7 ms·

Being not-lazy in your work is not the same as working lots of hours.

by qup 3y ago

bluefirebrand 3y ago
No, this is absolutely not true. Laziness is not working hard. What you're talking about is something else. Sloppy or Careless work maybe? But not lazy. If you're working 40+ hours a week you're definitely not lazy.
- Proziam 3y ago
  Most people consider low-effort to be lazy. You can absolutely put in a lot of hours, but be putting in near-zero effort. This results in sloppy or careless work, but the root cause is the laziness of the person.
  - winwang 3y ago
    I agree. I see it all the time. Huge amounts of hours being wasted "working hard", and running away from answering the real questions which would double the (positive) output in half the time. That said, I think "laziness" is only a small part of the answer. It seems to me that it's usually about an emotional response. Kind of like procrastination. The hard questions hit hard. There's a real good-feeling self-satisfaction from putting in hours of sweat.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      > I agree. I see it all the time. Huge amounts of hours being wasted "working hard", and running away from answering the real questions which would double the (positive) output in half the time. I think a lot of times we are put in boxes, and our roles are pretty heavily constrained, such that we do not have the power to "answer the real questions." Raise your hand anyone who's had this conversation with their manager: Manager: "Dev, I'd like you to take more responsibility, be transformational, be a 'force multiplier' for the team!" Dev: "OK, let me make major architectural decisions without having to get approval from three levels of managers." Manager: "Uh, wait..." Dev: "Let me hire and fire, and build up a team of direct reports." Manager: "Hold up..." Dev: "Give me a budget to spend on tools, training, contractors, and so on." Manager: "Whoa, whoa, whoa.. I didn't mean that transformational..."
      - johnnyanmac 3y ago
        Not quite that extreme but yea. I've had those conversations. > Working on X but Y is a blocker > Okay, I can do some work with Y to help get unblocked > No we'll let A (on a different team, maybe a different contracted studio) deal with it, here's tiny widget Z to work on in the meantime Sometimes it means well, sometimes it feels like they don't value your expertise nor care about fostering growth. And sometimes it's just politics (especially when working with multiple different companies and contractors and all that).
    - Proziam 3y ago
      Lazy is a convenient catch all for "This person lacks the emotional fortitude to do the work when the option of not doing the work presents itself." There are a million reasons/excuses for people to be lazy depending on perspective. Personally, I view people with this trait to be productivity vampires that I avoid like the plague regardless of their reasons (which in my experience are 99% excuses and 1% genuine hardships).
  - bluefirebrand 3y ago
    > This results in sloppy or careless work, but the root cause is the laziness of the person. If someone is producing a high volume of low effort work, they are not lazy. What they are is not disciplined, or not skilled. If someone is producing low volumes of high effort work, they are similarly not lazy, they are highly skilled and maybe a perfectionist If someone is producing high volumes of high effort work they are a either a one of a kind savant or they are lying about the volume or effort. If someone is producing low volumes of low effort work, then maybe we can call them lazy.
    - Proziam 3y ago
      You forgot the most common case: Someone skilled produces low volumes of medium-to-high effort work because they are the sort of person who would rather browse social media, or engage in office gossip, or play "call a meeting to discuss" games to avoid having to do the boring work. If someone is "undisciplined," more often they are just lazy and are engaging in avoidance behaviors. Humans with serious executive function issues are a tiny (super tiny) minority of the workforce.
      - ferbivore 3y ago
        What's the difference between "lazy" and "serious executive function issues"?
        Proziam 3y ago
        Emotional vs Medical. A person struggling with narcolepsy doesn't fall into the same bucket as the person who just wastes time at work so they don't have to do work.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - johnnyanmac 3y ago
        >Someone skilled produces low volumes of medium-to-high effort work So based on the table they are skilled, right? Are you suggesting that they are a savant in disguise and that they can produce high volumes of high effort work if they weren't "lazy"? if the work is considered medium-to-high effort by the organization, your opinion on if it's avoiding "boring" work (which can still be low or high effort) is irrelevant. >If someone is "undisciplined," more often they are just lazy and are engaging in avoidance behaviors. IME it's because the employers don't trust nor want them to work on the high effort work. So either the business's most profitable software is the most boring, or the candidate is too junior (alternatively, the position and responsibility is simply filled or not valued) >Humans with serious executive function issues are a tiny (super tiny) minority of the workforce. Likewise, humans who can do "productive" creative work for 80 hours a week consistently, for years, is also a super tiny minority. At the end of the day, "lazy" is relative and we haven't even established a baseline for what is/isn't lazy. So this conversation won't go anywhere. All we established in your lens is that taking breaks or doing non-technical work (meetings, even gossip depending on the line of work) is not productive in your eyes.
- hightrix 3y ago
  Some people consider themselves to be "working" while browsing HN or reddit while they are "on the clock". That is being lazy while working.
  - shaneoh 3y ago
    I wonder how you measure balance between being lazy vs. not lazy by this definition? I agree with you, but it's not like it's feasible to remain full-on focused on coding or meetings or documenting for 8 hours straight each day.
    - hightrix 3y ago
      Really good point. There's a big difference in checking HN in the 10 minutes between meetings vs spending 4 hours after noon reading and replying to threads.
rewmie 3y ago
> Being not-lazy in your work is not the same as working lots of hours. You've just provides your personal assertion on a non-definition. Do you actually have an alternative definition that does not imply working lots of hours?
- adrianmonk 3y ago
  Yes, work a normal, reasonable number of hours (let's say 40), but while you're there, give it your best. The point is that hard work doesn't imply excessive hours. If it did, that would mean anyone who doesn't put in excessive hours is lazy, which isn't true.
- default-kramer 3y ago
  From the article > I routinely come across developers who are the real deal: they’re conscientious and judicious in an unwavering way. They set a standard for themselves and do not compromise on it. Whether that’s a deliberate thing or whether they’re just built that way, it’s humbling to witness. If there’s a flaky test, they investigate it and fix it. If there’s a bug they spot in the wild, they make a ticket, and maybe even fix it then-and-there. If a new feature doesn’t gel well with the existing code, they refactor the code first rather than hacking the feature in. They’ll dive as far down the stack as necessary to get to the bottom of something. None of these things are necessary but great developers know that if they don’t address a problem early, and properly, it will only cost them more time in the long run. [... and more.] This sounds like a great definition of not-lazy, and it does not mention long hours anywhere. My anecdotal experience is that I usually only have 20-35 not-lazy hours to give per week; any further hours per week are much less potent. Right now I'm working 24 hours per week and I think my employer is getting a great bargain: they don't have to pay me for hours that would likely be lazy.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    Yeah, but that diligence takes time, and now you have to work on extra hours to keep up performance metrics with the rest of the team.

Being not-lazy in your work is not the same as working lots of hours.

by qup 3y ago

Being not-lazy in your work is not the same as working lots of hours.

No, this is absolutely not true. Laziness is not working hard. What you're talking about is something else. Sloppy or Careless work maybe? But not lazy. If you're working 40+ hours a week you're definitely not lazy.

Proziam 3y ago
Most people consider low-effort to be lazy. You can absolutely put in a lot of hours, but be putting in near-zero effort. This results in sloppy or careless work, but the root cause is the laziness of the person.
- winwang 3y ago
  I agree. I see it all the time. Huge amounts of hours being wasted "working hard", and running away from answering the real questions which would double the (positive) output in half the time. That said, I think "laziness" is only a small part of the answer. It seems to me that it's usually about an emotional response. Kind of like procrastination. The hard questions hit hard. There's a real good-feeling self-satisfaction from putting in hours of sweat.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    > I agree. I see it all the time. Huge amounts of hours being wasted "working hard", and running away from answering the real questions which would double the (positive) output in half the time. I think a lot of times we are put in boxes, and our roles are pretty heavily constrained, such that we do not have the power to "answer the real questions." Raise your hand anyone who's had this conversation with their manager: Manager: "Dev, I'd like you to take more responsibility, be transformational, be a 'force multiplier' for the team!" Dev: "OK, let me make major architectural decisions without having to get approval from three levels of managers." Manager: "Uh, wait..." Dev: "Let me hire and fire, and build up a team of direct reports." Manager: "Hold up..." Dev: "Give me a budget to spend on tools, training, contractors, and so on." Manager: "Whoa, whoa, whoa.. I didn't mean that transformational..."
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      Not quite that extreme but yea. I've had those conversations. > Working on X but Y is a blocker > Okay, I can do some work with Y to help get unblocked > No we'll let A (on a different team, maybe a different contracted studio) deal with it, here's tiny widget Z to work on in the meantime Sometimes it means well, sometimes it feels like they don't value your expertise nor care about fostering growth. And sometimes it's just politics (especially when working with multiple different companies and contractors and all that).
  - Proziam 3y ago
    Lazy is a convenient catch all for "This person lacks the emotional fortitude to do the work when the option of not doing the work presents itself." There are a million reasons/excuses for people to be lazy depending on perspective. Personally, I view people with this trait to be productivity vampires that I avoid like the plague regardless of their reasons (which in my experience are 99% excuses and 1% genuine hardships).
- bluefirebrand 3y ago
  > This results in sloppy or careless work, but the root cause is the laziness of the person. If someone is producing a high volume of low effort work, they are not lazy. What they are is not disciplined, or not skilled. If someone is producing low volumes of high effort work, they are similarly not lazy, they are highly skilled and maybe a perfectionist If someone is producing high volumes of high effort work they are a either a one of a kind savant or they are lying about the volume or effort. If someone is producing low volumes of low effort work, then maybe we can call them lazy.
  - Proziam 3y ago
    You forgot the most common case: Someone skilled produces low volumes of medium-to-high effort work because they are the sort of person who would rather browse social media, or engage in office gossip, or play "call a meeting to discuss" games to avoid having to do the boring work. If someone is "undisciplined," more often they are just lazy and are engaging in avoidance behaviors. Humans with serious executive function issues are a tiny (super tiny) minority of the workforce.
    - ferbivore 3y ago
      What's the difference between "lazy" and "serious executive function issues"?
      - Proziam 3y ago
        Emotional vs Medical. A person struggling with narcolepsy doesn't fall into the same bucket as the person who just wastes time at work so they don't have to do work.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      >Someone skilled produces low volumes of medium-to-high effort work So based on the table they are skilled, right? Are you suggesting that they are a savant in disguise and that they can produce high volumes of high effort work if they weren't "lazy"? if the work is considered medium-to-high effort by the organization, your opinion on if it's avoiding "boring" work (which can still be low or high effort) is irrelevant. >If someone is "undisciplined," more often they are just lazy and are engaging in avoidance behaviors. IME it's because the employers don't trust nor want them to work on the high effort work. So either the business's most profitable software is the most boring, or the candidate is too junior (alternatively, the position and responsibility is simply filled or not valued) >Humans with serious executive function issues are a tiny (super tiny) minority of the workforce. Likewise, humans who can do "productive" creative work for 80 hours a week consistently, for years, is also a super tiny minority. At the end of the day, "lazy" is relative and we haven't even established a baseline for what is/isn't lazy. So this conversation won't go anywhere. All we established in your lens is that taking breaks or doing non-technical work (meetings, even gossip depending on the line of work) is not productive in your eyes.
hightrix 3y ago
Some people consider themselves to be "working" while browsing HN or reddit while they are "on the clock". That is being lazy while working.
- shaneoh 3y ago
  I wonder how you measure balance between being lazy vs. not lazy by this definition? I agree with you, but it's not like it's feasible to remain full-on focused on coding or meetings or documenting for 8 hours straight each day.
  - hightrix 3y ago
    Really good point. There's a big difference in checking HN in the 10 minutes between meetings vs spending 4 hours after noon reading and replying to threads.

rewmie 3y ago

> Being not-lazy in your work is not the same as working lots of hours. You've just provides your personal assertion on a non-definition. Do you actually have an alternative definition that does not imply working lots of hours?

adrianmonk 3y ago
Yes, work a normal, reasonable number of hours (let's say 40), but while you're there, give it your best. The point is that hard work doesn't imply excessive hours. If it did, that would mean anyone who doesn't put in excessive hours is lazy, which isn't true.
default-kramer 3y ago
From the article > I routinely come across developers who are the real deal: they’re conscientious and judicious in an unwavering way. They set a standard for themselves and do not compromise on it. Whether that’s a deliberate thing or whether they’re just built that way, it’s humbling to witness. If there’s a flaky test, they investigate it and fix it. If there’s a bug they spot in the wild, they make a ticket, and maybe even fix it then-and-there. If a new feature doesn’t gel well with the existing code, they refactor the code first rather than hacking the feature in. They’ll dive as far down the stack as necessary to get to the bottom of something. None of these things are necessary but great developers know that if they don’t address a problem early, and properly, it will only cost them more time in the long run. [... and more.] This sounds like a great definition of not-lazy, and it does not mention long hours anywhere. My anecdotal experience is that I usually only have 20-35 not-lazy hours to give per week; any further hours per week are much less potent. Right now I'm working 24 hours per week and I think my employer is getting a great bargain: they don't have to pay me for hours that would likely be lazy.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  Yeah, but that diligence takes time, and now you have to work on extra hours to keep up performance metrics with the rest of the team.