I should actually be working 8h a day, but most of it is spend not working. If I’m honest I’m probably working more like 3h a day even though I enjoy my job.
8 hours of nominal work does equal about 3-4 hours of actual focused work. This is completely normal don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Humans need to eat, go to toilet, socialize with their coworkers, relax the brain, move if constantly in the same position.
Btw, meetings are work. If you spend a lot of time in meetings that does count as actual work.
I’m not (maybe an hour at most because I just started my job/training as software engineer), but long meetings are way more tiring than sitting there and coding. And coding while needing to listen to a meeting is even more exhausting.
Coding is something you can do for longer stretches as you get better at it. I struggle with 3 or 4 hours straight out of college. Now I run 7 hours no problem.
The dichotomy is that the more proficient you are at coding, the more meetings you need to be in to give engineering input… So the less time you spend coding. As a staff SWE I’m rarely able to get more than 3 or 4 hours straight to sit and code. Rather it’s an hour here or there broken up my meetings.
I relish my no-meeting days to sit and actually get concepts out into code.
I’m spent at the end of 7 hours coding though. I’ve crunched to 14 before… But the code I wrote was shit for 5 of those hours.
My company started prioritizing developer time by heavily discouraging meetings with devs before noon, and one day a week is supposed to be meeting free. We also just don’t respond to pings before noon now unless it’s an absolute emergency. Took managers a bit to catch on, but my efficiency has honestly skyrocketed and I’m loving it.
Yeah we do no-meeting Thursdays.
Problem is when SLT decides they want a demo of progress and see all this “free time” called focus time on our calendars and stick a 30m meeting about 1 hr before lunch.
Mark it as busy in the calendar, that might keep them away. If marking the whole day is suspicious, make 1-2 hour marks with 10-20 minute gaps (or longer as long as it doesn’t allow sticking a meeting in). Then make these “appointments” weekly and set the subjects(focus time) to private.
I’m not even allowed to work more than 10h a day so I’m not even able to crunch 14h except they are personal projects
It’s vanishingly rare that I need to do that but if something breaks or an emergency happens I’m senior enough that I need to step up.
I get time off in recompense. Usually an entire day once the 14hr crisis has passed.
If my time would be better spent coding than being in the meeting I just decline. It depends on the culture of the org though if that kind of approach is ok or not.
Btw, meetings are work. If you spend a lot of time in meetings that does count as actual work.
This is so important. I know so many people that complain about people being “in meetings all day instead of working” or manager expectations are to be doing a bunch of stuff, but your calendar is absolutely packed with dumb meetings. Meetings are work, so if other work needs to be done then I need to be allowed to take that time.
And no, multitasking isn’t real. If I’m doing other stuff during the meeting then I’m not actually paying full attention to either the meeting or the other work.
8 hours of nominal work does equal about 3-4 hours of actual focused work. This is completely normal don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Fuck you.
Sincerely, Blue collar workers
I work in an office 40 hours a week 8 hours a day Monday to Friday. Let me clarify, though.
No matter who asks that’s my answer and that’s how I expect to be paid for my time. There are days where I don’t have as many tasks to do and maybe I don’t have something to do here and there but during my scheduled time I’m always available if something comes up. If I’m making myself available that’s still working. If I can’t just leave work or just ignore things on my to do list then I’m working. I think more people need to think of it this way. Just because you’re not actively working on a task every second of working hours doesn’t mean you’re not working.
Edit: just wanted to add that working on your skills especially with something related to your job that doesn’t necessarily complete a task for work also counts as time worked in my eyes as well as my boss. I’m very open about training time and always keeping on top of my craft. Not sure if this is normal but it ought to be.
The other point of view is that we should work like 2 or 3 days in a week, or better, something like 20h, with no overload of work and no lower pay.
Maybe your work requires you to be available, but when some people spend hours on pause or chatting on the phone they are not available.
Developing strategies to avoid boredom and keep your wages because we are enslaved 40h per week should not be something we have to fight for. But I admit the situation may be very different depending on where you live. One fight at a time.
I completely agree. It’s definitely a slow battle. I’m just happy that my situation at work is as good as it is. I still think in general I’m under paid and I would also like to work less days in a week but I think it’ll be a long time before that’s the norm. If it ever happens. The least I and everyone else can do is to set realistic expectations and boundaries.
My last job was very bad at this. They were horrible with working around people’s schedules and getting days off was very difficult. My current job is the complete opposite. To be fair I got really lucky but I also think it shows work life balance is becoming more important to employees and in turn employers have to respect it or people won’t work for them. To give some context my current job allows me to request time off up to 24 hours before my normal schedule WITHOUT any type of approval. I can work around my schedule in almost any way I’d like and I can call off sick without needing to give a reason let alone provide a doctor’s note. This is how it should be for all jobs but I think we’re a long way from that.
lately between 9 and 11. it is often quite miserable, and it is an absolute tragedy that ‘reduced hours’ hasn’t seemed to be a goal of unions in ages.
Theoretically unions are unionized workers who represent all workers. So they should do surveys from time to time about what the current concerns of the workers are.
At least thats how it works in Switzerland.
When I used to work in the office I probably worked about 5 hours a day at most. The rest was spent on personal projects, fucking around, whatever
Now that I work from home it varies between two and four.
My production is exactly the same.
Same, I honestly spend most of my days in my home lab working on personal stuff and then grind out work when I need to. My production is still higher than all my immediate team mates and my boss consistently praises my efforts. I have pretty bad ADHD so this sporadic burst working is what works best for me. That being said i’m on call support so of course if a call comes in that gets responded to immediately as I am never out of earshot of my work PC and phone during work hours even though I may be actually on my personal PC.
Recently I took over a project two people have been working on and have just done it myself, the timeline for completion has also moved up a month with just me doing it. My co workers aren’t lazy, I just find that I know how to batch things together efficently and kill a flock with a boulder so to speak. Frankly my brain inscentivizes me finishing stuff fast.
This is what middle managers and c suite at my company that miss lording over cubicles don’t get, I am literally more efficient at home in my own environment without distractions, but also contrary to their beliefs I am not shut off from collaboration. I always answer calls and constantly run training sessions for our new hires and my co workers on my methods. This is all a bullshit way to get us back under their thumb.
IT in a building with less than 100 computers. If nothing is broken, I have nothing to. I have gone up to a week without anyone having anything to do other than create a few new accounts. 10/10 get paid to show up and know where the stash of new mice are.
A big part of my job is administrating a herd of VMs, license and relay servers, SQL servers, web apps and android devices. If I have nothing to do, then it means Im doing my job properly. I do try to spend at least half my free time developing work-adjacent skills from online resources and bantering with chatgpt, tho.
I do try to spend at least half my free time developing work-adjacent skills
Is Factorio a work related skill?
definitely
the factory must grow
Sometimes the job is just to be there, and to be the guy that knows what to do when things go wrong.
It’s not like firefighters are just running from one fire to the next.
Straight answer up front: sometimes my entire ten hour shift has less than 10 minutes of work in it.
I must confess, my job is a bit of an edge case because not everybody wants to do it.
I work third shift, and usually exclusively the weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday nights, 11pm to 9am).
4 ten-hour shifts.
and during these shifts… bruh most of the time I’m chilling
I’m reading ebooks, I’m watching anime or youtube, I’m chatting with friends on discord
most of my job is having a pulse while babysitting an empty building.
the part of my job that makes the money, though, is when the phone rings.
I work at a towing company, and I dispatch.
When people are calling me, it’s almost exclusively because shit’s fucked up.
I am in charge of sending some unfuckery their way.Most of the calls are from companies though: Motor freight lines like Ryder, Penske, Fleetnet, UPS, FedEx, and a few other carriers that are even less customer-facing; motor clubs like Swoop, Urgent.ly, AAA, NationSafe; or insurance companies like Allstate or GEICO.
What they want to hear is how soon and how much and knowing how to rapidly generate this information while remaining accurate is where most of the expertise lies.
Then there’s the police calls.
When there has been an accident and a disabled vehicle (and its pieces) must be removed from obstructing the roadway, that’s us.
When some dumb bastard drives drunk and subsequently gets rightly caught, we impound their shit.
When a stolen vehicle is found, we recover it.Whilst my opinion regarding cops (pigs) has evolved (fuck the police) quite a bit (they’re fucking bastards) in recent years (every last one of them), my guys do the NOT Standing On Someone’s Neck bits of it AFTER the dust has settled and the blood is done being spilled (and the bullets have stopped flying…) so generally we’re one of the responders on the make-someone’s-life-LESS-horrible side of the curve. Which feels pretty nice.
There are the rare occasions where a major shitshow evolves and I’m triaging calls and coordinating multiple assets in the field though, and that’s when the pay really feels worth it.
Presently I’m 5 years in and making 20/hr
Literally at this very second, it’s a wednesday night/thursday morning and I’ve already DONE my 40 hours this week - I’m here on overtime covering the other third shift dispatcher while they’re out, and each of these hours is worth $$$THIRTY BUCKS HELL YEAAAA$$$
it’s not enough to afford rent nowadays of course, but eh, i inherited the house from my father…
(and want to transform it into a group home for low income persons and families if I can get it organized right)
(i’ll be taking a page from history and trying to turn my house into something like a multigenerational compound except for people who aren’t strictly related by blood)Multigenerational housing for the win! Also, neat job, congrats!
nice try boss
I, too, am 100% productive at all times. Even when I’m not on the clock.
The whole 8 hour shift. Customer service, so the work is never over.
I worked cs for Dish Network and some days the downtime between calls wouldn’t even reach one second. Sometimes the system would glitch and give us two calls at once, that was fun
I take two chats at once most of the time. It’s brutal, all day. There is no space. Having only one chat for a short time is the break.
Mostly less than 30 min per day. Then every few months 10h per day.
Found the sysadmin
As a neurosurgeon I work more than 90 percent of the time I spend in the hospital… I work about 50-60 hours per week.
How many years do you plan on working for?
Dunno… I’m 35 now, and I work in Germany. I think I have to work for at least another 30 years. (-.-)
Well as long as you enjoy it. If it were me, I might consider cutting down my hours in some years so I could enjoy the finer things in life with my brain surgeon salary.
Brain surgeon salary here isn’t that high. :D. Just the same salary like any other attending doctor. We have something called tariff here in Germany. And as long as someone’s paid according to the tariff there is no big discrepancy between specialists.
TIL
I was about task how a person can even work that much forgetting I used to do air traffic control and had very similar hours. Glad I don’t have to work like that anymore. Although I’m sure your work is more rewarding.
The surgery and patient contact (speaking hours, visits) are really rewarding like you’ve said. But almost 30 percent or more of yoIur time (it really depends how high is your position) you’re doing (not so rewarding) paperwork… I hate paperwork. :D. It’s a necessary evil, but I still hate it. I work in Germany and we have soooo many paperwork. Paperwork is the only work we can delay, so in the end of the long day (after 8-10 hours of “real” work), your exhausted body still have to finish the paperwork. I very often have to bring the work home because I just don’t have the energy left to finish it in my hospital. And working at home is not “counted” as working hour… If you don’t like the work, it’s really stupid to pick this line of work ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ.
I have heard that air traffic controller (the one in the tower, at least) works like pilot on the ground. Is that true? :D
Sounds very exhausting and sometimes I complain because once or twice a year we have to work a little extra on Friday night’s, haha. Nice to have some perspective sometimes.
I wouldn’t say being an air traffic controller is really anything like being a pilot to be honest. Pilots have to have very technical knowledge of aeronautics and focus their one single job of safely managing / landing their plane. An air traffic controller has to coordinate airspace for (possibly) many aircraft in a safe way. It can get very chaotic when things go awry but 90% of the time it’s fairly straight forward procedure.
Id bet this month’s mortgage payment that there’s an inverse relationship between how much time people spend actually working in an 8 hour day and how much they get paid.
Teacher here. Yes and ouch
I don’t bet money, but I bet you’re right!
Absolutely. In my career and in all my friends careers, the more we move up, the less we work, the less we get paid. It’s ridiculous.
Wait what? Are you saying that if you get promoted to a manager, you work less and also get paid less?
Oops. I meant to say “more”. Edited.
I’m in healthcare so 8 hour day probably has 9 hours of work in it. Lunch break if I’m lucky.
Back when I did labor work I found I maxed out on efficient work at 6 hours. I couldn’t physically do more without increasing my injury risk or doing less quality work.
Then I started doing more office work and desk work. I found I typically would be able to commit 6 hours of honest work before I’d start losing focus and become prone to distractions.
Agree. 6 hrs max for focus. Unless there is a major break in-between the hrs like a party, I’m pretty burnt out after the 6th hr.
Depends on a given week. Some weeks it’s 8 hour days morning to evening and some weeks it’s finish all my work for the week on Wednesday before noon.
Where is everyone getting these jobs? Even if it’s slow I am still doing my job every few minutes unless systems are down.
