10 ms·

After you collapse on the sofa for a few minutes you then get back to work keeping yourself current, right? A reasonable measure of what it takes to stay curre

After you collapse on the sofa for a few minutes you then get back to work keeping yourself current, right? A reasonable measure of what it takes to stay current and relevant in this industry is twenty hours of dedicated reinvestment per week. Often times this reinvestment time is not afforded at work and as much as employers want to provide this as a benefit to developers, few offer the resources or time to allow developers to get anywhere close at work alone. Therefore, that time is likely your sole responsibility at home. If you're like most developers you should be budgeting four hours each day M-F (or three if you include the weekend). I know many that push for even more. Since our jobs tend to be sedentary and it's probably helpful to budget at least an hour for the gym a day to help mitigate the severe health effects of working a desk job, don't forget to factor time at the gym in your scheduling. Also, if you're like many developers I know you're likely on call and answering e-mails at home as well which is easy to forget about when calculating available time. This then quickly becomes a challenging schedule even for eight hour days. Those selecting ten hour days are probably not reinvesting as much as they should and will potentially burn out or become irrelevant in the long term. I've attempted a sustained schedule of 12 hour work days with 4 hour reinvestment and an hour at the gym and found it unworkable in the long term.

UglyToad 7y ago
Haha, yes, I recognise a lot of myself in this description. My previous job was a start-up and I was working maybe 8.30-6.30 most days with 20-30 minutes lunch and also working on open source software in the evenings (I still do the open source stuff and it's one of the few things I actually enjoy). I also attended regular exercise classes and the job came with crunch periods. Despite switching jobs a year ago to an 8.45 - 5.30 schedule I'm now so burnt out I'm taking 4 months out and will probably try to change fields. Software is well renumerated but it's a gilded cage, I am under no illusions other people are better off or other jobs are without stress, but trying to be a good programmer has reduced me mentally and physically to the point I can't face the thought of working.
- spraak 7y ago
  It really seems to depend on the company culture (which itself depends on the actual product) and office setup. E.g. I work remotely, spend time throughout the day relaxing and always done by 3pm and very well compensated
rootusrootus 7y ago
That is insanity. What could you possibly study four hours a day that would be worthwhile? That's just pumping in useless trivia information that will crowd out the useful development knowledge. Is it a web development thing? Framework-of-the-week psychosis? It just sounds like a recipe to get burnt to a crisp in a few years.
- daveslash 7y ago
  I realize that barefoot was speaking about studying things that are relevant to your job, but because you asked "what could you possible study for hours...that would be worthwhile", I'm going to say "study whatever interests you", regardless of it's relevance to your job. There are plenty of things worth studying for hours a day...as a hobby. I'm currently studying HAM radio & GIS systems.
- nostrademons 7y ago
  My first thought when reading your comment was "How could you possibly fit everything there is to learn into 4 hours a day?", but I think the disconnect is in two different conceptions of what a job is - For most people, a job is something where you are hired to do a specific task for a specific wage, using specific skills that you learn once and then apply many times. "Make this button green." "Move the navbar 20px to the right." "When this button is clicked, send off an RPC to the server, and when it's complete, update the table with the relevant data." These types of tasks lend themselves well to an "instruction manual" approach to skill acquisition: you read the manual, you apply it to your job, you memorize the parts that you use frequently, and you're done. Once you know everything in the manual, there's little point in studying further, because you know everything in the manual. A smaller (but growing) minority of jobs require you to solve a vaguely-defined problem, where there is no manual because nobody's solved it before, and often times the problem hasn't even been posed in a tangible form. "Find out who wrote everything on the web." "Evaluate whether we should invest $5M into this venture capital fund." "Identify our next billion-dollar business." "Make cryptocurrency useful." These jobs lend themselves to a "toolbox" approach. There is no manual, but if you have a wide enough breadth of experience, you've picked up a large variety of tools that you might be able to apply to the problem. So if you're tasked with figuring out who wrote what on the web, one approach might be ask the authors by having them add HTML markup, and then parsing and following that. Another approach might be to identify author bylines through machine-learning and then cross-reference them with a database of peoples' names that appear on the web. A third approach might be to identify pictures next to the byline and run facial recognition on them. You don't know which approach will be most useful until you're given the problem and actually try a few, but the bigger your toolbox, the more likely you are to find one that works. The financial returns to these types of jobs tend to scale exponentially with their complexity, because the number of people who can solve them decreases exponentially. That's why it's beneficial to have as big a toolbox as you possibly can if you want to play in these markets.
SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
> A reasonable measure of what it takes to stay current and relevant in this industry is twenty hours of dedicated reinvestment per week. That's insane - do we have statistics on people who do that?
news_to_me 7y ago
This might be the least healthy comment I’ve read on HN
0xffff2 7y ago
>A reasonable measure of what it takes to stay current and relevant in this industry is twenty hours of dedicated reinvestment per week. Which industry is that exactly? Because it's sure not mine, and I'm a software engineer, which I thought was the default assumption here.
- therealx 7y ago
  The guy is, assuming some normalcy, unhealthy. Maybe he's very young and still in the learning phase where you're eating up all your time learning, or maybe some physical/mental difference (Autism, etc). He's clearly never been burned out, and notice he budgets no time for social activities. Very unhealthy.
  - barefoot 7y ago
    It's a challenging habit to start but not as difficult as you'd imagine to maintain. That said, I've met a number of other professionals that sustain similar schedules. I have an array of hobbies including flying, rock climbing, tennis, and traveling. I've never been diagnosed with any behavior or personality disorder and organize social time primarily around the weekends. I also hit the gym every day which helps a lot. I completely credit any success I've had to working out frequently. I don't cast any judgement over developers not choosing to reinvest. I also think it's critical to know your limits and stay within them. I've been burned out several times throughout my career and know where my limits are. I am however very certain that this industry rewards continued learning and with the right mindset it's very rewarding both in the short and long term.
    - 0xffff2 7y ago
      >It's a challenging habit to start but not as difficult as you'd imagine to maintain. The question is, why would you want to? I don't spend any time at all staying current on my own time. I stay current on my employer's time. That's part of what they pay me for. If they don't want to pay for it, then I'm finding a new employer. Furthermore, I just have no idea where you come up with 20 hours per week. The kind of software I write just doesn't change anywhere near that fast, and I'm doing cutting-edge R&D! When I need to learn a new thing to do my job effectively, I go do research and learn whatever I need to. I don't, and see absolutely no reason to actively seek out new things to learn that I have no immediate plan to actually use.
opportune 7y ago
Lmao, this is just so absolutely ridiculous. Nobody needs to spend that long outside of work keeping yourself current... it's much more effective to just try to transition your actual work-work to being current and maybe spend a few hours here and there working on something interesting. If your current job isn't keeping your skills up to date, you need to switch ASAP. But even if it's not and you can't switch... jesus, it doesn't take 20hr/week to learn some new stuff
- barefoot 7y ago
  I agree outside of software development. However, the only constant in our industry is change and that change demands continuous reinvestment. The only other way to grow is to focus on complementary skills with longer relevancy and that takes real time. Your proposed alternative solutions to switch jobs or apply current skills at work (I'm assuming new skills or understanding) are common solutions used by many developers but ultimately have significant detrimental effects on companies both from very high industry churn rates as well as unnecessary application of new technologies by unskilled and inexperienced practitioners. These are as ubiquitous as they are bad and from a principled perspective I refuse to use them.
  - opportune 7y ago
    Well, you do whatever you think is best, however for me I am never going to be so loyal to an employer that I will spend 20hr/week outside of work making up for the lack of relevant tech I am encountering at work. And personally I wouldn't recommend that.
harshalizee 7y ago
What the heck! This is how you fall into a deep despair of depression because you wake up one day and realize your greatest skill is leetcode and job hopping. 12 years in the industry, I can tell you that you'll be fine with zero grinding. Once you learn how to learn, you can pick up anything you want on your employer's time if you have your fundamentals down. You have a life outside of SE, live it.

UglyToad 7y ago

Haha, yes, I recognise a lot of myself in this description. My previous job was a start-up and I was working maybe 8.30-6.30 most days with 20-30 minutes lunch and also working on open source software in the evenings (I still do the open source stuff and it's one of the few things I actually enjoy). I also attended regular exercise classes and the job came with crunch periods. Despite switching jobs a year ago to an 8.45 - 5.30 schedule I'm now so burnt out I'm taking 4 months out and will probably try to change fields. Software is well renumerated but it's a gilded cage, I am under no illusions other people are better off or other jobs are without stress, but trying to be a good programmer has reduced me mentally and physically to the point I can't face the thought of working.

spraak 7y ago
It really seems to depend on the company culture (which itself depends on the actual product) and office setup. E.g. I work remotely, spend time throughout the day relaxing and always done by 3pm and very well compensated

rootusrootus 7y ago

That is insanity. What could you possibly study four hours a day that would be worthwhile? That's just pumping in useless trivia information that will crowd out the useful development knowledge. Is it a web development thing? Framework-of-the-week psychosis? It just sounds like a recipe to get burnt to a crisp in a few years.

daveslash 7y ago
I realize that barefoot was speaking about studying things that are relevant to your job, but because you asked "what could you possible study for hours...that would be worthwhile", I'm going to say "study whatever interests you", regardless of it's relevance to your job. There are plenty of things worth studying for hours a day...as a hobby. I'm currently studying HAM radio & GIS systems.
nostrademons 7y ago
My first thought when reading your comment was "How could you possibly fit everything there is to learn into 4 hours a day?", but I think the disconnect is in two different conceptions of what a job is - For most people, a job is something where you are hired to do a specific task for a specific wage, using specific skills that you learn once and then apply many times. "Make this button green." "Move the navbar 20px to the right." "When this button is clicked, send off an RPC to the server, and when it's complete, update the table with the relevant data." These types of tasks lend themselves well to an "instruction manual" approach to skill acquisition: you read the manual, you apply it to your job, you memorize the parts that you use frequently, and you're done. Once you know everything in the manual, there's little point in studying further, because you know everything in the manual. A smaller (but growing) minority of jobs require you to solve a vaguely-defined problem, where there is no manual because nobody's solved it before, and often times the problem hasn't even been posed in a tangible form. "Find out who wrote everything on the web." "Evaluate whether we should invest $5M into this venture capital fund." "Identify our next billion-dollar business." "Make cryptocurrency useful." These jobs lend themselves to a "toolbox" approach. There is no manual, but if you have a wide enough breadth of experience, you've picked up a large variety of tools that you might be able to apply to the problem. So if you're tasked with figuring out who wrote what on the web, one approach might be ask the authors by having them add HTML markup, and then parsing and following that. Another approach might be to identify author bylines through machine-learning and then cross-reference them with a database of peoples' names that appear on the web. A third approach might be to identify pictures next to the byline and run facial recognition on them. You don't know which approach will be most useful until you're given the problem and actually try a few, but the bigger your toolbox, the more likely you are to find one that works. The financial returns to these types of jobs tend to scale exponentially with their complexity, because the number of people who can solve them decreases exponentially. That's why it's beneficial to have as big a toolbox as you possibly can if you want to play in these markets.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago

> A reasonable measure of what it takes to stay current and relevant in this industry is twenty hours of dedicated reinvestment per week. That's insane - do we have statistics on people who do that?

news_to_me 7y ago

This might be the least healthy comment I’ve read on HN

0xffff2 7y ago

>A reasonable measure of what it takes to stay current and relevant in this industry is twenty hours of dedicated reinvestment per week. Which industry is that exactly? Because it's sure not mine, and I'm a software engineer, which I thought was the default assumption here.

therealx 7y ago
The guy is, assuming some normalcy, unhealthy. Maybe he's very young and still in the learning phase where you're eating up all your time learning, or maybe some physical/mental difference (Autism, etc). He's clearly never been burned out, and notice he budgets no time for social activities. Very unhealthy.
- barefoot 7y ago
  It's a challenging habit to start but not as difficult as you'd imagine to maintain. That said, I've met a number of other professionals that sustain similar schedules. I have an array of hobbies including flying, rock climbing, tennis, and traveling. I've never been diagnosed with any behavior or personality disorder and organize social time primarily around the weekends. I also hit the gym every day which helps a lot. I completely credit any success I've had to working out frequently. I don't cast any judgement over developers not choosing to reinvest. I also think it's critical to know your limits and stay within them. I've been burned out several times throughout my career and know where my limits are. I am however very certain that this industry rewards continued learning and with the right mindset it's very rewarding both in the short and long term.
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    >It's a challenging habit to start but not as difficult as you'd imagine to maintain. The question is, why would you want to? I don't spend any time at all staying current on my own time. I stay current on my employer's time. That's part of what they pay me for. If they don't want to pay for it, then I'm finding a new employer. Furthermore, I just have no idea where you come up with 20 hours per week. The kind of software I write just doesn't change anywhere near that fast, and I'm doing cutting-edge R&D! When I need to learn a new thing to do my job effectively, I go do research and learn whatever I need to. I don't, and see absolutely no reason to actively seek out new things to learn that I have no immediate plan to actually use.

opportune 7y ago

Lmao, this is just so absolutely ridiculous. Nobody needs to spend that long outside of work keeping yourself current... it's much more effective to just try to transition your actual work-work to being current and maybe spend a few hours here and there working on something interesting. If your current job isn't keeping your skills up to date, you need to switch ASAP. But even if it's not and you can't switch... jesus, it doesn't take 20hr/week to learn some new stuff

barefoot 7y ago
I agree outside of software development. However, the only constant in our industry is change and that change demands continuous reinvestment. The only other way to grow is to focus on complementary skills with longer relevancy and that takes real time. Your proposed alternative solutions to switch jobs or apply current skills at work (I'm assuming new skills or understanding) are common solutions used by many developers but ultimately have significant detrimental effects on companies both from very high industry churn rates as well as unnecessary application of new technologies by unskilled and inexperienced practitioners. These are as ubiquitous as they are bad and from a principled perspective I refuse to use them.
- opportune 7y ago
  Well, you do whatever you think is best, however for me I am never going to be so loyal to an employer that I will spend 20hr/week outside of work making up for the lack of relevant tech I am encountering at work. And personally I wouldn't recommend that.

harshalizee 7y ago

What the heck! This is how you fall into a deep despair of depression because you wake up one day and realize your greatest skill is leetcode and job hopping. 12 years in the industry, I can tell you that you'll be fine with zero grinding. Once you learn how to learn, you can pick up anything you want on your employer's time if you have your fundamentals down. You have a life outside of SE, live it.