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Re: productive people. We have this notion of the 10x producer, but the real problem is high variability within the same person's work. I know productivity sup

Re: productive people. We have this notion of the 10x producer, but the real problem is high variability within the same person's work. I know productivity superstars, but if you catch them on the wrong day or at the wrong time, they look like lazy bums. Over a year, they're extremely productive. On any given day, they may look like they're wasting time. This property of conceptual work is at the core of a lot of culture clash with people who have more predictable work-comes-in, work-product-goes-out flows.

varelse 13y ago
1,000x yes! My productivity comes in intense bursts of effort, with quiescent periods of research and reflection between them (or what looks like goofing off to rigidly process-oriented sorts). Combine that variability with mandatory daily scrum meetings and it makes me want to figuratively slit my wrists.
- ryanbrunner 13y ago
  I'll even go a step further. I have a reputation as one of those people who has an ability to get things done at an incredible pace, but there's definitely days where I'm flat-out procrastinating and being lazy. For me, personally, and I suspect other people like me, it comes down to an ability to perform remarkably well under pressure, along with a lack of ability to perform well when the pressure is off. If there's no urgency to what I need to do, I find it very hard to commit myself to doing something.
  - commandar 13y ago
    It's funny, I made a comment on reddit a couple of weeks ago describing myself in almost the exact same way in a discussion about dealing with ADHD as an adult: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1j0ml8/psychopaths_do_not_lack_empathy_rather_they_can/cbaboxc?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1j0ml8/psychopaths_...
    - sloppycee 13y ago
      I am the exact same way, and was recently diagnosed ADHD.
  - api 13y ago
    Me too. My productivity curve looks very rocky, with very tall spikes -- huge amounts of very hard stuff done in hours -- and days where nothing happens. There seems to be a longer-duration cycle too. I have super-productive weeks and ho-hum weeks. Overall the average is decently high.
  - astral303 13y ago
    It can also be an anxiety thing, if one has generalized anxiety disorder. The anxiety of doing something hard or with higher uncertainty (a challenging software problem) is high, and it takes the even greater anxiety of the high pressure environment to overrule it. Worth investigating, because it seems like ADD, but it is not. ADHD drugs in this case can be counter-productive as they tend to increase anxiety. There are techniques to cope with this that can be quite effective.
  - varelse 13y ago
    Over the years I've come to realize that what once felt like procrastination is actually my brain working out the solution to a problem, and it quite literally prevents me from reducing the solution to code until it's damned well ready for me to do. So I just go with it now. The only thing that seems to speed this process up is intense cardiovascular exercise, which is probably a good idea on its own anyway (but I imagine it seems awfully odd from the outside). As for ADHD, I probably have a little of that going on with a sprinkling of Aspberger symptoms, but not seemingly in a sufficient way to have any significant effect on my life and/or overall productivity (except that is when it comes to %$!^ing daily scrum updates which drive me bonkers - once a week would be fine, once a day is ridiculous).
    - anonymous 13y ago
      Today I spent 5 hours staring at, stepping through some callback-heavy code, reading HN, browsing the web and about an hour to write, test and deploy about 20 lines of code fixing a really nasty race condition. And I'm still not completely sure things are really fixed. I might have spent even longer had it not become apparent that we have just the two options: 1. band-aid around the problem 2. complete rewrite of a large portion of the website
  - ishansharma 13y ago
    I'm glad that I am not the only one. I had this impression that I'm a bad developer because I'm not consistent. During my internship, I did quite a lot of work but in similar manner. Implement an interesting feature, then a week of laziness. Another feature and laziness. However the other replies to your comment also make me afraid about some psychological problem. I think I need to visit a doctor! :)
    - astral303 13y ago
      The difference between lazy people and people with a disorder is that lazy people don't feel bad about not getting work done.
      - varelse 13y ago
        I'll go even further and state that the problem is using MBAs to formulate how to manage creative sorts cough agile cough cargo-cult coding cough. if the area under your productivity curve is greater than everyone else around you, I don't give a you-know-what about the shape of the curve, you're doing just fine. To be fair to agile though, I can see situations where it can work. The problem is that many of its adherents seem to see agile as a hammer and all software engineering as various forms of nails.
        dragonwriter 13y ago
        > The problem is that many of its adherents seem to see agile as a hammer and all software engineering as various forms of nails. Agile isn't a methodology, but a metamethodology -- or, in terms of the metaphor, it isn't a hammer, it is a set of guidelines to use in selecting tools. Scrum is a hammer, but Scrum ≠ Agile. Often rigorous adherence to particular methodologies (usually Scrum) get misidentified as being "Agile", but rigorous adherence to a particular methodology is not only not the same as Agile, but is directly contrary to Agile principles (particularly, its a direct violation of the first value from the Agile Manifesto, "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools".)
        13y ago
  - rossjudson 13y ago
    I will tell you the secret to exhibiting consistent productivity, taught to me long ago by a master who shall remain nameless. Hold back some of the extra work on your killer productivity days and keep it in reserve. On those off days, reach into the "bank" and push some of those changes. And now you are consistent.
Silhouette 13y ago
I know productivity superstars, but if you catch them on the wrong day or at the wrong time, they look like lazy bums. I've encountered a particularly nasty variation of this since Agile became a Thing, where anyone who isn't writing code or running tests or showing up in the commit logs every few minutes obviously isn't working. The idea that it might be better to step back for an hour, or a day, or even a month, to think things through properly and maybe do some throwaway prototyping before you start pushing code to production, doesn't even seem to be accepted as credible any more in some quarters.
- api 13y ago
  Agile / Scrum is the return of the K-LOC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code People don't recognize it as such because the LOC -- lines of code -- has an added time dimension now and a different name. In Agile / Scrum it's K-(issue/day) where issues take the place of raw lines and the metric is applied per unit of sprint duration. But same idea, and same fallacy. It results in gobs of ugly Rube Goldberg machine code that's slow for fundamental O(crap) reasons and bug-ridden.
  - saidajigumi 13y ago
    "'Agile.' You keep using that word..." An org that calls what it does "agile" or "scrum" and then proceeds to accumulate technical debt like the Titanic taking on water is lying to itself about what it's doing. Piling up technical debt is a textbook Agile(flavor) failure, full stop. What sounds like happened in the case(s) you describe is that someone with dev management preconceptions wore "Agile" like a wolf in sheep's clothing and proceeded to dole out the same old ad-hoc nonsense. Nonsense as in being "efficient" (high KLOCs/metrics, butts in seats, long hours, etc.) and not caring about being "effective" (working on the right problem vs a problem, necessary understanding of the company and customer needs, working smarter vs. simply harder, etc.). I've seen this attitude a number of times, e.g. in program managers with history in big, established s/w companies. They learned a certain way of working, but then talk "Agile" as the trendy hire-word. Unfortunately, some of these folks never gained understanding of the tools that Agile brings to the table, and when/how to apply (or not apply) them to a situation.
WalterBright 13y ago
I know what you mean - my productivity definitely goes in cycles. I might create a great deal in 2 weeks, and then spend the next 2 weeks being unable to get much done. But I learned long ago not to worry about it. The down cycles inevitably pass and then I'm producing again. (no, I'm not bipolar)

varelse 13y ago

1,000x yes! My productivity comes in intense bursts of effort, with quiescent periods of research and reflection between them (or what looks like goofing off to rigidly process-oriented sorts). Combine that variability with mandatory daily scrum meetings and it makes me want to figuratively slit my wrists.

ryanbrunner 13y ago
I'll even go a step further. I have a reputation as one of those people who has an ability to get things done at an incredible pace, but there's definitely days where I'm flat-out procrastinating and being lazy. For me, personally, and I suspect other people like me, it comes down to an ability to perform remarkably well under pressure, along with a lack of ability to perform well when the pressure is off. If there's no urgency to what I need to do, I find it very hard to commit myself to doing something.
- commandar 13y ago
  It's funny, I made a comment on reddit a couple of weeks ago describing myself in almost the exact same way in a discussion about dealing with ADHD as an adult: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1j0ml8/psychopaths_do_not_lack_empathy_rather_they_can/cbaboxc?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1j0ml8/psychopaths_...
  - sloppycee 13y ago
    I am the exact same way, and was recently diagnosed ADHD.
- api 13y ago
  Me too. My productivity curve looks very rocky, with very tall spikes -- huge amounts of very hard stuff done in hours -- and days where nothing happens. There seems to be a longer-duration cycle too. I have super-productive weeks and ho-hum weeks. Overall the average is decently high.
- astral303 13y ago
  It can also be an anxiety thing, if one has generalized anxiety disorder. The anxiety of doing something hard or with higher uncertainty (a challenging software problem) is high, and it takes the even greater anxiety of the high pressure environment to overrule it. Worth investigating, because it seems like ADD, but it is not. ADHD drugs in this case can be counter-productive as they tend to increase anxiety. There are techniques to cope with this that can be quite effective.
- varelse 13y ago
  Over the years I've come to realize that what once felt like procrastination is actually my brain working out the solution to a problem, and it quite literally prevents me from reducing the solution to code until it's damned well ready for me to do. So I just go with it now. The only thing that seems to speed this process up is intense cardiovascular exercise, which is probably a good idea on its own anyway (but I imagine it seems awfully odd from the outside). As for ADHD, I probably have a little of that going on with a sprinkling of Aspberger symptoms, but not seemingly in a sufficient way to have any significant effect on my life and/or overall productivity (except that is when it comes to %$!^ing daily scrum updates which drive me bonkers - once a week would be fine, once a day is ridiculous).
  - anonymous 13y ago
    Today I spent 5 hours staring at, stepping through some callback-heavy code, reading HN, browsing the web and about an hour to write, test and deploy about 20 lines of code fixing a really nasty race condition. And I'm still not completely sure things are really fixed. I might have spent even longer had it not become apparent that we have just the two options: 1. band-aid around the problem 2. complete rewrite of a large portion of the website
- ishansharma 13y ago
  I'm glad that I am not the only one. I had this impression that I'm a bad developer because I'm not consistent. During my internship, I did quite a lot of work but in similar manner. Implement an interesting feature, then a week of laziness. Another feature and laziness. However the other replies to your comment also make me afraid about some psychological problem. I think I need to visit a doctor! :)
  - astral303 13y ago
    The difference between lazy people and people with a disorder is that lazy people don't feel bad about not getting work done.
    - varelse 13y ago
      I'll go even further and state that the problem is using MBAs to formulate how to manage creative sorts cough agile cough cargo-cult coding cough. if the area under your productivity curve is greater than everyone else around you, I don't give a you-know-what about the shape of the curve, you're doing just fine. To be fair to agile though, I can see situations where it can work. The problem is that many of its adherents seem to see agile as a hammer and all software engineering as various forms of nails.
      - dragonwriter 13y ago
        > The problem is that many of its adherents seem to see agile as a hammer and all software engineering as various forms of nails. Agile isn't a methodology, but a metamethodology -- or, in terms of the metaphor, it isn't a hammer, it is a set of guidelines to use in selecting tools. Scrum is a hammer, but Scrum ≠ Agile. Often rigorous adherence to particular methodologies (usually Scrum) get misidentified as being "Agile", but rigorous adherence to a particular methodology is not only not the same as Agile, but is directly contrary to Agile principles (particularly, its a direct violation of the first value from the Agile Manifesto, "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools".)
        13y ago
- rossjudson 13y ago
  I will tell you the secret to exhibiting consistent productivity, taught to me long ago by a master who shall remain nameless. Hold back some of the extra work on your killer productivity days and keep it in reserve. On those off days, reach into the "bank" and push some of those changes. And now you are consistent.

Silhouette 13y ago

I know productivity superstars, but if you catch them on the wrong day or at the wrong time, they look like lazy bums. I've encountered a particularly nasty variation of this since Agile became a Thing, where anyone who isn't writing code or running tests or showing up in the commit logs every few minutes obviously isn't working. The idea that it might be better to step back for an hour, or a day, or even a month, to think things through properly and maybe do some throwaway prototyping before you start pushing code to production, doesn't even seem to be accepted as credible any more in some quarters.

api 13y ago
Agile / Scrum is the return of the K-LOC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code People don't recognize it as such because the LOC -- lines of code -- has an added time dimension now and a different name. In Agile / Scrum it's K-(issue/day) where issues take the place of raw lines and the metric is applied per unit of sprint duration. But same idea, and same fallacy. It results in gobs of ugly Rube Goldberg machine code that's slow for fundamental O(crap) reasons and bug-ridden.
- saidajigumi 13y ago
  "'Agile.' You keep using that word..." An org that calls what it does "agile" or "scrum" and then proceeds to accumulate technical debt like the Titanic taking on water is lying to itself about what it's doing. Piling up technical debt is a textbook Agile(flavor) failure, full stop. What sounds like happened in the case(s) you describe is that someone with dev management preconceptions wore "Agile" like a wolf in sheep's clothing and proceeded to dole out the same old ad-hoc nonsense. Nonsense as in being "efficient" (high KLOCs/metrics, butts in seats, long hours, etc.) and not caring about being "effective" (working on the right problem vs a problem, necessary understanding of the company and customer needs, working smarter vs. simply harder, etc.). I've seen this attitude a number of times, e.g. in program managers with history in big, established s/w companies. They learned a certain way of working, but then talk "Agile" as the trendy hire-word. Unfortunately, some of these folks never gained understanding of the tools that Agile brings to the table, and when/how to apply (or not apply) them to a situation.

WalterBright 13y ago

I know what you mean - my productivity definitely goes in cycles. I might create a great deal in 2 weeks, and then spend the next 2 weeks being unable to get much done. But I learned long ago not to worry about it. The down cycles inevitably pass and then I'm producing again. (no, I'm not bipolar)