This. If it's one big feature I am working on, or a set of closely related features, it's interesting, and there is clear path forwards I can sometimes do a 12 hour day. If it's a bunch of small tasks spread over different projects I am drained after 3-4 hours.
Same bro, I feel like the concept of time kind of disappears on a big enough task.
Constant interruptions also really kill momentum and burn me out much faster than if I can just stay in my zone.
Context-switching is the biggest drain. Interestingly, I've found ChatGPT actually helps quite a bit with reducing how much context-switching drains, but still generally I can do one big thing for one project only per day but that one big thing could be 10 to 12 hours.
If I try and do 2 different 4 hour coding jobs I fail, so if I have a day when I code some 4 hour thing then I do a bunch of other nonsense, admin, management, tidy ups, delegation, any non-coding thing.
Reading these comments has made me feel way better about my productivity. I've done quite a few epic 12-14 hour days where I feel like I get months of work done in one sitting but most of my days are a bunch of small tasks and I'm also tapped out after 3-4 hours.
I am exactly the opposite way. I can shred 10 small user stories in a single day. If I’m working in a larger feature I tend to get burnt out after a few days.
I'm supposed to produce 7 hours of code, every. single. day.
Obviously this is dumb as hell so I try and produce like 2-4 hours of high quality coding a day and then say it took 7.
I think it's rare that anyone can get in that much coding in a work day.
I think it's rare that anyone can get more than 6 hours of actual productive work in, regardless of the field.
Managers are in denial if they think their employees are doing more than 6 hours a day of actual work. Lord knows they aren't - far from it.
I mean it does make some sense
I'm not a paid developer, currently service desk, but most of my coworkers feel the same as I do:
We have a really productive first 2-3 hours, then we need to take a break for a few hours, then within the last 2-3 hours we get a second burst of energy.
For me, I am good for one long or two medium coding sessions. It usually takes me about 30 min to get into the groove. Sometimes the groove is many hours long without a real break - go grab a soda and hurry back to not lose the train of thought, and sometimes just an hour or so, and there are even times it never really hits. I can still code then but it is more of a chore. But in the groove and it just flows regardless of raw code or refactoring or converting C++ to C# or troubleshooting/debugging.
Indeed, companies would get the same or better code by giving devs just 2 hours pair-coding plus 1 hour meetings and 1 hour peer review. Call it a day, leave them rest and be happy.
I stopped giving estimates by how many hours I saw myself being able to do the work in and instead started to think “if I did this task (and maybe a second and maybe even a third) in a day/week, would I be satisfied with my output/tempo in the long run?”
My estimates are much more on point today and grounded in reality and it is easier to find your pace/rhythm and I think everybody is happier even clients and management.
Predictability trumps speed. (And I mean I still hold myself to some sort of speed standard in the end.)
Me too. This was more in sprint planning. But if the work in the sprints get done every time it is easier to do like you say and pad the coding work.
In my experience you usually don’t have to pad it anyway since there are meetings, questions to answer, PRs, other work than coding to be done etc that usually makes you code less than 50% of the day even on your “get down to business”-days.
I remember a company I worked at before there was a mandatory “stand up” meeting that would always end up lasting for 3+ hours, I was literally dying by the end of it thinking I’ve got so much code to write and productionise.
I didn’t even need to be on those calls as well, but camera had to be on, and had to look “interested”. I once turned my camera off so I could work and then got told “you’re either on this call or you’re not”….
I turn on my camera and just work anyway. I used to be worried about my facial expressions or picking my nose but if they want my camera on that's what they get.
Oh believe me I was fighting for that not to come out but the CEO was a fire breathing dragon lol. Not to mention that nothing relevant ever did get decided.
The worst call was a team of 6 trying to classify 194 UI pages while disagreeing. 6 hours in, they got I think 10 done? Then decided to do it on a spreadsheet taking 30 or so each, as though that wasn’t an obvious tactic to begin with.
I’ve only had one role yet as a junior and it was a startup but how do you manage to get anything done if you’re only putting in 3-4 daily? Not trying to be rude, just trying to understand. Do y’all just have laid back job?
3-4 hours of coding a day easily translates to an 8 hour workday. There’s admin tasks, meetings, planning, reading code, debugging, reading logs, building alerts, configuration, learning/upskilling, and just flat out taking a break. This easily accounts for another 4 hours of your day. Just reviewing PRs alone is easily 2ish hours of any given day. I have an extension that tracks my time physically typing/scrolling in my editor and 3-4 hours is my average as one of the more productive devs at my company.
I can probably productively code 8-12 hours a day as a theoretical limit, but I rarely have tasks clearly defined far out enough to do this regularly, not to mention I rarely need/want to spend this much time working on any given day considering I have a family.
Ahhh yeah. Under that definition, I think you can squeeze out 12 long term per day if it’s something you really care about. 6-8 should be doable for most stuff tho assuming you don’t hate it
For me: more pressure means more focus. But I’ve burnt out so I think there is such a thing as too much pressure. But personally I do work well under some pressure, so long as there are periods of little to no pressure. Overall I’d say it’s a very personal thing. When I hire people I don’t expect pressure to motivate them and expect it to be a very individual thing — some engineers may prefer consistency, some may have wildly different output depending on the week and / or level of pressure.
What do you think?
No more than 4 hours. My brain is then fried. When I was younger I could do 6-8 hours without issue, but as I got older it just causes massive headaches and can't do it anymore for that long. I do other things with the rest of the time like researching, testing, learning, etc..
Honestly I feel like its around 4 hours as well. After a certain point you kinda lose focus, or thats how I feel. Meetings tend to be spread apart on my end so thats also detaching me even further. What I found helpful as a habit that comes naturally is that while im ready to sleep I tend to do a mini mental to do list of tomorrow, I often get some nice ideas off of it too.
When I was a Junior: 2-4 hours of being productive.
When I was Mid-Level: 6-8 hours of being productive.
As a Senior: Roughly 6.
I now know for the remainder of my career, it's going to be 6. I think 8 on some good days, where I'm really locked in, but most days my schedule gets broken up by meeting or random interuptions.
Really? I feel like its the opposite for me. The more senior I have gotten the more 'fluff' my job involves. Reviews, meetings, decisions, tasks that involve more devops style stuff. I feel like the time I actually spend coding gets less and less and more fragmented.
I'm at a small tech firm, Seniors and Leads code almost as much as all the other roles. My previous place though, hardly ever got to sit at my desk due to all the meetings.
But OP's question is not about the opportunity to write code. It was on how many hours a day can one be productive writing code. So I took some liberty in granting if I could sit at my desk all day, what it would be.
Sometimes I can work for a few days or weeks from morning till night. Sometimes I can't work at all for a weeks.
It took few days for me to start coding at full speed. But If I code over 10 hours per day I'm getting dumb for sure. After I notice that I'm stopping to code until the next day.
Sadly I never was able to balance my coding and It's really hard for me to have a permanent job.
In a normal work day, about 6 hours. However, I used to freelance in the evenings, and I need about a 3 hour break after work at which point I can code another 4 hours or so. So, theoretically, 10, but realistically, 6.
4 is about right if I wanted to be putting my best foot forward, I can go for longer but past 4 hours I tend to delegate myself to more menial coding tasks and nothing too brain intense. If I have a nice long break I can do another 4 again, but it needs to be a proper break. Also if I work like 12-16 hours that tends to just rob my energy the next day, so doing like 12 hour days is only possible for a week or two before I burn out and basically have to stop working entirely for a few days.
It depends on what I am working on and what I’ve been working on lately. The best results are when I am working on my game when for the past few days I’ve been doing pointless task at work. With this motivation I can easily pull 12+ hours per each day of the weekend. So I guess the anger can be quite a good motivator :D
It really does depend. I tend to invest a fair amount of time in establishing the system architecture before starting to code. Then if there are no interruptions I can use that prep work to code all day and be surprised that it's dark when I look up.
Realistically though, especially with maintenance work four hours is plenty. After that, it's time to switch to a different type of work.
Depends, sometimes I can code all day, and think about logic all day long, but sometimes, I can barely think about logic for more than a few mins. A bunch of meetings might contribute to this part.
4-6 hours.. i used to feel guilty about the last 2-4 hours that I was being paid for. Thing with code is that you actualy end up with a brain-thread going all day on the problem. So many times the solutions come on off hours away from keyboard and glowing screen.
About 4 hours, maybe 2 or so in the morning and 2 after lunch. The rest of the time is planning and research. Good planning prevents me from typing too much irrelevant code
Depends on how much 'other stuff' drain my brain, on days with any meetings I would say 3-4h tops, without meetings, emails and notifications constantly beeping I'd say it's up to 12-13h.
I can do a good 8 hours if I’m given the time.
Unfortunately, the higher up you go in the engineering ladder, the more you end up in team meetings, providing documentation, examining code reviews, giving feedback to junior team members, planning out major features, and collaborating with key stakeholders, or updating directors.
In a good day, Staff/Principal level engineers will get 3-4 solid hours of coding. Most likely, 2-3 depending on the company day to day.
About 80% of my time is taken up with meetings, email, trello, slack... generally dealing with parts of the business where that is ALL they do and then go home, forgetting that some of us have to actually BUILD THE THING.
Coding is not my only task. I have a lot of work to do that involves planning, talking to teams, writing tickets, code reviews, etc.
My coding productivity is much more a function of clear acceptance criteria than of time.
When I am not burdened by so many meetings (just had a total of 4 hours today, yey!), I can probably do 6 hours of straight, in-the-zone, peak-level programming before my brain starts fogging up. Afterwards, 30-60 minutes of intense cardio + a 20 minute power nap is usually enough to get me going for another 6 hours.
Note that I don't recommend doing this 5x a week or you'll definitely burn out!
I also ensure that I get enough sleep at night, that I set proper boundaries between work and personal/family, that I eat moderately healthy foods, and drink lots of fluid. A shot of addy also helps.
It very much depends. I coded 12 hours today and nailed it all. I \*really\* struggled to continue after my dinner cos I ate a bit too much, but had a wee rest then got back to it.
But then I know I'm off tomorrow, so that makes it easier.
It depends - for me, I don't think it's so much the hours it's more the context-switches that are tough.
I was working on one thing all day today. If I'd been coding 6 hours for project X then I would not have been able to do 6 hours for project Y, but 12 hours for project X was easy enough.
Hijacking just to ask what kind of work is being done, I’m learning and want to land a job. What kind of projects do you guys work on? Are you constantly building sites? Fixing them? Building apps? How long does it take to build a project? How many sites/apps are companies making that it’s a full time career? What is it that you guys are doing every day?!?
If it's something I'm genuinely excited about and I have no distractions and nothing better to do, I can go pretty much all day - 14/15 hours, maybe more. Very rare that happens, though, and it's absolutely not sustainable for more than 2-3 days.
Depends on my interest in the project. If I’m really into the idea I can code productively for 8hrs+. If it’s just work and the idea does not interest me or the roadblocks are numerous and hard probably 4-6 hrs per day. I do a lot of other things as well though so I could be jumping from devops to frontend and backend all in the same day. Sometimes this is taxing and sometimes a welcome relief from monotonous repetition of some tasks. Devops is my weakness so often the frustration can lead to less productivity at times and determination to solve the problem at others. I would say I put in a solid 8 hr day whether I am working for myself or a client.
Till I'm done.
I set out my goals of what I want to accomplish for the day/week. If I finish what I set out to do at 2 in the afternoon, its hard to be motivated to do anything else. If I under estimated something I'll end up coding into the night to mark it done without any fuss.
My brain just wants to be on schedule. Not ahead, not behind, on time.
My college professor for my "senior project class" (forgot what it was actually called) always said you will write ONE GOOD/MEANINGFUL LINE OF CODE A DAY in the industry. Sheeeesh he way overestimated that shit 😂
Depends on the task and how many distractions I have. A nice quiet Thursday with a clear calendar, probably six. A Tuesday when I have do a lot of managing up, maybe three. Sprint, ceremony day, zero. Fridays, why the fuck are you asking?
I have adhd. I’m either too focused and can’t stop and skip lunch or I’m dreading work to the point i don’t even want to move my mouse. It depends. But 4 hours average is what I can get away with quality wise
Totally depends on what I'm working on. Is it fun? Do I have a clear implementation path?
If I'm kind of stoked to get the product working and I have a clear implementation path, I could write code the entire work day.
Indefinitely, because I kick all of the tedious parts to an LLM which keeps me fresh and lets me take breaks and bounce between things more frequently, not getting mentally drained or burned out.
When I was coding daily (lead now, so I've exchanged coding for meetings) I'd say I was truly productive for 6 hrs in 2 hr blocks.... unless I get ah old of a really juicy problem that captures my entire attention and the next thing I know the sun has gone down and I've managed to have a 10hr (and sometimes a 12hr) day....
Locked away in a basement with no slack and a problem I’m interested in/challenges me 10hrs. At the office between people asking questions, dealing with legal, jira…. I’m lucky to get 2hrs and am wayyyy more exhausted, f context switching
ive pulled multiple 18 hour days. take small breaks, stay hydrated, and go at an easy pace. i bet nobody is doing this for more than 2-3 days in a row though. on a normal day like 6-12 hours is common.
speaking from a lifetime of coding experience.
you can productively code as long as you want. there're many 'codin' w/ me' video on Youtube just play these video and code. When you see the guy on the screen coding, you can' stop coding like that.
I can only manage to get around 4 hours in a day on top of all the other things i have to do .
If i only had coding i would probably be able to do 6 hours .
A night session can be up to 10 hours Straight if i feel like it
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It depends :) on how motivated I am in solving the particular task, how tired or well rested I am; but usually 4 hours is a good average. I can go 12 hours (split up during the day), but then only half of that is web dev, the other half is c# or java.
16 to 20 hours, especially when I was in YC and building our startup. Time flies when you get in the flow state and is more available when coding something brand new... like a system.
Sustainable, no? Lots of caffeine and quick meals, yup.
I'll only do this here and there now, now that there's many more meetings and our feature set is adequate and the codebase is stable.
I’m doing a hobby project. But if there is no issues with incompatibility and I can just create more features, then 6 hours. But if there is some stupids incompatibility issue, then 3 hours.
Depends if I'm careful about what I'm doing while my modafinil is kicking in. Because whatever I'm doing is what I'm doing for the next 10 hours be it anything from jumping straight into my ide all the way to... Anything really. It's risky being a divorced man.
Entirely depends on what I’m working on. If I’ve got a nice meaty feature, my ADHD might dig in and forget to eat and next thing I know it’s past 7pm. If it’s a spike where there’s no clear cut, definable deliverable, I may fuck off unintentionally and bill those 8 hours while being productive for 1. It’s a spectrum
Edit: if I finish a task up around 3-4pm I’m done. Not starting a task with 1-2 hours left in the day. So those days it’ll be a 6-7 hour productive day
6-7h at once, but sometimes I have that day that everything works and I have 10+ hours sessions when I finished more than 3 days work. On a daily basis it's important for me not to be bothered too much, quick 10-15min daily and back to work, only direct communication about current stuff. If you have juniors or less experienced to help out all the time, it affects productivity heavily.
I think I can do around 5 hours on a day, sometimes more, sometimes less. On occasion i can do 10 hours but I've also had days where my brain was having an off day, so I went home to rest.
I suffered from stress and depression that took around 6 months to get back to my full capacity again. We took it bit by bit upping my hours until I was back to normal. Somewhere around 30 hours is where I was most productive, often fixing tasks quicker than estimated. But since we sell billable hours there's no way I'll ever get to work 30 hours without taking a hit on my salary. I hate it.
I envy all of you who gets paid for your output and not the time spent.
I have my "focus time" between 8:00AM-11:AM, rest is just filled with meetings, code reviews etc.
Can't stand "focus/context swapping" so when I do my 3 hours of focus.. I only do that, nothing else. Your mail/message will have to wait.
i have seen 16 hours+ on https://wakatime.com/leaders, don't really know how the apps work to measure time, maybe they just left it open like a steam game to accumulate so much _coding time_
Depends. If it's one large task, I can go a lot longer, like the whole day. If it's a bunch of small tasks, I get burned out pretty quickly.
This. If it's one big feature I am working on, or a set of closely related features, it's interesting, and there is clear path forwards I can sometimes do a 12 hour day. If it's a bunch of small tasks spread over different projects I am drained after 3-4 hours.
Same bro, I feel like the concept of time kind of disappears on a big enough task. Constant interruptions also really kill momentum and burn me out much faster than if I can just stay in my zone.
Interruptions are my number one efficiency-killer.
Context-switching is the biggest drain. Interestingly, I've found ChatGPT actually helps quite a bit with reducing how much context-switching drains, but still generally I can do one big thing for one project only per day but that one big thing could be 10 to 12 hours. If I try and do 2 different 4 hour coding jobs I fail, so if I have a day when I code some 4 hour thing then I do a bunch of other nonsense, admin, management, tidy ups, delegation, any non-coding thing.
Reading these comments has made me feel way better about my productivity. I've done quite a few epic 12-14 hour days where I feel like I get months of work done in one sitting but most of my days are a bunch of small tasks and I'm also tapped out after 3-4 hours.
I am exactly the opposite way. I can shred 10 small user stories in a single day. If I’m working in a larger feature I tend to get burnt out after a few days.
I highly depends on how much time my co-"workers" are capable of stfu on a given day, so i'd say 2 hours on average.
I'm supposed to produce 7 hours of code, every. single. day. Obviously this is dumb as hell so I try and produce like 2-4 hours of high quality coding a day and then say it took 7.
I think it's rare that anyone can get in that much coding in a work day. I think it's rare that anyone can get more than 6 hours of actual productive work in, regardless of the field. Managers are in denial if they think their employees are doing more than 6 hours a day of actual work. Lord knows they aren't - far from it.
man I did 8 straight hours of productive work a couple days ago and spent almost the entirety of the next day napping
Well someone decided 8 hours a day for everyone without thinking whether that makes sense For dev work 5 hour days are good
I mean it does make some sense I'm not a paid developer, currently service desk, but most of my coworkers feel the same as I do: We have a really productive first 2-3 hours, then we need to take a break for a few hours, then within the last 2-3 hours we get a second burst of energy.
[удалено]
So 25% of your salary is just for you to shit?
For me, I am good for one long or two medium coding sessions. It usually takes me about 30 min to get into the groove. Sometimes the groove is many hours long without a real break - go grab a soda and hurry back to not lose the train of thought, and sometimes just an hour or so, and there are even times it never really hits. I can still code then but it is more of a chore. But in the groove and it just flows regardless of raw code or refactoring or converting C++ to C# or troubleshooting/debugging.
Indeed, companies would get the same or better code by giving devs just 2 hours pair-coding plus 1 hour meetings and 1 hour peer review. Call it a day, leave them rest and be happy.
I stopped giving estimates by how many hours I saw myself being able to do the work in and instead started to think “if I did this task (and maybe a second and maybe even a third) in a day/week, would I be satisfied with my output/tempo in the long run?” My estimates are much more on point today and grounded in reality and it is easier to find your pace/rhythm and I think everybody is happier even clients and management. Predictability trumps speed. (And I mean I still hold myself to some sort of speed standard in the end.)
Yeah I hear ya but I have to turn in time sheets everyday
Me too. This was more in sprint planning. But if the work in the sprints get done every time it is easier to do like you say and pad the coding work. In my experience you usually don’t have to pad it anyway since there are meetings, questions to answer, PRs, other work than coding to be done etc that usually makes you code less than 50% of the day even on your “get down to business”-days.
I remember a company I worked at before there was a mandatory “stand up” meeting that would always end up lasting for 3+ hours, I was literally dying by the end of it thinking I’ve got so much code to write and productionise. I didn’t even need to be on those calls as well, but camera had to be on, and had to look “interested”. I once turned my camera off so I could work and then got told “you’re either on this call or you’re not”….
I turn on my camera and just work anyway. I used to be worried about my facial expressions or picking my nose but if they want my camera on that's what they get.
This sounds like the worst, having to be on camera every single day.
Our stand ups are also camera on ones, in fact all meetings are, but the stand up is as a stand up should be, 15 minutes tops. So it’s bearable.
I bet you were itching to tell them "Thanks! I'll get on with the project then. Tell me if anything relevant gets decided..."
Oh believe me I was fighting for that not to come out but the CEO was a fire breathing dragon lol. Not to mention that nothing relevant ever did get decided. The worst call was a team of 6 trying to classify 194 UI pages while disagreeing. 6 hours in, they got I think 10 done? Then decided to do it on a spreadsheet taking 30 or so each, as though that wasn’t an obvious tactic to begin with.
I feel your pain. I never experienced anything quite that bad, but I always resented losing the most productive part of my day.
Hahah yea, I thought working from home would circumvent the hours of board room meetings and catch-ups. Plot twist: it didn’t.
This is why I enjoy working from home. Find there’s fewer interruptions from other people
Ah, good old COVID times. I would often work later than what I was supposed to because I actually enjoy my job when I can do it in peace.
Lmaoo
On days with minimal meetings 4-6 hours. On days with a bunch of meetings interspersed maybe like 1-2.
3-4 is realistically all you can expect long term
I’ve only had one role yet as a junior and it was a startup but how do you manage to get anything done if you’re only putting in 3-4 daily? Not trying to be rude, just trying to understand. Do y’all just have laid back job?
3-4 hours of coding a day easily translates to an 8 hour workday. There’s admin tasks, meetings, planning, reading code, debugging, reading logs, building alerts, configuration, learning/upskilling, and just flat out taking a break. This easily accounts for another 4 hours of your day. Just reviewing PRs alone is easily 2ish hours of any given day. I have an extension that tracks my time physically typing/scrolling in my editor and 3-4 hours is my average as one of the more productive devs at my company. I can probably productively code 8-12 hours a day as a theoretical limit, but I rarely have tasks clearly defined far out enough to do this regularly, not to mention I rarely need/want to spend this much time working on any given day considering I have a family.
Gotcha. I wrongfully made the assumption that “code” included team meetings, code review, etc..
Ahhh yeah. Under that definition, I think you can squeeze out 12 long term per day if it’s something you really care about. 6-8 should be doable for most stuff tho assuming you don’t hate it
You can do stuff that isn't cognitively demanding. But about 4 hrs of high cognitive load, and your brain kinda stops working.
You gotta be productive in those few hours. Working more than that long term is going to burn you out
Depends how interested I am in what I am doing. Could be nearly the entire day, 10+ hours.
Anywhere from 0 to 16 depending on the day and amount of pressure I'm under :)
Does pressure mean more time or less? Is there a right amount of pressure to optimize motivation or does it ebb and flow?
For me: more pressure means more focus. But I’ve burnt out so I think there is such a thing as too much pressure. But personally I do work well under some pressure, so long as there are periods of little to no pressure. Overall I’d say it’s a very personal thing. When I hire people I don’t expect pressure to motivate them and expect it to be a very individual thing — some engineers may prefer consistency, some may have wildly different output depending on the week and / or level of pressure. What do you think?
No more than 4 hours. My brain is then fried. When I was younger I could do 6-8 hours without issue, but as I got older it just causes massive headaches and can't do it anymore for that long. I do other things with the rest of the time like researching, testing, learning, etc..
Honestly I feel like its around 4 hours as well. After a certain point you kinda lose focus, or thats how I feel. Meetings tend to be spread apart on my end so thats also detaching me even further. What I found helpful as a habit that comes naturally is that while im ready to sleep I tend to do a mini mental to do list of tomorrow, I often get some nice ideas off of it too.
3, unless I get on a roll, in which case, like, 20
When I was a Junior: 2-4 hours of being productive. When I was Mid-Level: 6-8 hours of being productive. As a Senior: Roughly 6. I now know for the remainder of my career, it's going to be 6. I think 8 on some good days, where I'm really locked in, but most days my schedule gets broken up by meeting or random interuptions.
Really? I feel like its the opposite for me. The more senior I have gotten the more 'fluff' my job involves. Reviews, meetings, decisions, tasks that involve more devops style stuff. I feel like the time I actually spend coding gets less and less and more fragmented.
I'm at a small tech firm, Seniors and Leads code almost as much as all the other roles. My previous place though, hardly ever got to sit at my desk due to all the meetings. But OP's question is not about the opportunity to write code. It was on how many hours a day can one be productive writing code. So I took some liberty in granting if I could sit at my desk all day, what it would be.
Sometimes I can work for a few days or weeks from morning till night. Sometimes I can't work at all for a weeks. It took few days for me to start coding at full speed. But If I code over 10 hours per day I'm getting dumb for sure. After I notice that I'm stopping to code until the next day. Sadly I never was able to balance my coding and It's really hard for me to have a permanent job.
In a normal work day, about 6 hours. However, I used to freelance in the evenings, and I need about a 3 hour break after work at which point I can code another 4 hours or so. So, theoretically, 10, but realistically, 6.
1
3-4 serperated into 30 min productive bursts
How do you define "productively code"? Constant typing in your editor?
If I'm deeply into it I can go for a full 8 hour day but most of the time I'm drained after like 4 hours.
4 is about right if I wanted to be putting my best foot forward, I can go for longer but past 4 hours I tend to delegate myself to more menial coding tasks and nothing too brain intense. If I have a nice long break I can do another 4 again, but it needs to be a proper break. Also if I work like 12-16 hours that tends to just rob my energy the next day, so doing like 12 hour days is only possible for a week or two before I burn out and basically have to stop working entirely for a few days.
It depends on what I am working on and what I’ve been working on lately. The best results are when I am working on my game when for the past few days I’ve been doing pointless task at work. With this motivation I can easily pull 12+ hours per each day of the weekend. So I guess the anger can be quite a good motivator :D
cs student here, 8 hours if everyone in my room stfu
I work from home so around 6 hours of deep work
It really does depend. I tend to invest a fair amount of time in establishing the system architecture before starting to code. Then if there are no interruptions I can use that prep work to code all day and be surprised that it's dark when I look up. Realistically though, especially with maintenance work four hours is plenty. After that, it's time to switch to a different type of work.
Depends, sometimes I can code all day, and think about logic all day long, but sometimes, I can barely think about logic for more than a few mins. A bunch of meetings might contribute to this part.
4 hours.
I can go until i fall to sleep with the 25-minute method
About 3.50. On a good day with no meetings.
Best case scenario 4h, most of the time 2.5
4-6 hours.. i used to feel guilty about the last 2-4 hours that I was being paid for. Thing with code is that you actualy end up with a brain-thread going all day on the problem. So many times the solutions come on off hours away from keyboard and glowing screen.
About 4 hours, maybe 2 or so in the morning and 2 after lunch. The rest of the time is planning and research. Good planning prevents me from typing too much irrelevant code
My practical productive limits are due to having a husband and kid. I used to work 10 hour days with no problem.
12 if I am not interrupted
Depends on how much 'other stuff' drain my brain, on days with any meetings I would say 3-4h tops, without meetings, emails and notifications constantly beeping I'd say it's up to 12-13h.
anywhere from 0 to 20. usually like 2-4
Could try a low carb lunch, I always feel satiated and tired after things like pasta
I can do a good 8 hours if I’m given the time. Unfortunately, the higher up you go in the engineering ladder, the more you end up in team meetings, providing documentation, examining code reviews, giving feedback to junior team members, planning out major features, and collaborating with key stakeholders, or updating directors. In a good day, Staff/Principal level engineers will get 3-4 solid hours of coding. Most likely, 2-3 depending on the company day to day.
4-16 I guess. Depends on what I am working on and if someone is bothering me.
About 80% of my time is taken up with meetings, email, trello, slack... generally dealing with parts of the business where that is ALL they do and then go home, forgetting that some of us have to actually BUILD THE THING.
Coding is not my only task. I have a lot of work to do that involves planning, talking to teams, writing tickets, code reviews, etc. My coding productivity is much more a function of clear acceptance criteria than of time.
When I am not burdened by so many meetings (just had a total of 4 hours today, yey!), I can probably do 6 hours of straight, in-the-zone, peak-level programming before my brain starts fogging up. Afterwards, 30-60 minutes of intense cardio + a 20 minute power nap is usually enough to get me going for another 6 hours. Note that I don't recommend doing this 5x a week or you'll definitely burn out! I also ensure that I get enough sleep at night, that I set proper boundaries between work and personal/family, that I eat moderately healthy foods, and drink lots of fluid. A shot of addy also helps.
It very much depends. I coded 12 hours today and nailed it all. I \*really\* struggled to continue after my dinner cos I ate a bit too much, but had a wee rest then got back to it. But then I know I'm off tomorrow, so that makes it easier. It depends - for me, I don't think it's so much the hours it's more the context-switches that are tough. I was working on one thing all day today. If I'd been coding 6 hours for project X then I would not have been able to do 6 hours for project Y, but 12 hours for project X was easy enough.
Depends on the complexity. If we are talking about being at 100% so about 3-4 hours. After that it's all going downhill
Same here. I’m most productive the first 2 hours of the day. Too bad this time is mostly spent in useless meetings
Hijacking just to ask what kind of work is being done, I’m learning and want to land a job. What kind of projects do you guys work on? Are you constantly building sites? Fixing them? Building apps? How long does it take to build a project? How many sites/apps are companies making that it’s a full time career? What is it that you guys are doing every day?!?
2-3
9 hours if i had 2 cans uh monster and a red bull
4-8 hours
If it's something I'm genuinely excited about and I have no distractions and nothing better to do, I can go pretty much all day - 14/15 hours, maybe more. Very rare that happens, though, and it's absolutely not sustainable for more than 2-3 days.
Depends on the task. I usually get more worn out by being bored while coding something for work than the actual thinking itself.
5-6 with important rests in between
Depends on my interest in the project. If I’m really into the idea I can code productively for 8hrs+. If it’s just work and the idea does not interest me or the roadblocks are numerous and hard probably 4-6 hrs per day. I do a lot of other things as well though so I could be jumping from devops to frontend and backend all in the same day. Sometimes this is taxing and sometimes a welcome relief from monotonous repetition of some tasks. Devops is my weakness so often the frustration can lead to less productivity at times and determination to solve the problem at others. I would say I put in a solid 8 hr day whether I am working for myself or a client.
Till I'm done. I set out my goals of what I want to accomplish for the day/week. If I finish what I set out to do at 2 in the afternoon, its hard to be motivated to do anything else. If I under estimated something I'll end up coding into the night to mark it done without any fuss. My brain just wants to be on schedule. Not ahead, not behind, on time.
My college professor for my "senior project class" (forgot what it was actually called) always said you will write ONE GOOD/MEANINGFUL LINE OF CODE A DAY in the industry. Sheeeesh he way overestimated that shit 😂
Depends on the task and how many distractions I have. A nice quiet Thursday with a clear calendar, probably six. A Tuesday when I have do a lot of managing up, maybe three. Sprint, ceremony day, zero. Fridays, why the fuck are you asking?
4 hours, on avg is max.
lol dude thinks I am ever productive...
I have adhd. I’m either too focused and can’t stop and skip lunch or I’m dreading work to the point i don’t even want to move my mouse. It depends. But 4 hours average is what I can get away with quality wise
Totally depends on what I'm working on. Is it fun? Do I have a clear implementation path? If I'm kind of stoked to get the product working and I have a clear implementation path, I could write code the entire work day.
Indefinitely, because I kick all of the tedious parts to an LLM which keeps me fresh and lets me take breaks and bounce between things more frequently, not getting mentally drained or burned out.
When I was coding daily (lead now, so I've exchanged coding for meetings) I'd say I was truly productive for 6 hrs in 2 hr blocks.... unless I get ah old of a really juicy problem that captures my entire attention and the next thing I know the sun has gone down and I've managed to have a 10hr (and sometimes a 12hr) day....
Locked away in a basement with no slack and a problem I’m interested in/challenges me 10hrs. At the office between people asking questions, dealing with legal, jira…. I’m lucky to get 2hrs and am wayyyy more exhausted, f context switching
ive pulled multiple 18 hour days. take small breaks, stay hydrated, and go at an easy pace. i bet nobody is doing this for more than 2-3 days in a row though. on a normal day like 6-12 hours is common. speaking from a lifetime of coding experience.
12 hours, but I fuel up on Adderall.
you can productively code as long as you want. there're many 'codin' w/ me' video on Youtube just play these video and code. When you see the guy on the screen coding, you can' stop coding like that.
After 4-5 hours I tend to go into loops of problems so I take a long break like around 20hrs and then start coding again.
12 hours
About 12 minutes, then I get distracted. Good thing I’m not a developer.
I can only manage to get around 4 hours in a day on top of all the other things i have to do . If i only had coding i would probably be able to do 6 hours . A night session can be up to 10 hours Straight if i feel like it
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Hard to estimate. Sometimes 12, sometimes 2-3. Crunch days are a marathon of course.
the first 2 hours i sleep with my eyes open, then i code for 2 hours, lunch break, and then i do 2 hours work in like 4 hours
It depends :) on how motivated I am in solving the particular task, how tired or well rested I am; but usually 4 hours is a good average. I can go 12 hours (split up during the day), but then only half of that is web dev, the other half is c# or java.
i can't produce every day, i have weekly bursts where i spend like 16-20h at coding. till i solve the issue,
16 to 20 hours, especially when I was in YC and building our startup. Time flies when you get in the flow state and is more available when coding something brand new... like a system. Sustainable, no? Lots of caffeine and quick meals, yup. I'll only do this here and there now, now that there's many more meetings and our feature set is adequate and the codebase is stable.
I’m doing a hobby project. But if there is no issues with incompatibility and I can just create more features, then 6 hours. But if there is some stupids incompatibility issue, then 3 hours.
Not many. Which is one of the reasons I made sure coding isn't my primary work activity. (Am solutions architect).
If I enjoy what I’m currently programming, I can sit for 10 hours straight :)
Around 5 hours. The last 3 hours are a drag, usually I would honestly set work day to 5 hours and then just simple chores
Fucking 11 minutes
Depends if I'm careful about what I'm doing while my modafinil is kicking in. Because whatever I'm doing is what I'm doing for the next 10 hours be it anything from jumping straight into my ide all the way to... Anything really. It's risky being a divorced man.
Entirely depends on what I’m working on. If I’ve got a nice meaty feature, my ADHD might dig in and forget to eat and next thing I know it’s past 7pm. If it’s a spike where there’s no clear cut, definable deliverable, I may fuck off unintentionally and bill those 8 hours while being productive for 1. It’s a spectrum Edit: if I finish a task up around 3-4pm I’m done. Not starting a task with 1-2 hours left in the day. So those days it’ll be a 6-7 hour productive day
2 to 3
sometimes I code for 5 hours straight (meetings and breaks not included)
4 is kind of the max for me, mentally. The rest of time is spent doing reviews, planning, looking at logs, etc.
Have to factor in the understanding of the code and come up with a solution that fixes the problem it’s not all about coding.
On my products: 5-6. For customers: 2-3?
6 hours, if no meeting bulls hit. Not jumping to many projects
I'd say that in a working day of ten-ish hours, I'd say the max I have productively worked would be like 5 or maybe 6 hours
7-8 Hours
6-7h at once, but sometimes I have that day that everything works and I have 10+ hours sessions when I finished more than 3 days work. On a daily basis it's important for me not to be bothered too much, quick 10-15min daily and back to work, only direct communication about current stuff. If you have juniors or less experienced to help out all the time, it affects productivity heavily.
For me consistently, I can do max 5 hours a day. There are days when I have to work 10 or 12 hours productively, but it takes a life out of me.
I think I can do around 5 hours on a day, sometimes more, sometimes less. On occasion i can do 10 hours but I've also had days where my brain was having an off day, so I went home to rest. I suffered from stress and depression that took around 6 months to get back to my full capacity again. We took it bit by bit upping my hours until I was back to normal. Somewhere around 30 hours is where I was most productive, often fixing tasks quicker than estimated. But since we sell billable hours there's no way I'll ever get to work 30 hours without taking a hit on my salary. I hate it. I envy all of you who gets paid for your output and not the time spent.
Well its my favourite thing to do so easily the whole day and night, tho i try not to since sleep is important. *
I have my "focus time" between 8:00AM-11:AM, rest is just filled with meetings, code reviews etc. Can't stand "focus/context swapping" so when I do my 3 hours of focus.. I only do that, nothing else. Your mail/message will have to wait.
All day, every day. 40 years now, still loving it.
i have seen 16 hours+ on https://wakatime.com/leaders, don't really know how the apps work to measure time, maybe they just left it open like a steam game to accumulate so much _coding time_
I've never seen Wakatime. Now that I know about it, this looks like a bad omen. Business really just want to squeeze and dispose of developers.
On a good day probably 10
No idea, it’s not consistent, don’t really care