
Expecting programmers to problem solve for 8 hours is stupid - sake
I recently started a day job where I&#x27;m expected to work a normal 8 hour workday. No one is holding me accountable that I stick to that so it seems the requirement is more of a formality, but that&#x27;s besides the point.<p>As I&#x27;ve experienced trying to keep up this 8 hour work, I&#x27;ve come to realize that sticking to this old assembly line convention makes absolutely no sense for our field of work. On a good day I can work even 12h+, but usually my limit is somewhere around 4 and ½ hours. And after six hours I&#x27;m just burning myself out trying to force myself to focus. At 8 hours I can feel physical pain and it will take me whole evening to recover when I get off the clock.<p>It&#x27;s silly how many companies are still sticking to this old rule. Nobody wins when employees are wasting their time being inefficient. If the 8 hours workday is actually enforced, employees will just come up with coping mechanisms against the stress the overly stretched workday is causing them and they will end up loosing motivation.<p>Conservative improvement would be working 6h * 5 + 4h on Saturday (remotely), which would make employees more efficient, mentally healthy and that&#x27;s 6 hours less work time per week.
======
AnimalMuppet
My first software manager said that the most you can get out of people is five
hours of real work a day. She also said that programmers need to learn to tell
when the most productive thing they can do is go look out the window.

~~~
davidjnelson
It depends. 22 years here. I’ve had stretches of months I did 16 hours a day
of programming, including weekends.. Literally roll out of bed, code, eat
while coding, sleep. Most productive I’ve ever been, was in a complete flow
state. Was my choice though, not mandated.

These days I do it for 8 hours or so, and not on weekends, other than weekend
/ weeknight research. This is remotely though, so it’s easy to get in the flow
state.

In an office, forget about it. Those days are about team building,
relationships and planning. I don’t expect to get much coding done on those
days.

But if you’re tired, definitely take a break. If you can truly achieve a flow
state 8 hours passes in what feels like 10 minutes. It’s such a cool and
strange phenomenon.

But for it to work you have to be intentional. Mute slack, close email. Batch
those at the end of the day if possible.

Nothing like the feeling of being super productive and getting tons of high
quality, high leverage work done from the flow state.

I’m lucky in that my manager is very smart and “gets it”, because he’s been
there too.

~~~
lukaszkups
I think many of us were at this place once. I did as well during my 20s. Now,
I'm in my early 30s and I've found that working for couple days for e.g. 12+
hour long straight will lead me to a huge lag of energy that I'll be
recovering from for a longer amount of time that I've spent of working.

------
reggieband
Take some time out of problem solving and put it to other uses.

For example:

\- document systems

\- write tests

\- improve automation (build systems, helper scripts, etc.)

\- clean your desk

\- talk to a coworker

\- read / watch material online related to your work

\- go for a quick brisk walk

\- any activity to further a long-term career plan

I know that feeling of short-term daily burnout. It is often I get to 4:30pm
and I feel my concentration lagging. The trick is to give yourself permission
to set aside the work you are doing. You can do this by finding some other
activity that is useful other than facebook/reddit.

As an engineering manager I use that time to shift focus from short term (e.g.
a feature I am implementing) to long term (what kind of stuff do I want the
team to focus on within the next 6 months).

~~~
im_down_w_otp
At least 5 of those 8 require problem-solving. Arguably 7 of them do.

I'm not sure I understand how doing those things would ease mental fatigue?
Perhaps by at least breaking up the monotony?

~~~
steve_adams_86
I think sometimes some of these can be great strategies for relieving your
mind from more difficult tasks. For me documenting or writing tests isn't a
real mental break, but it sometimes feels like one if I've been hacking away
at a tough problem for 4 hours.

It isn't complete relief like going for a walk but it can be a better use of
your time.

I found working in labour jobs the same. Say you're packing sacks of cement up
a hill for 2 hours to a lot with bad access, and you're burnt out. You've got
another 2 hours of hauling sacks to go, or you could take a break and paint
some siding. If you push through the cement job you're going to be really
burnt out today and probably tomorrow too, and if you paint the siding, you'll
recover a little and feel way better today and tomorrow. Work will still get
done though. If the job is urgent and taking a walk isn't really an option,
painting the siding is your best bet.

------
6gvONxR4sf7o
There's a funny/weird dynamic with this. We all need to appear like we work as
much as everyone else appears to. Looks like your teammate puts in 9 hours per
day? Well you do too. Otherwise you'll look like a slacker, even though both
of you get five or six hours of work done. If everyone did it, it'd be fine
and you'd both get hours of time back to do anything else.

What's weird is that this dynamic affects workplaces too. If you are in an org
that actually lets people work great flexible hours you won't advertise it too
much, for fear of attracting workers whose primary goal is to slack, or
getting a reputation an org of slackers. And if you're a job hunter who cares
about this, you can't really dig in to asking about the hours everyone is
expected to work for fear of being perceived as a slacker.

Nobody can be open about it (orgs or teammates or applicants) and thus the
problem persists.

~~~
Viliam1234
> If you are in an org that actually lets people work great flexible hours you
> won't advertise it too much, for fear of attracting workers whose primary
> goal is to slack, or getting a reputation an org of slackers.

This reminds me of: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-
conservativ...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservative-
the-eternal-struggle/)

> The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to
> found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen,
> your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled
> civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to
> live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.

The common idea is that if there is a norm that everyone follows, and you
visibly deviate from the norm in some direction, it will disproportionately
attract people who extremely care about that direction, even if you only
wanted a minor change.

The difference between working 8 hours a day and working e.g. 7 hours a day is
not that dramatic, but if all jobs require 8 hours and you are the only job
who requires 7 hours, then all people who want to work as little as possible
will run to you, because you are the best option available for them. But you
didn't want the people who want to work as little as possible; you wanted
people who think that 7 hours is appropriate. People who believe that 7 hours
a day are best would have been happy at your company, but instead you will be
full of people who would actually prefer to work 4 or 2 hours a day, and while
your offer is better than the alternative, they will still be unhappy. So
instead of getting happier employees, you will actually get less happy ones.

If instead the job market offered the full spectrum: jobs with 8 hours a day,
jobs with 7 hours a day, jobs with 6 hours a day... and perhaps even jobs with
1 hour a day (with proportionally smaller salaries, I suppose), then offering
a position that requires 7 hours a day would attract exactly the people who
prefer to work 7 hours a day, no more, no less. Unfortunately, this is not the
current situation.

And I have no idea how to get from "here" to "there". The incentives seem set
up so that anyone who moves away from the current equilibrium gets punished.
(And in a parallel universe, where the norm is 9 hours, or 7 hours, anyone who
moves away from that equilibrium gets punished.)

Also, if people pretend to work 8 hours a day, but they actually work 6 (and
spend 2 hours watching cat videos), then if you say you want to work 6 hours a
day, people will assume it means 4 hours of work and 2 hours of cat videos.
Why shouldn't they assume you are just as hypocritical as anyone else?

~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
Honestly, that's kind of what I've begun to think of (axiomatically) as where
government needs to step in. When society's collective interest is in an
equilibrium which it's no one's individual interest to move towards, the
incentives need changing.

I have no idea how to fix it, but you're spot on that you can't change it
individually unless it's all at once. Or if we somehow figure out a better
incentive structure so that individual and collective best decisions match.

~~~
Viliam1234
I could imagine some collective action not organized by government, for
example to write a "6-hour day manifesto", share it on networks, have people
sign it, wear t-shirts, choose a day when you celebrate the idea... i.e.
gradually introduce the idea to the general public. (Perhaps even edgy
t-shirts, such as "I only work 6 hours a day, but I spend 8 hours at work to
appear busy. And so do you.") So that people notice that others share their
opinions.

Sometimes memes have power (but it is difficult to engineer them properly). I
believe that jokes contributed to the fall of Soviet Union, so perhaps jokes
could make 8-hours day go away. Just imagine if average people would start
saying: "So, you also work at a company where people pretend to work 8 hours a
day? Me too." Maybe if laughter became an automatic reaction to saying "8
hours", something would change.

------
0xd171
You're expected to be at work for ~8 hours, not to problem solve for that
long. (Hopefully, if you're at a half-decent company). You have email and chat
to manage, stand-ups, other meetings and calls, coffee breaks, lunch. Most
people can set up their day in a way that they can be productive without
feeling like they need to be constantly 100% concentrated.

~~~
guitarbill
Some people prefer working intensely, some people don't. So why demand 8h of
presence from everybody as long as the work gets done?

From my experience, policies of being in the office for <x> hours
significantly reduces productivity, as people spend more time trying to fill
their days instead of doing the work.

Regardless, it's patronising to effectively treat highly paid professionals
like children with dumb, simplistic rules, and morale will also suffer
appropriately.

~~~
techslave
no one works in a vacuum. people need to communicate and collaborate, even
when the work is prescriptive. core hours requirements stem from making sure
that there are times when everyone can have rich, immediate interactions. not
from childish supervision.

~~~
Viliam1234
"There needs to be some time when everyone is here, so that we can talk" does
not imply "you need to be here for 8 hours a day".

In theory, you could have a job where the core hours are just 4 hours a day
(most coders do not spend more time having rich interactions), and if you
succeed to get your work done, you can leave afterwards.

------
HissingMachine
I'm a project manager and I am very relaxed about working hours and remote
work. And it's because I have been monitoring my own programming habits for
years and came to a conclusion that it is as much a creative process as it is
technical execution. Depending on the complexity of the problem at hand, one
hour of programming (monitored with wakatime) usually includes two to three
hours of reading documentation, going through source to hunt a bug or planning
a feature you are implementing. So I usually set up the tasks as milestones,
usually bugs that we have to crush or features we have to implement, usually
we have a pretty good pace on projects and people seem to be way more
productive than other places I have worked that had a stricter culture.

Now this is my first time as a project manager, but I have set things up the
way I would want to work, and I have had positive feedback from my team and
management. So I'm pretty pleased with how things are going, YMMV depending on
how everything is set up so don't take this as an advice.

------
sleepysysadmin
My last job, an msp, expected 100% of our time to be billed out. You didn't
get lunches or breaks.

If you got your work completed quicker so that you could hit the washroom or
go for lunch, you were rewarded with more work.

Furthermore, I was on-call 24x7 and near daily would be called for help
afterhours. This wasn't smb stuff exclusively. This was federal governments,
hospitals, prisons, fortune 100s. All of which who have fees for downtime
around $10,000-15,000/hour.

During my performance review, I got chewed out for have >40 lates. I called
bullshit on this. My boss pulled up our time accounting system and turns out
all except 1 were weekends. I worked at least 1 day out of >40 weekends in the
previous year and I was being chewed out for it... seriously.

Then there was workplace politics; 2 other techs had been fighting for years
prior to me even being hired. I had to regularly work with 1 of the techs and
when he would rant about the other tech I'd just node and ignore the whole
thing.

For whatever reason, the other guy took it as if i was on that guy's team and
he started harassing me. I basically ignored it; took about a year before it
escalated. This guy came after me with everything. He'd take shit out of my
office. He'd bad mouth me to my clients. I collected a list of wtf is going
on.

Final straw, I had configured 2x ASA5506 for a remote location in Texas. Both
firewalls were accessible on the network. He told the MSP owners that my
configuration of the ASAs were so bad they needed to shutdown the facility and
ship these ASAs back to Canada for him to redo. Mind you, this is my client
not his and this is probably in around 200th pair of ASAs I've configured and
these were configured identical to 4 other locations which are up and running.

So I send long email detailing the harassment by this guy toward me.

The next day I was fired.

Point of the story, things can be worse. Pull up your socks!

~~~
BuckRogers
You were dealing with a very toxic person, who said a lot more about you
behind your back then you were aware of.

I’ve lived a lot of the same stories. Although yours may be the worst I’ve
ever heard, simply because I’ve never been fired. But bits and pieces of your
story are in just about every job I’ve had.

I’m no longer confused as to why a lot of people simply don’t want to work
anymore. Getting enough money and quitting, starting a menial business, or
getting on government assistance makes a lot more sense than your story.

~~~
sleepysysadmin
If you're curious to read what a rougher week was like:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/a7zjvr/my_toxic_m...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/a7zjvr/my_toxic_msp_4_day_week_long/)

You might ask why I didn't bail before? I didn't even interview for a single
job. I was pretty sick. Had major surgery and chemo shortly after that week.
It was a couple months after that week where I got fired.

They had about 30 techs and >20 techs quit and were fired after that.

------
prepend
There are lots of different configurations supported by lots of companies.
I’ve never worked in a company, in 25 years, that expected 8 hours of literal
coding. There’s meetings, admin junk, training, etc.

But maybe the easiest would be to start your one person contracting company
with either a high hourly rate that you can sell to clients who understand
your productivity. Or you can bill by job and have clients not care about
hours worked. This would let you work whatever you want.

I think the most common config I’ve seen for programmers is to work in 8x5
jobs that only require an hour or two of literal programming. And if lucky,
have flexibility within that period to maybe have a few bursts of deep work
and then slack time.

------
patatino
If I would run a dev company, this is how I would do it:

\- no open office

\- no meetings in the morning

\- no phones in the morning

\- no slack/whatever in the morning

Try to create a window for devs where they can do some deep work for 3-4
hours. It doesn't have to be in the morning, whatever works the best for each
developer.

------
mindcrash
You have a 8 hour workday. From those 8 hours you spend approximately 4 hours
primarily on job output. The other 4 hours are spent on secondary things like
reading/replying to emails, coaching juniors, taking a rest (it is imperative
to do so), socializing, reading Hacker News and so on.

Anyone up the chain expecting you to work 8 hours 100% productively is
completely unrealistic and IMO provide a good reason to find job happiness
somewhere else.

Best regards,

A product architect who doesn't treat his devs as robots

~~~
sebazzz
My employer uses a heavy anti-malware solution (configured to scan any file
access or modification) I will not name here: I'm spending at least one
additional hour in waiting on my computer.

------
hirundo
Think of it like a quarterback actively playing for only 20 minutes per game.
The rest of the time, planning, recovering, warming up, is also part of the
job. You can't average 8 hours per day encoding and decoding, but you can
spend the rest of it bulldozing distractions, learning, and otherwise
optimizing your flow states.

------
musicale
Office environments (and perhaps most companies) tend to optimize for the
appearance of work getting done rather than actually getting work done. As a
result, most of the time spent in them causes stress without creating any
benefit.

Moreover, forcing yourself to "work" when you are tired or simply done for the
day also tends to create negative returns.

If your work requires sustained concentration, a typical office environment
full of people (especially supervisors) and continuous interruptions from
noise and other distractions is not the place to do it.

------
remilouf
Back in my days as an academic I would follow the same pattern every day:
start working early from 7 till 10, take a long walk to the lab have a couple
informal meetings with colleague, have lunch. Work there for a couple hours
(my « available hours », run some errands or see a friend for coffee and work
another couple hours. I have never been as productive as I was back then.

I don’t think this schedule would work for everyone but the general idea was:
intense work for a short periods of time, take some time to talk with
colleagues and go through meetings and then work again, with long breaks in
between. That way I could manage 8 hours of productivity without burning out.
And yes, sometimes I would get in flow and work for 12 hours straight without
eating. But those days were more the exception than the rule. The point is I
could have roughly 8 hours _most days_ working this way.

In companies I’ve worked with I’ve always felt babysitted, as though I was
unable to discipline myself when not watched all the time by managers. The
truth is we don’t all work in the same way, and we are all reasonably
interested in our job—-and if we’re not, sitting all day in the office is not
going to change that. So why don’t we make room for everyone’s pattern while
keeping some team time every day?

------
AlexanderNull
One thing I do is keep a relatively small cup at my desk. I drink a lot
especially when thinking hard and whenever that cup runs out that's my signal
that it's time to take a break, grab more water, walk around a bit, maybe
stare out the window for a few moments. Highly demanding mental work isn't
something you should charge through nonstop, especially when there's a
creative requirement to it like there is in problem solving, you just won't
produce good solutions without allowing your brain to wander.

We also fought hard at work over the course of a year or two with management
to change up how we account team capacity. It's now a max of 6h expected work
per day on project work. There's simply not enough time for working any more
in addition to all the various random emails, slack notifications, restroom
breaks, and general cubicle chatter that's part of regular office work.

------
username90
The maths behind long workdays is pretty simple, you have as you say around 4
hours of productive hours per day, so why do companies want you to spend 8
hours in the office? Because the more free time you have the likelier it is
that you will spend those productive hours at home doing hobbies! Therefore
the goal of long work hours is to prevent you from having a life which could
get in the way of work.

Or from another angle, a person who voluntarily works 45 hour weeks likely
spends most of his productive hours at the office. A person who do 35 hour
weeks likely spends most of his productive hours at home. A person who is
forced to work 80 hour weeks will definitely spend most of his productive
hours at the office since he has no time left for anything else. It might hurt
his overall productivity, but it at least guarantees that the company gets his
all.

------
cm2012
I did a poll of HN a while back and the average HNer spends about 6 hours a
day doing work of any sort (including meetings, etc.) Only 25% did more than 8
hours a day, and 25% did 4 or less. Seniority had no effect on time spent
working.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
The problem is, if you're an employer and you went to a 6 hour workday:

1) you lose out on the people that can and do work 8 hours. 2) the people that
only work a percentage of the 8 hours are only going to work a percentage of
the 6 hours, and you'll lose out there as well.

Sure, you might say, we should just work less hours and hire more people. With
3.7% unemployment, that's easier said than done.

~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
3) It would be a more desirable job. Retention goes up and maybe you can get
better people. Your employees are happier and so are their families. When you
have to do "crunch time" people are less bitter.

~~~
Viliam1234
What if you offer a 6-hour workday, and people who want to work less than 6
hours will apply... because this is still the best existing alternative for
them? The retention goes up, but your employees will be unhappy, because they
actually wanted less than 6 hours.

Meanwhile, the company that requires 8 hours will get a lot of people who are
okay with working 8 hours (if that includes 2 or 4 hours on social networks),
and a few people who are not okay with that, but still happier than your
employees on average.

------
SergeAx
You are right: expecting software engineers to problem solve for 8 hours a day
is counterproductive. As a software engineers' manager I expect my
subordinates to problem solve 24 hours a day, including weekends and holidays.

This is not a fugure of speech, this is how creative mind works. When software
engineer is banging crap out of the keyboard - it is not a problem solving, it
is writing down a solution.

Before writing first line of code an engineer should have the whole structure
imagined as a draft and a particular module/section - as clear and real as if
we can touch it.

Now, working hours is a matter of comminucation. The time when the software
was written by individuals is over, today's business-valued software is
written by teams. To be a team, group of people should communicate. Most
effective type of communication is face to face, next best thing is
videoconferencing and it is about 3 times worse in terms of information shared
and remembered. It's a pity, but it is fact. So team of software engineers
should meet face to face a lot, and this is why we are working in offices,
have some mandatory hours (like 11 to 17), and have so many meeting rooms here
:)

The last, but not least question is discipline. I've met people who can churn
out problems' solutions at a constant rate regardless place, daytime and even
climate and timezone. Those are rare brilliants. Most people left to themseves
would beclome less productive, it is another sad fact. Office hours and
teammates is a best known work motivation to date, order of magnitude better
than hefty salary, stock options and money/stock-bound KPIs.

Now to you, if you don't mind. Thru my career I've met about dosen of
engineers who asked for more relaxed hours and/or (part-time) remote. It never
worked out as a productive boost, just more pain for me to control and
motivate those lads. Most of the time they were just plain tired and/or
unhappy, but thought it was something about they commute routine or office
aura. It was always symptom, not a cause.

I believe you are just tired and/or unhappy too. We are living in times when
being a skilled software engineer means ability to choose company, product,
location and team to be bouncy sparkling ball of ideas every morning. If you
are not this ball, ask yourself - why?

------
nao360
> On a good day I can work even 12h+

I'd wager that your _good days_ are often preceded by a good night's sleep, if
not good eating habits and exercise. For over a decade I believed that I
couldn't muster more than about 4 hours of focused, creative productivity in
any given day. I'd try to plan all of the most demanding work in the first
hours of the day, knowing that after lunch I would lose most of my motivation
and focus. I was overweight, malnourished, and prone to all kinds of mental
disorders (depression, anxiety, anger). At some point I finally had enough,
and started on a journey that has brought me to the happiest, most productive
years of my life.

Get good sleep every single day -- everybody's a bit different in this regard,
but there's tons of information out there on how you can achieve this.

Eat well -- again, everybody's a bit different, but for me this involves a low
carb, high protein diet and intermittent fasting (no breakfast, and eat lunch
and dinner within a 6 hour window). No junk food, soft drinks, sweets, etc. I
find the trend among scrum masters bringing snacks, treats, cakes, etc., to
meetings (planning, refinement, retros, etc.,) totally counter-productive!

Get some exercise -- if the local gym or sports club isn't for you, get some
kettle bells, or walk or cycle to work, etc. You don't have to run 5k every
day (or ever!), but you do need some robust exercise on a regular basis, even
if it's 5 minutes with a pair of kettle bells, particularly if most of your
days are spent glued to a desk.

I would say address these issues first (if they apply to you), and then
revisit your view on whether 8 hours of problem solving is feasible on a daily
basis.

------
danny_taco
I often leave early or come late to work and my employer doesn't care as long
as I get the work done. As long as I'm there for meetings where I have to be
there, everything is good. Perhaps you should talk with your employer about
their expectations from you so you don't feel like you have to be there for 8
hours from M-F.

------
codingdave
Different companies and teams have different cultures, so while I agree that
the standard 8 hour workday isn't ideal for coding, and personally seek out
teams that allow more flexibility... I also understand why some places do it.

That being said, if you are working yourself to exhaustion and burnout within
those 8 hours, to the point of chronic pain... that is something wrong the way
you are managing you work, your time, and your stressors. Many comments
already in this thread are terrific in the details of this, and how you can
adjust. But this also sounds like a medical issue. I'd get yourself to a
doctor, and get some bloodwork done. You may have something as simple as
vitamin deficiencies (probably due to how hard you are pushing yourself), so
identifying them, adjusting your diet, and taking some supplements could help
you. Go take care of yourself, and work will fall into place.

------
rossdavidh
I probably do literal coding only about half my work hours. Even if I'm at a
place where there's not many meetings or other bureaucratic time, there are
other things like general planning, organization, documentation, working on
architectural strategy, investigating potential new tools, etc.

What I have learned to do is to keep a list of these kinds of things, that
have to be done "soon" but not immediately. When I get to the part of the day
where my coding brain is getting weak, I switch over to that list. Sometimes
for the rest of the day, but often just for half an hour or so until I am
refreshed. Mostly, if you self-monitor, and have a ready list so you don't
find your brain blanks out when it's time to think of a non-coding task that
needs doing, you can balance coding and non-coding as needed throughout the
day.

------
dangrossman
> loosing motivation

Did some textbook publisher take "losing" out of all their spelling books 15
years ago? I see it misspelled more often than spelled correctly these days.

~~~
gerikson
Same here.

I can sort of understand why people confuse 'lose' and 'loose' due to
incorrect spellchecking, but 'loosing' isn't even correct English.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I can sort of understand why people confuse 'lose' and 'loose' due to
> incorrect spellchecking, but 'loosing' isn't even correct English.

Yes, it is.

“loosing” : “loose” :: ”losing” (the verb form, not the adjective) : “lose”

If you understand mistakenly using “loose” in place of “lose” you should be
equally able to understand using the gerund or present participle of “loose”
in place of the gerund or present participle of “lose” (or the identically-
spelled adjective), with the same single-“o” insertion transforming one valid
English word to another.

~~~
gerikson
Both you and NeedMoreTea are correct and I can't believe I missed that.
Thanks!

------
neuroticfish
> 6h * 5 + 4h on Saturday (remotely)

No thanks. I'll take my 8h * 5 and two entire days off. I agree that expecting
8 hours of productivity a day is silly but I think it's even sillier to expect
me to have only one contiguous 24 hour period away from work per week and not
experience burnout. Ideally the employer should set product quality standards
and let us determine how to apply our weekly productivity in order to meet
schedule.

------
boyadjian
I totally agree. In my job, we work 37h30 a week, and have supplementary
holidays. So it makes a day lasting 8h30, including one hour pause at midday.
For me, concentrating during 7h30 is impossible, usually, after 6h of work, I
am completely saturated. Same thing for me, takes the whole evening to cool
down before sleep. For me, a programmer should work 6h30 a day, that would be
a good starting point.

------
vpEfljFL
We have 8h workdays and it seems ok for general public, especially for large
companies where you can do only meetings all day without contributing anything
despite your butt in a seat.

Nothing pushing govs to lower the working time, so deal with it. For me
writing code more than 4-5h in a day is considered as a success today but when
I have meetings it becomes a hard goal to achieve.

------
pcunite
Boreout Syndrom

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boreout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boreout)

------
ineedasername
I don't think I've ever heard this type of complaint before. In my case, and
I'd wager a significant chunk of this community, doesn't have too much of a
problem putting in an 8 hour day. Sure, distractions arise sometimes,
sometimes it's harder to focus, but overall it seems like you are describing
your own limitations, not those of a majority.

~~~
sake
Distractions are not really my problem, it's mental exhaustion. If anything I
think I should probably have more breaks, when I'm at work I just work. I see
majority of people procrastinating, reading news, social media or socializing
with coworkers to take their mind off work from time to time.

If you can work 8 hours straight with only a lunch break, I don't think you
are doing very mentally intensive work.

~~~
Rainymood
I have studied and kept detailed logs of my work for years. When I reach 4-5
hours of "real" work (i.e. deep work) I am mentally exhausted and I consider
it a good day.

No one expects you to be 8 hours straight in the zone, no one does. And if you
can do so, the more power to you, but be careful not to burn yourself out.

3-5 hours of deep work - that's it

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> No one expects you to be 8 hours straight in the zone, no one does.

I see we haven't worked somewhere with billable hours.

~~~
h_r
Meetings, working on docs etc can still be billable. 8 hours straight _in the
zone_ every day? Nobody does that.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
I've worked in a previous position that expected 8 hours of billable work for
many of the junior devs, who didn't have meetings or documentation. It was
crazy.

------
CawCawCaw
Is that why programmers are also obligated to write emails and sit in
meetings?

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w_t_payne
8 hours only?

------
QuickToBan
If you want to work only 34 hours, expect to proportionately get only 85% of
your salary. And definitely don't expect others to work Saturdays. Don't
contact your coworkers over the weekends either.

~~~
Viliam1234
> If you want to work only 34 hours, expect to proportionately get only 85% of
> your salary.

It is not linear, unfortunately. For working only 34 hours, expect to get
maybe 50% of your 40-hours market salary, if you are lucky. Because by
standing out from the crowd, you are sending a signal that you are "somehow
weird", and that is not a good signal to send.

As long as there are other people willing to work 40 hours a day, most
companies won't bother making an exception for someone. Why hire a "weird"
person, if there are non-weird alternatives available?

------
BurningFrog
Coding shouldn't require extreme focus.

If it does, it's probably because your code base is an unstructured mess that
can't be worked on without superhuman effort.

Many programmers have never spent time in a well factored code base and don't
know how to write one, so this might just sound strange to them.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
If you're implementing something new, or a new interface, or basically
anything interesting, it's going to require focus. I don't know how you can
add anything of real value without a high level of focus.

~~~
BurningFrog
Focus, sure. Extreme focus is a sign something is wrong.

I think the classic _" one interruption makes me have to restart my 15 minute
'getting into the code' process"_ syndrome is a very clear sign that either
your code is way too complex, or you have sleep apnea.

