I was the same way. I spent my college years poring over HN, /r/programming, various blogs and articles. An older software engineer I knew was always surprised at how many things I knew and had opinions about, even though I was inexperienced. But I never actually wrote up a "complete" project in my own time, not a single one, I couldn't stick to anything. And I kept worrying that it would make me less employable. Yet I got my offer at [large, popular software company] before I graduated, only on my merits.

I think the best that can be expected is that you do your work, do it well, and never stop growing. You don't have to dump time into coding outside of work, just don't get complacent. That's assuming you don't have crappy leadership, in which case you may want to consider a different team or company.

As an example: I know a guy who's about to become a 3rd level developer at [large, popular software company] at the age of 28, which is a pretty big deal from a career development perspective. I don't think he's touched a line of code, or a single technical article, outside of work in the 5 years he's been here. He regularly works 25-30 hour weeks. He's just smart, puts out good projects, and is productive when he needs to be.

Someone asked on reddit a couple of weeks back why, when they sit with a coding problem for 4 hours at work the solution suddenly comes to them in 5 minutes the next day. I think your colleague's 30 hour week might be allowing time for him to think about his work without being at a desk doing his work. In other words, when he isn't being forced to make a show of presence he is working through solutions and processes in his mind.

I work where we fill out time sheets every day detailing what we worked on hour by hour (in part and in fairness also for billing reasons). It is counterproductive as I constantly stress about every minute I use on a task and worry I am taking too long. The results I see are those of programmers trying to please project managers and billing accounts, not good products that are optimized. Nobody seems to have time make something good.

The 30 hour guy probably isn't much smarter than the rest of us, he might just have the freedom to create with a relaxed mind. Stress apparently blocks creativity.

I left a company with great work/life balance but rather average or even low salary after 2 1/2 years for a startup but after a month into the job they introduced those stupid stopwatch JIRA plugins to measure time spent on tickets plus time sheets.

I know not everyone can maybe afford to do this but this is something I'm never going to put up with and I left after only 3 months purely out of frustration without even having a new gig. (Was quite suprised to be approached immediately by a subsidiary of a well known online auction house, where I'm still working for 2 years now.)

If you don't have a family (wife + kids) be bold and don't put up with such inhuman conditions. Developers are high in demand and this is the time to use the opportunity.

Kudos to you. If all developers acted this way, we'd have a lot less abuse.

I doubt any sane developer would come up with the idea of a stopwatch plugin on programming tasks. But I know some PMs who would. It is scary how being well-spoken and technically oblivious leads people to success in our industry.

No, asking people to log time is not abuse. Perhaps it's counter-productive (but even that's debatable as it depends on a lot of things). But it most definitely is not abuse.

Abuse is having the shit kicked out of you for answering back. Or being locked in a room for 48 hours without food or drink because you made a mistake. Or having your passport taken away and being forced to work for 18 hour days, 7 days per week, with no holiday and no pay.

All these things are happening in our world today, and equating them with programmers having to keep timesheets is ridiculous. It makes us sound like a bunch of spoiled babies who cry when we aren't allowed to play all day. So please use a different word than 'abuse' to describe something you prefer not to do at work.

Meh, if you want to go to the extremes there is no limit. I agree with what you said but it's completely out of context and I don't see how it is related to the topic.

In my eyes, it's relative to you or the situation in which you are in. For me personally it felt a lot like abuse and utter lack of trust to resolve using time sheets for a permanent position (not talking about freelancers and contractors).

Also why do you think that we are spoiled? I'm so fed up of people making software development look like a piece of cake and so easy. I tried to help some of my friends start with coding but after couple days they were quite overwhelmed and thought it was not so straightforward as imagined or as it looks to be. I'm also not talking about creating a hello world HTML document.

I'm definitely not a rock star programmer but I try to be solid one with hands-on mindset. I have 5 1/2 years experience working as a front end developer and there is still so much to learn and to improve on. Software development (especially web) is a field where you need to stay up to date and keen. We might not be exhausted physically but it's much harder to recharge and relax your mind.

This is why we shouldn't just put up with everything (timesheets is only one example of many) for the sake of having a job at all (because there are so many unemployed people right?). There are people who want to play safe and I'm fine with that but I learned that "no risk no fun" is true.

Update:

I want to add that I'm always grateful for what I have and don't take anything for granted. However I also know that I don't get anything for free unless you work hard for it.

I think his point is that just because an employer wants to log your time, and see how you're spending your time while at work, doesn't mean it's abuse. If they're paying you for your time, it's perfectly reasonable for them to see how you're spending your time.

Now, whether you choose to put up with it or leave, that's a different question. Given a choice, most people would choose an employer who gives them more latitude, as opposed to one who is monitoring them that closely. But that's an argument based on practicality, not morality.

The overall point is that there isn't a 1:1 correlation between time and productivity in this industry as there is in, say, working a cash register.

I might spend a couple of hours trying to debug something screwy with my dev environment, or googling around and thinking about what the solution to a problem, that doesn't create more tech debt, should look like. I might spend time dealing with feedback in code review, some of which may be beyond the scope of the story or not immediately perceptible by a stakeholder, but it's work that needs to be done nonetheless. Project managers are not developers for the most part, so they have to trust me on that.

When you hire someone to do tasks that you could do yourself, then asking them to log time is reasonable since you know what needs to be done and what the timeframe should look like. Asking a highly skilled employee such as a software developer to log time is an insult to their judgment and a waste of their (and your) time. You can't gauge my productivity from a time log.

This quibbling over the term 'abuse', like we should all just be thankful we're not sex slaves or PHP devs and leave it at that, is completely irrelevant. Fine, it's not abuse. It's just antagonistically treating your employees like untrustworthy delinquents. Is that better?

Precisely. You're saying that having to do things you'd rather not do is 'abuse', when I'd just call that 'being a grown up'.

You know there were grown up programmers in the computer industry before we got the MBA-types involved as PMs. Frankly, I'll be very happy to keep track of minutes I spend coding if all PMs in the org had to take a basic programming competency test. Lets say something easy like inverting a linked-list (with pointers yo) or b-tree deletion. I think some PMs are "tech clueless" but have worked their way up because they are effective at bullying. This is not true of very PM but certainly some PMs.

1. Do you need to know how to invert a linked-list (with pointers "yo") to pass a basic programming competency test? No. No you don't.

2. Why point out that it is "easy"? Is it so you can feel superior to people who might not know this?

> It makes us sound like a bunch of spoiled babies who cry when we aren't allowed to play all day

so if it isn't third-world violence, then the word 'abuse' in inappropriate?

There are legal definitions in the EU and US (and probably most countries) for what counts as 'workplace abuse'. Being asked to fill out timesheets as a general company policy doesn't satisfy any of them, so in that case the word 'abuse' is inappropriate.

It's worth pointing out that a lot real and extremely serious abuse is not limited to third-world countries. For example, the USA has an estimated 60,000 slaves.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Slavery_Index#Controver...

Implicit to "legal definitions" is that those definition are used when legal action is taken, ie. when the abuse has reached a certain, actionable level at which the authorities need to step in.

This HN discussion is not framed in a legal context, so not satisfying a legal definition of "workplace abuse" doesn't mean the word is being used inappropriately.

OPINION: If your definition of a "grown up" is to let people ruin your work process then meh, that's your choice. Don't try to impose it on others. Keep your disliking of what terms people use for your local beer pub and not on HN. Deal?

ON TOPIC: I'd definitely call a timesheet "a workspace abuse", yes. Most of the programming is a very creative work. Do you pester a designer for a complex image for a PR campaign? Do you go to him/her on the top of every hour and ask "what's up, you done yet"? Do you check a building's architect monitor every hour?

I am currently having a subtle and a very hard-to-detect bug in an e-commerce shop I am maintaining. It leads to losing a few orders each day (out of 100+). The people I work for are wise enough to understand that pinpointing the cause of the bug is 90% of the work and yes, it may take days -- days during which I add more defensive coding on several places, increase logging statements, introduce several new integration tests, and what not.

If I was forced to use a timesheet in this situation I'd honestly wouldn't even know what to say in it on the top of every hour. I would strongly resemble the private detectives in those noir animations I guess. "Currently chasing clue X" -- "No wait, that's not it. Damn it, I am out of cigarettes. I must persevere!" -- "The owner of the bar knew nothing. Damn. Moving on."

Would you want that in timesheets if you were the manager? How would it help you?

The fact that there are others who have it much worse than you does not invalidate your grievances or limit the language you can use to speak to those grievances. If we start that kind of comparison, then I'd argue the people you describe have it pretty good, compared to people to Nazi concentration camps, who got shot dead (!) for giving their supervisor sound technical advice (assuming Schindler's List is an acceptable source of Nazi anecdotes).

The OP is talking about 'workplace abuse' which has a specific definition which, even in its less extreme forms, is much worse than being asked to keep timesheets.

Imo you are missing the bigger picture here by clinging on the meaning of the word "abuse" and the timesheet example. However, if you are happy keeping timesheets knock yourself out. For me this is a big issue and if you think it's okay then what's next? Video surveillance at your desk or maybe counting number of commits in git per day?

It is precisely the word that I object to. You can express like and dislike, and choose and reject employment based on those likes and dislikes, all you want.

But bandying around words like 'abuse' based on those likes and dislikes is akin to crying wolf when you see a pussy cat. It devalues its meaning for those cases where people are genuinely suffering and need help.

There's certainly something to be gleamed here about programmers and their reluctance to context switch, and the desire for a one unified standard.

However, English isn't a programming language.

A more light-hearted comment on what I'm saying would be Eddie Izzard discussing the word 'awesome':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rYT0YvQ3hs

By devaluing the word, when we hear people talking about 'abuse' we will assume they're just whinging.

Well, maybe I'm insane, but I would.

One of the biggest problems with estimation (a frequent HN topic) is not knowing how long it took to do something. If you don't know how long it typically takes you to do a task, how the hell can you estimate how long it will take to do a variation of that task?

Are you really saying that having to record timesheets counts as 'inhuman conditions'? That's the way I read your comment, sorry if it's not what you meant. But if it is what you meant, then I urge you to read about modern human slavery, domestic servitude, sex trafficking, etc, and reconsider.

Something is not ok just because other things are worse.

@Retric: Exactly my thoughts. Amazing how you could express it in one short, concise sentence! :)

Something is not 'abuse' just because you don't want to do it. Workplace abuse has a specific definition and being asked to keep time sheets does not meet it by a long way.

"freedom to create with a relaxed mind" -- as I read this I realised that's what I've been missing for so long, and is what I try (mostly without success) to make time for outside of work.

"Stress apparently blocks creativity" -- most certainly does.

>>> But I never actually wrote up a "complete" project in my own time, not a single one, I couldn't stick to anything. And I kept worrying that it would make me less employable.

Same here, and I know a bunch of other people like this as well. It's just a matter of perspective. When you read such forums and similar, you often read opinions and insights of people who are the top of the field. So it's easy to lose the perspective of where you stand compared with the rest of your class or some other cohort.

>>> He's just smart, puts out good projects, and is productive when he needs to be.

Smart is the key word here. More hours of work does not necessarily mean better work. It shouldn't be about working longer, it should be about working smarter.

At the same time, writing good code is only small part of his success, I guess. Managing to ship top quality products without hand holding, making sure you are productive without anyone breathing down your neck, are all important and not something articles will teach you (usually).

I don't know about you, but I become less productive the more I'm micromanaged.

The company I work for now has problems managing customer expectations and controlling scope creep, so naturally rather than address the real issues the PMs have decided it's easier to stick their noses in the CMMI manual and send the software development team straight to process improvement hell.

I've reached the point where my motivation is so low it takes me a week to complete a task I know I could have done in a couple of hours if I could just reach down and muster up a little bit of give-a-shiat.

I need to get out of this place, but I rather doubt any of the other major employers around here would be any better (I just interviewed at one that looked like it would be an even worse situation. They declined to make me an offer - the interviewer must have picked up on my shock/disgust when he described their development processes to me).

Now, my side projects are seeing more love than ever before, probably because I need an outlet for my creativity (which my employer is most definitely not providing). One thing age and experience has given me is the ability to see my own projects through to some level of completion (as complete as software can be). My younger years were full of half-completed projects :)

I'm working on something I hope to turn into a SaaS product, maybe that's the escape plan (If I'm really lucky).

Micromanagement is usually on the extreme end and is usually bad. However, hand holding, when the developer needs a variable level of managing and overseeing, is quite normal and usually reduces the variance of the produced work. You could say that micromanagement is the extreme form of hand holding.

And the truth is that most of the developers need that. Some can be assigned a relatively abstract problem and they find the solution (by finding who to talk to, etc). While some needs a fair share of requirements gathering etc done for them, or they struggle to convert a large milestone to reasonable small tasks. That's ok, you just need to recognize it handle accordingly.

>>> any of the other major employers around here would be any better

major as in employing a large number of employees? Sometimes you can find happiness in a company of a dozen employees :)

One of the best ways I found of actually getting to write "complete" code outside of the job is to combine it with another hobby or an activity.

RC, home automation, every other silly thing you can make or teaching/volunteering at various places that do coding tutoring (schools, community centers, or even your own kids or family) might help you with that.

That said it only works if you like it, if you already considering programming to be a hobby, it's ok not to.

Not every profession needs to be also a hobby, and you don't need to spend your free time on your profession to be good at it.

I know plenty of developers that don't like technology that much and pretty much dislike IT related stuff specifically, and I know plenty of developers that spend every weekend cloning some project from hack a day. Both of these groups consist of good, lesser, and poor developers and so far I haven't really seen any substantial statistical proof that hobby programming enables you to become a better developer.

There could be extreme cases in which being a "super weekend hacker" gives you some advantage, especially if you are a single digit employee at startup and you need to hack everything together like crazy without worrying about the finer details, like documentation, maintainability, performance and all the other things that separate a hack job from a product, if your entire professional programming career is about flying solo and pushing out MVP/POC's then effectively one could say you are being paid for a hobby.

But if you are a developer at a large company with an established development life cycle and methodology the small hacks you pick up from your hobby would not really be relevant, hacking micro services on the newest SBC over the weekend won't necessarily help you work better as part of a team, won't necessarily help you write better documentation, and won't necessarily help you adhere to strict coding practices.

The smartest person I've ever worked with worked a 30h four-day week so he could spend more time with his family. Not so much a 10x programmer as a six sigma mathematician.

He built a video codec implementation by himself in 3 months.

> He built a video codec implementation by himself in 3 months.

At work? I can't even fathom a working environment where I could work on anything for 3 months (hell, even 3 days) without a panicking supervisor asking why it wasn't done yet and whether I could help out with this other thing that was a crisis and why can't we just buy something or better yet use an open source solution because we need results right now.

Small consultancy shop, everyone knows everyone else, panic-resistant directors, speculative project. Great place to work.

Plus of course a lot of trust that people who were known to do good work could be left alone to deliver it.

(Part of being a premium consultancy was setting reasonable expectations to the client and refusing to even offer a crap job at high speed. Takes a lot of faith in your standards and customer funnel to do that, though.)

I don't think coding side projects should be anything more than a hobby. Difference between coding for work and coding as a hobby is that with hobby you don't stress out yourself, but it relaxes you and makes you feel good.

If you take coding at home serious as you (presumably) do at work, like following deadlines, doing stuff you don't enjoy, stress yourself out, then it is a very unhealthy expectation.

Same. Probably that's why I usually abandon my side projects ;) well, at least I learn something new every time.

Just sometimes you need to get focused and finish some ugly small issue that prevents you from actually shipping. The feeling of shipping something that works usually beats it all at the end.

Probably not what people want to hear, but I think it's near impossible to complete a significant personal project while working a FT day job, let alone gain the inspiration for something unique and meaningful. If you're really passionate about pursuing your own projects, unless you are superhuman, I think you'll have to take time off work, or find something PT or flexible consulting hours.

I find it really hard to be passionate about personal projects at the same time as work projects. The moment I get excited about something at work, all of my personal stuff gets instantly shelved. Then, when work turns non-technical, all of a sudden I'm all fired up for my old projects.

I've seen this exact cycle multiple times with my job. I got into programming because I enjoy it and find it fulfilling. When I hit boring times at my job, I seek that fulfillment with side projects.

You should read Masters of Doom.

>The gamers weren’t just Softdisk guys anymore, they were, as they called themselves, the IFD guys, co-owners of Ideas from the Deep. Softdisk, as a result, took on an even greater pallor. But it was a day job, a job they all needed since there was no real money coming in yet and no guarantee that it would come in at all. They decided, then, to continue working on titles for Gamers Edge during the day while they churned out Commander Keen from the lake house at night.

>They became all the more efficient at "borrowing" the Softdisk computers. Every night after work they’d back their cars up to the office and load the machines. The next morning they’d come in early enough to bring the com- puters back. They even got a little cocky about it. Though the machines were top of the line, they wanted some minor adjustments made..."

It's doable if you're young, single and in good health. Like a lot of things.

(again I think I need to write my "I was a 10x programmer until I got chronic fatigue" post)

I would be interested in reading your article, if that helps motivate you at all. I went through something similar.

In my experience that is not true and I am really not superhuman. I am passionate about entrepreneurship and programming though.

Edit: Over time, 3 of my side projects allowed me to move country, take a 5 year 'sabbatical' (for me that mostly consisted of programming and repairing old 70-80s computers and developing new projects) and basically do whatever I like. If only for my 'main job' I would've not made that happen for a while (note; this was 8-9 years ago).

It's entirely doable unless you are on a permanent death march at work.

Us modern people have it incredibly easy with appliances doing the bulk of the chores home.

I just went to DisneyWorld and saw Walt Disney's 'Carousel of Progress' attraction, which is one of the oldest attractions there. It was basically about how awesome electricity is for automating so many of our chores in the household. Although it was supposed to allow more time for family and recreation, not work...

> Does this make me destined to fall behind?

IMO, yes it does, but only behind a tiny sliver of developers. You can still have an excellent and rewarding (professionally and financially) without putting in the extra effort and without the "true calling" that some devs have (and many more blog about having).

If you don't have the passion to spend time on nights/weekends coding projects, don't do it. You'll still do OK. You probably won't do quite as well as someone who does, but excelling at work is only one aspect of a happy life. (I think it would be foolish to pretend though that someone else equally talented who has greater passion and puts in 50% more effort won't have better outcomes in their field over a large population study.)

I don't think it's about side projects. When I am on a good project the 40 hours for my employer are really interesting and i may spend more time at home reading up stuff because it makes sense. But it's hard to spend 40 hours a week with some dull, uninspiring work and then go home and be motivated do something cool. The dull work pretty much drains all energy out of you.

This has been a serious problem for me. At best it makes slogging through the workday much harder. At worst it sends me into a depressive tailspin where I feel like I am destroying my career.

I honestly believe that as long as you are always trying to improve and don't coast, you should be good. I do not do side projects after work, but do try to work on my coding skills, focus and discipline during the workday. 17 years and counting, and every single year I improve (some times only by a little bit, but it really adds up).

I wouldn't worry at all if I were you. You're incredibly lucky to enjoy your job, and life has so much more to offer than coding, including family and friends. Your lack of all-comsuming passion for coding could easily be your ticket to a better life.