[michaelochurch]

The real crime is that programmers have so little time for the exploratory work that the career requires that they have to do all of that off-hours.

Doctors can read medical journals and call it "working time". Most programmers have feces thrown at them if they're caught learning on the job. This is just something we have to suffer until we develop a stronger tribal identity and demand the conditions of a profession (including ethical rights and obligations that supersede immediate managerial authority).

Do surgeons spend 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, cutting open bodies? Of course not. No one would allow it. They work a full work-week, but they spend a lot of that time keeping current with the field. That's how professions are supposed to work. Your metered work obligation is ~15 hours per week, and the other 25-40 you spend keeping current, networking, and performing other off-meter, self-directed work that is important to you and the profession.

Now, hackathons. There are two things one should know about that. The first is that the association of programming with the night hours is a bit of cultural legacy. Forty years ago, when computing resources were shared and scarce, night was the only time you could get low-priority (exploratory) jobs to run. So the hobbyists (young people, usually with access through a connection or favor) did their work at night. Now, we have enough in the way of resources that people can work at any time. Some people are most productive between 6 and 10 in the morning. Others are best from 8 pm to midnight. Whatever works.

The second is that hackathons seem, in many organizations, to exist to recapture the college lifestyle for people who haven't realized yet that It's Gone Forever. The hackathon recreates the "good old days" (?) of the 3:00 am, caffeine-fueled coding fests to get that hard-ass final project to work. It's not terribly unhealthy when you're a college student and have that kind of schedule autonomy (you can crash for a week) but it's a terrible idea to mix that lifestyle with the 9-to-5 regular workday. Also, most final projects are Done, submitted for a grade, and never need to be looked at again. This isn't the case for real-world software.

I tend to see most company's 20%-time and hack-day programs as negative spaces that define anything programmers actually enjoy as "not real work" (because they can be tricked into doing it "for free"). I can't even count the number of times I've seen people using 20%T programs to do things that, if they didn't have short-sighted imbeciles for managers, would just be regular-ol' working time.

[crusso]

Doctors can read medical journals and call it "working time"

Where did you get that idea? I grew up in a family of doctors. If they aren't seeing patients, they aren't billing. They go to school an unthinkably long number of years and then they're put into a sleep depravation nightmare called "interning" for years before they get to have a career that normally includes "on call time" where they're woken up at all hours of the night to go save someone's life.

Sitting around reading journals is what they do on their off time. Everything in your analogy is wrong.

[michaelochurch]

Perhaps I shouldn't have picked medicine as an example. The principle of professionalism is sound, but many of the traditional professions have departed from it. Law has outright imploded, while medicine has seen very long hours on account of the doctor shortage.

If they aren't seeing patients, they aren't billing.

Right, but 2000 hours per year wasn't traditionally the requirement. That may have changed. The professions have declined over the past 30 years.

For example, before the legal profession went to hell, 1200 billable hours was the requirement. Remaining time was for networking, keeping current, attending conferences, etc. If you billed 1500 hours, you were a rock star and guaranteed to make partner. Enough money was made in the billed hours to pay for the off-meter stuff.

They go to school an unthinkably long number of years and then they're put into a sleep depravation nightmare called "interning" for years

That is true. Medical school and residency are extremely difficult.

before they get to have a career that normally includes "on call time" where they're woken up at all hours of the night to go save someone's life.

Obviously, medicine can't be limited to the 9-to-5 hours, because people get sick all the time.

Regarding the very long work weeks, this problem was at least partially created by the AMA. They've been limiting medical school admissions to keep an artificial shortage of doctors. That has created an environment in which working hours are much more than they used to be.

[gamblor956]

For example, before the legal profession went to hell, 1200 billable hours was the requirement. Remaining time was for networking, keeping current, attending conferences, etc. If you billed 1500 hours, you were a rock star and guaranteed to make partner. Enough money was made in the billed hours to pay for the off-meter stuff.

I don't know who told you this, but this is inaccurate. 1600 was the normal billable hour standard prior to the legal boom among large law firms; 1500 was the standard among smaller law firms. Government lawyers were expected to spend 1800 hours or more on legal tasks (36 hours/week accounting for 2 weeks vacation). 1200 was only ever the requirement for partners, since their time by necessity include a lot of unbillable time spent with clients or potential clients.

Enough money was made in the billed hours to pay for the off-meter stuff

Lawyers used to bill their clients for everything, including the paper drafts were printed on. When the state bar associations and clients clamped down on these practices in the late 1990s, billing rates started going up, and kept going up when firms realized that clients were willing to pay.

[ameister14]

I don't think your point about the AMA is entirely accurate; I know people that have been practicing medicine for 40 years and they would disagree about the increase in hours per week; in fact, residents now have a cap on the number of hours per week they can work, something that didn't exist in the past.

A bigger problem with the AMA is that it's made up almost entirely of academics and yet wields a massive amount of power over the government's decisions regarding clinical practice.

The thing you might not realize is that in order to maintain board certification, doctors HAVE to read periodicals and go to conferences. There's a continuing education requirement so that they stay current.

[jrs235]

"A bigger problem with the AMA is that it's made up almost entirely of academics" followed by "There's a continuing education requirement so that they stay current."

Which is the the fox guarding the hen house. The academics controlling the AMA guarantee their own paychecks. And as you said this, academics controlling the AMA, is the bigger problem. It leads to a huge conflict of interests.

[ahoyhere]

"Perhaps I shouldn't have picked medicine as an example."

I don't think the mistake was in picking medicine, but rather declaring things without the benefit of facts.

[bmuon]

I agree. I know many scientists who put half their time to reading and reviewing papers, but I can't say the same for any other profession.

[derefr]

I would say that the expectation is "right" (ethically), and where it contradicts the world, it's the world, not the expectation, that is flawed :)

[michaelochurch]

Correct. I probably should not have invoked medicine, because (a) the doctor shortage has produced a culture of very long hours, (b) high fixed costs (e.g. malpractice insurance) skew the relationship between hours worked and payoff, and (c) there is a well-known and long period of intense professional hazing.

The ideal of professionalism is a good one. It has been under attack over the past 30 years.

Incidentally, both the medical and legal profession have suffered in opposite ways. The AMA imposed tight limits on medical school admissions in order to create a doctor shortage, and that has generated a huge per-doctor workload. On the other hand, the lack of control (and declining standards) in law has created a surplus of attorneys that has destroyed the professional culture in traditionally "white shoe" firms.

Doctors suffer very long hours (especially as residents) because there is too much work. Lawyers live in an imploded culture because there is so little desirable work (per attorney) that the partners hold all the cards.

This is irrelevant to software engineers, who should (by any standard or moral calculus) have the autonomy accorded a profession but, currently, do not. It's up to our generation to change that.

[mgkimsal]

"Your metered work obligation is ~15 hours per week, and the other 25-40 you spend keeping current, networking, and performing other off-meter, self-directed work that is important to you and the profession."

That sounds like the work schedule of professors at universities, but that's the only profession that springs to mind.

[michaelochurch]

The professions (especially academia) have all fallen from grace over the past few decades. Given the abysmal quality of leadership the American business world has had (pay more, get less) it shouldn't be surprising.

[shalmanese]

I don't know if it's a cultural legacy. Most engineering heavy firms where people are allowed to set their own hours have people roll in between 10 and 11. I don't think I've ever been to a tech company where the majority of people are in by 9 unless they have to.

I think plenty of programmers tend to be natural night owls and it's not uncommon for them to be working at 3am out of their own preference.

[gamblor956]

The real crime is that programmers have so little time for the exploratory work that the career requires that they have to do all of that off-hours

All professionals do this: doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc. This is why professionals get paid more than non-professionals; they are expected to learn on their own time rather than on the job. Even employers who provide continuing education at the workplace don't count that time as billable time. (Note that people who members of multiple professions must satisfy professional obligations for all of those professions, i.e., a lawyer-accountant must satisfy both CLE and CPE requirements.)

Welcome to the club.

[cnlwsu]

> Do surgeons spend 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, cutting open bodies?

Actually depending on the state, hospital, and part of their career it can be more like 80 hours per week.

[dougsq]

"The real crime is that programmers have so little time for the exploratory work that the career requires that they have to do all of that off-hours." You want to get paid for improving your craft? Your professional development is up to you. If you are passionate about your choice of a profession, then money shouldn't matter. You will do what ever it takes to learn, experiment and grow your skills because it is what you want. At work we do what we have to to get things done. If we are contributing to our personal experience on work time, are we not taking away from the task at hand if the exploration does not further that task? Hopefully, you can someday work for a company that encourages and facilitates personal development woot!. Hackathons are all about getting together and sharing ideas and pushing the envelope. Or should be in any case. The venue, the timing, the subject matter, all contribute or detract from the experience. But most of all it is the mix of people that make the difference, and the experience itself. Some of my best experiences have been late nights in a "skunk-works" project, building something we weren't sure could be built, and sure enough we did it! It didn't feel like work it felt like an adventure! I hope you get to experience something like that in the future. Don't confuse work and making yourself better. Think about changing the Hackathons for the better -- you get out what you put in.

[joshuacc]

This depends very much on one's employer. For example, I have enough time to do a reasonable amount of technical research and personal development related to my job each week. And that's even in a "boring corporate" environment.

[nickmain]

If the analogy is the medical profession then most software engineers are nurses or EMTs or ambulance drivers, not doctors.

[ahoyhere]

"The real crime is that programmers have so little time for the exploratory work that the career requires that they have to do all of that off-hours."

One should be wary of making generalizations like this. "Programmers have" or "Programmers don't have" groups an awful lot of extremely different people, and an extreme variation of experience, into one seemingly whole glossy industry.

When I programmed for hire, I never had any problem at all learning on the job. My jobs paid for books, training, and conferences. (Two of my jobs paid for conferences where I was accepted to speak -- that was part of my negotiation.) I also never had any issue charging for research & exploration time explicitly labeled as such in my freelance contracts.

Programmers have one of the world's most in-demand skills. If they have a sucky job that limits their growth, well, they should take those in-demand skills elsewhere. If they don't know how, or are afraid, they should suck it up and figure out how. Read a book on salary negotiation or how to attract better clients. Ask somebody. There's tons of info out there. There's no excuse. If they believe that they have nothing special to offer, so they are at a disadvantage in negotiations, then they have to figure out "Is that true?" and if yes "Then what can I do to gain leverage?"

Take control of your lives, folks.