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0 pointsSupermancho5y ago0 comments

> Just as an example, having to stay in the office if there's nothing else to do for the day was absolutely soul-crushing for me.

> That should literally never be the case for a developer though.

After 20+ years I've both been in such a position FULL TIME, as have others (eg: Many devs at ServiceNow) - hired on to work on cool things at an old small company and then literally sat around every day with no tasks and no responsibilities while everyone around me either didn't show up or watched TV on their monitors (open-plan btw).

I've seen big company devs do the same, making up busy-work tasks and literally not committing any code for months at a time playing the priority-game of "wait until something more important comes up, someone else will make a workaround" which was surprisingly effective.

The reality that a developer shows up and have nothing to do happens OFTEN in all sorts of organizations - eg last day of sprint, how many times have you pulled in a new multi-day ticket? Developer accountability is at an all-time low when software developers (across many sub-disciplines) can't make accurate estimates, can't meet anyone's estimates anyway, and are at an all-time-high demand. Managers are in a different boat, but same result. Perverse incentives and lack of a consensus (or willpower) on what constitutes value makes for do-nothing-and-get-paid while someone else does the work.

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onion2k5y ago

There will always be times when you don't have anything that you've been told to work on.

That is not the same as having nothing to do.

At a certain "senior" level (in terms of attitude rather than job title) you're expected to be a self-starter and think of things to do for yourself. Once you can do that you have no excuse for having nothing to do.

watwut5y ago

In my experience, it is not like that at all. The not having anything to do simply does not happen. What happens is "not being under pressure". But I was always able to find useful stuff to do, not including learning.

I do learning in work time. Learning could be backup for when there is truly nothing to do, like when git is down or something. But those chances are so rare, that I have to learn while there is stuff to do.

> eg last day of sprint, how many times have you pulled in a new multi-day ticket?

I was in exactly one team where you would wait on this situation. In literally all other teams, it was 100% normal to work on something multiday for next sprint. And that one team was dysfunctional in more then one way.

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