123 karma · joined June 1, 2015
And I don't game, but if I set up a gaming machine I can "rent" it out?
His blunt honestly with stuff in his own life helped me in my own. We've certainly all screwed up.
This is just one case of many (where I loose hours/money), but to elaborate; say I get a ticket for 2 hours, "Just add a delete button for an order item on a form". Sounds sane, and I even agree that it should only take 2 hours. But of course once you get into the code you find some snags. After two hours of digging through the code you realize why the delete button was never added in the first place (was not a simple task).
But either way, I just spent 2 hours reading code, and still have another 2-3 hours of coding left to do. Might take a break at that point and collect my thoughts, get something to eat, might get side tracked then and not get back to actually working for another hour or 2. Then code up the feature. So that's 7 hours+ right there. Then I bill 2 or 3 hours for that, but it took all day.
Boss is normally understanding of going a little bit over (though not really for going 150% over). But really the end customer that pays for the work is worse to deal with. Half the time if they think something (even if it is a "fix") is going to take longer than a couple of hours, they just won't bother with authorizing the work. Then we end up with a big wart in the code base that we have to work around constantly (which in many cases, refusing to pay for an 8 hour fix has caused 100's of hours of other issues.. but another issue)
So I guess I feel guilty about working 7 hours on a 2 hour ticket when I know the end customer will just throw a fit. I guess I should just start billing for those hours in this case. But it feels like it is my fault. If I could just remember the internals of the code base, I wouldn't have had to spend two hours just reading code. Seems reasonable.. but maybe not.
I pretty much figured that. Problem is how we manage our internal work flow is based on tickets with an amount of hours allocated to each one. Some have 4 or 8, others have 40+. Many times I am given 3 or 4 four hour tickets to tide me over for a couple of days (while some bigger tickets are negotiated), but trying to get those 4 four hour tickets done takes all week (or sometimes more). I've stopped really caring if I overrun the times, but the main issue is these smaller tickets branch out across many different apps, all with their own quirks and there is a 3+ hour ramp up time just to get familiar with what the ticket even wants me to do. Then you end up with the dreaded "Why did it take 8 hours just to add a button to a page?" scenario.
No, I'm out in the sticks. Hence why I fancy remote dev work :)
>Also, I have the feeling that you're overthinking this. Sit down at 08:30. Grab a brownbagged sandwich from 12:30 to 13:00. Then work until 17:00. Done, go home and enjoy your spare time.
I'm really trying to do that. Problem is a few hours time zone difference between me and my workplace. They are ahead of me. So what usually happens is I constantly end up staying up late in order to get them something they can test out in the morning (before I sign back on) that a way when I came back the next day for work, I will know whether what I did the day before is working or not. But I guess that is not working...
>This business of sitting in your office until 12:00 PM sounds ridiculous to me, why would any wife out up with that?
She manages, but doesn't like it...
Much more chance for congestion. I lived right next to a set of tracks once. Trains would regularly sit for over an hour without moving.