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Comment by cocktailpeanuts | Hacker News Reader

Aside from the judgment on whether the employer was terrible or not for making OP track the time, etc., if everyone tells you're slow, doesn't it occur to you that you may actually be bad?

I finished reading the post but cannot figure out what OP is trying to say. The title doesn't match the content. At first it sounded like it was one of those rant posts exposing the employer for mistreating, but then at one point it sounds like OP understands that he is a bad developer (because everyone tells him he's slow), but then goes on to talk about whether it may be the manager and not him. And then ends with some random conclusion about nothing. It's almost like watching an episode of Seinfeld--it's a post about nothing.

Then again, if a company hired someone who's so obviously bad that everyone thinks he's slow, it's their own fault and must be a bad company. Explains why they make him track time and all that stuff.

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The time tracking thing actually resonated quite well with me. Where I work, we also track time on very specific items (with JIRA/Tempo, which even includes a "stop watch" on each issue).

How I dread logging the hours there! Especially if it's a day or two after the fact. The items will often be specific features to be developed. And so I sit there, with the time sheet (and 20/20 hindsight, of course) asking myself: "How could you possibly have spent that long finishing it? It had a low estimate! Better round down so they don't think I'm an idiot. Who in their right mind would pay someone XYZ to add a lowly checkbox in the corner? I wonder how many hours Bob logged for that radio button he worked on. Those guys outside have emptied half a street's garbage cans in the time it took me to look up this API."

Of course, it's probably mostly in one's head. Like the author I don't really get negative remarks on performance, and consider myself a reasonably decent developer. But even so, the task of painstakingly journaling every half hour worked seems incredibly demotivating sometimes, for presumably no other reason than being a great time to second-guess everything you did.

I think it's because you're NOT a bad developer. The problem is, OP sounds like he is definitely a bad developer, and there's really no way around that.

I've been billing by the minute for about 6 years now. I find it quite liberating. I've got details of what I did for years. Months where I was productive, months where I crashed completely.

I love the details of it, I love how I build up detailed description of what I do as I'm doing it. I think I've had one bill quabbled with about 4 years ago which was me taking too long to write up the change log.

I khow getting time tracking forced on you from above would be frustrating, especially as management would probably abuse it. However I think that it's a shame, I love the transparency of it.

Article OP here.

The time-tracking we did was real-time. You sit down, you press "play" and you're tracking. The added bonus (oh jesus, I forgot about this one) was that your status was visible to your manager at all times.

Anyways, thanks for the thoughts!

Well, I'm kind of in the same position: I'm slow.

I do everything by the book, but in the end, everyone else does more.

I did notice that they're cutting corners, but then I tried to do it too, and I was still slower.

So, I'm still asking myself, am I slow or am I a perfectionist? I'd like to think it's the latter, but it may very well be that I'm slow.

My defense in my mind is that even cutting corners I try to do the important things right. It may be a lie I tell to myself.

That's pretty much what I got from this post, self-doubt.

Carve out some time and see if you can push yourself to finish something without the constraint of making it high quality.

If you can do this when you intentionally tried, it means you're a perfectionist.

If you cannot no matter how you try, it means you're bad.

It's important that you try this out and actually find out who you are, unless you can't do it because you're too scared.

If you find out that you're a "perfectionist" and that's why its slowing you down, try to learn how to balance. People never doubt you unless you're consistently slow. I am sure what happened to OP was he was consistently slow. It's extremely hard for a manager to just tell people they're slow, and this guy heard it multiple times, so it probably means he IS very slow.

Every programmer knows it's always not as straightforward as it looks from outside. Sometimes sou would come across a task that looks like it would take 30 minutes just to find out it's much more complex than that and it takes up your entire week. But sometimes it looks like it will take a week but turns out you can finish in 30 minutes. That's why most people tend not to judge you for being slow sometimes. It's only when you're ALWAYS slow that people doubt you.

Think about this for a moment: you say you do everything by the book but everyone else does more--have you ever thought if it maybe the case that these other people also do things by the book?

If you have doubts about yourself, you should really proactively figure out ways to tackle this. In most cases it's not because you're stupid, it's because you have bad habits and you just think it's natural.

How long did you try cutting corners? They could have years of experience cuttings corners, and you only have a few days, so of course they should be faster as they are more experienced at cutting corners than you are.

Try a few simple projects (eg: making flappy bird clone, or a simple HTTP server) as fast as possible and screen record all the time you work on the project. Then review the project and recording for things that slowed you down (eg: going down rabbit holes, or your tool-chain is too complex for the task at hand).

After that, do the project over (or a similar project) and try to beat your previous time. The only thing that should matter is the amount of wall-clock time until the project is minimally useful, eg: time to a browser accepting a static webpage, or the game minimally playable.

If you have trouble parting from the book way, an HTTP server might be the better option as there is the "book way" on how its supposed to be done, and what browsers will not vomit all over. Go for the browser rendering a page or two with no visible errors with dev tools closed rather than passing a comprehensive test suite as in the end the only thing that matters is "did the user notice the missing corners".

I've come to the following conclusion: if you are not pulling your weight, then either your manager or HR will have a talk with you about that. Even in a "right-to-work" state, firing and hiring costs are still high enough (impact to deadlines) that it makes financial sense not to fire and hire unless absolutely necessary.

So until such a talk happens, don't worry about it. Just keep on keeping on.

I was a lead once, and had an employee that was slow. He took 3 days to make a tool that should only have taken 1 day. He would sometimes get stuck on a bug for hours, and would stay late or come in early to try to figure it out. Sometimes the bugs turned out pretty obvious (to me).

But he had one quality that I really appreciated as a lead: he persisted in what he was doing until he got it done, and without complaining or needing any prodding. So I actually did not mind much at all that he was slow, because I could "fire and forget" him at something that was important but not urgent.

In fact, the main problem I had with him, was that sometimes he would get really angry about some code or a bug, and slam his fist on the desk and/or swear. I mentioned it but you know how code is, when you're really engaged with it, the process can be emotional, and it was hard for him to temper those impulses. It was never really bad, although I was aware that not everyone wanted to pair with him. Which was fine, we generally worked around it, but when allocating tasks, he sometimes got the short end of the stick because of it.

Everyone wants their employees to be the trifecta of talented, hard-working, and nice to work with. But most employees are missing one of those traits, and some are missing two. You sound like a diligent worker but maybe not a genius. That really should be okay for both you and them, and if your manager is good he will appreciate that. But consider, are you nice to work with? If you have a choice, maybe spend your effort that way, instead of worrying that you're not talented (enough).

Article OP here.

God, I love Seinfeld so I feel a little flattered by that! :)

The article is more of a musing about an insecurity than anything else. But as to the content, maybe I can explain a few things better:

1. The management WAS bad. The job where I was time-tracked was a nightmare in so many different ways. However, it instilled a sense of insecurity in me. A single comment from a manager at a completely different company brought all that stuff back up and ever since then, I haven't been able to put my mind to rest about my own performance.

2. Developers are often quick to blame management for problems without considering that THEY might be the problem. So I mentioned that when someone tells me "The management is bad if you're missing deadlines", it doesn't make sense to me as a blanket statement.

3. I concluded with saying that I have certain abilities that I recognize as good but I'm still wondering if that's enough or anywhere near enough.

Thanks for the feedback though! I'm trying to do better with writing this type of stuff so that it's as concise and self-explanatory as possible. Looks like I still have more work to do.

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