3 ms·

Yeah, my work pays me the same whether I work 40 or 60 hours, so I cut my day short whenever I know I'm not gonna be productive. Usually it saves me a few hour

Yeah, my work pays me the same whether I work 40 or 60 hours, so I cut my day short whenever I know I'm not gonna be productive. Usually it saves me a few hour of struggling and the solution comes to me first thing in the morning. I'm also the top 5% committer in my company even though I almost never touch 35h/week (caveat: I don't advertise this behavior at work and I work from home). Companies would really do themselves a favor cutting the day short, 40h of coding/meetings/etc a week is way too much for a lot of people.

singingfish 6y ago
yeah totally. I'll rage against the 40 hour work week any time anyone will let me. Personally I think I've got around 5 good coding hours in me in a day - ideally around 7:30 to 12:30. Schedule meetings for when I'm useless after that please.
- M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
  how do you find a company okay with this?
  - singingfish 6y ago
    well I mostly work remotely, and I have a reputation as someone who can get stuff done reliably. When I was last in an office full time, commuting on the train a few years ago I'd usually be the first in my team to arrive, and then first to leave - basically trying to do 7:30 to 4 but I'd generally be pretty useless for the last couple of hours of the day. Followed by a nap on the train.
    - M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
      not concerned about safety, napping on a train?
      - singingfish 6y ago
        not at all. Sometimes the slow local services fill up with lowlife, but these city commuter trains are fine where I live.
        cutemonster 6y ago
        What could be dangerous with sleeping on a train? I always sleep on trains and buses, I even change when I go to sleep, so I'm tired when on the train, so I can fall asleep. M5x7wI3CmbEem10, I first thought you were worried about sleeping too long, getting off at the wrong station I suppose it's getting robbed? And that you live in a quite different part of the world than me :-/
        M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
        > I suppose it's getting robbed? America.
        cutemonster 6y ago
        (the US or middle/southern America? I've gotten the impression that Canada is pretty safe though) Ok, I'm in western/northern Europe.
      - SirSavary 6y ago
        pro-tip: loop your legs and arms through the handles or straps of the bags you're traveling with to prevent people from stealing them while you sleep e.g. put your backpack on your lap against your chest and cross your arms through the straps, stick your leg through the loop of a duffel bag handle, etc
  - bagacrap 6y ago
    Just get your work done and don't broadcast loudly how/when you did it. I've worked fewer and fewer hours every year of my current job and my performance reviews all focus on the high velocity with which I work. I've never been asked nor told anyone how many hours a week I log in front of the screen. (wfh definitely helps with this but even before that, I kept odd/hard to track hours and no one ever questioned me)
    - M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
      sorry, can you detail this a bit more or give an example? if you get a week’s worth of work done in a day and send a pull request, surely they would see that you completed the task much faster.
      - bagacrap 6y ago
        I hope you work somewhere that code review exists. If you put a week's worth of work into a single pull request, you're probably making it too hard on your reviewer. So I break up my patches into smaller chunks (too small can easily be annoying as well, but I digress). These chunks and the conversations surrounding them can spread out over the rest of the week even though the focused time required to shepherd them along is <<8 hrs a day.
M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
how do you find a company okay with this?
twodave 6y ago
Can also relate--I've been writing software for 15 years, and for probably the first 5 years I produced more raw lines of code than the last 10. At some point we (hopefully) all learn that slogging more code at a problem has a vanishingly small chance of solving it well. The act of sleeping on a problem is almost mystical in that solutions seem to come out of thin air. The reality is that you're allowing your experience time to apply itself.
xkcd-sucks 6y ago
Probably better than browsing hn for 30m anyway

singingfish 6y ago

yeah totally. I'll rage against the 40 hour work week any time anyone will let me. Personally I think I've got around 5 good coding hours in me in a day - ideally around 7:30 to 12:30. Schedule meetings for when I'm useless after that please.

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
how do you find a company okay with this?
- singingfish 6y ago
  well I mostly work remotely, and I have a reputation as someone who can get stuff done reliably. When I was last in an office full time, commuting on the train a few years ago I'd usually be the first in my team to arrive, and then first to leave - basically trying to do 7:30 to 4 but I'd generally be pretty useless for the last couple of hours of the day. Followed by a nap on the train.
  - M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
    not concerned about safety, napping on a train?
    - singingfish 6y ago
      not at all. Sometimes the slow local services fill up with lowlife, but these city commuter trains are fine where I live.
      - cutemonster 6y ago
        What could be dangerous with sleeping on a train? I always sleep on trains and buses, I even change when I go to sleep, so I'm tired when on the train, so I can fall asleep. M5x7wI3CmbEem10, I first thought you were worried about sleeping too long, getting off at the wrong station I suppose it's getting robbed? And that you live in a quite different part of the world than me :-/
        M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
        > I suppose it's getting robbed? America.
        cutemonster 6y ago
        (the US or middle/southern America? I've gotten the impression that Canada is pretty safe though) Ok, I'm in western/northern Europe.
    - SirSavary 6y ago
      pro-tip: loop your legs and arms through the handles or straps of the bags you're traveling with to prevent people from stealing them while you sleep e.g. put your backpack on your lap against your chest and cross your arms through the straps, stick your leg through the loop of a duffel bag handle, etc
- bagacrap 6y ago
  Just get your work done and don't broadcast loudly how/when you did it. I've worked fewer and fewer hours every year of my current job and my performance reviews all focus on the high velocity with which I work. I've never been asked nor told anyone how many hours a week I log in front of the screen. (wfh definitely helps with this but even before that, I kept odd/hard to track hours and no one ever questioned me)
  - M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
    sorry, can you detail this a bit more or give an example? if you get a week’s worth of work done in a day and send a pull request, surely they would see that you completed the task much faster.
    - bagacrap 6y ago
      I hope you work somewhere that code review exists. If you put a week's worth of work into a single pull request, you're probably making it too hard on your reviewer. So I break up my patches into smaller chunks (too small can easily be annoying as well, but I digress). These chunks and the conversations surrounding them can spread out over the rest of the week even though the focused time required to shepherd them along is <<8 hrs a day.

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago

how do you find a company okay with this?

twodave 6y ago

Can also relate--I've been writing software for 15 years, and for probably the first 5 years I produced more raw lines of code than the last 10. At some point we (hopefully) all learn that slogging more code at a problem has a vanishingly small chance of solving it well. The act of sleeping on a problem is almost mystical in that solutions seem to come out of thin air. The reality is that you're allowing your experience time to apply itself.

xkcd-sucks 6y ago

Probably better than browsing hn for 30m anyway