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A bit over fifteen years ago, developer Joel Spolsky wrote:
It makes me think of those researchers who say that basically people can't control what they eat, so any attempt to diet is bound to be short term and they will always yoyo back to their natural weight. Maybe as a software developer I really can't control when I'm productive, and I just have to take the slow times with the fast times and hope that they average out to enough lines of code to make me employable.
What drives me crazy is that ever since my first job I've realized that as a developer, I usually average about two or three hours a day of productive coding. When I had a summer internship at Microsoft, a fellow intern told me he was actually only going into work from 12 to 5 every day. Five hours, minus lunch, and his team loved him because he still managed to get a lot more done than average. I've found the same thing to be true. I feel a little bit guilty when I see how hard everybody else seems to be working, and I get about two or three quality hours in a day, and still I've always been one of the most productive members of the team. That's probably why when Peopleware and XP insist on eliminating overtime and working strictly 40 hour weeks, they do so secure in the knowledge that this won't reduce a team's output.
But it's not the days when I "only" get two hours of work done that worry me. It's the days when I can't do anything.
The writer reckons the key to a productive day of writing software lies most in just getting started at the beginning of it. Do Soylentils have tried-and-true tricks to getting into the flow of writing code, or is it always catch-as-catch-can?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday July 27 2017, @10:08PM (4 children)
Thats... actually kinda nice. I'm just saying that my first impression of "Friday Frolicks" was the usual BS come out of a mgmt meeting at 3:30pm on the way to the golf course "Oh BTW here is a weeks worth of work to accomplish before 8am Monday, it's super important and best of luck I got a 4pm tee time"
Flex time companies are where its at... when its enough of a miracle to get everyone in core hours noon-3, they don't waste time BSing around.
Big company/remote/distributed is also nice. If the guy I sit next to stops talking to me, that doesn't matter because my closest coworker in terms of responsibility is 500 miles away and the data center where my server images reside isn't even in this state. And for awhile my bosses office was over 90 miles away from mine...
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 27 2017, @10:16PM (2 children)
If all people that are really relevant for you are far away. Why are you not telecommuting?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday July 28 2017, @01:06PM (1 child)
Elderly micromanaging boomer executives, the bane of business productivity. Whats worse, having software development procedures and standards stop in 1985, or following every weekly magazine fad?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday July 30 2017, @07:24PM
At least boomer executives will go out of style (best-before) not too soon :-)
Unless you decide to make your own business.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday July 27 2017, @10:37PM
Yeah I do sometimes feel kinda bad about skipping those all the time, 'cause it's a decent enough idea I guess. Usually it's some kind of low-effort "sport" (the only one I ever went to was a "humans vs. zombies" type game, although basically slow motion 'cause nobody cared all that much...last week they did some kind of paper airplane contest...although sometimes it's just ice cream too) But it's an open plan office where I sit in a giant ten person cubicle, so when that thing empties out and the office goes quiet and I'm all alone and can focus and really dig into whatever I want with nobody breathing down my neck...that's often the best part of my whole week. Usually I try to use that time to expand my personal toolbox type scripts...although it's often right at the start of my shift so sometimes I'm just bracing myself when I see all hell about to break loose :)