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Ask HN: Technical founders: What percentage of your day is coding?

by dquail on 6/19/13, 3:33 AM with 8 comments

I'm doing some research on the dynamics of founding teams. One of the core elements is understanding patterns in technical founders - particularly how much they code. This is part of our general interest in how successful people spend their days: http://blog.zenlike.me/category/how-they-work/ But it'd be able to quantify some of our research with data. Thanks for any help!

  • by Sealy on 6/19/13, 5:19 AM

    I find that my patterns of productivity when varies a lot when coding. Occasionally I get in 'the zone' where I have laser like focus and can knock out hundreds of lines of code in a night. Other days, I have no inspiration and write next to nothing.

    Can you clarify how you would measure a percentage of a day (are you referring to a 24 hour period or the awake hours)? I think a more sensible metric would be to ask how many hours per day on average does a technical founder spend coding.

    Averaged out in the first few months, it must be around 40-50% of my day. (~5-6 hours max).

    I find it hard to believe that anybody could clock more than 70-80% sustained for more than a week. With 8 hours of sleep a day, you would get 16 hours of potentially productive time. 80% would equate to ~13 hours of coding leaving you with 3 hours for meals and general 'life admin'. That's not much.

  • by waster on 6/19/13, 5:10 AM

    Think I'm a hybrid vs. pure technical founder, though I am doing all the frontend and in theory will be doing some of the backend too. I spend 90% of my day coding.

  • by eudoxus on 6/19/13, 3:43 AM

    Depends what stage you might be in. I started at pretty much 90

  • by noomerikal on 6/19/13, 4:35 AM

    70% - early stage

  • by dquail on 6/19/13, 3:33 AM

    70-80%