Ask HN: How busy are you at work on average? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How busy are you at work on average?

12 pointscm20125 comments

Here's a strawpoll: https://strawpoll.com/47x15cf1

I ask since this really seems to vary. I've split the questions by seniority level.

I do what I consider work about 8 hours a day. Most of this is just busywork though, hardly useful. Things like writing code that gets thrown away because of requirements changes, or writing lots of documentation that people refuse to read. Sometimes it's giving advice that people ignore, unless someone of higher rank gives the same advice. Sometimes it's attending meetings where the sole purpose is to schedule the next meeting or discuss timelines.

I do what I consider useful about 4 hours/week. But I allocate about 12 hours/day to working, because of commute, etc.

Sounds like you should quit (unless it's rather comfy like that...).

Man I wished someone would write documentation here, but indirectly nobody is allowed to take time for it. Devs are too busy and it shows if they suddenly start writing any other than the most essential, technical docs, for me it could be a core duty, but I have too much even more important things to do...

I think your poll should have been a bit more fine-grained. Now you only have: regular job with extra hours, without and part-time/passive income. With a 40h job, juggling break time, a bit of extra work and a an occasional stroll around twitter many of us will be quite close to the 8h so also right on the edge between two choices here.

Every other week I find a day to catch a breath, sort my to-do and actually do half of it. Once a month I find the time to take a step back and think a bit more meta (much too seldom).

The rest of the time—time just evaporates: meetings (no bullshit, but take time for preparation and often more to-dos fall out), behind schedule (and other depend on my work), firefighting

This is however my job, not (all of) my life, and I confine it to an average of 8h/day (10h with travel and breaks). Doing longer hours when necessary, but than also trying to leave a bit earlier on other days.

My work intensity varies from 'The new project deadline is yesterday!' to 'Spend 1 month writing boring documentation for the project' , I guess on average its pretty average

Data breakdown: https://imgur.com/qdSltlM

Looks like a perfect normal distribution. Did not expect that, oddly enough.

Feel free to keep taking the quiz, and we'll see if the answer gets different over time (I will subtract data up to now from future data)

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