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Always Do Extra

258 点作者 whoisnnamdi超过 3 年前

39 条评论

pedalpete超过 3 年前
I feel like the people who do &quot;extra&quot;, never feel like they&#x27;re doing extra, they feel like that is part of the job.<p>The example of &quot;creating two screens&quot;, you make the screens, and then look at them and think...is this the best I can do? Is there a better way to protect the security? Is there a way I can reduce the boilerplate? Can I refine this so it&#x27;s easier for somebody else to maintain later?<p>That&#x27;s the job, as far as I&#x27;m concerned. It&#x27;s the same in many other professions.<p>I like Ryan Holidays perspective on this in Perennial Seller. As a writer, you&#x27;re not done when you write the chapter. That&#x27;s the start, now you&#x27;ve got editing, and re-writes, promotion, sales...that&#x27;s the work.
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swiftcoder超过 3 年前
&gt; It&#x27;s never something we need to hide, but instead it&#x27;s something we&#x27;re eager to share with our teams - ala &quot;hey, I did some research on X, and maybe this is something that could be valuable for us to try&quot;.<p>I&#x27;ll give good odds that in most shops, if you pull this line more than a couple of times, your management chain is going to decide you aren&#x27;t picking up enough work in sprint planning...
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rm445超过 3 年前
Really interesting article about enabling longevity and success as a software developer, but it matches my view on all kinds of skilled work: whatever your employment arrangement, treat yourself as an old-fashioned professional.<p>Like a doctor or barrister, more tied to your profession than to one job. You need to be effective in your role, build your reputation by demonstrating your skills are beyond the bare minimum, and continually develop yourself as you go along. Ideally you get lots of win-wins: your &#x27;extra&#x27; is a win for the company in the long run, and you come out of it a little wiser, and over time you&#x27;re more effective due to the effects of past &#x27;extra&#x27;. The benefits of these win-wins can be pretty intangible, but they do build up over time.
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Traubenfuchs超过 3 年前
Never do more. Never do extra. Always do less.<p>Still homeworking? I recommend playing the piano for the rest of the week after you finished your properly overestimated tickets. Any other instrument will do. You can also cook one new dish a day, work out or learn any other new hobby! Feeling uninspired? Just clean, do a spa day or watch tv.<p>Trapped at work? Read a book! You could also try audio books if reading isn‘t your thing.<p>It‘s important to always overestimate tasks and blow them out of proportion. Have careful conversations with team members to encourage them to overestimate and teach them this skill. Keep 10x rockstar developers out of the team, if at all possible. Be an inspiring leader to help manage the worklife balance of your teammates!<p>Never forget to prepare something to say in the standup for every day. Do more work at the beginning of the week.<p>You will pick up new skills this way and have lots of things to talk about.
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vzaliva超过 3 年前
Great article! My feelings exactly. One thing to add: doing &quot;extra&quot; sometimes requires you to be little irresponsible. In the example in the article, many responsible programmers will opt to do &quot;More&quot; (3rd screen) instead of &quot;Extra&quot; because they know the project is past deadline and company really needs it. However this kind of thinking is is a trap. There is always an incentive from a company to do &quot;more&quot;. One should learn to ignore it to do &quot;extra.&quot; instead.
dkarl超过 3 年前
Oh, God. This sums up one of my coworkers. Smart, productive, generates lots of LOC that almost always do the right thing, but oh my God, the &quot;Extra.&quot; Dig into any of his code and you&#x27;ll always find something Extra, like the front end is built in SomeObscureLanguage.js, or the business logic is expressed in a custom DSL implemented by macros, or some piece of the app seems to be mysteriously absent, until you discover it&#x27;s injected via a custom plugin for the build tool.<p>Everything he does can be theoretically justified by DRY or some other principle of software engineering (it&#x27;s almost always DRY, and when it isn&#x27;t, it&#x27;s type safety) but the payoff for the extra complexity is always an order of magnitude away. Like, the custom build plugin would make sense if we had a bunch of apps that were structured the same way, but we only have one. The custom DSL for the business rules would make sense if there were a hundred rules, but there are only a dozen or so. Using SomeObscureLanguage.js might theoretically (for the sake of argument) give us an edge that would be worth it if this were one of our reputation-critical consumer UIs supported by dedicated team, but it&#x27;s an internal tool, and the bugs never get fixed because there&#x27;s only one person who knows SomeObscureLanguage.js, and he&#x27;s always doing something more Important.<p>I don&#x27;t disagree with the article. Extra will distinguish you more than More, and if done right, it can speed up your team. Just be sure that all the Extra you do makes your teammates Extra productive, and that you aren&#x27;t adding Extra burdens that slow everybody down and make software development Extra responsible for the slow pace of launching products for new markets.
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nkssy超过 3 年前
Glad about the explicit exploration of &quot;extra&quot; versus &quot;more&quot;.<p>Extra to me is often about <i>your</i> development. Learn now to do it next time either better&#x2F;faster&#x2F;smoother etc etc. I&#x27;ll agree with that idea.<p>The issue of extra is often then who pays for it. That can really make you enemies. People like free. Also, being over eager about improvements can put you on people&#x27;s radar as a threat depending on how dysfunctional either they or the organization are.<p>As a contractor the extra means you can get the same output faster or with less effort because you improved your process. Or you can charge more.<p>Now differentiate this from &quot;more&quot;. If you do more you over deliver. Instead of two deliverabkes, you do three. I&#x27;m ok with that if you get paid for it. It might even get you promoted if someone notices. Be careful that when it doesn&#x27;t help it might actually hurt you later. Expectations from not-so-good bosses can be subject to inflation when they see you provide more than they pay for.<p>There are pros and cons to both. Its not an either&#x2F;or situation either. You can use both to advantage.
dgs_sgd超过 3 年前
&gt; Assume there&#x27;s a reasonable amount of work you need to do to fulfill the base expectations for your job (i.e. your Normal Work) and then there&#x27;s a little time left over.<p>In my experience &quot;a little time left over&quot; is usually not enough time to bring meaningful &quot;extra&quot; work to the table. If I&#x27;m going to bring in something new and useful, and also be able to sell it to my team, then it&#x27;s hours of research, testing, and convincing.
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akarki15超过 3 年前
i agree that going off-roads from the main task is useful but i disagree with the way the author is suggesting to do it.<p>&gt; Assume there&#x27;s a reasonable amount of work you need to do to fulfill the base expectations for your job (i.e. your Normal Work) and then there&#x27;s a little time left over. (I know some may argue this &quot;left-over time&quot; thing, but just go with me)<p>this assumption fails at a lot of companies, especially smaller startups. with tight sprints and PMs breathing down your necks to get every ounce of work out, there is no &quot;left-over&quot; time. a lot of people who choose to do &quot;extra&quot; are in reality taking time from what would be family&#x2F;friends&#x2F;leisure time. i&#x27;d take being a mediocre dev than sacrificing my personal time.<p>i have found things at FANG company to be different tho- they don&#x27;t use sprints and as such I can set my expectations so that I can have my &quot;extra time&quot; during company time.
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knowingathing超过 3 年前
Fantastic article. As a UI designer, I feel like the little bit of &quot;Extra&quot; work that I&#x27;ve done in my career has paid off extremely well.<p>Of course, you need a manager who understands the intent behind your Extra work is that it is mutually beneficial and that you strike more than you miss when doing that Extra work. If these fall into place, you&#x27;ll be treated with more respect and will be given more autonomy which further encourages you to do what is right both for yourself and the company you work for.<p>That&#x27;s been my experience in my relatively young career (7-8 years). This article sums up this concept really well.
silicon2401超过 3 年前
Does anybody have good examples of &#x27;extra&#x27; work they&#x27;ve done? I agree with the author&#x27;s assertion that doing extra benefits one a lot more than baseline or more work. It&#x27;s essentially a way to inject creativity and studying into one&#x27;s normal work, as opposed to just flat-out working on a different project or straight up studying documentation. That comes with the benefit of being able to show it off in various ways that studying or a side project don&#x27;t offer (value add, taking ownership, etc).<p>However one thing that I find challenging about the idea is what to do. I know that kind of comes down to asking &quot;how to be creative&quot;, but if anyone has concrete examples of the kind of &#x27;extra&#x27; work the author describes, that would be helpful as a model to use.
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ilaksh超过 3 年前
Interesting article. Autonomy (or at least a smattering of it) is definitely key to staying engaged at work.<p>But I would say that actually those types of research that he mentions are often pretty important aspects of the engineering. And even further, initiatives for new technical approaches or even new features can also be quite important if the project is going to stay up to date and really tackle core technical or business challenges in a robust way.<p>The degree that autonomy seems &quot;extra&quot; rather than normal in the job may be a bad sign.
Hokusai超过 3 年前
So, learn on the job. Why we do not have the same learning time that doctors. Time to learn, time to go to conferences, time to share knowledge with colleagues.<p>Study at home makes no sense if society expects people to have children and educate them, or just to not burn out and leave the field for good.
DeathArrow超过 3 年前
Can&#x27;t that extra be something unrelated to your current project?<p>I like how Google lets employees use 20% percent of their time to work on other subjects that their current projects. More companies should do this. The value is huge: less bored developers, less burnt out developers, innovation and development of potential very useful features for the company.
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stayux超过 3 年前
Sharing my limited experience. In any way or form I don&#x27;t imply that my point of view is right. Producing software is complex process that requires constant adjustment and change.<p>I have successfully run my company (middle level web-shop) and delivered results for more than 16 years. In my PM practice I never required my engineers to do &quot;extra&quot;. In my view this is not productive approach at all.<p>Creating the adequate communication channels and production processes with transparency delivers results. Defining clear rules of engagement for the teams in research, prototype and production stages removes the &quot;need&quot; of &quot;extra&quot; work or overtime.<p>I understand the thesis of the article, but respectfully disagree with the author. Doing extra work for yourself as an investment in being better is definitely a good thing.<p>But doing this in production will create misalignment and frustration within the team, and the overall net effect will not be higher quality.
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lamontcg超过 3 年前
&gt; The second rule of Extra is that it must be aligned with your Normal Work.<p>Yeah advice from a different old programmer: do stuff that isn&#x27;t aligned with your Normal Work, and restrict how much you&#x27;re working on Normal Work to the point you&#x27;re not constantly burned out and have no ability to do other stuff.
bob1029超过 3 年前
In my opinion, doing &quot;extra&quot; as described here is precisely how one can grow into the maligned 10x developer. I promise no one starts out with that kind of mastery.
Buttons840超过 3 年前
&gt; Extra is finishing those two screens, but then researching a new library for form validation that might reduce the boilerplate code. Or it&#x27;s learning ways to protect against common security vulnerabilities from data entry.<p>How about making sure your code doesn&#x27;t &quot;work by coincide&quot;. Ensuring you don&#x27;t have any dead code, etc. I recently cleaned up a bit of code by straight up just deleting 80% of the lines. It still worked, it still did essentially the same thing. It wasn&#x27;t a refactor, just deleting lines. 80% of the code before was just leftovers from someone&#x27;s experimenting to get it to work, as soon as it appeared to work it was, commit, force push, go home (I&#x27;m kidding about the force push, probably). That&#x27;s not good enough.<p>So I agree with the article, once it works, you&#x27;re half done.
ksvarma超过 3 年前
This is absolutely valuable on small teams and I repeatedly have seen people on engineering and product do extra (not only on own team, but helping others) and there is this terrific positive environment every time we interacted with cross-domain teams. Overall a win.
IanCal超过 3 年前
&gt; In the end, I hope it&#x27;s clear that I&#x27;m not arguing that we neglect our Normal Work.<p>But you are. Choosing extra is choosing to ignore the prioritised work for something you want to do instead.<p>Just because the estimate was too low this week doesn&#x27;t suddenly mean there&#x27;s no more work.<p>While I think what they describe as Extra is valuable, I think there are reasonable paths to it:<p>* Get paid by the project, not the hours. Then the time is yours.<p>* Get buy-in to spend a reasonable amount of time doing &quot;extra&quot; things.<p>The latter has the obvious benefit of not only happening when people estimate things wrong.
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p2t2p超过 3 年前
Not unless I&#x27;m getting paid or recognised in some other way for going extra mile.<p>More often than not no one (bug some rare customer probably) gives a damn about you going extra mile. Often it is actually punished, not directly but I&#x27;ve had plenty of examples when people instead of doing extra ventured into doing some fun shit for other teams and uh-oh, cross-team impact, here&#x27;s your promotion while your actual team is struggling to get right the boring but actually money bringing stuff.<p>So no, money first please.
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akdor1154超过 3 年前
I think the observation is great but the implication of causality is the wrong way around..<p>People who get enjoyment from their programming job will like to Do Extra as they probably also get enjoyment from new tech, extending themselves, etc etc.<p>People who don&#x27;t get enjoyment from their programming job won&#x27;t get enjoyment from Doing Extra, so they won&#x27;t naturally do it.<p>Telling one of the latter to Do Extra probably won&#x27;t turn them into someone who gets enjoyment from a programming job.
melvinmt超过 3 年前
&gt; Doing More would be completing those two screens and then taking on a third screen that&#x27;s just like it. Yes, this would help move the project along faster and make your manager happy, and that&#x27;s great, but in the long-run, More doesn&#x27;t give you much.<p>Always doing Extra (and not being appreciated for it) is a great recipe for Burnout.
jjice超过 3 年前
Interesting POV. I&#x27;ve been doing &quot;more&quot; as described by the article, and you&#x27;re right that it&#x27;s not super rewarding. I like when the team acknowledges the extra points I knock out, but that&#x27;s a very shallow and temporary feeling. I&#x27;ll explore doing &quot;extra&quot; for the next few weeks.
MaysonL超过 3 年前
Swap the proportions! Do more Extra, less Normal Work. Worked for me, and most of the best I’ve known seem to do that.
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otikik超过 3 年前
I gotta wonder how long these people&#x27;s backlog is.<p>I do the thing until it is good enough (which sometimes is less done than initially requested) and then move on to another thing from the pile if I have time. Or I will answer support questions, or review pending pull requests.<p>&quot;Extra&quot; sounds a bit like &quot;gold plating&quot;.
nahnahno超过 3 年前
I completely disagree - do enough, or failing that, nothing. That is enough to solve the well-defined problems.<p>Giving extra to your employer for the same money is a recipe for exploitation. Additionally, “extra” tasks are less defined and therefore more likely to be wasted effort.
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pydry超过 3 年前
While ideal and even natural, I often find that &quot;normal work&quot; usually comes in such fits and starts that it typically make this approach difficult or even impossible.<p>The most recent time when I had plenty of time and few &quot;normal&quot; stories on my hands there was no normal work to align the extra to. This wasn&#x27;t as much fun as I thought it&#x27;d be. It led to some rather out there &quot;extra&quot; work (from the whole team) that ended up being rather pointless.<p>There have been a few exceptions where I had really good product managers that ensured a steady work stream that made this possible. Indeed, I found that if the worksteam was steady, it seemed like the <i>obvious</i> thing to do.
eBombzor超过 3 年前
Good message, but not hot on the phrasing. Should&#x27;ve said &quot;always try finding better ways of doing things&quot;, where &#x27;better&#x27; means less time, less future maintenance, more aligned with overall business goals, etc.
feldrim超过 3 年前
I started developing professionally on airgapped networks. At night, I was searching stackoverflow for the ideas I had, best practices of what I did that day, how to do things securely, etc. During the day, I cannot access internet because there was just one workstation with internet connection for about 20 devs, DBAs, sysadmins, etc.<p>And also you cannot copy-paste, so you needed to optimize what you do. Otherwise, you have to write down the exception you had you don&#x27;t know, then wait for your turn to use the workstation -add log on ceremony with smart cards, etc.<p>All of those nights, it turns out, I did extra.
jiggawatts超过 3 年前
I learned this decades ago from one of the best IT consultants in the city. I was interning with him, and he told me that for every project he does &quot;one new thing&quot;. Typically he tries a new product, a new approach, or just picks up a skill like a specific scripting language.<p>His thinking is that there&#x27;s always padding in these projects, so may as well fill the spare time with something that will help him <i>grow</i>. Two new things is too many unknowns and could derail the project, but one new thing is &quot;just right&quot;.<p>I&#x27;ve followed that philosophy ever since.
Cthulhu_超过 3 年前
I like to think that I do this; every time I touch some existing code, I try to do a round of polish first before getting to the brunt of the work. It&#x27;s not much, and it won&#x27;t advance my career much, but it gives me that hit of gratification that I need and that I don&#x27;t get from adding another form &#x2F; page &#x2F; database table &#x2F; whichever.
lowercase1超过 3 年前
&gt;And it&#x27;s with this decision that every reasonably happy, veteran developer I know distinguishes themselves. They all choose Extra.<p>Selection without causality can explain this. Turns out people who survive either have personality or environment that enable them to feel the Extra work is worth it. Where I&#x27;m at, it certainly doesn&#x27;t.
bryanrasmussen超过 3 年前
ok, so the new tv show I&#x27;m pitching will be The Always Do Extra Person working with Gavin from Time Millionaires <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28849950" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28849950</a><p>how will these two wacky characters play off each other I wonder!<p>on edit: added in wacky characters.
meheleventyone超过 3 年前
Sixteen years in and I agree with the definition of extra but I do that in the bracket of normal work. As in I do the ‘extra’ stuff and take time out of my working day to do it.<p>I’m honestly not convinced it has much to do with developer longevity though.
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xupybd超过 3 年前
I&#x27;ve been stuck in trying to do just the tasks planned. Picking up more when there is spare time. Trying to focus on only billable tasks. I stopped learning and burnt out.
wetpaws超过 3 年前
ahaha no
simorley超过 3 年前
Wrong. Business is about relationships. Be competent and do what is minimally required. Do extra networking or befriending your manager&#x2F;boss&#x2F;etc.<p>People who get ahead build relationships. The slaves stick around to do the extra work.<p>Competence + relationship &gt; competence + extra work<p>It&#x27;s so funny how all the business advice is about how to be a good slave rather than what really gets you ahead.
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eecc超过 3 年前
When you do extra, make sure it is recognized by your employer or go freelance and reap the benefits yourself.<p>Don’t. Ever. Give. It. Away. For. Free.