6 ms·

> I already spend an embarrassing amount of time slacking off daily, it's not like I'm pressed for time to get stuff done in the office. Just because that is t

by timmg 3y ago

> I already spend an embarrassing amount of time slacking off daily, it's not like I'm pressed for time to get stuff done in the office. Just because that is true for you doesn't mean it is true in general. Like, imagine a surgeon -- would he/she spend 8 hours a week slacking? Or a radiologoist -- can he/she read the same number of slides in 32 than 40? Or a barrista at starbucks? Also, if you worked 32 hours, would you still slack off? Is there a reason to expect that your slack/work ratio would change? You claim you'd be "in a better mood" -- but as humans we tend to adjust to the circumstances we are in. So I'm not sure that would be the case long term.

epylar 3y ago
mkaic isn't saying definitely they would be in a better mood, just that they -think- 3-day weekends would be good for their mental health and mood.
bluefishinit 3y ago
"Slacking off" doesn't enter into the equation. Is your output worth more to the company than it costs to pay you to produce it? If yes, then great there is no problem to be solved.
- TylerE 3y ago
  One way to think of it is that you're not always being paid to be doing something specific, but rather to be available on short (e.g. 15 minutes or less) notice.
  - Draiken 3y ago
    Sure, some roles require that, but most definitely not the majority. In development at least, most of the times I hear this, the "availability" is only needed for random unplanned meetings from useless managers that can't actually plan or work asynchronously. The organization as a whole or individual managers can't do their jobs well and they make the people that actually get shit done pay for it by "standing by" for no good reason. Ironically, they also completely ruin productivity with these interruptions.
    - __blockcipher__ 3y ago
      > In development at least, most of the times I hear this, the "availability" is only needed for random unplanned meetings from useless managers that can't actually plan or work asynchronously. Really? Because it's pretty routine for me to get pinged on IRC/slack/whatever by another engineer who's looking for help with something. Obviously I set the expectation that I'm not going to be able to instantly reply to every ping so some things are going to have to be async, but there's definitely a lot more than just managers that could ping me.
      - Draiken 3y ago
        Are those pings that require immediate attention? In my experience, no. The vast majority of time in my career, if you have a minimum amount of decent planning, you won't get blocked because you can't talk to another person immediately. And on healthy organizations, even if you do get blocked, you can simply work on something else while that particular task is blocked. If you really scrutinize all these availability claims, they pretty much all come down to lack of planning. Planning for blockers, planning for communication gaps, planning for maximizing asynchronous work, planning for decisions that require specific people, etc. So many people are horrified by the word "blocked" when it's most times an artificial block created by their own systems. If I can't move forward on something, I'll start on something else and come back to the other one later.
        jlkuester7 3y ago
        This. If you have a high-functioning team with good async culture/habits, in my experience "blockers" are not a big deal. I work closely with 5 other people and we are in 6 different time zones and I can honestly say that we are more productive than teams I have worked with in a traditional office setting. Sure, I cannot just walk over to a teammate's desk and ask a question, but I also don't have anyone walking over to my desk to interrupt me with a question. We are all intentional about _over communicating_ what we are working on and where we will need support from from each other. Everything else pretty much just flows naturally from that. There are (rare) times were I cannot progress on something that day because I need feedback from someone who will not be online for 10 more hours, but it is just a built-in assumption that this will happen and I always have other work queued up that I can do if I get stuck....
- aetherson 3y ago
  There's an opportunity cost question. If your output is worth more to the company than your costs, but it would be easy for them to hire someone at the same cost who has more output, then you're at risk.
  - bluefishinit 3y ago
    > but it would be easy for them to hire someone at the same cost who has more output History has shown that it's not easy at all to replace someone. It's difficult to find good people and convince them to join you and it can take a long time. If you can write code, you should always have the upper hand on your employer especially if your co-workers also realize that.
  - munk-a 3y ago
    People are not replaceable parts. HR would absolutely love it if all developer 3s were the same - and it should be the case that one developer 3 is more like another developer 3 than a developer 2 - but people are different and have their own quirks and strengths. And, of course, you're ignoring training costs which are usually a big factor in companies that aren't incompetent. That Senior Dev that's 15% above marketing asking rate but who knows your system inside and out... do you really want to spend six years training a (potentially highly proficient) newbies on all your systems and the subtle intricacies. And how long will it be until you, the manager, trust that new Senior Dev like you did the old? How many fires will you both need to walk through until you see an availability alert and just trust the Senior Dev either is dealing with it or would be ringing your phone if they need extra resources? It can take quite a while to get a new employee (again, even a highly proficient one) to that place where in a meet your product team can be going over a proposal and your Senior Dev raises there hand and proceeds to calmly explain the incompatibility with the current system and how much it will cost to overcome those incompatibilities - and if they remain silent then you know they've done those calculations and consider it in hand. Hiring a replacement is an extremely complicated calculations that most companies just punt on - for good reason.
    - krapp 3y ago
      The vast majority of people have been replaceable parts since the days of Henry Ford. If you're not one of those people, congratulations on your privilege, but I bet you're not as irreplaceable as you might believe.
- pelasaco 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - bluefishinit 3y ago
    > Germany, it feels like some individuals prefer to work as little as possible, maximize their earnings, and are resistant to fixed deadlines or essential tasks and meetings. This trend is concerning, and I'm genuinely worried about what the future holds for our industry here. You should rest easy because all of those things lead to more relaxed and happy employees which leads to less turnover, better output and higher quality software. Software development is a creative field and companies that treat it at as such are rewarded.
    - pelasaco 3y ago
      [flagged]
- abujazar 3y ago
  It does enter the equation, because idle time «working» or slacking off at work could be better spent pursuing other interests that improve quality of life and most likely increase productivity over time.
  - bluefishinit 3y ago
    I don't think this time should be labeled as "slacking off". It's just not working and there's nothing wrong with that if you've already met your obligations.
flardartbhhgg 3y ago
Do you have any idea how much break time surgeons take? Tons of them work 3day weeks because it’s more efficient. The rest of their time is either at home or “in clinic” doing busywork. https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/3-day-work-week-with-500k-salary.1433854/page-2 https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/3-day-work-week-wit... I suspect you’ve pulled “surgeon” from you-know-where on account of it being a high-status, high-value role. But don’t bring that baggage into the conversation.
- dmoy 3y ago
  Also my radiologist neighbor works 3 day workweeks in 12 hour shifts I think. Or used to. I forget the details. So that example from GP doesn't make sense to me either.
  - DoesntMatter22 3y ago
    3x12 doesn't seem too bad to me. You are zonked after but 4 days off is pretty sweet.
- freedomben 3y ago
  I think you were a little harsher than necessary, but this is a good point. Surgeons aren't doing surgery 40 hours a week. They'd be making tons of mistakes if they did that and they'd be getting burned out. The last surgery I had the doc only did ops on Tuesdays and Fridays. In many ways it's a good analogy to writing code 40 hours a week. It takes high concentration and the quality of output drops heavily when you're tired or need a break or rest.
  - paint 3y ago
    [dead]
  - szundi 3y ago
    What I see here that they completely exhaust thenselves with working in several hospitals parallel, consiliums etc, then they go do surgeries in between
manicennui 3y ago
If you've spent any time in the corporate world, I think you know that the majority of people slack off for part of the day. The medical profession has its own set of time problems that I don't think should be conflated with the time problems in the corporate world. Your second point is definitely valid. Changing habits is really hard, and some of us are able to get by while spending very little time doing work because we work so much more quickly than the average drone.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
com2kid 3y ago
> Just because that is true for you doesn't mean it is true in general. Like, imagine a surgeon -- would he/she spend 8 hours a week slacking? Or a radiologoist -- can he/she read the same number of slides in 32 than 40? Or a barrista at starbucks? My primary care doc has an assistant whose only job is to follow her around and input data into the electronic medical records system. There are countless blog posts from doctors complaining that a 1/3rd of their time is spent on redundant paperwork. For a related humorous take on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFGLDcTKFIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFGLDcTKFIY
eddmakesio 3y ago
My best friend is a radiologist and I guarantee he’s not working 32 out of his 40 reading slides - there could definitely be a way to organise them to have 32 maximum hours with the same output
- timmg 3y ago
  FWIW, my brother-in-law is too. I and do guarantee that he is reading slides every working hour.
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
> Just because that is true for you doesn't mean it is true in general. Like, imagine a surgeon -- would he/she spend 8 hours a week slacking? Don't many surgeons only work a handful of weeks per year? They're essentially already on a much better model.
- notyourwork 3y ago
  Not to my knowledge. Source: I know a neuro and ortho.

by timmg 3y ago

epylar 3y ago

mkaic isn't saying definitely they would be in a better mood, just that they -think- 3-day weekends would be good for their mental health and mood.

bluefishinit 3y ago

"Slacking off" doesn't enter into the equation. Is your output worth more to the company than it costs to pay you to produce it? If yes, then great there is no problem to be solved.

TylerE 3y ago
One way to think of it is that you're not always being paid to be doing something specific, but rather to be available on short (e.g. 15 minutes or less) notice.
- Draiken 3y ago
  Sure, some roles require that, but most definitely not the majority. In development at least, most of the times I hear this, the "availability" is only needed for random unplanned meetings from useless managers that can't actually plan or work asynchronously. The organization as a whole or individual managers can't do their jobs well and they make the people that actually get shit done pay for it by "standing by" for no good reason. Ironically, they also completely ruin productivity with these interruptions.
  - __blockcipher__ 3y ago
    > In development at least, most of the times I hear this, the "availability" is only needed for random unplanned meetings from useless managers that can't actually plan or work asynchronously. Really? Because it's pretty routine for me to get pinged on IRC/slack/whatever by another engineer who's looking for help with something. Obviously I set the expectation that I'm not going to be able to instantly reply to every ping so some things are going to have to be async, but there's definitely a lot more than just managers that could ping me.
    - Draiken 3y ago
      Are those pings that require immediate attention? In my experience, no. The vast majority of time in my career, if you have a minimum amount of decent planning, you won't get blocked because you can't talk to another person immediately. And on healthy organizations, even if you do get blocked, you can simply work on something else while that particular task is blocked. If you really scrutinize all these availability claims, they pretty much all come down to lack of planning. Planning for blockers, planning for communication gaps, planning for maximizing asynchronous work, planning for decisions that require specific people, etc. So many people are horrified by the word "blocked" when it's most times an artificial block created by their own systems. If I can't move forward on something, I'll start on something else and come back to the other one later.
      - jlkuester7 3y ago
        This. If you have a high-functioning team with good async culture/habits, in my experience "blockers" are not a big deal. I work closely with 5 other people and we are in 6 different time zones and I can honestly say that we are more productive than teams I have worked with in a traditional office setting. Sure, I cannot just walk over to a teammate's desk and ask a question, but I also don't have anyone walking over to my desk to interrupt me with a question. We are all intentional about _over communicating_ what we are working on and where we will need support from from each other. Everything else pretty much just flows naturally from that. There are (rare) times were I cannot progress on something that day because I need feedback from someone who will not be online for 10 more hours, but it is just a built-in assumption that this will happen and I always have other work queued up that I can do if I get stuck....
aetherson 3y ago
There's an opportunity cost question. If your output is worth more to the company than your costs, but it would be easy for them to hire someone at the same cost who has more output, then you're at risk.
- bluefishinit 3y ago
  > but it would be easy for them to hire someone at the same cost who has more output History has shown that it's not easy at all to replace someone. It's difficult to find good people and convince them to join you and it can take a long time. If you can write code, you should always have the upper hand on your employer especially if your co-workers also realize that.
- munk-a 3y ago
  People are not replaceable parts. HR would absolutely love it if all developer 3s were the same - and it should be the case that one developer 3 is more like another developer 3 than a developer 2 - but people are different and have their own quirks and strengths. And, of course, you're ignoring training costs which are usually a big factor in companies that aren't incompetent. That Senior Dev that's 15% above marketing asking rate but who knows your system inside and out... do you really want to spend six years training a (potentially highly proficient) newbies on all your systems and the subtle intricacies. And how long will it be until you, the manager, trust that new Senior Dev like you did the old? How many fires will you both need to walk through until you see an availability alert and just trust the Senior Dev either is dealing with it or would be ringing your phone if they need extra resources? It can take quite a while to get a new employee (again, even a highly proficient one) to that place where in a meet your product team can be going over a proposal and your Senior Dev raises there hand and proceeds to calmly explain the incompatibility with the current system and how much it will cost to overcome those incompatibilities - and if they remain silent then you know they've done those calculations and consider it in hand. Hiring a replacement is an extremely complicated calculations that most companies just punt on - for good reason.
  - krapp 3y ago
    The vast majority of people have been replaceable parts since the days of Henry Ford. If you're not one of those people, congratulations on your privilege, but I bet you're not as irreplaceable as you might believe.
pelasaco 3y ago
[flagged]
- bluefishinit 3y ago
  > Germany, it feels like some individuals prefer to work as little as possible, maximize their earnings, and are resistant to fixed deadlines or essential tasks and meetings. This trend is concerning, and I'm genuinely worried about what the future holds for our industry here. You should rest easy because all of those things lead to more relaxed and happy employees which leads to less turnover, better output and higher quality software. Software development is a creative field and companies that treat it at as such are rewarded.
  - pelasaco 3y ago
    [flagged]
abujazar 3y ago
It does enter the equation, because idle time «working» or slacking off at work could be better spent pursuing other interests that improve quality of life and most likely increase productivity over time.
- bluefishinit 3y ago
  I don't think this time should be labeled as "slacking off". It's just not working and there's nothing wrong with that if you've already met your obligations.

flardartbhhgg 3y ago

Do you have any idea how much break time surgeons take? Tons of them work 3day weeks because it’s more efficient. The rest of their time is either at home or “in clinic” doing busywork. https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/3-day-work-week-with-500k-salary.1433854/page-2 https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/3-day-work-week-wit... I suspect you’ve pulled “surgeon” from you-know-where on account of it being a high-status, high-value role. But don’t bring that baggage into the conversation.

dmoy 3y ago
Also my radiologist neighbor works 3 day workweeks in 12 hour shifts I think. Or used to. I forget the details. So that example from GP doesn't make sense to me either.
- DoesntMatter22 3y ago
  3x12 doesn't seem too bad to me. You are zonked after but 4 days off is pretty sweet.
freedomben 3y ago
I think you were a little harsher than necessary, but this is a good point. Surgeons aren't doing surgery 40 hours a week. They'd be making tons of mistakes if they did that and they'd be getting burned out. The last surgery I had the doc only did ops on Tuesdays and Fridays. In many ways it's a good analogy to writing code 40 hours a week. It takes high concentration and the quality of output drops heavily when you're tired or need a break or rest.
- paint 3y ago
  [dead]
- szundi 3y ago
  What I see here that they completely exhaust thenselves with working in several hospitals parallel, consiliums etc, then they go do surgeries in between

manicennui 3y ago

If you've spent any time in the corporate world, I think you know that the majority of people slack off for part of the day. The medical profession has its own set of time problems that I don't think should be conflated with the time problems in the corporate world. Your second point is definitely valid. Changing habits is really hard, and some of us are able to get by while spending very little time doing work because we work so much more quickly than the average drone.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

com2kid 3y ago

> Just because that is true for you doesn't mean it is true in general. Like, imagine a surgeon -- would he/she spend 8 hours a week slacking? Or a radiologoist -- can he/she read the same number of slides in 32 than 40? Or a barrista at starbucks? My primary care doc has an assistant whose only job is to follow her around and input data into the electronic medical records system. There are countless blog posts from doctors complaining that a 1/3rd of their time is spent on redundant paperwork. For a related humorous take on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFGLDcTKFIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFGLDcTKFIY

eddmakesio 3y ago

My best friend is a radiologist and I guarantee he’s not working 32 out of his 40 reading slides - there could definitely be a way to organise them to have 32 maximum hours with the same output

timmg 3y ago
FWIW, my brother-in-law is too. I and do guarantee that he is reading slides every working hour.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

> Just because that is true for you doesn't mean it is true in general. Like, imagine a surgeon -- would he/she spend 8 hours a week slacking? Don't many surgeons only work a handful of weeks per year? They're essentially already on a much better model.

notyourwork 3y ago
Not to my knowledge. Source: I know a neuro and ortho.