This is exactly the type of developer I try to be.
I've been in this industry about ten years now, and I've learned that while I am capable of a very high level of productivity I am not capable of maintaining it consistently. I can do short bursts on command and I can occasionally maintain it for a couple of months at a time, but I inevitably crash and start to drift.
I don't think I'll ever be the "rockstar" that puts repeatedly puts out amazing stuff, day in and day out for months and years. I know those people. What I can do is ensure that I deliver value during my "drift" periods by helping coworkers, implementing iterative improvements in existing processes, and doing systems-level design work.
At my current job, we work in two-week sprints. Right now, I've been working on a feature for six weeks that should have taken me no more than three. I completed it this sprint it a burst of productivity; last sprint I made little progress on it, but was able to complete a slew of smaller side tasks that helped the whole dev team.
I also spent a lot of time reading and "tinkering" with other parts of the codebase and the libraries we use which resulted in my becoming a domain expert in a couple of new areas. Because of that, at least twice another dev came to me with a complex problem in that area and I was able to point them to a simple solution in only a few minutes - in other words, my yak shaving had resulted in an immediate time savings for them and a longer-term time savings by drastically reducing the amount of code that we'll have to maintain going forward.
Now, if my value to the team were measured only in how quickly I completed the task that was assigned to me, I'd be barely meeting expectations. If you consider my overall impact it's an entirely different story. This is exactly what my employer does, and is a large part of why I joined them. I have the freedom to focus on tasks that are not on a tight timeline, and to reallocate myself if I need to or if I'm able to provide more value elsewhere.
I wouldn't last six months at Ballmer's Mircosoft, though.
I've been in this industry about ten years now, and I've learned that while I am capable of a very high level of productivity I am not capable of maintaining it consistently. I can do short bursts on command and I can occasionally maintain it for a couple of months at a time, but I inevitably crash and start to drift.
I don't think I'll ever be the "rockstar" that puts repeatedly puts out amazing stuff, day in and day out for months and years. I know those people. What I can do is ensure that I deliver value during my "drift" periods by helping coworkers, implementing iterative improvements in existing processes, and doing systems-level design work.
At my current job, we work in two-week sprints. Right now, I've been working on a feature for six weeks that should have taken me no more than three. I completed it this sprint it a burst of productivity; last sprint I made little progress on it, but was able to complete a slew of smaller side tasks that helped the whole dev team.
I also spent a lot of time reading and "tinkering" with other parts of the codebase and the libraries we use which resulted in my becoming a domain expert in a couple of new areas. Because of that, at least twice another dev came to me with a complex problem in that area and I was able to point them to a simple solution in only a few minutes - in other words, my yak shaving had resulted in an immediate time savings for them and a longer-term time savings by drastically reducing the amount of code that we'll have to maintain going forward.
Now, if my value to the team were measured only in how quickly I completed the task that was assigned to me, I'd be barely meeting expectations. If you consider my overall impact it's an entirely different story. This is exactly what my employer does, and is a large part of why I joined them. I have the freedom to focus on tasks that are not on a tight timeline, and to reallocate myself if I need to or if I'm able to provide more value elsewhere.
I wouldn't last six months at Ballmer's Mircosoft, though.