Go the Fuck Home: Engineering Work/Life Balance | Hacker News Reader

Go the Fuck Home: Engineering Work/Life Balance

youtube.com

17 pointsavinassh5 comments

Open articleView on HN

I have a unpopular opinion, goes against the main theme of this thread.

I find the "go the fuck home" strategy works for projects where output can be correlated with time spent. I'm in a situation where we're in new terrain, we're hitting problems that haven't been encountered before in our space. To fix them properly, I need to do a deep dive and fix the root cause, this takes time, time which seems to never exist.

Its quite insulting when someone says, "You can't get done this between 9-5, so you're incapable of doing this job."

Have you guys been in this type of a grind? I'm not sure how to deal with this right now other than fixing the core issues and moving on, which basically means working even more.

This is extremely valid.

This just sounds like "context switching" is your problem (I have the same problem where I work), instead of the number of hours you work. That's a well know productivity killer for programmers. If your job is flexible about the hours you work I think that's a separate issue than what's discussed here. Work late and come in late the next day or come in early and leave early. Maybe there's a few core support hours in the middle of the day where you need to be reachable for meetings or something.

I'm thinking about trying to implement a "quiet time," an hour or a few hour window everyday where you can expect some radio-silence. Even if it's once or twice a week I think it'd help.

I hear this is the case in other countries. If you stay late you're seen as incapable of completing your work in a responsible amount of time. I like this and try to encourage others not to work extra hours without compensation.

I really wish I stashed this article I read a year or so ago. I've tried to find it a few times and haven't. It was a college professor talking about how normal work hours are filled with procedure; boring stuff necessary for the job. Time cards, meetings, etc. This really encroaches on productive time. Most of us chose our line of work because it's something that interests us.

In that same vein, there are things your management finds worth spending time on and things you feel are more important. Your normal work hours are beholden to your supervisor since they pay the bills. After hours, you can choose what to work on. Glaring problems will be around for years and only get addressed if someone takes the time to address time. They're never "significant" enough to get scheduled.

I don't think the answer is to work extra hours unpaid. But I don't think talks like this address the reason people do it.

I have the following issue: Sometimes work tasks appear before I come to work or after I leave (before 9 am or after 6 pm) and someone else (working more hours than me) does the tasks and my manager gets complaints about me that I'm not around. I can certainly handle the workload, and the tasks usually can wait, but there are people staying 12 hours at workplace ready to do them or complain that I'm not present.

So far my manager was on my side because I wasn't informed about these tasks beforehand, but this still causes a lot of stress for me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com