I have been working at a large bank for a few years. Although some coding is needed, the bulk majority of time is spent on server config changes, releasing code to production, asking other people for approvals, auth roles, and of course tons of meetings with the end user to find out what they need.
I guess when I was a junior engineer, I would spend more time looking at code, though I used to work for small companies. So it is hard for me to judge if the extra time spent coding, was because of me being a junior or because it was a small company.
The kicker, is when we interview devs, most of the interview is just about coding. Very little of it is about the stuff I listed…
totally about company. I used to work on small company (<40 dev), I was spending more than 70% coding.
I switched to bank, way more developer (>500), if I spend 30% coding I am very happy.
I think in the last 8 weeks, I’ve written like 10 of code
Yes, tons. But it depends on the team and the software. If I’m on a small and inexperienced team for example I’m going to be doing a lot of the work, if I’m on a small but competent team then I may be doing a lot more design & abstraction then the actual work.
Right now as a tech lead I would say ~40% of my time is actual programming.
It’s the same for me. I’m a dev lead and most of my time is spent in meetings, reviewing code and coaching. I’ve learned to adapt. I still get to write code on occasion and I love that.
“Managing engineer,” here. 4-5 developers of various skill levels report to me at any given time.
My time as a whole is roughly spent like this:
- 30% paired programming (assisting developers, helping them troubleshoot, static code analysis looking for a bug they can’t find, diagramming a project for them to actually implement)
- 30% administrative (management meetings, performance feedback meetings with my direct reports, weekly one-on-one meetings with my direct reports, approving PTO, etc)
- 10% personal assignments (some sort of debugging/trouble shooting that requires my experience, or maybe putting presentations together to show off new technologies or some projects that we’re working on)
- 10% pull request review, providing feedback
- 20% meeting with business stakeholders, gathering requirements, providing estimates, creating agile stories, breaking agile stories into tasks, etc
To be fair it’s not a good comparison to compare an IC role against a management role for time breakdown.
Eh, I’m not really comparing, just offering what my time looks like since I’m still a “developer” of sorts. I’m still heavily involved with code, and I do end up making commits that ultimately deploy to production.
(I’m sure someone out there in an IC role would love to compare, especially if they’re considering taking a more managerial role.)
