What hours of the day is best to code
tonyp12
Posts: 1,951
I saw that there is a job opening at Parallax, but with hours of 7am to 3:30pm I don't think I would get much real work done until 10am
Is not most tech geek productivity between 3pm and 2am?
Is not most tech geek productivity between 3pm and 2am?
Comments
I've do all my best coding between the hours of 11pm and 5am in the morning.
But I agree with you. I can almost never get anything done before 12pm. My most productive hours are from 3pm to 2am, depending on the day.
-Phil
'Just looked at the job opening pdf. I would so fail the HR interview, they might hire me just to see if I was real.
I often code late into the night but the next morning I wonder what the heck I was doing.
http://www.parallax.com/files/content/docs/Company/JobDescriptions/Kitting-Shipping-Dec13.pdf
Isn't that job not targeted towards somebody who would have to write code (ie, hired for their geek) but instead towards someone who has to make the USPS/UPS/FedEx deadline of the day?
To them, switch time is a few minutes at best. Also, no real concept of "the primary task" is difficult for them as well. Again, to them there is just work.
Paul Graham has some great things to say about meetings. The big one is to schedule them at times that make sense for everybody. Another big one is to simply ask why and what the goal of the meeting is and how it compares to the 2X time cost of it on the PRIMARY TASK at hand.
"Oh, it's only a few minutes..." Yes, and then when I am done, it takes anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour to return to where I am right now...
"Can you attend, in case we need you?" Can you call me when you need me, and I'll show up, and remember, it costs about an hour....
A few of my favorites:
"You don't hear us call, or your extension ring with ear buds in." Yes. I know.
"Did you read my e-mail?" Not yet. My next e-mail check is... "Why wait so long?" So it doesn't cost me an hour to read and answer your e-mail. Nothing gets done. "But others respond right away, and I can't just wait..." They don't do what I'm doing.
"You marked the meeting tentative. We don't use tenative" Oh, I'm sorry. Declined then. !?! "But we need you in the meeting!" Well, why ask me then? "Because we don't want to disturb you."
Oh yeah. Don't you just love this stuff?
I usually go hide at home and get it done... Or, when I'm pinned, I make a brutal accounting, add up the costs according to the basic burden rate for the firm, roll the whole schedule forward and publish it, triggering very painful "It might be late" sales people calls, to which they generally leave me alone in the hopes of "getting it done early!"
Honestly, I've thought hard about putting a sign up that says, "Opening this door will cost us $200" but haven't done it yet.
A couple more:
"I didn't get a read receipt on my last e-mail, have you read it?" I don't know, which one? "I sent it 10 minutes ago" Well, yeah I didn't read that one yet. I do e-mail in batches, and the next one is coming up at... "But can you turn on read receipts?" No. "Why not?" Because they don't do any good. So I glance at your e-mail, and then you expect me to respond and maybe that takes a while. Should I send you one that says I just glanced at it, and then another one saying I may respond, but I need to think about it, and then another one that says when I will think about it, and another one that says, I've thought about it, etc... ?
"No, that's too much hassle, but it would be nice to know you read it." Why? "So I can expect a response." Arrgh!!
Needless to say, I don't have that turned on.
Wow! You really have a door? I've never had a door in 33 years!
Brutally honest responses...do they work very often?
Our meetings are all conference calls...this allows you to "multi-task" like all the other folks on the call....what do you mean you can't talk on thephone, respond to instant messages, reply to emails and code at the same time?
In the past, I've had to battle with this, and so I just phrased it in terms of dollars and backed it up with some nice references. Then, they go in eyes wide open. Sometimes, investing personal time works. But, if that isn't noted, accounted for, comp time, etc... then it gets abused and you quickly become that infinite resource. Not good.
The best compromise I've experienced is simple "time shifting" where I know I'll need the blocks. So I make that clear, sometimes producing a schedule delta with and without them, and let them pick. Usually, I'll get the optimal scenario and that's best for everybody involved. Go in to the office late, stay late, or work at 3AM, etc... whatever.
To me, there is code or content creation, and everything else. When I'm in everything else (pre-sales support), great! I can mix it up with the very best of them. Messy, but fun days. When it's the other tasks, then I just can't, and nobody else I know can either, so it's best to be honest about that IMHO.
Then again, you need to be ready to walk, or it might not work. YMMV
Some other tricks are:
Always push meeting times to form a block. I'll do it over and over, propose new time, until I've got two or three of them nestled together. That frees a couple hours on average and often they can move them with much greater ease than I can attend them.
Batch the email. I'll use a break time to read and get caught up, because that's often "a break" and it's a win-win. Other times, I've been known to set the autoresponder to indicate I'm catching up on e-mail / phones at...
Edit: Here's a big one! Queue up some e-mails to answer or send in the middle of the night. That gets noticed. It's worth some quiet time during the day. You are welcome.
Emergency support issues are just emergencies. Those people paid up, and so those interrups just happen. People know I can get a tap on the shoulder for those and it's no worries. Gotta take care of the users.
Offer up more compelling options. When I'm able to just hammer on a variety of things, I'll turn SKYPE on, for example. They can send in a whole pile of things and I'll just weave it together with e-mail, phones, meetings whatever. Get a ton done, and it's more appealing that way.
YMMV, of course.
Know what it takes to get one?
You gotta go on the dark side. Sometimes getting that door means surrendering your geek card. Other times it means alpha geek, and that means something different with a door than it means in cube land. If you've got a door, then you have to do with the business, sales, pre-sales, etc...
If you are a people person, this can work, and you can get a door.
There was PhiPi's MEETINGS. post (#4), Duane's AFTER A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP post (#5), potatohead's SWITCHING TIME and PRIMARY TASK post (#8), and his post #11, which has too many points to list. The one thing missing that I have to deal with is SAFETY MEETINGS and SAFETY PAPERWORK. All of that amounts to a huge waste of time.
I AGREE 100% WITH THOSE POSTS. I got more work done by working 8 hours on Saturday and 6 hours today without interruptions than I do in two regular work weeks. Too bad the folks responsible don't realize how much it costs, and that most of it is a waste of time. Only corporate CMA.
And some of the offices in my organisation is a couple of hours travel away, so if I have a task that needs to be done, somewhere, it'll often take most of the day.
(Even if it's at one of the closer Offices, the TTT rule often steps in. TTT = Things Take Time.)
My workday is usually 8am to 3:30pm, and guess what... My boss likes to have meetings from 1pm to 3pm...
Which means that on those days I can't go anywhere...
(technically, I could, since we use Lync, but I'm not gonna travel for an hour to get to somewhere, do some work, then sit down With my Laptop for 2 hours. Not a chance to avoid being disturbed by users... Also, prefer to be able to Return to the Office before 3:30pm)
Also, my inclination is to work 7 days a week, but I don't feel like that is right, especially for a family man. I find that getting away from it for a day actually makes me a better coder, and gets me past tough problems.
I'd say go for it.
Years ago I worked for Racal in a large group building CAD software. Despite being a bit before the arrival of the net and expectation that one is always online and responding there were plenty of interruptions from meetings, the phone, or just people marching up to desks and asking questions.
One software engineer put a sign up over his desk Reading "Core Time 9am to 2.00pm" or whatever the times were. Soon he added a big red lamp over the sign that came on during "core time".
Aside: Racal-Redac was in England and hence suffered from the traditional English problem that everyone went down the Pub for lunch on Friday and pretty much half of them never made it back to the office in the afternoon. The managements solution to the problem was inspired, they started shipping in piles of beer to the onsite cafeteria offered for free with Friday lunch. They called it the "beer bust". Of course this did not get any more actual work done on Friday afternoons but at least the engineers stayed of site and discussed work problems for hours:)
I'm a 7AM-ish morning code person.
If your manager is not shielding you from outside interruptions, then your manager is not doing their job. If your manager is always interrupting you, then you're probably not doing your job
I used to work a 7am-3:30pm shift when I did training texts and videos for a small government contractor, and I enjoyed having an hour or so in the afternoon to do errands. What I remember of Rocklin (and the Sacramento delta) is that it can get hot in the summer, so an earlier start is probably advantageous.
That's 'cuz you're not supposed to show up for work in your pajamas.
Everybody at the company had to be at work on time (8:00 am) and not a minute late... That is except the programmers and technical types. They would mostly wander in around 10:00 am, but also stay quite late. Some of them would still be around at 1 or 2 am.
Best time? Whenever the employer wants to pay me for!
I also started scheduling my own projects and tasks on my calendar as "unavailable" time so meetings are not scheduled on top of my efforts to complete my responsibilities. That definitely helps and gives me valid reasons to decline meetings when someone chooses to ignore my calendar and schedule anyways.
Yes, that is true. It gets noticed the most when you are back in the office at 8:30 that same morning!
Also true. I am fortunate to have a very hard working team of 11 as my Engineering staff. It makes a difference when you have their back to the point that have yours when you need to hide out to get things done. My team will even play interference for me when they know I need to focus on a project at my desk.
Interesting way of putting it, but sometimes that is the way I feel. I have been the Engineering Manager for 3 years, but in a cube farm with the bulk of my team. I have always seen good management from the role of a quarterback, not a coach. I like to be directing a team getting their shoes dirty, while with them getting mine dirty as well. Moving into an office did change the dynamic a little, but I still do everything I can to make sure my team knows that I am here for them, not me. It has always been my notion that true leaders don't lead, but rather, they are followed.
a lot of money floating around from investors, though less than half of the products will ever make a profit (if a startup/new innovation)
At least it's not your money, so you do your job as best you can though 9-5 and meeting is counterproductive for geeks
You collect a steady paycheck until company folds etc.
Yes!
Can't believe I didn't put that one in here. Good call.
The advent of the cubical has cost Corporate America BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars of productive time in industry.
As if the cubical wasn't bad enough, one of my clients remodeled and went with very short cubical walls because it would 'enhance communication'...
C.W.
Well, I'm not sure many remember back this far but when I was a vendor, one of my customers was a defense contractor who hadn't upgraded their office plans much since World War II. Picture blocks of 6 steel desks (ok, they had upgraded their desks) arranged in a 2x3 rectangles, obviously, each pair facing each other. Now, picture several columns and rows of these friendly little rectangles in a BIG, OPEN, HIGH CEILINGED mostly concrete room. Now, put a phone on each desk. Now add in a coupe hundred programmers, analysts, low level mangers and such........ It really sucked to be put in one of the middle desks! This went on into the mid 80's until they were bought and redid their office space.
This picture is close but doesn't do it justice.
The arrangement below, I often ran into - especially for vendors - you might have two hardware engineers, two software engineers and maybe a desk for the account rep/sales person. Cozy!!
Cubicles are a luxury!!
That's great. When I worked at Marconi Radar there was a chap who often went to hide out and work in a shed half way up a Chain Home Radar Mast.
You can see the tower and the shed behind our lab building here: http://www.g0mwt.org.uk/events/gb70gb-2009/gb70gb.htm
He had the right idea.
Study after study shows that ANY distraction disrupts the creative process...a few seconds of distractions will cost a company hours of creative work.
That is why it is SO IMPORTANT to allow "those who create" to work without disruption.
That is why "meetings" are so hated by technical types.
One also needs to isolate creative people from electronic interruptions...email, texts, phones are just as disruptive as the dreaded meeting.
My place insists on a conference call between sites spread around Europe every Tuesday and Thursday. The "distraction cost" with this scheme is such that it's only possible to get any work done on Mondays, most of which is spend try to remember what it was you might have done the previous Monday