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Comment by Philip-J-Fry | Hacker News Reader

I know trying to measure productivity is controversial and prone to issues but I wish there was an accepted way to measure it. At least then we'd be able to ask for a 4-day week and promise the same productivity.

I know I've spent half a day messing around before and then smashed out a piece of work in a few hours and still had the impression of being productive. Simply because the majority of employees aren't as productive as me. Being a very productive and capable developer will open lots of opportunities but some of us don't want to climb the ladder. I just want a comfortable job and be good at it.

I'd never take a pay cut though. If you kept the same productivity at a lower pay then you're effectively saying they overpaid you before. 20% less pay is 20% less work in my eyes.

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> I'd never take a pay cut though. If you kept the same productivity at a lower pay then you're effectively saying they overpaid you before.

It's your choice, of course - but that kind of thinking would just keep the parent poster from getting the deal they obviously prefer.

Yeah it's anyone's choice, but it shouldn't be that way. They say they get the same amount of work done in 4 days as they used to in 5. The business gets the same work out of them by paying 20% less. It's not fair on anyone. I think we need to stand our ground and demand the same compensation if our output is the same. Otherwise while you may feel satisfied with a 20% pay cut for an extra day, you'd be even more satisfied if you could just take that extra day. That's what everyone deserves, compensation for their work, not hours on the clock.

For most kind of boring programming tasks I can't do more than 3h a day. Maybe that would go to 4h with a 4 day week?

It was first when Covid19 WFH hit I realized how few hour a day I actually "work". It was hidden by meetings and discussions at the office I guess.

Right, but those meetings and discussions are part of work as well. It's not just coding that counts.

Sure I didn't mean that they are not part of my duties but that they hid my "bad" endurance at coding.

Regarding meetings maybe half the time in meetings is of no use for me and I am of no use for the others at the meeting but I still need to be there is the topic changes. The single biggest productivity improvement in WFH is that I can just work during uninteresting parts of meetings without being rude.

del

While it's true that some software developers are way too confident in their own abilities, I'd wager that in the general case most of us need to do more and better "sales" (tactfully acknowledging our own accomplishments). Stigmatizing that with labels only serves to keep all the metaphorical crabs in the bucket.

In any creative work, output is dynamic.

If you're working in an assembly line or checkout at the grocery store, your productivity isn't as variable. Assuming customers/inputs are always lined up, you'll process a similar number every hour and the quality is somewhat static.

In cloud infrastructure, I notice quality of work is highly variable. Some engineers will bandaid everything to get the task done. It's easy to do that.

Other engineers create solutions taking into account the current technical environment, business requirements and future concerns. I don't think we should hide from this fact. Software engineering as a profession becomes worth more the more we realize there's a difference in quality and quantity dependent on the engineer's abilities.

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