40 hours of metered work, for a programmer, is a ridiculous and onerous expectation. Let me explain, because I'm not averse to people working hard. I work quit

40 hours of metered work, for a programmer, is a ridiculous and onerous expectation. Let me explain, because I'm not averse to people working hard. I work quite hard as well. By "metered work", I mean the stuff that's requested by bosses and that you're supposed to dedicate your "working time" toward with a singular focus. I include availability (pager duty) as metered work, even if some of that's "down time". Any time you are worrying about bosses or metrics or pagers or status meetings, you're at work. Metered work obligations should be closer to 20, with the other 20-30+ invested in the stuff we have to do in order to stay relevant: keeping up with new technologies, exploratory side projects, self-directed coding, open source contribution, attending conferences. All of this stuff pays off and is useful work: it just doesn't pay off in the short term or appease a typical manager. 40+ hour metered-work commitments should be reserved for very rare occasions: existential threats to the company, not high-strung middle management. This would make programming more a real profession, which is what it should be.