Do you count meetings as "work", or as "not work"? (I don't spend much times in meetings at my current job, thankfully, so it doesn't change the question for me.)
Honestly, my best guess is 50%, or close. I still get my work done as fast as everyone else, though. No complaints on performance reviews.
Hm. Given an average week, probably on average 35% of my day is not working. Average being a reasonably interesting bug and/or project to sink my teeth into. Somedays I'll work 10 hours. Others I'll work 4 to 6.
Unlike most people, if I finish my work in 5 hours, I go home. If I'm not going to be working, I'd rather not be working at home. I've never had any complaints about work quality or throughput. I have had one complaint about not being seen in the office.
How do you assess "finished my work"? Unless you are working on tickets that might stop coming in is really hard to be "out of work", specially in projects.
I ask this because I see a lot of people saying the same but there's always more work to do, being testing something that should be working, fixing bugs, refactoring that old piece of junk you left behind due to times constraints, etc.
For me, it starts during sprint planning. I know what work is going into the sprint, and what work is being assigned to me (we don't run sprints in the natural way of grabbing the next card that's free. I disagree with it, but it is what it is). So I plan out what I need to do on a day-to-day basis to finish that amount of work. For a normal sprint (i.e executing on plans and agreed upon designs) I try to plan the day to be ~6 hours of coding work a day. Sometimes my estimates are long and I finish in 4 or 5 hours. Could I start on the next card? Absolutely. And if I finish all my work early, I'll pull something from the backlog.
But in general, I find it more sustainable to just go home after I finish in 5 hours because I know there are going to be times that I work 10 or 12 hours (or a Saturday). Also, for me, depending on the next card, it might take an hour or so to get going at the end of a day. So I'm now at 7 to 8 hours which is when I normally leave. Was that hour or two wasted? No. I retain the knowledge till the next day. But again for me, I've found that coming in and starting a new task fresh reduces that one or two hours to less and gives me a singular focus for the day.
If I finish in 2 or 3 hours, I always move on to the next task. That would be silly to go home after 2 hours (most days).
I adapt this style for wherever I work. It has worked for me at start ups as well as BigCo.
[Update] For the side things (refactoring messy code, flakey tests, automating a tedious process, etc.) - I create cards/tasks for them and get them into the sprint.
I know this makes me sound like a "terrible" employee. But it allows me to give my best on a more sustainable basis. And if it is something that truly needs to be done in a month, I'll work those 10 or 12 hour 7 day work weeks...
They probably make snide remarks because they don't understand that someone executing according to plan, consistently over several years and projects, working 5 hours per day, is more valuable than someone working 8 hours in a less organized manner and sometimes missing deadlines.
It sounds like you're only allocated to one project at a time, correct?
In many big corps it's common to be on four or five projects at any one time. Finishing one discrete piece of work is only a signal for the next project manager to appear at my desk and demand that I get working on his piece of work.
And I can see his perspective, he doesn't particularly care if i was super-productive that day on Project-A when he's managing Project-B and there are still hours left in the working day.
It really depends on the day. Sometimes I've got basically nothing to do whereas other times I'm overloaded and there basically isn't a moment I'm not. It's hard to figure an average.
Some days almost the entire day. I'll read, watch videos, do some tutorials. But its offset because usually when I do this it's because I'm hung up on something and it just isn't going to get solved unless the ole brain has time to do its subconscious thing.
Letting the subconscious work through a hard problem while doing something else is a truly underrated trick. Taking a shower or going for a walk also works wonderfully.
I used to take hour long lunch breaks, which I'd spend about 35mins walking to get food and finding a nice spot to sit outside, most days I done this I would come back into the office refreshed and often fix the issue I was working on shortly after coming back. But the hour-long break was always founded upon, which is why I ended up leaving. (it was also the only break I took each day, but the culture in the team I was in was to take no more than 30mins break)
Throwaway for maximum honesty: I am pretty sure I spend at least 75% of my time "at work" not working. HN, Reddit, messing around with side projects or learning a new language or framework. This has been the case for my entire working life.
I seem to get as much done as other people (sometimes better) so part of me wonders if I'm not as unusual as I feel. Part of me wonders if I should get evaluated for ADHD, since I find it such a struggle to focus on my work. And part of me is just frustrated with myself, that theoretically I could spend like 3 good hours at work each day, get more done, and have more quality time to myself.
Or they're "productive" in a different way. There's one developer on our team who spends large portions of his day creating diagrams, documents and largely unneeded JIRA tickets. It's busy work, but since he has nothing else to do, he just creates document exhaust.
The best way to describe ADHD is: The TV is always on, but you don't get to choose the channel.
Some things are easy to focus on—I can sit down to program for a bit and lose track of time for 5 hours. On the other hand, if something is boring, it's mind-numbingly boring.
It was the worst while I was in school, since teachers and professors just thought, "oh, he's unmotivated" when in reality it was more along the lines of, "I'd rather cut my toenails with a rusty butter knife than write the paper." (Okay, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration.)
Anyway, if it affects your life and managing it yourself isn't working (give it an honest effort, of course) definitely speak with a doctor. While too many parents think their kids have ADHD when the kids are really just, well, kids, trying to cope with ADHD without some sort of guidance sucks. A lot. It's amazing how much more productive you can be if you get some help coping with it.
Unrelated but I felt compelled to share a similar sentiment:
> It was the worst while I was in school, since teachers and professors just thought, "oh, he's unmotivated" when in reality it was more along the lines of, "I'd rather cut my toenails with a rusty butter knife than write the paper." (Okay, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration.)
Oh man I can relate so much. So many conversations with teachers asking why I wasn't motivated while every night I went home to program and build side projects and was singularly focused on becoming a programmer in the game industry.
The answer was of course I was motivated just not by anything they had to offer and that never went over very well.
> "I'd rather cut my toenails with a rusty butter knife than write the paper."
> Okay, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration.
I have ADHD, this is not an exaggeration. I actually really like your example.
It's literally how it feels like.
I remember being in school and doing things like lining up my pencil with the rays of light coming from outside, and then trying to outline the shadow of my pencil with a different pen. I would spend an entire class on that instead of listening to a single word the professor said.
The worst part about it is that part of you knows the professor is sharing interesting stuff, it just that your brain tells you its boring.
it's like a lack of motivation to the point of abhorring any expended effort on a task because it's _THAT_ worthless of a pursuit to you. It's like you endure pain that other people don't experience just to do normal activities if you don't find them fascinating.
I can relate to (what you wrote and also) "I'd rather cut my toenails with a rusty butter knife than write the paper", but even more "I'd rather cut my toenails with a rusty butter knife than be the kind of person that still isn't writing the paper even though it's 11pm on the day before the deadline but, oh, look, I'm still not writing the paper and now I'm actively running round the kitchen looking for butter knives as if they'd actually get me out of writing the paper, and now I'm cleaning the kitchen worktop for the first time in several months instead, and now I'm 10 pages deep on a Google search for what kind of spider I saw in the kitchen, and oh crap now it's midnight and I'm still the worthless jerk that hasn't started their paper"
I don't know if I have ADHD, though. Admittedly I wrote the above in a fairly exaggerated-ADHD way, and it's all the kind of thing I do actually do, but... no diagnosis, maybe just anxious about failure or lazy instead.
> The worst part about it is that part of you knows the professor is sharing interesting stuff, it just that your brain tells you its boring.
Yes! I remember sitting in class and hearing the professor say, "This is important and will be on the test" and continuing to daydream or fiddle with something else, even though I knew I needed to pay attention.
I've had similar symptoms to those caused by ADHD for quite some time now, but I'm not sure if visiting a doctor will help me much. The symptoms I've experienced are inattentiveness, boredom, lethargy, and poor time management. My question is: if I do get diagnosed by a professional, what kind of improvement can I expect from ADHD medication?
Medication is likely not the right solution for you, there are several very helpful books about Adult ADHD that you should check out that could change your life: Taking Charge of Adult ADHD, and, Is it You, Me, or Adult ADHD?
great books
I don't mean to be rude, but assuming you're not a doctor (and, even if you are, he's not your patient), I don't think it's good form to give medical advice on the Internet, particularly if it's advice that's dismissive of a mainstream treatment.
My two cents, don't rule anything out. I had a SO with adult ADD and medication made a world of difference. That's just one person, though, and everybody's different. Do talk to a doctor if you feel like you might have adult ADD. It's a very real thing, and there are lots of treatment options, both pharmacologic and not.
>"The symptoms I've experienced are... and poor time management."
I built a morning and evening routine app (Routinist) to help professionals schedule habits/goals into their days. I did not have ADHD in mind when I built it, but around 1/3 of the positive feedback I get through emails / reviews has some form "I have ADHD and this helps me".
I was on ADHD meds from the age of 10 to 18. They helped but they had really nasty side effects (used to take 2-5 hours of lying in bed to get to sleep, everything seems super dull and its very hard to break the intense concentration which for the most part is focused on unproductive things like organising old photos instead of cleaning your room.) For a phase of my life after I stopped taking meds, I got quite depressed that I couldn't concentrate as well at uni and my first year at work and that I couldn't listen to my girlfriend at the time very well. The analogies that everyone uses here completely resonate with me, in my head was always something like "1800-GHOST-DANCE by Hella" (mathrock song.)
Now I've worked for a bit and have accepted that I'm not wired in a way that will let me be an excellent student (in the traditional sense) without hating myself I have a lot more appreciation for my strengths and weaknesses. The biggest benefits to me post meds have been getting enough sleep, exercising and meditation (even just writing stuff in my mind down) - I'd get all that in shape before I'd go to a doctor if I was you.
Thank you for the informative reply! Yes, my next course of action is to start an organized exercise regimen and try to fit in a bit of meditation every day. I'll work on that a for a few months and see what happens.
Depends on the meds. I've only had a 'downer' (strattera) that made me feel almost comatose. It helped me focus a lot, definitely. But only by kinda 'blurring out' or 'graying out' the rest of the world that would otherwise grab my attention. I've been med-free since high school. However, I know some people who've taken meds and it's helped immensely.
Sorry I can't give a better answer! It's a question best left to your GP, I think.
>"I'd rather cut my toenails with a rusty butter knife than write the paper." (Okay, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration.)
This totally describes me. The line I quoted resonates because sometimes the idea of a boring task is actually frightening to me, in the way you described. Like I get a really sick feeling about it and will do almost anything to avoid it. On the other hand I feel like I have so much going on in my head, and so much I could produce if I could only channel it properly. The TV is most definitely always on. My lack of focus and procrastination has definitely held me back in my career.
One thing I'm wary of is medicalising what might just laziness. How do I know it's not a version of "special snowflake syndrome"? Is my own inattentiveness (and inability to get over it) really so much worse than what a "normal" person experiences?
To give a parallel, I heard a podcast where Ramit Sethi was talking about "introvert porn", where he's saying there is all this stuff online about how hard life is for introverts, how extroverts don't get it, basically making people feel good about being an introvert and telling them that it's an integral part of who they are rather than something they can change. And he's saying that this is a dangerous and self-defeating trap to get into because people don't realise that social skills can be learned. All these "introverts" are just falling back onto an excuse to avoid confronting the thing that's holding them back.
If I start blaming all my problems on ADHD am I just falling into a similar trap? After all, not everyone can be successful. Maybe I'm just not successful because I'm not that good at anything, not because of a medical condition.
Possibly relevant: I am in the UK where ADHD seems to be a lot less recognised than in the USA. People here are often critical of the idea of medicating ADHD in kids (which is relatively unusual here afaik). I don't know how a British GP would react to someone asking for an adult ADHD diagnosis - I imagine it wouldn't be taken very seriously.
I may have a mild form of this. My brain often thinks of all sorts of crap, and bounces from new idea to new idea all the time without focusing too hard on any given one.
But one reason I haven't sought medication is because I'm a bit afraid that the "TV" might be turned off when under medication. That constant bouncing around of ideas is responsible for a lot of my best design ideas. I don't want that to go away.
I just need to find a fast channel to get my ideas out there. Trying to make 'products' out of all of them just keeps them from getting out there, I think.
It's true that adult ADHD (and non-hyperactive ADHD, and ADHD in women) is under-recognised in the UK.
However, NICE (the National Institute for Clinical Excellence) has published guidelines about diagnosis and the short version iirc is that you're well within your rights to point out that your GP is not a specialist in this area and ask to be referred.
The bad news is there may not be anywhere locally to refer you to, so you may need to travel out of area, pay to see someone private (and then fight to have your prescription accepted and paid for by the NHS). There are more kids' specialists but they may not recognise the nuances of the adult condition.
No, I haven't done it - I've been meaning to for over a year and keep putting it off, ha ha.
> If I start blaming all my problems on ADHD am I just falling into a similar trap? After all, not everyone can be successful. Maybe I'm just not successful because I'm not that good at anything, not because of a medical condition.
I think the key is to recognize there are challenges with ADHD, but also to recognize that they're not insurmountable.
I do, on occasion, blame something solely on my ADHD. But, usually I have to be self-reflective and say, Hey, while my ADHD made this task way more difficult than it needed to be, failure to finish it on time was still my fault. So, for example, I'll have to budget more time for some tasks or take small, regular breaks to keep my focus.
We fall into the trap when we absolve ourselves of responsibility. It sucks, and to some degree it feels like victim blaming, but it's life!
> The line I quoted resonates because sometimes the idea of a boring task is actually frightening to me, in the way you described. Like I get a really sick feeling about it and will do almost anything to avoid it.
This is actually an amazing insight. This tells you exactly what the root of your procrastination is. It's not laziness, because I'm sure you can apply plenty of effort in tasks where this fear isn't present. Maybe drill down a bit further on what the source of this fear might be. Were boring tasks used as punishment in your childhood?
People with eating disorders are often afraid of boring food without realizing it. The thought of a diet is scary because they'll be missing out on their favourite foods. After adopting a bland diet for a few weeks, most find their fear dissipates, and bland food can become enjoyable. Maybe try the same strategy with boring tasks? Essentially exposure therapy.
> "I'd rather cut my toenails with a rusty butter knife than write the paper."
This statement really resonates with me too. Getting over the inertia to just start things that I don't really want to do is sometimes a multi-day effort, and then staying focused is hard beyond that. I've been thinking I should get evaluated, maybe I will.
I do have to ask, though, was that a Frank Reynolds toe knife reference?
Your description of ADHD is 100%, but for anyone trying to deal with this issue I would be very careful with meds prescribed from doctors, because for some of them it is mostly a big business. I was diagnosed with ADHD many years ago and prescribed with Ritalin and then an extended version of it (basically releasing throughout the whole day) and while it made me more productive, I experienced horrible jittering, crashes and I just did not feel like myself, but more like a zombie/junkie. I think it is scary that even 6-years old kids are prescribed with these pills nowadays.
pro tip: I was trying to find a natural solution, which for me is DMAE combined with fish-oil. It has basically the same effect for me in terms of productivity without the nasty side effects + you can buy it in every vitamin store. It is funny how I can almost immediately (within few days) notice when I stop taking these.
I had this same issue until I stopped visiting Reddit completely (even in my off work hours) and gave up my addiction to news. It's amazing the difference it has made in my productivity.
Nah, I don't spend much time on HN. I just scan the front page 2-3 times a day. Plus, I gain a lot of value out of it. I would probably not be where I am in my career were it not for HN.
I've had similar success in the past. But I went back to a single monitor instead of giving up reddit entirely. Not having the distraction always present on the second screen helps.
I use the reddit app on my phone to fill those <10 minute gaps in my day where I would otherwise be bored, eg waiting in line, waiting for a long loading screen, etc. It's simple to pick up and put down in a moment's notice.
Assuming you did the same thing, what do you do now without it?
I carry my kindle around and try to read any chance I get. Or if there is not enough time to read, I try to do... nothing. Haha I know it may seem like a crazy concept but I have been trying to resist the urge of always looking through Instagram, Snapchat, HN, etc.
That's not to say I never do it, a lot of times I still find myself checking social accounts when I'm in line or whatever, but I try to avoid reddit entirely because of how it always manages to suck up more time than you expect and I have found it seriously feeds the addiction to content, especially news.
I never thought I'd have to create a throwaway for HN, but here I am
This is me.
On a good day, I might work for 3 hours of my 7 hour day. On a bad day, 1 hour. Somehow, I get the work done, and even get praised for it, though it's not taxing or particularly good code. I think my firm is afraid to lose me, and let me get away with too much, but that could be paranoia / imposter syndrome. That said, my productivity is on a par with others I work with (surpassing some) and I don't consider myself to be a better coder than they are.
I spend the larger part of my day on side projects, learning new languages, trying new apps, painstakingly reorganising my local file system, reducing the size and complexity of my dropbox folders (even though I'm using less than half of my free space), reading HN, tinkering with electronics at my desk, reorganising my workspace, blogging, reading, listening to podcasts or audiobooks (I find I can't do anything that involves typing at the same time, but I can do graphics)
I have curtailed my reddit / browsing a lot, but its still more than I'd like.
Lately, I've decided that my job is not challenging me enough, and I want to leave it. And so I blame that on my lack of focus. But if I'm honest, I've always been like this. In previous jobs, in college, in school, I've always done the minimum required to get by because I have other "more important" things to do.
I'm easily distracted. I don't think I'd go so far as to say I have ADHD, but I do have trouble focussing on tasks when a computer is involved. I have a theory that this is a side-effect of the modern computing experience itself. Switching tabs and multitasking is so easy these days, with the amounnt of RAM / Bandwidth / CPU we have at our disposal, that doing several things at once is very tempting. I barely bother to close apps. I would normally have 4-5 VS windows, Android Studio, Photoshop, Sublime, etc all open at once, and while I'm not switching between them every five minutes, I might alt-tab to one by accident and lose an hour fixing some bug or trying some thing out.
There were some college projects that really captured my interest, but those were an exception.
In "Office Space*, the guy says he spends all his time appeasing his many bosses and only gets 10 minutes of real work done in a week. At my corporate job, I spent at least two hours a day doing necessary tasks that didn't really count towards production, but would cause problems if not taken care of. I also routinely cleaned up messes left by the people being actively rewarded by management for their speed who achieved that by doing sloppy work.
I do freelance work these days. My corporate experience helps me not stress overly much about how little actual work seems to happen. There are always a bunch of tasks necessary to getting other things done that "don't count" as work.
This really hits close to home for me. The first four years of my career I had the exact same sentiment. I would be able to complete my work in the first few hours of the day and just screw around after that. It was often misguided and didn't accomplish much other then learning random factoids. 15 months ago I finally brought myself to see a psychiatrist for depression, and between therapy and medication I was able to snap out of it and get on my feet again. The only thing is, while I started to love what I was doing again, I still felt no true inspiration to focus on something that wasn't truly challenging. And that turned out to be a major issue for me, and I had conversations with my therapist and she recommended I consider getting treatment for ADHD. One of my friends came by that weekend and happened to have a few extra extended release aderall, so I split it up over the two weeks between my next appointment with my psychiatrist. But I knew almost immediately after taking aderall that I likely had ADHD. I had a moment of clarity where my own thoughts didn't consume me while I worked for 30 minutes. The last time I felt that was probably a decade ago when I was still considering going to school for music performance. I've now been on medication for ADHD for a month and it's had a profound impact on my quality of life. I used to always be tired, regardless of how much sleep I got. I would find myself having difficulty in completing what should be minor tasks with any bit of precision. I was making so many little mistakes here and there that I didn't realize how much of an impact it was having on my morale.
This is a really long and roundabout way of saying, there's no reason not to go see a therapist and a psychiatrist if you feel like it's starting to impact you're quality of life. The worst thing that happens is you go to a doctor and get a comprehensive health examination to rule out any other factors or you take medication for a month that doesn't help.
Developer here. Going by my time Rescuetime logs, 62.5% of my time is spent outside of the IDE or any other work related application. I do not enjoy this work and spend a lot of time walking around/thinking about the problem/surfing non work sites.
I'd like to see where people are from if they're replying to this thread. I wonder how cultural norms affect effectiveness (do Americans work less at work because of the work-oriented culture which requires them to stay at work longer for no reason?)
I work in the USA and i would say I'm about 30-40% productive, maybe less. My productivity is strongly related to the density of meetings throughout the day: My productivity killers are relatively short gaps between meetings (<45m) during which i am completely unable to focus because of the anticipation that i will soon be completely distracted. So if I have three 1hr meetings with 45minutes gaps between them, my daily productivity plummets to nearly 0. Open office plan also doesn't help with staying focused.
> do Americans work less at work because of the work-oriented culture which requires them to stay at work longer for no reason?
I don't think US workplace culture is extreme in that regard. I usually look at East Asian work culture when it comes truly weird workplace norms and traditions.
My family lived in Japan for a short period, and my father told me that he and his colleagues had to wait for their boss to leave every night before they could leave work. Now that's extreme.
I recently started my first full time job associated with my career. I'd say I spend between 65-80% either doing my work or something related to it such as training or reading documentation (which take up about 20% of my time at the moment).
Arguably, time spent reading HN is a legitimate part of becoming/remaining a good developer. Certainly, spending time socializing with coworkers is a required part of work, many places. Spending some amount of time unwinding at the office is arguably required for mental health and therefore a functional component of remaining a worker -- does that count as working?
"Working" is an ambiguous category, it seems to me. One definition of work (call it "productivist") says that we're only working when we're literally producing something valuable. A more organizational view might hold that "work" is whatever you're socially (often implicitly) required to do to keep your job (whether measurably productive or not). And a third more holistic definition would include stuff like exercise or professional development that are not always directly "required" by anyone, but that you might go crazy without doing...
While it isn't work, reading technical articles regularly on HN can be very beneficial.
In fact, the first thing I tell aspiring developers is to start reading HN on a regular basis if they already aren't. It confers a sort of broad awareness of various stacks and ecosystems over time that's hard to obtain otherwise.
Absolutely and if keeping up with technology is not work then what it is "work"? Is it just typing out the code? What about when your IDE auto-completes your code? It's a little silly to think about it this way.
I try to keep my distractions to a minimum level but I've often encountered comments and articles on HN that have been of great benefit to my work and my clients. Things like a service I've never heard of, a library being used in a way that I haven't seen before or even just personal experiences.
Hell I even use HN to minimize distractions such as reading only the comments section about some new product Google/MS/Apple released(or is killing) just to get an idea of what's out there in the market and if it is of any use to me.
Yeah, learning the culture of your profession -- with a broad awareness of different ecosystems and things -- isn't "immediately productive," but it's a simple form of professional development. (And in my opinion, enlightened employers understand that decent professional development is a really important part of the work process.)
Anecdote: I found AWS had a hosted Elastic Search that had just been released. This knowledge enabled the team I led to solve a problem that was challenging my team with what was relatively a small amount of work.
There is no amount of heads down work that would of attained this amount of benefit. We were not thinking about the search problem much and the one of our engineers just kept spending more and more time trying to enhance our failing custom solution.
Making sure you are informed about what other people are making is useful and is part of your job as an expert. Now if I can just find an application for the CRISPR enhanced crypto sea-monkeys that I learned about yesterday that should really help us out.
I've learned a tremendous amount from reading HN. Sure, there's lots of posts that are time wasters, but so much good information for a developer is concentrated in one place makes it valuable and useful.
I'm surprised by the responses here. I didn't think it was as prevalent as comments suggest. At the beginning of my career it was probably around 50%, though after spending two years at a consulting company, it's dropped to 5-10% maximum. I find that reducing interruption and having music going keeps me engaged.
According to RescueTime, I spend around 83% of my screen time on "productive" things. My total screen time averages about 25 hours / week, whereas my at-work time is roughly closer to double that. I'd say that 67% of my off-screen at-work time is "productive" meetings and the other third is things like lunch, walks, etc.
Putting this all together, I spend 37.5 hours / week productively and 12.5 hours / week at work slacking off (or doing human things like eating and pooping). So call it 75% productive time.
I generally enjoy my job. I've counted writing this post / assembling this data as "not productive" time.
Unfortunately I'm paid hourly and remotely, so while getting settled, checking an email or two, getting coffee, etc are all things I would do as part of a normal workday, I don't tend to log those hours or get paid for any of it
I probably spend half my time not working. I'm burnt out though. After a few years at my current position, I just don't care.
Why is this?
I've had a few promising projects languish because my manager is slow or hesitant to allocate resources. That's a bit demoralizing. When I'm on a path to production for a functioning system I get caught up in the devops meeting vortex. That's a waste of time and it takes several weeks to get any sort of resolution. In these cases my time is mostly spent looking for workarounds and not "working". I feel there are a lot of politics and favoritism in the company, and my manager (and our team) is not on the right side. It's demotivating to have your work ignored because you're not a priority. I don't know how anyone stays for more than a year.
Edit: In the first few months I worked on random on-going projects, but was quickly made lead on some new projects. It was good at first, but after about 9 months I'd say most (90%) weeks I don't put in anywhere near 40 hours of work.
The sad thing is I've always gotten a raise (double digit in two cases) and full bonus every performance cycle.
I've finally started looking for another job.
Does anyone have recommendations? I'm really looking for a company that enables their individual contributors (engineers) to actually get shit done.
Work for a startup, preferably one that is already somewhat profitable. I have worked for this type company my whole career and this "devops vortex" you speak of is a foreign concept. I run a small IT dept and we have one 30 min staff per week plus a one-on-one for each dev. And they code and solve other problems all day, and of course surf the web or socialize to break up the day too.
I'm already in talks with two well known pre-IPO startups (<500 employees). The devops vortex is a new animal to me as well. I've never had so many problems moving systems into production than I have at this company.
Edit: I've talked with many in my professional network and they describe similar meeting loads (~1 hr/week) as you do. I'd estimate I spend on average 3 hr/week in meetings. And most of these meetings don't result in action items. They're essentially pointless.
Coming from an organization where I spent > 10 hours a week on meetings, I hear you. I believe I spent more time writing emails than writing code. The code I did write was done at night after everyone left and there would be no more meetings and useless phone calls. Managed to create the most used/useful application in the organization and still nothing changed.
When it occurred to me that things are not going to change in my lifetime even with all the promises of upper management, I started creating side projects where I am in control of the full direction. When that wasn't enough, I also started looking for a new job. Joined a startup as a CTO/Lead Dev and was happier.
I think of stuff that is beneficial to the company in one way or another like 95% of the time.
Re structuring thoughts, digesting ideas.... talking to others to understand how they think.
But if someone that did not know me came and looked at what i did during work hours and did not get to ask questions to me. I would assume they would think that i only worked 20-25% of the time.
I have recently gone freelance/self-employed and I have quickly missed the reality of being able to not have to question if I'm actually getting work done every minute of the day. The truth is, I can't do brain-intensive work for more than maybe 5 or 6 hours.
as much as keeping the pipe full and working for organizations that...have such internal problems they have to hire contractors does kinda suck.
working when you feel like you can contribute, billing exactly those hours, and filling the rest of your time with activities of your choice feels very honest and liberating.
if i feel like i can't get things done because of the environment then i don't work, and i don't bill. if i finish a job and they have no more work for me then i say, thanks, keep me in mind, let me know if you have any problems.
not really a capitalist, but the transactional nature removes all the festering emotional complications. and you can be a lot more straightforward about where things are broken.
It is an interesting question which, in my opinion, hinges entirely on a fairly puritanical notion of 'work.'
One of my 'problems' is that I can't "not work" in the sense of a laborer who is no longer building widgets. As a person who is asked to solve complex problems with a high degree of dimensionality inside of an arbitrarily constrained solution space, much of the 'work' I do consists of turning the problem over and over in my head while I explore the solution space.
A good example of this was an early review I got at Intel by my manager (a really solid EE type guy). He added some criticism of my time management (considered a 'ding' in the vernacular) for a embedded compiler/assembler/driver thing I wrote as part of the evaluation of a graphics processor. He said I had 'sand bagged' the time estimate.
When I asked him to describe that a bit more he explained that I had told him it would take 6 months to do, and it was 2 weeks late, and I had spent 5 months "goofing off and not working" and then about 6 weeks doing the work. So my estimate should really have been '8 weeks' and if I had started on time it would have been done two weeks earlier than that.
I thought about that for a long time. And explained to him the for five months I had no idea what the best way to write the software was, and in that five months I had learned about 8 different technologies that all came together into the final solution. I had to learn how to write device drivers in Xenix, how to map I/O space memory into the kernel, design a language which was human understandable and could be compiled into the odd little RISC instruction set of the Graphics chip. And until I had figured out all of that precursor information, I didn't have a clue how it would be written, but then after figuring out that information actually writing the code was fairly mechanical.
In this one case the problem was that hardware has so many great milestones you can call out, parts captured, schematics done, netlists verified, layout started, design rule verification, first films, films checked, first boards, boards checked, first assembly. Bringup in stages 1, 2, and 3 etc. All along the way there are pleasant milestones to say "this is done" now on to the next thing.
But software is never like that for building something that nobody has ever built before. And it is even rarely like that when you have the same software but you are building it on a different system. The linkages, the entanglement between the system and the software (and now the network and the services) makes each new implementation its own special snowflake, with its own kinds of problems.
Have you ever woken up and "knew" the solution to a tricky software issue? Or had an idea for a change to an existing system that might make it better? That happens to me all the time when I'm designing stuff. And a case could be made that I'm working even when I'm asleep! Not because I'm sitting there typing in lines of code but because I'm going through the solution space, somewhere in my subconscious, looking for clues to places that hold better answers than the answer that is currently checked into the git repository.
As a result I tend to measure my own productivity by 'solutions over unit time' versus 'hours typing into employer owned equipment'. It still bites me from time to time when a supervisor needs a constant stream of 'still flying' type status messages to feel comfortable.
Interesting. So despite the apparent success, your manager put on paper that you were "goofing off and not working"? Did he mention that verbally one or two times beforehand? How did you react?
Once things hit paper, I generally start interviewing. Not sure whether that was right. But looking back over my career, I usually should have left earlier rather than later in those cases.
It was verbal vs on paper. What was in the review was that I needed to improve my time management. And oddly enough I left for Sun Microsystems not to long after that, but not strictly because of the review, rather it was that I preferred a work culture that understood what programmers did in addition to understanding what EEs did.
And for what its worth, I took it to mean that I wasn't communicating how I was spending my time well enough and suggested ways that would work for both of us. I expect that had I stayed at Intel it would have been fine.
I've a hard time communicating what I'm doing in that "research" phase.
During standups, most people are reporting concrete tasks that got done and I feel a bit embarrassed to say I spent the whole day trying something out that's remotely related to the final product but was interesting for the ideas.
It's stressful to have to report those things, I feel like I have to justify them, what's my train of thought, etc, and a 1-minute update has to turn into an essay. Not really sure how to improve on that.
During your time at Intel did you have to report on your work quite frequently?
Intel was my first exposure to "management by objective" and "key results". And yes, there were weekly reviews of your progress. Every quarter, a set of objectives and under each objective key results, and then weekly you reported on how you were doing with respect to those.
I think the key to your stress is either that you aren't clear in your head what you're trying to figure out, or your trying to figure out things that aren't actually relevant. In my life what I have done is to do get very very disciplined about what I'm to understand and how that will relate to the final goal. Not surprisingly that is different as a manager than it is as an individual contributor.
If I were your manager, and you came to me with this (and I would hope your relationship with your manager is good enough that you could talk to them about it) I would start with three questions;
1) What parts of your assignment are you completely confident you can build/write?
2) What parts are you unsure of how to build?
3) What things that you are unsure about are between you and building the things you know you can build?
Perhaps you can imagine how the conversation goes after you answer those questions. But lets say for this hypothetical that you were unsure if you could build a database fast enough to respond in time to meet the response requirements of the product.
At that point we'd talk about what steps you could take to understand what sort of performance to expect out of a database, what variables had the biggest impact on that performance, and which databases were designed to be fast. And you and I would agree that you would spend this sprint perhaps developing your understanding of database performance. So at the stand up I'd expect you summarize and article you read, a set of benchmarks you set up, a set of test tables you created in the existing system, or maybe the top 5 blogs/books/videos you've found on analyzing database performance. At the retro I'd want to know what sources gave you the most information for the time invested, what were the time wasters, if you were more or less confident about the database choice and its performance and maybe how you had, or would, quantify your understanding with something objective.
From your perspective you would probably have spent the time 'surfing the web' to find out various sources of information or perhaps prototyping some things on AWS or on a local server.
If instead you came back and said, "I really don't know anything more about databases yet but I learned Rust, and got stuff running in the new Angular release and updated my server to the latest Ubuntu and read a book on containers. Then we're going to have a different talk :-)
Probably 25% on the average day. Occasionally 0%. There are entire days that I'll spend working on nothing but side projects, but our company is getting big so no one notices or cares. Sometimes I work from home just so I don't have to do anything other than be around for a couple meetings.
The bigger we get the more lawyers and compliance people we ad, and the less noticeable it is that I'm not doing shit.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] threadHonestly, my best guess is 50%, or close. I still get my work done as fast as everyone else, though. No complaints on performance reviews.
Unlike most people, if I finish my work in 5 hours, I go home. If I'm not going to be working, I'd rather not be working at home. I've never had any complaints about work quality or throughput. I have had one complaint about not being seen in the office.
[edit] clarified the 35% bucket
I ask this because I see a lot of people saying the same but there's always more work to do, being testing something that should be working, fixing bugs, refactoring that old piece of junk you left behind due to times constraints, etc.
But in general, I find it more sustainable to just go home after I finish in 5 hours because I know there are going to be times that I work 10 or 12 hours (or a Saturday). Also, for me, depending on the next card, it might take an hour or so to get going at the end of a day. So I'm now at 7 to 8 hours which is when I normally leave. Was that hour or two wasted? No. I retain the knowledge till the next day. But again for me, I've found that coming in and starting a new task fresh reduces that one or two hours to less and gives me a singular focus for the day.
If I finish in 2 or 3 hours, I always move on to the next task. That would be silly to go home after 2 hours (most days).
I adapt this style for wherever I work. It has worked for me at start ups as well as BigCo.
[Update] For the side things (refactoring messy code, flakey tests, automating a tedious process, etc.) - I create cards/tasks for them and get them into the sprint.
I know this makes me sound like a "terrible" employee. But it allows me to give my best on a more sustainable basis. And if it is something that truly needs to be done in a month, I'll work those 10 or 12 hour 7 day work weeks...
In many big corps it's common to be on four or five projects at any one time. Finishing one discrete piece of work is only a signal for the next project manager to appear at my desk and demand that I get working on his piece of work.
And I can see his perspective, he doesn't particularly care if i was super-productive that day on Project-A when he's managing Project-B and there are still hours left in the working day.
Working from home is getting things done.
I seem to get as much done as other people (sometimes better) so part of me wonders if I'm not as unusual as I feel. Part of me wonders if I should get evaluated for ADHD, since I find it such a struggle to focus on my work. And part of me is just frustrated with myself, that theoretically I could spend like 3 good hours at work each day, get more done, and have more quality time to myself.
Perhaps all the other people are also as unproductive as you? ;)
Some things are easy to focus on—I can sit down to program for a bit and lose track of time for 5 hours. On the other hand, if something is boring, it's mind-numbingly boring.
It was the worst while I was in school, since teachers and professors just thought, "oh, he's unmotivated" when in reality it was more along the lines of, "I'd rather cut my toenails with a rusty butter knife than write the paper." (Okay, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration.)
Anyway, if it affects your life and managing it yourself isn't working (give it an honest effort, of course) definitely speak with a doctor. While too many parents think their kids have ADHD when the kids are really just, well, kids, trying to cope with ADHD without some sort of guidance sucks. A lot. It's amazing how much more productive you can be if you get some help coping with it.
Just my $0.02.
> It was the worst while I was in school, since teachers and professors just thought, "oh, he's unmotivated" when in reality it was more along the lines of, "I'd rather cut my toenails with a rusty butter knife than write the paper." (Okay, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration.)
Oh man I can relate so much. So many conversations with teachers asking why I wasn't motivated while every night I went home to program and build side projects and was singularly focused on becoming a programmer in the game industry.
The answer was of course I was motivated just not by anything they had to offer and that never went over very well.
> went home to program and build side projects and was singularly focused on becoming a programmer in the game industry
> Okay, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration.
I have ADHD, this is not an exaggeration. I actually really like your example.
It's literally how it feels like.
I remember being in school and doing things like lining up my pencil with the rays of light coming from outside, and then trying to outline the shadow of my pencil with a different pen. I would spend an entire class on that instead of listening to a single word the professor said.
The worst part about it is that part of you knows the professor is sharing interesting stuff, it just that your brain tells you its boring.
I don't know if I have ADHD, though. Admittedly I wrote the above in a fairly exaggerated-ADHD way, and it's all the kind of thing I do actually do, but... no diagnosis, maybe just anxious about failure or lazy instead.
Yes! I remember sitting in class and hearing the professor say, "This is important and will be on the test" and continuing to daydream or fiddle with something else, even though I knew I needed to pay attention.
My two cents, don't rule anything out. I had a SO with adult ADD and medication made a world of difference. That's just one person, though, and everybody's different. Do talk to a doctor if you feel like you might have adult ADD. It's a very real thing, and there are lots of treatment options, both pharmacologic and not.
I built a morning and evening routine app (Routinist) to help professionals schedule habits/goals into their days. I did not have ADHD in mind when I built it, but around 1/3 of the positive feedback I get through emails / reviews has some form "I have ADHD and this helps me".
Now I've worked for a bit and have accepted that I'm not wired in a way that will let me be an excellent student (in the traditional sense) without hating myself I have a lot more appreciation for my strengths and weaknesses. The biggest benefits to me post meds have been getting enough sleep, exercising and meditation (even just writing stuff in my mind down) - I'd get all that in shape before I'd go to a doctor if I was you.
Sorry I can't give a better answer! It's a question best left to your GP, I think.
This totally describes me. The line I quoted resonates because sometimes the idea of a boring task is actually frightening to me, in the way you described. Like I get a really sick feeling about it and will do almost anything to avoid it. On the other hand I feel like I have so much going on in my head, and so much I could produce if I could only channel it properly. The TV is most definitely always on. My lack of focus and procrastination has definitely held me back in my career.
One thing I'm wary of is medicalising what might just laziness. How do I know it's not a version of "special snowflake syndrome"? Is my own inattentiveness (and inability to get over it) really so much worse than what a "normal" person experiences?
To give a parallel, I heard a podcast where Ramit Sethi was talking about "introvert porn", where he's saying there is all this stuff online about how hard life is for introverts, how extroverts don't get it, basically making people feel good about being an introvert and telling them that it's an integral part of who they are rather than something they can change. And he's saying that this is a dangerous and self-defeating trap to get into because people don't realise that social skills can be learned. All these "introverts" are just falling back onto an excuse to avoid confronting the thing that's holding them back.
If I start blaming all my problems on ADHD am I just falling into a similar trap? After all, not everyone can be successful. Maybe I'm just not successful because I'm not that good at anything, not because of a medical condition.
Possibly relevant: I am in the UK where ADHD seems to be a lot less recognised than in the USA. People here are often critical of the idea of medicating ADHD in kids (which is relatively unusual here afaik). I don't know how a British GP would react to someone asking for an adult ADHD diagnosis - I imagine it wouldn't be taken very seriously.
Public attitudes to health are often not reflected in the NHS in a variety of ways.
But one reason I haven't sought medication is because I'm a bit afraid that the "TV" might be turned off when under medication. That constant bouncing around of ideas is responsible for a lot of my best design ideas. I don't want that to go away.
I just need to find a fast channel to get my ideas out there. Trying to make 'products' out of all of them just keeps them from getting out there, I think.
However, NICE (the National Institute for Clinical Excellence) has published guidelines about diagnosis and the short version iirc is that you're well within your rights to point out that your GP is not a specialist in this area and ask to be referred.
The bad news is there may not be anywhere locally to refer you to, so you may need to travel out of area, pay to see someone private (and then fight to have your prescription accepted and paid for by the NHS). There are more kids' specialists but they may not recognise the nuances of the adult condition.
No, I haven't done it - I've been meaning to for over a year and keep putting it off, ha ha.
Links: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/CG72 - NICE guidelines; https://aadduk.org/forum/ - AADD UK forum
I think the key is to recognize there are challenges with ADHD, but also to recognize that they're not insurmountable.
I do, on occasion, blame something solely on my ADHD. But, usually I have to be self-reflective and say, Hey, while my ADHD made this task way more difficult than it needed to be, failure to finish it on time was still my fault. So, for example, I'll have to budget more time for some tasks or take small, regular breaks to keep my focus.
We fall into the trap when we absolve ourselves of responsibility. It sucks, and to some degree it feels like victim blaming, but it's life!
This is actually an amazing insight. This tells you exactly what the root of your procrastination is. It's not laziness, because I'm sure you can apply plenty of effort in tasks where this fear isn't present. Maybe drill down a bit further on what the source of this fear might be. Were boring tasks used as punishment in your childhood?
People with eating disorders are often afraid of boring food without realizing it. The thought of a diet is scary because they'll be missing out on their favourite foods. After adopting a bland diet for a few weeks, most find their fear dissipates, and bland food can become enjoyable. Maybe try the same strategy with boring tasks? Essentially exposure therapy.
This statement really resonates with me too. Getting over the inertia to just start things that I don't really want to do is sometimes a multi-day effort, and then staying focused is hard beyond that. I've been thinking I should get evaluated, maybe I will.
I do have to ask, though, was that a Frank Reynolds toe knife reference?
pro tip: I was trying to find a natural solution, which for me is DMAE combined with fish-oil. It has basically the same effect for me in terms of productivity without the nasty side effects + you can buy it in every vitamin store. It is funny how I can almost immediately (within few days) notice when I stop taking these.
I would highly recommend doing this, I have ADHD and knowing I wasn't crazy, and that it has a name, has helped me a lot.
Assuming you did the same thing, what do you do now without it?
That's not to say I never do it, a lot of times I still find myself checking social accounts when I'm in line or whatever, but I try to avoid reddit entirely because of how it always manages to suck up more time than you expect and I have found it seriously feeds the addiction to content, especially news.
It's probably not as unusual as it feels
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iiOEQOtBlQ
This is me.
On a good day, I might work for 3 hours of my 7 hour day. On a bad day, 1 hour. Somehow, I get the work done, and even get praised for it, though it's not taxing or particularly good code. I think my firm is afraid to lose me, and let me get away with too much, but that could be paranoia / imposter syndrome. That said, my productivity is on a par with others I work with (surpassing some) and I don't consider myself to be a better coder than they are.
I spend the larger part of my day on side projects, learning new languages, trying new apps, painstakingly reorganising my local file system, reducing the size and complexity of my dropbox folders (even though I'm using less than half of my free space), reading HN, tinkering with electronics at my desk, reorganising my workspace, blogging, reading, listening to podcasts or audiobooks (I find I can't do anything that involves typing at the same time, but I can do graphics)
I have curtailed my reddit / browsing a lot, but its still more than I'd like.
Lately, I've decided that my job is not challenging me enough, and I want to leave it. And so I blame that on my lack of focus. But if I'm honest, I've always been like this. In previous jobs, in college, in school, I've always done the minimum required to get by because I have other "more important" things to do.
I'm easily distracted. I don't think I'd go so far as to say I have ADHD, but I do have trouble focussing on tasks when a computer is involved. I have a theory that this is a side-effect of the modern computing experience itself. Switching tabs and multitasking is so easy these days, with the amounnt of RAM / Bandwidth / CPU we have at our disposal, that doing several things at once is very tempting. I barely bother to close apps. I would normally have 4-5 VS windows, Android Studio, Photoshop, Sublime, etc all open at once, and while I'm not switching between them every five minutes, I might alt-tab to one by accident and lose an hour fixing some bug or trying some thing out.
There were some college projects that really captured my interest, but those were an exception.
I do freelance work these days. My corporate experience helps me not stress overly much about how little actual work seems to happen. There are always a bunch of tasks necessary to getting other things done that "don't count" as work.
This is a really long and roundabout way of saying, there's no reason not to go see a therapist and a psychiatrist if you feel like it's starting to impact you're quality of life. The worst thing that happens is you go to a doctor and get a comprehensive health examination to rule out any other factors or you take medication for a month that doesn't help.
Quiet day = maybe half my time
Most of my days are busy; if I'm not busy with my main work then I'll be busy making the more mundane aspects of my job disappear into the background.
edit: formatting
I don't think US workplace culture is extreme in that regard. I usually look at East Asian work culture when it comes truly weird workplace norms and traditions.
My family lived in Japan for a short period, and my father told me that he and his colleagues had to wait for their boss to leave every night before they could leave work. Now that's extreme.
"Working" is an ambiguous category, it seems to me. One definition of work (call it "productivist") says that we're only working when we're literally producing something valuable. A more organizational view might hold that "work" is whatever you're socially (often implicitly) required to do to keep your job (whether measurably productive or not). And a third more holistic definition would include stuff like exercise or professional development that are not always directly "required" by anyone, but that you might go crazy without doing...
In fact, the first thing I tell aspiring developers is to start reading HN on a regular basis if they already aren't. It confers a sort of broad awareness of various stacks and ecosystems over time that's hard to obtain otherwise.
I try to keep my distractions to a minimum level but I've often encountered comments and articles on HN that have been of great benefit to my work and my clients. Things like a service I've never heard of, a library being used in a way that I haven't seen before or even just personal experiences.
Hell I even use HN to minimize distractions such as reading only the comments section about some new product Google/MS/Apple released(or is killing) just to get an idea of what's out there in the market and if it is of any use to me.
Making sure you are informed about what other people are making is useful and is part of your job as an expert. Now if I can just find an application for the CRISPR enhanced crypto sea-monkeys that I learned about yesterday that should really help us out.
Almost spit out my Coca-Cola brand carbonated soft drink. Thanks for the laugh!
Putting this all together, I spend 37.5 hours / week productively and 12.5 hours / week at work slacking off (or doing human things like eating and pooping). So call it 75% productive time.
I generally enjoy my job. I've counted writing this post / assembling this data as "not productive" time.
I watch some videos on latest tech, thats work too....
Only thing that matters is if have I completed tasks in my sprint or are there any critical issues
Why is this?
I've had a few promising projects languish because my manager is slow or hesitant to allocate resources. That's a bit demoralizing. When I'm on a path to production for a functioning system I get caught up in the devops meeting vortex. That's a waste of time and it takes several weeks to get any sort of resolution. In these cases my time is mostly spent looking for workarounds and not "working". I feel there are a lot of politics and favoritism in the company, and my manager (and our team) is not on the right side. It's demotivating to have your work ignored because you're not a priority. I don't know how anyone stays for more than a year.
Edit: In the first few months I worked on random on-going projects, but was quickly made lead on some new projects. It was good at first, but after about 9 months I'd say most (90%) weeks I don't put in anywhere near 40 hours of work.
The sad thing is I've always gotten a raise (double digit in two cases) and full bonus every performance cycle.
I've finally started looking for another job.
Does anyone have recommendations? I'm really looking for a company that enables their individual contributors (engineers) to actually get shit done.
Edit: I've talked with many in my professional network and they describe similar meeting loads (~1 hr/week) as you do. I'd estimate I spend on average 3 hr/week in meetings. And most of these meetings don't result in action items. They're essentially pointless.
When it occurred to me that things are not going to change in my lifetime even with all the promises of upper management, I started creating side projects where I am in control of the full direction. When that wasn't enough, I also started looking for a new job. Joined a startup as a CTO/Lead Dev and was happier.
I think of stuff that is beneficial to the company in one way or another like 95% of the time.
Re structuring thoughts, digesting ideas.... talking to others to understand how they think.
But if someone that did not know me came and looked at what i did during work hours and did not get to ask questions to me. I would assume they would think that i only worked 20-25% of the time.
Things are not always what they seem.
working when you feel like you can contribute, billing exactly those hours, and filling the rest of your time with activities of your choice feels very honest and liberating.
if i feel like i can't get things done because of the environment then i don't work, and i don't bill. if i finish a job and they have no more work for me then i say, thanks, keep me in mind, let me know if you have any problems.
not really a capitalist, but the transactional nature removes all the festering emotional complications. and you can be a lot more straightforward about where things are broken.
One of my 'problems' is that I can't "not work" in the sense of a laborer who is no longer building widgets. As a person who is asked to solve complex problems with a high degree of dimensionality inside of an arbitrarily constrained solution space, much of the 'work' I do consists of turning the problem over and over in my head while I explore the solution space.
A good example of this was an early review I got at Intel by my manager (a really solid EE type guy). He added some criticism of my time management (considered a 'ding' in the vernacular) for a embedded compiler/assembler/driver thing I wrote as part of the evaluation of a graphics processor. He said I had 'sand bagged' the time estimate.
When I asked him to describe that a bit more he explained that I had told him it would take 6 months to do, and it was 2 weeks late, and I had spent 5 months "goofing off and not working" and then about 6 weeks doing the work. So my estimate should really have been '8 weeks' and if I had started on time it would have been done two weeks earlier than that.
I thought about that for a long time. And explained to him the for five months I had no idea what the best way to write the software was, and in that five months I had learned about 8 different technologies that all came together into the final solution. I had to learn how to write device drivers in Xenix, how to map I/O space memory into the kernel, design a language which was human understandable and could be compiled into the odd little RISC instruction set of the Graphics chip. And until I had figured out all of that precursor information, I didn't have a clue how it would be written, but then after figuring out that information actually writing the code was fairly mechanical.
In this one case the problem was that hardware has so many great milestones you can call out, parts captured, schematics done, netlists verified, layout started, design rule verification, first films, films checked, first boards, boards checked, first assembly. Bringup in stages 1, 2, and 3 etc. All along the way there are pleasant milestones to say "this is done" now on to the next thing.
But software is never like that for building something that nobody has ever built before. And it is even rarely like that when you have the same software but you are building it on a different system. The linkages, the entanglement between the system and the software (and now the network and the services) makes each new implementation its own special snowflake, with its own kinds of problems.
Have you ever woken up and "knew" the solution to a tricky software issue? Or had an idea for a change to an existing system that might make it better? That happens to me all the time when I'm designing stuff. And a case could be made that I'm working even when I'm asleep! Not because I'm sitting there typing in lines of code but because I'm going through the solution space, somewhere in my subconscious, looking for clues to places that hold better answers than the answer that is currently checked into the git repository.
As a result I tend to measure my own productivity by 'solutions over unit time' versus 'hours typing into employer owned equipment'. It still bites me from time to time when a supervisor needs a constant stream of 'still flying' type status messages to feel comfortable.
Once things hit paper, I generally start interviewing. Not sure whether that was right. But looking back over my career, I usually should have left earlier rather than later in those cases.
And for what its worth, I took it to mean that I wasn't communicating how I was spending my time well enough and suggested ways that would work for both of us. I expect that had I stayed at Intel it would have been fine.
During standups, most people are reporting concrete tasks that got done and I feel a bit embarrassed to say I spent the whole day trying something out that's remotely related to the final product but was interesting for the ideas.
It's stressful to have to report those things, I feel like I have to justify them, what's my train of thought, etc, and a 1-minute update has to turn into an essay. Not really sure how to improve on that.
During your time at Intel did you have to report on your work quite frequently?
I think the key to your stress is either that you aren't clear in your head what you're trying to figure out, or your trying to figure out things that aren't actually relevant. In my life what I have done is to do get very very disciplined about what I'm to understand and how that will relate to the final goal. Not surprisingly that is different as a manager than it is as an individual contributor.
If I were your manager, and you came to me with this (and I would hope your relationship with your manager is good enough that you could talk to them about it) I would start with three questions;
1) What parts of your assignment are you completely confident you can build/write?
2) What parts are you unsure of how to build?
3) What things that you are unsure about are between you and building the things you know you can build?
Perhaps you can imagine how the conversation goes after you answer those questions. But lets say for this hypothetical that you were unsure if you could build a database fast enough to respond in time to meet the response requirements of the product.
At that point we'd talk about what steps you could take to understand what sort of performance to expect out of a database, what variables had the biggest impact on that performance, and which databases were designed to be fast. And you and I would agree that you would spend this sprint perhaps developing your understanding of database performance. So at the stand up I'd expect you summarize and article you read, a set of benchmarks you set up, a set of test tables you created in the existing system, or maybe the top 5 blogs/books/videos you've found on analyzing database performance. At the retro I'd want to know what sources gave you the most information for the time invested, what were the time wasters, if you were more or less confident about the database choice and its performance and maybe how you had, or would, quantify your understanding with something objective.
From your perspective you would probably have spent the time 'surfing the web' to find out various sources of information or perhaps prototyping some things on AWS or on a local server.
If instead you came back and said, "I really don't know anything more about databases yet but I learned Rust, and got stuff running in the new Angular release and updated my server to the latest Ubuntu and read a book on containers. Then we're going to have a different talk :-)
The bigger we get the more lawyers and compliance people we ad, and the less noticeable it is that I'm not doing shit.