
How much do salaried programmers really work? - putzdown
http://pastebin.com/9jCaF63Y
======
scotty79
I find working for corporations really relaxing. You just need to show up,
code some stuff at glacial pace with plenty of time for writing tests and code
reviews and messing with environments that always fall apart and slow hardware
and cumbersome security theatre, and ridiculously wasteful management process
because managers have only vague idea what is to be done and no idea how to
manage and delegate their inaptitude to developer team leaders.

And this feeling that project will fail or succeed mostly regardless of your
effort and probably without effect on your compensation. Worst they can do is
fire you and that will probably mean for you just getting a raise.

No one expects miracles of you and if enyone does no one is expecting that
you'll actually deliver.

This is so relaxing in contrast where each hour of your time is the thing you
sell and often you have to wrestle your money from the client who
overestimated profitability of his phantasy. Where your projects and you
actually rely on you delivering miracles.

------
mrmekon
As a consultant, you get to decide how often you take jobs. You can work
yourself to the bone, or you can take 6 months off per year. You can change
your work schedule as your mood or personal situation changes. If you're up
for it, it's quite easy to work your ass off, and it's quite easy to turn that
efficiency into more money. And when you're young and/or strongly financially
motivated that's easier to do.

As a salaried employee, you usually can't control when you work. You're
(supposedly) going to be in the office ~40 hours a week for ~50 weeks a year,
every year. So you naturally shift into a slower pace to avoid burnout.

I don't see it as a problem. You trade off efficiency for long-term stability.

~~~
NickWarner775
Agreed. I work in a salary job now, and find myself not pushing to do the
extra work as much, just since I know that I will be paid my salary almost
regardless, and that there is close to no incentive to finish a project fast.
People like independent contractors or consultants that get paid by the
project do their work FAST and WELL. I've worked with many.

~~~
notduncansmith
I think it's worth pointing out that "salaried employee" is not the opposite
of "consultant". I work for a consultancy, and while we receive a steady
salary twice a month, we're rewarded well for finishing early. I can't speak
to how common this is as a practice, but I'd just like it to be known that
being salaried does not necessarily entail a lack of concrete motivation to
perform above the minimum.

------
gruntl3d
I have a different point of view, i see contractors producing shit code then
leaving the building before it explodes. These are non-independent contractors
(about 90% of the industry in my country work for big name contract companies)
with very little incentive to produce quality or maintainable code. Whats
better than creating technical debt and never having to pay for it? I have
half a mind to turn contractor just to avoid taking over some contractors
mess.

------
taternuts
I really think that the amount of actual work you do in a given day is going
to be much higher for those with a high level of job satisfaction. Those who
get to solve challenging problems and work on cool products will probably put
more actual work in then those who aren't stimulated.

------
not_a_test_user
I work in an agency so I feel like I'm living in the worst of two possible
worlds: I'm expected to work overtime everyday as clients always need
everything for yesterday and I'm expected to get there everyday at 9AM no
matter how late I stayed the previous day.

------
jacques_chester
I work in a pair-programming shop. I came to them after freelancing for a
while.

The pace is fantastic. We sit down and _work_. We take breaks, we take lunch,
but when we are at the terminal we are absolutely _working_.

The whole logic of the place is: remove obstacles to change. Reduce the cost
and risk of change. Then make changes quickly in the direction of business
value. Repeat.

And it works. Very, very well. Like the NYC subway, even when it's terrible,
it's amazing.

I've never been as productive as I am now.

------
teh_klev
Maybe the question should be re-phrased as:

"Are contract programmers more productive than salaried programmers?"

I think that's what's really being asked here.

------
tempestn
When I was on salary I worked as an electrical engineer rather than solely a
programmer, but the environment was similar. I think I probably averaged a
solid... 4-5 hours of high-quality work a day. And I honestly felt like that
was pretty good most of the time; I was quite productive compared to many
colleagues. I certainly did have the standard difficulties though. Days when I
just couldn't seem to get started until 4pm when it was almost time to go
home, so I'd end up having to choose between leaving after 8 hours without
having accomplished much, or skipping the gym, working through the evening,
etc. Either way I'd feel vaguely guilty.

Now I run a (very) small software company and do everything I can to avoid
these issues. My brief experience as a salaried employee was invaluable. (It
makes me wonder how people who start companies right out of school ever manage
to become effective managers.) I certainly don't want to run a company where
my _best_ employees are producing at about 50%. I've found that (much like the
OP), when I switched to working for myself, my own productivity immediately
shot up - but how can I help create a similar environment for my employees?

The main thing in my opinion, as you'll regularly hear, is to focus on
results, rather than hours. If it's a traditional office, as long as people
are able to make meetings, they should be free to come and go as they please.
One major issue I would have at my previous job was that I was expected to be
there at 9am every morning. (Theoretically there were flex hours until 10am,
but there was a sense that you were slacking coming in at 10, even if you
stayed later than everyone else.) That meant if 5pm rolled around and I was
really in the groove, I was torn between riding that productive wave and ...
leaving, because if they're going to expect me to come in at the same time
regardless, why should I stay late?

Similarly, I would occasionally have work that I could do at home, and would
in fact have ideas about work at home and _want_ to work. (As an electrical
engineer this wasn't as common as a software engineer, but I probably could
have done 20%-40% of my work from home.) But again, there was mixed
motivation, because I wouldn't get any credit for that time, regardless of how
much I accomplished.

So, as a manager, focusing on time spent has to be the absolute worst thing
you can do for employee morale. However, what I didn't realize until I became
a manager/owner was just how _hard_ it is to be 100% results-oriented,
especially when everyone is working remotely. Having a technical background
myself, it's a bit easier, since I'm at least in a good position to evaluate
the quality, and to some extent, the quantity of work produced. But even so,
it can be very hard to not think about whether people are working "enough",
especially when you can't physically see the work happening. I will
occasionally find myself worrying when I don't see any commits or status
updates or anything from a given employee over the course of a day or two,
even though I have full confidence in them. And I think that's natural. Plus,
it's a lot of _work_ staying on top of the details of what people are doing,
to the extent you have to, to be "results-oriented". It seems that most, or at
least many, managers deal with this by just constantly "checking in". They
just pop in (physically or virtually via chat or whatever), ostensibly to see
what you're doing, help out if necessary, etc., but they don't really know
what's going on, so there's no substance to the conversation - it's really
just to see that you're _there_. There are even those services that take a
picture every 30 seconds or whatever, theoretically to foster a team
atmosphere, but it looks a lot to me like something to prove you have your
butt in your chair. It is simply impossible to create good work by _forcing_
someone to be physically present for a given number of hours, but it's a
difficult thing to avoid. (Although I have found that some people appreciate
those random check-ins that drove me crazy, so I try to identify when that's
the case. If so, I will try to IM them occasionally, but I try to say
something useful when I do, and pick times when it's unlikely to interrupt
flow.)

And it's made more difficult by the fact that you can't go too far the other
way either. If you simply give 100% freedom and rely on your employees to keep
you up to date, the work done might be of high quality, but it will slow to a
glacial pace. People do need some amount of structure and goals to remain
productive - just not _pointless_ structure. That's the part I've struggled
most with, since my main concern was the opposite type of bad management,
which I'd been exposed to most in the past. For quite some time I avoided
weekly meetings, since they felt like a waste of time given that we can easily
communicate by email and chat. Turns out a brief weekly meeting (usually
around 30 minutes) to get everyone in sync is immensely helpful in moving
things along. Similarly keeping track of everything in a project tracker like
Pivotal helps a ton. And paradoxically, these types of enforced structure
allow for greater freedom, since they alleviate that stress of not knowing
what your employees are doing. And hopefully they help on the employee's side
too, since there are explicit goals and expectations to keep one motivated,
along with the flexibility to pursue them in the most efficient way.

Honestly, I'm sure there are still days when my employees get a solid 2 hours
of work in. Few people can work at 100% capacity, 40 hours a week, week after
week indefinitely. As a manager I figure I have to accept that, while
providing the environment and the tools to help minimize those days as much as
possible. (Providing sufficient vacation is another important factor there
imo.) Of course, I still wonder what I could do better, so if anyone has
thoughts (or disagreements!) I'd be happy to hear them!

------
hashberry
~3 hours per day. When you become specialized it's easy to complete work
quickly. The salary is paying you to be reliable.

------
dfraser992
I was a independent contractor for about 12 years - I never did fantastically,
but always scraped by reasonably well and had enough free time to keep the
stress levels down. Then I got a contract working on a website that somehow
turned into a enterprise B2B company and I got sucked into burnout for 4
years, due to my not paying attention, excessive psychological ownership (I
was the ONLY IT person on staff, it was a 2 founder, 2 salesguys, and me
company), and the founders turned out to be a) a slimy manipulative asshole
and B) a full blown sociopath who couldn't understand why customers he'd lied
to got upset and threaten to sue....

Yeah, excessive sense of responsibly.... A lesson in the dangers of not paying
attention and getting hooked on work and not understanding the bottom line of
some businesspeople is to screw everyone else over

Anyhow, after my nervous breakdown was over, I got a job working at a largish
startup-ish mobile app company. It's a nice place, the co-workers are fine,
but god almighty, the English are lazy fucks. Half the day seems to be spent
chatting. I do not remember this atmosphere when I was working full time 20
years ago (I'm American) and open office plans just plain suck. I really hate
being distracted. Perhaps it is my still-a-contractor mentality, but I was
hired to do some work and churn out code, or write a document and pointless
stories about the latest traffic jam are slightly annoying. I can't imagine
this is a atypical UK company - there is a saying about "tea-breaks every 20
minutes" that I now understand...

My co-workers know what they are doing, I don't want to seem like I'm
disparaging them. But the idea the English are going to create IT companies on
the order of Apple or Microsoft is pretty laughable. My only other exposure to
the quality of IT in the UK is cleaning up other idiots' messes. OTOH, I am an
American and Americans have an excessive work ethic...

So yes, when you are a contractor, you learn how to think of yourself as a
corporation unto yourself. Thus you get into that mindset, which being a
salaried employee is diametrically opposed to. Until you grasp the
enlightenment that any company these days is going to treat you like trash
when it becomes profitable to do so. I'm not advocating screwing a customer
over, because my alliance is primarily to the profession and not to any
employer, and most clients are not malicious. But you always have to look out
for number one - there is no such thing as loyalty anymore like they had 30,
40 years ago

I'm still making sure to be productive because I'm a professional. But 5pm
comes and I do not worry about anything else, unlike when I was younger. No
one else really is going to care and unless you are keeping the profit from
the surplus labor you generate (yeah, Marx does have some useful things to
day), you are only one of the Clueless

~~~
prx
Doug, don't be an asshole.

Regards, A coworker

~~~
dfraser992
yeah.... sorry. The personal issues are piling up and my way of handling them
is to hyperfocus on work. And to vent about other matters using displacement
mechanisms, a website I'm helping out with has gone down and the hosting
company is doing nothing. I _know_ this stuff, but it takes clearly crossing
the Rubicon first to pull it into consciousness...

