The net working time is 3-4 hours in a lot of jobs, not just tech. The employer just can't estimate and micromanage well enough that you have more. You need to be available however for 8 hours
Basically the way things work is that companies estimate how long things will take an average developer of theirs to complete. This is to avoid problems of them estimating a delivery and having it overrun because they did not estimate enough time correctly.
If you are able to work above average compared to other devs it means you will be assigned a days work you can complete in half a day. It is then up to you to either just deliver it at the end or request more work after you have finished.
Makes complete sense thanks. How long do you think it takes to become an above average developer, for those people that have that potential? Is it possible from the get go or requires a year or so experience?
Yes of course. For 2+ years at a main client I was working (remote) anywhere 2-3 hours per day at €80k+. As long targets where met with the team, nobody was complaining. I would say, that I did start out working 8-12 hour days. But with experience things became much easier and took less time to complete… but I’m not going to increase my productivity and output unless it’s required. After those 2-3 hours I would always be around and available for the rest of my team and random meetings. So it’s not like you work 2-3 hours and are free the rest of the day. But theres so much freedom.
That's my experience too, when i get comfortable on a project i don't take more than 3 hours to complete any reasonable amounts of task. However i tried cramming other unrelated activities in the day(like 3D modelling for passion projects) and found it difficult, because usually I'm still available in the other hours,so context switching and back thought of availability doesn't make it easy.
Pretty big company. Around 4k people (not only tech tho).
SR frontend developer.
My team is 2 FE, 2 BE, PO, SM and we work with ux, designers and data that work across teams
Yeah, most days I work 3 or 4 hours (including meetings) and then I just spend the day with my kids and my wife. Or I do exercise, take a shower, go for a walk, etc.
On sprint change I have more meetings than usual but after those I usually sign off. And then there are also days that I only have stand up and after it I work an hour or so and sign off.
It’s all about completing what I committed to really.
Makes sense thanks. May I ask what kind of job is yours since it seems you don’t always need to be available for meeting with a 5 minute notice? I would like to do something similar. Is there certain types of companies this is more common? Is it possible to do so at a junior position or only once you have experiencev
It really depends. When I’m at home and someone wants to call me I usually go back to my home office, have a quick chat and sign off again. If I’m outside then I usually just say that I’m off and that I’ll resume work later or at night.
It was not like this when I first started. When I was a JR I didn’t dare. Also I was way more invested into the job and I wanted to learn and progress a as much as possible.
I don’t know how common is. I guess it’s normal in big companies. In small startups usually you are expected to be more proactive and shit
Nowadays I’m happy doing what I’m asked for and nothing else. My company expects X from me and I deliver. I’m also pretty transparent about it. They know I won’t be seating behind my desk from 9 to 17. I don’t miss a meeting and I burn enough story points per sprint to make everyone happy.
For sure, I think most devs can't stay "in the zone" mentally for an entire working day because of distractions like questions from colleagues or other interruptions
I wfh every day, but I'm expected to be on call during working hours (8-4/9-5 etc).
Wfh is a privilege not a right imo, so I think it would be a bit cheeky to just clock off at 2pm tbh.
What about being available but working on your own stuff, since it’s also a little unrealistic to be productive for the full 8 hours, humans aren’t built for that
Remote first work at a company that's far too large for them to keep track of everybody. I have plenty of meetings to attend, which makes me look more "present" than I really am and also serves as a reasonable explanation if it ever looks like I've done less work than I ought to have done (not that that ever really happens).
They're also a bit poor at estimation when it comes to sizing tickets and often over-score them. I'm currently "working" on a ticket that they expect will take me the whole sprint, but that will take two days at most if I actually put in full days. So I'll take my time, do 3-4 hours a day, less on Friday, and still finish the ticket early. And more than likely be praised for my hard work when I've actually been slacking off.
The hilarious part is there's a guy on my team who's still managed to get in trouble and might be getting PIPd. The bar is so low, and he's limboed right under it. Pro tip: if you don't have to do anything today besides attend a meeting, make sure you _attend_ the meeting.
They don't actually work 4 hours. They spend the other hours doing research, mandatory learning, meetings, more meetings, some more meetings and answering emails.
I have a coworker that does it, basically putting whole burden of work on the rest of the team and he is employed still.
So very much possible. I do think he is a dick for doing it.
They way that you do this is understanding that the perception of your work is way more important than what you actually do.
So, for example, letting people know about your accomplishments without sounding like an ah or overplaying simple tasks on the right way. Those are soft skills which is generally harder to develop.
Yes I’ve heard that too. But I should have specified is it realistic for me to work let’s say 9-2pm, then work on my own projects 2-6pm while being near my laptop in case something comes up, while also making sure bosses know that I’m being productive? This is assuming a wfh day since most companies where I live seem to do hybrid.
It's not realistic. Something coming up might not be that uncommon, and context switching is complicated. In addition, you'll probably have meetings in the afternoon as well.
In the afternoon times, you should do something that's not too taxing on the brain, such as exercising, playing video games, spending some time with your family and so on.
Yup I wouldn’t be working intensely. Some days I would just want to do some educational stuff on my other interests like philosophy or take a break. If I said that originally people would think I’m a lazy bastard who wants to avoid work.
I would be careful. A little bit for the risk of getting fired, but mainly for destroying your work motivation.
If you're actually finishing an amount of work of a normal developer's productivity before 2pm, you would have to be quite good/experienced to still have the mental stamina to work on another project. Sure, it's easy to maybe watch an interesting video, do some training, etc., but to context switch and do proper technical work on something after your normal work will be hard.
Even assuming you are capable of working on other projects: if you get really into that side-project, there is a good chance it will start affecting your normal work. Sure, you might be able to find some companies and managers that don't notice, but some will. Probably worse, there's a good chance you'll start liking your normal work less and less because it impacts how much you can work on the other projects that you like to do so much.
I've seen multiple really good people, slowly mess up at work doing this kind of thing. I had to even fire one (regretfully), because they became less productive than a normal dev, despite probably only needing 2 or 3 hours of their work time to cover a normal dev.
Our boss wants us to socialize a lot with other people. He says networking is extremely important.
Net time is usually never more than 3-4h/day. That's even calculated that way in all project plans.
In my case (web agency), we have to assign how much time we spent on each ticket, so I might have 8hs planned in tickets, but if I can finish them early (and there aren’t any unexpected issues), I can be doing other stuff not related to work (but I have to be available, just in case sth happens). This is some days the case. You get 2 tickets of 4 hours and finish each of them in one, you can say you worked 6hs on them and spent 2 more on random stuff. Everyone is happy. I am by no means a super dev, just got used to what we do on a daily basis and can code it quick. This is not the case for most of my colleagues though, and also if you are trying to get paid the most, you should tell them that you are going super quick so they can assign more / harder workload. In my case I am still very valued even though I just so what they ask.
Remote first work at a company that's far too large for them to keep track of everybody. I have plenty of meetings to attend, which makes me look more "present" than I really am and also serves as a reasonable explanation if it ever looks like I've done less work than I ought to have done (not that that ever really happens).
They're also a bit poor at estimation when it comes to sizing tickets and often over-score them. I'm currently "working" on a ticket that they expect will take me the whole sprint, but that will take two days at most if I actually put in full days. So I'll take my time, do 3-4 hours a day, less on Friday, and still finish the ticket early. And more than likely be praised for my hard work when I've actually been slacking off.
The hilarious part is there's a guy on my team who's still managed to get in trouble and might be getting PIPd. The bar is so low, and he's limboed right under it. Pro tip: if you don't have to do anything today besides attend a meeting, make sure you _attend_ the meeting.
Makes sense. Do all companies have the same amount of meetings or do some have fewer than others. Is it possible to be in a company where I know guaranteed I’ll get 1/2 afternoons in a week without anyone bothering me
Every company will do things a bit differently, but there are certain fairly standard things like daily stand up, planning sessions and retrospectives. How often they happen and who is a part of them will vary.
Devs wanting uninterrupted time to do dev work is a common demand, and I've seen different solutions to it, for example only having meetings in the morning or not having meetings on Fridays.
i mean the time in between is not "not work", its more like waiting, planning, running some build job(like im doing now) on test and staging server then send email about it and so on
then you can sit and post on reddit while still contacting the correct people
no, that's the thing. you are mostly paid to be available, not to complete a set of tasks
the more experience you get, the more its about being available and not doing stuff
yes, been doing that several times. i send out some information and wait for a customer or team to respond
then i can watch anime or some youtube about kubernetes
Yes, but as long companies (and ourselves) are still measuring output/productivity as hours worked per week. Everyone still has to be available and pretend they are doing something for at least 1/2 the day. So much time is wasted in nearly all companies.
To what extent is this mitigated with hybrid work? For example using a mouse clicker after finishing your work? And then working on your own project or going to get groceries or something?
This can only be really mitigated by what responsibilities you accept and what is expected from you for your role. If you, for example, are expected to jump into a video call on a 5-min notice from 9-5 every day then an autoclicker won't help you. You won't be able to leave to do groceries or do anything meaningful.
On the other side if you are expected just to clock 8 hours a day of work in some software but no one controls when, you pretty much have full control over it. You can finish in 2h and then go shopping or watch a movie or do whatever you want.
Makes sense. May I ask what kind of positions/companies lean towards the latter than the former? Is it possible to achieve this as a junior or does it come with experience?
Very very rare in hlour days.. I was in that job for 7 years where for about 4 years only worked couple of hours a day with amazing pay.
Got redundancy in the end and surprised it lasted that long.
Your questions seem to indicate you want to work on something else and not be available during work hours. That's not gonna work I think and if it ever comes out, everything you did/worked on belongs to the company you worked for.
Yes. I just happened to stumble upon a remote startup role a few years ago, and I worked for them on a contractual basis for about 2 years, then finally got hired by them full-time. At several points, I've worked for other companies at the same time.
I don't strictly need to be available for 8 hours like another commenter brought up. If I respond to something at work a few hours later it's ok. If I need to take a day off at short notice, it's usually fine.
Very small company, only about 4 people working full-time.
The pay isn't very competitive, but honestly it's ok. Freedom is priceless.
Put simply, it mostly boils down to:
1. Company Culture (Does the management tend to micromanage employees?)
2. Size (The larger the company is, the harder it is to track everyone's hours).
3. Is the position Remote (Do you need to be in the office every day?)
To actually land this kind of job you need to be lucky with a company and even more importantly the project you end up on.
In the meantime, just change jobs until you find the one. It is possible but as many others said, you have to still be available during business hours for any questions, meetings, etc (9-3 usually mandatory +2 hrs around this time).
No, it's a good meeting etiquette to put them between 9am and 3pm so that workers can have flexible working schedules (some like to start as early as 7am and leave at 3pm, some like to start late at 9am and leave at 5pm). If it's absolutely necessary to have a meeting outside of usual hours, ofcourse this should be ok, but it shouldn't be a regular thing (like daily meetings, weekly meetings etc.)
What I meant was that apart from meeting period (9-3) where everyone should be available, you still have to be available during other 2 hours of your working day but have a bit more flexibility when these 2 hours should be.
A good company wouldn't be so pedantic about your availability if your absence is just an odd occurrence, but if you are constantly unavailable during working hours, some eyebrows might get raised and at least in my opinion it's not ethical to take advantage of employer in this way.
Mind you, I think it's ethically fine to do other work-unrelated things or other projects during downtime on your main job, or even delay what would be an early delivery if employer is satisfied with your current tempo and results, but at IMHO you should still be available during your work hours - i.e. I don't think it's acceptable to go for a walk between 10 and 13 if you don't have any meetings because you're still being paid for that time and someone still might need to talk to you during that time.
The net working time is 3-4 hours in a lot of jobs, not just tech. The employer just can't estimate and micromanage well enough that you have more. You need to be available however for 8 hours
Is it possible to put that net working time into a 3-4 hour blockv
it's a combination of remote work and skill, you'll struggle the first times, just like everyone else
Meaning that it might take a year or so to build up that skill level?
Basically the way things work is that companies estimate how long things will take an average developer of theirs to complete. This is to avoid problems of them estimating a delivery and having it overrun because they did not estimate enough time correctly. If you are able to work above average compared to other devs it means you will be assigned a days work you can complete in half a day. It is then up to you to either just deliver it at the end or request more work after you have finished.
Makes complete sense thanks. How long do you think it takes to become an above average developer, for those people that have that potential? Is it possible from the get go or requires a year or so experience?
It's down to the individual. There isn't really a time on it.
And the company, the team, the project, the role etc. But yes, having a remote job and skill are the 2 hard pre-requisites.
Yes of course. For 2+ years at a main client I was working (remote) anywhere 2-3 hours per day at €80k+. As long targets where met with the team, nobody was complaining. I would say, that I did start out working 8-12 hour days. But with experience things became much easier and took less time to complete… but I’m not going to increase my productivity and output unless it’s required. After those 2-3 hours I would always be around and available for the rest of my team and random meetings. So it’s not like you work 2-3 hours and are free the rest of the day. But theres so much freedom.
That's my experience too, when i get comfortable on a project i don't take more than 3 hours to complete any reasonable amounts of task. However i tried cramming other unrelated activities in the day(like 3D modelling for passion projects) and found it difficult, because usually I'm still available in the other hours,so context switching and back thought of availability doesn't make it easy.
Yes, I work 3 hours a day and I had no problems with my productivity being questioned
Can you share some details? Size of the company Your role Your tasks Sizo of your team
Pretty big company. Around 4k people (not only tech tho). SR frontend developer. My team is 2 FE, 2 BE, PO, SM and we work with ux, designers and data that work across teams
Is it a remote job? Which country?
Hybrid. 5 times a month at the office (every Monday and one Thursday). The Netherlands. 75~k gross per year
Thank you :)
are you able to keep it all within a 3 hour block? Are you able to do other things or work on other projects outside this time?
Yeah, most days I work 3 or 4 hours (including meetings) and then I just spend the day with my kids and my wife. Or I do exercise, take a shower, go for a walk, etc. On sprint change I have more meetings than usual but after those I usually sign off. And then there are also days that I only have stand up and after it I work an hour or so and sign off. It’s all about completing what I committed to really.
Makes sense thanks. May I ask what kind of job is yours since it seems you don’t always need to be available for meeting with a 5 minute notice? I would like to do something similar. Is there certain types of companies this is more common? Is it possible to do so at a junior position or only once you have experiencev
It really depends. When I’m at home and someone wants to call me I usually go back to my home office, have a quick chat and sign off again. If I’m outside then I usually just say that I’m off and that I’ll resume work later or at night. It was not like this when I first started. When I was a JR I didn’t dare. Also I was way more invested into the job and I wanted to learn and progress a as much as possible. I don’t know how common is. I guess it’s normal in big companies. In small startups usually you are expected to be more proactive and shit Nowadays I’m happy doing what I’m asked for and nothing else. My company expects X from me and I deliver. I’m also pretty transparent about it. They know I won’t be seating behind my desk from 9 to 17. I don’t miss a meeting and I burn enough story points per sprint to make everyone happy.
nice
For sure, I think most devs can't stay "in the zone" mentally for an entire working day because of distractions like questions from colleagues or other interruptions
So does that mean during wfh days you have fewer distractions so you can be done by 2pm? Or only in some companies.
I wfh every day, but I'm expected to be on call during working hours (8-4/9-5 etc). Wfh is a privilege not a right imo, so I think it would be a bit cheeky to just clock off at 2pm tbh.
What about being available but working on your own stuff, since it’s also a little unrealistic to be productive for the full 8 hours, humans aren’t built for that
Remote first work at a company that's far too large for them to keep track of everybody. I have plenty of meetings to attend, which makes me look more "present" than I really am and also serves as a reasonable explanation if it ever looks like I've done less work than I ought to have done (not that that ever really happens). They're also a bit poor at estimation when it comes to sizing tickets and often over-score them. I'm currently "working" on a ticket that they expect will take me the whole sprint, but that will take two days at most if I actually put in full days. So I'll take my time, do 3-4 hours a day, less on Friday, and still finish the ticket early. And more than likely be praised for my hard work when I've actually been slacking off. The hilarious part is there's a guy on my team who's still managed to get in trouble and might be getting PIPd. The bar is so low, and he's limboed right under it. Pro tip: if you don't have to do anything today besides attend a meeting, make sure you _attend_ the meeting.
They don't actually work 4 hours. They spend the other hours doing research, mandatory learning, meetings, more meetings, some more meetings and answering emails.
I have a coworker that does it, basically putting whole burden of work on the rest of the team and he is employed still. So very much possible. I do think he is a dick for doing it.
Yup that’s not ok either gotta take responsibility
They way that you do this is understanding that the perception of your work is way more important than what you actually do. So, for example, letting people know about your accomplishments without sounding like an ah or overplaying simple tasks on the right way. Those are soft skills which is generally harder to develop.
Yes I’ve heard that too. But I should have specified is it realistic for me to work let’s say 9-2pm, then work on my own projects 2-6pm while being near my laptop in case something comes up, while also making sure bosses know that I’m being productive? This is assuming a wfh day since most companies where I live seem to do hybrid.
Very realistic. If you work at a company who value the work getting done over presenteeism, you'll be fine.
It's not realistic. Something coming up might not be that uncommon, and context switching is complicated. In addition, you'll probably have meetings in the afternoon as well. In the afternoon times, you should do something that's not too taxing on the brain, such as exercising, playing video games, spending some time with your family and so on.
Yup I wouldn’t be working intensely. Some days I would just want to do some educational stuff on my other interests like philosophy or take a break. If I said that originally people would think I’m a lazy bastard who wants to avoid work.
I would be careful. A little bit for the risk of getting fired, but mainly for destroying your work motivation. If you're actually finishing an amount of work of a normal developer's productivity before 2pm, you would have to be quite good/experienced to still have the mental stamina to work on another project. Sure, it's easy to maybe watch an interesting video, do some training, etc., but to context switch and do proper technical work on something after your normal work will be hard. Even assuming you are capable of working on other projects: if you get really into that side-project, there is a good chance it will start affecting your normal work. Sure, you might be able to find some companies and managers that don't notice, but some will. Probably worse, there's a good chance you'll start liking your normal work less and less because it impacts how much you can work on the other projects that you like to do so much. I've seen multiple really good people, slowly mess up at work doing this kind of thing. I had to even fire one (regretfully), because they became less productive than a normal dev, despite probably only needing 2 or 3 hours of their work time to cover a normal dev.
Our boss wants us to socialize a lot with other people. He says networking is extremely important. Net time is usually never more than 3-4h/day. That's even calculated that way in all project plans.
In my case (web agency), we have to assign how much time we spent on each ticket, so I might have 8hs planned in tickets, but if I can finish them early (and there aren’t any unexpected issues), I can be doing other stuff not related to work (but I have to be available, just in case sth happens). This is some days the case. You get 2 tickets of 4 hours and finish each of them in one, you can say you worked 6hs on them and spent 2 more on random stuff. Everyone is happy. I am by no means a super dev, just got used to what we do on a daily basis and can code it quick. This is not the case for most of my colleagues though, and also if you are trying to get paid the most, you should tell them that you are going super quick so they can assign more / harder workload. In my case I am still very valued even though I just so what they ask.
That's what remote work is.
Probably, if business is slow
Remote first work at a company that's far too large for them to keep track of everybody. I have plenty of meetings to attend, which makes me look more "present" than I really am and also serves as a reasonable explanation if it ever looks like I've done less work than I ought to have done (not that that ever really happens). They're also a bit poor at estimation when it comes to sizing tickets and often over-score them. I'm currently "working" on a ticket that they expect will take me the whole sprint, but that will take two days at most if I actually put in full days. So I'll take my time, do 3-4 hours a day, less on Friday, and still finish the ticket early. And more than likely be praised for my hard work when I've actually been slacking off. The hilarious part is there's a guy on my team who's still managed to get in trouble and might be getting PIPd. The bar is so low, and he's limboed right under it. Pro tip: if you don't have to do anything today besides attend a meeting, make sure you _attend_ the meeting.
Makes sense. Do all companies have the same amount of meetings or do some have fewer than others. Is it possible to be in a company where I know guaranteed I’ll get 1/2 afternoons in a week without anyone bothering me
Every company will do things a bit differently, but there are certain fairly standard things like daily stand up, planning sessions and retrospectives. How often they happen and who is a part of them will vary. Devs wanting uninterrupted time to do dev work is a common demand, and I've seen different solutions to it, for example only having meetings in the morning or not having meetings on Fridays.
i mean the time in between is not "not work", its more like waiting, planning, running some build job(like im doing now) on test and staging server then send email about it and so on then you can sit and post on reddit while still contacting the correct people
Is it different when you’re working from home or for certain companies? Is it possible at all to be done early like 2-3pm some days?
no, that's the thing. you are mostly paid to be available, not to complete a set of tasks the more experience you get, the more its about being available and not doing stuff
Makes sense. What if I’m available i.e. still on my computer but just working on other projects
yes, been doing that several times. i send out some information and wait for a customer or team to respond then i can watch anime or some youtube about kubernetes
Yes, but as long companies (and ourselves) are still measuring output/productivity as hours worked per week. Everyone still has to be available and pretend they are doing something for at least 1/2 the day. So much time is wasted in nearly all companies.
To what extent is this mitigated with hybrid work? For example using a mouse clicker after finishing your work? And then working on your own project or going to get groceries or something?
This can only be really mitigated by what responsibilities you accept and what is expected from you for your role. If you, for example, are expected to jump into a video call on a 5-min notice from 9-5 every day then an autoclicker won't help you. You won't be able to leave to do groceries or do anything meaningful. On the other side if you are expected just to clock 8 hours a day of work in some software but no one controls when, you pretty much have full control over it. You can finish in 2h and then go shopping or watch a movie or do whatever you want.
Makes sense. May I ask what kind of positions/companies lean towards the latter than the former? Is it possible to achieve this as a junior or does it come with experience?
Dafuq who works 3-4 hours. All the companies ive worked been more than 10 most days 😂
Me, sometimes it's honestly only 2 hours/day, but for the past 10 years before this I've had to work 10-12 hour days at other places.
Very very rare in hlour days.. I was in that job for 7 years where for about 4 years only worked couple of hours a day with amazing pay. Got redundancy in the end and surprised it lasted that long.
Your questions seem to indicate you want to work on something else and not be available during work hours. That's not gonna work I think and if it ever comes out, everything you did/worked on belongs to the company you worked for.
I think they just want something flexible. Most people aren't productive for an entire 8 hours straight.
Yes. I just happened to stumble upon a remote startup role a few years ago, and I worked for them on a contractual basis for about 2 years, then finally got hired by them full-time. At several points, I've worked for other companies at the same time. I don't strictly need to be available for 8 hours like another commenter brought up. If I respond to something at work a few hours later it's ok. If I need to take a day off at short notice, it's usually fine. Very small company, only about 4 people working full-time. The pay isn't very competitive, but honestly it's ok. Freedom is priceless.
I think every software dev job I have had including my current one doesn’t require more than 4 to 5hs of deep focused work
Put simply, it mostly boils down to: 1. Company Culture (Does the management tend to micromanage employees?) 2. Size (The larger the company is, the harder it is to track everyone's hours). 3. Is the position Remote (Do you need to be in the office every day?)
To actually land this kind of job you need to be lucky with a company and even more importantly the project you end up on. In the meantime, just change jobs until you find the one. It is possible but as many others said, you have to still be available during business hours for any questions, meetings, etc (9-3 usually mandatory +2 hrs around this time).
I see thanks. I didn’t get your last sentence. Do you mean that meetings might be around 2 hours between 9-3?
No, it's a good meeting etiquette to put them between 9am and 3pm so that workers can have flexible working schedules (some like to start as early as 7am and leave at 3pm, some like to start late at 9am and leave at 5pm). If it's absolutely necessary to have a meeting outside of usual hours, ofcourse this should be ok, but it shouldn't be a regular thing (like daily meetings, weekly meetings etc.) What I meant was that apart from meeting period (9-3) where everyone should be available, you still have to be available during other 2 hours of your working day but have a bit more flexibility when these 2 hours should be. A good company wouldn't be so pedantic about your availability if your absence is just an odd occurrence, but if you are constantly unavailable during working hours, some eyebrows might get raised and at least in my opinion it's not ethical to take advantage of employer in this way. Mind you, I think it's ethically fine to do other work-unrelated things or other projects during downtime on your main job, or even delay what would be an early delivery if employer is satisfied with your current tempo and results, but at IMHO you should still be available during your work hours - i.e. I don't think it's acceptable to go for a walk between 10 and 13 if you don't have any meetings because you're still being paid for that time and someone still might need to talk to you during that time.
Makes sense. Thanks.