

Why I Eat Lunch at My Desk - scottndecker
http://scottndecker.com/blog/2014/03/02/Why-I-Eat-Lunch-At-My-Desk/

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mpeg
I disagree with the reasoning, and I normally eat lunch at my desk because
it's convenient and I get to watch crap on the internet.

First off, being the person that gets to put out fires is in no way a certain
path to a promotion. And the experience gained from it is no different than if
you just shadowed the person who would usually be fixing those problems.

Also, you mention how doing this you get an extra hour a day to do other
stuff, does that mean you leave an hour earlier than your coworkers? That's
definitely not going to get you promoted in most places.

I say take the lunch hour, at desk or elsewhere and spend it however you want,
then work smarter for the rest of the day.

~~~
vadman
Shadowing may get you the same experience, but it will not make you The Person
Who Solves Problems in the eyes of others and thus won't help your promotion.
Which was the author's point.

~~~
mpeg
That doesn't get you promotions either. It just makes you the go-to person for
everyone to sort their stuff out.

If you want a promotion, move companies - it's a safer bet.

~~~
vadman
That depends on the company. In terms of reputation/respect, I earned most of
it when my boss was on vacation and I had to make decisions and take
responsibility. Didn't benefit me in that particular case, since our company
was bought by a bigger one and they started calling the shots, and then I left
that job. So I suppose I should upvote you :)

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kjjw
This is why I walk to work with a small jug of water, which I pour over my
head during the walk to give myself a shower, and why I walk to work in my
underwear and get changed at my desk while checking my e-mails.

~~~
pestaa
You're wasting time by not taking the shower and getting changed
simultaneously.

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mgkimsal
Hrm... the math seems fuzzy. You go home an hour earlier because you ate lunch
at your desk? I've not been in too many software positions where you get to go
home simply because you were in the building for 8 hours. _ESPECIALLY_ not if
you were the sort of person who wanted to take on managerial tasks
(delegation/etc as identified by the OP).

~~~
johnward
I don't know. There are plenty of software positions that are flexible so long
as you get your work done.

I'm a consultant so I need to bill a certain number of hours per day.
Sometimes I can snack and bill and that helps me meet the requirements.

~~~
exelius
Not if you want to get ahead. The guy working bare minimum 40 hour weeks isn't
going to get fired so long as he stays productive... but he's obviously not
putting in any effort to progress his career.

There's nothing wrong with that; it's perfectly fine to value running with
your dog or watching Netflix over working an extra hour; but the choices you
make have unintended consequences. Like it or not, working involves politics,
and a big part of politics is perception.

I've worked as a consultant as well; and as a consultant you can never be the
first person out the door because people who don't know your situation will
still form opinions about you. Considering most consultants cost 2x-4x what a
salaried employee does (at least nominally), you have to appear to be "better"
than the average employee. Sometimes that means you stick around the client
site and do work for other clients just to look busy. But it almost always
means you don't leave early. The same goes for people who have ambitions of
moving up in an organization.

~~~
rdtsc
You have been downvoted and I think unfairly.

You are right in that people already have biases and prejudices and even
though it perpetuates a wrong paradigm -- if you are consultant and try to
make as much money as you can these perceptions (even though detrimental to
the industry) matter.

It should really be coming from the top and be part of the culture that hours
spend huddled over a monitor != better or high quality/faster/less bugs
products. But we are not there yet. So should one leave for another place, and
find that culture (work for a startup?), or work with it, as in just pretend
you work harder to get noticed better...

So I am not defending the idea behind it, but your rationale for working with
it.

Think about this scenario. It is 8:30pm, manager/owner walks by and he sees
group of developers huddled over a monitor screen. What is happening? Is this
a good thing or not? Are they working extra hard and deserve +$5k bonus at the
end of the year, or they picked a bad technology, made bad mistakes in the
implementation, allowed untested code in production and now have to put out
fires. I think the opinion on the above will be pretty divided, but,
unfortunately, it will mostly be seen a good thing. This spreads and becomes
part of the culture, and those that are productive and finish their work
faster, whose code doesn't break in production leave at 5, and are seen as
lazy by incompetent managers. That is very dangerous.

The worst I have seen is people what seems like to me, intentionally allow
bugs in production, things crash and burn. Then, they get to save the day with
lots fanfare and visibility. That becomes a very dysfunctional environment
from which one should try to escape as soon as possible.

~~~
exelius
Oh; I totally agree that working more hours is not better _for the company_. I
think that a lot of organizations also realize this, especially in software
development. A large part of my current job is fixing the types of
dysfunctional environments that you describe by providing development managers
insight into the quality of code/tests that individual developers commit. I'm
acutely aware that your "rockstar" developers may in fact be your problem
children; but it takes a lot of data and process to be able to prove that.

My comment was really aimed more at the reality of the situation: when
operating in a political environment (as every office is, like it or not),
it's better to err on the side of being visible. Like I said; some people are
perfectly content with maintaining the job they are currently in, and there's
nothing wrong with that. But if you have ambition to move up into management,
simply writing good code isn't enough. You've gotta play the political game at
some point or another, and the political game often happens late in the day
after all the senior management are done with their meetings.

This is doubly true for a consultant. An unfortunate reality of consulting is
that when you're on short contracts -- as most consultants are -- you have to
sell the next project while you're working on the current one. Being visible
and physically present leads to the conversations that end in your client
asking you to help them out with a problem. These are not "hard sell" tactics
(I always hated those because it makes you come off as scummy and sales-ish);
it's just making sure that you're in the right place at the right time and
you're having the right conversations with the right people.

This doesn't have to mean working yourself to death -- I usually leave around
5:30 and almost never stay in the office after 6:00, nor do I typically work
more than 45 or 50 hours a week. Do I wish I could go home at 4:00 some days
and not be negatively perceived? Yeah, I do. But that's not reality, at least
not anywhere I've ever worked. If the social norm is 9:00am-5:00pm, you should
probably be there during those hours because an 8 hour work day really isn't
asking much. If the social norm is 8:00am-7:00pm, well, you should probably
find a better job...

------
triangleman83
Lunch is quite a variable thing in the US workplace. I've had all sorts:

1: Got takeout lunch and came back to eat it at my desk. Would get griped at
by boss for eating at desk because it seems like I am available to work
(between 12pm-1pm hours?). I was told to "eat somewhere out" except the only
place to get internet was at my desk. Maybe I should have had a neon sign to
indicate it was my lunch hour. This was ~2003 so I guess my only option for
killing an hour out at a restaurant at the time would have been some kind of
portable gaming system.

2: Work provided lunch, some people ate in the break room, I brought back to
desk, worked while eating (not much work to be done in 10 minutes really),
then left to go home for ~45 minutes to play on computer there. Free lunch and
still an appreciable break!

3: Since I drove 75 miles one way to work, I came in an hour later and ate
lunch at desk. I can admit I was less productive during this time. Not to
mention, I did have to drive out for lunch which cost ~10-15 minutes.
Oversight was low, however, and I felt owed a bit by the huge delays on the
promised opening of a new office nearby my house.

4: Lunch hour is mandatory between 12pm-1pm. Made lunch in break room, ate at
desk to play on computer for my mandatory 1 hour. I had to start wearing
headphones because bosses (same bosses who made mandatory lunch) would try to
talk work during 12pm-1pm hours since they never ate lunch or went anywhere
for lunch. I wish they had stuck to their own rule. Eventually started going
to Chinese restaurant nearby for the hour to escape, made friends with order
taker there, watched tv shows on iPad or read books on e-reader. You could say
I did learn my lesson from #1 here and the advent of portable tech kept me
satisfied. Was less happy when lunch was reduced to 1/2 hour since it made my
Chinese trip impossible. Had to stick to faster food and eat in my truck, with
tethered iPad or e-reader of course.

5: Currently, my office is 5 minutes from my house as is my wife's, so we meet
up at home. My lunch hour is flexible whereas hers is not, so I wait for a
text that she is leaving first.

In conclusion, lunch time usage greatly depends on what the employer will
allow. However attempting to eat at my desk has either upset my employer by
making it seem like I am available to work when I am taking an hour break, or
else it probably was not productive time which my employer was probably not
aware of but still wouldn't have been thrilled about.

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LukeB_UK
If you work during your lunch, all you're doing is working every day for an
hour for free. Or if you want to look at it slightly differently, you're
diluting your salary.

Not to say there's anything wrong with putting an extra bit of time in unpaid,
but doing it every day means it will become expected.

At my work, we get to take an hour between 12 and 2, people generally know to
avoid bugging people in this window and if they do, they'll precede it by
asking "are you still on lunch?".

~~~
numo16
> all you're doing is working every day for an hour for free

That also depends on how HR defines your time. For instance, we can bank hours
as flex time and use them to take personal time (separate from our paid
vacation), as needed, as long as it doesn't interfere with delivering what we
have scheduled. Good example, at one point the company had a couple of months
where we all worked saturdays for a big release. All of that saturday time was
banked as flex time and many of us took 4 day weeks for the following month or
two. I'm sure my company might be in the minority of valuing employee time
like this, but they aren't all like everyone in this thread is making them out
to be.

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Shivetya
My reasons are selfish.

1) I do not care to look like some of my heavier colleagues, who get this way
by where they eat every day. 2) I do not care to spend the money they do each
week on eating out, meals are from a very low of five bucks a day to more than
ten. 3) I already spend enough time with many of them at work, some of them I
care not to spend another minute with, doubly so when its my time and my lunch
is my time 4) surfing at lunch is relaxing, that and reading on my kindle

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skywhopper
Obviously there's no single right answer to this question. Anyone who says
otherwise is just spouting nonsense.

I hadn't thought of the "be forced into addressing emergencies" aspect, but
that's a good one. If you can pull it off, you'll get mad props and great
experience.

But ultimately, it's a decision each person should make for themselves.
Company culture, social habits, work habits, finances, diet, all may play a
role. Do what's right for you in the environment you find yourself in.

------
abruzzi
Two comments:

1\. I eat lunch away from work and alone, to give me an hour a day to get away
from the people they work with. Not that they're bad people, but I can't take
being around anyone for too long a stretch. I get along with my co-workers
better when I can take a break from them.

2\. I don't know how other employers handle thisn, but where I work, his 4
hours a week less wouldn't fly. According to the Fair Labor Standards Act
(FLSA) most computer workers are exempt. They are paid salary, not hourly, and
in fact (if you believe our HR department) you are not even allowed to to hour
by hour accounting of time with exempt employees. So eating lunch at my desk
would be a "thank you, but you still have to work until five" thing. If a
server goes down at 2am and I have to come in to fix it, there is no hourly
accounting of that time, it is just part of my job. We've tried to sneak flex
time or comp time by our HR department, but they don't allow it for exempt
employees.

------
awjr
One of the places I contracted at had the best dynamic in the team of
developers. They had this lunchtime ritual where everyone went for a 45 min
lunch walk. Cleared the head, gave you exercise and you were able to to chew
the cud with people.

Really did help with the way the team worked together.

~~~
hessenwolf
Would that I had a boss so conscientious.

------
chollida1
I eat lunch at my desk as well. Unfortunately its because I trade and even
though most of what I do is computer automated, I've got to be watching things
and reacting all the time.

Hell I even try to time bathroom breaks for just before 9:30 and after 4.

As for cleanliness, just use a wet wipe once in a while. I've never understood
how people let their keyboards get dirty.

I use a pretty expensive keyboard so maybe that's the key to keeping a clean
desk. Only use expensive keyboards and then you'll be more likely to keep it
clean?

I kind of miss being able to get up and walk around the block to hash out an
idea. The upside is that someone brings lunch to our desks so its not all
bad:)

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igvadaimon
We can go and optimize further. For example by eating breakfast while driving
a car. Or by drinking coffee in the shower..

~~~
benburton
Now we only need to find a way to shower in the car...

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RankingMember
Besides the fact that it's more consecutive sitting time, which is not
healthy, eating lunch at your desk tends to make your desk a gross place to
be; crumbs in your keyboard, bits of food and food smells around, basically a
germ farm. It's also a good way to give yourself indigestion if you're doing
something stressful and don't give yourself the mental break of getting up and
leaving.

~~~
collyw
My problem is I don't get a chance to code for more than an hour or two at a
time without being interrupted to fix some minor bug (usually someone has not
filled in an Excel properly). If you lunch at desk, you can stay focused on a
problem for longer, without the implicit context switching that lunch
involves. (Though sometimes it is nice to get away).

~~~
mpeg
But then people might come interrupt you during your desk lunch; if the issue
is interruptions you can always grab a meeting room for yourself and go work
in there for an hour or two.

Break areas work fine for that too if your office has them. If your boss asks
just say you wanted to grab some quiet coding time.

I've never had any problems doing this, I think we're lucky that programmers
are mostly judged on the output of their work and their ability to solve
stuff; yet few people exploit this.

~~~
collyw
Sure, but lunch away from the desk is a guaranteed break away for around an
hour. A small interuption might take 5 minutes to fix, which is easier to get
back to the flow of what you were doing.

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hessenwolf
My team counterpart, who I recommended for the team, eats lunch at his desk,
because he is an anti-social wanker. It was a complete failure as a
recommendation. He does shitty work because he does not discuss it or open it
up to criticism, and my work is shittier because I don't have somebody to
criticise it and bounce ideas off.

------
kohanz
The OP, in the comments section, writes: _" I'm a consultant and, therefore,
expected to track my billable hours throughout the week"_.

I'm not sure how I would feel about a consultant that is billing me by-the-
hour at, presumably a not insignificant rate, claiming that they work with the
same focus and productivity while they are eating lunch as they would during
the other 7 hours of the day.

I would say the OP should count himself lucky that he has a fairly lenient
employer, as I would estimate that the vast majority of employers would not
give credit for this "hour worked". Also, at least where I'm located (Canada),
lunch "hour" is actually 0.5 hours and the work-day is 7.5 hours.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Where in Canada is that? It used to be that way in Ontario, but they switched
back to an 8 hour work day a while back. Certainly many employers still follow
that schedule, but it is no longer the legislated standard.

[http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/pubs/guide/hours.php](http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/pubs/guide/hours.php)

~~~
kohanz
I'm in Ontario at a government-funded organization, so it seems the legacy
schedule is alive and well.

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rplnt
Most of the time it's not only about you though. If you share an office, do
your colleagues like the smell and noise of your lunches? I sure don't 8 out
of 10 times. Sometimes it's really strong smell, sometimes it makes me hungry,
sometimes the cutlery is noisy, etc...

If you take the lunch at the same time as everyone else, this doesn't apply of
course. But why would you time your lunch by someone elses schedule if you eat
alone anyway?

If you are worried about 1st benefit, you can take the lunch on different
time. The second benefit is.. well. Eating lunch from home in break room takes
about the same time as in front of the computer. But you count that as work...
so...

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normloman
Does your boss give you a 5 week paid vacation because you eat lunch at your
desk? If not, you can't claim you're saving 5 weeks. Assuming you don't leave
early, you're actually working an extra hour each day.

~~~
Fishkins
His comment says he leaves early. That could be problematic with some
managers, but maybe the lunchtime work is appreciated at his job.

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calhoun137
I think the article, as well as many of the comments, are missing the crucial
point: going out for lunch is about spending time with friends, socializing,
and maintaining work/life balance. And of course, it's also about networking.

Although the article makes an interesting point about how doing work while
everyone else is out to lunch can lead to accelerated career advancement; I
think going out to lunch provides a valuable networking opportunity that is an
important aspect of career advancement inside any organization.

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k-mcgrady
So this only works if you're employer is flexible and lets you go home an hour
early? It also seems like it would be in the employer's interest to prevent
this practice. You may be at your desk for an extra hour but you're eating
lunch - work doesn't have your full attention. Overall you're probably working
slightly less than the rest of the employees.

------
poopicus
I don't understand the reasoning about working less time overall. I do
something similar with my lunch-breaks: I work through them, and go home an
hour earlier at the end of the day. It doesn't mean I've worked less time,
just that I've moved the lunch hour to the end of the day. I still work 7.5
hours a day.

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vrikis
I eat my desk cause our office has a small table in the kitchen area that
seats 4. It's shared between about 100 staff... There's absolutely no culture
of eating together etc... Everyone here sits at their desks and eats their
lunch there.

EDIT: I eat AT my desk... I don't actually eat my desk...

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hcho
I hope he also realizes that he's making his office smell. My coworkers don't
seem to...

~~~
LyndsySimon
That's really dependent upon what you eat.

My current office has a kitchen adjoining the main workspace, so there's
always some kind of food smell lingering in the air.

Prior to this job, I would often bring a sandwich and/or fruit and eat at my
desk. We had cubes there, so I'd just slide my door shut for a bit of privacy,
eat lunch and surf the web mostly.

There's always the person who decides it's a good idea to heat up their tuna
casserole and stroll through the department, though.

------
nl
_When crap hits the fan in our production environment, people go to my
manager. When my manager isn 't there, they go to the technical lead on the
team. When the technical lead isn't there, they go to me. And do you know when
the manager and technical lead are both gone?_

That's a very positive attitude to take about production support.

But I think if you are looking to take on more responsibility then ask for it.
If they won't give it then leave.

"Working" through lunch and then leaving early is almost certainly detrimental
to your career prospects at that place.

~~~
mcv
> "Working" through lunch and then leaving early is almost certainly
> detrimental to your career prospects at that place.

How do you know? Are you familiar with his workplace?

If not, then please stop telling him what his workplace is like. Different
companies have different cultures and different requirements.

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RankingMember
I'd also note that there's team bonding that goes on (if you go to lunch in
groups) that you miss out on just sitting at your desk alone.

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dominotw
Eat wherever the fuck you want. No one gives a fuck. Can we stop discussing
this every week.

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mh_yam
Does this person actually leave 1 hour early every day he eats at his desk?

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nodemaker
LOL why is this shit getting upvoted! Really HN!

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aet
Don Draper does not approve.

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djmollusk
because youtube

