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Many companies think their employees are being productive for 40 hours a week, while it's actually somewhere between 10 and 20, with the rest being a big void.

by mkl95 4y ago

Many companies think their employees are being productive for 40 hours a week, while it's actually somewhere between 10 and 20, with the rest being a big void. If you are actually doing 40 hours a week you are productive as hell.

nkozyra 4y ago
> If you are actually doing 40 hours a week you are productive as hell. I disagree. But I think what we qualify as "work" is more rigid than it needs to be. Is spending 5 minutes looking at HN every few hours work? Most people would say no, but it absolutely helps developers to know what's going on or new or what other devs outside their company are saying. If I spend 20 minutes reading about a language/app that my company doesn't use is that work? I think a lot of the "yes" answers would be accompanied by rolling eyes.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  Also, there is an assumption that everyone can be productive for any length of time without some form of intermission to break it up. What if most people need a 5-10 minute break for every 30 minutes work? You might not be able to get around that by just making the daily or weekly work hours shorter. You'd just be applying the productivity factor to fewer total hours. I doubt we've found the optimal work to rest ratio, but a lot of these assumptions go unchallenged in these discussions.
- nkrisc 4y ago
  Ok but can you write an OKR for reading HN?
  - dilyevsky 4y ago
    Best not forget to groom that ticket as well
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Cue people reading HN for exactly 1200 seconds per day then overflow onto r/hackernews
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  > If I spend 20 minutes reading about a language/app that my company doesn't use is that work? I think a lot of the "yes" answers would be accompanied by rolling eyes. I think it's unfair to not count any of this as work. As engineers it's important for us to be on top of current trends and available tools. Yes, your company might not use it today, but if no one reads about new developments in tooling/languages, your companies processes will always stay the same and (if better tools for the job emerge), will just be priming a market that new entrants using better technology will be better able to serve. Some exploration of new technologies is really important for people in our field, and it's really unfortunate that (many) people working in the field feel they have to spend ~10-20 hours per week of their own time keeping abreast of new developments to stay competitive
therealdrag0 4y ago
There are different types of voids. 1. Non work social media. 2. Work socializing (water cooler). 3. External support/collaboration/reviews. 4. Day dreaming not about work. 5. Thinking about work while not “producing” maybe not even at computer. I can work 40 hours where it feels like 10-20 hours are actually working on my “planned” work, but the other time is on #3 and #5 which “feels” like a void but is actually critical and valuable to business. I’m not saying you are but some people categorize this sort of work as BS or not work and that’s totally wrong IMO.
- TylerE 4y ago
  5 is a big one.!I’ve solved more problems playing guitar or in the shower than I ever have banging my head against the keyboard
  - noncoml 4y ago
    In that sense coding is like writing a book. Are you only productive when you actually type the words?
    - DesiLurker 4y ago
      most of my coding time is actually figuring out the right way to do something. breaking the problem down right and then another big chunk is identifying (& 'fixing') interactions with external components. I know those are important things but at some level it feels as if I am not being productive. still I justify it by thinking about the opportunity cost of doing it the wrong way.
      - scaramanga 4y ago
        Right, and that's the part where it really helps to be well rested, stress-free and not being monitored by a warden/jailor :)
- mikrl 4y ago
  6. Spiralling ;)
spaniard89277 4y ago
My thinking time doesn't compute into my company's KPIs but it definitely is an essential part of my job. The thing is that many modern jobs don't fit a taylorist model where you can measure worker performance precisely. Not to mention that many variables that affect worker performance are out of control of companies.
conductr 4y ago
They also have different definitions of what productive means. For example, employees may view meetings and such as unproductive whereas the company may view it as a productive part of the decision making process. Organizational & communication overhead is required for working in coordination with large numbers of people in multiple disciplines. However, from the IC employee's perspective it's mostly a distraction and counter productive towards their outputs.
dinkblam 4y ago
> while it's actually somewhere between 10 and 20, with the rest being a big void. are you joking? 2 hours a day is nothing. > actually doing 40 hours a week you are productive as hell. i've easily topped 100 hours a week for prolonged periods. i'd guess it is the same for any founder.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Yeah, I think there is a pretty big culture bubble, and know people on both sides. Some people spend most of their life working 60 real hours weeks, especially blue collar work. I have a white collar workplace, and there is a big spread. There are people that do 20 hours of real work and those with a 60+ hour average. I have done 100+ hour weeks of real heads down work & all nighters , but can't/wont do it prolonged. As skeptical as some people are of merit based compensation, I'm confident that the willingness to pull out the stops and get it done has lead to promotions, raises, and freedom to scale down my workload during slow times. I think it is interesting that some people simply don't believe that high volume work happens, is productive, or is even possible.
  - Moissanite 4y ago
    > I'm confident that the willingness to pull out the stops and get it done has lead to promotions, raises, and freedom to scale down my workload during slow times. If I had this confidence, I'd put in the hours cheerfully; I've had spells of 80-100 hour weeks in the past and invariably it was caused by sales people or managers over-promising without asking a technical expert, and could have easily been avoided. Doing the hours resulted in some vague gratitude at best. Now (in a new role), I can see clear evidence of things which are correlated with promotion, but working long hours is not one of them.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      I agree that hours by themselves are largely meaningless. I should be more clear and specify hours when necessary, and not some arbitrary deadline. For example, I've been on projects that are stuck or failing and each day they are down or behind costs 7 digit revenue per day. Being the person capable and willing to work overnight to fix it or put in long weeks until it's done bought me a lot of Goodwill, promotions, Etc. I still have directors that mention them in all staff meetings after 5+ years. Of course working 60 hours a week on some bullshit project with no impact will not have the same results.
hulitu 4y ago
I heard Elon does 120 hours a week. /s I haven't seen anyone doing 40 hours a week. At least not more than a week.
- yodsanklai 4y ago
  I've seen tons of people doing it for extended periods of time. I can think of - ambitious people working in competitive environments (research, corporations, students) - doctors/dentists/nurses, lot of them work long hours and their job require focus - small business owners
  - scaramanga 4y ago
    And as long as their patients are willing to pay the costs of this practice with their blood, everything will be fine :)
- shishy 4y ago
  Medical residents work 80 hours a week. And that's an average over 4 weeks, so they could work 90 easily one week. 40 is nothing...
  - janef0421 4y ago
    Medical residents tend to be highly stressed, and these practices were apparently originated by a man who used cocaine in the same manner as coffee.
  - scaramanga 4y ago
    With patients paying a staggering toll as a result. Maybe we should work pilots like that... It'd certainly make flying more "fun"
- kolbe 4y ago
  Lawyers and bankers regularly do 4000 hour years. Doctors often average 60 hour weeks for extended periods of time. What are you talking about?
interstice 4y ago
Freelance web developer background currently developer / business owner - my achievable baseline is 30 hours of billed out time and around 10 hours of admin/emails/meetings etc. Keeping the emails from eating the rest is an ongoing battle though.
- orblivion 4y ago
  Do you not charge for meetings? And what about emails where you're hashing out something clearly in the domain of what you're working on?
  - sarchertech 4y ago
    When I’m consulting the only meetings I don’t bill for are meetings with prospects.
  - interstice 4y ago
    It depends on the meetings (and the email), if its directly related to a project it can fall under project management but a lot of them end up being internal comms or estimating for minor jobs that might not be approved etc.
CallMeJim 4y ago
On the flip side; no one is productive 100% of the time. If people worked 20 hours per week, the actual productive time would likely be between 5 and 10 hours per week.
- manmal 4y ago
  No, people would cut the unnecessary BS in order to get things done. Most people can’t concentrate 40h/week, so the BS serves to fill up the remaining time.
  - CallMeJim 4y ago
    Do you think people would be able to maintain 100% productivity when working 20 hours/week?
    - manmal 4y ago
      With adequate breaks (that don’t count against the 20h), yes.
    - lossolo 4y ago
      I work like that. I work fully remote, around 20-25 hours a week but when I start working I do focus on work for 4-5 hours without any breaks, no HN, no social media, no eating, nothing. In every company/team I've worked in, I was almost always seen as the most productive person, while others reported working 40+ hours a week. It can be done if you have proper environment for it.
shagie 4y ago
While the "I'm sitting down and writing things that are going to be productive" is likely in the 10-20h/week range, there is still a lot of * Meetings * Mentoring * Answering random questions * Continuing education (Hey, Spring 6.0 was just released, what's in that?) * Support (and being available for support) Those can easily fill in a lot of the 'void'. I can point to 5h/week that are standing 'meetings' where it is often 'me helping out someone with a git or jira or GitHub issue' and it is that time that is designated each day (to try to avoid having the 'answering random questions' become too disruptive). I am certainly not '40h/w, butt in seat, head down coding' and even though I may be only "productive" 10-20h/week, I'm certainly busy with work stuff to fill up the rest of my day. It's never "do an hour or two of work in the morning and day dream for the remaining six hours."
- phphphphp 4y ago
  You’re describing what I’d understand as productive time: if someone says they’re not being productive, I interpret it to mean there’s zero value to be derived for their employer from their activities. For example, being asleep or browsing Reddit or watching YouTube videos… When I say I’ve only been productive for 20 hours in a week, I don’t mean I spent 20 hours programming and 20 hours in meetings, I mean I spent 10 hours programming and 10 hours in meetings. I’d be surprised if most people only count programming time as productive time! If you’re doing 40 hours a week of programming + meetings + support + any other needle-moving things, you’re more productive than I’ve ever been in a job.
  - vsareto 4y ago
    Being available is still useful to your employer on some level. Even if you are watching videos, you can close it the minute you get a ping that needs your attention. The only completely unproductive state is if you're doing nothing for your job and also refuse to respond to communications.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  Most of these conversations seem to come down to weird definitions of "productive time". Most of us managers would consider meetings, mentoring, work-related Slack conversations to be productive time. Yet I read a lot of the comments here where people don't consider anything to be productive time unless they're actively writing code, which ignores the realities of working in a team environment. A better metric might be tracking the amount of non-work time: Time spent on HN, social media, reading news articles, running errands. Again, us managers are realistic that everyone can (and should!) take small breaks throughout the day. However, if those breaks expand to fill 20-30 hours of the supposed 40-hour workweek, something has gone very wrong. That's certainly not normal at any well managed company.
Consultant32452 4y ago
This is very dependent on the industry. My friend does tech support for field technicians at a major alarm company. When he is working he is really working. The calls/paperwork are constant. Conversely, many gigs I've had there was multiple hours per day of mindless web surfing because there just wasn't work to do.
wellareyousure 4y ago
I think the shocking this is we are still talking about this when it has been everyone's lived experience for decades.
wellareyousure 4y ago
quickthrower2 4y ago
Despite what people think, coding 100% is not necessary most productive. Those meetings and social intersection are more useful than people would guess, it is hard to measure team cohesion and the power of good decisions like lines of code.
RajT88 4y ago
If you are actually doing 40 hours a week, you're probably working at least 60 hours.
wizofaus 4y ago
"If you are actually doing 40 hours a week you are productive as hell." That's assuming that the work you've been set to do is productive, and you're doing it in a productive manner. For instance, I've spent weeks grinding away on features that never get used by customers. Is that productive? I've also spent hours trying to fix a bug because of infrastructure/platform/tooling constraints that means the code/compile/debug cycle is stupidly slow. Is that productive? I don't have the slightest doubt I could be a lot more productive than I am now while working less hours. But it's often down to factors that are more or less out of my control.
- scaramanga 4y ago
  Only weeks? Jesus. I feel like I've spent a good decade or two of my best years doing that. "No better options" is a hell of a drug, haha.
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    Well, sure, the total amount of time I've spent working on features that never ended up getting used by customers over the last two decades or so is something I wouldn't want to think about. A certain amount of it is inevitable with software development (or probably any sort of product design and development), and you'd like to think you're at least learning something from the experience, but undoubtedly you could be doing better things with your time...
bitL 4y ago
There are companies in the SW industry that require 40h/week and actually monitor that (e.g. collecting metrics in 10-minute intervals and rejecting intervals with low intensity levels).
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  That might be Twitter … by Monday morning
  - bitL 4y ago
    Twitter will get 12-hour shifts common in Tesla instead...
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  In the US? That sounds bananas to me.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - scaramanga 4y ago
    Not to mention illegal in the EU.
    - bitL 4y ago
      Not if they only do business in the EU with legal entities like freelancers or small limited-liability pass-through companies where there is no weekly time limit for the owner nor the "no monitoring" requirement.
  - bitL 4y ago
    BTW, most FAANG companies monitor and record everything you are doing, you just don't hear about it because they are smart about it. But when SHTF, you learn very quickly. Also ask Meta devs about their typical workload if they want to keep their jobs (they actually have to work).
danabrams 4y ago
My fear is that if you’re being productive 20 hours and unproductive 20 hours a week and the work week is reduced, how do we know you won’t just end up being productive 10 hours and unproductive 20. That said, we should definitely be experimenting. If people are equally productive at 40 hours and 20 hours, we shouldn’t keep them in the office just for aesthetics.
- chefandy 4y ago
  The article cites several instances that indicate that wouldn't be the case.
- cmh89 4y ago
  >My fear is that if you’re being productive 20 hours and unproductive 20 hours a week and the work week is reduced, how do we know you won’t just end up being productive 10 hours and unproductive 20. Unless you are a cashier or some other customer service position, the time you spend working should be matter very little compared to your output. If you a job that takes you 20 hours, you can either do it in 20 hours and get a huge chunk of your life back, or you can do it in 40 hours and spend a lot of time chatting with your coworkers making them unproductive. It's up to management to understand how much time it takes to complete tasks and to staff accordingly.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> with the rest being a big void. There shouldn't be a 20-30 hour "void" in people's work week. If people are meeting, discussing work, building relationships within the company, or otherwise doing things around their work, I still consider that to be productive time. Nobody actually expects programmers to be writing code 40 hours a week. We know this. On the other hand, if people are spending 30 hours per week messing around on the internet, browsing social media, chatting in social Discords, or other activities that are clearly not work related, that's not normal at all at well managed companies. There are a lot of companies where people can get away with working 2 hours per day and then ignoring work for the other 6 hours of their supposed 40-hour work week, of course. I think a lot of people have experienced these companies somewhere in their career and concluded that everyone, everywhere is actually only expected to do 2 hours of work-related things per day. It's not true at all, and I've met a lot of people who really struggle to adapt once they finally end up on a well-managed team that expects people to put in more than a couple hours of work-related effort per day. I suspect we'll see a lot of companies clamping down on these low-productivity pockets now that the easy money has run out and we're all forced to examine personnel costs very closely. I know I've had a few coworkers who curiously never seem to do much of anything. They've always been first to go when the layoffs arrive and their managers are forced to choose who stays and who goes.
- mdkfkfid 4y ago
  > On the other hand, if people are spending 30 hours per week messing around on the internet, browsing social media, chatting in social Discords, or other activities that are clearly not work related, that's not normal at all at well managed companies. It all just depends on how much ambition you have my friend, you too can slack off for 3/4 of your workday if you don't take on more responsibility than you can do in 1/4 of your time lolololol
- sokoloff 4y ago
  I agree with most of what you say, but it still leaves room for efficiency gains if there’s 15 hours a week of meetings and building relationships that could be done in half that time, leaving an entire workday freed up. I’ve worked on plenty of teams where nebulous “team building” was an entirely enjoyable and majority unnecessary excess way to spend time at work. Loved those teams, but we could have worked a 4 day week, still had a tight team, and gotten just as much done for the business.
deleted 4y ago
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givemeethekeys 4y ago
I'll go a step further. If you're productive 40 hours a week, then you're a tool, in the pure sense of that word. You'll be passed over for promotions because you're so good in your current position! You'll be praised and then one day you'll get a new boss when your old boss moves on. And your new boss will have this need to prove themselves to their boss. And they'll do this by turning your 40 hour week into a 60 hour week. Why? Because you're a tool! Don't be a tool. Do what your boss does - spend time talking to people around the company - thats what lunch meetings are all about - figure out how to get those expensed! Get to know everyone and follow up with them frequently. Invite them to non-work things. Go home early because you have a life. Unless, of course, your work is your life. In which case, you're leaving the dream, bud!
NoPicklez 4y ago
Exactly, the majority of people aren't putting in 40 hours a week of productive work unless they're working over 40 hours. We shouldn't treat productivity like we're robots, we're not switched on working on a repetitive task for all of 8 hours a day.
scaramanga 4y ago
Many managers just want to see the serfs whose time they've paid good money to rent, fuelling their egotistical needs, and are not making rational choices about productivity at all. Such irrationalities have always been present in the institution of wage slavery. See twitter for an excellent current example of what this looks like.
incomingpain 4y ago
>f you are actually doing 40 hours a week you are productive as hell. This is the 10x engineer. Their peers are working 10 hours, but never get in the flow like they do. Hence the 10x productivity.

by mkl95 4y ago

nkozyra 4y ago

> If you are actually doing 40 hours a week you are productive as hell. I disagree. But I think what we qualify as "work" is more rigid than it needs to be. Is spending 5 minutes looking at HN every few hours work? Most people would say no, but it absolutely helps developers to know what's going on or new or what other devs outside their company are saying. If I spend 20 minutes reading about a language/app that my company doesn't use is that work? I think a lot of the "yes" answers would be accompanied by rolling eyes.

deleted 4y ago
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xboxnolifes 4y ago
Also, there is an assumption that everyone can be productive for any length of time without some form of intermission to break it up. What if most people need a 5-10 minute break for every 30 minutes work? You might not be able to get around that by just making the daily or weekly work hours shorter. You'd just be applying the productivity factor to fewer total hours. I doubt we've found the optimal work to rest ratio, but a lot of these assumptions go unchallenged in these discussions.
nkrisc 4y ago
Ok but can you write an OKR for reading HN?
- dilyevsky 4y ago
  Best not forget to groom that ticket as well
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Cue people reading HN for exactly 1200 seconds per day then overflow onto r/hackernews
pcthrowaway 4y ago
> If I spend 20 minutes reading about a language/app that my company doesn't use is that work? I think a lot of the "yes" answers would be accompanied by rolling eyes. I think it's unfair to not count any of this as work. As engineers it's important for us to be on top of current trends and available tools. Yes, your company might not use it today, but if no one reads about new developments in tooling/languages, your companies processes will always stay the same and (if better tools for the job emerge), will just be priming a market that new entrants using better technology will be better able to serve. Some exploration of new technologies is really important for people in our field, and it's really unfortunate that (many) people working in the field feel they have to spend ~10-20 hours per week of their own time keeping abreast of new developments to stay competitive

therealdrag0 4y ago

There are different types of voids. 1. Non work social media. 2. Work socializing (water cooler). 3. External support/collaboration/reviews. 4. Day dreaming not about work. 5. Thinking about work while not “producing” maybe not even at computer. I can work 40 hours where it feels like 10-20 hours are actually working on my “planned” work, but the other time is on #3 and #5 which “feels” like a void but is actually critical and valuable to business. I’m not saying you are but some people categorize this sort of work as BS or not work and that’s totally wrong IMO.

TylerE 4y ago
5 is a big one.!I’ve solved more problems playing guitar or in the shower than I ever have banging my head against the keyboard
- noncoml 4y ago
  In that sense coding is like writing a book. Are you only productive when you actually type the words?
  - DesiLurker 4y ago
    most of my coding time is actually figuring out the right way to do something. breaking the problem down right and then another big chunk is identifying (& 'fixing') interactions with external components. I know those are important things but at some level it feels as if I am not being productive. still I justify it by thinking about the opportunity cost of doing it the wrong way.
    - scaramanga 4y ago
      Right, and that's the part where it really helps to be well rested, stress-free and not being monitored by a warden/jailor :)
mikrl 4y ago
6. Spiralling ;)

spaniard89277 4y ago

My thinking time doesn't compute into my company's KPIs but it definitely is an essential part of my job. The thing is that many modern jobs don't fit a taylorist model where you can measure worker performance precisely. Not to mention that many variables that affect worker performance are out of control of companies.

conductr 4y ago

They also have different definitions of what productive means. For example, employees may view meetings and such as unproductive whereas the company may view it as a productive part of the decision making process. Organizational & communication overhead is required for working in coordination with large numbers of people in multiple disciplines. However, from the IC employee's perspective it's mostly a distraction and counter productive towards their outputs.

dinkblam 4y ago

> while it's actually somewhere between 10 and 20, with the rest being a big void. are you joking? 2 hours a day is nothing. > actually doing 40 hours a week you are productive as hell. i've easily topped 100 hours a week for prolonged periods. i'd guess it is the same for any founder.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
Yeah, I think there is a pretty big culture bubble, and know people on both sides. Some people spend most of their life working 60 real hours weeks, especially blue collar work. I have a white collar workplace, and there is a big spread. There are people that do 20 hours of real work and those with a 60+ hour average. I have done 100+ hour weeks of real heads down work & all nighters , but can't/wont do it prolonged. As skeptical as some people are of merit based compensation, I'm confident that the willingness to pull out the stops and get it done has lead to promotions, raises, and freedom to scale down my workload during slow times. I think it is interesting that some people simply don't believe that high volume work happens, is productive, or is even possible.
- Moissanite 4y ago
  > I'm confident that the willingness to pull out the stops and get it done has lead to promotions, raises, and freedom to scale down my workload during slow times. If I had this confidence, I'd put in the hours cheerfully; I've had spells of 80-100 hour weeks in the past and invariably it was caused by sales people or managers over-promising without asking a technical expert, and could have easily been avoided. Doing the hours resulted in some vague gratitude at best. Now (in a new role), I can see clear evidence of things which are correlated with promotion, but working long hours is not one of them.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    I agree that hours by themselves are largely meaningless. I should be more clear and specify hours when necessary, and not some arbitrary deadline. For example, I've been on projects that are stuck or failing and each day they are down or behind costs 7 digit revenue per day. Being the person capable and willing to work overnight to fix it or put in long weeks until it's done bought me a lot of Goodwill, promotions, Etc. I still have directors that mention them in all staff meetings after 5+ years. Of course working 60 hours a week on some bullshit project with no impact will not have the same results.

hulitu 4y ago

I heard Elon does 120 hours a week. /s I haven't seen anyone doing 40 hours a week. At least not more than a week.

yodsanklai 4y ago
I've seen tons of people doing it for extended periods of time. I can think of - ambitious people working in competitive environments (research, corporations, students) - doctors/dentists/nurses, lot of them work long hours and their job require focus - small business owners
- scaramanga 4y ago
  And as long as their patients are willing to pay the costs of this practice with their blood, everything will be fine :)
shishy 4y ago
Medical residents work 80 hours a week. And that's an average over 4 weeks, so they could work 90 easily one week. 40 is nothing...
- janef0421 4y ago
  Medical residents tend to be highly stressed, and these practices were apparently originated by a man who used cocaine in the same manner as coffee.
- scaramanga 4y ago
  With patients paying a staggering toll as a result. Maybe we should work pilots like that... It'd certainly make flying more "fun"
kolbe 4y ago
Lawyers and bankers regularly do 4000 hour years. Doctors often average 60 hour weeks for extended periods of time. What are you talking about?

interstice 4y ago

Freelance web developer background currently developer / business owner - my achievable baseline is 30 hours of billed out time and around 10 hours of admin/emails/meetings etc. Keeping the emails from eating the rest is an ongoing battle though.

orblivion 4y ago
Do you not charge for meetings? And what about emails where you're hashing out something clearly in the domain of what you're working on?
- sarchertech 4y ago
  When I’m consulting the only meetings I don’t bill for are meetings with prospects.
- interstice 4y ago
  It depends on the meetings (and the email), if its directly related to a project it can fall under project management but a lot of them end up being internal comms or estimating for minor jobs that might not be approved etc.

CallMeJim 4y ago

On the flip side; no one is productive 100% of the time. If people worked 20 hours per week, the actual productive time would likely be between 5 and 10 hours per week.

manmal 4y ago
No, people would cut the unnecessary BS in order to get things done. Most people can’t concentrate 40h/week, so the BS serves to fill up the remaining time.
- CallMeJim 4y ago
  Do you think people would be able to maintain 100% productivity when working 20 hours/week?
  - manmal 4y ago
    With adequate breaks (that don’t count against the 20h), yes.
  - lossolo 4y ago
    I work like that. I work fully remote, around 20-25 hours a week but when I start working I do focus on work for 4-5 hours without any breaks, no HN, no social media, no eating, nothing. In every company/team I've worked in, I was almost always seen as the most productive person, while others reported working 40+ hours a week. It can be done if you have proper environment for it.

shagie 4y ago

While the "I'm sitting down and writing things that are going to be productive" is likely in the 10-20h/week range, there is still a lot of * Meetings * Mentoring * Answering random questions * Continuing education (Hey, Spring 6.0 was just released, what's in that?) * Support (and being available for support) Those can easily fill in a lot of the 'void'. I can point to 5h/week that are standing 'meetings' where it is often 'me helping out someone with a git or jira or GitHub issue' and it is that time that is designated each day (to try to avoid having the 'answering random questions' become too disruptive). I am certainly not '40h/w, butt in seat, head down coding' and even though I may be only "productive" 10-20h/week, I'm certainly busy with work stuff to fill up the rest of my day. It's never "do an hour or two of work in the morning and day dream for the remaining six hours."

phphphphp 4y ago
You’re describing what I’d understand as productive time: if someone says they’re not being productive, I interpret it to mean there’s zero value to be derived for their employer from their activities. For example, being asleep or browsing Reddit or watching YouTube videos… When I say I’ve only been productive for 20 hours in a week, I don’t mean I spent 20 hours programming and 20 hours in meetings, I mean I spent 10 hours programming and 10 hours in meetings. I’d be surprised if most people only count programming time as productive time! If you’re doing 40 hours a week of programming + meetings + support + any other needle-moving things, you’re more productive than I’ve ever been in a job.
- vsareto 4y ago
  Being available is still useful to your employer on some level. Even if you are watching videos, you can close it the minute you get a ping that needs your attention. The only completely unproductive state is if you're doing nothing for your job and also refuse to respond to communications.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
Most of these conversations seem to come down to weird definitions of "productive time". Most of us managers would consider meetings, mentoring, work-related Slack conversations to be productive time. Yet I read a lot of the comments here where people don't consider anything to be productive time unless they're actively writing code, which ignores the realities of working in a team environment. A better metric might be tracking the amount of non-work time: Time spent on HN, social media, reading news articles, running errands. Again, us managers are realistic that everyone can (and should!) take small breaks throughout the day. However, if those breaks expand to fill 20-30 hours of the supposed 40-hour workweek, something has gone very wrong. That's certainly not normal at any well managed company.

Consultant32452 4y ago

This is very dependent on the industry. My friend does tech support for field technicians at a major alarm company. When he is working he is really working. The calls/paperwork are constant. Conversely, many gigs I've had there was multiple hours per day of mindless web surfing because there just wasn't work to do.

wellareyousure 4y ago

I think the shocking this is we are still talking about this when it has been everyone's lived experience for decades.

wellareyousure 4y ago

quickthrower2 4y ago

Despite what people think, coding 100% is not necessary most productive. Those meetings and social intersection are more useful than people would guess, it is hard to measure team cohesion and the power of good decisions like lines of code.

RajT88 4y ago

If you are actually doing 40 hours a week, you're probably working at least 60 hours.

wizofaus 4y ago

"If you are actually doing 40 hours a week you are productive as hell." That's assuming that the work you've been set to do is productive, and you're doing it in a productive manner. For instance, I've spent weeks grinding away on features that never get used by customers. Is that productive? I've also spent hours trying to fix a bug because of infrastructure/platform/tooling constraints that means the code/compile/debug cycle is stupidly slow. Is that productive? I don't have the slightest doubt I could be a lot more productive than I am now while working less hours. But it's often down to factors that are more or less out of my control.

scaramanga 4y ago
Only weeks? Jesus. I feel like I've spent a good decade or two of my best years doing that. "No better options" is a hell of a drug, haha.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  Well, sure, the total amount of time I've spent working on features that never ended up getting used by customers over the last two decades or so is something I wouldn't want to think about. A certain amount of it is inevitable with software development (or probably any sort of product design and development), and you'd like to think you're at least learning something from the experience, but undoubtedly you could be doing better things with your time...

bitL 4y ago

There are companies in the SW industry that require 40h/week and actually monitor that (e.g. collecting metrics in 10-minute intervals and rejecting intervals with low intensity levels).

quickthrower2 4y ago
That might be Twitter … by Monday morning
- bitL 4y ago
  Twitter will get 12-hour shifts common in Tesla instead...
DiggyJohnson 4y ago
In the US? That sounds bananas to me.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- scaramanga 4y ago
  Not to mention illegal in the EU.
  - bitL 4y ago
    Not if they only do business in the EU with legal entities like freelancers or small limited-liability pass-through companies where there is no weekly time limit for the owner nor the "no monitoring" requirement.
- bitL 4y ago
  BTW, most FAANG companies monitor and record everything you are doing, you just don't hear about it because they are smart about it. But when SHTF, you learn very quickly. Also ask Meta devs about their typical workload if they want to keep their jobs (they actually have to work).

danabrams 4y ago

My fear is that if you’re being productive 20 hours and unproductive 20 hours a week and the work week is reduced, how do we know you won’t just end up being productive 10 hours and unproductive 20. That said, we should definitely be experimenting. If people are equally productive at 40 hours and 20 hours, we shouldn’t keep them in the office just for aesthetics.

chefandy 4y ago
The article cites several instances that indicate that wouldn't be the case.
cmh89 4y ago
>My fear is that if you’re being productive 20 hours and unproductive 20 hours a week and the work week is reduced, how do we know you won’t just end up being productive 10 hours and unproductive 20. Unless you are a cashier or some other customer service position, the time you spend working should be matter very little compared to your output. If you a job that takes you 20 hours, you can either do it in 20 hours and get a huge chunk of your life back, or you can do it in 40 hours and spend a lot of time chatting with your coworkers making them unproductive. It's up to management to understand how much time it takes to complete tasks and to staff accordingly.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> with the rest being a big void. There shouldn't be a 20-30 hour "void" in people's work week. If people are meeting, discussing work, building relationships within the company, or otherwise doing things around their work, I still consider that to be productive time. Nobody actually expects programmers to be writing code 40 hours a week. We know this. On the other hand, if people are spending 30 hours per week messing around on the internet, browsing social media, chatting in social Discords, or other activities that are clearly not work related, that's not normal at all at well managed companies. There are a lot of companies where people can get away with working 2 hours per day and then ignoring work for the other 6 hours of their supposed 40-hour work week, of course. I think a lot of people have experienced these companies somewhere in their career and concluded that everyone, everywhere is actually only expected to do 2 hours of work-related things per day. It's not true at all, and I've met a lot of people who really struggle to adapt once they finally end up on a well-managed team that expects people to put in more than a couple hours of work-related effort per day. I suspect we'll see a lot of companies clamping down on these low-productivity pockets now that the easy money has run out and we're all forced to examine personnel costs very closely. I know I've had a few coworkers who curiously never seem to do much of anything. They've always been first to go when the layoffs arrive and their managers are forced to choose who stays and who goes.

mdkfkfid 4y ago
> On the other hand, if people are spending 30 hours per week messing around on the internet, browsing social media, chatting in social Discords, or other activities that are clearly not work related, that's not normal at all at well managed companies. It all just depends on how much ambition you have my friend, you too can slack off for 3/4 of your workday if you don't take on more responsibility than you can do in 1/4 of your time lolololol
sokoloff 4y ago
I agree with most of what you say, but it still leaves room for efficiency gains if there’s 15 hours a week of meetings and building relationships that could be done in half that time, leaving an entire workday freed up. I’ve worked on plenty of teams where nebulous “team building” was an entirely enjoyable and majority unnecessary excess way to spend time at work. Loved those teams, but we could have worked a 4 day week, still had a tight team, and gotten just as much done for the business.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

givemeethekeys 4y ago

I'll go a step further. If you're productive 40 hours a week, then you're a tool, in the pure sense of that word. You'll be passed over for promotions because you're so good in your current position! You'll be praised and then one day you'll get a new boss when your old boss moves on. And your new boss will have this need to prove themselves to their boss. And they'll do this by turning your 40 hour week into a 60 hour week. Why? Because you're a tool! Don't be a tool. Do what your boss does - spend time talking to people around the company - thats what lunch meetings are all about - figure out how to get those expensed! Get to know everyone and follow up with them frequently. Invite them to non-work things. Go home early because you have a life. Unless, of course, your work is your life. In which case, you're leaving the dream, bud!

NoPicklez 4y ago

Exactly, the majority of people aren't putting in 40 hours a week of productive work unless they're working over 40 hours. We shouldn't treat productivity like we're robots, we're not switched on working on a repetitive task for all of 8 hours a day.

scaramanga 4y ago

Many managers just want to see the serfs whose time they've paid good money to rent, fuelling their egotistical needs, and are not making rational choices about productivity at all. Such irrationalities have always been present in the institution of wage slavery. See twitter for an excellent current example of what this looks like.

incomingpain 4y ago

>f you are actually doing 40 hours a week you are productive as hell. This is the 10x engineer. Their peers are working 10 hours, but never get in the flow like they do. Hence the 10x productivity.