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treehau5

Profession: Software "Engineer"

[06:15] First alarm goes off;

[06:45] Finally wake up, get out of bed, shower, shave, make espresso for me and the wife

[07:15] out the door, 30 minute commute to office

[07:45] breakfast bagel at my work cafe

[08:00] arrive at desk, begin contemplating work -- work on something I procrastinated on the previous day so that I can have a good standup report

[9:00] everyone arrives at office, noise increases 10x, I am physically unable to concentrate anymore. Earplugs and noise-deadening headphones help some, but then having those on distracts me

[10:00 til 05:45 or 6:30 pm] Constant battling distractions, meetings, interruptions, and general work-related chaos, trying to somehow manage to squeeze in any actual developer work. Work proclaims how 'fun it is to work here! awesome! totes cool! We have so much cool stuff! Our culture is the best culture!'

Help me.

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Profession: software "engineer" too.

[08:00] First alarm goes off;

[10:00] I'm starting to wake up

[11:00] Some quick HN checking

[12:00] Ok, off to office.

[13:00] At the office; talking with customer if needed, otherwise desperately trying to get some work done amidst noise and distractions, including but not limited to people occasionally playing board games for a break.

[18:00] All my cow-orkers in the room have finally left for the day. Time to get some actual work done.

[21:00] Ok, time to head home.

[22:00] Let's eat something quickly and go to sleep.

[02:00] That side project is _way_ too interesting; I guess I'll be waking up at 10:00 tomorrow again...

So no help from me.

The other day, one of my cow-orkers asked me, how can I bear working late hours - it must be very lonely. I desperately tried not to answer that with "that's precisely the point".

Your work schedule speaks to mine on a spiritual level. I can't imagine working anywhere where strict hours (9-5 or similar) are required.

It's not necessarily strict; just most convenient.

"Non-strict, not lazy"

It's mostly hard for me because of... some weird mix of biology and psychology, I guess. Since the end of highschool, I'm incapable of maintaining a "morning person" lifestyle for longer than half a week, full week at best. Nevertheless, I do appreciate the benefits of having some time alone in the office, when I can focus.

Have you done a sleep study? I used to feel this way about my own sleep schedule, turns out I sucked at breathing and sleeping at the same time (sleep apnea).

I haven't. I guess I should. You reminded me that I've been told in the past that I sometimes have moments of heavy (loud) breathing.

I remember having a similar 6pm alone with the walls bliss in my last mission. Absence allowed me to fill the room with ideas and motivation. Very nice and very odd at the same time.

>The other day, one of my cow-orkers asked me, how can I bear working late hours - it must be very lonely. I desperately tried not to answer that with "that's precisely the point".

Is your cow-orker also a software engineer (or "engineer" if you prefer, esp. in their case)?

I'm starting to think that a large majority of software developers actually like open-plan work environments with lots of interruptions, however they also don't browse forums like this very much. They do well (or well enough to keep their jobs) in these environments, enjoy them, but they don't hang out on places like this online either at work or after-hours, and go home to play with their kids or watch sports or hang out at bars.

Yes, he's also a software engineer[0]. Yes, I have a similar suspicion.

This is a longer topic, but in my mind there's a bimodal distribution on a spectrum of attitude towards programming. Some, like me, are people in love with technology, who go home to tinker on side projects. Other - like that cow-orker - treat software as a career, and they go home to socialize, play board games with friends, etc. Without judging anyone, my impression is that our industry is mostly filled with the second kind of people now[1], and they seem to predominantly feel good in open-space offices.

In the end, I figured that my preferences must be in minority, so I don't complain too much. That is, unless someone is really distracting me for longer periods of time, at which point I'll kindly ask them to stop.

[0] - I'm not here to tell him how he should feel about his degree. For myself, looking back at the education I got, I think my feelings were best expressed by a friend of mine: "if for that I'm an engineer, then I'm afraid to go to a doctor".

[1] - I believe it used to be different in the past, but that impression might be colored by small exposure to the real software world in my teens; the kind of people you meet on-line in programming circles are usually self-selected to be tech lovers / geeks.

>For myself, looking back at the education I got, I think my feelings were best expressed by a friend of mine: "if for that I'm an engineer, then I'm afraid to go to a doctor".

Don't worry too much: doctors get far more education and training than we engineers do, and it's a lot more rigorous. They have to get a 4-year undergrad premed degree, and then at least 4 years in med school, plus residency (which is basically on-the-job training), etc. It's nothing at all like engineering where you can get a BS in 4 years or so and then be set loose.

Wow, I've never realized I may have filter bubbled myself to believe that all devs hate open offices. Not sure I want to believe that either, though. Too depressing.

It's pretty normal for people to believe their opinion is the majority one; I'm sure there's a psychological term for it ("confirmation bias" I think).

But I've seen way too many devs who seem to actually like being able to interrupt their coworkers to think that all devs hate that, and I've seen way too many comments on places like this in favor of open offices.

Many people complain about the usual work chaos. I'm also an engineer and I don't get it. For me, having other people come and ask questions is not distraction but an opportunity to help, learn to know their point of view, learn new things. Meetings are a way to influence the direction of the company however small my influence may be. Other people talking can really distract if it's heavily on topic, but usually also enables a little smalltalk 2-3 times each hour, which provides a lot of the otherwise missing social life between Monday Morning and Friday Afternoon. Even the actual development can happen together with one or two other guys, which increases the speed (since what's hard for me is usually easy for one of the colleagues and vice versa) and makes the solutions smarter (you can't just think off something, you need to be able to argue it as well).

In my eyes it's really addicting, and I usually get this after-disco/cinema low when the amount of people in office starts to slow down.

What's the actual "engineering work" you are trying to do without interacting with people all the time?

Edit: I think most answers can be summarized as "When I'm left alone I get into the flow mode, and that's enjoyable". The same way I mostly get it when working together with a colleague on a problem. Both ways may not always be the most productive, but due to producing a good feeling we prefer these. I see, thanks for showing your points of view.

Hmm. How about actually building stuff? For most software engineers, thats a very important part of their job/life/happiness. That requires long focus and flow. And in my personal opinion has a great sense of fulfillment attached to it compared to lot of scattered micro impacts. Ultimately you need to learn to balance both otherwise it gets very frustrating.

Do you have to personally write every single line of code or are you happy when the whole team builds the code?

Not the previous poster, but I'd argue that being able to point to something meaningful (doesn't have to be the whole system, but a coherent component) and say "I made that" brings satisfaction that's hard to beat.

This seems tricky to reconcile with the "everything is done by a team" model that's currently in vogue.

Also: http://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt-...

The above comic strip absolutely perfectly shows what's it about for me. Though I agree there is stuff better done with others (brainstorming, or discussing hard problems where you're stuck; also variants of rubber-duck debugging/designing; I'd say it boosts "breadth" and "lateral thinking"). But for many people there is most certainly also stuff better done alone ("depth" I suppose? often things like analysing interactions between subsystems; or building an algorithm; or reading docs or a paper; researching existing apps/solutions/libs in order to "spreadsheet" their pros & cons; also analysing/designing thread interactions; or debugging, building internal knowledge of a problem - which is also a required step before rubber-ducking, or generally discussing it, is even possible; also arguably maybe reviewing someone else's code).

+1, this comic strip is perfect. It describes the issue precisely, in a way rarely seen even in best comic strips.

Things I have to do fall into two categories - either I immediately know how to approach them, at which point I can code while having conversations and there's little you can do to distract me - or, I don't immediately know how to approach them, at which point I need time alone and in peace to load the whole system into my head and think through appropriate steps, possibly running mental simulations of several solutions in my head. The second kind of work is when I turn into a pretty antisocial person - I don't just avoid conversations, I avoid being in the same room with other people.

And frankly, second kind of work is kind of more important. It doesn't take skill to pump out hundreds of lines of code an hour. It takes skill and concentration to write those and only those lines that move the project forward in a way that's maintainable down the road.

I also have that feeling, but only when coding with other people. The only time I really need to think that complex on my own is when I learn a really new topic. E.g. two weekends ago I really wanted to learn how iptables work because I was so frustrated that most SO/blog answers are not agreeing with each other, they often don't work when just copy&pasting, and nobody really explains why he chose that way and not another. [1] Then I really need to spend like 24h just reading docs and building these complex systems in my head.

With two people these complex systems often also end up in actual diagrams or code, which then can be tested or used for documentation and later lookup.

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/43375012/wrapping-ones-he...

Somebody has to do something. If everyone is running around talking to everyone else like a bunch of agitated monkeys, no real work actually gets done.

Well, have you noticed that I argued exactly the opposite?

I did, but I was replying to 'grogenaut in reply to 'nyrulez, by pointing out that while one doesn't have to feel responsible for writing all code, somebody has to feel responsible for writing some code, at least some of the time.

Yeah, not for me. My experience with building stuff on my own: Very stressful and long winding, a lot of procrastination and unsocial habbits start to creep in after a week, solution is not really valuable to anybody since nobody is familiar with it.

The biggest, most used solutions I helped building usually happened when I cooperated with others. The same discussions that happen in your head, just that part of it is coming from another brain.

Most of this kind of 'collaboration' that I have seen have fallen in the bikeshedding or superficial variety. Not all work is of this kind. Some require building mental constructs and contexts that are easily derailed and painstaking to reconstruct

I enjoy helping when people come up to me with legitimate questions, for all the reasons you mention. It feels like half the time, I'm being bugged not for any real reason, but because the person couldn't bother to put some effort in first.

For example, I've become known as "the regex guy" at the office. I know regex really well as well as the ins and outs of the regex engines of languages we use. I don't mind when I get called over to help with a tough regex, or optimizing something. But way too often whatever I get interrupted and cross the building just to replace ".*" with ".+" or something equally simple.

I usually just type the solution and tell them my copy of Mastering Regular Expressions is on the office bookshelf if they'd like to borrow it, the first chapter should cover all the basics. I'm also very happy to explain the basics of regex to someone in my down time, but very few people have taken me up on that offer.

Programmer who doesn't know regex is something like a system admin who doesn't know sed.

I do ok.

regex and sed also feels somewhat related. hehe

Well of course people are gonna keep calling on you, you're known as the guy who will cross the building to fix their work for them! What incentive does anyone have to borrow your copy of Mastering Regular Expressions when their problems can be fixed with a simple email to you?

Sometimes you really have two NOOP choices:

1. Give them a quick answer and point them to the book but they'll never read it and continue to interrupt even if you told them to not interrupt for trivial matters. On and now you're so much of patronizing dork. Back to square one.

2. Don't give them the answer, and point them to the book. Now you're the smartass jerk that doesn't socialize. Plus they won't read the book and invent some crazy solution to get shit done and later when you have to fix the mess the WTF/min ratio goes through the roof. Back to square one.

Which leaves you with three possible actions: DealWithIt, RageQuit, or RageFix, only one of them being a long term fix but things don't happen in a vacuum and you're not always in a position to do so.

I don't see the problem with choice #2. Being "the smartass jerk that doesn't socialize" means you don't get bothered with stupid questions as much, and having to "fix the mess" means that you get to be the hero when someone else's crap doesn't work, and you can put that in your weekly summary.

> I usually get this after-disco/cinema low when the amount of people in office starts to slow down

When the office slows down and things get quieter is when I find myself finally able to get completely focused in on things that require all of my attention.

I enjoy meetings, business talk, planning and miscellaneous conversations with coworkers more than (I think) most software developers, but to get any sizable software project done I do best with chunks of a few hours at a time to get into a focused state, get all of the moving parts loaded into my head, then actually write the code/fix the bug etc.

My solution to this–in an office that I share with people who talk on the phone–is to show up in the late morning after they've made their morning calls, and leave in the evening a few hours after they leave. This way we overlap in the afternoon, but I get some time with a quiet office where I can really think.

Just while writing this comment several conversations happened around me that drew my attention away from what I was writing. When I focused my attention back to the comment, I had to skim what I'd just written to 'reload' my thoughts. At least for me, this 'reloading' process takes a long time when it comes to writing software, despite various tricks I've come up with over the years to help speed it up.

Same here. As described in the schedule I posted elsewhere in this thread, I tend to come to office at 12:00 - 13:00[0]. And I like it quite much. Most of the cow-orkers in my room work ~09:00 - ~17:00, so there's 4-5 hours of overlap in the afternoon, followed by 3 hours of peace when I can focus and get something done. There are days when I do actually manage to come as early as 08:00, and those days I really miss being alone in the room.

[0] - Had long battles about that with my boss. He gave up after a year, realizing that there's no way to make me come before 10:00 regularly (my sleeping patterns are weird), but I am there when it matters and get the job done.

Yeah that "reloading " process is hard for me as well, which is why I wear headphones. But some people don't respect headphones! They still interrupt with trivial bs, even after you've given them every possible nonverbal clue that you're trying to get shit done!

I actually ditched shitty Bluetooth headphones and bought myself a HyperX Butt set for work just because of noisy cow-orkers. Works wonders for ambient noise and I enjoy the quality of whatever I am listening to, but as you said, some people still don't get the clue.

Yeah, it doesn't matter how good your headphones are when some asshole sneaks up behind you and taps you on the shoulder to ask you some inane question that he could have sent in an email.

Sometimes I wonder if it's assholeness or just complete inability to read nonverbal cues.

I think it's assholes, for lack of a better term. Instead of respecting your privacy and sending you an email to avoid interrupting you, they think that whatever concern they have is more important and worth interrupting you.

> complete inability to read nonverbal cues

Isn't that the default in software departments/companies? However, usually that is considered an "asshole" by the general population, despite actually being a good reason for not reacting to nonverbal communication.

No surprise, some people prefer other methods of work than others. But it isn't black and white.

Helping others is fun but I've been on both sides. There are plenty of people who always need help and never put effort in, and are extremely distracting and lower morale.

And interactions are not always of the "Hey can you explain this" variety. Sometimes it's your manager worrying about a project and nitpicking every detail and still managing to not know what's going on. Sometimes it's your manager trying to prove he is "technical" despite not being technical at all, and just downplays your work. Yes, I deal with this daily. Sometimes people are just assholes, and HR/management doesn't deal with it because they produce or are too afraid. Something else I deal with daily. And on top of that, sometimes I just don't want to talk to someone about something. I just want to focus and get done what I need to get done.

> What's the actual "engineering work" you are trying to do without interacting with people all the time?

Building systems. Adding features to software. Debugging it. Anything more trivial than generating and wiring classes that someone else designed for you.

I guess a lot depends on the kind of work you're doing. In all of the projects I worked on, 90% of work time would be spend on actually doing it, and only 10% on talking about it (and most of that at the beginning, and then at some critical moments in the project). After the design discussions had been concluded and we've settled on appropriate division of labour (critical aspect: modularity, so that people can work in isolation and have to agree only on interfaces), it was mostly individual work.

Now don't get me wrong, I love helping others and answering their questions, or sitting with them and figuring stuff out. Just not all the time, and not in the very moment I'm trying to do something cognitively demanding (like redesigning half a dozen subsystems, or carefully weaving in new features requested by the client in a way that doesn't disrupt the rest of the application).

I think most answers can be summarized as "When I'm left alone I get into the flow mode, and that's enjoyable". The same way I mostly get it when working together with a colleague on a problem. Both ways may not always be the most productive, but due to producing a good feeling we prefer these.

I think it's hard to separate the questions of productivity and satisfaction. It's satisfying because you're being productive, but conversely it's easy to dodge the urge to procrastinate because the results are satisfying. So the two go hand in hand.

(And yes, I entirely recognise that for some people the satisfying+productive mode does involve intense, fine-grained collaboration, while for others it doesn't. I've seen both modes work, and don't really see why they shouldn't coexist -- although ideally with walls and doors to keep the noise of the collaborative types at bay!)

Suppose you are taking a math exam. One about advanced calculus that is really hard and taxing. I'm talking about one of those that is five hours long and there are only three problems in total on the test, so you are expected to spend over an hour on each problem.

Would you prefer if a) the environment was quiet and no one was interrupting you. Or b) the environment was noisy and you were constantly interrupted by people talking about how they spent their weekend.

To many developers, productive work is like taking a math exam. Therefore we want the same kind of environment (a distraction free one) to do our best work.

When I left NetApp (single office) and joined Google (quad cube) it was quite a shock and very disorienting. However, since it was the way Google wanted to do things I practiced non-listening, which is to say keeping my focus on my screen and project and ignoring my ear inputs. Oddly the best tool for practicing was 'World of Warcraft' as it provided a continual level of required attention so it was easier to practice not listening. It took a couple of months but I got to the point where I could sit in my cube, work on my code and three office mates could be having a conversation around me without distracting me.

The interesting side effect is that people actually expect me to be listening sometimes when I'm not. So they will say something, expect a response, and not get it and it will surprise (and sometimes annoy) them. I've been unable to 'selectively' listen to avoid that, its either all on (and distracting) or all off (and not distracting).

Selective hearing was always Superman's superpower that I envied the most. He could hear just exactly when Lois Lane would cry for help, even if not expecting. All else he could just ignore

wait... did Google let you play WoW at work to practice this new arrangement?

:-) At the time Google was pretty reasonable about people doing what ever it took to become more productive. And it wasn't exactly 'hard core' playing, it was simply a tool that provided the necessary engagement motivation.

Not unlike processing all of the works of Shakespeare into bags of words and n-gram vectors and correlation maps to get a handle on how you can slice and dice documents for search. Nobody expected the time spent slicing and dicing Shakespeare would generate useful work product, but it did help train you so that you could generate useful work product.

And like the Shakespeare exercises, once the benefit was realized you moved on.

> [08:00] ... work on something I procrastinated on the previous day so that I can have a good standup report

lol, me too, I'm afraid to admit. Every dang day.

I want to assume many of us are like this.

I also read this and though to myself "I didn't know other people do that too" :)

My equivalent of that, when I have a bad day and/or was working primarily on conceptual stuff, is to find some low-hanging refactoring fruit (like a typo a cow-orker made in a class name) that I can do in 2 minutes and that will touch several files, so there's some movement from me on source control. I tend to notice and note down such "high-noise/low-importance" quick fixes, so that the next time I spend few days grappling with huge architectural issues, I don't hear "you didn't commit anything in the past few days, what's wrong".

Commits are a really terrible metric when it comes to measuring productivity for this exact reason.

Profession: Another Software "Engineer"

[05:00 - 06:00] Wake up with the sun, and work in bed on side projects on personal laptop;

[06:00] Get myself together, spend the only waking time I have with my infant child during the week.

[06:30] Gym

[07:00] Commute to work

[08:10] arrive at desk, have breakfast at desk while picking up on momentum from yesterday, or fixing what problem I was too mind-numbed to see through the afternoon before

[8:30 - 9:30] Everyone else streams in. Catch up on non-tech business developments in informal chat.

['til 6:30] Work, work, work + mental breaks on HN. Find 20 minutes for lunch. Tea somewhere around 4:00 - 5:30 PM. Occasionally impromptu meeting with my manager for rubber ducking, feature planning, or architecture question.

Can't complain. Tiny start-ups are great when the personalities fit.

You may complain a lot later about not seeing your child grow up for more than 30 minutes a day, but I'm sure you have probably considered that :)

Believe me, I've considered it. For now, I'm content to take over parenting for a good chunk of the weekend, which gives the working mama a break and chance to prep for the next week. I'm banking on a big enough exit imminent before the baby hits 4 years old so that I never have to work again if I don't want to.

Failing that rough time frame, it's off to a big firm or government where hours are tightly defined. As you're alluding to, time is too precious a resource to squander. I joined this last company not long ago and I'm very enthusiastic about it, but this is the last start-up I can see myself doing. Unless someone is independently wealthy, I don't see how the commitment it takes is an acceptable sacrifice for a full and satisfying life once kids come into the picture.

>[06:30] Gym >[07:00] Commute to work

Serious question: How does this work? Do you work out for exactly 30 minutes and jump straight on transport / in the car / etc? 20 minutes plus a quick shower? Is there no time factored in for cleaning yourself up after working out, to be presentable at work?

Intense weight lifting, no more than 6 sets or so. Enough to get sore, not enough to break a sweat. Shower at night. Well over half the battle to stay fit is showing up to the place of exercise: even 2 sets at high enough intensity is enough to maintain and grow a fitness base. It took me a long time to optimize for it. I live in the Northeast, so if it's a hot summer's day, occasionally I do have to cut it short earlier and get in a shower. Sometimes I miss the train and have to take the next one - I try to take fewer breaks in the day to make up the lost 20 min. or so. ;-)

Living in the suburbs and having a similar 1 hour 20 min train ride to work, I ended up setting up a small workout space with a treadmill, weights and a rowing machine. It does the job but no substitute for a fully equipped gym. I applaud your disciplined schedule though. I still find it hard to work out consistently.

Find remote work. You can work in solitude (as is natural) and collaborate asynchronously (as it should be).

Made the switch a year ago after moving from web developer to tech lead and having all the issues you mentioned. Now I'm just writing code again. Best decision ever.

Not OP but in a similar situation. Believe me, I'm trying to. Unfortunately companies in my area are not too happy about remote work, and I don't feel ready yet to risk going full freelance (though I'm actively working on changing that).

But if it's remote work it doesn't need to be in your area (as long as they are willing to employ you, as opposed to contracting).

This week I'm trying to negotiate a remote work policy with my employer. Keep your fingers crossed :). The thing is, I actually like my work, and like my company. But due to mostly family reasons, I'd like it much more if I could spend at least 3 days / week out of the office. Long-term, I'll either relocate with my SO back to a major city, or I'll go freelance.

Oh I know the feeling. I'll just add to this: - Can I work from home? - No - Why? - Because working from home you might be not as efficient as from office

I once got my boss to admit that they didn't trust people to do actual work from home, and that's why they didn't allow it. It was oddly satisfying.

These days I can work from home when I want, but I don't because it stresses me out not to have a clear separation between home and work.

> These days I can work from home when I want, but I don't because it stresses me out not to have a clear separation between home and work.

It's really hard. Takes some practice and discipline. One good way is to literally switch everything off (computers phones) at the end of the day. Stops you from "just answering that email" etc.

Another good one is leaving the house (drop off kids, buy breakfast coffee, whatever) end then when you are back home you are "at work". Then repeat when leaving work.

Shift it an hour earlier, and that is exactly my day. Except it is public sector, so no one is forced to pretend that it is fun.

Same. The bit about headphones kills me.

I love being in the office until the cacophony of everyone else begins and the noise is maddening. Sometimes I don't want to need to listen to music to be uninterrupted.

I now work from home 2-3+ days per week, even though I live about 20 minutes from HQ.

SW Engineer as well. Office can get noisy quite quickly, so I wouldn't be able to focus without headphones and Spotify. If music distracts you(vocals are the main suspect), try some ambient noises, or movie soundtracks(Hans Zimmer, John Williams). Also a comfortable pair of headphones is preferable.

Earplugs are great.

I had the same problem with distraction. At the moment I am writing this, I have just finished working and its 4am, will leave office at 4:30. will crash on my bed around 5am.

tough I am reading the art of learning, and I have been trying to train myself to work in a distracting environment. Because you can never control your external factors.

there are two counter points in that book he makes though: 1. the best players control the game by directing it towards their strengths 2. take your own playing style into consideration

you can write software any where you can take your cpu, pixel grid and network thing me bob

Sounds like you work at my old job. It's amazing how much some companies can talk about how cool they are. No one gives a fuck how many times you can say you are cool, put up or shut up.

Get a remote gig ;)

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