8 ms·

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

• 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
      • slowmovintarget 5y ago
        I read that twenty years ago, and it is still relevant.
        • 0des 5y ago
          Just curious, do you have any other recommendations that are more or less timeless?
          • vladak 5y ago
            https://archive.org/download/the-unwritten-laws-of-engineering/The%20Unwritten%20Laws%20of%20Engineering.pdf https://archive.org/download/the-unwritten-laws-of-engineeri... I had a colleague that can be considered brilliant engineer and I believe could be doing all kinds of exciting hard projects and work in the top tier companies. When our manager decided to leave the company, he went along, for a job which in my view is nowhere near his maximum abilities (although he might argue otherwise), quoting the 'Be as particular as you can in the selection of your supervisor.' rule from the above book (which is relevant to the other thread in this topic).
          • Splizard 5y ago
            SYSTEMANTICS. THE SYSTEMS BIBLE / How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail
    • pm90 5y ago
      You decide as a team. Concepts like story points and processes like agile sprints are intended to create a more realistic estimate of the work a team can deliver. The process comes with tradeoffs; it won’t work for everyone. So then it’s up to them to bring it up during retrospectives and decide to either change the process or… not. It’s important to understand that working on a team means that you just don’t get to have all the nice things that you would working individually. You gotta approach it with that mindset.
  • giantg2 5y ago
    Sounded more like if you get it done early, wait until the due date to hand it in. Them use the extra time for other stuff.
    • xyzzy21 5y ago
      Exactly. Then divide the saved time on things you can learn from, that you enjoy or to prep for things that can for your advantage (e.g. G-jobs).
• TacticalCoder 5y ago
  > 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? And these same people are going to expect nothing short of the best of the best from surgeons / plane pilots / car manufacturers / etc. So they can slack of... But doctors are expected to do the work!
  • falcolas 5y ago
    > surgeons / plane pilots All of whom have downtime and at least one (if not more) backup. Software developers typically don't (strict adherents to pair programming aside). They also spend company hours getting better at their craft, building professional ties. Just like the article suggests software developers do.
    • 0des 5y ago
      Are you the author?
      • falcolas 5y ago
        Nope. Just someone who sees wisdom in the message.
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
  • adamsmith143 5y ago
    Sure but most engineers aren't working on anything with near that level of importance. Like sorry but another bugfix on Youtube or the Uber app really pales in comparison to a Triple Bypass or safely landing a plane with 200 passengers during a high crosswind for example.
    • deleted 5y ago
• tnzk 5y ago
  > 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. This looks like what exactly the author says in the article to me
  • 0des 5y ago
    To a high performer the tone of this article is a shot across the bow.
    • shock-value 5y ago
      You read it wrong then. > affords me more time to relax, review what I have created, and enjoy it rather than drag myself to the next task This is exactly what the author is promoting. A hypothetical so-called "worker bee" would indeed be moving on to the next task at the fastest possible clip.
      • Apocryphon 5y ago
        It also says > You should try and spend your time in ways that will benefit you and your employer. Which is hardly antagonizing their boss, or slacking.
    • AitchEmArsey 5y ago
      Depends on your definition of high performer. If you prize delivering short-term value by chugging through the task pile faster than other people can, then sure this article is not aligned with your ideals. That is not what I would call high performance; I would much rather be someone who can take a razor/lawnmower to that pile of tasks and do exactly the subset (down to potentially none at all) which delivers the most marginal value for the units of time I think are warranted for the project as a whole - then repeat until the goals are met.
      • fuzzfactor 5y ago
        Sometimes I want to stop and smell the roses, but mostly I want to smell the roses along the way while accomplishing other things too.
• Buttons840 5y ago
  > 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". People perceive (perception being more important than reality in this case) growing inequality, and see that society as a whole isn't moving toward any goals they care about, so they just grift as be they can, coast and collect their paychecks. Society used to dream of a future of abundance and robot house-maids, now we picture the future being scarcity and catastrophic climate change and nuclear fallout. Am I wrong? Please tell me I'm wrong. I want to hear what future dreams society is persuing other than moving money around and making investment portfolios grow.
  • 0des 5y ago
    You're wrong. These concerns, in many forms, have been present for years, however we were once instilled with the instinct to overcome, but now frailty is more valued because even in failure you can not criticize those who are less able. Those appearing less able while still managing to overcome, even when due to random chance, results in more peer accolades and ironic fanfare in the face of adversity or some other disadvantage. The privilege industrial complex continues. Am I kidding? Please tell me I'm kidding.
    • adamsmith143 5y ago
      > These concerns, in many forms, have been present for years, however we were once instilled with the instinct to overcome, but now frailty is more valued because even in failure you can not criticize those who are less able. Actually I think you are totally off base here. I know in my cohort of age 30+ millennials there is a strong sense of doom. Many people have the attitude of "why should I have kids when they'll be born into a hellscape" or "why bother trying to save for retirement when the world will probably collapse before I reach 70." These are very real and very pervasive thought patterns I have seen in younger people in particular. It has nothing to do with frailty and your take smacks of boomerisms.
      • 5y ago
• Apocryphon 5y ago
  > When did we become so not only complacent but also discouraging of any genuine effort? Overcorrection for burnout and other consequences of poor WLB. And because WFH has distilled many white collar remote jobs to their essence shorn of the trappings of the office, causing people to reflect on what work really means.
  • 0des 5y ago
    Curious if there would be a book about this in the future when some time has passed
    • Apocryphon 5y ago
      Given your reading comprehension of the OP, I’m not sure you’d get much out of such a book, seeing as how you missed the point of the article is essentially “work smarter, not harder” and to use excess time at work for career development and continuous learning.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • 0des 5y ago
        Bless your heart, I hope your day gets better.
        • Apocryphon 5y ago
          Thanks, you too! Maybe yours will become better too after you try rereading the article and getting past its clickbait title and provocative framing.
• krinchan 5y ago
  It sounds like you're misinterpreting the article or you did not read it. > 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[sic] acknowledging your own serfdom or that you're serving "the man". In my decades long experience in corporate programming, when people accuse everyone around them of not putting in enough effort one of two things are happening. The first, which is very rare, is that you are truly in a dead end job with a toxic work environment. If this is the environment you're in and you aren't looking for the first exit and interviewing constantly, frankly, you deserve to stay there and suffer. You may succeed in the short term but only because you'd have to dig 6 feet into the ground to find the bar. Your managers only see you as a resource to exploit before you burn out and fall to the same level as your co-workers. The second, and this is the most common, is that you are sprinting constantly and have yet to develop any sense of work/life balance. In essence, you're convinced the world itself is insane and you are the only one truly "working". You are on the path to burnout and the people who are "aloof" are actually trying to help you find a path to long term work over decades. Mind you, maybe you just work in bursts. You find a high pay/high pressure cooker of a job, throw yourself into it till you just can't, and then take a year long sabbatical. I don't know you, but I've seen these sentences so many times and 90% of the time it's the same unawareness and inexperience with maintaining a sustainable level of work. I'm not trying to attack you here. I am trying to impress upon you that I was once of the same opinion as you. Through the years I've become more open to the idea that that Good Work Ethic is mostly a product of Capitalist Propagandizing (TM) starting as early as primary school. Even though I maintain and am praised consistently for my "work ethic", I am keenly aware of the constant pressure to produce more value for a vanishingly smaller share of that value. That awareness makes me able to make better decisions about how much and for how long to disturb the equilibrium of work/not-work, and how much time a task takes at both a sustainable pace and at a "crunch" pace. Burn out and the more obvious visible symptoms take years to set in, and then it takes almost as long to counteract, if you can at all. Some people burn out permanently and never truly recover. It's just better to not get to that point at all. The ways around this are individual, because what is sustainable is individual. One co-worker works roughly 4 10 hour days and is available-but-not-working on Fridays. Another is very strict about having a 3 day weekend every month. One often works lightly during the week and then works Saturday when they can have more heads down time. TL;DR: If you feel that everyone around you is telling you you're working too hard, you probably need to assess the sustainability of your level of work. You may or may not need to make changes, but (again, in my experience across tens of years and companies) you almost certainly need to put in place long term plans if you're running net-negative on your burn out battery.
• avgcorrection 5y ago
  > 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. Is this a new kind of brag? Maybe an “offense brag”? This article makes me, a very conscientious and productive person, feel offended because it tells me that I should chill out a little. (Except that’s not what it says; more on that later.) > 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. From the article: > 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. Completing tasks in a speedy manner makes it so that you don’t have to rush to the next task. Seems in line with the article. > When did we become so not only complacent but also discouraging of any genuine effort? From the article: """ If you optimally fill your time at work doing 'work' work, then this means that you are likely: - Not developing other skills - Not building your network inside the company as well as you could - Probably working less efficiently than you could - Unable to respond to new or changing demands without working longer hours or stopping something else that you think you need to do. See the ongoing supply chain crisis for why you should have some slack in your system. """ Two of those points are about working on other things than whatever narrow task that you are assigned. So apparently it’s not about being complacent at all. Don’t fret. This is HN. We are all A-type, elite white collar workers at this place.
• CipherThrowaway 5y ago
  The theme of the article is not that you should be less productive, it's that stepping back and slowing down can make you more productive. For example you could have saved yourself some offense if you had taken the time to consider the author's point before reacting.
• AlwaysRock 5y ago
  I did not read the article how you read it. It seems to me you are doing exactly what the author is suggesting. You are doing your work and then taking time to do other things. The author isnt saying dont give a shit. They are saying when you finish your work you don't have to ding a bell and say, "NEXT TASK PLEASE" right away. There are other aspects of work that are important too.
• agumonkey 5y ago
  The artistic side of programming is very often put aside. To the point I felt like a narcissistic alien. I wonder how prevalent this notion is in the industry. It often feels we're cogs in a pipeline.