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All the engineers that I’ve worked with that were doing 12 hour x 6 days ended up being drags on the rest of the team. Their 2am fever dream garbage would hit

by hedora 1y ago

All the engineers that I’ve worked with that were doing 12 hour x 6 days ended up being drags on the rest of the team. Their 2am fever dream garbage would hit prod, and then it’d take a full time support person to apologize to customers while two full time engineers wasted a week refactoring production into something that worked. Anyway, I’ve noticed I can only work 6 hours if I write code myself, but can easily hit 10 hours vibe coding / reviewing / writing the tricky bits. Has anyone tried 10-4 these days? It’s still 40 hours per week, but feels more sustainable.

bad_username 1y ago
10-4 is great because it removes fragmentation. It gives you one full, non-fragmented fresh day of life, rather than low-energy little bits in the evenings. It's way easier to do something meaningful with the day than with the bits. To me this fragmentation removal also privided a surprising converse effect: for the 4 days I could think about work uninterrupted and guilt-free which put me in a state of sustained multi-day focus that provided tangible boost to the quality of my results. For sure it's impossible to do concentrated work for 10 hours straight, but a typical job isn't only concentrated work. Onve you learn what your energy levels are through the day, and manage your workload accordingly and have discipline , it is perfectly possible to have sudtainable full-output 10 hour workdays. Not for everyone, but definitely beneficial for those who know how to use it.
hamdingers 1y ago
I tried 10-4 for 6 months at a company that had a mix of people working 4 and 5 days, it made me less productive and more burnt out as a senior engineer. I have ~5 hours of productive creative energy per sleep, others may be different but that's me. Ideally I give 4 hours to the job, spend 4 hours reviewing/meeting/etc. and have 1 for myself. If I push myself beyond that, I start doing substandard work, so 10-4 meant I either did fewer hours of productive work per week, stole my personal creative hours, or delivered substandard work. I did all three depending on the week, but in any case my productivity overall suffered, that appeared in my peer reviews, and the stress slowly built up until I went back to working 5 days.
- hedora 1y ago
  I’ve been the same way for most of my career. If I’m using a coding assistant, I end up doing 2-3 hours of hard thinking and 7-8 of babysitting. Unlike meetings, I don’t have to use any emotional/social energy with the coding assistant.
wiseowise 1y ago
10-4 is great, but that’s only 30 hours a week. Where did you get 40?
- b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago
  10h 4 days / week
  - wiseowise 1y ago
    Pfffft.
    - uncircle 1y ago
      Exactly what I thought. 10am-4pm is sane, 10 hours a day is still crazy, but I guess to employees talking about 996, in comparison it seems a good deal. I have been self employed for 12+ years, for 9am-1pm is a very productive day, and anyone that claim they can do much more actual knowledge work than that either is pushing papers or has a lot of down time and faffing about. Also I’d rather work fewer hours 6 days a week, than pushing way past my productivity cramming everything in 4 days.

by hedora 1y ago

bad_username 1y ago

10-4 is great because it removes fragmentation. It gives you one full, non-fragmented fresh day of life, rather than low-energy little bits in the evenings. It's way easier to do something meaningful with the day than with the bits. To me this fragmentation removal also privided a surprising converse effect: for the 4 days I could think about work uninterrupted and guilt-free which put me in a state of sustained multi-day focus that provided tangible boost to the quality of my results. For sure it's impossible to do concentrated work for 10 hours straight, but a typical job isn't only concentrated work. Onve you learn what your energy levels are through the day, and manage your workload accordingly and have discipline , it is perfectly possible to have sudtainable full-output 10 hour workdays. Not for everyone, but definitely beneficial for those who know how to use it.

hamdingers 1y ago

I tried 10-4 for 6 months at a company that had a mix of people working 4 and 5 days, it made me less productive and more burnt out as a senior engineer. I have ~5 hours of productive creative energy per sleep, others may be different but that's me. Ideally I give 4 hours to the job, spend 4 hours reviewing/meeting/etc. and have 1 for myself. If I push myself beyond that, I start doing substandard work, so 10-4 meant I either did fewer hours of productive work per week, stole my personal creative hours, or delivered substandard work. I did all three depending on the week, but in any case my productivity overall suffered, that appeared in my peer reviews, and the stress slowly built up until I went back to working 5 days.

hedora 1y ago
I’ve been the same way for most of my career. If I’m using a coding assistant, I end up doing 2-3 hours of hard thinking and 7-8 of babysitting. Unlike meetings, I don’t have to use any emotional/social energy with the coding assistant.

wiseowise 1y ago

10-4 is great, but that’s only 30 hours a week. Where did you get 40?

b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago
10h 4 days / week
- wiseowise 1y ago
  Pfffft.
  - uncircle 1y ago
    Exactly what I thought. 10am-4pm is sane, 10 hours a day is still crazy, but I guess to employees talking about 996, in comparison it seems a good deal. I have been self employed for 12+ years, for 9am-1pm is a very productive day, and anyone that claim they can do much more actual knowledge work than that either is pushing papers or has a lot of down time and faffing about. Also I’d rather work fewer hours 6 days a week, than pushing way past my productivity cramming everything in 4 days.