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Comment by wainstead | Hacker News Reader

All true, but neither should we deny ourselves a long session of "flow" if it makes us happy.

I'm finding that 'flow' is a significant contributor to NIH Syndrome.

You can't flow while integrating a third party library anywhere near as easily as you can flow by rewriting half of it (badly) from scratch.

Flow is a rush. Anything that is a rush can be indulged in to the point of self- (or other-) harm.

> You can't flow while integrating a third party library anywhere near as easily as you can flow by rewriting half of it (badly) from scratch.

That is not so clear cut, it depends on the library. If the documentation sucks or the library is a mess, rewriting it may both induce flow and be a win for the team.

Especially if you have to make changes to it later.

I do not believe flow has any significant relationship to whether the underlying thing you are creating is going to interface with a pre-existing tool or be a new creation.

I frequently need to reach states of deep flow when I am reading large inter-related files for refactoring, or modifying existing code to use a new library, or to follow tutorials for something only tangential, like new deployment tooling.

Reaching states of flow is necessary no matter what you’re doing, and given the insane explosion of modern process overhead and meeting-centric corporate culture, it’s important to protect flow time and make it known how important flow is. Whereas I can see how people might try to use thinking like in your comment to undermine flow time, and falsely act like it’s somehow better to deny developers workspace or blocks of time for getting into flow states.

I have to agree with this. You're either writing assembly code yourself, or you're using code that was invented by someone else (and even the assembly code will have been invented by someone!). If using libraries/frameworks is something you do consistently, you can absolutely reach a state of deep work while working with them.

Libraries should help keep the flow going at a high level by keeping one from being bogged down with having to reinvent the wheel. In fact, if they didn't contribute to flow, I don't think we'd use them!

I think you're confusing using a library you've already been using (in which case I agree) and introducing a new library.

Most people engaging in NIH aren't removing a library that is already being used in your build process. They're deciding it's easier to implement URL processing (spoilers: it's not) than to use a library that already exists.

The exception to that is when the existing library turns out to be a dumpster fire and you rip it out and replace it with something else or a custom version.

Either way, the decision to (usually wrongly) believe that writing it all yourself is easier/better has little to do with flow.

I love flow, it makes me feel great. But it doesn't make me happy - just grumpy when people interrupt me, and impatient when I'm in social occasions when people are making small talk.

That's why it would be good to get paid by hour. When I was freelancer when things flowed I sometimes worked 24+ hours straight through or had several 16 hours days. But then I had other days when I got nothing done and took off. In a salaried position the company takes the long "flow" session for free but still expects you to be there the next day.

Sounds like the solution isn't "getting paid by hour," if an adjustment of expectations is just as good.

True. By hour is just much easier to track.

That's not true of all salaried positions. In my experience, it's the salaried positions that have flexible time, not the hourly ones.

When I work 13 hours 3 days in a row my employer still expects me to show up for the remaining 2 days of the week. If I had a fixed 40 hours week I would be done and could recover these 2 days. I also don't get more money for working more.

Sounds like a problem with your employer. None of mine have ever had a problem with me taking off early to make up for days I've worked longer hours.

Have you talked to them about it?

I have talked about this. From my experience it's very common in tech to let people work longer without compensation in time or money.

By your behavior you are putting your employer in a situation where he breaks the law. Mention this to your manager, companies are not above labor laws simply because "its IT, everybody does that". They can be sued easily by disgruntled employees, and for huge piles of cash.

Not everybody does that, and if they do, there is appropriate compensation (cash, extra time off and/or both). Good companies simply don't, they realize you can easily walk away to next company. I never ever worked for an employer like that for example, and that's 15 years and 6 employers in 3 countries.

You're selling yourself cheap. Have some dignity.

A salaried person working 13 hours a day with no extra compensation is not breaking the law in the United States. I have never heard of a lawsuit about that that succeeded.

Good companies do realize that making people work overtime consistently without reward is a bad idea, if for no other reason than the selfish one: your good employees will leave.

I know a lot of companies that do it anyway because they either don't care or don't accept people are leaving because of the constant overtime.

I also know people who have stayed at bad companies either because they don't want to let their team down or they just got used to the constant overtime and didn't realize how bad it was until they left. Or the simple fact that many people do not like change, and prefer the overtime they know rather than jumping to the unknown new job.

Just because someone is working overtime without compensation doesn't mean they don't have dignity. There are many reasons to stay at a crap job (for a while, if you have to). Please don't insult others just because their life is worse than you have allowed your life to get.

That being said, I agree with a few other posters - if you are consistently working 13 hour days, start looking for a new job. My rule of thumb is to spend one hour job hunting for every hour of required/expected overtime.

I don't know the details of your situation, but if your employer doesn't require 13 hour days, don't do it voluntarily. To say tech companies "let people work longer without compensation" is kind of shirking responsibility for your actions. If they didn't ask you to work all night, but you did anyway, who's fault is that?

Go home and contribute to an open source project or something. Unless you're at a tiny startup and getting tons of equity you're never going to be compensated for it, and it'll still be there tomorrow.

And if they do require 13 hour days, leave. The market for devs is too good right now to tolerate that.

"Flow" definitely can be enjoyable and productive. Unfortunately, I've found that as often as not people use it as an excuse to not have to interact with anyone, or as a badge of "look how hard I'm working" without necessarily getting much done.

(Which I guess is nothing against what you said, just a pet-peeve of mine)

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