How much time you spend at home on work subjects

Question

One of my colleague tell me that he found himself working lot of hours at home about subjects he didn't finish at work, for example: bug he had this morning, and didn't finish, or writing spikes for understanding issues.

The main idea he wanted to note is that he like reading and writing about new technologies and features at home (to extend his knowledge) but didn't like to waste his time about something he should do at work, but didn't manage its time so well. moreover, we are trying to find out whether it is normal...

I checked my habbits for the last two weeks and found out that:

1. I spend 2 hours a day - reading posts and learning new things (=10 hours a week)
2. at the weekends I spend more 6-10 hours coding, reading and posting

this is =20 hours a week that I am extending my knowledge. (and I enjoy every minute) I found out that for the last 2 weeks I am doing almost =5-6 hours of work on stuff I found myself stuck at work and needed more extra time...

I would like to hear you people, talking about your work hours habbits... So we could know more about this subject...

Answer 1

Less time since SO came along...

Answer 2

I spend (virtually) no time working at work stuff at home - thankfully I realised a few years ago that family, friends, recreation and health take priority over what goes on between 9 and 5.

Having said that, I'll often go to bed with a work problem in my head and wake up with the solution - does that count? ;-)

As a side issue, I have often found that people who regularly have to take work home with them to complete are not being as productive as they could be during work hours.

Answer 3

I typically work 55-60 hours a week. Outside of that I don't want to see a computer. At all. Not even on the TV. I have even been known to bark at friends and family asking me how to fix their PC, recommend a laptop etc... Life is too short.

Answer 4

Well, I do not take work to home but still work at home :) Thorough from back to back reading, while consulting with manual, experimenting, a few pet projects. That is, I do at home what I can not allow myself at office due to the time constraints.
And I strive for 40 hours per week, and mostly manage it.

Answer 5

I used to work between 20 to 40 hours a week until a year ago (for two years). Form my point of view, taking work home will depend on two things

1. You are new to a technology and in order to be productive you need to spend more time learning about it.
2. You got more work to do, this could be because of bad planning of your work or commiting to do more than what can be done in regular hours

I faced the first scenario when i had start work as Websphere Administrator without knowing anything about WebSphere Application server, so i used to spend a lot of time time reading and experimenting in Virtual Machines.

The second was when our site was going live and there was so much work to do with a key resource having left us, resulted in me working 18 hours daily for 2 months.

I no longer do work from home at the same level probably 4 hours a week i guess. But Overall i think it is normal for people in the IT field to take work home.

Answer 6

At least 4 hours for week in reading book and articles, coding in GNU/Linux system: for me it's time for me, not for my office work.

Without forget that in the work (and in the life) to having some hobbies can help more than an excessive concentration in technoglies.

Answer 7

I think maybe two to three hours per week, and thats more thinking about a problem I couldn't solve, or thinking on the train home, or what's going on my to-do list for tomorrow or something like that, which is probably not far off from any other profession.

That does not include hobby work/self-directed learning of course :)

Answer 8

I used to spend a lot of time tinkering at home, learning new skills, trying to keep up to date with all the latest technologies.... and then I thought "stuff it, this isn't helping my career, it's just turning me into a geek". So although I may think about a work-related problem at home, I won't do anything about it until I get to the office the next day. I'm being paid to work 9 to 5, so that's what I work. Any time outside of that is my own.

Yes, I'm cynical, and yes, I'm jaded too.

Answer 9

I rarely bring work home. I don't get any extra economical compensation for overtime/after hours work, so if I do bring work home, it's not "for them" - only for myself. If I run into a problem, or a technique that I really want to learn, then I'll read up on to satisfy my own curiosity. But I never, ever bring a work problem home, and solve it off hours.

My spare time is jam packed as it is. I play in a band, work out, and I'm one of those crazy people who actually wants to spend time with his wife. ;) When we decide to get kids, I'll be devoted to them. Not the company.

That said, I do sometimes need to spend extra time at the office before deadlines etc., but I always make sure to take the same amount of time off. As I said, I don't get any extra pay for the extra hours. Plus, simply relaxing/doing nothing is a very important ingrediant to keep your health in later life.