Amazon Says Developers Spend 'Just One Hour Per Day' on Actual Coding (fortune.com) 152
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon Web Services said in a post earlier this month that developers report spending an average of "just one hour per day" on actual coding. But that doesn't mean these workers twiddle their thumbs the remaining seven hours per day. Instead, developers spend the majority of their time on "tedious, undifferentiated tasks such as learning codebases, writing and reviewing documentation, testing, managing deployments, troubleshooting issues or finding and fixing vulnerabilities," according to Amazon Web Services.
Define "Coding" (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't "tedious, undifferentiated tasks such as learning codebases, writing and reviewing documentation, testing, managing deployments, troubleshooting issues or finding and fixing vulnerabilities" part of development? I don't do much coding anymore, but developing code involves all these things, not just entering lines of code into a project.
Re: Define "Coding" (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Define "Coding" (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, that's basically the job description.
Yes, it is. For a lot of positions. Not just those who code. Do web developers spend only an hour per day developing new content as well? How long do SysAdmins spend deploying new systems as opposed to fixing and patching broken ones every day? I wouldn’t be surprised if an hour a day describes the time most of us have to perform a core function of work. Rest of the time we’re running around reacting to Shit Happens and Reality.
I don't know why this is news.
Because clickbait is “news” now.
Re:Define "Coding" (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a pitch for AI products. They're now saying the "real" coding is the stuff the AI product they conveniently sell doesn't do. Free up your developers to do the "real" coding by buying our product.
Re: (Score:3)
It's a pitch for AI products. They're now saying the "real" coding is the stuff the AI product they conveniently sell doesn't do. Free up your developers to do the "real" coding by buying our product.
Pitch for AI products? That’s odd. I more read it as Amazon practically bragging about their daily bureaucracy (proudly?) consuming 7 hours of an Amazon coders day. Every day.
It was one hell of a strange flex, I gotta admit.
Re: (Score:3)
Whities now have a line that came from above, that explains why they shouldn't pick blueberries.
So
Re: (Score:2)
My impression is that a lot of coders don't know how to code. It's like a cargo cult: Copy and paste the established patterns, without devising a plan beforehand, and hotfix any problems that crop up in production due to the architecture being hacked together ad-hoc to respond to constantly chaging requirements.
No programmers to think things through and design the interfaces that people will have to work with, or decouple the different parts that are putting load on the hardware. No requirements defining
Re: (Score:2)
What I don't understand about so called cut and paste programmers is... I've never used code from stackexchange with
Re:Define "Coding" (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is this context.
People don't realize that coders are probably spending most of their time reacting to "fix it now" stuff and edge cases. Writing new code requires not having to do this.
Don't become the person that has to leave during a wedding or funeral because you're the only person who knows how a thing works because some stupid AI stomped on it.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
This seems to be a sales pitch aimed at managers who love their meetings and hate their staff.
Re: Define "Coding" (Score:3)
Correct. Those tasks are essential to making something that actually works. If I coded either hours a day, I would create a useless mess of code. Much like an AI already does.
Re: Define "Coding" (Score:4, Insightful)
It might just turn out that time making sure the code you are about to write is going to make sense and fit the design or model properly should
be a super important priority to spend time on. And the job description of a coder was never to type code strings on the keyboard as quickly as they can for hours out of the day.
All those other tasks are actually the coding and necessary to create the thought process behind what you are about to type. The proportion of time actually typing the code SHOULD be low; as the process should be thought-intensive, and a majority of that time is going to be in prep work.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably because it doesn't take up that much time. Counterintuitively, it is easier to write code than to read code. Logically, a code review should take at least as long as writing the code to be reviewed (if you don't count the time for design and requirements), but in practice it is something devs want to get over with as quickly as possible so they can get back to growing the code base. Using the wrong idioms or not commenting confusing passages may get remarks, but how the different parts work toge
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Fred Brooks jr. said that testing takes at least half of the time of development. But that was a long time ago.
In today's move-fast-and-break-things culture, testing is not skipped over, it may happen after release. Sometimes the user doubles as tester.
Re: Define "Coding" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you ever find yourself writing "undifferentiated" followed by a list of different examples, it's probably time to crack open a dictionary and/or consider your choice of profession.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes but those don't readily fit in a cute spreadsheet that grants me the illusion of measuring the nebulous concept quality with a single number.
Then I might actually have to manage.
Re: (Score:2)
Related to the report that albertatech on YouTube talks about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
No mention of bureacracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Every employee must do crap that isn't directly replated to their core job function.
Training: security and HR
Filling out HR forms
Waiting on IT after the laptop craps out
filling out PRs for needed software licenses
VPN is down
windows updates
etc
Re: (Score:2)
Administrivia
Re: (Score:2)
You’re forgetting the day long sprint planning, the 1 hour long “standup meetings” and other elements of the Platinum Scum Grand Master General’s (I don’t keep up with whatever the bullshit titles are now) interference there is.
Re:No mention of bureacracy (Score:4, Insightful)
It’s very simple actually. It all boils down to don’t be an asshole.
Re:No mention of bureacracy (Score:5, Insightful)
DEI training is about indoctrinating people into viewing the world through the lens of critical theory
You went to a 45-minute work-required training that did this? Or is this just what the yelling people on TV told you happened in these trainings?
My large employer (20,000+ employees) does annual trainings for all employees...and basically the DEI training boils down to: "don't treat someone badly because of their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, political views, veterans' status, pregnancy status, sexual orientation, or other characteristics and if you do, we will ask you again politely to stop doing it."
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You went to a 45-minute work-required training that did this?
Yes. The DEI propaganda is insidious, but when they talk about implicit bias, allyship, racial equity, privilege, etc. they are practicing critical theory and are categorizing people based on immutable characteristics. This is because attacking language by redefining terms to mean something else is one of the DEI methods. You have to use a Wokish Dictionary [newdiscourses.com] to understand what is really being said.
Re: (Score:2)
This is because attacking language by redefining terms to mean something else is one of the DEI methods. You have to use a Wokish Dictionary [newdiscourses.com] to understand what is really being said.
Maybe you haven't realized this yet, but language is not static. It evolves over time and reflects societal changes. Woke was a term used by the black community and meant to be awakened politically as to the current state of affairs. Then white people got a hold of the word and changed the meaning to "something I don't like and seems scary" and haven't shut up about it since.
Oh and every time you say "woke" god makes another drag queen.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe you haven't realized this yet, but language is not static.
I think I was perfectly clear that I objected that WHAT they are saying, not HOW they are saying it.
Re: (Score:2)
I think I was perfectly clear that I objected that WHAT they are saying, not HOW they are saying it.
That was not clear at all.
You were told that WHAT they are saying is a variant of Wheaton's Law. You dismissed that and complained about newspeek, which is entirely about HOW they are saying it. You even said you need a dictionary.
So are you saying that you don't understand what is being said because the language they use is foreign to you? That is HOW, not WHAT.
Apart from your assertion that it is not about "being nice" (whatever you mean by that), you have not said anything at all about WHAT they are s
Re: (Score:2)
You were told that WHAT they are saying is a variant of Wheaton's Law. You dismissed that and complained about newspeek, which is entirely about HOW they are saying it.
I stand by my original assessment, or WHAT they are saying: "DEI training is about indoctrinating people into viewing the world through the lens of critical theory, where people are ranked based on their immutable characteristics and arbitrarily assigned 'oppressed' (desirable) or 'privileged' (undesirable) categorizations. It has nothing to do with being nice." . I see this as a direct critique of the content. To be clear, I do not accepting the premise that these presentations are a variant of Wheaton's L
Re: No mention of bureacracy (Score:2)
People like you made DEI training necessary in the same way the idiots that dry their cat in the microwave made disclaimers necessary.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You don't need to take your yearly corporate training that seriously man.
I don't, but people that are responsible for hiring and promotions (i.e., HR and management) do take it seriously and we end up with a lot of dead weight or even worse, people that intentionally cause trouble over something ridiculous (e.g., master-slave).
Re: (Score:2)
I am someone who often (but not always) supports many progressive and liberal ideas, but I have long thought these kinds of workplace-enforced trainings were not really going to solve any meaningful work or societal problems because:
1. They are often not done well and tend to be
Re: (Score:2)
This is a long way of saying that I support the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion work...
When you say you support equity, what do you exactly mean? Also, how far would you take that approach? For example, should promotions be based on racial representation at each salary/seniority rank? Should everyone, regardless of position and experience get the same salary? Also, how would equitably deal with poor performers or slackers?
Re: (Score:2)
Don't be disingenuous.
It isn't the 45-minute training (which is, in actuality, the better part of a week of training spread out over the span of your first 6 months at Amazon, with regular 'updates'), it's the maxim to do the things in that training to perfection or suffer the consequences of termination and/or a lawsuit.
At Amazon, it's like being brainwashed into Animal Farm. You need to not only treat people equally, you've got to treat the special people with extra difference and preference. This is quit
Re: (Score:2)
If it is documented, do you have a link to that documentation, or is it only available for a fee?
Re: No mention of bureacracy (Score:2)
White men aren't inherently smarter, fitter or better than any other category. I see why that rankles you.
Re:No mention of bureacracy (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't try to gaslight us. [gaslights us]
Your strawman is obvious.
Re: (Score:3)
DEI training is about indoctrinating people into viewing the world through the lens of critical theory, where people are ranked based on their immutable characteristics and arbitrarily assigned 'oppressed' (desirable) or 'privileged' (undesirable) categorizations.
I have plenty of citations to show that this is a very accurate description.
Thompson, Sherwood. Encyclopedia of Diversity and Social Justice. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition, p. 65.
Re: No mention of bureacracy (Score:2)
Nice quotes. You don't seem to understand what they say however.
Re: (Score:2)
Great, you quoted four sources for things that racists use to "justify" their being racist. Critical Race Theory being a pseudo-scientific basis for racism, identity politics being something bigots use to explain how they are the victims for their noble birthrights not being legally recognised, the next one again being unironically about white supremacy being justified by perceived victimhood, and the last one constructing a case against universalism in general and humanism in particular to blatantly justi
Re: (Score:3)
The grunt work (Score:2)
There's a lot of grunt work associated with developer jobs but it sounds like the Amazon people have it in spades. Seven hours per day?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The gruntwork gets more as the organization gets larger.
Until it gets so large that the gravitational force does not allow one bit of useful work to be done.. At the point no single line of code nor even a semicolon to escape. At that point your only hope is a restructuring.
Re: (Score:2)
Not putting the entire code base in one big SVN repository would help.
Of course the bigger the company, the more people competing to get the locks, preventing others from getting their tickets done.
(And converting to git doesn't help: As long as it stays in one mega-repo, you are just trading locks for merge conflicts.)
But somehow, managers seem to be horrified by the idea of lots of different small things, independently versioned, working together through stable interfaces. Even when using microservices,
Re: (Score:2)
Wait, you think they actually plan and design things before they start to code?
we need to talk about your TPS reports! (Score:2)
we need to talk about your TPS reports!
Pretty much (Score:5, Insightful)
But to figure what needs to be changed, where and the best way to achieve it, can take a lot of digging & experience.
Itâ(TM)s like that old joke with the machine repair man.
A repairman was hired to repair a large machine in a factory. He showed up, examined the machine, then tapped it once with a hammer. It started up. The factory owner was pleased, but not when he got a bill from the repairman for $10000. He thought that was outrageous, and he asked for an itemized bill. So the repairman handed him a bill which said:
Tapping machine with hammer: $1
Knowing where to tap: $9999
Re:Pretty much (Score:5, Informative)
Well yeah. It only takes like 30 minutes to actually push out a code change. But to figure what needs to be changed, where and the best way to achieve it, can take a lot of digging & experience.
One hour of coding, interspersed with six hours of running tests or running the app in the debugger so you can figure out what is wrong. I've been doing this since the late 1990s, and in spite of machines being orders of magnitude faster, the code has gotten orders of magnitude more complicated to compile, thus canceling out most of the benefit. So thirty years later, we're still spending most of our time waiting on slow machines.
How true (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So thirty years later, we're still spending most of our time waiting on slow machines.
Or fast machines, even.
My workstation has 64 cores (128 w/hyperthreading) @ 4.2Ghz, 256 GiB of RAM and 4 TB of nVME storage with some crazy transfer rate and access times (I don't recall the numbers)... and yet it takes 45 minutes to do a clean build. It's so bad it's actually kind of impressive.
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't AI (Score:2)
supposed to alleviate devs from the tedium so they can just code in peace?
An average day (Score:5, Interesting)
Hour 01: Emails and tending to crap
Hour 02: Daily Five Minute Stand Up
Hour 03: Office Talk because RTO
Hour 04: Lunch at desk to do a bit of code
Hour 05: Company/Department/Business Unit All Hands
Hour 06: One on One with manager
Hour 07: Tolerating annoying co-workers and scope creeps
Hour 08: Do a quick fix to work around some Tech debt
Thinking about the code you have to write has to be done in your own time because it looks like you're not doing anything.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah I'm also surprised to not see "conceptual work about what to code" anywhere in Amazon's list. Maybe it depends on what you code? I generally spend more time conceptualising than coding. I spent the best of Tuesday afternoon writing a mathematical model on a board, implementing it took less than thirty minutes.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure if you've noticed, but most of the AWS services aren't particularly special. There's hundreds of them, and most of them can be summarized as "devops integrations with our web UI of open source platforms". It seems they've got a very Enterprisey process once that product is released, and each new feature gets squeezed out of a rock very slowly. Past initial release of a service, very little actually seems to change, unless it's to add something which leads to you spending more money.
Re: (Score:2)
But what do you do for the other 5 hours of your day? If you can't find time to do your work, that sounds like a time management problem... we'll put you under review...
spent 9 hours today on a bug (Score:5, Informative)
Zero hours coding done today. 1.5 hours of meetings. and 9 hours trying to reproduce and triage an intermittent bug.
(I don't work for Amazon ... anymore)
Re:spent 9 hours today on a bug (Score:4, Interesting)
I spent two days one time trying to find a frustrating bug in code for some revision I made. The code did not work sometimes but my change should have not caused the whole thing to fail even if my revision was bad. The sometimes part was the headache. It was a basic client/server relationship. Code asks the server for data which displays on the screen. The customer wanted to get different data to show up on their default screens. "Can we add tracking number to the screen in addition to customer number? It should be on the top right hand side." Easy change.
When I tested it, sometimes no data would be brought back. Sometimes it worked perfectly. It was the exact same test data every time. I had no idea why that would fail sometimes. Finally after a day, I ran a ping test to the server. 25% of packets were being dropped. Sometimes not all the time. That could be bad if it was a server side problem. However, the culprit was stupidly simple. For my area of the floor, there were not enough network ports so IT hooked up a consumer grade 4 port switch for the 3 desks. The network switch was failing. Sometimes.
The bulk of my dev time (Score:5, Insightful)
is spent pre-building code during my morning run or in the shower, even - depending on the pressure - while I sleep.
Actually committing it and kicking off build is the least part of it. If I figured out how to do it with far less code, then that's a win for everyone.
Volume of code committted is a terrible metric employed by brain-dead MBAs. It just encourages the production of garbage.
Re: The bulk of my dev time (Score:2)
complete bullshit (Score:3)
Diversifying (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not slacking, I'm diversifying my activity and thus highly qualified for DEI roles. I do the equivalent of a genderfluid disabled lesbian transsexual of work every day.
Re:Diversifying (Score:4, Funny)
And racial minority too.. I'll be getting my certified minority-equivalent engineer next week.
Re: (Score:2)
Note: I didn’t mean that in a racist manner. More like satirical. Thanks.
Re: (Score:2)
"Yeah, I called that guy the n-word. But I wasn't being racist, just satirical." Here's a clue: that transsexual has to work a helluva lot harder, and be a helluva lot smarter, than you are, just to hold down a job.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree some do, but that has nothing to do with my meta-satire.
It is not that I am lazy (Score:2)
Wrong priblem (Score:5, Informative)
1. Developers should NEVER test their own code beyond basics, they are too familiar with the code and cannot be trusted to test it correctly.
2. Developers should RARELY document their own code, beyond markup for documentation systems. The design SHOULD have been written long before any code was written, and user guides that don't describe the integrated system aren't helpful. You want technical writers for this.
3. The time spent coding is irrelevant. If the design was poor, then most of that time is spent on debugging and technical debt. Furthermore, different languages take different amounts of code to do the same thing. There are only two useful numbers: the percentage of hinderences eliminated, and the degree of improvement. In the words of Metallica, Nothing Else Matters.
Re: (Score:2)
Developers should NEVER test their own code beyond basics, they are too familiar with the code and cannot be trusted to test it correctly.
I know that's the going thinking, and it has its usefulness, but there is the occasional rare developer who actually can write bug-free code... and their productivity is multiples of lesser-skilled, bug-writing devs. A lot of orgs make the mistake of chaining these devs with the same restrictions they use on normal devs. There's a different approach possible: allow self-test (and various other freedoms) based on the history of how many bugs (of what severity) the dev has produced in, say, the past year..
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, OK, that makes sense.
Re: (Score:3)
2. Developers should RARELY document their own code,
Judging by lack of documentation, most places already practice this.
Re: (Score:2)
They don't meet the minimum I specified, which is where problems arise.
Re: (Score:2)
The statement "Developers should RARELY document their own code" is unrealistic. It's not scalable. No company hires enough technical writers to do this.
Re: (Score:2)
OK, so let's see what you're saying.
1. The programmer uses doxygen comments to document all calls and all structures
2. The programmer uses flowcharting software to document modules
3. The programmer produces a diagram showing how modules are intended to interact
4. The programmer documents the network APIs for RPC or CORBA via markup as above
5. The programmer documents other in-house network structures via markup as above
6. The programmer writes MAN pages for any command-line services
7. The programmer writes
Re: (Score:2)
Incompetent requirements engineers are not the problem if the software engineers. Fix the incompetency, don't try to patch over it. Patching over it is precisely why Agile often fails. Agile isn't the problem, the morons who gather the requirements are.
Stop the presses (Score:2)
Same as it ever was (Score:3)
It's long been known that roughly only about 10 lines of code per day per dev. are created in a typical org. Debugging, planning, installing updates, meetings, admin BS, etc. has always slowed things down.
Fresh code is buggy code (Score:3)
If you're generating lots of fresh code every day, you're inevitably generating lots of new bugs along with it.
At the beginning of a new project, that's reasonable -- after all, you're creating something brand new -- but hopefully as time goes on your codebase matures and starts to settle down into a stable configuration, where you reuse or tweak existing functionality more often and write fresh new tranches of code less often.
The endgame should be a stable codebase that implements all desired features and works 99% correctly, and your job is to figure out and fix that remaining 1%. At that point, you shouldn't be doing much "coding" at all, rather you'll be doing a lot of testing, debugging, and optimizing of the existing code.
I'd say in a given week... (Score:2)
Small companies? (Score:2)
I'm sure I got in at least three hours of coding, most days, although I worked for companies that might have had 2-5 people. So, I was in charge of building and maintaining the computer hardware, the in-house and web networks, the email server, tech support, writing and editing documentation (books and help files), sales, packaging and shipping... I never lacked for things to do. Technically, I was a programmer, or "senior developer", or "software engineer", or whatever gibberish title they wanted to give m
maybe a new category (Score:2)
Let's call them developing hey, I came from a developing country myself!
In other news... (Score:2)
The nature of modern work (Score:2)
Generating New Code (Score:2)
We shouldn't take insight or advice from people who can't differentiate maintenance from features and who ignore the cost of bureaucracy and management meetings.
Odds are everything is wrong in this claims if you had to bet.
Non Paywalled Link (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/ama... [yahoo.com]
Why do editors post paywalled versions of articles that are readily available elsewhere? It takes 5 seconds to check this.
This is normal (Score:2)
I'm a writer in industry, but I spend only 15-20% of my work time writing. The other 80% is program management, interviewing subject-matter experts, coding, legal reviews, managing my direct reports, meetings, etc., to support the writing. I suspect this kind of ratio is normal in most corporate professions.
Writing docs is a huge time sink at Amazon (Score:2)
Writing documentation is a huge time sink at Amazon. That's not necessarily a waste of time because strong documentation means strong products and services.
Amazon has a strong culture of writing "crisp" documents. It can take a dozen iterations before something as short as a one-pager is judged to be good enough to present at a meeting.
I blame Hollywood (Score:2)
Even shows like Halt And Catch Fire that tried to get it right couldn't properly demonstrate the tedium of debugging.
Sounds about right. Shrug. (Score:2)
The time I actually spend typing Swift in to Xcode or Kotlin in to Android Studio is just part of my day. The rest of my day is thinking. Research. Testing. Paperwork.
No point in mindlessly pounding on a keyboard if I have nothing to add to whatever I'm working on...
...laura
Thinking? (Score:2)
My boss, at one of my favorite jobs, long ago, told me about someone he used to work with. The guy would spend hours, staring into space, feet on desk... then type in the code, and it worked.
This... shall I call it an accusation? Is along the lines of when I worked at the Scummy Mortgage Co, and the old VP, before he retired, would come in and stare at us programmers, to see if we were working. I was told he did that with the keypunchers, and didn't understand the difference.
I agree with another poster - so
Odd... (Score:2)
Doing mundane tasks (Score:2)
I'm just do a tiny bit of coding as a hobby, but in my limited experience I find that most of my real programming gets done when I'm away from my computer doing mundane tasks. All the solutions to my programming problems and ideas of how/what to implement come to me when I'm walking, showering, or just plain stoned.
Re: (Score:2)
Every time you say woke, god makes another drag queen.
Re: WOKE HR Courses. Fire HR, they are a threat. (Score:2)
We're discussing the previous Intel CEO, a seriously overpaid white male, and yet you think women are the problem?
If you don't see the irony and inherent sexism of that position, it's likely because it is totally invisible to you. No wonder any criticism of the current USA hurts so much. Once you see the racism and sexism endemic to the USA, it's hard to unsee it.