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Comment by yunyeng | Hacker News Reader

Why don't you take your time doing outside backend projects ? Spend less time for the company you are working and more time for your own backend enjoyable projects. It's not like they fire you at the point, just take things slowly at work and try to focus your own projects which you enjoy.

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To the contrary, I am worried that if I work any less, they will fire me.

I get into work at 7:00 AM every morning to an empty office. Others join me around three hours later, but I understand that since nobody sees me come in there is a misconception about the hours that I work. I leave at 7:00 PM.

I would like to write a Python interpreter in Python, though. That sounds like a lot of fun. :)

Unless your work hours are being explicitly questioned, you perhaps are being a self conscious to the point of being unhappy. There is also a difference between being physically present for 12 hours and being productive. I don't think anybody would for a minute guess you are productive for 12 hours. If you actually are, you are way more valuable to the company than they are paying you and they would be damn fools to fire you. (And you shouldn't even try to be that productive).

Is your work tracked in any fashion, such as Jira?

Understood. I did not mean to imply that I'm productive the entire time. In fact, I don't believe in working 12 hours days specifically because I agree that virtually no person can put in 12 hours of productive work in a single day.

I take time to eat breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner while at work. I also take off at 5:00 some days to exercise, not to mention the fact that I take a 20 minute nap every day directly after lunch.

We use a system similar to Jira called Phabricator. I'm also interested in how our team can use Phabricator better, because I don't think it paints an accurate picture of the amount of work anyone at the company puts in.

If it makes you feel better, we used JIRA extensively at my previous employer and it didn't come close to painting an accurate picture either.

It is all about how you use the tool. For instance, our "tasks" (similar to bugs, perhaps) are generally large and not well defined. This makes it hard to break a large task down into smaller tasks. Without smaller tasks, it appears as if you're doing nothing at work all day.

Do your check ins in the morning - 7, 8, 9 am. You will build a body of work that no one can dispute.

Though it doesn't sound like this place is for you, so perhaps that is just rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic.

That is a very interesting (and kind of dark) metaphor. Haha. :)

Sorry to hear about your situation dude. There are some good tips from everyone here. Maybe try getting a better work/life balance going on. Come in to work later and leave earlier, 12 hours on anything can be draining. Hopefully that improves things for you.

I've been considering this lately, and perhaps I'll give it a try. My concern is that, by coming in later, I lose the advantage of coming into early, which is the ability to do more work when there is no one around to interrupt me.

Why not speak to your boss and explain this? Come in earlier but leave earlier as well. You still do your standard 8 hours, but just at different times.

Why are you working 12 hours a day at a job you don't enjoy?

Stop. Stop now. Sleep in tomorrow morning, and leave around 5 or 6. Pay careful attention that the world does not end because you've done so--and if you get fired, you can punch me in the stomach.

I don't think I want to punch someone named "angersock" in the stomache. :)

start at: 11am ,

break time: 1hr (1pm to 2pm),

leave at: 5pm,

I remember this phase of my work.

I solved it by producing content no one could possibly question the value of, then becoming an expert on that content.

It's easy to work 40 hours per week if the company would see you as valuable if you worked 0.

And since you outpace your coworkers, I can't see why you can't do this.

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