[HN Gopher] What "work" looks like
___________________________________________________________________
What "work" looks like
Author : LordNibbler
Score : 690 points
Date : 2022-10-25 04:04 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.jim-nielsen.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.jim-nielsen.com)
| stoeckley wrote:
| Rich Hickey talks about this, calling it "hammock-driven
| development."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc
|
| Aaron Sorkin has also touched on this:
|
| > Most of the time, me writing looks--to the untrained eye--like
| someone watching ESPN. The truth is if you did a pie chart of the
| writing process, most of the time is spent thinking. When you're
| loaded up and ready to go--when you've got that intention and
| obstacle for the first scene that's all you need. For me at
| least, getting started is 90% of the battle. The difference
| between page zero and page two is all the difference in the
| world.
| vasco wrote:
| I think this is true and I use my "background brain" a lot,
| specially overnight to deal with problems. Sometimes I'll even
| intentionally not give any thought to a problem of the day
| because I know I'll wake up with the answer tomorrow anyway, why
| waste time with my "primary brain" train of thought on it?
| rpastuszak wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment, but brainstorming is a difficult
| skill and most teams are not really good at it.
|
| Some things can be coached or solved with tools but 99% of the
| problems I experienced boil down to the people involved, team
| dynamics.
|
| Some problems can be surprisingly easy to solve with a decent
| facilitator, e.g. the loudest voices can be balanced a little
| bit.
|
| The hardest problem (imho): sacrificing creativity for the
| lowest-common-denominator approach (so everyone is sort-of-kinda-
| happy yay). In my experience this is way more common at startups
| than more established teams.
|
| Sometimes I think that as much as large businesses struggle with
| red-tape/slow implementation, startups struggle with decision-
| making. I know it sounds counter-intuitive.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Having worked at two start-ups, I agree. I think the "we are
| all one happy family" is directly driving the "we cannot come
| to decissions". Both are driving me crazy at the moment.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| What I've learned is that having a team of passionate, driven
| people has nothing to do with treating it "like a family"
| which is both sinister and creepy.
|
| Another reason it's a red flag: it's a signal that the
| company has a somewhat dated approach to hiring.
|
| The current generation seems much better at noticing this
| kind of bullshit than mine.
| hrbf wrote:
| Back when I started as a freelancer, I initially copied the
| 9-to-5 rhythm of ,,working". That, despite having viewed this
| forced window of work as one of the biggest annoyances that come
| with a job.
|
| Over time, I could overcome this ,,weird" feeling of not sitting
| at my desk while working. It went quite a bit like the author
| describes:
|
| - Load up on context and information.
|
| - Start outlining the problem.
|
| - When stuck, try for a while. If no progress is to be made, go
| for a walk, do laundry, buy groceries. Stuff _away_ from the
| computer.
|
| - When potential solution inevitably form in my mind, write them
| down wherever I am.
|
| I often find that when I arrive at potential solutions this way,
| I'm usually a lot more motivated as opposed to banging my head
| against the wall. It's not only more productive, it's better for
| your mental and physical health, it keeps you engaged and
| satisfied with your work. Many times I simply cannot wait to
| return to the desk to try the ideas out.
|
| It's also important to know when to stop. Occasionally there are
| days where I can get nothing creative done. I have learned the
| hard way that when I force myself through, more often than not I
| mess something up so terribly that I need at least half a
| productive day following up, rectifying what I broke. It may feel
| like cheating yourself at first but sometimes it's better to just
| stop for the day entirely.
|
| However, while employed, have you tried to go out for an extended
| walk or do something else away from your computer, outside of the
| building you are required to work in? Deciding to do so without
| permission can get you a citation and asking for permission leads
| to blank stares from your co-workers and managers. For many,
| that's apparently akin to asking for paid time off whenever you
| feel like it. The conclusion here can only be that many employers
| are more interested in owning your time than results, whether
| they realize this or not. Which brings us to a larger point about
| work culture and insistence on presence at all times but that's a
| huge, separate discussion.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| blibble wrote:
| > However, while employed, have you tried to go out for an
| extended walk or do something else away from your computer,
| outside of the building you are required to work in?
|
| I'm 2 decades into my career amongst multiple different
| employers in different industries (including traditional stuffy
| ones), and I've never had anyone even raise an eyebrow at
| people wandering off for a few hours unannounced
|
| if you're billing the client by the minute then maybe I can see
| why they'd get upset, but otherwise, as long as you're
| delivering, who cares?
| barrenko wrote:
| I've been recently reprimanded for being seen too often
| drinking water at the kitchen.
| mr_gibbins wrote:
| Leave. Honestly.
|
| I had a gig in a tiny company where the ritual was always
| to have a cup of tea/coffee at hand. People took it in
| turns to brew up. Which meant, with 3-4 people in the
| office, an enforced tea round every 45-60 minutes. If you
| were doing something, tough. TEA ROUND!! They'd literally
| come over and tap you on the shoulder. I spent more time at
| the kettle than I did working. I had the solace of daily
| pay, but when the time came to renew the contract, noped
| right out of there.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| Quit
| jakupovic wrote:
| Now
| iopq wrote:
| The company I worked for complained I was away for two hours
| during lunch. That's including, you know, driving somewhere
| to sit in a restaurant and wait for food. I quit after a
| month.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| > I've never had anyone even raise an eyebrow at people
| wandering off for a few hours unannounced
|
| _wandering off for *a few hours*_ he said ...
|
| Wow, you must be one lucky sir.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| I started working from home four years ago and I have less
| ability to step away from my desk now than I ever had working
| from the office. It got even worse in 2020 after most of the
| office started working from home. Not to mention that teams
| snitches on me if I am away from my computer for five
| minutes.
| mxuribe wrote:
| > "...Not to mention that teams snitches on me if I am away
| from my computer for five minutes..."
|
| When you said "teams", did you mean the Microsoft Teams
| app, or like your actual co-workers? Because if its your
| co-workers; damn, sorry to state it, but that's pretty
| toxic environment.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| Sorry I should have said Microsoft Teams.
| mxuribe wrote:
| Whew, that's a relief!
|
| And, er, um...If your workplace does not lock down the
| computer too much, you may want to look up "mouse
| jiggler" or mouse mover" to help keep the Teams snitch at
| bay. ;-)
| ljf wrote:
| I was very lucky at a previous company to be able to do this -
| I had weekly or fortnightly meetings with the CTA, Snr Dev
| Manager and a few others where we would meet to agree
| strategies and issues.
|
| Due to limited office space, very quickly these turned into
| 30mins to 1 hour walks - so each week I'd get 5 really
| impactful conversations with my peers, through the medium of a
| walk.
|
| Sometimes the focus would be on connecting as two humans (which
| helped our working life massively) other times it would be
| totally work/problem focused. But the space away from the
| office, and with the privacy that came from being away from
| everyone else, we got loads done.
|
| Really valued that way of working, I've tried to get it going
| in my current role, and had some success with Teams 'remote'
| walks with my last manager (each of us took our phone for a
| walk in our local areas) but for various reasons this didn't
| work out well for us.
| hinkley wrote:
| Concerns like this are a big part of why you need to charge
| double your normal rate when contracting. You might not get
| paid for travel to and between job sites. You also aren't
| working performatively so there's little or negative value to
| padding your hours to match a 40 hour schedule every single
| week. Work 30 hours except during crunch time. Sharpen your
| saw.
| boppo1 wrote:
| > that's a huge, separate discussion.
|
| I don't think so. It's basically just the tragedy of the
| commons. Most workers are responsible and a 20-30 minute
| nap/walk break would make them more productive. 20% will abuse
| it endlessly.
| hrbf wrote:
| I hear this argument repeatedly. What's missing is the
| question _why_ said people do this. I feel it's not
| sufficient to lump them together under "some people are
| leeches" and be done with it. I'd argue that if they had a
| meaningful responsibility, they wouldn't bug off.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think some would think they are abusing it and discover
| they benefit from it.
|
| Someone who doesn't nap at work gets home to find Season 3 of
| Ted Lasso has landed, stays up to watch it because they can
| just nap at work if six hours of sleep turns out to be a bad
| idea. But then they have a good afternoon because of the nap
| and decide to try it again.
| xezian wrote:
| In the context of such a short post, the fact the author mentions
| going for "a run" twice doesn't seem trivial to me.
|
| Going for "a run" has become such an integral part of "work" for
| me (software eng), I consider my career choices one of the main
| factors in my subsequently becoming a distance runner.
|
| I began my foray into software development almost 5 years ago,
| and in the last 2 - not unconnectedly also my first 2 years
| working 100% remotely - I've run 2 half marathons (officially,
| several more in training), a marathon relay, a 10k, and just a
| couple of weeks ago my first marathon.
|
| Bragging about this because with all the time spent training I
| developed an even deeper connection between the "work" (solving
| whatever current problem for my job) and the time I spend
| running. At this point I often deliberately wait to go for the
| run until I've really got my mind around the code/feature/bug I'm
| working on. Once I'm actually moving, I don't really try and
| actively think about it, but more often than not at some point on
| my run something will click, and I'll return to my desk with a
| clearer path forward.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >In the context of such a short post, the fact the author
| mentions going for "a run" twice doesn't seem trivial to me.
|
| Gets the blood pumping and overclocks your brain.
|
| I too have been working from home since covid started. What I
| find, take a break from sitting and move around. Do some
| chores. It gets your blood pumping and when you sit back at
| your desk you receive a +20 IQ points temporary boost.
| hinkley wrote:
| It's more than that if you have ADHD or are on the spectrum.
| Repetitive activities help upregulate the brain in ways that
| allow for these sorts of random connections between seemingly
| disparate data to happen more reliably. Some people think
| better when fidgeting, walking, brushing teeth, washing their
| hair, walking through doorways.
|
| I went through a particularly dangerous phase in college
| where ideas would come to me while I was crossing the street.
| I used to joke that if I wasn't careful my best idea would
| end up getting me run over by a bus.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >It's more than that if you have ADHD or are on the
| spectrum.
|
| I'm IT and not a doctor and do realize 'alternative
| medicine' is amongst my original post. I'm not against
| modern medicine, but I do also realize modern medcine is
| not perfect and has been corrupted in many ways.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| Recently, working from home, this is what brainstorming looks
| like to me:
|
| - i raise my desk so i can stand
|
| - i pace around the house talking to myself
|
| - we all asynchronously type different weird ideas to each other
| and discuss each one, then go back to pacing
|
| I've never been as creative as I have been with this setup.
| am391 wrote:
| A big part of the problem is the perception of what work is.
|
| When someone can see you at your desk hitting keys or standing in
| front of a white board drawing diagrams there is the perception
| thaat you're doing something. When you're staring out a window or
| go for walk during "work" time the perception is that you're
| goofing off because there is no visible evidence of the mental
| processes going on.
|
| So the interessting question is how can we change the perception?
| lkrubner wrote:
| I strongly agree:
|
| "The mantra of sharing your work and involving everyone in
| decisions naturally leads to inviting and copying people into
| things that add no value to them, or you."
|
| Fred Brooks, in his book The Design Of Design, includes a section
| on "The Magic Power of Teams Of Two". In his opinion, large teams
| cannot get anything done, and most innovation comes from
| individuals, but Brooks feels that teams of two people are the
| sweet spot for innovation. You and one other person -- if that
| other person can challenge you in the right way, offer a
| different perspective, or fill in holes in your knowledge, then
| instead of slowing you down, they speed you up.
|
| I personally have found that meetings of two people (me and one
| other person) are where all the most important conversations
| happen about solving problems or plotting strategy. I wrote about
| that in "Truly Agile development revolves around one-on-one
| meetings, not daily standups":
|
| http://www.smashcompany.com/business/truly-agile-development...
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Not Brooks, but someone estimated productivity goes up about as
| the 0.7 power of team size.
|
| Using that exponent, two people can do 1.6 times as much work
| as one person so each is about 80% as productive.
|
| Ten people can do 5 times as much work as one person, so each
| is half as productive.
|
| Twenty five people can do 9.5 times as much work, and each
| member is 38% as productive as single person.
|
| Split those twenty five into five non-interacting teams of five
| people, and they can do 15.4 times as much work as one person.
|
| Obviously real life isn't as precise as these formulas, but
| they provide some guidance.
|
| This book https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/rapid-
| development-... has tables about the limits of what can be
| done. The biggest takeaway is that some projects simply can't
| be done faster than a certain way limit.
|
| The only way around those limits is to find a way to reduce the
| size of the project. Either cut scope, or find a way to write
| less code, typically with a more powerful programming
| environment.
| mach1ne wrote:
| I can attest to this. Furthermore, teams of two make it more
| difficult to check out of a shared problem and allow the other
| team members to do the work, thus it improves the overall
| performance.
| usrme wrote:
| I, personally, feel that instead of two it would need to be
| three to have a more diverse set of opinions and to break any
| stalemates. I've worked for many years with just one other
| person and the number of times where we had ideological
| differences and not enough exposure to alternatives are
| innumerable.
| layer8 wrote:
| The one-on-one meetings don't always have to be with the same
| person. And of course, the particular person matters, some
| can be more of a hindrance than a benefit.
| lkrubner wrote:
| Yes, to be sure, I need to be more careful how I phrase this.
| I recently consulted with a VP of engineering who liked to
| bring 9 engineers together to review a database schema. I
| suggested more one-on-one meetings. He said, "Yes, I know you
| like less chefs in the kitchen." But that was not true, so I
| clarified with him: "I think it is great that you meet with
| those 9 engineers, but you should consider meeting with them
| either one at a time or maybe in groups of twos. The problem
| is that with nine people, on one video call, the conversation
| will either last 6 hours or some people won't be able to
| voice their concerns. There is a risk that the comments will
| remain at a general level. If you want to dive into the
| details, and surface the real risks of a given model, then
| hold smaller meetings. And really, the only purpose of those
| meetings is to surface the risks you face, so there is really
| no point to those larger meetings. Hold smaller meetings and
| surface the risk. But I am 100% okay with the idea of meeting
| with all 9 engineers, if you have the time to do that. Just
| meet with them in small groups. (And if you don't have the
| time to hold 7 or 8 or 9 separate meetings, then be strategic
| about who you meet with --- that is one of the most basic
| skills of leadership, knowing how to invest your time."
| lkrubner wrote:
| For anyone interested, I did write a small book on the
| theme of personal connections and face-to-face
| communication, being more important than processes or
| tools:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/meetings-underrated-Group-waste-
| time-...
| bstpierre wrote:
| It often feels like "teams" of 1.5 work really well. Basically
| this is one person doing the work, with one other person who is
| very much in the loop but not actually on the hook. The worker
| is getting the job done, and the consultant is offering ideas,
| questioning some decisions, reviewing WIP, and generally
| supporting the worker. Having been on both sides of this, I
| think that the little bit of distance that the consultant has
| from the immediate problems of the job, while still having
| awareness of a lot of the context, can really accelerate the
| work.
| Izkata wrote:
| Once when two co-workers needed help with something I had
| more knowledge of, I sat between them so I could look over
| both of their laptops and jump in as needed. When a manager
| was confused about what was going on I called it "double-
| pairing" and got a funny look back.
| michaelrpeskin wrote:
| Great insight! I always look back at my high-school
| internship at a real software company back in the 90's. I
| spent at least half my day sitting in the cube of the old
| unix greybeard (literally) just watching him code and once in
| a while asking what he was doing. It seemed like a waste of
| time, but 1) I became a really good c programmer from
| multiple summers of watching an expert, and 2) since I really
| wasn't in charge of typing, I had a second stack going in my
| head and when he would ask "what was the query we just sent
| to the database" or something like that, I'd remember and
| keep him going. So I think I helped him as much as he helped
| me.
|
| I often try to recreate that with interns and juniors at my
| current job, but everyone is so anxious about not typing or
| not submitting commits they don't stay and watch me work.
| Plus I think I'm less comfortable with silence than my old
| mentor was. He didn't care if I was sitting beside him for a
| hour while he was quietly hacking away. I tend to feel the
| need to explain a bit too much about my thought processes.
| mintyten wrote:
| I had a similar experience in my last position. I was
| helping to lead a very green second shift team and had very
| little experience on the system we were testing. I ended up
| shifting my hours to split them between first and second
| shift and would spend the first part of the day just
| watching a very experienced operator. All I really I did
| was just help him plot and interpret data in excel or
| matlab. When we transitioned to second shift I would be
| already be familiar with the issues of the day and got to
| practice the things I observed earlier in the day. Having
| the time to sit back and observe allowed me to ramp up
| extremely quickly on the program.
|
| I feel the one-on-one relationship can work well in both
| situations where the individuals are peers and when it is
| more of a mentor-mentee relationship. In grad school I had
| a close friend that was on more of a VLSI track while I was
| on an RF track. We had different expertise, but a shared a
| common background of electrical engineering. This allowed
| us to bounce ideas off each other where there was enough
| competence to provide meaningful feedback and just enough
| diversity to provide a different perspectives/approaches.
|
| I recently gave a listen to the BBC podcast The Bomb and
| some of the work done in the era seemed to also follow
| pairing of minds. Maybe it was just the way the material
| was presented, but there seemed to primarily be a team of
| two tackling each of the major components needed for the
| various atomic programs to succeed.
|
| There was an article linked here a while back about tacit
| knowledge that I feel applies in a way to the mentor-mentee
| relationship. Many comments about skills learned by
| observation and imitation from one-on-one work.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23465862
| vanderZwan wrote:
| I think you're onto something - I have a friend with whom I
| collaborate a lot where it feels like that. We're always
| working on our own thing, rarely on a truly shared project,
| so we're basically two "1.5 sized" teams. It's amazing
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Someone, I can't remember who, wrote an article where he
| said that 1.5 is the optimum team size.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| These people going for walks, taking showers, napping and solving
| problems: I don't have this experience. Instead for me it is
| using pen and paper that does it for me. And it seems more
| efficient to have a computer nearby to browse code or docs while
| I do it. Breaks are helpful for maintaining energy but not for
| eurekas. But I agree that if walks make you more productive and
| you are thinking about work then that is actual work.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| For me it is the reverse. My best creative time is the sauna,
| followed by the shower, and lying in bed in third position. Pen
| and paper work great for fleshing out stuff, but not for the
| original insights. Once we get to the keyboard and screen that
| is the implementation of ideas already formed elsewhere.
|
| This is not a straight cascade, but different phases
| influencing each other. I also want to point out that its not a
| value statement. All phases have their own merit, and all of
| them pose their own challenges.
|
| At least for me, doing without any of them will grind creative
| productivity to a halt.
| JamesianP wrote:
| I think the key is being able to genuinely relax from focusing
| on the problem to help your thinking. To allow an opportunity
| for those competing thoughts that aren't making it to your
| awareness because they are beaten by whatever train of thought
| you are stuck on. Little rituals like taking a shower (or
| sitting on the toilet is a popular one) distract you so you can
| relax. Or they should. If it isn't working for you maybe you
| are too good as staying focused and aren't getting the benefit
| from relaxing. Thinking about work while walking would defeat
| the purpose.
| flerchin wrote:
| Sometimes the solutions don't come while I'm vacuuming or doing
| the dishes. Then I'm hours further along without having "worked"
| on the problem.
| ahtavarasmus wrote:
| So true. My best quality time is when first reading hard problem
| and going for a walk to attack it at every angle.
| gjadi wrote:
| There is a good MOOC on coursera on the topic of learning and
| creative working: Learning How To Learn by Barbara Oakley (there
| is also a book).
|
| She talks about focused and diffused mode of thinking. The main
| idea is that to create new neuron connections (memory or
| understanding) you've to work hard on a topic - the focused mode
| - and then take a break - the diffused mode.
|
| By switching modes you help your brain. Of course, you can't just
| go do something else without working hard first ... :)
| Yeroc wrote:
| I was hoping someone would mention "Learning How To Learn" as I
| was immediately reminded of this as well. The process described
| in this article aligns completely with portions of Barbara's
| research and teaching.
| [deleted]
| ilaksh wrote:
| Well, you can actually think in front of a computer also, whether
| you are just sitting there or typing outlines or whatever.
|
| As far as collaborative creativity, that's a whole other thing.
| The challenge is that often everyone has somewhat different
| goals, assumptions, and knowledge.
|
| That's a reason that solo development can be an advantage.
| Component-based systems might help to some degree.
| CapsAdmin wrote:
| I kind of see collaboration as a way to ensure you don't go off
| on some idea that doesn't align with the rest of the team. In the
| blog post he mentions that he presents his idea with the team in
| step 4, isn't that when it becomes collaboration and his idea is
| potentially scaled back or enhanced?
|
| I've seen brainstorming variants where the team thinks for
| themselves first in silence in the same room and then present
| their ideas in form of post-it notes. In the end though, people
| tend to select the safest ideas, but I feel it also depends on
| how many "radical thinkers" are really on the team.
| Aleksdev wrote:
| Very interesting read. I was always a fan of the way Tesla
| conducts meetings.
|
| "Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is
| obvious you aren't adding value."
| mrweasel wrote:
| My mind is apparently a bit more brutal, but much the same. Load
| the problem, meaning read on the problem, do a few test
| implementations of the basics, maybe do a rough object oriented
| solution, then a functional, get stuck and go do something else.
| Then at any random point here after, but mostly when completely
| relaxed my mind swing into action with: Hey buddy, remember that
| thing you where working on? Well, here you go, here's ALL OF IT
| in 20 seconds, so pay attention.
|
| The human brain is amazing at background processing, but at least
| in my case it doesn't drip out solutions, you get everything at
| once.
| et1337 wrote:
| For the past 3 years I've worked in an almost 100% pair
| programming environment. It works wonders for a lot of problems,
| especially around "code ownership". It's much harder to get
| precious with your code, or point fingers at someone else's code,
| when the responsibility for every line is shared by at least two
| people.
|
| But I found that the pressure of pairing shuts down a lot of
| thought. Long silences are forbidden in pairing; you must
| vocalize your thought process. I found myself searching for gaps
| in the conversation where I could think for a second and blurt
| out my thoughts before it's too late to turn the train around. I
| believe pairing can lead to local maxima this way because there's
| no room in the conversation for deep thought.
| attemptone wrote:
| I've read a sentence somewhere that comes to mind: "You need
| the possibility of silence to say something unheard-of."
| sibeliuss wrote:
| Were you required to pair? I'm always curious about this kind
| of arrangement, and fear that it can often be a sort of crutch,
| especially for more Jr engineers who don't yet have the
| experience writing a large amount of code on their own.
| Test0129 wrote:
| I'm shocked you made it 3 years. I did a stint trying to do
| what they call "mob programming" and felt borderline suicidal.
| I couldn't think because I was constantly vocalizing what I was
| doing. Nothing added up and every ticket felt like it was just
| a hodge-podge of different ideas with no real flow. Lord help
| you if someone wanted to disagree. Now you have to completely
| stop your worker thread and handle that. There was no art to
| it. Its just one robot and two guys standing behind you
| ordering you to do this or that. I found it impossible to reach
| a flow state and produce actual good work. I left every session
| feeling like I accomplished nothing for myself. I am not
| attached to my code, but I am attached to my _accomplishments_.
| When all your work is atomized between people you are
| effectively no one. In this case, I believe, it 's better off
| to leave.
|
| Pair programming in moderation can be enlightening. Much like
| traveling to a different town as an artist to learn from other
| artists. Too much of it and you lose your identity. It is
| completely possible to remain detached from your work but still
| desire to work mostly alone on your own tickets. Code ownership
| is a silly concept. On one hand everyone suggests being
| detached from your work. Yet everyone simultaneously realizes
| having your name in a PR matters. I make a habit of crediting
| people who worked with me in the PR message. It's pretty
| simple.
| Phlogistique wrote:
| I guess everyone is different and appreciates a different
| amount of collaboration!
|
| I guess something ideal for me would be roughly 70% pair
| programming, 30% alone time - but I have not been able to
| test this guess because I have always worked on teams where
| pair programming is the exception, not the norm.
| mostertoaster wrote:
| This is a helpful reminder to me. Thanks.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Diffused time is needed for creativity to come. The best ideas
| always come while not actively working on it. Working out, going
| on a walk, taking a shower, or even before going to sleep can
| have your subconscious do the work for you.
|
| I always thought big tech companies knew this with how many "fun"
| activities they have in the office, but it seems like nobody
| utilizes it as much as they should. At least my experience.
|
| There's a cap on active work each day. Yet we work through that
| cap thinking we're some type of hero and end up doing pretty poor
| work.
|
| This is very "left brain, right brain" thinking. There's a number
| of books on this topic. I think one of the better ones is Barbara
| Oakley's books on how to teach yourself.
|
| If you read any famous creative's memoirs, you'll see similar
| patterns where the best stuff came at the oddest times. You'll
| probably even see that cliche story about Edison falling asleep
| with metal balls to wake up and write his inventions down.
|
| Peter Drucker and many before him knew that "knowledge work" was
| a whole different ballgame. They were quite ahead of their time
| thinking back now in 2022:
|
| https://hbr.org/2014/10/what-peter-drucker-knew-about-2020
| mostertoaster wrote:
| I identify with what he is saying.
|
| When I'm confident in myself I can do this and be effective. Go
| think about a problem not sitting at my desk.
|
| When I'm not confident in myself, I act like an impostor and try
| to look like I'm doing work.
|
| The hard part is remaining confident in myself, when myself has
| not always given me reason to be confident in it.
| [deleted]
| shatnersbassoon wrote:
| I like the Alan Partridge definition of brainstorming:
|
| "An American technique where ideas are graded by how loudly the
| person who thought them up shouts"
|
| (paraphrase)
| a_bonobo wrote:
| IMHO why companies don't push the 'step away and let the problem
| gestate in your brain' message is that it blurs the lines between
| 'payable time' and 'free time'. For my creative work, a lot of
| solutions occur in the evenings after I've clocked out. Since I'm
| developing solutions for work do they not owe me money for the
| hours worked?
| Test0129 wrote:
| I don't think it's that at all. If you're salary the company
| quite literally owns you, every thought no matter how
| inconsequential, etc. I can see how that could be a problem for
| hourly. It's really about control. You give the appearance of
| work to appease the PHB who signs your paycheck. You know,
| after plenty of experience, the person who appears to be the
| hardest worker is often times the least likely to be put on the
| chopping block. It's a very primal hierarchical reaction to
| this kind of thing.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| company quite literally owns you. yes, modulo the actual law
| Test0129 wrote:
| If you dont believe it I encourage you to try to start your
| own company while working somewhere else. You'll be mired
| in _legal_ nonsense so deep you wont even be able to see
| clearly. When you become an employee you sign just about
| every right away you have to anything you do, ever, while
| working for the company. NDAs, Non-Competes, Invention
| Agreements, etc.
|
| Sure, the company can't avoid paying you. But in exchange
| they get 2/3 of your waking life for 30-40 years and 100%
| of your production. Some companies are better, some are
| worse. All of them have lawyers that, should you cross
| them, will make you regret everything. I am at a relatively
| relaxed company (compared to FAANGs) and even here I had to
| go through a ton of channels and sign paperwork to even
| begin work on an open source project.
| throwaway_au_1 wrote:
| PHB = Pointy Haired Boss, for anyone else not familiar with
| Dilbert.
| skrebbel wrote:
| They don't own you, they rent you.
|
| I don't think with todays developer salaries, there's any
| space left for that good old "work is slavery" message you're
| sending. The HN crowd is huge so I'm sure there are
| exceptions, but most people reading your comment can switch
| jobs whenever they want. Not without stress, but without real
| risk.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Look how many comments here are something like: "Well, of course
| leisure is good - because it helps me work harder!" It's sad.
| It's that "work-is-noble" ethos. These people are effectively
| saying that they are at-lesiure in order to work better - they
| have it backwards! I don't know about you, but I work in order to
| be-at-leisure; I am only ever not-at-leisure in order to be-at-
| leisure. Refreshing and recharging is good - because it's the
| end, not the means!. But so many here seem to be framing leisure
| as the means, the end being work itself. Work itself is not
| noble.
| kortilla wrote:
| Some people enjoy creating things and solving problems.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Hey let me just say I'm totally with you and you put it very
| well.
|
| I would go even farther: I even dread the typical "1 hour lunch
| break" because it is _anything_ but leisure. It 's just "rush
| to reenergize your body to be able to do more work later, but f
| your mind and soul which are yearning for _actual_ leisure ".
| sneak wrote:
| I disagree. My leisure is almost always unproductive, and I
| personally find productivity to be virtuous.
| postalrat wrote:
| Some people honestly enjoy work. I enjoy making stuff for
| myself and for others.
| t43562 wrote:
| I find collaborative debugging to be quite powerful. Whether it's
| duck debugging your own code or working with other people to
| solve a problem that isn't of your own making.
|
| It doesn't mean you are stuck in a room but it does mean updating
| people on what you've found out and asking the questions that
| come into your mind. Very often someone else comes up with an
| idea that advances the state of knowledge until the bug is
| solved. What happens when you don't know all you need to know to
| solve a problem? Sometimes you have to involve other people.
|
| As for "is looking out of the window work" well yes of course it
| can be and you do need to be alone to think often.
|
| I just feel that when I'm stuck in my own perspective and not
| moving forward much, it can help to get someone else's just as it
| can help to do some totally different thing and come back at the
| problem freshly.
| Quequau wrote:
| Hey, I've been fired for step two. I'll quote "you aren't paid to
| walk around and think".
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Hell, I had one complete a*hole of a boss who, one time when I
| was sitting at my desk, in front of my computer, leaning back
| in my chair trying to figure out how to make something work,
| say "there's not a terminal in the ceiling, commandlinefan".
| a3w wrote:
| This. My old first boss told us that he is happy if we sit at
| our work places and are deep in the trenches of coding.
|
| I was happy when doing databases on a whiteboard or collecting
| coffee and fruit from the canteen. Needless to say, I did not
| feel like sitting in place and hurting my back just to be
| looking productive.
| d0m3 wrote:
| That's why remote work is so liberating. You don't have to stay
| at your desk but you can move your body and free your mind as
| much as you like. When I get back to the office I feel stuck.
| Physically and mentally.
| pcurve wrote:
| I never felt constrained or locked out even at office. I would
| go for a walk. I would space out at desk. I would chat with
| people. No one got offended. Of course it probably helped that
| mg boss was not in the same states.
| evrydayhustling wrote:
| These ideas are intuitive, but I can't find the research backing
| them. The blog quotes another blog [1] which claims research but
| doesn't reference it. That one uses a quote from an MIT article
| [2], which is a perspective piece with no actual experiments.
|
| People use "research says" to add gravity to ideas, but it's
| important to share (and check) the sources.
|
| [1] https://paulitaylor.com/2022/05/06/the-case-against-
| collabor...
|
| [2]
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226279557_A_Complex...
| Jakob wrote:
| Agreed, while I prefer deep work in solitude, there is a lot of
| literature which suggests that collaboration enhances outcomes.
| Random example:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221...
| LocalPCGuy wrote:
| Not sure that literature really contradicts the original
| hypothesis. The abstract (can't download the full text
| without buying it) seems to be implying that they found there
| is motivation for working in groups and made work more fun
| (or rather, even just providing cues that make people feel
| like they are working in groups) but didn't really touch on
| innovation or collaboration as it relates to
| brainstorming/ideation.
|
| I think it's important as the poster above you said, not just
| take the word research at face value. I'm sure that there may
| be studies that show collaboration can lead to good ideation
| and outcomes also, I just don't think this one is that.
|
| Some notes from the abstract:
|
| > ... examined cues that evoke a psychological state of
| working together ... which increased intrinsic motivation as
| people worked alone.
|
| > Outcomes were diverse, e.g., task persistence, enjoyment
| and, 1-2 weeks later, choice.
|
| > These cues also increased feelings of working together but
| not other processes.
|
| > The results suggest that cues of working together can
| inspire intrinsic motivation, turning work into play. The
| discussion addresses the social-relational bases of
| motivation and implications for the self and application.
| adrian_b wrote:
| In my opinion, collaboration certainly enhances outcomes, but
| only when it alternates with solitary work.
| tonylemesmer wrote:
| Part of the brainstorming method with a room full of people is to
| extract insights that should have already have been gathered in
| research.
|
| It lessens the likelihood that the wrong person is left to solve
| the problem by themselves because you have the input from others
| too. Even if they are the person who eventually carries selected
| idea through to implementation at least they've been exposed to
| insights and conversations from other 'stakeholders'.
|
| Often consultancies will involve more people (e.g. the customer)
| in the idea generation activity to bring them along on the
| journey. Brainstorms can definitely be done badly but also
| managed well by experienced facilitators.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Boss: "Hicks, how come you're not working."
|
| Bill: "There's nothing to do."
|
| Boss: "Well, you pretend like you're working."
|
| Perhaps the biggest sink on the economy and environment is
| perfomative work that David Graeber calls "bullshit jobs".
| Commuting 100 miles to sit in an office to _be seen_ to perform
| is tragic and borne of insecurity of both manager and worker
| colluding in a game.
|
| I think what constitutes work exists at a deep, invisible level
| that approximates to something like loyalty or duty. It is
| whether one holds the task/company in mind. And it happens 24/7.
|
| Some of the most important work I've done for clients happened
| while out walking, or shopping. I've cut short social events or
| vacations to rush back and test an idea I had.
|
| Problem is, you can't measure that. And even if you could, I
| wouldn't let you. It's a private space. The more any "boss" tries
| to intrude, observe or manage that process, the faster it
| evaporates.
|
| That's not to say that structured tools, planning, presentation
| and other forms of explicating and evidence aren't part of work.
| They're just not the most important parts, and actually play very
| little role in the big leaps and "paradigm shifts" in creative
| work.
|
| By "problem" I mean problem for someone whose only role is to
| monitor and report what others do. "I'm still thinking about it"
| is something they don't want to hear.
| eru wrote:
| The topic of bullshit jobs has been overhyped.
|
| Btw, even if they are a problem, their impact on the economy
| pales in comparison with restrictions on migration and
| construction.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > The topic of bullshit jobs has been overhyped.
|
| I think that's true and it's a shame Graeber's choice of
| language basically offends. Who wants to hear that their job
| is "bullshit"? And let's face it, sometimes we feel good
| name-calling all those people whose work we don't understand.
|
| Unfortunately that over-hyping subtracts from real and
| serious questions about why we're burning resources (human
| and material) doing _perfomative_ acts.
|
| Even the things you mention, like mobility and development
| regulation can be "perfomative", as "acting out" of things we
| think we ought to be seen to do but no longer have the
| courage to examine.
|
| This is down to the cult of "the system" as a Big Other,
| which must be appeased - something I'm not sure Graeber
| articulated well. But it was a key step in the unravelling of
| the Soviet system, and I think we are repeating it now in the
| West.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > it's a shame Graeber's choice of language basically
| offends. Who wants to hear that their job is "bullshit"?
|
| A very large number of people who already believe that
| about their job.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Indeed, the core of the book is built on interviews with
| people who _self-report_ that their jobs are bullshit.
| Graeber goes on to cover some systemically-bullshit jobs
| (largely escalating zero-sum games like advertising or
| the military-- "we had to spend more because the other
| guy spent more, so the status quo is preserved") but all
| the stuff about ordinary jobs at ordinary companies that
| are bullshit come from surveys and interviews.
|
| All I can figure is people who bristle at the term or at
| the notion that there might indeed be a whole lot of
| bullshit jobs haven't had a very broad set of work
| experience, and run in a social circle that's very
| similar to them. It seems impossible not to notice,
| otherwise.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's also a language that implies that entire jobs are it,
| and entire jobs are not.
|
| There probably exist jobs that are entirely bullshit or
| entirely not-bullshit, but if they exist, they are
| extremely rare.
| npteljes wrote:
| >Perhaps the biggest sink on the economy and environment is
| perfomative work
|
| I think nothing illustrates this better, than the productivity
| output of Japan vs other developed nations[0]. In Japan,
| there's a lot that you need to do at your job performatively:
| strict schedules, logging what you do have been doing in small
| intervals like 30 minutes, checking in and out formally, having
| to keep up with coworkers outside of work, tons of pressure and
| appearances, and long hours. And yet, productivity is not
| great.
|
| [0] https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01196/
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| >Perhaps the biggest sink on the economy and environment is
| perfomative work that David Graeber calls "bullshit jobs".
| Commuting 100 miles to sit in an office to be seen to perform
| is tragic and borne of insecurity of both manager and worker
| colluding in a game.
|
| For years (5+), at my job there's often nothing to do, so after
| lunch I just go home, and declare 4 hours worked that day
| (8-12, instead of normal 8) at the end of a month. Of 5 of us
| employees I am the only one doing that. Never once has my boss
| confronted me about it, neither subtracted from my full salary.
| I feel kinda blessed.
| j-bos wrote:
| How did you declare the hours? An email? "Unpaid time off"
| submission?
| badpun wrote:
| In many companies, there are systems into which you enter
| how many hours you worked each day. (often you also need to
| break down the work per department/budget, so that you as
| an expense can be tracked across multiple company budgets).
| pcurve wrote:
| Man I wish everyone did that. I managed a team of twenty with
| a layer of managers and it was just impossible to get a pulse
| on workload. The truth is there is always work to be done. It
| doesn't have to be feature work but it could be product
| health, process health, or pie in the sky thinking work. Some
| employees were great about utilizing downtime to tackle these
| but many were not. I loved the ones who were confident to
| tell me "hey boss I got some time. What do you want me to
| focus on ?"
| hansel_der wrote:
| > I feel kinda blessed.
|
| you should
| b4je7d7wb wrote:
| I do the same, but report 8 hours. I automated this task in
| every job that required to report hours. I refuse to work in
| a clock in clock out fashion.
|
| Thankfully I now have a job that autoreports 8 hours. I never
| even opened the software to edit hours.
| drmacak wrote:
| It actually does not matter what work looks like the important
| part are the results. I think that's generaly one of the worst
| problem at job. People being "busy" without any results and
| people that seems to calmly delivere. Usually management favors
| the first kind as it feels like no struggle no work is being
| done.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| I also used to say I have to sleep over it, and had the best
| ideas when I was in the shower in the morning. But since I had
| almost a burnout I really seperate work and life. So I never
| think about work things bevor I start to work, so I need a lot
| more time on work for solutions and they are never as good as the
| solutions from the morning shower. But yeah, my private life is
| sooo much better now.
| Test0129 wrote:
| I've had more ideas come to me after hiding in my office to take
| a nap than sitting at my desk. It got to be such a gold mine of
| solutions that I still to this day allocate 30 minutes of my day
| to a nap. Non-negotiable. So many hard problems that have been
| brought to me, or complicated needs for architecture, etc were
| solved by simply turning my active brain off. When I was in
| graduate school I'd regularly get stuck on some stupid thing I
| didn't understand and slamming my head against the
| paper/book/whatever didn't help. Again, a quick nap and I was
| good (or at least better than I was).
|
| Performative work is a disaster. I worked in a stuffy IT office
| of a company before I got my degree and became a software
| engineer. It took YEARS to deprogram performative work. I still
| hide when I take a nap. I suspect that if my current company
| found out I was sleeping on the job they'd still be upset with
| me. However, my output is so good the results speak for
| themselves. It would be difficult to fire me for napping.
| nestorD wrote:
| During my PhD, I had a friend famous for having a pillow on his
| desk. He would take a nap everyday and went on to finish his
| PhD 6 months earlier than all prognostications and with some
| great ideas.
| willturman wrote:
| Hammock Driven Development by Rich Hickey [1] is a presentation
| that dives into why taking a step back from the immediacy of a
| problem often leads to clarity.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc
| slifin wrote:
| The urge to invoice a Hammock for my home office to my
| employer
| jereees wrote:
| Just buy it. Look at it as an investment for your future
| mental health.
| sph wrote:
| > I've had more ideas come to me after hiding in my office to
| take a nap than sitting at my desk. It got to be such a gold
| mine of solutions that I still to this day allocate 30 minutes
| of my day to a nap.
|
| Many of the hard problems in my career have been solved while
| having a long warm shower in the middle of the work day.
|
| In general, my own productivity trick is understanding and
| leveraging the Eureka effect. Your subconscious is still
| working on the problem when your conscious mind is doing
| something else. Often, if pointed focus doesn't work, just
| leave it in the back burner to stew. Then wait for the
| proverbial light bulb to show you the way, out of nowhere. It
| never fails, yet I have never heard anyone mention this
| phenomenon.
|
| My empirical explanation is hard problems benefit from
| unrelated stimuli, so they're able to be approached from an
| oblique direction. In other words, to think out of the box,
| stop thinking and do something else.
| deepGem wrote:
| Benjamin Franklin had this amazing idea of having ball bearings
| in his hand while solving and thinking about hard problems. The
| thinking would eventually make him fall asleep and as he fell
| into a slumber, the ball bearings would roll off his hands
| startling him up. It is at this precipice, the fine line
| between awake and asleep states that most of his ideas came to
| life. He would start penning down his ideas in this state.
|
| So it worked then, it works now. A 20 to 30 minute nap during
| the work day has a ton of benefits, including stress reduction.
| I don't know why it is frowned upon. I have fallen asleep many
| times at my desk and have been made fun of, but who gives a
| damn. I would rather be stress free and have some good ideas
| come about.
| arthurofbabylon wrote:
| Leveraging the hypnagogic state.
|
| If anyone is interested, the yoga tradition has extensively
| developed this technique - it's called Yoga Nidra.
| texasbigdata wrote:
| It's pandemic popular as "non sleep deep rest" if you want
| to try it by following a YouTube guide. Great nap
| replacement for when you're too wired to fully fall asleep.
| SamPatt wrote:
| My guess is it's frowned upon because there's a difference in
| choosing to take a nap, and needing to take a nap.
|
| The latter is associated with aging and physical decline.
| mathieuh wrote:
| I'm the same except with guitar. I always keep a guitar next to
| my desk, and when I start getting frustrated or stuck with work
| I'll noodle around for 20 minutes. Usually I feel very
| refreshed after doing this. Working from home has been a
| godsend for me.
| lqet wrote:
| The three fundamental ideas of my PhD came to while:
|
| 1.) Sitting in a park sketching solutions on a notebook.
|
| 2.) Laying at the beach on vacation.
|
| 3.) Playing Legos with my daughter.
|
| Without these ideas, I doubt there would've even been a PhD, or
| even a paper publication.
|
| (There was a period of 2 years in my life where I did not have
| any significant ideas, at all. During that time, I was employed
| at a company which offered a constant stream of urgent TODO
| emails and tickets. I worked until exhaustion for 2 years, but
| did not get any work done.)
| mr_gibbins wrote:
| Snap. Whenever I sat down to cast about for ideas on how to
| develop the initial form of my PhD, nada, zip. Deliberate
| concentration on one thing was a shortcut to procrastination.
|
| The 'big idea' came when I was on campus, standing outside
| smoking. Hit me like a bombshell. I literally ran to see my
| supervisor, blurted out IT'S JUST A F**G MOLECULE, cleared
| off his whiteboard and spent the next hour sketching out what
| turned out to be another 5 years of work.
|
| Those eureka moments are where true creativity turns up, I
| find it impossible to solve problems through dedicated,
| stare-at-the-screen thought, but I'll get a brainwave at e.g.
| the gym and nearly drop the weights on my head.
|
| Companies need to promote creative problem-solving spaces,
| and I'm not talking about a beanbag area with free lattes,
| but a sit-and-think, light, non-social way of working that
| promotes this kind of thing. No idea how this could be done
| in practice, though.
| lqet wrote:
| I also vividly remember the moment I had idea 1 from my
| list above. It was such a nice warm autumn day in the last
| months of a very turbulent year: I struggled finding
| something worth doing a PhD on, and in the 10 weeks before,
| I got married, my wife got pregnant, was rushed into
| emergency for a suspected ectopic pregnancy a few days
| later, which then suddenly turned out to be a completely
| normal pregnancy. I also had an upcoming conference talk a
| week later, for which I was completely unprepared. Suddenly
| the idea was there, and it was like a door to a wide avenue
| opened, with follow-up ideas left and right all along the
| way. It turned out quite beautiful in the end, and when we
| published 6 months later, one of the reviewers found the
| idea "elegant", which was _by far_ the most positive thing
| I ever read in a paper review.
| samstave wrote:
| What was the idea/paper/phd about???!
| spidersouris wrote:
| > Companies need to promote creative problem-solving
| spaces, and I'm not talking about a beanbag area with free
| lattes, but a sit-and-think, light, non-social way of
| working that promotes this kind of thing.
|
| Would that really solve the problem? I feel like when
| you're standing in front of your computer screen searching
| for a solution, it's because you're switching to some
| different and unplanned activity that you are able to get
| an _eureka!_ moment. Creating a specific place where
| employees can go to think would defeat the whole purpose
| IMHO, because then people would go there and would do the
| exact same thing as when they 're in front of their
| computer screen.
|
| What may work is promoting short breaks during which
| employees can do any activity of their liking, whether it
| be playing video games, walking, smoking a cigarette...
| Basically anything that takes their mind off work. That
| guarantees development in creativity.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Companies need to promote creative problem-solving spaces,
|
| Unfortunately, there are people that do not understand how
| this concept works. These are the same employees that stare
| at screens trying to for a square peg into a round hole,
| but then see other employees trying it the other way and
| complain about how so many people are doing nothing when so
| much is to be done.
|
| These complaints tend to percolate up, and these creative
| problem solving spaces end up getting removed to be
| replaced by more work space for the additional head count
| to solve all of the work to be done
| cma wrote:
| The question is would you be able to still get those
| spontaneous ideas at a background level without also the
| staring at the screen and deliberate work?
| psychomugs wrote:
| I got an Apple Watch in the endgame of my PhD to catch all
| the thoughts I'd have out and about, particularly on runs. I
| rarely reviewed them and a lot was adrenaline-induced ranting
| and raving, but the act of documenting helped cement them
| better and drastically cut out the anxiety of potentially
| forgetting something really good.
|
| David Lynch analogizes his sitting-with-cigarettes-and-a-
| notepad-to-catch-ideas to fishing. You can't chase after them
| but once in a while a big one will come along.
| jayde2767 wrote:
| I know the castration of ideas in the "Everything-is-an-
| Emergency" company culture. If you're not careful, it will
| condition you to delay work because the next "emergency" and
| shift in priority is imminent.
| hinkley wrote:
| I kept my sanity at one place by working on refactoring
| every moment there wasn't an emergency. I was trying to
| make all the changes easier. But that was after having
| tried several other solutions, including the dreaded
| Infinite Configurability, which has to be the absolutely
| best way to punish most of the team for how clever two or
| three of them are.
|
| I'm working at a place like that now and it's been an eye
| roller. After ten years on the project one of the problem
| people has finally seen this as a problem (though I haven't
| heard him admit that he contributes). He's looking at code
| now written by two people who have been copying his code
| style for years, and suddenly feeling the pain of it. It's
| great he's growing, but he's over forty and should have
| learned this years ago. I blame a mix of things including
| staying at one place for far too long.
|
| And I keep telling him this code used to be worse, but I've
| been chipping away at it for some time.
| hinkley wrote:
| > But that was after having tried several other
| solutions,
|
| I should clarify that I didn't mean concurrent or
| consecutive here, but across several different projects.
| Different preconditions can sink a strategy. It's hard to
| get any signal when you apply multiple unsuccessful
| strategies to the same 'experiment'.
| uglygoblin wrote:
| I empathize deeply with you. I have been dealing with a
| system of "infinite configurability" for the last couple
| years and it's playing out the same way. The best I've
| been able to do is slowly codify the most problematic
| corners and put guard rails as many places as possible.
|
| Sometimes I want to put my hands up in defeat and leave
| but there is also a satisfaction and growth from
| simplifying the Rube Goldberg machine.
|
| It still sucks though.
| hinkley wrote:
| "Code coverage" and code that does everything and thus
| nothing are a potent cocktail as well. You can have 90%
| 'coverage' on a file and still only be covering 5% of the
| actual code paths (that's unfortunately not hyperbole,
| but a real number from a real analysis I did. When the
| numbers disagree that much, people tend to ignore the
| terrifying one)
| lqet wrote:
| This is exactly how my working days looked like in the last
| 12 months before I quit. Sitting in front of the screen
| waiting for the next emergency ticket. Why even bother to
| start some deep work? It will be interrupted, possibly for
| days, in the next hour anyhow. It was corporately-enforced
| procrastination, non-stop, for 2 years. At the same time,
| the technical debt grew and grew, until it towered above
| everything. It felt like torture. A miserable experience.
| At some point, my partner mentioned something like "I sure
| hope you will smile again some time"; around the same time
| I noticed that I took immense risks in traffic, especially
| as a pedestrian. Getting up in the morning was extremely
| difficult. 2 weeks after I left, the ideas came flowing
| again (ironically for problems we struggled with for months
| and months at the company).
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| Creativity and experimentation are not needed for
| survival, so stress hormons flow and the nice things are
| postponed.
| walthamstow wrote:
| This is also happening in government, IMO.
|
| Govts get caught up in the latest emergency in the
| social/media and completely forget about innovation and
| long term planning. It's particularly acute in the UK at
| the moment.
| Fnoord wrote:
| Yes, this is undervalued. It is called the diffuse mode of
| thinking (as opposed to the focused mode). Walk around in the
| park during lunch break is work, too.
| a_e_k wrote:
| At the grad school that I went to, senior grad students were
| offered a chance to move out of the lab and into a private
| "dissertating office" as they became available. With a couch I
| could nap on, an incredible window view to gaze out from, and a
| door I could shut for focus work, it was amazingly productive
| for finishing my dissertation. Those few months were the only
| time that I've ever had a private office and to this day I
| still rather miss it.
|
| (And most of my favorite papers came about from ideas that I'd
| had while on vacation.)
| mellavora wrote:
| Churchill also saw the value of the nap:
|
| "Nature has not intended mankind to work from eight in the
| morning until midnight without that refreshment of blessed
| oblivion which, even if it only lasts twenty minutes, is
| sufficient to renew all the vital forces... Don't think you
| will be doing less work because you sleep during the day.
| That's a foolish notion held by people who have no
| imaginations. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two
| days in one -- well, at least one and a half,"
|
| -- The Gathering Storm
| gman83 wrote:
| If I was drinking whiskey for breakfast I'd probably need to
| take a nap in the afternoon as well.
| samstave wrote:
| >> _"Lady Nancy Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I
| 'd poison your tea._"
|
| Churchill: _" Nancy, if I were your husband, I'd drink
| it."_
| sph wrote:
| If you were not drinking coffee, perhaps you might as well.
| I wonder if our cultural addiction with caffeine, an
| effective sleep inhibitor, is the reason why napping and
| siestas feels so weird and exotic to our modern minds. "Oh
| you're from Italy? I heard they take lunchtime naps over
| there." Sadly only my grandma had such a luxury.
|
| Everybody else chugs coffee and is expected to work 9-18
| without pause, like the rest of the Western world.
| scruple wrote:
| Aren't the Italians known for their coffee?
| seti0Cha wrote:
| From what I've seen, Italian coffee consumption is
| nothing like American coffee consumption. They don't sip
| at enormous cups of drip coffee while working, but
| instead quickly drink small amounts of espresso as a
| break. It seems to me that leads both to less caffeine
| consumption and more actual enjoyment of the beverage.
| scruple wrote:
| Certainly not conclusive at all, but... Top results from
| a Google search:
|
| > Individually, an American coffee drinker consumes about
| three cups of coffee per day.
|
| > Italians drink an average of 3 coffees a day
|
| It seems that the averages are roughly equal. Of course
| there are outliers everywhere.
| wrs wrote:
| Presumably the American is having a cup of drip coffee
| (100mg caffeine) whereas the Italian is having a shot of
| espresso (60mg).
| SoftTalker wrote:
| More likely these days, the American is having some kind
| of warm, sweet milkshake with a couple of shots of
| espresso in it.
| sph wrote:
| Italians drink small cups of espresso or moka (if
| homemade), and maybe a cappuccino at breakfast. The
| morning and lunch time ones are mandatory, then maybe one
| mid afternoon or in the evening.
|
| If you happen to see someone having a cappuccino at
| lunch, or, yikes! with their dinner, they're probably a
| tourist.
|
| When I last lived there, Starbucks and the lattes and
| pumpkin spice big mugs were a "weird American novelty"
| for teens in major city centres.
| Test0129 wrote:
| I drink plenty of coffee and still take naps. Its hard
| for people to remember these days but the "lazy nappers"
| meme started during the industrial revolution. We've only
| had a 40 hour week, for example, for a (relatively) small
| amount of time here in America.
| gausswho wrote:
| Do the majority of American workers even cap at 40?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| At one job? It's possible and doable.
|
| A lot of people who are working in precarious situations
| actually work two or more jobs at less than 30 hours
| each, because 30 is when you qualify for employer
| provided health insurance.
| andrepd wrote:
| More to the point, there is evidence that a 10-20 minute nap
| at the middle of the day, such that you don't go into deep
| sleep, improves cognitive function and subjective alertness.
| foobarian wrote:
| > from eight in the morning until midnight
|
| Somehow that doesn't make me feel much better
| carlmr wrote:
| >When I was in graduate school I'd regularly get stuck on some
| stupid thing I didn't understand and slamming my head against
| the paper/book/whatever didn't help. Again, a quick nap and I
| was good (or at least better than I was).
|
| I remember doing this, too. I would often nap 2-3 times a day
| in crunch time and sleep less during the night, solving many
| problems.
|
| I think the problem as you say is the performative part of
| work, and napping really doesn't look good in that sense.
|
| Since COVID WFH I often also nap instead of eating lunch, which
| is a double power boost, since a big lunch can make you almost
| comatose.
| kubota wrote:
| This! The human mind never fails to amaze me, so often the
| solution to a work problem pops into my head right after waking
| up, without even remembering what I was dreaming about.
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| > So many hard problems that have been brought to me, or
| complicated needs for architecture, etc were solved by simply
| turning my active brain off.
|
| I get it that it works but wonder what could be the logical
| explanation of this. I remember this method was also mentioned
| in the movie Turner & Hooch.
| alfor wrote:
| When you are focused on a problem your left side of the brain
| take over (thinking in worlds and steps) When you relax,
| draw, daydream or sleep your left brain can take over and
| think in parallel, images, abstractions.
|
| When you dream the constraint on your consciousness
| (simulation) are lifted to allow more divergent scenario.
| That's why dreams can be a bit crazy.
|
| It's a bit like brainstorming on steroid, letting loose of
| more constraints.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Not sure at all, but one thing that strikes me is when you're
| purposely "thinking really hard," you're probably in a state
| akin to vigilance. You're trying to assess ideas quickly and
| move to the next one. If you're playing with legos, an idea
| can just sit there in the back of your mind and tumble about
| a little bit into different configurations and orientations.
|
| I think another commonality is physical activity: walking,
| playing, washing. There may be some chemical thing going on
| with muscle activity but also subjectively I have a suspicion
| that these sorts of activities are essentially pumping noise
| into your cognitive processes, helping divergent thinking,
| while also keeping your attention sufficiently occupied to
| achieve the "non-vigilant" posture toward those ideas.
| LocalH wrote:
| My working hypothesis is that the conscious and subconscious
| mind cannot access the same part of the brain at the same
| time (sort of like bus conflicts). So, counterintuitively, to
| let your subconscious mind churn on a problem, you have to
| actively focus elsewhere. This, at least, seems to be how it
| works for me.
| nadavwiz wrote:
| Love it! as a Product Manager there's always the tension between
| being inclusive and collaborative and turning into product-by-
| committee, which never ends well.
|
| You end up doing what people asked, not what was processed, as
| you say - in the shower, and lit up as the best thing forward
| FriedrichN wrote:
| Because humans are social beings, we need to signal to the others
| that we belong to the group and are doing our part. Our loyalty
| is prized more than our effectiveness or efficiency. It doesn't
| matter how productive you are, the feelings of the group are more
| important.
|
| You can see this in many places in our society. The security
| theater in airports don't make air travel that much safer, but it
| does send a signal to the group "look, we're doing something
| about it!". Same goes for the war on drugs, notoriously
| ineffective and seemingly only makes things worse. The hunt for
| benefits fraud is often not quite effective, hurts the ones that
| actually need the benefits, but the fear of the freeloader is big
| enough one must be seen to be tough on fraudsters. Or school,
| where doing what you're told is much more important than any
| learning you might do along the way. Or the way China is now
| burying itself with Xi's everlasting reign.
|
| If you think humans are meant to be effective and efficient, you
| are very much mistaken. Everything we manage do, we do in spite
| of it.
| largepeepee wrote:
| While I agree with the overall point, that view of airport
| security and drug control being ineffective shows the power of
| Hollywood propaganda than valid points supporting the issue of
| the human condition.
|
| One only has to look at places that value such measures to see
| they DO work.
|
| Israeli airports for example or Singapore's drug policies. Both
| of which employ draconians measures to ensure effectiveness but
| they do boast success rates.
|
| I'll say policies lose effectiveness when the populace don't
| value it or when the neighborhood has powerful bad actors that
| oppose it, like trying to reinforce gun laws in Canada.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The thing is, Israel legitimately has to fear terrorism.
| Western countries only keep that ridiculous security theatre
| because it's politically _very_ hard to get rid of something
| that got introduced for "safety" even if it has proven to be
| pointless.
| swayvil wrote:
| This puts the independent operator (lone contractor,
| entrepreneur...) in an interesting position. For him ,
| effectiveness matters more than loyalty displays. His world is
| different from that of the "solid tribe member".
| leobg wrote:
| FriedrichN? Is that an allusion to Nietzsche? It would
| certainly be fitting the sharpness of your observation.
| Wouldn't be surprised to find the thought you expressed here in
| "Human, All Too Human".
| FriedrichN wrote:
| I guess this would comport with his concept of slave morality
| that states that the collective is more important than the
| individual and tends to trend towards the lowest common
| denominator.
| effnorwood wrote:
| [deleted]
| langsoul-com wrote:
| Like the quote goes, a week of hard work can save you hours of
| deep thinking.
|
| Better to figure out shit in IT before going in too deep and
| needing to redo the design. Especially databases!
| trashtester wrote:
| > Load my brain with all the context of a problem.
|
| It's easy to overlook this part of the article. The _loading_ of
| the brain is essential for me. That part may actually look like
| work. It may involve discussions, meetings drawing sketches or
| prototyping code. Those things may actually look like work, but
| the purpose is not necessarily to produce the final product
| (unless it turns out to be trivial), but to build understanding.
|
| If something really requires creativity, THIS is the time to pull
| in the oars, take some time off and allow the brain to process.
| It's important to avoid other activities that grab the attention
| too much. The best thing is to try to avoid screen time. Maybe go
| for walks, take naps, spend time with friends or family, etc.
|
| Within 1-2 days, ideas are likely to pop up, often in the middle
| of the night. That's the time to get out of bed, do some quick
| sanity checks for the ideas (a sketch, a few google searches,
| etc), and ideally go back to bed if possible. The next morning,
| the first 4-16 hours may be as productive as a month or more of
| "normal work".
|
| If more difficulties are encountered, this can be repeated after
| a day or work or so. Eventually, though, the creative parts of a
| task are likely to have been solved, meaning it makes sense to
| spend several days (or weeks) with a more regular schedule,
| whether I do the job myself or spend the time destilling it into
| something that can be scaled out to coworkers (the ones that
| prefer to have detailed specifications of what to do).
|
| This is not unlike physical exercise. A muscle doesn't get
| stronger from exercise, but rather from the rest that comes after
| the exercise. The resting alone provides no benefit, but too much
| exercise is equally bad. For those who need to do heavy lifting,
| it may be better to work fewer hours and let the body recover
| between each session.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Seymour Cray dug a tunnel to nowhere from his basement out into
| his backyard.
|
| He claimed that's where he got his best ideas.
| sz4kerto wrote:
| Work: going for a 2 hour run over the weekend, thinking about
| some problem between the 60th and 80 minute, spending the next
| week implementing it. (typing it in, telling others about it on
| meetings, whatever)
|
| Also: this is why hourly billing is pointless. You bill for the
| low value activity and can't bill for the high value activity.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Software development can be viewed as creative work. Bad things
| happen when creative workers and assembly line managers clash.
|
| But, sure, there's a lot of boilerplate and routine work to be
| done - that's the low-effort stuff.
| fy20 wrote:
| The problem isn't so much what work looks like, but how to
| measure it. I'm kind of surprised with the shift to work from
| home (and in some cases back again) we haven't seen any large
| companies come out with analytical data about what is more
| effective and how they measure it. I'm guessing the reason why is
| because they don't, and any return to office policies are driven
| soley by pointy haired managers with no real data.
|
| My company measures performance based on the company reaching its
| sales target, but as a lonely software engineer whose projects
| can still be months once I've finished them until they reach
| customers, my impact on that measure (in the short term) is
| basically nothing. We also do OKRs but somehow my team never get
| assigned any. Sure as an engineering team you can try to estimate
| cards and measure your velociy at the end of the sprint, but how
| do you do the same for a product manager or creative roles like a
| copywriter?
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Well, the joke's on those PHBs, because soon we'll have the
| data available in the form of aggregate performance data for
| companies implementing return to office policies versus those
| that have not. I do not foresee the results favoring the
| "everybody in the office all the time" model.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Do we then get to lay off large swaths of PHBs and replace
| them with people whose titles describe the actual value some
| of them can add and be respected for: clerk, administrator,
| evangelist, etc?
| bmcmaste wrote:
| I agree. Packing people in a room to "brainstorm" doesn't work.
|
| In Design Thinking, team members diverge and ideate privately.
| Later the team converges by discussing ideas as a group to refine
| or combine ideas.
| musha68k wrote:
| Cue Cal Newport's _Deep Thinking_ movement.
|
| The interesting part is that most companies don't want to keep
| learning even through this pandemic.
|
| I see most of them as dinosaurs by now. Unexpected to be the case
| by many but soon to be extinct and replaced by smarter
| collectives, working towards their respective common goals.
|
| The world desperately needs this kind of change on all decks.
|
| We can't stubbornly brute force ourselves out of this mess with
| the same kind of thinking that created it.
| virtualritz wrote:
| This is exactly how I 'work' and always have. Sometimes the
| process of distilling a solution in my mind for some more
| difficult problem can even take days.
|
| But the common denominator is that it happens away from the
| keyboard and is not visible to an outside observer.
|
| At the keyboard I work on different, easier stuff in the meantime
| and regular go back to the difficult problem in my mind when
| doing mundane things.
|
| Walking is a favorite. Forests/nature works best, parks are fine.
| City is kinda ok.
| matai_kolila wrote:
| Another reason Businesses love "collaboration" is that it has a
| much higher bus factor, so as much as we all love to "go dark",
| it's not predictable and therefore risky. Shitty but predictable
| work is often profitable, whereas great but unpredictable work is
| only sometimes profitable.
|
| Ironically, isn't this basically the argument for why Business
| People play golf? That their jobs involve "big picture thinking"
| and that's hard to do in an office? I feel like I've heard that
| justification before.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I installed Steam on my work computer and I play a bit of
| something that's fun but also engages my engineering brain when I
| need a break from work but want to keep flow state going
| somewhat, like a city builder.
| codyb wrote:
| "reduced creativity due to the tendency to incrementally modify
| known successful designs rather than explore radically different
| and potentially superior ones."
|
| This rings _so true_ to me. You go into a meeting, one person
| says some idea. You spend three quarters of the meeting
| discussing that idea, discovering its pitfalls and warts, and
| then you come up with answers to those.
|
| And then that's it.
|
| Nobody likes the written word, write up a proposal discussing a
| bunch of options for the problem at hand, let me read it, and
| _then_ let's all go into a meeting together.
|
| But most times when I write out a few paragraphs on any medium
| people skim it or ignore it, and then ask questions that were
| already covered, or don't read it at all and need to be brought
| up to speed during the meeting wasting everyone's time whose
| already spent a few minutes alone with some ideas first.
|
| It's just... so ineffective, and yet _so hard to change_.
| kerblang wrote:
| The catch is that empowerment (this is the correct word that
| everyone seems to be looking for) and collaboration are
| opposites: I trust you to solve this vs. let's solve this
| together.
|
| People tend to lash out at whichever one seems like a problem:
| "You can't get anything done around here without some stupid
| committee harassing you!" "The left hand doesn't even know what
| the right hand is doing!" They don't understand that yes, you
| have to balance these opposing values, and that "opposing"
| doesn't mean right vs. wrong.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I do a 5K walk each morning. Takes most of an hour (I'm just
| getting up, now, and will be walking in a few minutes). I put on
| headphones, and listen to fairly mindless techno music, while I
| walk.
|
| I use it to "triage" the day's tasks.
|
| I often figure out solutions to blockers, during this time.
| maest wrote:
| Honest question (as in, I'm not insinuating what I expect the
| answer to be): do you think you'd be less efficient or more
| efficient if you triaged the day's tasks at your desk?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Maybe, but I'd be less healthy. I do the walk anyway, so I
| like to use the time.
|
| Not offended in the least. Perfectly good question.
| jrcplus wrote:
| I worked at Apple during the second, golden Steve Jobs era. It's
| easy to assume that the culture of secrecy and need-to-know
| disclosure was for marketing/PR benefit and/or old-school Silicon
| Valley "only the paranoid survive" mindset, and perhaps that's
| true, but a very real side effect is that you have very tight
| loops of communication, so you can focus and move quickly without
| being stuck in tons of meetings or drown in mass emails or
| otherwise become easily distracted. Of course there are
| downsides, but when it works, it's beautiful. It's the best "case
| against collaboration" I have experienced.
| quesera wrote:
| > It's the best "case against collaboration" I have
| experienced.
|
| Steve Jobs is also famous for promoting work spaces / floor
| plans designed to encourage serendipitous (or at least
| spontaneous) interactions between people and groups. Notably at
| Pixar, but then again at Apple Park.
|
| There's a tension between the two. Probably the "ideal", if
| such a thing could exist at all, varies between individuals and
| teams, the nature of their work, and over time.
|
| This is a completely boring idea though, one which will inspire
| no blog posts!
| dark_star wrote:
| Software development is creative work. Creative insight can come
| anywhere, any time. Better ideas can make difficult things easy.
| And make the impossible- possible.
|
| So the most important thing on a software team (or really any
| team creating high technology products or services) is an
| environment where team members feel safe to be themselves-
| psychologically safe, where they can try out new things, make
| mistakes, fail, and not be punished or belittled. Say their ideas
| and have them improved by others, not criticized. It's an
| environment where team members take care of themselves so they
| can be creative- sleep enough, exercise enough, be with friends
| and family enough, play enough.
|
| You have to be at your keyboard or lab bench or whatever enough
| to make things. But if you are there too much your creativity
| plummets. This is what I try to get across to my teams.
| Multicomp wrote:
| > You have to be at your keyboard or lab bench or whatever
| enough to make things. But if you are there too much your
| creativity plummets.
|
| I agree, one of the ideas that I started applying from the book
| "steal like an artist" involved having an analog and a digital
| desk for work.
|
| You have creative ideas and brainstorm at the analog desk, then
| document, iterate, and refine your ideas at the digital desk.
| jcpst wrote:
| It seems that no matter what ideas I come up with for
| capturing creative moments, it becomes vastly simpler if I
| just use pencil and paper. But I have started finding ways to
| capture with tech in a low-friction way.
|
| One of them is using the Voiceliner app during times where
| it's not convenient to write things down. It also forces me
| to express my idea in natural language.
| jjzhiyuan wrote:
| Can't agree more :)
| rjbwork wrote:
| Just FYI, you're being downvoted because generally on HN you
| should just upvote if you have a contentless agreement
| comment to post, AKA a "this"-style post.
| sriku wrote:
| I liked how Rich Hickey described this - "hammock driven
| development".
| i_dont_know_ wrote:
| I agree with the message overall: impactful work might not 'look'
| like work, but I'm not sure what the author's deal is with
| conflating 'collaboration' with 'meaningless meetings'.
|
| I guess I've just had different experiences, but for me,
| 'collaboration' means 'understanding that this project/task does
| not exist in isolation and looping in those relevant stakeholders
| early to make sure they decide _with_ you as opposed to
| discovering roadblocks too late '. I can't imagine how someone
| can be against that.
|
| From context, I feel like the author is using that word to mean
| 'gather people in a room and pretend to work'... is that how it's
| used normally?
| mostertoaster wrote:
| I was thinking his point was how there is a lot of
| collaboration that isn't actually useful, just as there is a
| lot of sitting at your desk "working" that isn't useful.
|
| It doesn't mean you never sit at your desk and work, just that
| sitting at your desk doesn't mean you're working. Likewise for
| collaboration.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| satisfice wrote:
| This fits my sense of things. I've been in software since the
| 80's.
| bjornsing wrote:
| > I think Business with a capital B loves "collaboration" because
| of the seeming evidence of the feat: the potential for innovation
| is visible, even palpable when people are in a room -- "I can see
| people meeting and talking and there are sticky notes all over
| the wall!"
|
| I live in a consensus culture (Sweden) and have a slightly more
| cynical take on this: I think the main reason Business loves
| collaboration is that it legitimizes a system where the Business
| (and Business people) capture most of the value from innovation.
|
| People vary greatly in their capacity for creative innovative
| thinking. Those that don't have that capacity benefit from making
| innovation a "team sport" where they can play a leading role
| without exposing their ineptitude.
|
| One data point that has convinced me of this hypothesis is how
| emotional people het around the counter examples. Talk about some
| fantastic mathematician (e.g. Galois) or "lone genius" scientist
| and many people go ballistic. Why would this be so sensitive if
| it wasn't perceived as a threat to the ego?
| gernb wrote:
| I find I'm way more productive when I can discuss solutions with
| coworkers often. Run ideas buy them, etc. My thinking gets
| clearified and they often suggest things that lead to better
| designs.
|
| With that, I get a clearer mental picture and implementation goes
| much much faster than when I'm alone.
|
| Further, I can't think everything through so being able to bounce
| ideas off coworkers as I'm implementing is invaluable
|
| If I'm doing rote grunt work then I don't need to discuss
| nottorp wrote:
| > so being able to bounce ideas off coworkers
|
| After those ideas come up when solo though?
| gernb wrote:
| No, if I have to do it solo and then wait until non-solo to
| discuss I lose the flow.
|
| To me it's like music. I can't jam without people to jam with
| live.
| callnerd wrote:
| collaboration for me is tremendously helpful to remove blind
| spots, and learn how others think about the problem.
|
| the solution to a thorny problem is often conceived alone, and
| then refined with a set of motivated engineers.
| rrwo wrote:
| This goes for most "work" that requires a bit of thought and
| planning.
|
| People are expected to be at a desk for X hours a day so they can
| be managed, monitored and measured.
| pSYoniK wrote:
| A few years back I was doing work for a university course and
| working full time. I was burned out and exhausted mentally. The
| problem was staring me in the face for weeks and I felt powerless
| and unable to progress at all.
|
| I then decided that I won't be progressing with it at this rate
| (I would wake up at 5, study for 3 hours, go to work, work for 8
| hrs, come home, eat, study another hour or two). So I just
| decided to not study for a week (it felt extremely stressful at
| the time because it felt like I won't be progressing with the
| coursework unless I'm staring at the screen figuring it out).
|
| I came back and finished the entire coursework a week after that
| in one day. I went on to complete the remainder work within a
| couple more days for the other courses. Since then I've been
| trying to remind myself that trying to do the same thing over and
| over and expecting different results is very much the definition
| of insanity. I also understood that sometimes the problem needs a
| different angle, maybe you need to just wipe the slate clean and
| go for a walk/run. You need to switch the context and let your
| brain wonder a bit.
|
| Once you do that, you might open yourself up and become more
| receptive to new approaches and new ideas. Sometimes it's better
| to map out a problem in your head, twist and turn it on all of
| its facets and then decide how to proceed. This idea that you're
| not productive unless your Teams activity icon is green and
| you're moving your mouse and typing away furiously, is ludicrous.
|
| For those who play games, I used to play Warcraft 3 (semi
| competitively). A friend said that APM (actions per minute) =
| skill, so the higher the APM the higher the skill level of the
| player. And that to reach level 50 (the max at a point on the
| ladder) you need APM 300-350+. I said that it doesn't matter if
| you have 500 or 100, how you spend those actions is more
| important. We played a series of games, he ended up averaging
| 380-390 APM and I averaged (on purpose below my average) 180 APM.
| I won 5 games in a row and we left it at that. Looking busy does
| not equal being productive. Seeing "stuff happen" doesn't mean
| its useful stuff.
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| I forget who said it, but this reminds me of something one famous
| scientist said, about how most of his best ideas came to him in
| one of four places: the bath, bus, bed, or bar.
| lucasfcosta wrote:
| That's one of the reasons I think being a founder is probably the
| most freeing job title one can have. There's no single human
| making judgements about your performance. Instead, the market is
| the judge.
|
| That way, you focus on leverage and impact, not on "time on
| desk".
|
| Also worth noting that sometimes there's no substitute to just
| sitting down and grinding away.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Many founders report to their shareholders though.
| lucasfcosta wrote:
| That's true, but, in my experience, shareholders are way more
| likely to judge you for impact rather than "grind time",
| especially because they cannot measure "grind time" anyway.
| JetAlone wrote:
| redkinght99 wrote:
| "TPS TPS TPS REPORTS AAAUUUGGHHHHHH!"
|
| Regarding your point though, my spellchecking sense is telling
| me the author probably meant to type: "...that's too often our
| mental image of "working" " .
| crazygringo wrote:
| This is one of the most absurd, black-and-white things I've ever
| read.
|
| Does innovation come from running, showering, lying in bed?
| Absolutely, no question.
|
| But at the same time, when you get a diverse group of people to
| solve particular problems, they generally come up with _far_
| better solutions than any one of them would have on their own.
|
| Because these are really about two totally different types of
| problems. The first "private innovation" one is often about
| finding a _clever_ solution to a relatively well-defined problem
| that is "puzzle-like" -- math, code, chemistry, whatever.
|
| The second "group collaboration" one is often about finding a
| _workable_ solution to a relatively ill-defined problem that is
| people /organizational/product -- what is the right marketing
| campaign, right new product, right new vacation policy? Where the
| most valuable contribution is "wait, but have you thought of
| this?" or "wait, but if we do that <bad thing happens>" and
| everyone says "oh good point, I didn't know that was a
| constraint/solution!"
|
| The obvious answer is that _both_ are valuable. The idea that
| they are somehow at odds, or that only the first one is "work",
| is ludicrous. It's true that "individual contributor" jobs often
| fall more into the first category. But to denigrate the second
| category as "not work" is both disrespectful and, frankly, just
| idiotic.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I think design by committee rarely turns out well. However,
| listening to the groups response to an already working
| product/demo can be very valuable before the next release.
| Joeri wrote:
| What the group is good at in your second category is precisely
| defining the shape of the problem. In my experience the
| solution is then still born from an individual's creative
| efforts, even during this group effort. I prefer the sandwich
| model of cooperation: get together to define the problem,
| separate to work on it, get together to review solutions,
| iterate.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > The obvious answer is that both are valuable. The idea that
| they are somehow at odds, or that only the first one is "work",
| is ludicrous. It's true that "individual contributor" jobs
| often fall more into the first category. But to denigrate the
| second category as "not work" is both disrespectful and,
| frankly, just idiotic.
|
| But let's be honest. Most mantras try to force _all_ work into
| the "group collaboration" bucket. If HR and other management-
| training groups value isolated work and individual
| contributions they sure don't show it. Literally every piece of
| training I've received about working effectively has been about
| collaboration.*
|
| I think that's because most work training material is not
| really about innovation or productivity at all; it's about
| avoiding HR gaffes and workplace conflict.
|
| *Don't get me wrong; collaboration is a superpower, and many
| ineffective work relationships I've observed were hampered by
| someone's inability to collaborate well.
| [deleted]
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Most mantras try to force all work into the "group
| collaboration" bucket. If HR and other management-training
| groups value isolated work and individual contributions they
| sure don't show it. Literally every piece of training I've
| received about working effectively has been about
| collaboration._
|
| I think that's because isolated/individual work is so obvious
| and default that there's nothing to train.
|
| People know how to work alone. They often have to be actively
| encouraged to collaborate, however. HR isn't trying to force
| "all" work into collaboration, that's silly. But the right
| way to collaborate often isn't remotely obvious, when there
| are so many types of collaboration and so many different
| types of tasks/projects. So training makes sense and pays off
| here.
| hinkley wrote:
| Group collaboration can rely on cleverness when someone builds
| a hypothetical on top of a set of assumptions that sound
| reasonable but contain elements that are foreign to everyone on
| the team.
|
| And clever ideas often benefit from a round of annealing to
| smooth out corner cases and ergonomics. This can either be
| direct feedback or the result of asking questions about the
| solution, triggering the author to refine the idea while
| explaining it.
| [deleted]
| kamphey wrote:
| I liked this line "still felt a strange obligation to be at his
| computer because that's too often our the metal image of
| "working"."
|
| Even as a business owner, sometimes I sit at my desk "working"
| but on nothing in particular. I should be walking.
| bradlys wrote:
| I think this really depends on the type of work you're doing.
| I've found that often the work I'm paid to do at many jobs is one
| step away from pure code monkey - even if that job is pulling me
| $1m+/yr. It seems like the author here is more on the design side
| and isn't working as an IC anymore. So they probably are making
| big decisions rather than having to implement others decisions.
| (I loathe implementing others but they pay me the big bucks to
| shut up and do it)
|
| I've given up trying to innovate or give new ideas. They're
| obviously not valued at all. How often does management actually
| listen to ICs and give credit? Next to never unless they're a
| puppet. Your peers and team lead might like what you propose but
| management is incredibly risk averse _and_ wants "innovations"
| to come from their puppets. You're not one of their puppets and
| start proposing things? You're just putting your job at risk
| because it undermines their leadership decisions. ("Why is X in
| charge when Y is proposing better ideas?" is a statement that
| starts getting thrown around a lot - it happens very fast)
|
| SV is incredibly political. Maybe some parts of the world aren't
| and you can get some freetime in where you work "creatively".
| Maybe when you're not working in engineering anymore you can get
| more freedom in these realms but for eng ICs - the motto is shut
| up.
| Bakary wrote:
| If you pull in a million+ a year... why not just become
| financially independent and do the work you want to do?
| bradlys wrote:
| Lean FIRE wouldn't be hard. But I'm more of a fatFIRE type.
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