Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

As someone who has gathered this metric at several major software companies, you're doing well. I'm sure there are individuals that have higher "efficiency" but in aggregate all employees are much less productive.

Tons of people are saying "oh all that other non-coding stuf stuff is productivity too" but I think they're missing the broader context. Sure, Software engineers can write emails and status updates, but it's definitely not the most productive use of their time. We could also have engineers serve food at the cafe and empty out the garbage cans, but we don't because others can do that. It turns out many of the "work" things that are socially accepted can also be done by others. The one non-code thing I'm in favor of engineers doing is talking to customers and doing research. Most of that should be done by a PM, but for added context it's always useful to get some firsthand experience too.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: