Ask HN: What is the expected capacity for a full time developer?

[blahbap]

At [large company] there I work as a contractor, several projects are being planned with only a limited pool of resources. Initially plans where laid expecting everyone to deliver at 100% capacity - meaning that 8 hours of work would be done during an 8 hour workday. But if you subtract lunch, meetings, procastination, interuptions et al. - what is the expected capacity (%) of an experienced developer in a semi-agile environment?

[matt_s]

I used to use 25 hours out of 40 in burndown calculations, so 5 hours a day. This was then used against task lists that had estimates in hours of 1,4,8,16 increments. If something needed a re-estimate after work began that was taken into calculation.

That was with a fairly low amount of BS. If there a lot of meetings then lower it. If you work in an open plan work space with people not directly contributing to the same effort, lower it some more.

[skylark]

I work at an extremely large non-tech company following a semi-agile process.

Officially, we're expected to do 6 hours of coding per day. However with meetings and lunch, we only really have 4.5 - 5 hours of time that isn't blocked off.

Then, because some meetings aren't scheduled back to back, we essentially lose the time in the middle (especially if that time is only ~30 minutes).

When all is said and done, I'm probably putting in 3-4 hours of code in per day on average. It's more than enough to get the job done.

It's soul crushing and I'm looking to quit soon.

[toledi]

The question doesn't really have a well defined answer. It would vary tremendously by the organization and project they're working on. Also depends a lot on their level. There are senior engineers who code probably <25% of their time, but add value by helping other engineers, planning, architecting, removing obstacles, etc.

[bayonetz]

Hoped and dreamed for? 100%

What I actually use when preparing estimates?

40%-75% which depends on stuff like the developer being staffed, how short the project is (shorter = more productive), how bleeding edge the tech is (higher tech = less productive), etc.

[brudgers]

What unit is developer capacity measured in?

Lines of code, bugs per hour (clised?, created?, avoided?), revenue per month (a contractor standard), etc.

Utilization is different from productivity.

[antoinevg]

See: http://style.org/unladenswallow/

[debacle]

80% if you have a lean development cycle. 50% if your organization loves meetings and project plans.