[nkozyra]

> If you are actually doing 40 hours a week you are productive as hell.

I disagree. But I think what we qualify as "work" is more rigid than it needs to be. Is spending 5 minutes looking at HN every few hours work? Most people would say no, but it absolutely helps developers to know what's going on or new or what other devs outside their company are saying.

If I spend 20 minutes reading about a language/app that my company doesn't use is that work? I think a lot of the "yes" answers would be accompanied by rolling eyes.

[xboxnolifes]

Also, there is an assumption that everyone can be productive for any length of time without some form of intermission to break it up. What if most people need a 5-10 minute break for every 30 minutes work? You might not be able to get around that by just making the daily or weekly work hours shorter. You'd just be applying the productivity factor to fewer total hours.

I doubt we've found the optimal work to rest ratio, but a lot of these assumptions go unchallenged in these discussions.

[pcthrowaway]

> If I spend 20 minutes reading about a language/app that my company doesn't use is that work? I think a lot of the "yes" answers would be accompanied by rolling eyes.

I think it's unfair to not count any of this as work. As engineers it's important for us to be on top of current trends and available tools.

Yes, your company might not use it today, but if no one reads about new developments in tooling/languages, your companies processes will always stay the same and (if better tools for the job emerge), will just be priming a market that new entrants using better technology will be better able to serve.

Some exploration of new technologies is really important for people in our field, and it's really unfortunate that (many) people working in the field feel they have to spend ~10-20 hours per week of their own time keeping abreast of new developments to stay competitive

[nkrisc]

Ok but can you write an OKR for reading HN?

[quickthrower2]

Cue people reading HN for exactly 1200 seconds per day then overflow onto r/hackernews

[dilyevsky]

Best not forget to groom that ticket as well