Employee productivity in the industry

You know of all these people that pitch their ideas to investors and do start ups, or even just big name places. Well, I’m confused, though I also haven’t worked in a firm yet, but what do programming engineers, designers, etc do to keep themselves busy?

I mean, there’s work towards getting a product done, of course. But, when the work is done and the bugs are gone (or almost so), is it just more ideas and projects presented? The reason I ask is because I have an idea and would like to get it out there and such. However, I’m trying to grasp what duties, when a main project is done, a engineer does that keeps a paycheck.

I do know people come up with ideas and more to do, but sometimes there’s a certain limit to what you can push where you might not have an ideas for a while. Then what? Maybe I’m underestimating the amount of time it takes to program and even forgetting a polishing stage to make things more efficient. So, I’m just curious really about routine.

That said, Windows Calculator is definitely done, Notepad is done. It just depends on how far you want to progress a project. You can still have a completion point if you want. It’s just better to continue development and get more money with future releases. The more people use something, the more features are requested. The flip side to that is you add too much and create something useless (by trying to be too much), that’s when people start using something else.

I disagree that Calculator or Notepad are done, in face, Windows 7 brought a bunch of new updates to the calculator so it obviously can’t have been the final evolution. The latest version has programmer and statistics calculation pads, a history panel (very useful), unit and date converters plus a bunch of worksheets. As for Notepad, it would be useful if Microsoft could allow the status bar to be visible without needing word wrap disabled! While I agree that projects can go beyond a sensible scope, it’s more about the implementation than the ultimate “bloatworthyness” qualification of the final solution! :slight_smile:

exactly, if you look at a successful online venture like Facebook or Amazon, it is always tweaking the design, planning new features or changing the design of the pages.

All these need careful planning and implementation and are all done on a test server first before beta release and eventual public release.

Technically yes and I suppose I wasn’t keeping in mind the fact that during development, more feature ideas/etc come up. So while they work, their future work is being planned.

Software is never “done”.

There is always going to be bug fixes, patches, updates, new features to be developed, etc…