How many hours of sleep do developers get?

5 pointsby maxwellito11 anni fa9 comments

It can sound silly, but I'm curious about this. When I read stats about commit times and or the post from wark milson (http://warkmilson.com/2015/05/15/three-years-of-logging-my-inbox-count.html#time-spent-checking-email), I feel developers get 5 hours of sleep every night.

If you want to tell about yourself, please do. (You can also talk about the amount of coffee you drink to balance)

10 comments

bowlich11 anni fa

More than when I worked retail.

If I looked at when I used to do customer-facing work. I could get by on four hours a night. Show up with blood shot eyes and bumble through the day without any fear of messing up.

Since my development career has taken off I can't go less than 9 hours of sleep. It seriously impacts my work performance to not have a full night's rest and I will even stop work and go home for a nap (or hit the gym, seems like a 50/50 which will work to pep up the energy) if I start feeling my internal engines roaring down.

I have done some late night commits. I do wake up in the middle of the night with a burning idea. I occassionally stay up to work on a personal project but I can only afford to do that maybe once or twice a month. I do sometimes miss the days of menial service industry work where I could just stay up and binge-watch a show on Netflix, read a novel cover-to-cover, or code through the night on a personal project knowing that being exhausted at work wouldn't ding me on the next review.

pathy11 anni fa

I try to sleep 8 hours per night, during weekdays it is probably closer to 7 but I don't function well on less than that.

I tend to drink about 3-5 cups of coffee per day so not that much. I do avoid coffee after 3pm though.

lazyfunctor11 anni fa

I average between 7-8 hours. I drink maybe 2-3 cups of tea in a day. I swim around 3 times a week, squash maybe once or twice a week and kayaking(white water) on some of the weekends.

irascible11 anni fa

gamechangr11 anni fa

I sleep six hours and drink one cup of coffee about 2pm. I have monitored my coffee intake for three years. I average 5.4 a week or ( 1 cup a day most workdays)

I should mention that I run 4-5 times a week in the morning.

mod11 anni fa

I don't function on 5 hours of sleep.

I work at home, and with 5 hours of sleep I'll literally just fall asleep at my desk.

I need 7-9 hours, and probably average 8.5.

I really wish I only needed 5, though.

kat11 anni fa

I need somewhere between 7-8 hours of sleep. I don't drink coffee and I exercise 3 times a week. I find sleep matters more in the long run. I can function on 6 hours, but after a few months I'm burned out and I end up catching whatever cold/flu is going around.

Rainymood11 anni fa

Sleep is important. Like really important. You can be 'cool' and play 'rockstar programmer' for a couple of nights, but it will have some negative impact on your long term productivity.

That being said, I too, have had some epiphanies at 4 am ... I average around 7-8, I wish I could get a steady 8.5+ but my body just won't budge. Guess I'm stuck with 8 hours :)

staunch11 anni fa

Sleep is the only magic brain regeneration mechanism that exists. Every other option is drastically less effective at improving long-term and consistent productivity.

sheepmullet11 anni fa

9.5 hours on average. Skipping out on sleep in order to get more done only works as a very short term strategy (effective for less than 2 weeks IMO, and even then only for grunt-like work).