
How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week? - donnemartin
http://brianknapp.me/programmer-60-80-hour-weeks/
======
drblast
I seem to be alone in this, but I actually do about 25-30 hours of actual
programming work each week. And that's sit-down-and-concentrate-and-build-shit
work. I'm pretty ruthless about declining extraneous meetings and I keep my
door closed most of the time.

I think it's reasonable to have 25% of a 40-hour week be for meetings, helping
other people, eating lunch, sitting in on interviews, and learning/trying out
new things.

And yeah, 25-30 hours is probably a maximum, and it needs to be done in three-
hour chunks at a minimum. As a manager you can _easily_ destroy that by
allowing an environment where a solid three-hour block of time never happens
for a dev.

~~~
psyc
Do your worst, skeptical HN, but I swear on my life I've been maintaining more
than 80 hours of ridiculously productive, focused coding time per week, for
about a year. It so different when you love and believe in what you're working
on. I literally can't wait to get out of bed and start working, and the entire
day goes by before I notice. The thing I'm working on is a sheer joy to work
on, and the conditions are ideal. I'd wager the inability to focus for N hours
is related to the stress of having to force yourself to focus on something you
wouldn't be focusing purely for the sake of it.

~~~
j7ake
You need to be thinking of a career of 30+ years rather than a 3 year sprint.

It's cool you're spending your time producing, but don't forget you need to
take care of yourself and hone your fundamentals (linear algebra, data
structures, algorithms, your field).

~~~
ScottAS
Well... As pg mentions in one of his essays: the startup game is about getting
the rewards of a 30 year career out of 4 years. If you truly believe that you
are building something that matters and you are going to win, 80 hour weeks
make a lot of sense.

~~~
coldtea
As pg doesn't mention though, statically you won't reap "the rewards of a 30
year career out of 4 years" regardless of how hard you work and whether you
"truly believe that you are building something that matters and you are going
to win".

------
daliwali
I both agree and disagree with the premise that programming is a creative
process. Donald Knuth calls programming “an aesthetic experience much like
composing poetry or painting.” The most creative work can be done when it's
not clear if something will work or not, that is it might fail, and it
requires the ambition of a mad scientist to succeed. The individual programmer
must have autonomy and not be micro-managed or ruled by a committee, otherwise
they will resort to being creative in ways that are petty and insignificant,
like naming conventions, syntax formatting, arbitrary rules, etc.

99% of programming jobs are not creative jobs. Most problems aren't that
unique, and most programmers work within well-established boundaries and
frameworks. Step out of line or take unconventional risks, and you may find
yourself unemployed. This is not necessary bad, it brings stability, but also
stagnation (it is why enterprise IT culture is so soul-draining, from first-
hand experience). Not only enterprise but many startups operate this way.
There is overwhelming cognitive bias towards doing what other people are
doing, which will only lead to the same results.

------
LoSboccacc
A: you hire young one that have no idea what they're doing and jump into
problems both feet without thinking a path ahead

and for every programmer claims to work that much, you also get two of them
complaining on the costant shit the overworked one produces and have to fix
strange bug half their time

eventually the software becomes a mess of tangled issues and advancement
grinds to an halt irregardless of amount of time spent

~~~
Sorreah
My last job was exactly that. I was dropped in as an almost-30 year old,
working with young 20 year olds still in school.

I was fired a few months later, with the main reason being that I usually left
the office 9 or 10 hours after coming in and only occasionally worked the 12+
hour days that the rest did.

With a small codebase and self contained projects, I can't really say quality
suffered. Only the employees.

~~~
coldtea
> _I was fired a few months later, with the main reason being that I usually
> left the office 9 or 10 hours after coming in and only occasionally worked
> the 12+ hour days that the rest did._

Such practices are illegal (or at least frowned upon) in most of the civilized
world.

~~~
rhapsodic
_> Such practices are illegal (or at least frowned upon) in most of the
civilized world._

It's called "employment-at-will", and it's not that uncommon.

------
jogjayr
The "IPO-ing will make me exceedingly wealthy" scenario is certainly one way
to get an 60-80 hour work week.

The other is to be in a business that the employee is passionate about for
intrinsic reasons. If the employee is a "true believer" in the company's
mission, that can be a motivator to go above and beyond.

Using technology and/or techniques that the employee is interested in learning
can be a useful driver. Someone who wants to learn machine learning, for
instance, will put in the extra hours if they're given a chance to do it at
work while working on a project. Granted it's not a way to get 80 hours from
an expert in the field.

Another is to give an employee a great degree of freedom or responsibility in
a particular role, and emphasize its importance to the company. Giving a
programmer absolute technical authority over a critical project, with high
visibility, can motivate them to go hell for leather for a few months.

Ultimately I think working 60-80 hour weeks over the long term, for any
reason, will cause burnout. But you can get some short-term boosts if you
align the employee's passions with your business needs.

~~~
unholiness
Yeah, I hear a lot of people saying essentially "40 hours is the most anyone
can be productive for in a week". My more realistic rule of thumb is that
people can tolerate maybe 20-30 hours of doing things they don't intrinsically
care about.

So, if you give a shit about 20% of your job, and your job tolerates you doing
personal stuff (slash miscellaneous browsing) for a few hours a week, then
sure, 40 hours can be sustainable. On the other hand, if this job is your
passion, work is stimulating, and you've got things you feel positive
ownership over, then having 60-80 hour work weeks isn't necessarily unhealthy
(so long as you're aware if and when those drives start to dwindle).

The other upshot of this theory is it dismantles argument that side projects
hurt employees' productivity. The extra time spent pursuing your own passions
simply isn't draining in the same way implementing others' ideas is. If
anything, it adds motivation to the day-to-day stuff, knowing you'll learn
skills at work that help the side project you really care about.

------
harrygallagher4
My first programming job (actually, just my first job) was technically a 40
hour/week job, but in the employee handbook it said something along the lines
of: "The <company name> day is typically regarded as 8AM to 8PM." They didn't
pay very well either. Brian is right, I totally hated my job, hated my boss,
hated pretty much the entire company, and quit in 5 months. I was pretty
disappointed. I'm still cautious about getting back into the industry. I'm at
school now, not studying anything CS related.

~~~
mamon
> "The <company name> day is typically regarded as 8AM to 8PM."

correct me if I'm wrong, but usually such statement means that you can choose
your own 8 hour timeframe to work. So you can work 08 AM - 4 PM, or 11AM - 7
PM, or whatever. It is not expressing expectation of 12h workday.

~~~
mcv
That's how I would take that too. It sounds like it's okay to come in at 11 as
long as I work until at least 7 pm.

------
matthewborden
If you _need_ your employees to work 60-80 hours per week, you need to
evaluate your business plan and if it's actually viable.

~~~
Qantourisc
In case an employee has little overhead, get 2 "part-timers" and let them each
work 30-40 hours per week. And cut all other distractions where possible.

~~~
skrebbel
I'll never work in a place that considers 40 hours "part time".

------
grecy
Answer:

Be in America where employees are close to slaves, and people are scared of
losing their job, so you can force them to do these kinds of atrocious things.

My brother lived and worked in North America for 7 years before returning to
Australia. He'd been in Australia for a few months when I asked what the
biggest change was. He didn't say no snow, he didn't say driving on the wrong
side of the road, food or attitudes.

He said in North America people are scared of and slaves to their jobs because
of Health Care, student loans and debt in general, where-as in Australia
employers are thankful to employees, and nobody is scared of their job.

I think it's a powerful statement when it's the most noticeable difference
after 7 years.

~~~
mack73
Nobody outside of NA are scared of loosing their jobs, is what you believe,
because of how enslaved to the system Americans are?

Households in Sweden take on heavy debt. If we loose our jobs here some of us
fall back for a while on a (voluntary) system which from an angle looks like a
basic income but that cover only a fraction of that household's mortage,
enslaving us to a system in the same way Americans may seem enslaved in their.

I always though Americans were used to and didn't have a lost sence of
security when job-hopping, the way their employment system is designed.

Edit: clarified the opt-in nature of such an insurance

~~~
grecy
> _Nobody outside of NA are scared of loosing their jobs, is what you believe,
> because of how enslaved to the system Americans are?_

I didn't say _nobody_ , and I didn't say _everywhere_ outside America. Don't
exaggerate what I said.

I used an example that Australia Vs. America is a vast difference.

In my experience (and that of my brother), Americans not having maternity
leave, sick leave, decent holidays etc. and having student debt and health
care tied to their work means they are treated much more like slaves than in
other high-performing OECD countries.

I'm curious about Sweden now.

\- When one does lose their job in Sweden, what happens when you break your
leg next week? or get cancer?

\- How much student debt to those in Sweden incur for a 4 years bachelor
degree?

\- How many weeks of leave does Sweden mandate by law from full-time work?

\- How about maternity leave and sick leave?

~~~
mack73
>Don't exaggerate what I said

Alright then.

>When one does lose their job in Sweden, what happens when you break your leg
next week? or get cancer?

Care for children is always for free in all clinics except private ones. Care
for the rest of us cost 30 EUR, no matter if you have a job or not. There is
an upper roof of how much your yearly medical bill is. This roof stays the
same if you have a job or not. I have it that roof a couple of times but never
for acctual medicine bills, so I don't know exactly how it works for medicine,
but doctor bills, the upper roof is 10 doctor visits for 30 EUR then a year of
no doctor bills.

Many have extra insurance to conver for events where you loose your ability to
work.

>How much student debt to those in Sweden incur for a 4 years bachelor degree?

One part of the debt you take on you never pay back. That part is like a carte
blanche check that students get to spend on whatever education they like, at
University level. Second part is a loan. Some work part-time while at
University and others hit the roof which would be something like 17 semesters
and 17*2000=34K EUR. Then you start paying that back as soon as you take on
your first job but never over ~1% of your income.

>How many weeks of leave does Sweden mandate by law from full-time work?

5 weeks. Many have 6 weeks. You can get those in money instead of as vacation.
4 weeks is around a months pay.

>How about maternity leave and sick leave?

Everyone have sickleave. First day: no money for you, poor sick fellow. Next
day its around 70% of your pay. If you are chronically ill a special incurance
takes care of you, puts you in early retirement.

All mothers: around 300 days of leave per child. You get goverment money
during those days. All fathers: minimum is 3 months I think? They can also use
some of the mother's days.

~~~
grecy
Thanks for the detailed reply, I appreciate it.

As a thought exercise, answer all of my questions above for the USA, comparing
the answers to those you gave for Sweden.

Now you know why I said workers in the USA are akin to slaves compared to
high-performing OECD countries.

~~~
mack73
Yes, in Sweden we have laws that protect the employer to a much higher degree
and we also have a very static work force. You can easily go this route: learn
something, get a job, don't steal or do anything criminal, keep that job until
you die or get replaced by a robot. And many do. And get very anxious at the
prospect of ever changing occupation because of their mortage. I job-hop alot
though (without anxiety, because I'm in demand).

I thought the American system would at least to some degree make job-hopping a
non-issue, giving you a much more flexible work force, not anxious, since the
fact that you can get fired and have to leave the same day goes both ways. But
perhaps that worry comes from not having any type of security nets where we
have at least a few. So sure, I see where you come from when you say an
American employee is a slave to the corporation that gives him health
insurance. He can hop only to other employers with health insurance. He will
have less options than me.

We are healther in Sweden, perhaps, but slaves to the money system like
everyone else.

~~~
fatso83
I think you mean employee (arbetar), not employer (arbetsgivare).

~~~
mack73
Yes you are right. I mix up those to.

------
smdz
If an employer is expecting this, they are setting themselves up for failure.

> No programmers really work 60-80 hours a week, especially in a 5 day span

There are cases when we are required to deliver athletic/marathon-like
performance and it can be achieved for a shorter timespan

I have worked on multiple occasions, 14-16 hours per day to achieve 98-100
"productive" hrs per week, working 120 hrs a week for 3-4 weeks. I know it was
productive, because I installed time-tracker and used a personal notepad too
to track my time. I was invisible to my family, sleeping just 4-5 hours a day
and sometimes I could not sleep after the first week. Also note, doing this as
a freelancer I was getting paid for all that extra time - and I have a premium
price attached for quicker results. I would not recommend doing this if you
are being paid peanuts or being paid regular rates because that opens up a
world of abusive managers/biz-owners.

------
memracom
When I really like the work that I am doing and there are some real
challenges, I can get up to 6 hours of work done before I have to take a break
for a few hours. Not every day, but 2-3 days out of 5. It means that there is
no point in making an appearance before 10 am or working past 4 pm. But when I
am really smoking I can put in another 2-4 productive hours in the evening
after 7 pm or so.

Of course, few employers understand this kind of work pattern, and most of
them prefer having a developer spend more time in the office, even though it
results in less productive work getting done. This is often enforced by people
who are unable to correctly assess technical skills or the outcomes of
technical work. Since they have no clue who is competent and whether any of
the work output is usable, they compensate by forcing people to spend more
time doing useless activities that they can assess. Like sitting at a desk,
having meetings, raising an issue and setting up a meeting of stakeholders to
discuss how to solve that issue. Many of us have to work in environments where
these enforcers create a lot of churn to make it seem like the enforcer is a
valuable member of the team.

I suspect that there are more such useless people in the workforce nowadays
because companies no longer try to hire good competent people who will work
for one company their entire career. As a result, there is nobody in the
company long enough to identify and get rid of incompetents while at the same
time, the truly skilled people give up and find a new opportunity every 2 to 3
years.

By the way, the incompetents that I talk about are not skilled developers who
make a mistake or two, or who get stuck in ratholes solving the wrong problem.
I am referring to the people that are weeded out with fizzbuzz. Unfortunately
there is no fizzbuzz for project managers, business analysts and a whole range
of other support roles, including managers.

So my take on how to get developers to work at a high level of productivity is
to make the environment excellent. Get rid of the people who waste other
people's time. Cut way back on meetings and replace them with a good ticket
system and some people who make sure that tickets are properly sized with
clear requirements including context and acceptance criteria. This pretty much
means a mature Agile shop. Focus on all the stuff around the developers and
make sure that the retrospectives are as brutally honest as possible, and
follow through on fixing problems that are brought up in the retrospectives.

~~~
dlwdlw
The danger here is that this ideal environment created requires external
meaning and tasks. Exploratory movement is messy, painful, and inefficient. It
often requires you to learn new things on the fly and punishes severly for
understandable mistakes.

Most of upper management and management involves strategic plays. Exploring a
jungle, trying to find treasure, and doing so while other tribes are out there
to kill you. Allies can become enemies and vice versa. Reality is cruel.

Triabl power is amassed through followers, and one of the best perks you can
provide for followers is meaning. A cultivated environment where they can do
what they want to do and is often what they do best. The messiness of dealing
with what makes them feel like fools is hidden away.

The end result is that strong tribes (also known as insitutions or movements)
can deploy "happy" specialists defeating other tribes, be it seige mechanics,
hackers, or priests. The specialization is possible because they are shielded.

This specialization defines the middle class. Comfort within a bubble. A
bubble that depends onthe existence of the institution or tribe they subscribe
to. The overspecialization that is a strength ONLY as along as the rules don't
change. The disruptor unwittingly becoming the disruptee. Twitter giving rise
to Trump.

------
simplydt
I think it follows from Brian's point that only founders may ever put in that
much work, maybe very early employees; as he said, the trick is to be painting
your own house...

Having said that, I completely agree that long hours are overrated and maybe
unhealthy. Burnout will follow. Everyone has to recover. Such long stints can
only be kept up for so long!

~~~
TP4Cornholio
Is that true? I avoided ever joining startups because I assumed everyone
worked 60 hours every week.

~~~
brogrammernot
To an extent, yes.

However, I would say typical early stage startup work is 55 hours/week.

Basically 10 hours day through the week, and a couple hours on the weekend.

~~~
TP4Cornholio
What's your experience on the average workweek for mid/later stage startups?

~~~
brogrammernot
Again, n=1 but I've experienced and have friends who have experienced around
50 hours/week for mid/later stage startups.

The stress is lower because you usually have more cash flow or significant
rounds that make the work more enjoyable and you have a better comfort of
working overall.

------
isaaclyman
This sounds true to me, but it would take a very uncommon executive to put it
into practice. MBA types won't do a thing without quantitative data behind it
and attempts to measure real productivity in creative fields usually turn into
meaningless self-fulfilling prophecies. I wonder what it would take to break
the dogma of the 40-hour week?

~~~
houst0n_
Running teams of contractors for years, I disagree it's uncommon. I let my
guys do whatever they want as long as the work is being delivered.

Sometimes I have to have a standoff with some salaried dragonwoman or other
who takes offence but that's on me and doesn't run downstream \-- as long as
everything is being done why should this be a problem?

Productivity drops when you force people to work outside their peak schedule
and as soon as you force school rules you immediately deteriorate your
relationship with a subordinate because you're saying you don't trust them
from the outset.

Someone takes the piss then reign them in. Starting from that position makes
you a bad boss and an unhappy team is much less likely to scrape across the
finish line each sprint than one who isn't...

~~~
balls187
> Running teams of contractors for years, I disagree it's uncommon. I let my
> guys do whatever they want as long as the work is being delivered.

I agree with this statement. I would amend it to say "As long as the work
_they signed up for_ is being delivered."

~~~
houst0n_
Who is 'they' in that case? They for me is whoever is paying us to help them
with their business.

If it's the contractors/team members then no. Ive unfortunately had several
highly paid (4 figures uk/day) contractors who think themselves above certain
tasks, or who refuse to do anything they didn't agree with who seem surprised
when they get told to fuck off.

You're an overpaid contract dev and you're refusing to implement your points
because you disagree with the architecture even after it was discussed fully,
while on a k a day? Fuck those ballerinas. They won't be getting more work
with us then.

We are there to help a business achieve a goal, nothing more.

~~~
tensor
I downvoted you for arrogance. You obviously think your are better than those
you "manage." Are you technical? Can you sling assembly? Ok, what about C? C++
maybe? I'm guessing you can't do any of that. Can you back up your talk?

~~~
throwanem
Sounds like a good boss to me, and I know good bosses. Sounds like he doesn't
have a lot of time for the kind of prima donna architecture astronaut who
can't convince anyone else on a team that he's worth listening to but wants
everything done his way anyway. Shall I tell you what you sound like right
now?

------
lngnmn
Still trying to apply manufacturing or construction work practices to IT in
2017.

The people of talent and intelligence, like poets and writers, work due to
their own vision and inner values to make money as a by-product of their
chosen occupation.

Coding factories would inevitable fail like any other kind of a manual labor
sweatshops.

To make intelligent people do their best (intelligence implies that this is
the only way they approach any task) is to motivate them for the cause. Any
kind of naive manipulation, primitive deceptive practices and employee-morale
bullshitting would surely fail with reasonable smart people.

There is an economic law - a forced labor is not productive and it produces a
lowest quality crap the whole system could get away with. That's why communism
failed.

------
euph0ria
I find the numbers somewhat off compared to how it is where I work. We are a
small team mostly working remotely.

I would estimate that my team puts in (per person) on average about 5-6 hours
per day writing code. About 2 hours go to emails, daily meetings, demos and
architecture discussions etc.

I have very few interruptions during the day and usually 1-2 meetings pre-
scheduled that are 30 min in duration each.

My phone is usually on silent for all notifications except calls and I turn
off email as well when I need to focus. I take a short 5 min break every 45
min or so. I avoid HN/Facebook etc during the work day.

There is very little stress, we work towards a defined goal and have daily
updates on the progress and what everyone focuses on. Deadlines are very rare.

------
hnnsj
Fully agree on the office hours aspect of it, but not necessarily on the "you
can't get your best work done by someone else's specification" aspect. Either
I'm missing some point, or this sounds rather egocentric to me. What is "good
work"? Beautiful code? Difficult code? Or is it code that is actually of
utility? I'd argue the third. If your code isn't doing anyone else any good
(and hopefully enough people to make it a viable business and thus "work". And
if your code is supposed to help anyone else, you have to build it to someone
else's specifications, implicitly or explicitly.

------
tobyhinloopen
I somewhat agree with the author, but I have some comments.

I do agree that programming is a creative profession and that creative
"energy" is limited to just a few hours per day/week.

However, most programming doesn't require constant creative insights. Even if
you have to be creative (IE thinking of fancy features/implementations or
something yourself) the most time is spent actually writing code.

I tend to think of something (requiring intense creative energy), planning
what I'll be doing and when my creative energy is lower or I have plenty of
planned work, I actually execute these plans. Writing code based on earlier
made plans requires little creative energy usually. Additionally, the
"executing" phase usually takes many times longer than planning.

For me, for a 40 hour work week, about 8 goes into planning, 24 goes into
actual programming and 8 goes into useless meetings/e-mails/blablabla. Then I
have creative energy to spare on my side projects for about 20h/week.

Tbh, I did spent a lot of time figuring out how to optimise workflow privately
and professionally, figuring out why sometimes I could get stuff done and
sometimes I couldn't. A separation of "creative time" and "doing time" helped
a lot.

~~~
wootest
Implementation may be strictly mechanical if you have everything planned out
NASA-binder style, but surely there'll still be a need to adjust the plan from
time to time? Then there's debugging and maintenance, both of which may not
require all your creativity all the time, but if you're creatively sapped,
you're walking into it with a few tires already slashed. At least that's what
I've found in my own experience. It's not that you have to be creative
constantly, it's that you have to be able to summon up the capacity to be
creative at any given time.

------
gorthol
That how I would maximize developer productivity (but NOT working hours) if I
owned a company:

\- Let them work at home, at _any_ time they want. Just reserve some hours for
meetings or stand-ups if you want. Don't control the hours, control that the
tasks are progressing.

\- Open source parts of the codebase, let the developers own some modules or
components on their github accounts. This way the quality of the code will be
a personal matter to them.

\- If shit goes down or hard deadlines approach (this happens) pay overtime
and do a post-mortem analysis of what happened but DON'T turn that into a
blame fest just cold analysis because most often than not its random factors
of life (downtime for family or health reasons, whatever) and of coding not
being a hard science (that external library that looked so sweet turned a
minefield for example ) the real causes. Anybody trying to do that in the
postmortem should be called out.

\- If the last point happens too much, fire the manager/lead/CTO (normal
programmers should be fired too sometimes but only when their performance is
substandard and this is sometimes that will be easy to see day by day).

------
airbreather
Brain Knapp is so on the money here.

So, if attendance is your key metric the best way to get them to attend 60-80
hours a week is pay them by the hour, plus allow them to "work from home" half
the time.

------
xyzzy4
To answer the actual question:

1\. Pay your programmers per hour, and pay them very well. For example many
people who are paid $200/hour would work 80 hours per week.

2\. Provide free taxis or have easy public transportation to their homes.

3\. Offer to pay for their children's daycare if they work extra hours.

4\. Provide free food delivery from nearby restaurants.

~~~
codr4life
Why would you work 80 hours per week when a couple of hours a day is enough to
get by? Or even encourage that? There's plenty more important things in life
than work and funny money, and plenty more important things in work than
number of hours spent behind the keyboard.

~~~
tudorconstantin
Because you know that you go full throttle for 3-5 years and then you have the
possibility to retire.

I would sacrifice 5 years of my life in order to get financial freedom for the
rest of it.

~~~
codr4life
And then you get run over by a bus.

~~~
tvmalsv
I guess the alternative is to learn very little, have fun, run up huge debt,
because why not, you're going to get run over by a bus tomorrow. But, then you
don't. Well, crap.

~~~
codr4life
Go ahead and postpone life then, no one will stop you; life still doesn't give
a shit about plans. You should try being close do dying a couple of times,
that will align your perspective with reality in no time at all.

------
gregn610
Agreed to a point, but there's also several hours a day of non-programming
that just has to get done which never features in these SV conversations.
Dealing with network guys to get the firewall exceptions you need, getting the
DBA to actually do the indexes you asked for, endless ticket updates,
meetings, more meetings, timesheets, checking the contractor's deliverables,
production issues, interuptions etc. etc. Then add understaffing, UAC
policies, sanfus and shifting requirements. So sure, 3 or 4 hours in the
programming zone easily becomes a 55hr week.

------
adpoe
Early in my career, I worked at a few different businesses where management
expected us to work 12+ hour days. Mostly web development & design.

We did it, but the secret was that we didn't spend all of that time actually
heads-down, working. (Surprise.)

We were in the office for 12+ hours (sometimes until 3am, having client calls
and presentations at midnight), but how much of that time were we actually
getting creative, productive work done? Maybe half.

And here's the problem: The hard part was, I was managing projects, and I had
developers putting in 12+ hour days against my budgets, when I knew that maybe
6 of those hours were actually productive work time. Everything went over
budget, across the board, for everyone's projects. At least on paper.

'Moral' of the story: you can require people to work whatever time frames you
want. And if you pay well enough, people will do it. (At least until they burn
out, or find a more prestigious/higher-paying job.) But it's a waste of
everyone's time and money, and it creates more problems than its solves.

Worst of all, you're creating an environment where the culture of working 12+
hours is nothing but theatre. You spend half your time creating and carefully
cultivating an artifice, just to meet management's expectations... which they
know are unrealistic. Talk about being unproductive.

------
spacelizard
This article also leaves out:

\- waiting for compiles

\- waiting for the CI server to finish running tests

\- waiting for network transfers

\- waiting for VMs to spin up

\- waiting for slow algorithms to process data

\- et cetera

Even if it were physically and mentally possible to problem-solve 16 hours a
day, we are still not at the point where our processes and machines can keep
up with us, and we probably never will be. The dev-test cycle in itself is
very time-consuming and repetitive. I don't know any way of solving this that
doesn't involve spending even more time writing a lot of unit tests.

~~~
auvrw
provided there are a few tasks to handle at once, some of the time under the
general "wait for compute" heading can be reduced by switching between tasks
... just recently (my dumbfoundedness over why i didn't think of this sooner
being the main reason i'm posting) i realized "hey, why not clone the local
repo into _another_ local repo?". the thing to figure out is how to decide
whether waiting for compute or context switching will be more boring (or "less
productive").

while i'm blathering, this too:

"good programmers are lazy." \-- anon

------
tutufan
Yeah, you can demand that people get shit done. But in the end, shit is what
you will have.

------
peterbecich
WakaTime is great for tracking time actually spent typing:
[https://wakatime.com](https://wakatime.com)

------
wellboy
Good article but disagree with one of the main arguments that programming is
creative work.

Maybe 10% of programming is the creative part,if you're not building
artificial intelligence, but for instance consumer apps or UI.

20% is reading the technology API doc to understand how it works, 50% is
writing the code down and the rest is bug fixing, so not so much creativity.

------
jnordwick
Title should include (2016). I remember when this went around last year.

~~~
supercoder
Why should it include it if you remember when it was ?

~~~
drewmate
Because I didn't. It's mostly as a courtesy to me.

------
lutusp
Quote: "No programmers really work 60-80 hours a week, especially in a 5 day
span."

Wow -- this person doesn't know about hackers (granted that it's a term with
multiple definitions). The problem with hackers is not getting them to work,
it's getting them to stop.

A true hacker will work on a project far beyond any practical termination
point, perpetually thinking of ways to improve the code in ways that meet
private aesthetic goals unrecognizable to others and having no bearing on
earthly considerations.

Programmers that quit after eight hours and go home may fit well into a
corporate culture, but they're not the kind of programming addicts about whom
legends are born.

Poets have a saying that poems are never finished, they're abandoned. It's the
same with programming, but only if you're a hacker.

p.s. found the original quote:

"A poem is never finished; it is only abandoned." \-- Paul Valéry

~~~
bnegreve
His point is that developers can work a lot on their own project, but you
can't get them to work that much on someone else's project.

------
koonsolo
Steve Blank has a nice article about this:
[https://steveblank.com/2016/09/07/working-hard-is-not-the-
sa...](https://steveblank.com/2016/09/07/working-hard-is-not-the-same-as-
working-smart/)

“Our team knows this isn’t a 9-5 company. We stay as long as it takes to get
the job done.”

...the front door of the company opened – and a first trickle of employees
left. I asked, “Are these your VPs and senior managers?” He nodded looking
surprised and kept watching. Then after another 10-minute pause, a stream of
employees poured out of the building like ants emptying the nest. Rahul’s jaw
dropped and then tightened. Within a half-hour the parking lot was empty.

------
_Codemonkeyism
Work or sitting at their desk? (or staying in office doing 'stuff'). From my
experience and some studies knowledge workers peak at around 30-35 hours a
week.

Astonishingly still many client CEOs ask me how they can make their developers
work more, marketing also works 60h they claim.

~~~
otoburb
>Astonishingly still many client CEOs ask me how they can make their
developers work more, marketing also works 60h they claim.

Some larger software firms try to capitalize their R&D costs by developers to
enter timecards. If the CEO doesn't prioritize work culture and labour norms
appropriately, it's easy to make the case that developers aren't working hard
enough (i.e. >40hrs/week) against anecdotal claims from other departments.

One might think the easy way out of this is to fight data with data and ask
the marketing teams to enter timecards. But I've never seen or heard of any
marketing department enter timecards, primarily because marketing is
considered an operational cost to the busines from an accounting perspective,
as opposed to Engineering being classified as a more favourable capital cost.

------
ganfortran
20 hours sounds right. I don't think I could gain more actual productivity
forced by someone even myself to work long hours. Often time, when it feels
right, the code just spills itself like charm, and after that my brain just
turned south for distractions.

------
paulryanrogers
Question itself strikes me as only slightly better than "How do you make
workers indentured servants?"

Thankfully the article itself proposes the questioner reconsider the realities
of programming work.

------
camgunz
Pay them double the money for half the quality.

------
faragon
Few can do real programming work over 30h a week. If you force people, you'll
get fake work. Specific individuals can work more, by themselves (challenge,
pride, try to show whatever, etc.), but are the exception. And of course, that
effort level can not be sustained forever.

------
ntlk
I wouldn't trust the creative work of someone who does over 35 hours a week.
Creative problem solving requires the ability to switch into a relaxed state
at will, and I haven't yet met anyone who can do it while under pressure to
work 60 hours a week or more.

------
lacampbell
Do people who work like that actually get valued by their employers? To me it
seems like they'd be treated as expendable and easy to push around - not a
valued trait for promotion.

------
Xcelerate
I'm curious — are there any companies who have their programmers work ~4 hours
a day? How does the work output compare to more traditional companies?

------
noway421
Almost thought that was Ask HN and was terrified

------
seajones
35-40 hours, but we have some guys who work extremely long hours, showing
their effort out, which is fair enough

------
andreapaiola
Stupid (not very intense) bug fixing > 50% of the time.

------
andreapaiola
yeah, I practically don't do meetings (I'm not in USA) and I do 40 hours a
week of almost pure programming.

It's very hard

------
dbg31415
> No programmers really work 60-80 hours a week, especially in a 5 day span.
> That is a 12-16 hour day, 5 days a week.

Who works only 5 days a week? Saturday... sure take the day, but many of us
end up working Sundays to get everything ready for Monday mornings. Making
sure all the issues are prepared, reports for the past week have been written,
all of our tasks for the week are defined and prioritized... 8-10 hours a day,
6 days a week... seems common to me.

~~~
chrisdone
You're (presumably) being paid for 5 days a week at 8 hours per day.

If you cannot manage your time reasonably within this period, consider doing
some research into that. If you can and yet your employers expect more time,
then you're probably being exploited.

Either way this is not normal.

~~~
dbg31415
I think it's very normal for anyone who owns their own business.

