I should actually be working 8h a day, but most of it is spend not working. If I’m honest I’m probably working more like 3h a day even though I enjoy my job.
8 hours of nominal work does equal about 3-4 hours of actual focused work. This is completely normal don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Humans need to eat, go to toilet, socialize with their coworkers, relax the brain, move if constantly in the same position.
Btw, meetings are work. If you spend a lot of time in meetings that does count as actual work.
I’m not (maybe an hour at most because I just started my job/training as software engineer), but long meetings are way more tiring than sitting there and coding. And coding while needing to listen to a meeting is even more exhausting.
Coding is something you can do for longer stretches as you get better at it. I struggle with 3 or 4 hours straight out of college. Now I run 7 hours no problem.
The dichotomy is that the more proficient you are at coding, the more meetings you need to be in to give engineering input… So the less time you spend coding. As a staff SWE I’m rarely able to get more than 3 or 4 hours straight to sit and code. Rather it’s an hour here or there broken up my meetings.
I relish my no-meeting days to sit and actually get concepts out into code.
I’m spent at the end of 7 hours coding though. I’ve crunched to 14 before… But the code I wrote was shit for 5 of those hours.
My company started prioritizing developer time by heavily discouraging meetings with devs before noon, and one day a week is supposed to be meeting free. We also just don’t respond to pings before noon now unless it’s an absolute emergency. Took managers a bit to catch on, but my efficiency has honestly skyrocketed and I’m loving it.
I’m not even allowed to work more than 10h a day so I’m not even able to crunch 14h except they are personal projects
Btw, meetings are work. If you spend a lot of time in meetings that does count as actual work.
This is so important. I know so many people that complain about people being “in meetings all day instead of working” or manager expectations are to be doing a bunch of stuff, but your calendar is absolutely packed with dumb meetings. Meetings are work, so if other work needs to be done then I need to be allowed to take that time.
And no, multitasking isn’t real. If I’m doing other stuff during the meeting then I’m not actually paying full attention to either the meeting or the other work.
It fluctuates based on workload, but I find myself working anywhere from 4-5 hours a day to basically nonstop during my workday (9 hrs). I do think most people are really only capable of doing “good” work, meaning being at their most productive, for about 3 hours a day though. The rest of the time is spent slogging through and putting out mediocre work, just to get it done.
The same for me (but 8 hour workday). Honestly, I couldn’t do the job if the working non-stop days were the default. I am wasted after such a high-stress day, so I need it to fluctuate. I also don’t feel bad on days where I do less, because I know I do a 110% on the other days. A workday is simply too long to be productive the whole time and the workload usually varies.
Straight answer up front: sometimes my entire ten hour shift has less than 10 minutes of work in it.
I must confess, my job is a bit of an edge case because not everybody wants to do it.
I work third shift, and usually exclusively the weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday nights, 11pm to 9am).
4 ten-hour shifts.
and during these shifts… bruh most of the time I’m chilling
I’m reading ebooks, I’m watching anime or youtube, I’m chatting with friends on discord
most of my job is having a pulse while babysitting an empty building.
the part of my job that makes the money, though, is when the phone rings.
I work at a towing company, and I dispatch.
When people are calling me, it’s almost exclusively because shit’s fucked up.
I am in charge of sending some unfuckery their way.
Most of the calls are from companies though: Motor freight lines like Ryder, Penske, Fleetnet, UPS, FedEx, and a few other carriers that are even less customer-facing; motor clubs like Swoop, Urgent.ly, AAA, NationSafe; or insurance companies like Allstate or GEICO.
What they want to hear is how soon and how much and knowing how to rapidly generate this information while remaining accurate is where most of the expertise lies.
Then there’s the police calls.
When there has been an accident and a disabled vehicle (and its pieces) must be removed from obstructing the roadway, that’s us.
When some dumb bastard drives drunk and subsequently gets rightly caught, we impound their shit.
When a stolen vehicle is found, we recover it.
Whilst my opinion regarding cops (pigs) has evolved (fuck the police) quite a bit (they’re fucking bastards) in recent years (every last one of them), my guys do the NOT Standing On Someone’s Neck bits of it AFTER the dust has settled and the blood is done being spilled (and the bullets have stopped flying…) so generally we’re one of the responders on the make-someone’s-life-LESS-horrible side of the curve. Which feels pretty nice.
There are the rare occasions where a major shitshow evolves and I’m triaging calls and coordinating multiple assets in the field though, and that’s when the pay really feels worth it.
Presently I’m 5 years in and making 20/hr
Literally at this very second, it’s a wednesday night/thursday morning and I’ve already DONE my 40 hours this week - I’m here on overtime covering the other third shift dispatcher while they’re out, and each of these hours is worth $$$THIRTY BUCKS HELL YEAAAA$$$
it’s not enough to afford rent nowadays of course, but eh, i inherited the house from my father…
(and want to transform it into a group home for low income persons and families if I can get it organized right)
(i’ll be taking a page from history and trying to turn my house into something like a multigenerational compound except for people who aren’t strictly related by blood)
for most people it does. For me, while they may exist outside of my awareness, I am nevertheless unaware of them. What health issues I had been experiencing came about as a result of other major life circumstances, and i’ve seen some pivotal improvements since some of those circumstances have been amended.
I always was a natural night-owl. I’m always more alert at night, and get eepy sweepy after the sun comes up, so it suits my proclivities perfectly.
I’ve been at it for five years already, so, if it’s a chronic issue, guess I’ll find out after another 20 years of it!
Same, as a programmer I would guess 2-3h at most. I mean actual coding with that, meetings and discussions take up the rest of the day.
The dude is right though. The most important part of being a programmer is designing an elegant solution. That requires talking the problem through, solliciting feedback, getting ideas… you meeting with ppl and talking to them.
The second most important part of being a programmer is realizing that you’re not doing this alone. Once again, you talking to colleagues to discuss what they can expect and when, likewise what you need and when.
Meetings are super important. Unless your a code monkey or if it’s office gossip or me having to spend an hour explaining why a job estimated to take 4 weeks will not be done next Friday. And no, “trying a little harder” or “realizing how important this to the client” isn’t going to change that.
I work in an office 40 hours a week 8 hours a day Monday to Friday. Let me clarify, though.
No matter who asks that’s my answer and that’s how I expect to be paid for my time. There are days where I don’t have as many tasks to do and maybe I don’t have something to do here and there but during my scheduled time I’m always available if something comes up. If I’m making myself available that’s still working. If I can’t just leave work or just ignore things on my to do list then I’m working. I think more people need to think of it this way. Just because you’re not actively working on a task every second of working hours doesn’t mean you’re not working.
Edit: just wanted to add that working on your skills especially with something related to your job that doesn’t necessarily complete a task for work also counts as time worked in my eyes as well as my boss. I’m very open about training time and always keeping on top of my craft. Not sure if this is normal but it ought to be.
The other point of view is that we should work like 2 or 3 days in a week, or better, something like 20h, with no overload of work and no lower pay.
Maybe your work requires you to be available, but when some people spend hours on pause or chatting on the phone they are not available.
Developing strategies to avoid boredom and keep your wages because we are enslaved 40h per week should not be something we have to fight for. But I admit the situation may be very different depending on where you live. One fight at a time.
I completely agree. It’s definitely a slow battle. I’m just happy that my situation at work is as good as it is. I still think in general I’m under paid and I would also like to work less days in a week but I think it’ll be a long time before that’s the norm. If it ever happens. The least I and everyone else can do is to set realistic expectations and boundaries.
My last job was very bad at this. They were horrible with working around people’s schedules and getting days off was very difficult. My current job is the complete opposite. To be fair I got really lucky but I also think it shows work life balance is becoming more important to employees and in turn employers have to respect it or people won’t work for them. To give some context my current job allows me to request time off up to 24 hours before my normal schedule WITHOUT any type of approval. I can work around my schedule in almost any way I’d like and I can call off sick without needing to give a reason let alone provide a doctor’s note. This is how it should be for all jobs but I think we’re a long way from that.
