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"Your developers come in at 9:15 and leave before 6 and don't check work email at night: Hard" Am I the only person who find this attitude obnoxious? I know -

by earl 15y ago

"Your developers come in at 9:15 and leave before 6 and don't check work email at night: Hard" Am I the only person who find this attitude obnoxious? I know -- and I'd like to include myself -- some good devs who don't sell 24x7 to our employers. edit: in particular, I don't check work email at night. I don't do ops. People should write better code or hire a different engineer.

dupe123 15y ago
I agree. If he means developers who only spent time on programming related things during the 9-5 and not during their free time, maybe I can understand. Good developers should be passionate and will probably spend their free time learning and coding (not necessarily work related) but to say the only good developers are ones that are slaves to their job is ridiculous to me.
tseabrooks 15y ago
It's the trendy thing to do these days. You can especially see it on HN there is a lot of bashing of programmers that don't code outside of work and/or only work 40 hours per week.
- apostlion 15y ago
  That's odd, since “overtime is bad, more time is not more productivity” seems to be all the mantra. The thing is, that for a young, smart person, mechanically giving up 50, 60, heck, 100 hours per week is not that hard, but it gives the nice “hero” feeling, social kudos. Empirically, in full-time scenario (30+ hours per week), there is no difference in velocity of development work with more time spent; yet, there are toxic social effects. Basically: what do the people who bash “undertimers” think?
- sjs 15y ago
  Programming is a creative endeavour. All these accomplished and renowned 9-5 programmers must hang out at the end of the rainbow with all the accomplished 9-5 painters, musicians, etc. I'm not saying there aren't any - some people really just have a knack for it. I'm saying they are the exception and not the rule. At work you're often focused on completing tasks on time. Good employers understand that you need to develop skills and will allow you to do so on the clock. Many people are not fortunate enough to work at such places and if they don't sharpen their skills outside of work then their skills dull with time. Novices that work at such places will have a very hard time progressing in such an environment if they don't take the initiative in their spare time. Working with developers that are more skilled than you are is also a good way to learn and improve. If you don't get that at work then you better find or start an OSS project or something to contribute to.
  - sjs 15y ago
    Sorry for replying to myself. I want to mention that not everyone needs the Sistine Chapel, that is there's a lot of room for all skill levels. The guy closer to the other end of the spectrum who knows just enough PHP to hack something together still has a skill that others, who perhaps do not need a Michelangelo, are happy to pay him for. There's nothing wrong with that. When most of us use the word "good" in this context we mean significantly better than average. I think it comes across as an implication that if one isn't a "good" dev then they're bad but that's not what I intend at all. In fact what many of us mean by "good" is probably closer to "best".
  - regularfry 15y ago
    There's all the difference in the world between coding outside work hours and working outside work hours.
    - sjs 15y ago
      I agree, and started writing about that in my first comment before rereading tseabrooks comment. > [...] a lot of bashing of programmers that don't code outside of work and/or [...]
cgopalan 15y ago
Exactly what I was going to point out also. Maybe the OP was throwing in some humor? The only reason I say this is that it seems like all other criteria are also not very concrete. For eg, following so and so on twitter, lunch-time discussions - as opposed to having a good understanding of type systems, functional programming etc.
- code_duck 15y ago
  Of course, I believe those are intended to be good-humored feelers for company culture more than specific requirements.
barrkel 15y ago
Some of the most productive times I've ever had writing code was when I arrived at work at 10, and left at 5:30. I didn't really get started until about 11, and usually had an unproductive period around 1 till 3 as I ate and digested lunch. But the work I did do in those ~4 hours was some of the stuff I'm most proud of ever doing. I still got some looks leaving in the evening from the managing director, but the way I saw it, it was pointless continuing when I was tired - I always got better ideas the next day anyway after sleeping on the current problems.
Almaviva 15y ago
Being an extremely effective professional programmer (as opposed to a competent one) requires you to learn and do some things that you won't learn in school, and also that no sensible person would pay you for. This is just fact and people who don't like it either may accept being just competent or are in the wrong career.
- oinksoft 15y ago
  What does that have to do with regularly burning the midnight oil for no tangible reason? I study computer science and new technologies when off the job, but you won't catch me dead working on company code after hours.
pnathan 15y ago
That attitude is horrifically obnoxious. I am not going to sacrifice my health and my life to a company unless I have a really good reason to.
- vegai 15y ago
  I wouldn't call it obnoxious. I would call it plain stupid, and if it is not some sort of sarcasm, I would not trust anything David Pollak has to say about anything from now on.
reinhardt 15y ago
I came here to comment on the same thing. Even if I happen to check work email some night or weekend that I'm more bored than usual, I make a point to not reply. Oh, and this was similarly obnoxious (if not said tongue-in-cheek): Your developers stare blankly or say 3 "Hail Marys" when they hear the name "Zed Shaw": Scala == Hard Dude, seriously? Since when are programmers judged by their propensity to keep up with the latest gossip about the most loud-mouthed self-important subculture celebrities ?
- candeira 15y ago
  No need to rubbish Zed. You can like Zed like I do, and still not make any conclusion from the fact that a developer doesn't know who he is. Except, maybe, that said developer doesn't read Hacker News either.
- irahul 15y ago
  > Oh, and this was similarly obnoxious (if not said tongue-in-cheek): Your developers stare blankly or say 3 "Hail Marys" when they hear the name "Zed Shaw": Scala == Hard That basically means if you follow technical news, and cutting edge stuff, you have most likely heard of him - for his software(mongrel2, lamson), his books, his essays(rails is a ghetto, programming motherfuckers). Mongrel was a big deal some time back, and still is in the rails world, and rails is a big deal; all these factors kinda make Zed a known name. If you don't know Zed, that's not a big deal - no one gives a fuck about Zed. But not knowing Zed here is weakly implying(not necessarily though) you have been living under a rock and you aren't familiar with Rails, Mongrel2 etc, which is not a good thing IMO.
  - reinhardt 15y ago
    Please. Zed's fame (or rather notoriety) doesn't come from Mongrel (never heard of lamson) and afaik his main association with Rails is the famous rant. Can you name off the top of your head some of the core developers of FreeBSD, PostgreSQL, JBoss, Hadoop, Gnome and a dozen others more important FOSS projects? I can't, and yet this doesn't say anything about both the significance of said projects and my familiarity with them.
danssig 15y ago
I can understand expecting a good dev to be interested in programming outside of work but expecting someone to give some company hours for free? Sounds like the guy is clueless. It's hard to imagine anything else he says will be useful given that sentence.

by earl 15y ago

dupe123 15y ago

I agree. If he means developers who only spent time on programming related things during the 9-5 and not during their free time, maybe I can understand. Good developers should be passionate and will probably spend their free time learning and coding (not necessarily work related) but to say the only good developers are ones that are slaves to their job is ridiculous to me.

tseabrooks 15y ago

It's the trendy thing to do these days. You can especially see it on HN there is a lot of bashing of programmers that don't code outside of work and/or only work 40 hours per week.

apostlion 15y ago
That's odd, since “overtime is bad, more time is not more productivity” seems to be all the mantra. The thing is, that for a young, smart person, mechanically giving up 50, 60, heck, 100 hours per week is not that hard, but it gives the nice “hero” feeling, social kudos. Empirically, in full-time scenario (30+ hours per week), there is no difference in velocity of development work with more time spent; yet, there are toxic social effects. Basically: what do the people who bash “undertimers” think?
sjs 15y ago
Programming is a creative endeavour. All these accomplished and renowned 9-5 programmers must hang out at the end of the rainbow with all the accomplished 9-5 painters, musicians, etc. I'm not saying there aren't any - some people really just have a knack for it. I'm saying they are the exception and not the rule. At work you're often focused on completing tasks on time. Good employers understand that you need to develop skills and will allow you to do so on the clock. Many people are not fortunate enough to work at such places and if they don't sharpen their skills outside of work then their skills dull with time. Novices that work at such places will have a very hard time progressing in such an environment if they don't take the initiative in their spare time. Working with developers that are more skilled than you are is also a good way to learn and improve. If you don't get that at work then you better find or start an OSS project or something to contribute to.
- sjs 15y ago
  Sorry for replying to myself. I want to mention that not everyone needs the Sistine Chapel, that is there's a lot of room for all skill levels. The guy closer to the other end of the spectrum who knows just enough PHP to hack something together still has a skill that others, who perhaps do not need a Michelangelo, are happy to pay him for. There's nothing wrong with that. When most of us use the word "good" in this context we mean significantly better than average. I think it comes across as an implication that if one isn't a "good" dev then they're bad but that's not what I intend at all. In fact what many of us mean by "good" is probably closer to "best".
- regularfry 15y ago
  There's all the difference in the world between coding outside work hours and working outside work hours.
  - sjs 15y ago
    I agree, and started writing about that in my first comment before rereading tseabrooks comment. > [...] a lot of bashing of programmers that don't code outside of work and/or [...]

cgopalan 15y ago

Exactly what I was going to point out also. Maybe the OP was throwing in some humor? The only reason I say this is that it seems like all other criteria are also not very concrete. For eg, following so and so on twitter, lunch-time discussions - as opposed to having a good understanding of type systems, functional programming etc.

code_duck 15y ago
Of course, I believe those are intended to be good-humored feelers for company culture more than specific requirements.

barrkel 15y ago

Some of the most productive times I've ever had writing code was when I arrived at work at 10, and left at 5:30. I didn't really get started until about 11, and usually had an unproductive period around 1 till 3 as I ate and digested lunch. But the work I did do in those ~4 hours was some of the stuff I'm most proud of ever doing. I still got some looks leaving in the evening from the managing director, but the way I saw it, it was pointless continuing when I was tired - I always got better ideas the next day anyway after sleeping on the current problems.

Almaviva 15y ago

Being an extremely effective professional programmer (as opposed to a competent one) requires you to learn and do some things that you won't learn in school, and also that no sensible person would pay you for. This is just fact and people who don't like it either may accept being just competent or are in the wrong career.

oinksoft 15y ago
What does that have to do with regularly burning the midnight oil for no tangible reason? I study computer science and new technologies when off the job, but you won't catch me dead working on company code after hours.

pnathan 15y ago

That attitude is horrifically obnoxious. I am not going to sacrifice my health and my life to a company unless I have a really good reason to.

vegai 15y ago
I wouldn't call it obnoxious. I would call it plain stupid, and if it is not some sort of sarcasm, I would not trust anything David Pollak has to say about anything from now on.

reinhardt 15y ago

I came here to comment on the same thing. Even if I happen to check work email some night or weekend that I'm more bored than usual, I make a point to not reply. Oh, and this was similarly obnoxious (if not said tongue-in-cheek): Your developers stare blankly or say 3 "Hail Marys" when they hear the name "Zed Shaw": Scala == Hard Dude, seriously? Since when are programmers judged by their propensity to keep up with the latest gossip about the most loud-mouthed self-important subculture celebrities ?

candeira 15y ago
No need to rubbish Zed. You can like Zed like I do, and still not make any conclusion from the fact that a developer doesn't know who he is. Except, maybe, that said developer doesn't read Hacker News either.
irahul 15y ago
> Oh, and this was similarly obnoxious (if not said tongue-in-cheek): Your developers stare blankly or say 3 "Hail Marys" when they hear the name "Zed Shaw": Scala == Hard That basically means if you follow technical news, and cutting edge stuff, you have most likely heard of him - for his software(mongrel2, lamson), his books, his essays(rails is a ghetto, programming motherfuckers). Mongrel was a big deal some time back, and still is in the rails world, and rails is a big deal; all these factors kinda make Zed a known name. If you don't know Zed, that's not a big deal - no one gives a fuck about Zed. But not knowing Zed here is weakly implying(not necessarily though) you have been living under a rock and you aren't familiar with Rails, Mongrel2 etc, which is not a good thing IMO.
- reinhardt 15y ago
  Please. Zed's fame (or rather notoriety) doesn't come from Mongrel (never heard of lamson) and afaik his main association with Rails is the famous rant. Can you name off the top of your head some of the core developers of FreeBSD, PostgreSQL, JBoss, Hadoop, Gnome and a dozen others more important FOSS projects? I can't, and yet this doesn't say anything about both the significance of said projects and my familiarity with them.

danssig 15y ago

I can understand expecting a good dev to be interested in programming outside of work but expecting someone to give some company hours for free? Sounds like the guy is clueless. It's hard to imagine anything else he says will be useful given that sentence.