will (and should) pay for remote workers to have an office outside of their house, if that's what they need. That's been my experience for the past 5 years anyways. > your complaints are with shitty offices, not something inherent to onsite vs. remote work. For myself and many others I've read accounts from, it's so much more than a 'real office'. It means no commute, no office drama, being able to talk with my wife in person during the day, make my own lunch... For people passionate about remote, it's more than a specialized office, but a whole different way of working.

2sk21 7y ago

I wish I could upvote you a hundred times. I get at most about 3 hours of intense concentration per day. The need to show constant progress on daily scrums is what made me quit my job recently.

deevolution 7y ago

I intentionally show up to work around 11 and leave around 4 or 5 precisely because I know I won't be productive for the full 8 and would prefer to use those last few hours to go climbing or workout, which helps to relieve stress and prepare me for the next day

spraak 7y ago
Do you work remotely or in an office? I do about the same (9 to 3) but remotely, so the visibility of hours in an office is what I'd worry about, though I have no plans to work in an office.

musicale 7y ago

> It's my experience that at most 2-3 hours is productively spent, the rest is wasted. That sounds about right for most workplaces I've been in, and it's probably a fairly sustainable pace for work that requires careful thought and concentration. I remember reading about a consultant who advised struggling graduate students to spend no more than 18 hours a week working on their dissertations; on this schedule most of them finished in 6 months or less.

croh 7y ago

exactly. pretending being busy 4-5 hours eats lot of energy. Also sometimes, you spend weeks doing nothing and then your idiot manager wants to deliver something quickly over weekend. what a waste of life. My biggest regret wasting limited time of life on these stupid things and people.

meuk 7y ago

> you can get the work done very quickly and then have large periods of unproductive time. Totally agree, but I've also worked in codebases where I spend a huge effort and don't get anywhere (these are usually codebases with dark corners which no one knows anything about).

cambaceres 7y ago

I have similar experience as you, and what I concluded was that it was the 4-5 hours of looking busy that really made me tired, usually I was surfing the internet, switching to a new page every minute. A better strategy is to work 15-30 minutes and then take a few minutes break where you meditate.