5 ms·
There’s no way you can sustain 8 hours/day of productive work 5 days a week as a developer. It’s not working a field or packing boxes, there’s a mental componen
by akmarinov 4y ago
There’s no way you can sustain 8 hours/day of productive work 5 days a week as a developer. It’s not working a field or packing boxes, there’s a mental component that gets exhausted over time.
- tiahura 4y agoBiglaw attorneys routinely bill 2200 hours a year in 6 minute increments. Add in nonbillable work and self-written off time, and many of these attorneys work 60+ hour weeks. Plus, they do this into their 50’s.
- jelled 4y ago6 minutes billed is rarely the same thing as 6 minutes worked.
- tiahura 4y agoCorrect. It’s usually like 30. You have to open the file, find the email you were going to respond to, double check with whoever that the answer is “yes”, look up the other attorney’s phone number, double check your calendar to make sure the date works, call you spouse to make sure they can pick up the kids that day, and then call the other attorney. If you think Biglaw clients, with in house counsel that used to be at biglaw, blindly pay padded bills at $800/hr, you are mistaken.
- bluefirebrand 4y agoSure. I could do that too as a software engineer. How much you bill and how much you work aren't necessarily the same. Why would you think they are?
- tiahura 4y agoThey’re not the same. In addition to the 40-60 hours a week of billable work, they do 10-20 hours of nonbillable work as well.
- sauruk 4y agoAnd everyone likes biglaw attorneys and thinks that they’re well adjusted people too
- plonk 4y agoDoes that job involve constant creativity, or is it more about applying existing knowledge? I have no idea, but the amount of knowledge that law students need to cram in a few years makes me think it's a lot of the latter.
- jcdavis 4y agoIANAL, but have family & friends in biglaw > Biglaw attorneys routinely bill 2200 hours a year in 6 minute increments. A surprising portion of that work is random menial stuff, they don't actually end up doing 40hr/week of mentally demanding work. > Plus, they do this into their 50’s. The ones that survive to make partner do. But its well-known that BigLaw absolutely burns through associates. Very few BigLaw associates make it past 35, most eventually leave for saner pastures of corporate counsel/government/etc jobs.
- kongolongo 4y agoThis analogy is interesting do you think there are some lawyers that consider themselves 10xlawyers haha. It make sense that a lot of it would be similar to documentation and meetings and various agile ceremonies and not just 2200 hours of straight legal argumentation and writing.
- tiahura 4y agoBiglaw clients aren’t suckers. They don’t pay $800/hr for agile ceremonies. They go over their bills with a fine tooth comb and have ML systems to detect padding.
- catlifeonmars 4y agoAny idea why six minutes and not some other?
- tiahura 4y agoIt varies, but 6 min = 1/10th of an hour so it’s pretty common.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- molsongolden 4y ago1/10 of an hour. Not sure if this is changing with all the time tracking software now but it's easier to bill by tenths than it is to track/calculate exact minutes and any larger unit might involve too much rounding up. e.g. .1 for a quick email reply is more palatable than a .25 (1/4 hour, 15min) minimum.
- sunnyps 4y ago0.1 hours?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- a_techwriter_00 4y agoAmerican lawyers, as a profession, have one of the highest rates of alcohol abuse and mental illness in the country.
- whateveracct 4y agoAnd more than that - it's abstract problem solving. Sometimes the problem is never gonna have an answer until I am washing my dishes after breakfast tomorrow. My subconscious & creativity can't be sped up. It's this idiocy that you can convert time into software at a fixed rate that got us into this mess.
- jonny_eh 4y agoaka "The Mythical Man Month" [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month
- whateveracct 4y agoI recently read through that book and it's nuts both how prescient it is and how different some of the suggestions are than what anyone now would consider. For instance, there was talk of a team structure with one programmer and everyone else in specialized, supporting roles. That wouldn't fly today because everyone is obsessed with employee fungibility and bus factor.
- twblalock 4y ago> That wouldn't fly today because everyone is obsessed with employee fungibility and bus factor. Rightly so. Job hopping is much easier in the software industry now than it was when that book was written. Average tenure in software jobs is significantly lower than the average for all professions, and even that general average is only around 4 years.
- fooster 4y agospeak for yourself?
- akmarinov 4y agoThen you’re not really doing software development, just copying code off of google ;)
- ren_engineer 4y agoburnout only happens if you are working on something you hate and actively have to force yourself to work on it or have external stress from bad coworkers, managers, or general life stuff. I've worked 12+ hour days on side projects for fun and felt fresh and mentally sharp because I enjoyed what I was doing. The idea that the human brain hits some brick wall at the scheduled 40 hour work week and can't do anymore thinking is comical