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Comment by hpaavola | Hacker News Reader

Doing nothing is the most draining task there is. Not only it is really boring and mind numbing, but you pretty much have to pretend like you are doing something, which is way harder than actually doing it.

But since corporations pay by the hours you sit at your desk, and require you to sit at your desk, there arent too many options.

I've done 80% work weeks for about 6 years now, so I actually can afford to leave right after lunch if I feel like it since I don't have to pull some crazy 14 hour day next day.

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I wholeheartedly agree with your first sentence. When I think back to jobs I left, it's not because I was overworked, it's because I was bored out of my mind. I could routinely come in late, take a long lunch, and then leave early, and nobody cared because anything I tried to do was blocked by bureaucracy anyway.

Some people might consider that a luxury but I considered it a first-class ticket to depression. There's no paycheck large enough for me to sit in a seat all day and do nothing of value.

I've had both jobs where I could mostly work when I wanted to and also where I had to be in the office basically the entire day. I found that at the job where I had flexibility, I produced better output, and I didn't have a lot of time where I would surf the net to overcome boredom.

In the inflexible environment, surfing net locations that were somewhat work related was the only thing I could do to pass by time when I knew I wasn't going to write quality code or when I was too mentally tired to accomplish the task that was at hand. I had many times where going home and returning in the morning was the best thing for trying to solve a difficult problem.

Unfortunately, many employers don't care and want to fit development staff into the typical 9-5 mold even if it means reduced productivity.

Employers still fail to understand that they need to monitor results, not people.

The problem is that it's self-reinforcing pattern. People are being monitored, which puts more stress on them, which leads to inferior results. So bosses think "the poor results show that these people are lazy, we need to keep better tabs on them".

It is commonly held around here that the best programmers are 10x more productive than the typical programmer. Assuming that is true, how are the rest of your employees going to react when a handful of developers only have to put in 1/10th of the time?

Managing people is more about trying to make things appear fair to everyone. Disgruntled employees are a great way to bring down the entire organization.

I think the 10x productivity thing might be true in unrestricted settings, where everyone is their own boss, but I doubt it holds up in heavy corporate environments. The reason is because you often have to justify your actions to other engineers, wait for feedback, etc. And commit procedures can be long and painstaking. So while some are certainly more productive than others, I doubt it's 10x.

It really can be. The least productive people are not only producing less work in more time, they are also producing work that needs to be reviewed more thoroughly, needs to be redone, or causes bugs whose fixes take more time than the original implementation took. Add all these up and you can easily exceed 10x productivity compared to a developer who gets it right the first time, producing code that's clean, easy to maintain, and easy to adapt to changing requirements. Not only have I seen it first hand, I've seen it over and over, and I expect to continue to see it throughout my career.

> Managing people is more about trying to make things appear fair to everyone. Disgruntled employees are a great way to bring down the entire organization.

I agree with your second statement, but your first statement sounds too cynical. If this is what you're learning from the person managing you, I would encourage you to do what you can to move to a different manager.

This is SO true. It is incredibly boring to do nothing, and like you say, it can be harder work to do nothing!! I wish corporations would wise up to it, and allow their employees more responsibility and flexibility but I doubt it will happen any time soon.

It's actually kind of funny, because you have to make it look like you are working, but not working too hard. I once had a job that was seasonally busy. In the offseason there was almost nothing to do. I'd often use the opportunity to do some learning, whether a new language or new technique or just play around. But I had to be careful not to get into it, and type quietly as everyone knows there's not that much to do.

Worst job ever: During a semester break (vacation?) I worked in a factory which produced wax powder.

A machine filled packages with various powders and them on a convoy belt.

If a package was to heayvy or to light another mechanism pushed of the belt intpo a little bay where I was postioned.

My job was correcting the packages weight and putting it back on the belt.

I often had shifts where I got 3(!) package in 8 hours and I had no other dutys, and I could not bring a book or anything else to kill the time.

The one positive thing about "doing nothing" is that it gives you the opportunity to do whatever you want. Provided your employer is fine with you working on side projects (or you are just sneaky enough), it's incredible what you can accomplish when you have little "day job" work to do.

Forget about the "sneaky" part unless you have your own office. If you do something you are not supposed to do (and which might endanger your employment) your concentration will suffer.

But who owns the side projects?

Very likely your employer. Check your contract.

Definitely, but they usually won't have a problem with you working on an open source project. Just don't work on a startup, obviously don't want ownership concerns there.

> Doing nothing is the most draining task there is. Not only it is really boring and mind numbing, but you pretty much have to pretend like you are doing something, which is way harder than actually doing it

Also, if you actually do something, even if it's for example some mundane programming, at the end of the day you gain a sense of accomplishing something. Even though the job performed is to the benefit of your employer and you'd be theoretically "better off" (less effort) doing nothing, getting the job done instills some sense of purpose and accomplishment, which are good for emotional well-being.

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