Hacker News Reader

Comment by threatofrain | Hacker News Reader

Going to the bathroom is productive. It is not “fucking” around.

This is just a blog post of a guy fawning over John Carmack and dealing with feelings of not measuring up.

This is uncharitable to the point of seeming like a deliberate misread.

The bathroom anecdote is just a memorable illustration of Carmack's mindset: only work counts as work. Neither Carmack nor the author thinks you should avoid the bathroom or feel bad about pissing.

This is a self-aware blog post of a guy who worked with John Carmack and was able to use that to honestly assess his own productivity, and the amount of time he wasn't focused.

Work count as work ?!? Soooo, anacdote time. I had this boss who walked into my office and saw me sitting in front of my computer, reading the screen and not typing. He asked me: "what are you doing?" I said: "thinking about how to solve problem X." he said: "okay, but why aren't you typing?!?!" For him it was working as a software engineer is only when you type.....

Just to be clear: your boss was a moron. Neither I nor Carmack nor the author of this article is arguing that “thinking doesn’t count”.

I think he strikes a chord with a common theme around programmers. We’re talented, and it’s easy for us to abuse that talent b/c what we’re doing is often hard to track for more functional folks. As such the burden of responsibility falls on our own internal mechanisms (i.e. self-discipline).

Early in my career I had an issue of not getting things done. I later learned about myself that I just have some needs to make sure my values are aligned to the work which required a pivot to another company. But everyone has their own reasons for not being “better”!

Calling bathroom visits 'productive' is exactly the kind of lie to yourself the article goes on about. So your product is time spent sitting around and shitting in a bowl? Then go ahead and optimize for number of bathroom breaks..

Breaks are necessary, and paid time, certainly - I'm not masochist enough to deduct every small break from my work time - but neither is John Carmack, nor is the author arguing for that.

Coming from a factory background, bathroom breaks are something you have to find time for. If you were to just take one during a changeover, you would see a lot of productivity go into the scrap box. So to me it makes sense to count them as part of the "paid 15-minute break" a factory employee gets. I mark my personal timesheet as not working then too.

This was written by Brian Hook, who worked with John Carmack at id during the Quake 2 & 3 era.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com