Do you work more hours than you're paid for?

For me, this has always been a rarity... but I know other devs who regularly work way longer than they're contracted to - even when there is no apparent deadline pressure or emergency.

I've never really understood this. 🤷

Define "work". I spent all my spare time after work hours creating this for a couple of years, and it turned into a company after about 2 years. My reasons for working on Magic was that I wasn't allowed to create what I considered to be "brilliance" at my day job, so instead I spent my weekends and vacations creating "brilliance". Whether or not Magic is brilliant I guess is in the eye of the beholder, and besides the point, but there is a lesson to be learned here, which is that employers needs to engage their employees with challenges that allows the individual developer to stretch and use the best of his or her abilities. If they don't, the loose their developers.

And since most people wanting to work "beyond" what's required also happens to typically be the best people in their fields, this implies they loose their best people if they don't allow for people to "create brilliance" ...

Interestingly, I created Magic to solve problems I experienced myself in my day job, and I offered at least 3 employers to use it, in fact I practically begged them to use it, without success. The arguments was "it's a hobby project and what do we do if you quit?"

Well, I quit, and it's no longer a "hobby project" ... ;)

I certainly have done, probably more than is healthy.

I guess I got into the habit when there were deadlines and pressure (and my own business) and I find it really hard to break. I also find that when I "get on something" it helps to just keep hitting it rather than spooling down and back up again.

Additionally I tend to do side projects that somehow end up being a part of work because they've been inspired by something I was doing for my day job - then all of this side effort is wrapped up in what I'm delivering (and is usually open source and hence not paid for again!)

Finally I guess I often feel like the working day has been taken up with phone calls and meetings and I haven't really done what I want, so I roll into it after the phone stops ringing.

I don't suggest any of this is a good idea though - I would say work/life balance is important. I also try to not have my working style rub off on those around me, because it's not something I feel I should require from or inspire in my colleagues.

I used to do that a lot, in the first 4-5 years of my career. Its more likely the case when working for early-stage startups - I wrote about this in some detail here:

The Idea of an Invigorating Startup Life can Often be an Illusion

Ashwin Hariharan ・ Dec 18 '20 ・ 7 min read

#startup #programming #career #beginners

Especially where I come from, there is this expectation that you'll have to spend really long hours with no extra pay - there's a lot of pressure to "hustle". Often they won't actually ask you directly, but tactfully implied in double-speak.

I'm observing that this is slowly starting to change since the last few years, ever since work-from-home started to get mainstream. 😇

I worked so much unpaid overtime, overextending myself to meet unrealistic deadlines. I kind of regret it but it taught me a great deal in a short amount of time.

It's a good way to accelerate your learning as a less experienced developer, and it's natural to want more work/life balance as you grow older.

I don't have tight dead line, and rarely extend my work hours to achieve that.

However, I tend to work extra hours to improve the overall code base instead. These code in need of rafactoring are too painful to ignore. Guess it's like I want to flex my ego like an alpha male primate, but if it help with team productivity then why not.