8 ms·

I've been a software engineer and managed software engineers for 20 years and worked in all kinds of businesses. This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in m

I've been a software engineer and managed software engineers for 20 years and worked in all kinds of businesses. This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion. Doing just as much work as your employer requires and no more is way less of a problem than employees who actively steal, commit fraud, bring drama and distract other team members, or are introducing defects because they've faked their way into a job they don't have the skills for. Your managers are likely dealing with those problems too, so they may be more aware of your situation than you think and are ok with it. Or maybe not, whatever. Not your problem either way. They can let you know if they're not happy with your performance, which it sounds like they are not doing. However! I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health. Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life. You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race. Personally, this realization has led me to switch careers. I'm now in a 2 year evenings and weekends program to get certified to do something that has nothing to do with tech. It is a huge pay cut. I also am happier than I have ever been in my adult life because I'm learning something challenging and helping people instead of coasting through 8 or 9 hours of pretending to work every day. Starting over mid-life and finding another thing that I love as much as I loved computers as a teen has been a blessing worth more than any amount of money. Good luck!

dx034 5y ago
I like that point about mental health. Side projects can be great, speaking from experience. It's just a legal question, although in many countries (I can only speak for Europe), you won't get into much trouble if you stay out of the employer's business and strictly separate code for side project and your main job. It's more complicated in jurisdictions where the employer has more say about your life while being employed. But if coding isn't your thing (not every developer likes coding), there are a lot of ways to utilize that time. Sports is a great way, spending time with family another (esp working remotely).
pmulard 5y ago
Just curious, but what career did you switch to? Also, congrats on finding more happiness :)
cj 5y ago
> This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion. Perhaps at large companies? I would hope people applying to jobs at small 5-20 person startups aren't bullshitting and lying about the work they do. Or to reword the same sentiment, I hope people looking for the easiest possible path target their job search at companies with lots of bureaucracy where people not doing your job is more easily tolerated. Edit: I like the suggestion from someone else in the comments here to "work in an environment where not being productive is not harmful."
- cogman10 5y ago
  The 5->10 hours a week is definitely on the extreme end of laziness. However, I do think if you are doing the full 40+ hours only working you are likely heading towards burnout. IMO, 5->6 hours of work in an 8 hour work day is both normal and acceptable to keep people from burning out and ultimately dropping to the 5->10 hour a week range.
  - neuronic 5y ago
    I think there is also this topic of mental work vs. physical work. When I did physical work I could and did work 8-10hrs per day. Even if I wasn’t motivated, just illness was a problem. But as a software dev I have mostly 5hrs a day of good work, sometimes 9hrs, sometimes 2hrs… then it’s like a block in the brain. Like running out of gas. Today I mostly just fixed up a tiny shell script. The last couple of weeks have felt like wading through quicksand. I went from amazingly busy in my last project to burned out and „lazy“ in my new project.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- almost_usual 5y ago
  At a 5-20 person startup there are probably like 5 engineers, there’s no time to waste and everyone knows what everyone is doing.
  - deleted 5y ago
methyl 5y ago
> this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health I can relate to that. I used to work not more than it was required for being perceived as a very productive person (10-15 hours / week), but at some point I couldn't stand it. I co-founded a startup and for first two years I easily crossed 60 hours/week on average, yet I was much happier and had more energy than previously. Of course 60 hours work week is not sustainable, but I definitely felt better mentally doing too much rather than too little.
- nostrebored 5y ago
  60 hour workweeks are absolutely sustainable? Desirable maybe not, but I’ve known lots of people who have worked ten hours a day six days a week. Especially if they don’t have other commitments.
  - 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
    I think many doctors work much more than that (60-80 hours each week) for pretty much their entire careers.
    - ltbarcly3 5y ago
      No they don't. They do it for a brief period when they are interns, under the theory that if you only have 2 years to make someone a good enough doctor you need that many hours per week to accomplish it. The majority of doctors work 41 to 60 hours per week. This is self reported, so it is likely that it is somewhat inflated. I once met someone who claimed to work 180 hours one week (do the math).
      - ProjectArcturis 5y ago
        No, they work 60-80 during the 3rd and 4th year of med school, then 80-100 during residency, which lasts 4-7 years. It's absolutely an insane system.
    - zibarn 5y ago
ConfessionTime 5y ago
>However! I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health. Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life. You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race. This is where my comment about remote work comes into play. When I worked in an office, I spent most of the day just entertaining myself on the internet. That isn't great for long-term mental health. Now that I am working from home I can put in the same level of work while spending the rest of my work day in more satisfying ways as long as I keep an eye on my Slack and email for urgent issues. I can't imagine ever returning to an office in which there is more pressure to spend 8 hours a day sitting in front of my computer. I have thought about switching careers a few times over the years. However anything I would want to switch to would require a big pay cut. My relatively high salary as a software developer is what enables the rest of my life. Maintaining that lifestyle is my priority as that is where I find my happiness.
- somethoughts 5y ago
  As a SW developer you provide two benefits to the company: - the build phase: develop spaghetti code - the maintain/insurance phase: maintain the spaghetti code and keep it up to date with the software package dependencies required by the spaghetti code In the long term its easier/cheaper to have the person who originally wrote the spaghetti code be around to maintain and add one off small feature improvements to it (i.e. ensure log4j patches are handled properly) than to find/hire/train a new developer every time a 0day patch needs to be applied.
  - thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
    There's one more reason - the one I use to rationalize my idleness to myself: in addition to our work output, the corporations are also paying us to be a part of their "reserve army". We might work 3-4 hours a day, but when things escalate, the company taps into its reserves to get stuff done. Having doldrums about that is like soldiers worrying they only spend 3 hours a day in combat
tmnstr85 5y ago
I think the real issue arises with equity or the option for equity. Suddenly you're in a much more influential position because if you build the next unicorn internally, its going to take everyone to the moon. That equity needs to be proportional to your input to the stack. That's what i'm hearing from all the "well you can't do this in a small company!" comments. What often happens when companies start to mature- from small to medium - the equity stops making sense. At the beginning the engineers were in the business meetings, now others are taking credit for the engineers work and you find yourself in a back room being told there's a jira list of defect and bugs to work through. Meanwhile, you wrote the source. That's where the significant hazard mentioned above plays a really wacky role in your mental health. I'm at the point where I'm just realizing how toxic my situation has been for YEARS. And I'm ready for the change...
jollybean 5y ago
" This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion. " It's definitely not acceptable. It's a form of White Collar / 1st World Corruption. Taking money from people with expectation of value, while not providing that value is Fraud. Just because we don't always have great oversight, does not abnegate our responsibilities towards trying to do a good job. This notion of 'I Can Get Away With It' and 'Other People Do It' is exactly the kind of logic that someone in an corrupt and dysfunctional system would use to accept taking bribes, or to commit other forms of common crimes. 'Wealthy Nations' are wealthy because people are organized rationally and effectively, - but we can't have oversight over everything. 'Wealthy Nations' run into dysfunction and bloat often due to systematic reasons, but also due to these kinds of scenarios and it's an example of where it breaks down. Workers are adamant that they want to be 'trusted' to do their jobs and to work remotely - at the same time they want the ability to do 'nothing' in systems which necessarily can't have a lot of oversight, or don't because 'trust' ? This is unreasonable populism: "Pay me, trust me, but I'm going to do nothing, and if you lay me off over Zoom, you're going to see it on CNN!" If you want to live in a world of trust, it means you have an obligation to at least try to live up to your obligations.
- marstall 5y ago
  but let me get this straight. It's OK for the monopoly-seeking/having company shareholders to become billionaires off the labor of their workers while sitting on their asses?
- paxys 5y ago
  Is there a quantification for the value you are obligated to provide your company written down in your employment contract? If not, on what basis are you throwing around words like "crime" and "fraud"?
  - jollybean 5y ago
    It's Fraud when there is payment for services not rendered. The problem arises when there's little ability for oversight, which implies a high degree of trust in the system and the mechanism for verification can't be there. Put another way: If someone pays you $50 to fill their tires up with air, it's Fraud if you don't do it - irrespective of your customer's ability or willingness to verify. If your customer was busy on the phone, or with their children, would it be 'Perfect Contractually Acceptable' to not fill their tires up with air 'Because You Can?'? Either legally or morally - no - it's fraud. Fortunately, most tasks involve a kind of implicit oversight - i.e. 'you know when your tires were not filled'. In software, the mechanisms for oversight aren't so great - but that should be fine with all of us to the extent that we're professionals - we don't want Management breathing down our necks anyhow. But the inherent level of trust implies a higher degree of professional competence on the part of all of us. FYI - this is assuming that there is a problem with oversight. If the OP is doing some 'genius 2 hours a week', the company knows it, is fine paying $150K for that bit of work, that's totally fine. It's disturbing that this is even a discussion.
pradn 5y ago
> I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health. Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life. You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race. I am a few years out of college and this hasn't quite crossed my mind. Perhaps I've now had enough years of work experience to start feeling the long term effects of how I feel about work. The effects of stress have been evident, certainly - weight gain, for example.
bennysomething 5y ago
What did you switch to? I keep thinking I want to be an electrician or carpenter
irrational 5y ago
> Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life. Well, I love programming. I’d just rather work on my own personal projects than the boring stuff the business wants me to work on. Fortunately I can get done what the company wants me to do in a few hours a day and then write code for my own projects.
- etskinner 5y ago
  One thing I've found helpful to combat boredom is this: In the absence of deadlines or people nagging you to do something, pick the task you want to do most (or dislike the least), or the task that is most interesting rather than the task that's oldest or some other measure. That way, you're still chipping away at your to-do list, but you're happier to do it.
taswellian 5y ago
> You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race. How? I find satisfaction in many things, but none of those things pay the bills or put food on the table.
- waynesonfire 5y ago
  > >You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race. This is asking the wrong question. A few weeks ago I ran into quote on hackernews... [1] “Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.” I hope I'm not stretching this too far as I'm not too good about explaining stuff like this. But, my take away is that you'll discover the things that pay the bills and the things that don't are one of the same. The difficulty of life is finding that peace. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29442307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29442307
  - tharkun__ 5y ago
    I read that one (and still do) as: Before you know how you do something it just looks like what it is on the surface. Might even look easy for most things. Software development is easy right? Bunch of for loops and ifs to tell a computer what to do! Then you start learning. What do you mean 0s and 1s? That are actually different voltages somewhere on a tiny piece of silicon and metals? Assembler? Compilers? Machine code? A gate? What's an Adder? What's a program counter and what does that have to do with that German dude? (von Neumann ;)) You finally master all this and it becomes second nature or you figure out where you can 'ignore' and still be productive (I remember how I learned how multiplication is actually done on a simple computer and all that but I no longer actively need to know in my day to day work). This just an example but this applies on many many levels and one reason I see all the time for why people get stuck on a problem is because they can't ignore or figure out what to ignore. A very simple one is the ability to just read a stack trace. They simply get lost in the parts I instinctively fly over and don't even fully recognize to find the important part. And that's when it's just a punch again. It's second nature. Don't even need to actively think. Your subconscious is doing it for you.
throwaway984393 5y ago
I'm hoping to follow after your example.... at some point. Really want to do something with my time that feels worth it. But the difficulty of starting over is this intimidating mountain that I look out my window at each day, behind a forest with no visible path. I wonder when I'll finally get fed up enough to strap on some boots and head out into the wilderness.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
"This is both normal amd mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion." I wonder if there is anyone reading this comment who thinks, "That does not sound normal, acceptable nor professional."
throw10920 5y ago
> Doing just as much work as your employer requires and no more Do you also think that it's acceptable for an employer to only do as much for its employees as is required by law, and no more?
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Isn’t that exactly what they are doing anyway? The only reason you get anything more is they couldn’t find employees if they didn’t.
2-718-281-828 5y ago
well put! I work in consulting for a large corporation and they pay for me more than 1000 Euro per day. I don't see much of that money but I can't really complain about my salary. It's pretty good (not SV-good, though). Now on average I'd say I work no more than 4 hours. Some days even less. Occasionally I feel proud of that and even brag about it to friends. But deep down I feel how this is just not making me happy. It's also not that I am lazy by any means. I think I am burned out to some extent. This mental state comes with an inability to use the rest of the work day. I spend it procrastinating - which is actually more tiring than working for whatever reason. During office times I thought this is because I have to multitask watching my back and having a solution at hand if somebody suddenly stands next to me. Now being in home office for more than a year it seems that the origin is more something like a spiritual conflict. I'm wasting my time. And I know I'm wasting it. At the same time I feel motivated to become more structured and diciplined so I can game my employer (which I do not respect for a couple of reasons) in a way benefiting me beyond my salary. Having said that I have been taking my car to a garage, doing shopping, reparing my bike or whatever during work time - so, technically, I do benefit. My g/f earns about a third of what I do while actually working a tough, stressful job in full time. Regularly when she leaves the house in the morning I sit there browsing the internet after the obligatory daily and I feel actually a bit ashamed when she sees that. I don't know ... but, yeah, thanks for your post - got me thinking.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  It appears we live much of the same life. I work 3 to 4 hours a day at best, and part of that is the standup. Wife works hard for 8+ hours a day and makes a third of my salary. I want to be productive but I just cant seem to do more hours than that. Even those hours of work are broken up. "his mental state comes with an inability to use the rest of the work day. I spend it procrastinating - which is actually more tiring than working for whatever reason" I feel the same way. Difference is I actually really like my employer and I still cant focus for more than a few hours a day.
  - 2-718-281-828 5y ago
    of course, the obligatory thing to consider is AD(H)D - which I do suffer from. anyway - interesting that you "really like your employer". do you also like the product and the work environment? looking back though it didn't seem to matter much for my productivity either. liking my employer can even complicate things further because then I feel guilt.
paxys 5y ago
> However! I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health. Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life. Agree with everything you wrote except this part. I have worked jobs where I truly believed in the mission, worked hard, was paid a lot, achieved great things and was overall very satisfied. I was also massively burned out by the end of it. On the other hand I have had stretches where I was disillusioned and disconnected from work and was completely coasting, so exactly in the situation the OP describes. I had zero stress at work and used to leave at 5pm sharp, had lots more time for family and friends, picked up some great hobbies, did a lot more weekend trips and extended travel, and my mental health and happiness could not be better because of it. Ultimately some people derive their life's purpose from their jobs, while to others it is just a necessary annoyance for making money. There's no single "correct" approach to this.
- a9h74j 5y ago
  I've seen it suggested that people tend to be level in personal growth while advancing in career growth, or level in career growth while advancing in personal growth, either more or less deliberately.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  > ... jobs where I truly believed in the mission ... I was also massively burned out This can be true but being in alienating jobs that you don't care about is also a cause for burnout. Both extremes are dangerous, it's well established.
- cloverich 5y ago
  They aren't mutually exclusive. Being very interested and motivated at your job does not mean you have to work long hours, sacrafice vacation, or tune in during off hours. Some of the best (staff level) people I ever worked with absolutely killed it while at work, and would take multiple 2 week vacations and say "dont contact me while I'm out" (etc).
- cvwright 5y ago
  Just wanted to point out that this > I truly believed in the mission, worked hard, was paid a lot, achieved great things and was overall very satisfied. and this > used to leave at 5pm sharp are not mutually exclusive. We have this weird thing in tech where we think that, to be passionate, you have to work yourself into the ground. But this is stupid. There's organizational psych research going back decades showing that teams who work 40-hour weeks will quickly outperform teams working 60 hrs / week. For one thing, they make fewer mistakes and thus have less work to re-do. Fewer bugs to fix. I've done more than one stretch of intense, focused programming and CS research work when I was a grad student. There was one period of two weeks when my buddy and I both put in about 116 hours one week and 118 hours the next week. I have basically no memory of anything that happened in those weeks, and I never have since like one month afterwards -- like a drug addict on a bender or something. I guess it worked out OK. We got our papers published. But our actual productivity in those last few weeks must have been absolute garbage. In contrast, I spent last academic year on sabbatical building out my side project, and I don't think there was even one week where I put in more than 60 hours. Personally I can sustain 45 or 50-hour weeks basically indefinitely. But if I ever tried to push it above 55, there was a big price to be paid, and I was useless and braindead for the following day or two. Be passionate, love what you do, but don't hurt yourself doing it. There's a quote that I like: Most people vastly over-estimate what they can achieve with intense effort over the span of a week. And they vastly under-estimate what they can accomplish with sustained, moderate effort over the course of a year.
oakfr 5y ago
I am with you on most of your points, but definitely not on the "normal and mostly acceptable". The truth of our domain is that you can get great work done in 3-4 hours a day (I am referring to deep work here, not meetings). In fact, most of us become much less productive beyond that. The remaining hours can/should be spent on useful meetings, reading, learning new things, chatting to people about things, etc. Coasting from a standup to the next with zero work in between is definitely not normal (_if done on a regular basis_) and the sign that something is not right in your current situation. You may find it OK right now and for years on end. But you're likely going to pay a hefty bill for this many years down the road. I am not saying you should live Elon's life. But finding something meaningful to do with your life should be a goal, I believe.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > I am with you on most of your points, but definitely not on the "normal and mostly acceptable". The "normal" part is easy to disprove: If everyone was doing near zero work and lying their way through standup about it, nothing would ever get done. That may be normal in certain zombie organizations, but those organizations can't last forever without people doing actual work. Somebody is doing the work, even if the OP isn't. > Coasting from a standup to the next with zero work in between is definitely not normal (_if done on a regular basis_) and the sign that something is not right in your current situation. The part about doing nothing all day and then lying their way through standup stood out to me. Like you said, we all know that programmers aren't hands-to-keyboard programming for 8 straight hours every day, nor do we expect that. However, we do expect that everyone is putting in similar amounts of effort to their peers. I'm surprised how many comments here are justifying the zero-work behavior because the manager hasn't caught on yet. This doesn't mean the work disappears. It means the person's teammates have to pick up the slack and carry the project forward without the OP. Working with a deadbeat teammate is an awful experience. If you need to get anything done, the only way forward is to plead with them to get some work done, or just do it yourself. More often than not, the team ends up doing it themselves. We've all been stuck with deadbeat team mates, from group projects in school to the workplace. It's not okay to be the deadbeat teammate.
  - 5y ago
repomies69 5y ago
> It is a huge pay cut. I also am happier than I have ever been in my adult life because I'm learning something challenging and helping people instead of While I congratulate your career move and I am very happy for you, I want to point out that there are tons of jobs in Software Development that genuinely help people and make society go forward.
- 10hr 5y ago
  They don't seem particularly easy to find. Perhaps you could name some?
mrbonner 5y ago
I appreciate your candid feedback about the OP's attitude at work. Especially, I like it when you, as an SDM, agree that majority of the people will be "average" and as long as they don't wreck-havoc the team, they should be appreciated, right? > However! I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health I have a hard time believing that in this stage and age, especially in the US this is true. How do you justify working for a big corp big nice pay to support your family vs. getting a salary just to live by working for your life's mission? Do we just forego the opportunity cost from a bigger paycheck, not just for you but your family as well?
gxt 5y ago
>Through most of that time I have averaged roughly 5 - 10 hours of actual work a week >This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion. If you are expected to engage for 40h/week and only show up for 5-10, this is unacceptable. It's literally theft. If you have to spend 30 out of 40h/week in meetings, etc when it's part of your role as senior or architect etc it is acceptable. If you have to spend 30 out of 40h/week in meetings, etc when it's not part of your role and you don't attempt to raise the issue that your time is not spent fruitfully, this is unacceptable. You're expected to be autonomous and paid handsomely for it, if this is acceptable wtf is wrong with this industry.
- 10hr 5y ago
  I'm approximately a millionaire in my late 20s and have only really built 1 little thing since 2017... Might it catch up to me this year? Perhaps, but that's when I will go get an unrelated masters and change to my "retirement career"
- 10hr 5y ago
  Pretty much my only skill is leetcode easy/med + basic sys design and knowing some SRE principles. I almost wish the interview wasn't as gameable so I could move on with my life in a new field
jliptzin 5y ago
What is your certification in out of curiosity?

dx034 5y ago

I like that point about mental health. Side projects can be great, speaking from experience. It's just a legal question, although in many countries (I can only speak for Europe), you won't get into much trouble if you stay out of the employer's business and strictly separate code for side project and your main job. It's more complicated in jurisdictions where the employer has more say about your life while being employed. But if coding isn't your thing (not every developer likes coding), there are a lot of ways to utilize that time. Sports is a great way, spending time with family another (esp working remotely).

pmulard 5y ago

Just curious, but what career did you switch to? Also, congrats on finding more happiness :)

cj 5y ago

> This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion. Perhaps at large companies? I would hope people applying to jobs at small 5-20 person startups aren't bullshitting and lying about the work they do. Or to reword the same sentiment, I hope people looking for the easiest possible path target their job search at companies with lots of bureaucracy where people not doing your job is more easily tolerated. Edit: I like the suggestion from someone else in the comments here to "work in an environment where not being productive is not harmful."

cogman10 5y ago
The 5->10 hours a week is definitely on the extreme end of laziness. However, I do think if you are doing the full 40+ hours only working you are likely heading towards burnout. IMO, 5->6 hours of work in an 8 hour work day is both normal and acceptable to keep people from burning out and ultimately dropping to the 5->10 hour a week range.
- neuronic 5y ago
  I think there is also this topic of mental work vs. physical work. When I did physical work I could and did work 8-10hrs per day. Even if I wasn’t motivated, just illness was a problem. But as a software dev I have mostly 5hrs a day of good work, sometimes 9hrs, sometimes 2hrs… then it’s like a block in the brain. Like running out of gas. Today I mostly just fixed up a tiny shell script. The last couple of weeks have felt like wading through quicksand. I went from amazingly busy in my last project to burned out and „lazy“ in my new project.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
almost_usual 5y ago
At a 5-20 person startup there are probably like 5 engineers, there’s no time to waste and everyone knows what everyone is doing.
- deleted 5y ago

methyl 5y ago

> this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health I can relate to that. I used to work not more than it was required for being perceived as a very productive person (10-15 hours / week), but at some point I couldn't stand it. I co-founded a startup and for first two years I easily crossed 60 hours/week on average, yet I was much happier and had more energy than previously. Of course 60 hours work week is not sustainable, but I definitely felt better mentally doing too much rather than too little.

nostrebored 5y ago
60 hour workweeks are absolutely sustainable? Desirable maybe not, but I’ve known lots of people who have worked ten hours a day six days a week. Especially if they don’t have other commitments.
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
  I think many doctors work much more than that (60-80 hours each week) for pretty much their entire careers.
  - ltbarcly3 5y ago
    No they don't. They do it for a brief period when they are interns, under the theory that if you only have 2 years to make someone a good enough doctor you need that many hours per week to accomplish it. The majority of doctors work 41 to 60 hours per week. This is self reported, so it is likely that it is somewhat inflated. I once met someone who claimed to work 180 hours one week (do the math).
    - ProjectArcturis 5y ago
      No, they work 60-80 during the 3rd and 4th year of med school, then 80-100 during residency, which lasts 4-7 years. It's absolutely an insane system.
  - zibarn 5y ago

ConfessionTime 5y ago

>However! I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health. Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life. You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race. This is where my comment about remote work comes into play. When I worked in an office, I spent most of the day just entertaining myself on the internet. That isn't great for long-term mental health. Now that I am working from home I can put in the same level of work while spending the rest of my work day in more satisfying ways as long as I keep an eye on my Slack and email for urgent issues. I can't imagine ever returning to an office in which there is more pressure to spend 8 hours a day sitting in front of my computer. I have thought about switching careers a few times over the years. However anything I would want to switch to would require a big pay cut. My relatively high salary as a software developer is what enables the rest of my life. Maintaining that lifestyle is my priority as that is where I find my happiness.

somethoughts 5y ago
As a SW developer you provide two benefits to the company: - the build phase: develop spaghetti code - the maintain/insurance phase: maintain the spaghetti code and keep it up to date with the software package dependencies required by the spaghetti code In the long term its easier/cheaper to have the person who originally wrote the spaghetti code be around to maintain and add one off small feature improvements to it (i.e. ensure log4j patches are handled properly) than to find/hire/train a new developer every time a 0day patch needs to be applied.
- thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
  There's one more reason - the one I use to rationalize my idleness to myself: in addition to our work output, the corporations are also paying us to be a part of their "reserve army". We might work 3-4 hours a day, but when things escalate, the company taps into its reserves to get stuff done. Having doldrums about that is like soldiers worrying they only spend 3 hours a day in combat

tmnstr85 5y ago

I think the real issue arises with equity or the option for equity. Suddenly you're in a much more influential position because if you build the next unicorn internally, its going to take everyone to the moon. That equity needs to be proportional to your input to the stack. That's what i'm hearing from all the "well you can't do this in a small company!" comments. What often happens when companies start to mature- from small to medium - the equity stops making sense. At the beginning the engineers were in the business meetings, now others are taking credit for the engineers work and you find yourself in a back room being told there's a jira list of defect and bugs to work through. Meanwhile, you wrote the source. That's where the significant hazard mentioned above plays a really wacky role in your mental health. I'm at the point where I'm just realizing how toxic my situation has been for YEARS. And I'm ready for the change...

jollybean 5y ago

" This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion. " It's definitely not acceptable. It's a form of White Collar / 1st World Corruption. Taking money from people with expectation of value, while not providing that value is Fraud. Just because we don't always have great oversight, does not abnegate our responsibilities towards trying to do a good job. This notion of 'I Can Get Away With It' and 'Other People Do It' is exactly the kind of logic that someone in an corrupt and dysfunctional system would use to accept taking bribes, or to commit other forms of common crimes. 'Wealthy Nations' are wealthy because people are organized rationally and effectively, - but we can't have oversight over everything. 'Wealthy Nations' run into dysfunction and bloat often due to systematic reasons, but also due to these kinds of scenarios and it's an example of where it breaks down. Workers are adamant that they want to be 'trusted' to do their jobs and to work remotely - at the same time they want the ability to do 'nothing' in systems which necessarily can't have a lot of oversight, or don't because 'trust' ? This is unreasonable populism: "Pay me, trust me, but I'm going to do nothing, and if you lay me off over Zoom, you're going to see it on CNN!" If you want to live in a world of trust, it means you have an obligation to at least try to live up to your obligations.

marstall 5y ago
but let me get this straight. It's OK for the monopoly-seeking/having company shareholders to become billionaires off the labor of their workers while sitting on their asses?
paxys 5y ago
Is there a quantification for the value you are obligated to provide your company written down in your employment contract? If not, on what basis are you throwing around words like "crime" and "fraud"?
- jollybean 5y ago
  It's Fraud when there is payment for services not rendered. The problem arises when there's little ability for oversight, which implies a high degree of trust in the system and the mechanism for verification can't be there. Put another way: If someone pays you $50 to fill their tires up with air, it's Fraud if you don't do it - irrespective of your customer's ability or willingness to verify. If your customer was busy on the phone, or with their children, would it be 'Perfect Contractually Acceptable' to not fill their tires up with air 'Because You Can?'? Either legally or morally - no - it's fraud. Fortunately, most tasks involve a kind of implicit oversight - i.e. 'you know when your tires were not filled'. In software, the mechanisms for oversight aren't so great - but that should be fine with all of us to the extent that we're professionals - we don't want Management breathing down our necks anyhow. But the inherent level of trust implies a higher degree of professional competence on the part of all of us. FYI - this is assuming that there is a problem with oversight. If the OP is doing some 'genius 2 hours a week', the company knows it, is fine paying $150K for that bit of work, that's totally fine. It's disturbing that this is even a discussion.

pradn 5y ago

> I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health. Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life. You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race. I am a few years out of college and this hasn't quite crossed my mind. Perhaps I've now had enough years of work experience to start feeling the long term effects of how I feel about work. The effects of stress have been evident, certainly - weight gain, for example.

bennysomething 5y ago

What did you switch to? I keep thinking I want to be an electrician or carpenter

irrational 5y ago

> Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life. Well, I love programming. I’d just rather work on my own personal projects than the boring stuff the business wants me to work on. Fortunately I can get done what the company wants me to do in a few hours a day and then write code for my own projects.

etskinner 5y ago
One thing I've found helpful to combat boredom is this: In the absence of deadlines or people nagging you to do something, pick the task you want to do most (or dislike the least), or the task that is most interesting rather than the task that's oldest or some other measure. That way, you're still chipping away at your to-do list, but you're happier to do it.

taswellian 5y ago

> You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race. How? I find satisfaction in many things, but none of those things pay the bills or put food on the table.

waynesonfire 5y ago
> >You only have one life, do something with it that is satisfying. Get out of the rat race. This is asking the wrong question. A few weeks ago I ran into quote on hackernews... [1] “Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.” I hope I'm not stretching this too far as I'm not too good about explaining stuff like this. But, my take away is that you'll discover the things that pay the bills and the things that don't are one of the same. The difficulty of life is finding that peace. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29442307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29442307
- tharkun__ 5y ago
  I read that one (and still do) as: Before you know how you do something it just looks like what it is on the surface. Might even look easy for most things. Software development is easy right? Bunch of for loops and ifs to tell a computer what to do! Then you start learning. What do you mean 0s and 1s? That are actually different voltages somewhere on a tiny piece of silicon and metals? Assembler? Compilers? Machine code? A gate? What's an Adder? What's a program counter and what does that have to do with that German dude? (von Neumann ;)) You finally master all this and it becomes second nature or you figure out where you can 'ignore' and still be productive (I remember how I learned how multiplication is actually done on a simple computer and all that but I no longer actively need to know in my day to day work). This just an example but this applies on many many levels and one reason I see all the time for why people get stuck on a problem is because they can't ignore or figure out what to ignore. A very simple one is the ability to just read a stack trace. They simply get lost in the parts I instinctively fly over and don't even fully recognize to find the important part. And that's when it's just a punch again. It's second nature. Don't even need to actively think. Your subconscious is doing it for you.

throwaway984393 5y ago

I'm hoping to follow after your example.... at some point. Really want to do something with my time that feels worth it. But the difficulty of starting over is this intimidating mountain that I look out my window at each day, behind a forest with no visible path. I wonder when I'll finally get fed up enough to strap on some boots and head out into the wilderness.

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

"This is both normal amd mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion." I wonder if there is anyone reading this comment who thinks, "That does not sound normal, acceptable nor professional."

throw10920 5y ago

> Doing just as much work as your employer requires and no more Do you also think that it's acceptable for an employer to only do as much for its employees as is required by law, and no more?

Aeolun 5y ago
Isn’t that exactly what they are doing anyway? The only reason you get anything more is they couldn’t find employees if they didn’t.

2-718-281-828 5y ago

well put! I work in consulting for a large corporation and they pay for me more than 1000 Euro per day. I don't see much of that money but I can't really complain about my salary. It's pretty good (not SV-good, though). Now on average I'd say I work no more than 4 hours. Some days even less. Occasionally I feel proud of that and even brag about it to friends. But deep down I feel how this is just not making me happy. It's also not that I am lazy by any means. I think I am burned out to some extent. This mental state comes with an inability to use the rest of the work day. I spend it procrastinating - which is actually more tiring than working for whatever reason. During office times I thought this is because I have to multitask watching my back and having a solution at hand if somebody suddenly stands next to me. Now being in home office for more than a year it seems that the origin is more something like a spiritual conflict. I'm wasting my time. And I know I'm wasting it. At the same time I feel motivated to become more structured and diciplined so I can game my employer (which I do not respect for a couple of reasons) in a way benefiting me beyond my salary. Having said that I have been taking my car to a garage, doing shopping, reparing my bike or whatever during work time - so, technically, I do benefit. My g/f earns about a third of what I do while actually working a tough, stressful job in full time. Regularly when she leaves the house in the morning I sit there browsing the internet after the obligatory daily and I feel actually a bit ashamed when she sees that. I don't know ... but, yeah, thanks for your post - got me thinking.

wonderwonder 5y ago
It appears we live much of the same life. I work 3 to 4 hours a day at best, and part of that is the standup. Wife works hard for 8+ hours a day and makes a third of my salary. I want to be productive but I just cant seem to do more hours than that. Even those hours of work are broken up. "his mental state comes with an inability to use the rest of the work day. I spend it procrastinating - which is actually more tiring than working for whatever reason" I feel the same way. Difference is I actually really like my employer and I still cant focus for more than a few hours a day.
- 2-718-281-828 5y ago
  of course, the obligatory thing to consider is AD(H)D - which I do suffer from. anyway - interesting that you "really like your employer". do you also like the product and the work environment? looking back though it didn't seem to matter much for my productivity either. liking my employer can even complicate things further because then I feel guilt.

paxys 5y ago

> However! I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health. Doing something you don't like, care about, or believe in for decades long periods of time can really mess with your sense of self worth and happiness in life. Agree with everything you wrote except this part. I have worked jobs where I truly believed in the mission, worked hard, was paid a lot, achieved great things and was overall very satisfied. I was also massively burned out by the end of it. On the other hand I have had stretches where I was disillusioned and disconnected from work and was completely coasting, so exactly in the situation the OP describes. I had zero stress at work and used to leave at 5pm sharp, had lots more time for family and friends, picked up some great hobbies, did a lot more weekend trips and extended travel, and my mental health and happiness could not be better because of it. Ultimately some people derive their life's purpose from their jobs, while to others it is just a necessary annoyance for making money. There's no single "correct" approach to this.

a9h74j 5y ago
I've seen it suggested that people tend to be level in personal growth while advancing in career growth, or level in career growth while advancing in personal growth, either more or less deliberately.
goodpoint 5y ago
> ... jobs where I truly believed in the mission ... I was also massively burned out This can be true but being in alienating jobs that you don't care about is also a cause for burnout. Both extremes are dangerous, it's well established.
cloverich 5y ago
They aren't mutually exclusive. Being very interested and motivated at your job does not mean you have to work long hours, sacrafice vacation, or tune in during off hours. Some of the best (staff level) people I ever worked with absolutely killed it while at work, and would take multiple 2 week vacations and say "dont contact me while I'm out" (etc).
cvwright 5y ago
Just wanted to point out that this > I truly believed in the mission, worked hard, was paid a lot, achieved great things and was overall very satisfied. and this > used to leave at 5pm sharp are not mutually exclusive. We have this weird thing in tech where we think that, to be passionate, you have to work yourself into the ground. But this is stupid. There's organizational psych research going back decades showing that teams who work 40-hour weeks will quickly outperform teams working 60 hrs / week. For one thing, they make fewer mistakes and thus have less work to re-do. Fewer bugs to fix. I've done more than one stretch of intense, focused programming and CS research work when I was a grad student. There was one period of two weeks when my buddy and I both put in about 116 hours one week and 118 hours the next week. I have basically no memory of anything that happened in those weeks, and I never have since like one month afterwards -- like a drug addict on a bender or something. I guess it worked out OK. We got our papers published. But our actual productivity in those last few weeks must have been absolute garbage. In contrast, I spent last academic year on sabbatical building out my side project, and I don't think there was even one week where I put in more than 60 hours. Personally I can sustain 45 or 50-hour weeks basically indefinitely. But if I ever tried to push it above 55, there was a big price to be paid, and I was useless and braindead for the following day or two. Be passionate, love what you do, but don't hurt yourself doing it. There's a quote that I like: Most people vastly over-estimate what they can achieve with intense effort over the span of a week. And they vastly under-estimate what they can accomplish with sustained, moderate effort over the course of a year.

oakfr 5y ago

I am with you on most of your points, but definitely not on the "normal and mostly acceptable". The truth of our domain is that you can get great work done in 3-4 hours a day (I am referring to deep work here, not meetings). In fact, most of us become much less productive beyond that. The remaining hours can/should be spent on useful meetings, reading, learning new things, chatting to people about things, etc. Coasting from a standup to the next with zero work in between is definitely not normal (_if done on a regular basis_) and the sign that something is not right in your current situation. You may find it OK right now and for years on end. But you're likely going to pay a hefty bill for this many years down the road. I am not saying you should live Elon's life. But finding something meaningful to do with your life should be a goal, I believe.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> I am with you on most of your points, but definitely not on the "normal and mostly acceptable". The "normal" part is easy to disprove: If everyone was doing near zero work and lying their way through standup about it, nothing would ever get done. That may be normal in certain zombie organizations, but those organizations can't last forever without people doing actual work. Somebody is doing the work, even if the OP isn't. > Coasting from a standup to the next with zero work in between is definitely not normal (_if done on a regular basis_) and the sign that something is not right in your current situation. The part about doing nothing all day and then lying their way through standup stood out to me. Like you said, we all know that programmers aren't hands-to-keyboard programming for 8 straight hours every day, nor do we expect that. However, we do expect that everyone is putting in similar amounts of effort to their peers. I'm surprised how many comments here are justifying the zero-work behavior because the manager hasn't caught on yet. This doesn't mean the work disappears. It means the person's teammates have to pick up the slack and carry the project forward without the OP. Working with a deadbeat teammate is an awful experience. If you need to get anything done, the only way forward is to plead with them to get some work done, or just do it yourself. More often than not, the team ends up doing it themselves. We've all been stuck with deadbeat team mates, from group projects in school to the workplace. It's not okay to be the deadbeat teammate.
- 5y ago

repomies69 5y ago

> It is a huge pay cut. I also am happier than I have ever been in my adult life because I'm learning something challenging and helping people instead of While I congratulate your career move and I am very happy for you, I want to point out that there are tons of jobs in Software Development that genuinely help people and make society go forward.

10hr 5y ago
They don't seem particularly easy to find. Perhaps you could name some?

mrbonner 5y ago

I appreciate your candid feedback about the OP's attitude at work. Especially, I like it when you, as an SDM, agree that majority of the people will be "average" and as long as they don't wreck-havoc the team, they should be appreciated, right? > However! I will say that this way of working and living comes with some significant hazard to your mental health I have a hard time believing that in this stage and age, especially in the US this is true. How do you justify working for a big corp big nice pay to support your family vs. getting a salary just to live by working for your life's mission? Do we just forego the opportunity cost from a bigger paycheck, not just for you but your family as well?

gxt 5y ago

>Through most of that time I have averaged roughly 5 - 10 hours of actual work a week >This is both normal and mostly acceptable, in my professional opinion. If you are expected to engage for 40h/week and only show up for 5-10, this is unacceptable. It's literally theft. If you have to spend 30 out of 40h/week in meetings, etc when it's part of your role as senior or architect etc it is acceptable. If you have to spend 30 out of 40h/week in meetings, etc when it's not part of your role and you don't attempt to raise the issue that your time is not spent fruitfully, this is unacceptable. You're expected to be autonomous and paid handsomely for it, if this is acceptable wtf is wrong with this industry.

10hr 5y ago
I'm approximately a millionaire in my late 20s and have only really built 1 little thing since 2017... Might it catch up to me this year? Perhaps, but that's when I will go get an unrelated masters and change to my "retirement career"
10hr 5y ago
Pretty much my only skill is leetcode easy/med + basic sys design and knowing some SRE principles. I almost wish the interview wasn't as gameable so I could move on with my life in a new field

jliptzin 5y ago

What is your certification in out of curiosity?