Only 5% of your time is spent writing code? That sounds like a low estimate for most software engineers I work with.

May I ask if you could estimate how you spend the other 95% of the time?

▲ Enginerrrd 34 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It sounds plausible to me since this is pretty en par with most other engineering disciplines. I’m a civil engineer. My responsibility is ultimately mostly to produce a constructable plan set. I spend far less than 5% of my time drafting or modeling.

▲ hatthew an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In no particular order

    - Meetings
    - Reading papers
    - Understanding legacy code
    - Reading internal news
    - Ad hoc chats with coworkers
    - Writing docs
    - Editing configs
    - Thinking about solutions
    - Slacking off
    - Analyzing results
    - Testing code
    - Reviewing PRs
    - Understanding others' ongoing projects

	▲	PizzaBorsch 38 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		AI can do everything you listed except chats with coworkers and slacking off. I just don't think you've utilized the most recent versions of codex or claude.

▲ FatherOfCurses 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sneering at "kids these days"

▲ varispeed an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The least experienced developer writes the most code. Juniors would be spending whole day in the IDE, typing, testing, typing etc. Senior developers will go to a park for a few hours, think, then come back spent an hour or less typing code that just works or write nothing at all, maybe even delete code. Instead they might update documents, ask clarifications about found edge cases or errors in planning that were not considered.

	▲	nomel an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Since software is in every industry of man, I think you'll need to mention which industry this perspective is coming from. This is definitely NOT the case in certain industries.

▲ davidw 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Commenting on Hacker News?

▲

wartywhoa23 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

For those who claim to be developers who code no more than 5% of their time and resort to arguments like "we're already not writing machine code by hand for 50 years, how is AI different from a higher level language?", it's not commenting, it's shilling for the AI corpocracy on HN.

▲

icedchai 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In all seriousness, communications consumes a lot of time. Meetings, emails, Slack messages, pestering stake holders and other developers...

▲

hjort-e 2 hours ago | parent [-]

If you spend 95% of your time on that stuff, you better be working on like critical infrastructure where nothing can go wrong, otherwise you are in an incredibly dysfunctional company.

▲

icedchai an hour ago | parent [-]

I agree it would be absurd for it to take 95% of your time. I have, however, seen that it takes a lot more time than one would think.

I did some contracting work for a severely dysfunctional meeting heavy organization and it was about 2 hours of meetings for every hour of real technical work!

▲

hjort-e an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Ah yes agreed, if it's more than 90% it just signals to me that a developers skills are probably being wasted too much on business/coordination stuff.

But i guess if we mean actual time tapping your keyboard making code, then it's true some days for senior+ devs, but definitely not technical work overall.

▲

fragmede an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So about 26 hours of meetings to 13 hours of "real technical work" per week, but that's is 33%, not 5%.

▲

skydhash an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Even when it’s not dysfunctional, you spend a lot of time on communication and reading stuff other people wrote (including code). It’s very rare to work in isolation.

▲

hjort-e an hour ago | parent [-]

I guess it depends on what you feel coding is. To me it's the architecture planning and reading other people code, not just writing code. If we say it's just typing, then 95% is not absurd no

▲

skydhash 42 minutes ago | parent [-]

> it depends on what you feel coding is. To me it's the architecture planning and reading other people code, not just writing code

And that would be where we disagree. I don’t read code to look at code. When I’m reading code, I’m looking for the contracts to follow when interacting with a system. It would be nice if it were documented, but more often than not you have to rely on code.

It’s very rare that I plan with a technical mindset. Yes I use the jargon, but it’s all about the business needs. Which again create contracts.

Same with writing code. Code is like English for me. If I don’t have a clear idea on what to write, I stop and do research (or ask someone). But when I do, it’s as straightforward as writing a sentence.

	▲	hjort-e 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Huh? So you you don't research if something is technically feasible before you promise your stakeholders a delivery time/ price estimate? We all do the same stuff, the disagreement would just be what you feel coding is and if you think technical work is the same thing or a superset. If you as software dev aren't hands on with planning or working more than 5% of your time, you are basically a PO with a programing hobby

▲ mxksisksm 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]