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I used to slave away hanging dry wall (lol child labor laws), and then worked as a waiter. Now I work in big tech, and let me tell you the amount of people slac

I used to slave away hanging dry wall (lol child labor laws), and then worked as a waiter. Now I work in big tech, and let me tell you the amount of people slacking off during work is incredible. Not that they necessarily should be working themselves to death, but with respect to the article, there's a lot of low hanging fruit. Wall St. is a sort of special type of pathology due to the sheer amount of high frequency, arbitrary deadlines that must be met. What's worse is that the work is incredibly repetitive and boring. A buddy at GS showed me what they did and it's incredibly dry. Literally Excel docs, pivot tables, slide decks. It's not even creative. Ironically they recruit top tier students (well, as much these days, but still) from Harvard, Stanford, etc. You can tell they're just putting in the work to eventually go work at a Hedge Fund or whatever. There's certainly diminishing returns, but I'd say the average engineer at Big Tech has not reached that point. That being said, it's hard to care when said companies are making 5-12X your salary in profit, and projects keep getting shuttered and requirements are changing and there's a bunch of delays due to bureaucracy, lol. In some ways I actually think it's better if everyone is lazy as it quickly reveals what's important. The problem with everyone acting busy is that it can be hard to tease out what's meaningful.

ftlio 5y ago
I worked in construction/manufacturing as labor, then in a CNC engineering capacity, then as middle management, then at a vendor for manufacturing as a software engineer. All were progressively less work, but my god consumer tech isn’t even close. The people working the hardest seem to be the most keen on useless bureaucracy and bridges to nowhere somehow. I’ll never go near it again. I also don’t think I’ll ever not be adjacent to manufacturing & construction again. “Tech” people are insane.
- jolux 5y ago
  Everywhere is a bit different and companies whose primary product is itself software tend to be a bit more different as well.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  I'm interested to know why somebody who's sworn off the tech world is reading HN. I don't blame you at all, by the way. Tech is insane! Just curious why you're haunting HN, though!
  - ftlio 5y ago
    HN is still high quality content. Tech as a culture is defunct, but building stuff, and a network of builders, will never go away.
cameronh90 5y ago
People definitely slack off a lot in tech, but I think it's because it's a semi-creative process. Personally, I find if I've got a very clear road ahead of me with few complex decisions, I can just steam ahead, maybe for 12+ hours with few distractions. However, when it gets into the weeds, it's harder to keep going like that. Spend a little while thinking, have a break, read the latest tech news, walk around a bit, come back, think some more - eventually figure out the answer. I could fill that time with busy work, but I personally feel that I find a better solution if I have some room to think. Procrastination is definitely a thing too, and it can be hard to stay motivated when the feeling of progress is so non-linear and lumpy. It can feel like nothing is being done for weeks at a time, then suddenly everything fits together. Meanwhile I have no issues doing, say, physical gardening work. Can spend hours digging, weeding, building planters. Lots of time between decisions to think about what you're doing next and simple, linear, visible progress throughout the day.
- kayadera 5y ago
  It's not time spent on programming that fatigues me, it's decisions made and how complex they are. I find estimating time so difficult because it's hard to tell how many complex decisions will come up.
- galaxyLogic 5y ago
  I have the same experience. I could go ahead and start implementing. But that means committing to a particular design. The first design that comes to your mind is typically not the best at all, why would it be. Therefore I feel hesitant to start coding it right away. Give the design-ideas some time to boil a bit in my head while perhaps focusing on something else. The better designs then typically pop up and that saves a lot of work in the future. And eliminates a lot of unnecessary technical debt.
  - galaxyLogic 5y ago
    The key is to keep in mind what is the current problem you are looking a solution for. Then here and there while you're eating or even watching TV ask your brain the question "What could possibly be the answer to this problem?". As if by some magic it is often the case that the brain then comes up with hey maybe the solution could be found by exploring this territory further ..."
didibus 5y ago
I think to some extent, the actual movement of bodies around for some X hours matters less than the feeling of tiredness afterwards and the level of anxiety and stress you take home. In that regards, I think that tech jobs are much worse than traditional labor jobs. At least this is true of myself with my prior labor jobs have been military, construction, and clerk at retail pharmacy. None of those ever left me as exhausted, tired, still anxious/stressed and in this weird state of wanting to just crash on the couch and close my eyes when the day's over. Now maybe it's age, but I feel it is more about the type of work itself and the surrounding expectations. Everyone I similarly know who've transitioned to work in tech feel the same. I know people who were waiters, musicians, bar tenders, other construction workers, all hate their tech jobs moreso, though also wouldn't go back given the drastic pay cut and the worse leeway in choosing vacation and time-off/sick time. And that's true even for "slacker" tech worker. Like I too slack off in comparison, if I'm on a construction job, I might work a 10 hour straight, moving constantly, while I really put out 4h to 6h of actually working in tech, but I'm still more tired at the end of the day. Would be interesting to study the phenomenon. P.S.: I'm really not comparing it to all jobs, I have no idea what farm work, or manufacturer work is like, mining, oil rigging, paving, etc. Those might leave you more tired and pay less, be strenuous on your health, etc. Just speaking of the ones I specifically mentioned.
JohnBooty 5y ago
Now I work in big tech, and let me tell you the amount of people slacking off during work is incredible It's because the whole damn process of developing software in a company bigger than a garage is just a giant mess of productivity-busting bullshit all day, every day. Meetings, alerts, waiting for CI, waiting for builds to complete, whatever. There's no flow. I experience flow at my job maybe once or twice per month, tops.
- civilized 5y ago
  Most of that is self-imposed and unnecessary.
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    Yeah and no. It's a reality at a majority of workplaces in my direct experience and in my friends/coworkers' experiences. But, I could do a better job at seeking out workplaces where that's not the case. In that sense it's self-imposed.
  - jseban 5y ago
    Yeah and by people like the person who wrote the article, which I find ironic, that the article complains about being "forced" to work efficiently robbing the work of it's social and human aspects, yet people in the comments here, and elsewhere, are complaining about literally the opposite thing: being forced to work inefficiently and suffer from these forced "human" aspects of socialisation with people they can't choose freely. Gives me the feeling that the author really tries to misuse the workplace for lifestyle, meaning, socialising etc which they really are responsible for themselves in their free time. People just want to get their work done and proceed with their own lives outside of work, I think maybe this individualism is actually what the article is complaining about.
    - oriolid 5y ago
      > Gives me the feeling that the author really tries to misuse the workplace for lifestyle, meaning, socialising etc which they really are responsible for themselves in their free time. This gives me the feeling that you really believe that pretending to not be human during work hours makes one more productive. As far as I know it doesn't work like that even for assembly line jobs.
rufus_foreman 5y ago
In the 90's I went from working at a factory stacking 100 pound boxes on pallets 8 hours a day to writing code for money. At my first corporate programming job, there was a guy in the cube (we still had cubicles at least) next to mine who would spend most of the day doing anything but writing code. He would be on the phone with his wife arguing about some random thing or on the phone yelling at his kids or whatever. I was astonished. In the factory, there was nothing like that. The machines ran, and you did your part that they hadn't figured out how to automate yet, and if the machines were down, the boss came through and told you to pick up a broom or something like that. The guy worked an hour a day at most and spent most of the rest of the day on the phone. He was irreplaceable. In the tiny bit of time that he actually spent working, he wrote Monte Carlo interest rate simulations in C that apparently worked since the financial company I worked for is still solvent given what happened in 2000 and 2008. I'm like that now. Not the irreplaceable part.
- mecha_ghidorah 5y ago
  I mean it is also the case that as a dev I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff, but in a way where I can sort of be doing something else at the same time. Often doing something else at the same time helps because if I'm not I get bored and stop doing it altogether. So I'm goofing off on HN while background processing the design of a thing. Sure I could be staring at an IDE window when doing it, but instead I just open it to check things when needed. I'm sure I'm less productive per minute than if it is all I was thinking about but I'm more productive on the scale of a full day if I am only half focusing on certain things. I have ADHD though so I'm probably not typical, but my point is that for intellectual work just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't happening
Spooky23 5y ago
Remember with the Ivy League people you’re selecting for intelligent people who can put up with authority and systems. These kids ground through Cello lessons at age 6 or whatever. They plan backup schools in middle school and want to be IBankers when they grow up and most kids want to be astronauts or whatever. They’re trained for that type of work. Other professions are similar. Pilots need to be independent but suited to strictly internalizing procedures.
lostcolony 5y ago
>> In some ways I actually think it's better if everyone is lazy as it quickly reveals what's important Agreed. That said, it's quite nice to be the lazy person amongst all the ones trying to look busy. 80/20 rule applies; learning to focus on the 20% that will give you 80% of the value means you can be delivering more than most of your peers, while also not having a hard time managing work/life balance. Everyone else is trying to hit 100%, failing, and not even getting the 80% of value you're capturing due to all the noise.
pts_ 5y ago
In 10 years when climate crisis unfolds being a leech will blow back.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ftlio 5y ago

I worked in construction/manufacturing as labor, then in a CNC engineering capacity, then as middle management, then at a vendor for manufacturing as a software engineer. All were progressively less work, but my god consumer tech isn’t even close. The people working the hardest seem to be the most keen on useless bureaucracy and bridges to nowhere somehow. I’ll never go near it again. I also don’t think I’ll ever not be adjacent to manufacturing & construction again. “Tech” people are insane.

jolux 5y ago
Everywhere is a bit different and companies whose primary product is itself software tend to be a bit more different as well.
JohnBooty 5y ago
I'm interested to know why somebody who's sworn off the tech world is reading HN. I don't blame you at all, by the way. Tech is insane! Just curious why you're haunting HN, though!
- ftlio 5y ago
  HN is still high quality content. Tech as a culture is defunct, but building stuff, and a network of builders, will never go away.

cameronh90 5y ago

People definitely slack off a lot in tech, but I think it's because it's a semi-creative process. Personally, I find if I've got a very clear road ahead of me with few complex decisions, I can just steam ahead, maybe for 12+ hours with few distractions. However, when it gets into the weeds, it's harder to keep going like that. Spend a little while thinking, have a break, read the latest tech news, walk around a bit, come back, think some more - eventually figure out the answer. I could fill that time with busy work, but I personally feel that I find a better solution if I have some room to think. Procrastination is definitely a thing too, and it can be hard to stay motivated when the feeling of progress is so non-linear and lumpy. It can feel like nothing is being done for weeks at a time, then suddenly everything fits together. Meanwhile I have no issues doing, say, physical gardening work. Can spend hours digging, weeding, building planters. Lots of time between decisions to think about what you're doing next and simple, linear, visible progress throughout the day.

kayadera 5y ago
It's not time spent on programming that fatigues me, it's decisions made and how complex they are. I find estimating time so difficult because it's hard to tell how many complex decisions will come up.
galaxyLogic 5y ago
I have the same experience. I could go ahead and start implementing. But that means committing to a particular design. The first design that comes to your mind is typically not the best at all, why would it be. Therefore I feel hesitant to start coding it right away. Give the design-ideas some time to boil a bit in my head while perhaps focusing on something else. The better designs then typically pop up and that saves a lot of work in the future. And eliminates a lot of unnecessary technical debt.
- galaxyLogic 5y ago
  The key is to keep in mind what is the current problem you are looking a solution for. Then here and there while you're eating or even watching TV ask your brain the question "What could possibly be the answer to this problem?". As if by some magic it is often the case that the brain then comes up with hey maybe the solution could be found by exploring this territory further ..."

didibus 5y ago

I think to some extent, the actual movement of bodies around for some X hours matters less than the feeling of tiredness afterwards and the level of anxiety and stress you take home. In that regards, I think that tech jobs are much worse than traditional labor jobs. At least this is true of myself with my prior labor jobs have been military, construction, and clerk at retail pharmacy. None of those ever left me as exhausted, tired, still anxious/stressed and in this weird state of wanting to just crash on the couch and close my eyes when the day's over. Now maybe it's age, but I feel it is more about the type of work itself and the surrounding expectations. Everyone I similarly know who've transitioned to work in tech feel the same. I know people who were waiters, musicians, bar tenders, other construction workers, all hate their tech jobs moreso, though also wouldn't go back given the drastic pay cut and the worse leeway in choosing vacation and time-off/sick time. And that's true even for "slacker" tech worker. Like I too slack off in comparison, if I'm on a construction job, I might work a 10 hour straight, moving constantly, while I really put out 4h to 6h of actually working in tech, but I'm still more tired at the end of the day. Would be interesting to study the phenomenon. P.S.: I'm really not comparing it to all jobs, I have no idea what farm work, or manufacturer work is like, mining, oil rigging, paving, etc. Those might leave you more tired and pay less, be strenuous on your health, etc. Just speaking of the ones I specifically mentioned.

JohnBooty 5y ago

Now I work in big tech, and let me tell you the amount of people slacking off during work is incredible It's because the whole damn process of developing software in a company bigger than a garage is just a giant mess of productivity-busting bullshit all day, every day. Meetings, alerts, waiting for CI, waiting for builds to complete, whatever. There's no flow. I experience flow at my job maybe once or twice per month, tops.

civilized 5y ago
Most of that is self-imposed and unnecessary.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  Yeah and no. It's a reality at a majority of workplaces in my direct experience and in my friends/coworkers' experiences. But, I could do a better job at seeking out workplaces where that's not the case. In that sense it's self-imposed.
- jseban 5y ago
  Yeah and by people like the person who wrote the article, which I find ironic, that the article complains about being "forced" to work efficiently robbing the work of it's social and human aspects, yet people in the comments here, and elsewhere, are complaining about literally the opposite thing: being forced to work inefficiently and suffer from these forced "human" aspects of socialisation with people they can't choose freely. Gives me the feeling that the author really tries to misuse the workplace for lifestyle, meaning, socialising etc which they really are responsible for themselves in their free time. People just want to get their work done and proceed with their own lives outside of work, I think maybe this individualism is actually what the article is complaining about.
  - oriolid 5y ago
    > Gives me the feeling that the author really tries to misuse the workplace for lifestyle, meaning, socialising etc which they really are responsible for themselves in their free time. This gives me the feeling that you really believe that pretending to not be human during work hours makes one more productive. As far as I know it doesn't work like that even for assembly line jobs.

rufus_foreman 5y ago

In the 90's I went from working at a factory stacking 100 pound boxes on pallets 8 hours a day to writing code for money. At my first corporate programming job, there was a guy in the cube (we still had cubicles at least) next to mine who would spend most of the day doing anything but writing code. He would be on the phone with his wife arguing about some random thing or on the phone yelling at his kids or whatever. I was astonished. In the factory, there was nothing like that. The machines ran, and you did your part that they hadn't figured out how to automate yet, and if the machines were down, the boss came through and told you to pick up a broom or something like that. The guy worked an hour a day at most and spent most of the rest of the day on the phone. He was irreplaceable. In the tiny bit of time that he actually spent working, he wrote Monte Carlo interest rate simulations in C that apparently worked since the financial company I worked for is still solvent given what happened in 2000 and 2008. I'm like that now. Not the irreplaceable part.

mecha_ghidorah 5y ago
I mean it is also the case that as a dev I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff, but in a way where I can sort of be doing something else at the same time. Often doing something else at the same time helps because if I'm not I get bored and stop doing it altogether. So I'm goofing off on HN while background processing the design of a thing. Sure I could be staring at an IDE window when doing it, but instead I just open it to check things when needed. I'm sure I'm less productive per minute than if it is all I was thinking about but I'm more productive on the scale of a full day if I am only half focusing on certain things. I have ADHD though so I'm probably not typical, but my point is that for intellectual work just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't happening

Spooky23 5y ago

Remember with the Ivy League people you’re selecting for intelligent people who can put up with authority and systems. These kids ground through Cello lessons at age 6 or whatever. They plan backup schools in middle school and want to be IBankers when they grow up and most kids want to be astronauts or whatever. They’re trained for that type of work. Other professions are similar. Pilots need to be independent but suited to strictly internalizing procedures.

lostcolony 5y ago

>> In some ways I actually think it's better if everyone is lazy as it quickly reveals what's important Agreed. That said, it's quite nice to be the lazy person amongst all the ones trying to look busy. 80/20 rule applies; learning to focus on the 20% that will give you 80% of the value means you can be delivering more than most of your peers, while also not having a hard time managing work/life balance. Everyone else is trying to hit 100%, failing, and not even getting the 80% of value you're capturing due to all the noise.

pts_ 5y ago

In 10 years when climate crisis unfolds being a leech will blow back.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]