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> I tend to fix my working hours (productive or not) to around 4 per day. And we wonder why employers want us back in the office. I mean come on. One day, the

by cj 3y ago

> I tend to fix my working hours (productive or not) to around 4 per day. And we wonder why employers want us back in the office. I mean come on. One day, there are threads here saying $120k is considered underpaid for an entry level dev out of a bootcamp. The next day, we talk about how all the RTO companies are only doing it because managers want to feel productive. The day after that, there are threads of remote devs boasting they don't even consistently work 4 hours a day. And the day after a thread about how we're all going to unionize to protect our rights. This is truly an interesting phenomenon. Either these anecdotes are just that, anecdotes and not representative of most people, or there's a huge misalignment between employer and employee expectations. Edit: to be clear, I fully support the author of this blog post because he works 3 hours per day working for himself. More power to him. If you truly think you’re underpaid and overworked, do what the guy in this article is doing! Stop making excuses and become an entrepreneur. Work for yourself, set your own hours, no managers, and you’ll leverage the full earning potential of your skillset. No employment contracts to comply with!

youerbt 3y ago
> And we wonder why employers want us back in the office. I mean come on. Yes, because one can't work 4h tops while being in office... Truth is, they can't tell how much working hours this individual is putting. And maybe it's not that important.
meiraleal 3y ago
The devs "boasting" (that is your perspective, not the reality) are probably the ones generating more revenue for those companies wanting "us" back in the office (are you a SWE?). There's a reason the biggest tech companies hire the best (and others who might not be considered the best) for significant sums - they are worth it. Yes, we are underpaid. Just look at the bank balances of Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Software engineers aren't illiterate construction workers. We have the means to build and destroy tech companies that think they can do whatever they want.
- Sai_ 3y ago
  A software engineer can create but can they sell? Can something you create be worth a billion dollars without selling it? Even the highest selling piece of art tops out at a few dozen million dollars... I fear you may have a very skewed sense of a software engineer's place in the world.
  - meiraleal 3y ago
    Why do you believe that software engineers can't sell? Many programmers have created billion-dollar companies, more than any other profession. The world's largest companies today were founded by software engineers. There's no inherent need for a designated "business" person within a tech company. And we didn't even talk about FOSS and indie development which are both as big as big tech and driven exclusively by programmers.
    - Sai_ 3y ago
      The original comment seemed to imply that every software engineer is deserving of more by virtue of being a software engineer in a trillion dollar company. That seems very questionable to me which is what I was calling out. I’m sure there are a handful of Zuckerberg type people (let’s be extravagant and say there at 10k such developer/entrepreneurs who have built unicorns by dint of their software skills) but the software engineering discipline is orders of magnitude bigger than 10k. Edit - Since the original comment was focused on dollar value created by software engineers, we can discount much of FOSS where value has been captured by the likes of AWS and RedHat, not the FOSS community.
- cj 3y ago
  > There's a reason the biggest tech companies hire the best [..] for significant sums - they are worth it. No. The amount they pay is a function of supply and demand of workers and the necessity of filling the position within the company. > Software engineers aren't illiterate construction workers. Construction workers have the ability to build and destroy buildings probably more easily than SWEs can build or destroy companies. Just like a skyscraper is more than just concrete and steel, a software company is way more than just code.
meiraleal 3y ago
> Edit: to be clear, I fully support the author of this blog post because he works 3 hours per day working for himself. More power to him. If you truly think you’re underpaid and overworked, do what the guy in this article is doing! Stop making excuses and become an entrepreneur. Work for yourself, set your own hours, no managers, and you’ll leverage the full earning potential of your skillset. No employment contracts to comply with! Your edit makes more sense than the original post, which sounds like you are resentful because many SWEs know their worth.
jwestbury 3y ago
> And we wonder why employers want us back in the office. I mean come on. I worked less than anyone else on my team at my last job. I was probably doing "active" work for 3-4 hours a day -- plus meetings. I was also a senior engineer with good performance reviews, and contributed more to the codebases of my team's major projects than anyone else on the team. It's important to note that I was also often thinking about work when taking my dog for 45-minute middway walks, cooking lunch for myself and my wife, etc.

by cj 3y ago

youerbt 3y ago

> And we wonder why employers want us back in the office. I mean come on. Yes, because one can't work 4h tops while being in office... Truth is, they can't tell how much working hours this individual is putting. And maybe it's not that important.

meiraleal 3y ago

The devs "boasting" (that is your perspective, not the reality) are probably the ones generating more revenue for those companies wanting "us" back in the office (are you a SWE?). There's a reason the biggest tech companies hire the best (and others who might not be considered the best) for significant sums - they are worth it. Yes, we are underpaid. Just look at the bank balances of Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Software engineers aren't illiterate construction workers. We have the means to build and destroy tech companies that think they can do whatever they want.

Sai_ 3y ago
A software engineer can create but can they sell? Can something you create be worth a billion dollars without selling it? Even the highest selling piece of art tops out at a few dozen million dollars... I fear you may have a very skewed sense of a software engineer's place in the world.
- meiraleal 3y ago
  Why do you believe that software engineers can't sell? Many programmers have created billion-dollar companies, more than any other profession. The world's largest companies today were founded by software engineers. There's no inherent need for a designated "business" person within a tech company. And we didn't even talk about FOSS and indie development which are both as big as big tech and driven exclusively by programmers.
  - Sai_ 3y ago
    The original comment seemed to imply that every software engineer is deserving of more by virtue of being a software engineer in a trillion dollar company. That seems very questionable to me which is what I was calling out. I’m sure there are a handful of Zuckerberg type people (let’s be extravagant and say there at 10k such developer/entrepreneurs who have built unicorns by dint of their software skills) but the software engineering discipline is orders of magnitude bigger than 10k. Edit - Since the original comment was focused on dollar value created by software engineers, we can discount much of FOSS where value has been captured by the likes of AWS and RedHat, not the FOSS community.
cj 3y ago
> There's a reason the biggest tech companies hire the best [..] for significant sums - they are worth it. No. The amount they pay is a function of supply and demand of workers and the necessity of filling the position within the company. > Software engineers aren't illiterate construction workers. Construction workers have the ability to build and destroy buildings probably more easily than SWEs can build or destroy companies. Just like a skyscraper is more than just concrete and steel, a software company is way more than just code.

meiraleal 3y ago

> Edit: to be clear, I fully support the author of this blog post because he works 3 hours per day working for himself. More power to him. If you truly think you’re underpaid and overworked, do what the guy in this article is doing! Stop making excuses and become an entrepreneur. Work for yourself, set your own hours, no managers, and you’ll leverage the full earning potential of your skillset. No employment contracts to comply with! Your edit makes more sense than the original post, which sounds like you are resentful because many SWEs know their worth.

jwestbury 3y ago

> And we wonder why employers want us back in the office. I mean come on. I worked less than anyone else on my team at my last job. I was probably doing "active" work for 3-4 hours a day -- plus meetings. I was also a senior engineer with good performance reviews, and contributed more to the codebases of my team's major projects than anyone else on the team. It's important to note that I was also often thinking about work when taking my dog for 45-minute middway walks, cooking lunch for myself and my wife, etc.