I got to thinking about this a couple months ago as I sat in my chair pondering what a pain it was to accomplish some task I was working on.  There was a lot to do and I thought briefly to myself, “this is hard work”.  It was brief because I immediately sat back and enjoyed a small chuckle.  Can I honestly say that developing software is “hard” work?

Working Hard for Real

Many of friends from back home are in the trades – carpenters, electricians, plumbers, landscapers.  If they heard me describe anything I do in my profession as hard work, I’d probably get punched in the teeth, perhaps deservedly so.  When one of these guys has a day of hard work, it means breaking their back, spending thousands of calories, excreting gallons of sweat.  Sometimes they work so hard they even hurt themselves, but pick up the pieces and come back for more the next day.

My Kind of Working Hard

Now compare that to what I do.  When I am really working hard, would anyone be able to tell?  Could someone stop by my cube one day when I’m doing something easy and another day when I’m doing something hard and be able to tell the difference?  Would they be able to comment at the water cooler, “I just stopped by Corey’s cube and he is working really hard”.  I think not.

Often times working hard in the software profession is associated with the number of hours being worked.  I would agree, that this can be very difficult and the signs of this kind of hard work can certainly be visible to the naked eye.  For the purpose of this post, I’m talking about a regular 8 hours work day.

Thinking is Work

Back to my friends in the trades for a moment.  They would find it hysterical to hear me come home and tell the wife, “I’m tired…I worked very hard today.  Will you rub my fingers?”. Worked hard doing what?  Sitting on my ass?  Pushing buttons?  Wiggling my mouse around?  The truth is, yes, all of the above.  Hard work is a relative term.

For starters, let’s look at the definition of work:

sustained physical or mental effort to overcome obstacles and achieve an objective or result

Notice the word mental?  So we’re covered from a semantics standpoint.  Thinking actually is work – by definition!  If we go a little further, we find that there’s science that shows our brains consume quite a bit of energy.  The more we think, the more energy our brain needs.  This is confirmed by the fact that when we as humans stimulate our brains, we even get very hungry (which explains a lot about the typical IT break room and our physique as an industry).  If we’re consuming more energy and getting hungry, it must be hard work.

What does this Mean?

Great, so I now I know the harder I think, the harder I work.  What does this mean?  Do we as software developers ever take the easy way out because the alternative is so exhausting?  Probably not.  My gut tells me it’s more likely due to laziness than anything else. Sure, sometimes the situation demands that we cut corners, but other times there’s no real good excuse.

It was Vince Lombardi who said:

The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.

I say we embrace hard work.  If we are going to sit on our butts for eight hours pushing buttons, we might as well make them count.