28 ms·

Maybe you should do less 'work'

605 points by jwhiles 5y ago

mnsc 5y ago
"And that's why money isn't nearly as important as SLACK. You can print or burn money, but you can't manufacture SLACK. It is The Final Commodity. So They want it _all_." The Book p. 94
- shoo 5y ago
  https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/09/30/slack/ https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/09/30/slack/ > Slack. The absence of binding constraints on behavior. > Poor is the person without Slack. Lack of Slack compounds and traps. > Slack means margin for error. You can relax. > Slack allows pursuing opportunities. You can explore. You can trade. > Slack prevents desperation. You can avoid bad trades and wait for better spots. You can be efficient. > Slack permits planning for the long term. You can invest. > Slack enables doing things for your own amusement. You can play games. You can have fun.
jacknews 5y ago
One problem with this argument is of course that what is really expected of you, ultimately, is at least what the other guys are delivering, not just a certain amount of work a week.
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  And the worst part of this is that it winds up being a popularity contest. If your manager doesn't like you, they won't weigh your productivity the same way they weigh their favorite's. Even if you are delivering as much or more than others, you also have to be liked.
- CiPHPerCoder 5y ago
  Enter the prisoner's dilemma
  - jacknews 5y ago
    LOL, I'm not sure that actual game theory game applies directly, but the name is perhaps apt, a bit like how "salary" is similar to "slavery".
sudden_dystopia 5y ago
Can confirm this will not get you promoted, it will just get you more work. You are more valuable as a peon than management if you are this good at your job. Always act dumber than your boss.
- digianarchist 5y ago
  I worked pretty hard at getting promoted at my last job which unfortunately didn't happen. In the end I did the cost/benefit analysis of the amount of extra work I was doing compared to the 15% raise that I would get from being promoted. In the end I moved companies and got a raise of about 35%. I'm back to doing the same amount of work I was doing before I tried to get promoted.
  - bluefirebrand 5y ago
    This is honestly a really big sickness within our industry and it seems to be everywhere. I don't think I will ever work towards a promotion again.
    - deltaonefour 5y ago
      Working towards a promotion is not just about productivity. You have to display leadership qualities. But here's the key. Not all managers want leaders. It an be viewed as a threat. When the time is right, you can show off your leadership skills.
      - alfalfasprout 5y ago
        Don't forget politics. You can display leadership qualities all you want but politics play into whether your project will ultimately suceeed, be deprioritized, and who gets credit for what.
- grumple 5y ago
  > Can confirm this will not get you promoted, it will just get you more work. You are more valuable as a peon than management if you are this good at your job. Always act dumber than your boss I've been promoted at every job I've had by working both smart and hard, but never exceeding 40 hours except in very rare exceptional circumstances. Devs have higher IC roles to fill so that helps. But now I get to be miserable as a manager. Be careful what you wish for. And please, be smarter than me so I feel good about you taking my place when I leave. That said, I don't think many people are productive for more than 20 hours a week for sustained periods and we should all work less.
Fertilio 5y ago
"You should try and spend your time in ways that will benefit you and your employer." This doesn't mean to work 4h a day on a 40h week contract and playing gets.the rest of it. And I think people doing that, are blocking their own carriers. I make double what I made 6 years ago and can cut back to 50% with a still good salary. If I would not have used my te properly I would be stuck in a job I probably don't like because I'm not really contributing or really feeling appreciated because for what? Is my boss happy enough with me can't feel good. Getting kudos because your stuff makes it easier for others or adds value or runs smoothly gives confidence and pride. At least I like my work and tx to my attitude and skills I have more freedom not less.
0des 5y ago
Getting my task completed at my own pace makes me feel good. Often that is fast and on time. In my heart, when I touch the keyboard, I feel like a greyhound dog with a little Bob Ross afro - it can be a race, a competition, but it is also an expression of my art. This article makes me feel bad because in the authors world, people like me are relegated to worker bee monkies trying to please the bossman due to pathology or some such delusion. I work this way because it pleases me. Doing my tasks diligently and in a timely manner affords me more time to relax, review what I have created, and enjoy it rather than drag myself to the next task. A bit off topic but as of late there is this creeping normalization of intentionally subpar or less optimized results I'm noticing in our industry but also general society. When did we become so not only complacent but also discouraging of any genuine effort? It is as if everyone is so aloof that if you show any effort or appreciation of your craft that you're societally acknowledging your own serfdom or that you're serving "the man".
- freedom2099 5y ago
  That is not at all what the article was about! It was never stated that you should be late or take too much time in doing tasks… it was about using more wisely your time (if the sizing claimed the task needed 5 days to be done and you are done in 2 maybe you could have spent more time thinking about the design or if everything is ok try to using the extra time to generate value in other ways instead of rushing towards the next task)
  - vlovich123 5y ago
    Who establishes that sizing? I’ve yet to see anyone who can accurately estimate their own tasks let alone someone who can estimate that for others. In agile, I think a great time for reflection is between sprints. Also, I’m super fast but I’ll instead take frequent small breaks in the middle of work (read hacker news, write up documentation etc). There are other times to reflect than between tasks.
    - 0des 5y ago
      on this topic, I would like to add this: The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition) by Frederick P. Brooks ISBN 13: 9780201835953 ISBN 10: 0201835959 https://www.biblio.com/9780201835953 https://www.biblio.com/9780201835953
muse900 5y ago
Personal experience has taught me that there is a MAXIMUM amount of COMP that you will receive as an employee, no matter how much hard work you put into your company. So basically what is happening, is that you are working hard for some achievements, that someone else is going to benefit off.
- giantg2 5y ago
  And that max level is specific to each individual based largely on things out of their control, like politics. Edit: why downvote?
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Yes. Compensation is best measured as hourly rate: $/h. Working too hard just decreases that ratio because work hours increase while money stays constant.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    > Working too hard just decreases that ratio because work hours increase while money stays constant I assume this may hold for the US, but not for many other countries. For example in my country the hourly rate for overtime hours is higher by law. Your hourly compensation decrease while working longer would only decrease if you were an external contractor paid a fixed amount of money for completion of a specific task.
    - adamsmith143 5y ago
      We aren't really talking about overtime though, which also exists in the US, but the amount of output during a normal 8 hour day. You might get paid somewhat more than a peer for putting out 2x the output but there are massive diminishing returns.
      - jhgb 5y ago
        What I was responding to literally talked about "work hours increase". I don't see how you can have "work hours increase" and simultaneously keep the same "normal 8 hour day". That sounds contradictory to me.
giantg2 5y ago
I'm glad they talk a good bit about perceptions. That's really what it comes down to at the end of the day. Who cares if you're doing a lot of work or a little work if nobody sees it. I don't know what's expected of me, at least not in an objective way. They apparently want me to go faster. One thing they are looking at is if I'm finishing early and asking for more work. So they are using that as an indicator, which is contrary to this article's advice. I wish I had time to learn new skills. The work is so disjointed that you can never become an expert in one technology. Just constantly bouncing between systems, stacks, and languages. It's a mess. I have no desire to learn a new technology right now just because I know I will never get the chance to use it or become good with it.
- pm90 5y ago
  Sounds like you need a vacation : )
  - giantg2 5y ago
    I have a toddler - vacations don't really exist at this stage of life. Plus the past two years have seen me using most of that time for family medical issues. This year I'll be using about 1/4 of my time off for my wife to go on vacations.
    - machiaweliczny 5y ago
      My travel addicted friends went twice to vacations with 6 and 12 months old no problem.
    - scruple 5y ago
      Your story is similar to mine. Expectations at work are unrealistic, bordering on complete fiction. We have 3 young children and my wife is still on disability and recovering from childbirth 6 months ago. A vacation would be great but it isn't happening anytime soon. Vacations at this point in my life just means I work even harder than I do for my day job. Vacations are when the daycare is closed, which is actually more often than I can believe (especially contrasted against the exorbitant price of child care...). It sounds bad but it isn't that bad, I've definitely had worse periods in my life and that was before marriage with children. I wouldn't do anything differently, except maybe finding a different job before kid number 3 came along...
SpodGaju 5y ago
Maybe the most important reason: If you are a salaried employee, the more work you do only cheapens your labor. And it cheapens the labor f your fellow employees.
cowanon4757 5y ago
This is very solid advice. Once you become so productive that you don't need all of your working hours to do your job, you should spend that time on skill acquisition - either learning about something adjacent that you don't do daily or learn something that will be required for the next level (if that is your goal) This is the only sane way I have found to progress in a tech career. The daily and weekly learning really adds up too - in my experience this is the difference someone who has 10 years of experience and someone who has "2 years repeated 5 times"
- ArcMex 5y ago
  >This is the only sane way I have found to progress in a tech career. The daily and weekly learning really adds up too - in my experience this is the difference someone who has 10 years of experience and someone who has "2 years repeated 5 times" I agree. Thankfully, my culture does not shun 2-3 year job spells on your resume. Typically, this is what I do. When I learn enough to do my boss's job, I leave. I am now at a point of running my own, small consultancy service. Only need a few more clients to finally quit my day job for good.
- teaearlgraycold 5y ago
  This is why I roll my eyes out of their sockets when I hear a recruiter or job description that mentions years of experience as a qualification.
thenerdhead 5y ago
I think for people who don’t agree with the article, perhaps seeking jobs that are outcome based are ideal. For those that are output based, I think it’s totally reasonable to cut back strategically.
- giantg2 5y ago
  Why the difference? Most places that talk about outcomes are really measuring outputs, just with more secret sauce in how it's measured (still based on the perception of the bosses).
  - thenerdhead 5y ago
    Most places that measure outputs are not driving business results, they are measuring the wrong things and even promoting the wrong people. Outputs = Productivity. How much stuff you do. Outcomes = Efficiency. How much useful stuff you do. Don't aim to get more stuff done (productivity), rather aim to have less stuff to do (focus / efficiency). Do more with less. Frequent activity & context switching is hardly tied to achievement.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      I'm aiming to keep my job. So until the bosses actually start measuring outcome, I'm stuck with output.
- ArcMex 5y ago
  It's funny, ever since I dedicated the morning to normal duties and afternoons to growth and development, I deliver results faster. Could be that I only use 4 hours to do all my work so I plan better and action faster.
  - thenerdhead 5y ago
    Yeah exactly. Knowledge work is much less about the actual work we do. We're regularly on the clock having our brains work whether we like it or not. This focused and diffused time is crucial to be effective.
almost_usual 5y ago
I think most engineers who always search for tasks and work long hours are dealing with some form of anxiety or imposter syndrome. If management hasn’t brought up any performance issues and you’re anxious about your job you need to talk to someone. You’re on the road to burnout.
- pm90 5y ago
  Managers and senior engineers should be responsible for making them feel better in these situations. Having a support group of peers is also really helpful. If you reach Senior level ranks and continue to suffer from these feelings though…
  - almost_usual 5y ago
    > If you reach Senior level ranks and continue to suffer from these feelings though… They need to consult a therapist because they’re likely dealing with anxiety disorder. If someone truly enjoys working 12 hours a day and weekends constantly then I suppose it’s fine.
- mtberatwork 5y ago
  A note on burnout: once you have had one burnout, the next one comes on faster and with less triggers needed.
incomingpain 5y ago
From my read, the title doesn't seem accurate at all. >You should try and spend your time in ways that will benefit you and your employer. The title says to do less work, but in reality seems you're still doing as much work but rather developing those other skills. Really just improving yourself. My 2 previous jobs were MSP. Like all MSPs, you wont control your schedule. someone else decides that you only need 30 minutes of your time to work on ticket X. It doesn't matter if that ticket requires you to drive 45 minutes away and then 45 minutes back. You will get chewed out for not completing the work in the allotted time. You will be required to do all the self-improvement on your own time and own dime. My current job though is awesome. I have been afforded the time during work to work on open source python projects that are beneficial to the team. For example, I had recommended we get solarwinds. less than a year later the solarwinds supply chain thing dropped. we dropped solarwinds. I decided screw it. I rebuilt the functionality we wanted in django. Prior to this job I didnt know python. Now I have multiple useful python projects. I can certainly confirm that this approach has been much better.
ascar 5y ago
This reads a bit like deliberately aiming for Parkinson's law. "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." However, I agree to some extent. I'm especially opposed to the concept that there should be 8 productive hours in a day. I sincerely believe that this is for most people not possible in creative knowledge work, which includes software engineering. So, if you have 5 productive hours of engineering and finished your goal and are in line with expectations, there shouldn't be a need to drain yourself to keep going, but rather spending your extra time on something else like job-related learning is a great way to prevent mental fatigue. This is especially true as there can be very different "energy distribution" between people. One person can achieve in 4 productive hours what another can in 8. But one works in productive bursts and the other in sustained effort. The first can't just sustain or expand that burst to 8 hours.
- pm90 5y ago
  100% agree. Let’s be clear though: you may need 4 hrs but sometimes you may need 12. Creative professions can be that way. Reaching an understanding that both can happen and accepting that fact is important. To a certain extent, it’s just recognizing the reality of what actually happens today anyway, rather than trying to fit into the 8hour workday concept.
- Forgeties79 5y ago
  Honestly I feel like we could take it a step further. Most people are not going to put in five real hours of work every day either. Which makes the eight hour workday in some ways all the more ridiculous. 20 hours a week is pretty much the ceiling in my experience beyond big crunch times, special events, etc. If people really stepped back and thought about how much time they spend screwing around at work I think they’d be surprised, like how many people were surprised to discover how many hours they spend on social media apps when screen time tracking was introduced in phones. I worked in the film industry for several years on the Hollywood side before switching over to commercial. 12 to 14 hour workdays were pretty much the norm. When I flipped over to the more commercial side, our workdays typically ended at 8 to 10 hours. And let me tell you, the commercial productions were exponentially more efficient. We got more done per day by a large margin, no matter the scale or complexity compared to the films I worked on. When you know there is less of a threat threat of the company extending the hours, you tend to get things done in the time allotted.
horse90 5y ago
I cannot disagree with the author given that modern companies are little more than an aggregation of short-term individuals each with her own agenda many of whom would happily backstab you in order to advance it.
ArcMex 5y ago
Being in tech has the advantage of me being knowledgeable enough to pursue tools and languages of interest that will benefit both my business and day job. That is what I did. I learned web development and used those skills to do projects at work and for my clients on weekends. Later on, I learned project management. Used those skills at my day job and made a consultancy killing as a PM for hire. I feel privleged to have been in this position. So, yes, I do advocate for spending time increasing your value at work. But that time should also work for you outside of that day job.
alexashka 5y ago
100% this, but let me add the why: Most people don't want to do good work, they just want to get paid and fuck off. It is really hard to grok this because it is just so disappointing and demotivating. Most people lie constantly, to appear as if they want to do work, as if they give a fuck - they are lying to your face. Once you realize this much, once you come to terms with what most people are - the rest will fall into place. Until you grok this, these sorts of posts will seem like cynical takes, like someone who doesn't want to work hard, who wants to be a free loader. No, these sorts of posts are cautionary tales that society is filled with free loaders and liars, so you need to tread with caution and know how to deal with these 'people'.
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  From the other side of the coin. Your employer is free loading off of you. You are paid a fraction of the amount of money that your work actually generates. If your work generates 100 dollars... you're paid 10. So essentially your employer is fucking you and any other attitude other than to treat the situation for what it is, is delusional. Don't call us 'people'. You're the one that doesn't get it. Now I'm not saying you need to freeload. But I do what I'm paid to do because this is a business transaction that favors the employer. After I'm paid, I fuck off, because I just got shafted by my employer and I owe him nothing until he can pay me again. My work is only good to the point where my employer is willing to continue paying me.
  - alexashka 5y ago
    I don't employ anyone. I'm not coming from a place of a disgruntled employer complaining about the workers being 'lazy' or whatever. I'm coming from a place of what the blog talks about - someone who came in starry eyed doing good work, only to find out you won't get paid 3x for doing 3x the work relative to everyone else, but instead they'll try to get you to do 4x the work for a 10% yearly bonus, until you drop dead of exhaustion. Oh, and your co-workers will hate your guts and try to undermine you. Nice system, right? That's the dynamic I'm addressing - if you're enthusiastic and starry eyed and think people are out there wanting to change the world for the better or at least take a modicum of pride in their work - be very careful, the real world is not like that, at all.
deltaonefour 5y ago
The problem is, the idiot who pushes himself to 100% sets a standard that the rest become expected to follow.
nonrandomstring 5y ago
I'd like to rewrite this as "Why you should maybe not work so hard for someone else". Intrinsically motivated people (you'll know what I mean is you are one too) know no bounds to the ecstasy of work. Struggling toward a self-defined end is like flying in the clouds. In "flow", work is no longer work at all. It is labour relations within a late-capitalist system of dehumanising exploitation, over-systematisation and rampant financialisation that turns life's greatest joy of having skills and purpose into farcical performance art, into an inefficient, resentment-fuelled spectacle of self-harm.
- egypturnash 5y ago
  I am self-employed and I love doing what I get paid to do but there are many other things I like to do as well. I work hard enough to pay my bills and really not much harder.
  - nonrandomstring 5y ago
    That "zero surplus" living sounds like a nice balance. As I get older, and especially with kids around, it's what I aspire to more.
TameAntelope 5y ago
I agree with the content of the article, but I don’t agree with the premise that these things aren’t also “work”. Engineers tend to obsess over, “focused work” like it’s the only way to be productive, and anything that’s not “focused work” is wasted time. That is a surefire way to burn out. Instead, finding ways to “riff” on your job by doing work with longer time horizons of payoff keeps your job fun. It’s all “work”. Maybe the title ought to be, “Stop obsessing over focused work.”
- giantg2 5y ago
  Well, the bosses usually only care about work the helps produce value. They might like the fact that you know some new tech that they can use in their latest assignment, but they weren't giving you credit while you were learning it the year before just for fun.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    There are a lot of things you can learn that do both?
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Find better bosses and employers. They are out there.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      I have looked but haven't found any.
    - jader201 5y ago
      At the end of the day, even the best bosses care about making money, because that’s what _their_ bosses (i.e. investors) care about. So even if you find a boss/employer that is supportive of “the fun stuff” for a season, that will eventually come to an end.
      - toomuchtodo 5y ago
bentobean 5y ago
There are times at which developers must give 110% effort in order to address critical business needs, unexpected outages, emergency pivots, etc… But in order for people to rise to such occasions, they must have some excess capacity from which to pull. TL;DR - If you run the engine at redline all the time, you’re destined for a blowout.
jokoon 5y ago
Beyond those arguments, it's also important to remind that we should work between 20 or 30 hours per week, not more. It's about health, being able to rest, do leisure, physical activity, see friends, date, etc. There are things to learn about the antiwork mentality. Not saying everyone should quit their job, but still, it would be nice if everyone could be able to negotiate with their employees. I have often been called a parasite, and honestly, it comforts me in realizing that I should not compete with people who turn work into a competition. Those people will generate enough taxes and labor for lazy people like me, and it's okay.
- lijogdfljk 5y ago
  > Those people will generate enough taxes and labor for lazy people like me, and it's okay. Feels odd to me to make a statement like this. Is it in jest? In my view everyone should pull the same minimum. Not have some people work more to offset other people working less.
  - Cerium 5y ago
    If you are pretty good at your work that minimum might only take 20 hours?
    - lijogdfljk 5y ago
      Well i'm not talking hours, to be clear. Just some idea that we're all equal. Ie, if a hypothetical society depends on addicts working more than "lazy people" (in the parents words) then it feels to me we're set up for failure.
      - noahtallen 5y ago
        How does one avoid the inequality, though? One could be working 60 hours a week at fast food joints and not make anywhere close to a part time software developer. As a result, the “lazy” developer is generating more tax revenue. There are too many possibilities to make it “fair”, unless we get rid of the income tax. Even if everyone paid the same amount, it wouldn’t be fair, unless everyone made the same amount of money. Which also doesn’t seem fair.
bentobean 5y ago
"You didn't tell him how long it would really take, did you?" - Montgomery Scott
photochemsyn 5y ago
Most people work within some kind of incorporated structure, as employees or contractors on hourly wages or salaries. Unless they're also invested in the corporate structure, i.e. they're the providers of capital, they'll see no real benefit from the success of the business other than avoiding losing their job when the business crashes. The solution is pretty obvious, and is fairly common in Germany at least: employees and investors must be viewed as equivalent stakeholders. This means worker organizations should have as many voting seats on corporate boards as the investor organizations providing the capital do. It's not one or the other - generally speaking, no workers means no business, and no capital also means no business. The result would be that profits get distributed equally to workers (as bonuses on top of wages/salary) and investors. Otherwise it's the same problem as communist countries had: why work hard and be productive if you get the same reward for it as someone who sits around doing little or nothing? In response upper management will trot out lines like 'we're all a family here' and 'you should enjoy the pride and satisfaction of a job well done' and similar nonsense.
decebalus1 5y ago
One should definitely not be working hard. You need to minimize work and maximize income. The more you work, the less you actually make per-hour invested, if the income does not grow proportionally to surpass the current ratio. Unless you're in a good strategic position which ensures you will get huge benefits by working hard (think large stake in the company), working hard is a losing game. A company will pay you the bare minimum it can get away with, taking into considerations all sort of parameters (such as risk of attrition) so naturally, your optimal behavior should be to work as little as possible to not get fired. Use the extra time to invest in yourself or just enjoy life.
mrozbarry 5y ago
I work at a software consultancy, and here are my hot tips around this: - Take breaks between tasks. Your flow should mostly allow 5-10 minute breaks often (like once an hour or so) without anything or anybody blowing up. - It's healthy that your client (or bosses) will always want more work, especially if you and your team do good work. - Always instill in your client (or bosses) that work will get done when it's done. They are paying you to know how long something _should_ take, and to identify obstacles that could make something take longer, as well as the time you need to plan/prepare to keep you and your team sane. - Your best working state is when you're relaxed. People have told me they work best under pressure, and I really refuse this to ever be true. You can certainly work under pressure, and even work fast, but I honestly believe your best work is the work that you enjoy and care for, not just the work you spit out fast. - You can have fun doing just about any task if it's not stressful. Sure, there are a lot boring tasks in software, like waiting for compiles, or doing slow-moving dev-ops work, but if there is a clear path with no major obstacles, it really won't be that bad. The biggest thing for me is having me and my team take breaks often. It's a good time to reflect on the work that's been done, think about a problem, or just take your mind off a larger problem for a few minutes. Depending on the industry, your client, your boss, etc., your mileage is going to vary, but as a software consultant, it is your job to advise on what time you need to get something done right. So I guess I agree with the article. Not that you shouldn't regularly give 100%, but you should always be buffered so in high stress, high stakes, you and your team have capacity to go above and beyond the usual, but your average work load isn't maxing you out all the time.
- theguyovrthere 5y ago
  "People have told me they work best under pressure" What I have learned about this phrase is "I work best when I am hyper focused on a singular <event, issue, project, task> and that is usually associated with being "under pressure" that causes us to slide into a state of hyper focused thinking.
  - oo0shiny 5y ago
    This is common in people with ADHD. Focus is an issue unless there's a stimulus provided: either joy or fear. Which is why those of us with ADHD will either hyper-focus on only what they enjoy unless there's the pressure of a deadline to kick-start the motivation to focus.
xyzzy21 5y ago
This is quite correct. Never assume YOU KNOW what people expect of you WITHOUT EXPLICITLY ASKING for details. For me, when I was a young buck, I assumed they wanted the perfection that I EXPECTED. Turns out 99% of the time, I was grossly overestimated what and how much others expected or wanted from my efforts. So I developed the habit of asking lots of questions about what would satisfy them (boss, customers, peers, employees, etc.) for just about any task, project, effort, etc. It also meant (often) that I had to work far less and with less stress. NEVER ASSUME. Always ask what would be sufficient and then ONLY do what is sufficient. The advantage is they get what they want and you can get schedules, deliverables, etc. right and on-time which makes everyone happier than overdelivering and being late at the same time.
someelephant 5y ago
Work addicts will have a hard time following this advice unless they get the same dopamine boost from other tasks like networking. Unlikely to happen until they accept they have a problem.
ramesh31 5y ago
The key is doing visible work. This is why being a frontend dev is so rewarding at times. I can spend weeks cranking out some heavy algorithmic/data structure code that does some incredibly important data manipulation that our app fundamentally relies on, but it won't get as much kudos as a 10 line, 5 minute CSS fix that made someone's workflow easier.
Dave3of5 5y ago
Don't need to read the article just the headline I'm on it already !
pier25 5y ago
> Obviously I don't practise any of what I talk about here, and diligently ensure that I spend all my time at work delivering business value. Obviously! ;)
informal007 5y ago
Except you like your work
sna1l 5y ago
I think the main point this article is missing is that having to work extremely hard (10-12 hrs+) usually implies there is something structurally wrong with the team. Your team is criminally understaffed, you aren't getting enough time to fix tech debt, etc. While understaffed, there are times that you just have to work hard to keep things together, but if you don't surface these issues up the chain then you will for sure burn out.
caffeine 5y ago
You are the boss of a company of one. Your company sells labor to the labor market, it makes investments in assets, it borrows funds, etc. It’s your job to decide how that company is run. It’s your job to decide what investments that company needs to make to get good returns. It’s also your job to interpret the contracts your company enters into and decide what is acceptable, and to appropriately risk-manage legal hazard, reputational hazard, etc. There is nobody else to run this company. It does not have a right to a good outcome. A lot of companies fail. Your company of one WILL fail if you make poor decisions. When you truly internalise that last fact is when you become an adult. (Edit: clarified that the last paragraph refers to the previous one specifically)
- powvans 5y ago
  I think this is a great way to look at things and would just like to add that when you have a spouse and children, aka additional stakeholders, it's not exactly a business of one.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- srveale 5y ago
  > When truly internalise that fact is when you become an adult. Implying that everyone who runs a company is mature and makes responsible decisions, which is not true.
  - mc32 5y ago
    Not all companies survive. Some companies, like people survive despite odd choices due to corruption, etc.
    - ryanbrunner 5y ago
      We live in societies that find it unacceptable for people to fail, to varying degrees depending on where in the world you are, and at least personally, that's a difference between companies and people that I'd like to maintain and even strengthen.
Decabytes 5y ago
I'm convinced that the only people who actually make what they are worth (at least in my industry) are people who either contract or start their own business. During my grad school years, my PI contracted with other companies for a minimum of $300 an hour, but I've seen others in the industry with higher rates. The higher up you go in our company go from being able to reimburse a couple thousand dollars in travel, to capping out at over 8 figures. The way I see it, being self employed is the only way for most people to achieve these types of numbers. Now I don't have aspirations to ever work at those levels, I'm more focused on being debt free in the next ten years so I don't have to work such a high powered job, and I can retire early. But when I see compensation numbers like that, it certainly makes me think twice about picking up more than my fare share of work just to generate good will within the company.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  Most business owners earn about the same as if they worked for someone else. It's only the top decile where the numbers start to differ. http://reactionwheel.net/2019/01/schumpeter-on-strategy.html http://reactionwheel.net/2019/01/schumpeter-on-strategy.html
xwdv 5y ago
If you want to work hard because it’s some kind of virtue, pick up a second job in tech. Juggling two full time remote jobs will give you all the work you need for twice the income.
rsweeney21 5y ago
The short term reward of feeling good about completing a feature or fixing a bug is intoxicating. Even learning a new skill can quickly make you feel better about yourself. It's easy to justify that spending excess time on things like this because it has a clear ROI - you become a better developer, you get paid more, you feel smarter. Just be careful to also invest in things that have a more distant ROI. Family, kids, health, friends, community service, mental health, spirituality - whatever it is that you value. If you are unfamiliar with what else there is out there that can bring happiness, I'd suggest reading "How will you measure your life?" by Clayton Christensen. He's the same guy that wrote the "Innovators Dilemma".
dmje 5y ago
Um, because life is more important than work? Because your kids will only be young once and they don't give a sh*t about your CV? Because you could be dead tomorrow? Because there is lots apart from work that gives you love, satisfaction and pleasure? Because you don't need to be insanely wealthy? ...and a gazillion other reasons.
vhiremath4 5y ago
Ok. Great. You have established you're exceptionally talented and can do it all. Now the question is whether you should do it all, and only you can answer that question. :)
kkfx 5y ago
The point IMVHO should, must be: did you work to live or did you live to work? Work is needed, not just because of the actual society but because even with the most advanced automation we need countless of thing that demand manual/brain work, that's is. But we live to live, not to work. So we should and must work to obtain what we need and want, a certain safety etc, more than that is illogical. Some might like their work so doing it is a pleasure and for them work hard means being satisfied and that's perfectly fine, however there is still a need to craft a life, because while we live in a society we need a family, friends, kids etc not just colleagues and services. The above, at philosophical level for the whole society have issues, for instance since we have evolved enough to reduce natural selection by a big extent we need to learn to regulate our reproduction to satisfy both individual desire and social needs in resources terms, like avoiding being too much to been able to live or too little to make the species on the brink of extinction but that's an a bit loose thing for individuals, just well studied incentives or disincentives likely suffice leaving individuals with significant willingness free to decide. Family and friend however are still a need, arriving at 80 alone at home and then go to a old people's home is not that nice for most, for instance. Being able to organize a party with people we like is part of our life, we are social animals and reduce themselves to "make a neighbor party" it's not good either. The rest is life.
nanochad 5y ago
>If you can meet these expectations in fewer hours than you are supposed to work, then you shouldn't just find more to do. Instead you should do something different. This one really struck home for me. I will often quickly finish a task like refactoring a class heirarchy, then I will spend another 3 hours looking at it and the surrounding code to check for any unoptimal usages. But it always turns out to be a waste of time, because we have much bigger things on the backlog. Thanks for reminding me.
honkycat 5y ago
Lately I have been using the metaphor of "keeping the temperature low" at work to describe how I am approaching my work. You see, in the past, I would work on all cylinders constantly worried about how I was performing and trying to get work done as fast as possible. I would let the temperature rise and rise until I was boiling over. And I would get a lot of work done! However: 1. This is unsustainable. It stressed me out and left no slack room for me to take on additional work. 2. It was annoying to work with me because I was constantly stressed out about nothing. I was judging myself for not working hard enough, while working harder than anyone else around me. And what comes naturally from judging yourself is judging others. And it was a viscous cycle. Any more my priority is to take regular breaks, meditate, create space for myself to find compassion and love for the people around me, and overall just try and be a positive calming force in the company. And people love it! I am complemented for my maturity and sensitivity and leadership abilities.
- jmfldn 5y ago
  "Any more my priority is to take regular breaks, meditate, create space for myself to find compassion and love for the people around me, and overall just try and be a positive calming force in the company" This is great, and very wise too. Great for you and great for everyone around you. People who generate peaceful relations and harmonious cohesion within a team (or society) are like force multipliers for the quality of that team or society. I work on a team where this is somewhat the case and where I try to embody this (imperfectly... but I try!) and it makes for a productive team, harmonious and strong communication and general happiness.
AlwaysRock 5y ago
I've been in jobs where was less was expected of me than I was capable of delivering and, more often than not, jobs where more was expected of me than I was capable of delivering, at least for any considerable length of time without burnout. Both were difficult. I like to think that if I had one of the lower effort needed jobs now that I would find other useful things to do like the author mentioned. At the time I mostly read books or played video games with other staff when I was done with my work. It was nice but a bit frustrating because I would go home and feel like I had already read and/or played video games so I didnt have fun things to do after work. Absolutely a problem from the top of the hierarchy of needs but still a problem.
- gigaflop 5y ago
  I like to think that I "sell" myself assuming 80% capacity, in order to avoid spending too much time operating at the bleeding edge with all pistons engaged. Nobody can deliver at 100% for an extended period of time without suffering some consequence. So long as I have just as many 60% days as I do 100%, and average out near the benchmark of 80%, then I have fulfilled the expectations that have been set, and I can be comfortable shutting the lid of my laptop at 1700 sharp. I'm currently working in downtime(which I expect to continue for some more time), and have been spending my time trying to build something for internal use that also counts for my self-education goals. There's definitely a temptation to goof off and read, play games, or watch movies, but I'd rather be 5% efficient at figuring out how to get Azure to cooperate than 'opt out' and take unofficial personal time. I want to be able to show that I can independently produce value, and increase the value of my 80% for when raises come around.
swamp40 5y ago
>> *Obviously I don't practise any of what I talk about here*
da39a3ee 5y ago
(a) You should you whatever makes you happy. If that's work then ok, but see (b) (b) If doing "work" is what makes you happy, then when you are doing work on your own time, I'd suggest trying to stretch yourself. Try to do something which seems difficult, or radical. Allow yourself to fantasize that you're going to become famous by doing this thing whatever it is.
mwattsun 5y ago
> What do I mean by working as hard as possible? I mean someone who can finish all the work that is expected of them in less than the total time that they are meant to spend working and then asks for more, similar, work to do. I was surprised the author didn't use the term 'workaholic' but I'm older so maybe it's an older term. Google trends does show a steady decline in the use of the term [1] Oxford defines a workaholic as "a person who compulsively works hard and long hours." There are too many reasons for this compulsion to go into in a comment... [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=workaholic https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=w...
jlengrand 5y ago
100% hard agree. One thing that I'd like to add as well. If you're an employee, getting 120% of the same job done will 99% of the time NOT get you promoted faster. The folks who get promoted typically do because they're visible in several places. Do 100% of your job, and then do 20% of something else. Blog, Mentor, do POCs, network, .... Find your own way. It's maybe unfair, I know, but I've seen so many frustrated folks seeing other get promoted while "they were the ones going the extra mile for their project". Plus, if you do things visible outside, you can sell that much easier to whoever employer comes next than "I've pushed out more features than my colleagues".
bspear 5y ago
Extra credit at school means something tangible. Extra credit at work rarely does. I think this message applies especially to people working in big tech and/or people working primarily on salary, not equity. When you have equity in a startup though, each person doing more of their best work can actually make a massive difference to the trajectory of the business. And if you're working on a promising business, working better and faster is the highest ROI thing that can be done. So it all depends.
argc 5y ago
I haven’t figured out how to not work all the time, but I’d like to. More likely though I’m just going to quit without a job lined up long enough to recover from burnout and go back to things I love, until I need to work again.
- therealdrag0 5y ago
  I think having other commitments is the only real way to work less. Make evening plans and weekend plans with other people for example.
Melatonic 5y ago
There was a time during the first shut down when my company decided to reduce peoples hours and also reduce their salaries instead of laying off more employees. I end up working 20 hours a week (instead of my normal 35) with a reduced salary (and I was even able to collect partial California unemployment benefits for the remainder of the reduced hours under a special program called Workshare). Honestly it was amazing - made me really want to find a job that was less pay but also that low in hours. Working less than 40 is nice but once you get down to 20 you have whole DAYS where you can do whatever you want. You sometimes start work at noon or end at noon and then have the remainder of your weekday to yourself or in the company of others. It was an odd experience seeing my neighbours and friends going through so much stress and pandemic related BS while I was (temporarily at least) having revelations about how much I wanted to work in life. Fortunately and unfortunately it was very short lived.
- j7ake 5y ago
  This sounds great. Ideally for me is that I am able to choose stretches of the year where I work 50% and stretches where I work 100%, and small number of weeks where I work 150%.
- npsimons 5y ago
  > made me really want to find a job that was less pay but also that low in hours This was a very large factor in why I quit - old job wouldn't let me cut back hours, even at reduced pay, even framing it as "leave without pay", so I had no choice but to quit to get my time back, and I had enough money. As it is, I'm content staying in that "learning and broadening" mode, even though I'm 20-ish years in on my career. I don't think I'll go back, unless I absolutely have to, or a project catches my interest, but even then, no amount of money is going to convince me to work so many hours or ever in an office again (another reason I quit was they wanted us back in the office, despite my being much more effective working from home).
  - shoo 5y ago
    > old job wouldn't let me cut back hours, even at reduced pay, even framing it as "leave without pay", I was curious what your role was, at what the incentives might have been for your old job to refuse this. In your about page I see: > Previously a programmer in the DoD world speculation: were you working for a contractor that needed to bill your time out by the hour to the government? So if you weren't working maximum billable hours, they weren't making maximum profit margin on your hours, compared to someone else who would?
drekipus 5y ago
I really resonate with this post; I don't want to say I there's something I "struggle" with but I do feel the need to be able to balance my time a bit more. I'm often a very productive member of my team, I love challenges, and I love digging into things and coming out the other side and feeling accomplished; My manager gets me onto things and asks when they might be done by, and I feel complied to deliver more in shorter time frames. It's not so much that I feel "pressured" by expectations; but more I feel "involved" - my failures are the teams failures, my success is the team's success. and I want my team/product/company to succeed, so I spend my effort contributing to that. However, this does swamp out time for my personal things that I want to do; I am wanting to learn lisp, and have some of my own personal projects that I want to play around with, in a multitude of technologies; I don't have spare time outside of work, so it's really on work time that I want to be able to experiment with these things. as the author puts it - "it doesn't offer any immediate value to me or the company, ... but I think generally made me fitter smarter and more productive".. So for me, the balancing act, is to assert time to reflect/recharge in other spheres of technology, while also feeling the communal duty of our team to get the company going.
gdubs 5y ago
Leverage, as a principle, is so important. I always try to keep the 80/20 rule in mind. But perhaps most simply put, if you're working harder and harder and not seeing results, then you're probably focusing on the wrong things. There's a natural up-and-down to projects where you'll feel like things are going great, then terrible, then ok... But then there's times where it doesn't matter how much effort you put in, that boulder just isn't gonna budge. It's vital to step back and figure out whether your efforts should be refocused. Otherwise, it's a recipe for burnout.
a-dub 5y ago
i've always believed: avoid doing work on computers, use computers to do work instead. my father's generation called this: work smarter, not harder. wise computer people call this: be lazy. industrialization of software work runs counter to this, it's your real job to defeat it.
sebastianconcpt 5y ago
The problem is that this changes dynamically in function of opportunity and ambition, or its composed form: opportunity to expand ambition.

605 points by jwhiles 5y ago

mnsc 5y ago

"And that's why money isn't nearly as important as SLACK. You can print or burn money, but you can't manufacture SLACK. It is The Final Commodity. So They want it _all_." The Book p. 94

shoo 5y ago
https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/09/30/slack/ https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/09/30/slack/ > Slack. The absence of binding constraints on behavior. > Poor is the person without Slack. Lack of Slack compounds and traps. > Slack means margin for error. You can relax. > Slack allows pursuing opportunities. You can explore. You can trade. > Slack prevents desperation. You can avoid bad trades and wait for better spots. You can be efficient. > Slack permits planning for the long term. You can invest. > Slack enables doing things for your own amusement. You can play games. You can have fun.

jacknews 5y ago

One problem with this argument is of course that what is really expected of you, ultimately, is at least what the other guys are delivering, not just a certain amount of work a week.

bluefirebrand 5y ago
And the worst part of this is that it winds up being a popularity contest. If your manager doesn't like you, they won't weigh your productivity the same way they weigh their favorite's. Even if you are delivering as much or more than others, you also have to be liked.
CiPHPerCoder 5y ago
Enter the prisoner's dilemma
- jacknews 5y ago
  LOL, I'm not sure that actual game theory game applies directly, but the name is perhaps apt, a bit like how "salary" is similar to "slavery".

sudden_dystopia 5y ago

Can confirm this will not get you promoted, it will just get you more work. You are more valuable as a peon than management if you are this good at your job. Always act dumber than your boss.

digianarchist 5y ago
I worked pretty hard at getting promoted at my last job which unfortunately didn't happen. In the end I did the cost/benefit analysis of the amount of extra work I was doing compared to the 15% raise that I would get from being promoted. In the end I moved companies and got a raise of about 35%. I'm back to doing the same amount of work I was doing before I tried to get promoted.
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  This is honestly a really big sickness within our industry and it seems to be everywhere. I don't think I will ever work towards a promotion again.
  - deltaonefour 5y ago
    Working towards a promotion is not just about productivity. You have to display leadership qualities. But here's the key. Not all managers want leaders. It an be viewed as a threat. When the time is right, you can show off your leadership skills.
    - alfalfasprout 5y ago
      Don't forget politics. You can display leadership qualities all you want but politics play into whether your project will ultimately suceeed, be deprioritized, and who gets credit for what.
grumple 5y ago
> Can confirm this will not get you promoted, it will just get you more work. You are more valuable as a peon than management if you are this good at your job. Always act dumber than your boss I've been promoted at every job I've had by working both smart and hard, but never exceeding 40 hours except in very rare exceptional circumstances. Devs have higher IC roles to fill so that helps. But now I get to be miserable as a manager. Be careful what you wish for. And please, be smarter than me so I feel good about you taking my place when I leave. That said, I don't think many people are productive for more than 20 hours a week for sustained periods and we should all work less.

Fertilio 5y ago

"You should try and spend your time in ways that will benefit you and your employer." This doesn't mean to work 4h a day on a 40h week contract and playing gets.the rest of it. And I think people doing that, are blocking their own carriers. I make double what I made 6 years ago and can cut back to 50% with a still good salary. If I would not have used my te properly I would be stuck in a job I probably don't like because I'm not really contributing or really feeling appreciated because for what? Is my boss happy enough with me can't feel good. Getting kudos because your stuff makes it easier for others or adds value or runs smoothly gives confidence and pride. At least I like my work and tx to my attitude and skills I have more freedom not less.

0des 5y ago

Getting my task completed at my own pace makes me feel good. Often that is fast and on time. In my heart, when I touch the keyboard, I feel like a greyhound dog with a little Bob Ross afro - it can be a race, a competition, but it is also an expression of my art. This article makes me feel bad because in the authors world, people like me are relegated to worker bee monkies trying to please the bossman due to pathology or some such delusion. I work this way because it pleases me. Doing my tasks diligently and in a timely manner affords me more time to relax, review what I have created, and enjoy it rather than drag myself to the next task. A bit off topic but as of late there is this creeping normalization of intentionally subpar or less optimized results I'm noticing in our industry but also general society. When did we become so not only complacent but also discouraging of any genuine effort? It is as if everyone is so aloof that if you show any effort or appreciation of your craft that you're societally acknowledging your own serfdom or that you're serving "the man".

freedom2099 5y ago
That is not at all what the article was about! It was never stated that you should be late or take too much time in doing tasks… it was about using more wisely your time (if the sizing claimed the task needed 5 days to be done and you are done in 2 maybe you could have spent more time thinking about the design or if everything is ok try to using the extra time to generate value in other ways instead of rushing towards the next task)
- vlovich123 5y ago
  Who establishes that sizing? I’ve yet to see anyone who can accurately estimate their own tasks let alone someone who can estimate that for others. In agile, I think a great time for reflection is between sprints. Also, I’m super fast but I’ll instead take frequent small breaks in the middle of work (read hacker news, write up documentation etc). There are other times to reflect than between tasks.
  - 0des 5y ago
    on this topic, I would like to add this: The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition) by Frederick P. Brooks ISBN 13: 9780201835953 ISBN 10: 0201835959 https://www.biblio.com/9780201835953 https://www.biblio.com/9780201835953

muse900 5y ago

Personal experience has taught me that there is a MAXIMUM amount of COMP that you will receive as an employee, no matter how much hard work you put into your company. So basically what is happening, is that you are working hard for some achievements, that someone else is going to benefit off.

giantg2 5y ago
And that max level is specific to each individual based largely on things out of their control, like politics. Edit: why downvote?
matheusmoreira 5y ago
Yes. Compensation is best measured as hourly rate: $/h. Working too hard just decreases that ratio because work hours increase while money stays constant.
- jhgb 5y ago
  > Working too hard just decreases that ratio because work hours increase while money stays constant I assume this may hold for the US, but not for many other countries. For example in my country the hourly rate for overtime hours is higher by law. Your hourly compensation decrease while working longer would only decrease if you were an external contractor paid a fixed amount of money for completion of a specific task.
  - adamsmith143 5y ago
    We aren't really talking about overtime though, which also exists in the US, but the amount of output during a normal 8 hour day. You might get paid somewhat more than a peer for putting out 2x the output but there are massive diminishing returns.
    - jhgb 5y ago
      What I was responding to literally talked about "work hours increase". I don't see how you can have "work hours increase" and simultaneously keep the same "normal 8 hour day". That sounds contradictory to me.

giantg2 5y ago

I'm glad they talk a good bit about perceptions. That's really what it comes down to at the end of the day. Who cares if you're doing a lot of work or a little work if nobody sees it. I don't know what's expected of me, at least not in an objective way. They apparently want me to go faster. One thing they are looking at is if I'm finishing early and asking for more work. So they are using that as an indicator, which is contrary to this article's advice. I wish I had time to learn new skills. The work is so disjointed that you can never become an expert in one technology. Just constantly bouncing between systems, stacks, and languages. It's a mess. I have no desire to learn a new technology right now just because I know I will never get the chance to use it or become good with it.

pm90 5y ago
Sounds like you need a vacation : )
- giantg2 5y ago
  I have a toddler - vacations don't really exist at this stage of life. Plus the past two years have seen me using most of that time for family medical issues. This year I'll be using about 1/4 of my time off for my wife to go on vacations.
  - machiaweliczny 5y ago
    My travel addicted friends went twice to vacations with 6 and 12 months old no problem.
  - scruple 5y ago
    Your story is similar to mine. Expectations at work are unrealistic, bordering on complete fiction. We have 3 young children and my wife is still on disability and recovering from childbirth 6 months ago. A vacation would be great but it isn't happening anytime soon. Vacations at this point in my life just means I work even harder than I do for my day job. Vacations are when the daycare is closed, which is actually more often than I can believe (especially contrasted against the exorbitant price of child care...). It sounds bad but it isn't that bad, I've definitely had worse periods in my life and that was before marriage with children. I wouldn't do anything differently, except maybe finding a different job before kid number 3 came along...

SpodGaju 5y ago

Maybe the most important reason: If you are a salaried employee, the more work you do only cheapens your labor. And it cheapens the labor f your fellow employees.

cowanon4757 5y ago

This is very solid advice. Once you become so productive that you don't need all of your working hours to do your job, you should spend that time on skill acquisition - either learning about something adjacent that you don't do daily or learn something that will be required for the next level (if that is your goal) This is the only sane way I have found to progress in a tech career. The daily and weekly learning really adds up too - in my experience this is the difference someone who has 10 years of experience and someone who has "2 years repeated 5 times"

ArcMex 5y ago
>This is the only sane way I have found to progress in a tech career. The daily and weekly learning really adds up too - in my experience this is the difference someone who has 10 years of experience and someone who has "2 years repeated 5 times" I agree. Thankfully, my culture does not shun 2-3 year job spells on your resume. Typically, this is what I do. When I learn enough to do my boss's job, I leave. I am now at a point of running my own, small consultancy service. Only need a few more clients to finally quit my day job for good.
teaearlgraycold 5y ago
This is why I roll my eyes out of their sockets when I hear a recruiter or job description that mentions years of experience as a qualification.

thenerdhead 5y ago

I think for people who don’t agree with the article, perhaps seeking jobs that are outcome based are ideal. For those that are output based, I think it’s totally reasonable to cut back strategically.

giantg2 5y ago
Why the difference? Most places that talk about outcomes are really measuring outputs, just with more secret sauce in how it's measured (still based on the perception of the bosses).
- thenerdhead 5y ago
  Most places that measure outputs are not driving business results, they are measuring the wrong things and even promoting the wrong people. Outputs = Productivity. How much stuff you do. Outcomes = Efficiency. How much useful stuff you do. Don't aim to get more stuff done (productivity), rather aim to have less stuff to do (focus / efficiency). Do more with less. Frequent activity & context switching is hardly tied to achievement.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    I'm aiming to keep my job. So until the bosses actually start measuring outcome, I'm stuck with output.
ArcMex 5y ago
It's funny, ever since I dedicated the morning to normal duties and afternoons to growth and development, I deliver results faster. Could be that I only use 4 hours to do all my work so I plan better and action faster.
- thenerdhead 5y ago
  Yeah exactly. Knowledge work is much less about the actual work we do. We're regularly on the clock having our brains work whether we like it or not. This focused and diffused time is crucial to be effective.

almost_usual 5y ago

I think most engineers who always search for tasks and work long hours are dealing with some form of anxiety or imposter syndrome. If management hasn’t brought up any performance issues and you’re anxious about your job you need to talk to someone. You’re on the road to burnout.

pm90 5y ago
Managers and senior engineers should be responsible for making them feel better in these situations. Having a support group of peers is also really helpful. If you reach Senior level ranks and continue to suffer from these feelings though…
- almost_usual 5y ago
  > If you reach Senior level ranks and continue to suffer from these feelings though… They need to consult a therapist because they’re likely dealing with anxiety disorder. If someone truly enjoys working 12 hours a day and weekends constantly then I suppose it’s fine.
mtberatwork 5y ago
A note on burnout: once you have had one burnout, the next one comes on faster and with less triggers needed.

incomingpain 5y ago

From my read, the title doesn't seem accurate at all. >You should try and spend your time in ways that will benefit you and your employer. The title says to do less work, but in reality seems you're still doing as much work but rather developing those other skills. Really just improving yourself. My 2 previous jobs were MSP. Like all MSPs, you wont control your schedule. someone else decides that you only need 30 minutes of your time to work on ticket X. It doesn't matter if that ticket requires you to drive 45 minutes away and then 45 minutes back. You will get chewed out for not completing the work in the allotted time. You will be required to do all the self-improvement on your own time and own dime. My current job though is awesome. I have been afforded the time during work to work on open source python projects that are beneficial to the team. For example, I had recommended we get solarwinds. less than a year later the solarwinds supply chain thing dropped. we dropped solarwinds. I decided screw it. I rebuilt the functionality we wanted in django. Prior to this job I didnt know python. Now I have multiple useful python projects. I can certainly confirm that this approach has been much better.

ascar 5y ago

This reads a bit like deliberately aiming for Parkinson's law. "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." However, I agree to some extent. I'm especially opposed to the concept that there should be 8 productive hours in a day. I sincerely believe that this is for most people not possible in creative knowledge work, which includes software engineering. So, if you have 5 productive hours of engineering and finished your goal and are in line with expectations, there shouldn't be a need to drain yourself to keep going, but rather spending your extra time on something else like job-related learning is a great way to prevent mental fatigue. This is especially true as there can be very different "energy distribution" between people. One person can achieve in 4 productive hours what another can in 8. But one works in productive bursts and the other in sustained effort. The first can't just sustain or expand that burst to 8 hours.

pm90 5y ago
100% agree. Let’s be clear though: you may need 4 hrs but sometimes you may need 12. Creative professions can be that way. Reaching an understanding that both can happen and accepting that fact is important. To a certain extent, it’s just recognizing the reality of what actually happens today anyway, rather than trying to fit into the 8hour workday concept.
Forgeties79 5y ago
Honestly I feel like we could take it a step further. Most people are not going to put in five real hours of work every day either. Which makes the eight hour workday in some ways all the more ridiculous. 20 hours a week is pretty much the ceiling in my experience beyond big crunch times, special events, etc. If people really stepped back and thought about how much time they spend screwing around at work I think they’d be surprised, like how many people were surprised to discover how many hours they spend on social media apps when screen time tracking was introduced in phones. I worked in the film industry for several years on the Hollywood side before switching over to commercial. 12 to 14 hour workdays were pretty much the norm. When I flipped over to the more commercial side, our workdays typically ended at 8 to 10 hours. And let me tell you, the commercial productions were exponentially more efficient. We got more done per day by a large margin, no matter the scale or complexity compared to the films I worked on. When you know there is less of a threat threat of the company extending the hours, you tend to get things done in the time allotted.

horse90 5y ago

I cannot disagree with the author given that modern companies are little more than an aggregation of short-term individuals each with her own agenda many of whom would happily backstab you in order to advance it.

ArcMex 5y ago

Being in tech has the advantage of me being knowledgeable enough to pursue tools and languages of interest that will benefit both my business and day job. That is what I did. I learned web development and used those skills to do projects at work and for my clients on weekends. Later on, I learned project management. Used those skills at my day job and made a consultancy killing as a PM for hire. I feel privleged to have been in this position. So, yes, I do advocate for spending time increasing your value at work. But that time should also work for you outside of that day job.

alexashka 5y ago

100% this, but let me add the why: Most people don't want to do good work, they just want to get paid and fuck off. It is really hard to grok this because it is just so disappointing and demotivating. Most people lie constantly, to appear as if they want to do work, as if they give a fuck - they are lying to your face. Once you realize this much, once you come to terms with what most people are - the rest will fall into place. Until you grok this, these sorts of posts will seem like cynical takes, like someone who doesn't want to work hard, who wants to be a free loader. No, these sorts of posts are cautionary tales that society is filled with free loaders and liars, so you need to tread with caution and know how to deal with these 'people'.

deltaonefour 5y ago
From the other side of the coin. Your employer is free loading off of you. You are paid a fraction of the amount of money that your work actually generates. If your work generates 100 dollars... you're paid 10. So essentially your employer is fucking you and any other attitude other than to treat the situation for what it is, is delusional. Don't call us 'people'. You're the one that doesn't get it. Now I'm not saying you need to freeload. But I do what I'm paid to do because this is a business transaction that favors the employer. After I'm paid, I fuck off, because I just got shafted by my employer and I owe him nothing until he can pay me again. My work is only good to the point where my employer is willing to continue paying me.
- alexashka 5y ago
  I don't employ anyone. I'm not coming from a place of a disgruntled employer complaining about the workers being 'lazy' or whatever. I'm coming from a place of what the blog talks about - someone who came in starry eyed doing good work, only to find out you won't get paid 3x for doing 3x the work relative to everyone else, but instead they'll try to get you to do 4x the work for a 10% yearly bonus, until you drop dead of exhaustion. Oh, and your co-workers will hate your guts and try to undermine you. Nice system, right? That's the dynamic I'm addressing - if you're enthusiastic and starry eyed and think people are out there wanting to change the world for the better or at least take a modicum of pride in their work - be very careful, the real world is not like that, at all.

deltaonefour 5y ago

The problem is, the idiot who pushes himself to 100% sets a standard that the rest become expected to follow.

nonrandomstring 5y ago

I'd like to rewrite this as "Why you should maybe not work so hard for someone else". Intrinsically motivated people (you'll know what I mean is you are one too) know no bounds to the ecstasy of work. Struggling toward a self-defined end is like flying in the clouds. In "flow", work is no longer work at all. It is labour relations within a late-capitalist system of dehumanising exploitation, over-systematisation and rampant financialisation that turns life's greatest joy of having skills and purpose into farcical performance art, into an inefficient, resentment-fuelled spectacle of self-harm.

egypturnash 5y ago
I am self-employed and I love doing what I get paid to do but there are many other things I like to do as well. I work hard enough to pay my bills and really not much harder.
- nonrandomstring 5y ago
  That "zero surplus" living sounds like a nice balance. As I get older, and especially with kids around, it's what I aspire to more.

TameAntelope 5y ago

I agree with the content of the article, but I don’t agree with the premise that these things aren’t also “work”. Engineers tend to obsess over, “focused work” like it’s the only way to be productive, and anything that’s not “focused work” is wasted time. That is a surefire way to burn out. Instead, finding ways to “riff” on your job by doing work with longer time horizons of payoff keeps your job fun. It’s all “work”. Maybe the title ought to be, “Stop obsessing over focused work.”

giantg2 5y ago
Well, the bosses usually only care about work the helps produce value. They might like the fact that you know some new tech that they can use in their latest assignment, but they weren't giving you credit while you were learning it the year before just for fun.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  There are a lot of things you can learn that do both?
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Find better bosses and employers. They are out there.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    I have looked but haven't found any.
  - jader201 5y ago
    At the end of the day, even the best bosses care about making money, because that’s what _their_ bosses (i.e. investors) care about. So even if you find a boss/employer that is supportive of “the fun stuff” for a season, that will eventually come to an end.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago

bentobean 5y ago

There are times at which developers must give 110% effort in order to address critical business needs, unexpected outages, emergency pivots, etc… But in order for people to rise to such occasions, they must have some excess capacity from which to pull. TL;DR - If you run the engine at redline all the time, you’re destined for a blowout.

jokoon 5y ago

Beyond those arguments, it's also important to remind that we should work between 20 or 30 hours per week, not more. It's about health, being able to rest, do leisure, physical activity, see friends, date, etc. There are things to learn about the antiwork mentality. Not saying everyone should quit their job, but still, it would be nice if everyone could be able to negotiate with their employees. I have often been called a parasite, and honestly, it comforts me in realizing that I should not compete with people who turn work into a competition. Those people will generate enough taxes and labor for lazy people like me, and it's okay.

lijogdfljk 5y ago
> Those people will generate enough taxes and labor for lazy people like me, and it's okay. Feels odd to me to make a statement like this. Is it in jest? In my view everyone should pull the same minimum. Not have some people work more to offset other people working less.
- Cerium 5y ago
  If you are pretty good at your work that minimum might only take 20 hours?
  - lijogdfljk 5y ago
    Well i'm not talking hours, to be clear. Just some idea that we're all equal. Ie, if a hypothetical society depends on addicts working more than "lazy people" (in the parents words) then it feels to me we're set up for failure.
    - noahtallen 5y ago
      How does one avoid the inequality, though? One could be working 60 hours a week at fast food joints and not make anywhere close to a part time software developer. As a result, the “lazy” developer is generating more tax revenue. There are too many possibilities to make it “fair”, unless we get rid of the income tax. Even if everyone paid the same amount, it wouldn’t be fair, unless everyone made the same amount of money. Which also doesn’t seem fair.

bentobean 5y ago

"You didn't tell him how long it would really take, did you?" - Montgomery Scott

photochemsyn 5y ago

Most people work within some kind of incorporated structure, as employees or contractors on hourly wages or salaries. Unless they're also invested in the corporate structure, i.e. they're the providers of capital, they'll see no real benefit from the success of the business other than avoiding losing their job when the business crashes. The solution is pretty obvious, and is fairly common in Germany at least: employees and investors must be viewed as equivalent stakeholders. This means worker organizations should have as many voting seats on corporate boards as the investor organizations providing the capital do. It's not one or the other - generally speaking, no workers means no business, and no capital also means no business. The result would be that profits get distributed equally to workers (as bonuses on top of wages/salary) and investors. Otherwise it's the same problem as communist countries had: why work hard and be productive if you get the same reward for it as someone who sits around doing little or nothing? In response upper management will trot out lines like 'we're all a family here' and 'you should enjoy the pride and satisfaction of a job well done' and similar nonsense.

decebalus1 5y ago

One should definitely not be working hard. You need to minimize work and maximize income. The more you work, the less you actually make per-hour invested, if the income does not grow proportionally to surpass the current ratio. Unless you're in a good strategic position which ensures you will get huge benefits by working hard (think large stake in the company), working hard is a losing game. A company will pay you the bare minimum it can get away with, taking into considerations all sort of parameters (such as risk of attrition) so naturally, your optimal behavior should be to work as little as possible to not get fired. Use the extra time to invest in yourself or just enjoy life.

mrozbarry 5y ago

I work at a software consultancy, and here are my hot tips around this: - Take breaks between tasks. Your flow should mostly allow 5-10 minute breaks often (like once an hour or so) without anything or anybody blowing up. - It's healthy that your client (or bosses) will always want more work, especially if you and your team do good work. - Always instill in your client (or bosses) that work will get done when it's done. They are paying you to know how long something _should_ take, and to identify obstacles that could make something take longer, as well as the time you need to plan/prepare to keep you and your team sane. - Your best working state is when you're relaxed. People have told me they work best under pressure, and I really refuse this to ever be true. You can certainly work under pressure, and even work fast, but I honestly believe your best work is the work that you enjoy and care for, not just the work you spit out fast. - You can have fun doing just about any task if it's not stressful. Sure, there are a lot boring tasks in software, like waiting for compiles, or doing slow-moving dev-ops work, but if there is a clear path with no major obstacles, it really won't be that bad. The biggest thing for me is having me and my team take breaks often. It's a good time to reflect on the work that's been done, think about a problem, or just take your mind off a larger problem for a few minutes. Depending on the industry, your client, your boss, etc., your mileage is going to vary, but as a software consultant, it is your job to advise on what time you need to get something done right. So I guess I agree with the article. Not that you shouldn't regularly give 100%, but you should always be buffered so in high stress, high stakes, you and your team have capacity to go above and beyond the usual, but your average work load isn't maxing you out all the time.

theguyovrthere 5y ago
"People have told me they work best under pressure" What I have learned about this phrase is "I work best when I am hyper focused on a singular <event, issue, project, task> and that is usually associated with being "under pressure" that causes us to slide into a state of hyper focused thinking.
- oo0shiny 5y ago
  This is common in people with ADHD. Focus is an issue unless there's a stimulus provided: either joy or fear. Which is why those of us with ADHD will either hyper-focus on only what they enjoy unless there's the pressure of a deadline to kick-start the motivation to focus.

xyzzy21 5y ago

This is quite correct. Never assume YOU KNOW what people expect of you WITHOUT EXPLICITLY ASKING for details. For me, when I was a young buck, I assumed they wanted the perfection that I EXPECTED. Turns out 99% of the time, I was grossly overestimated what and how much others expected or wanted from my efforts. So I developed the habit of asking lots of questions about what would satisfy them (boss, customers, peers, employees, etc.) for just about any task, project, effort, etc. It also meant (often) that I had to work far less and with less stress. NEVER ASSUME. Always ask what would be sufficient and then ONLY do what is sufficient. The advantage is they get what they want and you can get schedules, deliverables, etc. right and on-time which makes everyone happier than overdelivering and being late at the same time.

someelephant 5y ago

Work addicts will have a hard time following this advice unless they get the same dopamine boost from other tasks like networking. Unlikely to happen until they accept they have a problem.

ramesh31 5y ago

The key is doing visible work. This is why being a frontend dev is so rewarding at times. I can spend weeks cranking out some heavy algorithmic/data structure code that does some incredibly important data manipulation that our app fundamentally relies on, but it won't get as much kudos as a 10 line, 5 minute CSS fix that made someone's workflow easier.

Dave3of5 5y ago

Don't need to read the article just the headline I'm on it already !

pier25 5y ago

> Obviously I don't practise any of what I talk about here, and diligently ensure that I spend all my time at work delivering business value. Obviously! ;)

informal007 5y ago

Except you like your work

sna1l 5y ago

I think the main point this article is missing is that having to work extremely hard (10-12 hrs+) usually implies there is something structurally wrong with the team. Your team is criminally understaffed, you aren't getting enough time to fix tech debt, etc. While understaffed, there are times that you just have to work hard to keep things together, but if you don't surface these issues up the chain then you will for sure burn out.

caffeine 5y ago

You are the boss of a company of one. Your company sells labor to the labor market, it makes investments in assets, it borrows funds, etc. It’s your job to decide how that company is run. It’s your job to decide what investments that company needs to make to get good returns. It’s also your job to interpret the contracts your company enters into and decide what is acceptable, and to appropriately risk-manage legal hazard, reputational hazard, etc. There is nobody else to run this company. It does not have a right to a good outcome. A lot of companies fail. Your company of one WILL fail if you make poor decisions. When you truly internalise that last fact is when you become an adult. (Edit: clarified that the last paragraph refers to the previous one specifically)

powvans 5y ago
I think this is a great way to look at things and would just like to add that when you have a spouse and children, aka additional stakeholders, it's not exactly a business of one.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
srveale 5y ago
> When truly internalise that fact is when you become an adult. Implying that everyone who runs a company is mature and makes responsible decisions, which is not true.
- mc32 5y ago
  Not all companies survive. Some companies, like people survive despite odd choices due to corruption, etc.
  - ryanbrunner 5y ago
    We live in societies that find it unacceptable for people to fail, to varying degrees depending on where in the world you are, and at least personally, that's a difference between companies and people that I'd like to maintain and even strengthen.

Decabytes 5y ago

I'm convinced that the only people who actually make what they are worth (at least in my industry) are people who either contract or start their own business. During my grad school years, my PI contracted with other companies for a minimum of $300 an hour, but I've seen others in the industry with higher rates. The higher up you go in our company go from being able to reimburse a couple thousand dollars in travel, to capping out at over 8 figures. The way I see it, being self employed is the only way for most people to achieve these types of numbers. Now I don't have aspirations to ever work at those levels, I'm more focused on being debt free in the next ten years so I don't have to work such a high powered job, and I can retire early. But when I see compensation numbers like that, it certainly makes me think twice about picking up more than my fare share of work just to generate good will within the company.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
Most business owners earn about the same as if they worked for someone else. It's only the top decile where the numbers start to differ. http://reactionwheel.net/2019/01/schumpeter-on-strategy.html http://reactionwheel.net/2019/01/schumpeter-on-strategy.html

xwdv 5y ago

If you want to work hard because it’s some kind of virtue, pick up a second job in tech. Juggling two full time remote jobs will give you all the work you need for twice the income.

rsweeney21 5y ago

The short term reward of feeling good about completing a feature or fixing a bug is intoxicating. Even learning a new skill can quickly make you feel better about yourself. It's easy to justify that spending excess time on things like this because it has a clear ROI - you become a better developer, you get paid more, you feel smarter. Just be careful to also invest in things that have a more distant ROI. Family, kids, health, friends, community service, mental health, spirituality - whatever it is that you value. If you are unfamiliar with what else there is out there that can bring happiness, I'd suggest reading "How will you measure your life?" by Clayton Christensen. He's the same guy that wrote the "Innovators Dilemma".

dmje 5y ago

Um, because life is more important than work? Because your kids will only be young once and they don't give a sh*t about your CV? Because you could be dead tomorrow? Because there is lots apart from work that gives you love, satisfaction and pleasure? Because you don't need to be insanely wealthy? ...and a gazillion other reasons.

vhiremath4 5y ago

Ok. Great. You have established you're exceptionally talented and can do it all. Now the question is whether you should do it all, and only you can answer that question. :)

kkfx 5y ago

The point IMVHO should, must be: did you work to live or did you live to work? Work is needed, not just because of the actual society but because even with the most advanced automation we need countless of thing that demand manual/brain work, that's is. But we live to live, not to work. So we should and must work to obtain what we need and want, a certain safety etc, more than that is illogical. Some might like their work so doing it is a pleasure and for them work hard means being satisfied and that's perfectly fine, however there is still a need to craft a life, because while we live in a society we need a family, friends, kids etc not just colleagues and services. The above, at philosophical level for the whole society have issues, for instance since we have evolved enough to reduce natural selection by a big extent we need to learn to regulate our reproduction to satisfy both individual desire and social needs in resources terms, like avoiding being too much to been able to live or too little to make the species on the brink of extinction but that's an a bit loose thing for individuals, just well studied incentives or disincentives likely suffice leaving individuals with significant willingness free to decide. Family and friend however are still a need, arriving at 80 alone at home and then go to a old people's home is not that nice for most, for instance. Being able to organize a party with people we like is part of our life, we are social animals and reduce themselves to "make a neighbor party" it's not good either. The rest is life.

nanochad 5y ago

>If you can meet these expectations in fewer hours than you are supposed to work, then you shouldn't just find more to do. Instead you should do something different. This one really struck home for me. I will often quickly finish a task like refactoring a class heirarchy, then I will spend another 3 hours looking at it and the surrounding code to check for any unoptimal usages. But it always turns out to be a waste of time, because we have much bigger things on the backlog. Thanks for reminding me.

honkycat 5y ago

Lately I have been using the metaphor of "keeping the temperature low" at work to describe how I am approaching my work. You see, in the past, I would work on all cylinders constantly worried about how I was performing and trying to get work done as fast as possible. I would let the temperature rise and rise until I was boiling over. And I would get a lot of work done! However: 1. This is unsustainable. It stressed me out and left no slack room for me to take on additional work. 2. It was annoying to work with me because I was constantly stressed out about nothing. I was judging myself for not working hard enough, while working harder than anyone else around me. And what comes naturally from judging yourself is judging others. And it was a viscous cycle. Any more my priority is to take regular breaks, meditate, create space for myself to find compassion and love for the people around me, and overall just try and be a positive calming force in the company. And people love it! I am complemented for my maturity and sensitivity and leadership abilities.

jmfldn 5y ago
"Any more my priority is to take regular breaks, meditate, create space for myself to find compassion and love for the people around me, and overall just try and be a positive calming force in the company" This is great, and very wise too. Great for you and great for everyone around you. People who generate peaceful relations and harmonious cohesion within a team (or society) are like force multipliers for the quality of that team or society. I work on a team where this is somewhat the case and where I try to embody this (imperfectly... but I try!) and it makes for a productive team, harmonious and strong communication and general happiness.

AlwaysRock 5y ago

I've been in jobs where was less was expected of me than I was capable of delivering and, more often than not, jobs where more was expected of me than I was capable of delivering, at least for any considerable length of time without burnout. Both were difficult. I like to think that if I had one of the lower effort needed jobs now that I would find other useful things to do like the author mentioned. At the time I mostly read books or played video games with other staff when I was done with my work. It was nice but a bit frustrating because I would go home and feel like I had already read and/or played video games so I didnt have fun things to do after work. Absolutely a problem from the top of the hierarchy of needs but still a problem.

gigaflop 5y ago
I like to think that I "sell" myself assuming 80% capacity, in order to avoid spending too much time operating at the bleeding edge with all pistons engaged. Nobody can deliver at 100% for an extended period of time without suffering some consequence. So long as I have just as many 60% days as I do 100%, and average out near the benchmark of 80%, then I have fulfilled the expectations that have been set, and I can be comfortable shutting the lid of my laptop at 1700 sharp. I'm currently working in downtime(which I expect to continue for some more time), and have been spending my time trying to build something for internal use that also counts for my self-education goals. There's definitely a temptation to goof off and read, play games, or watch movies, but I'd rather be 5% efficient at figuring out how to get Azure to cooperate than 'opt out' and take unofficial personal time. I want to be able to show that I can independently produce value, and increase the value of my 80% for when raises come around.

swamp40 5y ago

>> *Obviously I don't practise any of what I talk about here*

da39a3ee 5y ago

(a) You should you whatever makes you happy. If that's work then ok, but see (b) (b) If doing "work" is what makes you happy, then when you are doing work on your own time, I'd suggest trying to stretch yourself. Try to do something which seems difficult, or radical. Allow yourself to fantasize that you're going to become famous by doing this thing whatever it is.

mwattsun 5y ago

> What do I mean by working as hard as possible? I mean someone who can finish all the work that is expected of them in less than the total time that they are meant to spend working and then asks for more, similar, work to do. I was surprised the author didn't use the term 'workaholic' but I'm older so maybe it's an older term. Google trends does show a steady decline in the use of the term [1] Oxford defines a workaholic as "a person who compulsively works hard and long hours." There are too many reasons for this compulsion to go into in a comment... [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=workaholic https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=w...

jlengrand 5y ago

100% hard agree. One thing that I'd like to add as well. If you're an employee, getting 120% of the same job done will 99% of the time NOT get you promoted faster. The folks who get promoted typically do because they're visible in several places. Do 100% of your job, and then do 20% of something else. Blog, Mentor, do POCs, network, .... Find your own way. It's maybe unfair, I know, but I've seen so many frustrated folks seeing other get promoted while "they were the ones going the extra mile for their project". Plus, if you do things visible outside, you can sell that much easier to whoever employer comes next than "I've pushed out more features than my colleagues".

bspear 5y ago

Extra credit at school means something tangible. Extra credit at work rarely does. I think this message applies especially to people working in big tech and/or people working primarily on salary, not equity. When you have equity in a startup though, each person doing more of their best work can actually make a massive difference to the trajectory of the business. And if you're working on a promising business, working better and faster is the highest ROI thing that can be done. So it all depends.

argc 5y ago

I haven’t figured out how to not work all the time, but I’d like to. More likely though I’m just going to quit without a job lined up long enough to recover from burnout and go back to things I love, until I need to work again.

therealdrag0 5y ago
I think having other commitments is the only real way to work less. Make evening plans and weekend plans with other people for example.

Melatonic 5y ago

There was a time during the first shut down when my company decided to reduce peoples hours and also reduce their salaries instead of laying off more employees. I end up working 20 hours a week (instead of my normal 35) with a reduced salary (and I was even able to collect partial California unemployment benefits for the remainder of the reduced hours under a special program called Workshare). Honestly it was amazing - made me really want to find a job that was less pay but also that low in hours. Working less than 40 is nice but once you get down to 20 you have whole DAYS where you can do whatever you want. You sometimes start work at noon or end at noon and then have the remainder of your weekday to yourself or in the company of others. It was an odd experience seeing my neighbours and friends going through so much stress and pandemic related BS while I was (temporarily at least) having revelations about how much I wanted to work in life. Fortunately and unfortunately it was very short lived.

j7ake 5y ago
This sounds great. Ideally for me is that I am able to choose stretches of the year where I work 50% and stretches where I work 100%, and small number of weeks where I work 150%.
npsimons 5y ago
> made me really want to find a job that was less pay but also that low in hours This was a very large factor in why I quit - old job wouldn't let me cut back hours, even at reduced pay, even framing it as "leave without pay", so I had no choice but to quit to get my time back, and I had enough money. As it is, I'm content staying in that "learning and broadening" mode, even though I'm 20-ish years in on my career. I don't think I'll go back, unless I absolutely have to, or a project catches my interest, but even then, no amount of money is going to convince me to work so many hours or ever in an office again (another reason I quit was they wanted us back in the office, despite my being much more effective working from home).
- shoo 5y ago
  > old job wouldn't let me cut back hours, even at reduced pay, even framing it as "leave without pay", I was curious what your role was, at what the incentives might have been for your old job to refuse this. In your about page I see: > Previously a programmer in the DoD world speculation: were you working for a contractor that needed to bill your time out by the hour to the government? So if you weren't working maximum billable hours, they weren't making maximum profit margin on your hours, compared to someone else who would?

drekipus 5y ago

I really resonate with this post; I don't want to say I there's something I "struggle" with but I do feel the need to be able to balance my time a bit more. I'm often a very productive member of my team, I love challenges, and I love digging into things and coming out the other side and feeling accomplished; My manager gets me onto things and asks when they might be done by, and I feel complied to deliver more in shorter time frames. It's not so much that I feel "pressured" by expectations; but more I feel "involved" - my failures are the teams failures, my success is the team's success. and I want my team/product/company to succeed, so I spend my effort contributing to that. However, this does swamp out time for my personal things that I want to do; I am wanting to learn lisp, and have some of my own personal projects that I want to play around with, in a multitude of technologies; I don't have spare time outside of work, so it's really on work time that I want to be able to experiment with these things. as the author puts it - "it doesn't offer any immediate value to me or the company, ... but I think generally made me fitter smarter and more productive".. So for me, the balancing act, is to assert time to reflect/recharge in other spheres of technology, while also feeling the communal duty of our team to get the company going.

gdubs 5y ago

Leverage, as a principle, is so important. I always try to keep the 80/20 rule in mind. But perhaps most simply put, if you're working harder and harder and not seeing results, then you're probably focusing on the wrong things. There's a natural up-and-down to projects where you'll feel like things are going great, then terrible, then ok... But then there's times where it doesn't matter how much effort you put in, that boulder just isn't gonna budge. It's vital to step back and figure out whether your efforts should be refocused. Otherwise, it's a recipe for burnout.

a-dub 5y ago

i've always believed: avoid doing work on computers, use computers to do work instead. my father's generation called this: work smarter, not harder. wise computer people call this: be lazy. industrialization of software work runs counter to this, it's your real job to defeat it.

sebastianconcpt 5y ago

The problem is that this changes dynamically in function of opportunity and ambition, or its composed form: opportunity to expand ambition.