But how much time per week does an SWE actually spend writing code?

another one, this is 2nd most frequent thing people write here, not sure how to even approach answering :)

so I’ll do what I was thought in first grade to never do and answer a question with a question - how much time per week does a brick layer spend laying bricks? they are looking at these new “robots” laying bricks automatically and talking on BrickLayerNews “man, the brick laying has not been a bottleneck for a long time.”

But to answer your question directly, a lot of time if other people do their job well. Last week I had about 7 hours of meetings, the rest of the time I was coding (so say 35 hours) minus breaks I had to take to stretch and rest my eyes

	▲	paulhebert 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Interesting! I guess it really varies between jobs, roles, and companies. Thats never been my experience but I have an odd skill set that mixes design and dev. I’ve always spent a lot of time planning, designing, thinking, etc. How detailed are the tickets if you spend all your time coding? You never have to think through architecture, follow up on edge cases the ticket writers didn’t anticipate, help coworkers with their tasks, review code, etc.?
	▲	apsurd 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		i think this is it. you're a bricklayer. No, the bottleneck for erecting buildings is not bricklaying. Without taking all the time to write a dissertation to try to convince you, because why; how about we just start with even zoning laws and demographic analysis preclude the laying of the bricks. is it so unreasonable to think it is not about the laying of the bricks?
	▲	2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
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	▲	slopinthebag an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I think you comparing software development to brick laying says all anyone needs to hear about your approach to software development. It's like saying the bottleneck in mathematics is arithmetic.