We discuss how to maintain a career as a programmer, the manager career path, startups vs big company culture, and practicing self-care.
Carlton Gibson 0:06
Hi, welcome to another episode of Django chat. I'm calling Kisan joined by Will, Vincent. Hello. Hi, Carlton. Hi, this week, I don't know what we're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about some talk I gave at Django con Europe a couple of years ago.
Will Vincent 0:18
Yes. So last year. So this is the talk that I first became acquainted with who you are, though, most people haven't watched the talk, which is outrageous, we'll link to it. But it was a talk on growing old gracefully, and as a career programmer, which really resonated with me in my 30s when I saw it, and we want to sort of talk about some of the themes in there because I think they'll resonate with a lot of people regardless of where you are in your career. Because stereotypically programming is a young person's career. You come out of school, you can jump right into potentially a high paying job, you get a lot of authority, but you will find that as you continue, experience is not always appreciated, and there is quite a bit of ageism. And so I thought you had a lot of good perspective on that, that we could kind of dive into some of the themes.
Carlton Gibson 1:04
Yeah, I guess. So I'd been like, so when I gave that talk, I'd been programming for decades. And like professional freelance, you know, I've done London agency thing. I've done this, I've done that. And what would I say? What was the it was like? Yeah, I
Will Vincent 1:23
mean, it's almost a defense of programming. I would say, on the one hand, you're sort of saying it's, I mean, it's saying gracefully, right? It's not you're not put out to pasture when you hit 35.
Carlton Gibson 1:32
Yeah, exactly. There was this there was this. So one of the hooks was like this, this headline that I saw on Hacker News that programmers by the time you're 40, get a plan B,
Will Vincent 1:40
because, yeah,
Carlton Gibson 1:41
it's like you can't carry on program you can't carry on program because you can't get hired for a start. Why? Because you're expensive, because you experienced because you've got family. You need more money than some junior developer who's fresh out of school, but the hiring manager Well, they don't know you, they don't know. They, you know, they've all they've got is your CV like so how would they Going to how they're going to justify that that quite sometimes quite a big multiple of of renumeration how and so it's really it can be increasingly hard to get hired. But also if you're in a job like so, you know, I gave an example IBM, constructively dismissing all the old hands, they've got these consultants that go round and help design systems in IBM's client companies, you know, this is the merit that the tech consulting that they do. And they would be sending these these people had families too far remote offices and all the rest doing everything they could to get rid of them. And in the end, they were, you know, prosecuted for constructive dismissal.
Will Vincent 2:40
Yeah, I mean, it's always a slap on the wrist. But yeah,
Carlton Gibson 2:42
yeah, I mean, it doesn't put off the behavior but the point is that you know, did it was like they there's this picture the programming is something that you do for 10 years and then get out of but I'm like, No, no, like programming is, you know, is it's like my my lifeblood. It's, it's something that Deeply stimulates me and I want to carry on doing forever.
Will Vincent 3:03
Right? But I think it's and this is, you know, your talk, you talked about what does that path look like? Because I recall being in San Francisco at a startup in my 20s, and sort of going, I don't see any 30 something programmers. Now again, I was like in the hardest startup land. But I remember thinking, where do they go? And because I think that the paths diverged, right? I mean, so I'll give you the stereotypes, then you can disabuse them. I mean, so the stereotypes would be, you know, if you're a man, you grow Neck Beard, and you go work for some huge company in the peninsula, and you just you're an individual contributor, so you're pegged as an individual contributor, which is a little bit of a clue, they don't work well with others. And you better be really good and you could be fired quickly, but you have a niche that you become an expert in or you become a manager, and then you're losing your technical skills, but you know, you're in charge of stuff you have to do hiring, but there's no kind of I didn't, I wasn't aware back then I'm still always a little bit surprised about have what is that happy path from your 20s to your 30s to your 40s because there is this stigma that you can't just be a developer, that's a waste of your skills and unless especially if you're in a larger organization, there's only a tiny number of spots for you to be an architect or whatever title they call it, you know, they do you know, the turnover even at Facebook, Google these companies. The average age is something like 27 Yeah, it's it you know, this, it's very young, a lot of people go and do two to three years. And then they go where right and that's sort of
Carlton Gibson 4:30
the case. Right? So there's this image of I don't know if you got these images, maybe Charlton Heston films back from the day like being a slave on a Roman galleon right and beating the drums and whipping them if they stop you know, they till they do they literally fall over in their oars, and then they get them out from the chains, throw them into the sea and chain in the next slave onto the the and it's like that's the startup thing, right? You get the youngsters in who are all keen and you're free. them to the till they fall over and then you guarantee the
Will Vincent 5:03
Yes, right? That's
Carlton Gibson 5:04
okay. But there are companies which aren't like that, right? So my first sort of thing is, hey, look outside of tech, because in June or in the real world, you know, these these these ideas that software is eating the world where it really is. And if you can, if you've got Django type skills, if you can code up a block, and then you can take those to a real company, you can do stuff in that will just be massively productivity boosting. So you're in a department of you're in a normal office or clerical department doing something in some company that makes you know, actual physical widgets in the real world. If you can write some software that will just smooth the process or whatever as part of your your, your real world job, your rapid adding massive value and that software that probably can't get written by an outside consultant, because you have some
Will Vincent 5:54
expertise, while too expensive, and they don't have the domain expertise yet to do Do it. So that is that is one thing is it's I mean, especially in San Francisco, there's a feeling like if you didn't spend your weekend, you know writing a compiler and C you're, you're slacking off. And then the real world people can't use PowerPoint.
Carlton Gibson 6:12
Yeah, people can't people can't use Python, for instance at all
Will Vincent 6:17
right anyway, install it. By the way, install Python three comm I finally have that live with if you want to a working opinionated way to just get it working. Go check that out. I finally have that up.
Carlton Gibson 6:30
But yeah, but exactly. This is the thing like sorry, you know, outside of the tech bubble. Yeah, it's not this. There are companies that will and millions of companies that will be desperate for your technical expertise, because we're kind of like at the cost of the image I gave was off the base of one of the keynotes there on the Industrial Revolution, was that we're in a kind of a second industrial revolution. Now we're at the point where you've imagined in a Dickens novel where people are paying scribes to read and write for them because they can't read and write themselves. Well, that's kind of Like where we're at with with programming is that it's it's just literacy now in 50 years time, like all my kids already, they're already learning Python at school. They're just you know coding away and you know, scripting things up and they just see
Will Vincent 7:14
Yeah, and well, they're not in the US then right but learning it at school, okay, but maybe it's another 10 years maybe it's another day
Carlton Gibson 7:20
Yeah, becoming HMI and basic scripting skills will be you know, there will always be professional programmers writing compilers and all the rest of it as there are always there are still professional writers. But that basic kind of Yeah, I you know, I can script up something to automate and boring bit of my, you know, the ultimate, the boring parts bit of the Python book, right? The, that sort of stuff. If you can take that into the real world, you are phenomenally valuable these days. You can you can do that. And you can code and you can program and you can do it in a world where you're not, you know, spending all your creative passion and energy on finding more ever more creative ways to get people to click on a link
Will Vincent 8:00
Well, right and that's the thing is it is hard to break into tech. And you know, especially when you're new, you just accept and want to jump through whatever hoops are thrown your way. But there are bad companies there are abusive bosses. You know, and I think it's hard when you feel trapped, but there is a bigger world. And as you said, I think looking beyond just straight tech is a good idea at any stage of your career. But also
Carlton Gibson 8:25
as well, you find you like there's a kind of market value thing like young programmers, they don't realize how quite how, what they should be asking for for for their salary. And so they sort of take a much lower salary than they're really worth. Whereas in the real world, you can get out there and you can negotiate a much better renumeration. And actually, do you know what you've got paid vacation and you've got holiday, you know, health care, and you've got, you know, a pension brand and you've got job security and they've got a career path for you where they're actually trying to invest in you because you're a valuable asset. And that is so far removed from this tech tech startup. The
Will Vincent 9:01
day when I would say, as some advice to my younger self, if you want to know what a companies can be, like, look at look at the top person or persons and see what their background is, is it in tech, if it's not in tech, they're always going to undervalue tech, that's just how it is. It's either tech or sales, and see what their life is like. I mean, I made a vow to myself after coming out of startups that I will, I wouldn't work for another startup unless there was at least a parent who was an executive who was a high level person, because as a parent myself, it's just no way that a non parent is going to understand. And, you know, you could say that limits my scope, but also, I have an awareness that you know, if I wasn't a parent, I wouldn't get it. But if someone you know, looked at people in power and see what behaviors they are modeling, because whatever the company says they're gonna, it all trickles down from the top people.
Carlton Gibson 9:52
Yeah, look, they're unlimited leave but you're not really allowed to take any and you know, all these. I mean, I think that's the even things like free lunch like, you know they do free lunch. But that that's kind of dangerous. Like why is it that they're trapping you in with your workmates? Why aren't you allowed to take that hour as lunch break and go off and do something different and get a change of energy and you know, recuperate your mental space before you come? No, you have to be hothoused in the canteen together. Like, that's not always evil. But hang on a sec. Well, these after these after work, drinks that we have to go to, like, hang on should after work, shouldn't be going home and spending time with my family. Why am I
Will Vincent 10:29
Why am I staying here? I mean, I would say a great company. I mean, this is what I tried to do when I was managing a team is set people down and say, here's the path we see for you. So you know, this is what success one to five years out looks like and be clear about it. I wouldn't expect a company to do that for you. You have to have that in in your head because ultimately, no one cares about you as much as you care about yourself. But you should have a plan for in sort of say well, this is what I want to get and then know that unfortunately in a lot Companies basically the only time you can negotiate properly is when you're hired. And once you're in the queue, you're just whatever, you know, 2% a year, whatever it is, that's just how it is. And you know, your manager, I was a manager, they don't have the power to control this, they are given a budget. And they're a bit confined by the realities of the system. So it depends on the place. But when I was a manager, I always told employees Tell me when you get a better offer, because I may not know if what we're paying is at market rate, I want the chance to to match it. But what often happens is that junior developers, or developers, they're in a place a year or two starts being less than new. They hear that a friend somewhere else getting paid more money, they kind of gross about to their manager, the manager is like, Well, what do you need to do about it? I've got my budget, and then they start interviewing, they get an offer. And it's, you know, 30%, more 20% more, and then they just kind of drop the bomb and the manager saying up, I'm going, when if they'd had the conversation with the manager, either manager wants to know, generally speaking, I want to know it doesn't mean I can match it, but I want the chance to match it. Because if you just drop a bomb and leave, that's not always the best way to do it. Yeah, but that's a lot of times how especially, you know, someone newer in their career, they feel kind of bad about having other offers. I mean, I always told them, please, you should, you should know what the market is. And you should tell me what it is, you know, don't feel bad about talking to competitors. I want people who are wanted by other companies, and I want them to be here for the right reasons. Not, not someone who feels trapped.
Carlton Gibson 12:31
Yeah. And this is particularly difficult in startups because they've got the normally burning through capital. And they've got a budget and it's plotted out over the months and they can't just sort of double the programming budget you know, yeah, I mean, because that's that doesn't fit in so then they'll let go of the person with all the knowledge and the year and a half of experience and they'll hire a new Jr. in and now, you know, in this this horrible startup thing. I think real companies like a static which companies have got an actual revenue stream and a profitable? They they have much more flexibility in, you know, giving realistic
Will Vincent 13:07
raises? I think so. Yeah. And I think it's I mean, it's, you know it, it's hard being the in charge of a startup where you're sitting there going, how am I gonna pay the bills this month? I need to raise around at the same time rally the troops and be like, yep, everything's fine. You know, you don't. You don't want to lie to them. But you also don't want to burden them with the anxieties that you feel as a small business owner or startup owner knows. I have some quite a lot of empathy for the position. But you know, be aware that startups are high risk by design. But you know, what we sort of slacked on startups, I would say startups can be great for your career, because you'll have a chance to spread your wings, you'll take on responsibility. You can manage people within a year or two. They cannot be really great. But there's a risk involved there.
Carlton Gibson 13:51
So you've got to go into the open minded and like the big danger is burnout here. The big danger is that they do you're tied to that or and that they're not there. They don't care about you, and they don't look after you. And they're only expecting you to be there a year, 18 months. And so you've got to look after yourself at that point. And you've got to be careful. And you've got to say that I set these limits for myself, and I won't be Stockholm Syndrome into, you know, working the late nights or the weekends, or all those things that just aren't conducive to a healthy life.
Will Vincent 14:25
Well, that's why I said, look at the behavior of the top. You know, I think Yeah, look at like Elon Musk, who allegedly works 100 hours a week, you know, how's he doing? Hmm, mixed bag, he'd probably be doing better if he worked less.
Carlton Gibson 14:39
Maybe I didn't fully
Will Vincent 14:41
who knows. But again, I think I think part of it though, is you know, with experience, you sort of realize things you can change and things you can't change. So companies often kind of are how they are and you may not be able to have this kind of frank conversation with your manager, in which case, leave. I mean, tech right now is There's a lot of jobs out there and you are not trapped. And it is easy to get this Stockholm Syndrome approach, especially because you spend all this time with folks. And you know, it's fun to do. But you do have to look out for yourself as you point out and I, you know, in your talk you, you know, the thing is you want to look out for yourself without being like crabby. And just saying no to your colleagues. Oh,
Carlton Gibson 15:20
no, right? No, but itself. Now, it's how you self care is the number one priority. So it's a marathon, not a sprint, you you were working on the assumption that you're going to do this career indefinitely, that you want to be a career programmer, because programming fulfills you. And it's a deeply rewarding activity. And it's well enumerated and it's, it's secure in terms of there being massive market demand for it. So you're going to keep going for it. So you can't do you can't work in a way that means in six months time, or 812 months time or 18 months time, you're going to hit the floor and knee, you know, nine months in rehab. That's that you just can't work that hard. It's not sustainable. So self care is your number one priority. So okay, well, having said that, how then do you build a career And how then do you find the companies that aren't because if you just, you know, type in tech job, the only thing you're going to find is, you know, these kind of startups or digital agencies, which they all kind of have the same model. They're all rapidly hiring, they're all desperate. So how do you how do you find companies that are not like that? Well I say in the talk be prolific you know, do do you know I give the example of contributing to open source but you know, do that if you've got an hour a week, do an hour a week, but that adds up if you've been doing that for three you know, for six months Oh my god, that person's been active and they've got something to show for it. If you've been doing it for three years Wow. It's actually quite impressive and it wasn't that you killed yourself to do that you just gave a little bit of time. Give that time limited, be prolific, be diligent, get on with it. Don't Don't be on Facebook. Don't be on Twitter. Don't be on slack all the time. Just get on and do work. So that way so that when you're not working, you can relax because you know you take the time when you are relaxing. Don't be on Facebook. Don't be on Twitter. That means like because You're relaxing. And then the secret is to be social. Get out and put yourself out there. Don't just be the ghost to coach don't just sit there behind the keyboard going, Oh, you know, I've done my thing. And then I never say anything else. Because if you can reach out, the opportunities will appear.
Will Vincent 17:13
It's true that it's all about your network and connections. And even though we're staring at a computer, all had the best jobs, the best opportunities come from knowing people from going to a meetup from being involved in a conference from volunteering for something and as you say, to programmers need to think about their brand you need to think about, it's worth having a blog, it's worth having contributions to open source you could point to, because generally you can't talk about or show the code that you worked on at work, it's proprietary. So even if you come out of some amazing place, I would want to see some of your code. And if you have no if I'm hiring you if you have no code to speak of, you know, and again, especially as you get older, you don't have to be coding after work. You don't have to have infinite side projects, but you should have something public facing you should have something available because again, you If you come out of, I don't know, the best Django place in the world, I would want to see some real code before I hired you. And I would rather, you know, see code and have a conversation about that code, rather than give you some whiteboard or give you some project to do that will blow up time I would much rather talk about will tell me about this contribution you made to Django, small as it may be. Tell me about that talk you gave? Tell me about this blog post. You know, that's a much better conversation. But you're gonna have to have that conversation. You're gonna have to prove it. And as you say, you can't just be head down, getting attaboys from your colleagues. I mean, nobody, nobody knows what you're doing. Yeah,
Carlton Gibson 18:36
no, no, no, no, exactly. And so can you, you know, if you're at a company, can you open source something? Maybe not, maybe you can, maybe can't, you can't, but if you can, that will count. Can you get your company to give you an amount of time to say work on Django, work on Django rest framework or work on, you know, to just contribute, and then if you can get that time then that makes it that makes it gives you an opportunity to then build something to point out and say Look, hey, I did this. I did that,
Will Vincent 19:02
you know, also what you said about burnout and, you know, stepping away from the computer. I mean, this is something we all struggle with, I still struggle with, I think especially, I mean, personally, I struggle with this in the context of having a busy, personal life with a lot of responsibilities. Sometimes, distractions feel nice, right? It's a little bit of an escapism. And yet, you know, if I come in on a Monday, and I'm not feeling great, it's probably because I, you know, I spent an hour or two doing this or that I really didn't let myself disconnect from technology. And then, you know, come in with his feelings of burnout of it doesn't matter. It's meaningless. You know, what's the point?
Carlton Gibson 19:41
Okay, but let's say Sally, let's say Facebook or Twitter or whatever, like one of these things, whether on your mobile phone, and yet five minutes, fine. It's no problem. 10 minutes and I'm fine. But then it gets to that point where you put your phone down and you're sat there and then you pick it up again. And then you look at it again, and then you say, oh, I've looked at it. It's really done. I've scrolled past the same 50 updates 50 times you put it down and then all of a sudden is back in your hand and you're looking at the game. And this is on Saturday evening, when you're meant to be, you know, relaxing and spending time with your wife or your partner or whoever, whoever it is. And it's like, what are you doing? And it's not your fault. It's like your brain is hardwired.
Will Vincent 20:15
This this monkey brain is Yeah,
Carlton Gibson 20:17
but it's rat brain actually is as rap, right? Okay. It's like, it's this positive reinforcement cycle where, like, there's this really tiny dopamine hit from the information that you take in and it's late because it's variable because you never know when the new update will come. There's this kind of it was so they did this experiment. They got rats in a cage, right. And if they give them a button where it gives out food and it reliably gives out food, the bat will press the button when it's hungry, it will eat the food and it will go away and do its thing and it'll come back when he wants someone press the button again, it's all you know, quite healthy. But if the button is random, where the rat never knows whether give food if they press it, the rat will sit there and it will just end up pressing the man all the time and it will get rid of fat and overweight. And it's because there's this kind of variable reinforcement. And that's exactly what it's like with email exactly what it's like with social media. And it's, it's, it's, it's an addiction, and it's nothing that you've done wrong. It's your brain. It's the way your mammalian brain is wired to keep you alive in a situation of scarcity. But what's that doing is it's destroying your ability to rest and your ability to concentrate and your ability to be peaceful in your mind when you're not at work. And even when you're at work, right.
Will Vincent 21:31
Sometimes analogies to other things are helpful here. I mean, if you're, if anyone's been an athlete or focused on, you know, with any discipline, a lot of times it's the rest part that is the challenging part, but the most important part, because it is hard to rest, it is hard to disconnect. It is hard to have that space and yet you have to have that to let your to recover, to let your subconscious work to have things you know, pull in and you know, especially a lot of programmers, I think we're sort of, you know, knowledge attics, we just want more, more, more and more. There's always more to learn. There's always more news, there's more programming Things You know, I mean, I have a bookshelf of programming books, I certainly sometimes on a weekend will sit there and think I should dip into, you know, that algorithms book. And it's fine sometimes, but it just means I can never disconnect. So it's, yeah, as you said, the awareness that that's how we're wired.
Carlton Gibson 22:16
But I think, I think if the algorithms book is an order of magnitude better than the mobile phone,
Will Vincent 22:23
right, in the least then
Carlton Gibson 22:24
you're sat down and concentrating on something and getting into it's not like this cookie, cookie of content, Cookie of information, Cookie of information is snacking. It's this sort of intellectual snacking, which is exhausting. Yeah, I talk about this lots in the talk, right. I talked about some software that I used to the block distractions I delete everything from my mobile phones. I can't get on there. I there various techniques.
Will Vincent 22:50
What do you think about career paths? Right? I mean, so you've never you haven't you're not a manager. I'm not a manager right now. What sort of what's your take on that? Tension because it is a little bit the Peter Principle if you're great programmer, you're very much pulled toward managing. And there is a, I think there definitely is a stigma towards, you know, individual contributors of a certain age.
Carlton Gibson 23:11
Yeah. Okay. But well, okay, so I deliberately avoided corporate structure. I like being freelance I like working remotely. I like, you know, doesn't mean I don't work in a team, but I don't want to be in an office environment. And I don't want that. But I you know, as I get older now, I think, you know, if I could establish something that I might in take on some youngsters, I might build a team, but it would be I keep it a small team, and it would be very much craft based team, it would be like about building software. I would never, I don't want to be in that kind of office environment where it's so big that it ceases to be a workshop or software workshop, if that makes sense.
Will Vincent 23:52
Yeah, well, if you see these diagrams of after, like five or six people on a team, you look at the web of connections, it just becomes like exponential Yeah, and that is kind of why, yeah, a three person team can move faster than a 10 person team. And that's kind of where good managers come in because it is hard to organize large teams and you do need them for some projects, but it's a big jump from, you know, two or three folks to a full team. I
Carlton Gibson 24:17
think, um, is it Fred Brooks, the mythical man month he in there, he's got a team structure, which is like a programming team should be structured a bit like a surgical team. So you've got a an experienced surgeon with perhaps an assistant who is senior, and then perhaps a couple of juniors with them, but also then someone on the side who's doing tooling and you know, that works like the auxiliary in a operating theater who's doing other bits and bobs that I can't remember the exact structure that he outlines there, but it's a way of trying to structure a software team maintaining the that expertise and When you're talking about someone who's got 1520 years of programming experience, to move them sideways into management is to really lose an opportunity to create something powerful.
Will Vincent 25:09
Yeah, I think that book, he also has the phrase what one engineer can do in one month, two can do in two months.
Carlton Gibson 25:17
Yeah, because you've got the communication problem. But that so this this idea of how you structure a team is about solving that communication problem.
Will Vincent 25:24
Right problem well, and that's why places like, like Basecamp famously only have three person teams for any new project. I mean, they're not standard, but I think can learn a lot from how they do things where they have two developers and one designer for any new project. And they work in six week increments. So they kind of they don't, you know, spend six months or a year on something without revising. Can we just toss it?
Carlton Gibson 25:49
Yeah, no, and that's important because it's this idea that they have a bet to place a bet and one thing that you know, is the curse of software's software estimation. Because you want to plan this giant, you know, space shuttles, the navigation system size piece of software, you can't plan that in front upfront. And so their way of getting around that is to do six week bets and the worst they've lost the six weeks.
Will Vincent 26:14
Right. And there is that, you know, the sunk cost fallacy. Certainly No one likes to throw out old code. But I think, you know, so what's the appeal being a manager? I mean, I've been a manager. I mean, I totally get it in terms of, I think, if you have had bad managers, or great managers, you sit there and go, well, what's really holding back the team? If you have a good team, a lot of times it's the management it's, it's the goal setting. And it also is a new challenge, which if you're 510 years into your career, you know, sometimes you want to just sling straight code, you know, maybe not. So, I think that difference is when you want that challenge versus you're forced into that challenge. So it's, it's a hard thing in tech. I mean, there are people who say you should you know, bounce back and forth. Every two years, you know, coding managing. I think, you know, in a large organization, there's much more of a managerial class. And that sort of makes sense. That probably has to be, but in smaller companies. Yeah, I don't know, it's attention. I'm not sure the answer. I mean, basically, you know, there is a nice career path as a programmer in your 20s. And then it's a little bit like, choose your own adventure. There isn't. It's not like careers where you have to as you get,
Carlton Gibson 27:25
I mean, as you get older, you have to you have to be if you want to stay at the keyboard, if you want to keep developing, you have to be very deliberate about making sure that you remain competitive, you know, you've got you've got to imagine yourself, going to a company where you've got a hiring manager who's trying to recruit in tech and you're up against some 20 year old and they have to be able to see the value in you. They have you have to be able to demonstrate that otherwise they can't hire you.
Will Vincent 27:53
Right. They Yeah. Right. And so being pointing to open source contributions, talking about things you've worked on? And again, yeah, and you know, I guess was concluding thoughts A lot of it is, you can't make someone see something they don't see if they don't value experienced programmers. They just don't.
Carlton Gibson 28:10
Yeah. And yeah, and you can't sell you can't sell experienced programmers to the kind of, for one of a better word sweatshop environment that a lot of tech companies are. So you've got to you've got to look at that company. And you've got to, are they are they even in the market for something which isn't the junior developer who's going to work the long hours and, you know, burn themselves out, and then they'll get a new one.
Will Vincent 28:33
And some of the very best programmers, I know, probably almost exclusively work, a pretty limited number of work hours, take that for what it is, but they found a way to have the discipline to, you know, do 3040 hours a week, and that's it. And they, I mean, David Henry Hanson, he wrote rails 10 hours a week, he still works 40 less hours a week. He's fairly productive. You know, lots of Django people I could point to who also, you know, not just you but Don't do crazy hours. And they're massively prolific because as you talked about in the talk, they don't have distractions. They don't do this. They don't do that they're focused. And so it is.
Carlton Gibson 29:09
The human body isn't built to do hundred hours a week, every week, for once a month, you can do it a week, but where's the recovery? Like, you know, even going to a conference, it, you know, it takes a massive load out of you. So where's the recovery afterwards? You know, if you okay that maybe there's a deadline or drop dead date, where if this software doesn't ship on this date, then this company is going under? We've got to make a ship. Okay, maybe maybe that deserves extra hours. But where's the recovery afterwards? And what you find in a lot of agency environments, or startup environments is its drop down drop dead deadline, followed by immediately by another one, followed by immediately by another one until you fall over on the floor. And that, that the human body's just isn't built that way.
Will Vincent 29:49
Yeah, they're not all like that. But
Carlton Gibson 29:51
yeah, no, no, there were loads of great companies out there. But the stereotype is this. And it's more than the stereotype. It exists and it's belief it's prevalent
Will Vincent 30:00
Okay, well growing old gracefully Carlton's talking,
Carlton Gibson 30:02
you know, it's really good. Well,
Will Vincent 30:08
yeah. And I guess the last thing is I'm aware that this is what we're saying is probably in one ear out the other for maybe folks who haven't experienced this experienced this yet, but there is some truth in it. So I hope it resonates. We'll be back to our normal technical podcasts in the near future as ever. We're at Jango chat, calm and chat Django on Twitter. We'll see you all next week. Take care. Join us next time. Bye bye