Tag: work

What people don’t get about my job : Programmer

I came across this rather lengthy, but definitely worth a read, article about different professions and misconceptions people have about them.  Some of the stories are surprising, some – less so.  Given that there is not one from a computer programmer, I decided to share here my view of it.

It’s too tough to choose a single misconception, so I’m going to limit myself to the top three.  These three are the ones I have to deal with most often.  They vary from person to person, of course.  But I’ve heard the same from a few of my colleagues.  So here it comes.

Continue reading What people don’t get about my job : Programmer

On working hours

I’ve recently started advocating for flexible working hours in all the offices I can get my foot into.  With our recent power cuts there was an extra possibility for a few companies to try remote working and more flexible schedules.  It went very well with some, and so well with others.  The lack of self-discipline is often mentioned as a primary roadblock to such flexibility.  I used to agree with that.  But now I don’t.  I think that internal company communication tools and channels have a much larger impact on whether flexible schedules and remote work will work or not.

Why am I suddenly speaking about flexible hours?  Because I came across this blog post by Zach Holman, one of a few GitHub employees.

By allowing for a more flexible work schedule, you create an atmosphere where employees can be excited about their work. Ultimately it should lead to more hours of work, with those hours being even more productive. Working weekends blur into working nights into working weekdays, since none of the work feels like work.

Read the whole thing, it’s not that long and it is well written.

On working remotely

Here are a few notes on working remotely from a person who has first hand experience with that:

In terms of communication I think remote employees are a massive benefit to a company, it is easy in an office to forget about proper communications channels because you can bypass them and tap somebody on the shoulder, which leads to confusion as people are now out of the loop and without information they need to work, this problem becomes even worse as your company grows. Working remotely is impossible without proper communication channels, seperate mailing lists for different working groups, bug trackers, project management tools and chat rooms for quick messaging. Everyone will be forced to use these as a part of their daily workflow which helps combat the usual lack of adoption with office tools, when I am working remotely I feel a lot more confident I know what I need to do than in an office. There are times when its easier to work face to face particularly with more high level discussions and planning so I make sure to use as much of my time visiting the office to get these done.

I wish more people considered it.

On status meetings

Web Worker Daily shares an insight on status meetings:

It will probably come as no surprise to WebWorkerDaily readers that a recent survey found that 70 percent of information workers don’t believe status meetings help them accomplish work tasks. Additionally, almost 40 percent of respondents feel that such meetings are a waste of time, even though 55 percent of respondents spend one to three hours per week attending such meetings.

The survey also found that 67 percent of respondents spend between one to four hours per week just preparing for status meetings, and 59 percent said that preparing for status meetings often takes longer than the meeting itself. In addition, 57 percent of those surveyed indicated that they multitask during status meetings — so maybe there’s more work getting done than one might think!

The survey was conducted online within the United States from June 6–8, among 2,373 information workers.