[dustinmoris]

> Software to me is extremely mentally demanding and draining, it requires short burts of extreme concentration, but what is more draining is making up the remaining 4-5 hours looking busy.

Well said! I haven't met a single software engineer who hasn't described something similar to me. I'm the same, I like to wake up early, enjoy my first coffee and then I feel the most productive for the first 4 hours of the day. In those first 4 hours in my morning, often exactly between 8 and 12 I get a shitload of work done. I get so much done that it feels like a real milestone every day. The feeling of being contend afterwards makes it really hard to get into the same focused mindset back again after lunch. After I had my lunch meal I often spend no more than 1-2 hours just doing minor post-real-work tasks, email replies, etc. before mentally signing off completely and calling it a day.

Asking a software engineer to work a certain number of hours per week is useless. It's better to agree on a certain scope of work that one would like to see get done and then let them off the hook as soon as it's done. Some people can do a 3 day burst of 8 hours, but then are so destroyed on a Thursday or Friday that they won't get ANY work done. Others like me are productive every day, but only for ~4-5 hours. Either way, only a fool will think that they will get more out of an SE than they are actually able to focus on. They will just say that something took longer, a bug was holding them back or whatever.

Moreover, the salaries which SE get are so high that an employer isn't paying for the time anyway. They pay for the skill which is being applied during that time, so what's the point in making them commit a certain amount of time. Absolutely useless... well... hopefully one day things will change..

[mattrp]

I agree that morning time is most effective and I’m not a morning person. I also agree that contiguous time is vital - usually 4-5 hours. What I’ve noticed is that once I achieve something in that 4-5 hours it’s very difficult to go on to repeat the feat in the next consecutive time block. It’s far better if I go for a run, bike, golf, hang out for the next time block than it is to sit there and struggle with the next code task. But this has been the case whether I’m coding or doing any other kind of work. That said, there are days maybe once or twice in a seven day period where I will code for 8-12 hours straight and the entire time is productive. I think it comes down to energy conservation. Just like runners can build up to run a marathon they usually don’t keep running marathons every day afterwards (although I knew a guy once who did that for something like 30 days straight). So what should one do in their downtime? I think planning and communicating is often seen as non work. I also think meditation is definitely not seen as something one should do on the clock. Yet when I read about billionaires daily habits, they often take naps in the day, meditate, etc. I think Dr. Dre was said to meditate twice a day during the time he was involved in Beats. (My memory is bad so if it wasn’t him it was somebody like that). Anyway I don’t think pay structure necessarily needs to change but maybe the constant monitoring and feelings of guilt if you aren’t pulling desk time should.

[nextos]

Hardy famously admitted he worked only 4 hours in math, and spent the rest of the time watching cricket in Cambridge.

Software is probably quite close in intensity to pure math, so I don't see anything wrong with this!

The 8 hour workday makes no sense outside agriculture and industry. And even here, due to automation, people should be spared from such a long day anyway.

[scroot]

The future struggle for people in these kinds of jobs is to get the wider culture to admit to itself that the latter 4 hours are unnecessary and even detrimental to workers.

[nostalgk]

I think it's rougher for people to understand that aren't in this industry, and there are so many jobs that _do_ benefit from this in a numerical way, i.e. more parts per hour, more accounts created, sales made, etc.

[Loughla]

It's not just software and tech, though. It's almost every 'professional white collar' job.

I work in higher education, and it's exactly the same experience for me. 4-5 hours of productivity a day, at best, and 2-3 hours of just generally wasting time and trying to look busy/meetings/e-mails.

[scroot]

Can't deny that there are some industries where more hours are better and that beyond the 4-5 hour range they don't suffer from diminishing returns. But I'd point to David Graeber here and just say that there seem to be a lot of people out there making themselves look busy for much of the day, and in the process wasting a lot of their lives and needlessly taxing their own emotional states. And together we've tacitly made a decision that this is all OK and normal.

[nostalgk]

Yup, it's certainly a punchline in seemingly every office job I've ever worked. I've worked a lot of retail and cooking jobs though too, and I think a lot of people come from these fields as well and have trouble distinguishing intellectual work from physical, utilitarian work.

[ssully]

I don't know if they are unnecessary, but they do not require me to be in the office. I usually end up reading up on things, or responding to emails when I am in those latter 4 hours. Those tasks can be done just as effectively at home.

[commandlinefan]

> I feel the most productive for the first 4 hours of the day

The same time that the product managers, project managers, portfolio owners, program managers, and stakeholders fill with hour-long "standup" meetings?

[realshowbiz]

Meetings often destroy my productivity for the day.

I’ll be in the flow all morning, but once I have an hour long standup meeting (or similar scattered topic based meeting) I struggle to regain focus for the rest of the day.

[bovermyer]

I sidestep this problem by getting to work before all of those people are even awake.

[fulekia]

110% this. I mostly work from home, but on office days, I show up at least an hour before everyone else, and often get a lot done in that time. Once people show up, start making coffee, talking about the latest sportsing, etc., I'm already 2.5 hours into my day.

[rfeather]

No doubt the first 4 hours are intense and draining, which I definitely experience. But curious if any on this thread notice any correlation with what you put into your body? If I heavily caffeinate, I'll usually want to collapse right after work, which isn't helpful since I really would rather spend at least some time on personal projects each night (personal preference, not prescribing or judging to those that don't). Also, a bigger/carbohydrate heavy lunch usually knocks me out whereas something lighter or more fat+protein based won't as much.

[edit, cleared up who this is targeted at]

[chrstphrhrt]

Had to switch from coffee to black tea for this very reason. Cannot subsist without some caffeine for mental health reasons, and absolutely love coffee, but it just does not love me back.

When I drink too much coffee, it makes alcohol that much more necessary to offset the extra stress and anxiety, but black tea does not have this issue, it just kinda fades away for me. Then a little cannabis at night for a bit of pleasure and sleep promotion.

[jimbokun]

I think this is where some of these Kalzumeus Classics come in:

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr...

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

The problem is most of us do not market our skills and the value we can provide. We market ourselves as being available to be handed tasks to toil on for forty hours a week.

Figuring out the value we provide, and how to explain and market that value, is hard work and higher risk, though, so many of us take the safe and easy route of a full time job sitting behind a desk for forty hours, whether or not we can fill those hours productively.

[SimbaOnSteroids]

Thanks for this, I'm working my first job feeling like a complete slacker everyday, it's just like my head is full of fog after a certain period of time and I can't seem to push through it.

[ketzo]

My experience too. This thread is helping dispel a bit of the imposter syndrome for me — you’re not alone at all.

[croh]

yeah hopefully, still we are young.