[HN Gopher] Always Do Extra
___________________________________________________________________
Always Do Extra
Author : whoisnnamdi
Score : 61 points
Date : 2021-10-13 19:50 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bennorthrop.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bennorthrop.com)
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| > Assume there's a reasonable amount of work you need to do to
| fulfill the base expectations for your job (i.e. your Normal
| Work) and then there's a little time left over.
|
| In my experience "a little time left over" is usually not enough
| time to bring meaningful "extra" work to the table. If I'm going
| to bring in something new and useful, and also be able to sell it
| to my team, then it's hours of research, testing, and convincing.
| knowingathing wrote:
| Fantastic article. As a UI designer, I feel like the little bit
| of "Extra" work that I've done in my career has paid off
| extremely well.
|
| Of course, you need a manager who understands the intent behind
| your Extra work is that it is mutually beneficial and that you
| strike more than you miss when doing that Extra work. If these
| fall into place, you'll be treated with more respect and will be
| given more autonomy which further encourages you to do what is
| right both for yourself and the company you work for.
|
| That's been my experience in my relatively young career (7-8
| years). This article sums up this concept really well.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| ok, so the new tv show I'm pitching will be The Always Do Extra
| Person working with Gavin from Time Millionaires
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28849950
|
| how will these two wacky characters play off each other I wonder!
|
| on edit: added in wacky characters.
| eBombzor wrote:
| Good message, but not hot on the phrasing. Should've said "always
| try finding better ways of doing things", where 'better' means
| less time, less future maintenance, more aligned with overall
| business goals, etc.
| bob1029 wrote:
| In my opinion, doing "extra" as described here is precisely how
| one can grow into the maligned 10x developer. I promise no one
| starts out with that kind of mastery.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Interesting article. Autonomy (or at least a smattering of it) is
| definitely key to staying engaged at work.
|
| But I would say that actually those types of research that he
| mentions are often pretty important aspects of the engineering.
| And even further, initiatives for new technical approaches or
| even new features can also be quite important if the project is
| going to stay up to date and really tackle core technical or
| business challenges in a robust way.
|
| The degree that autonomy seems "extra" rather than normal in the
| job may be a bad sign.
| rm445 wrote:
| Really interesting article about enabling longevity and success
| as a software developer, but it matches my view on all kinds of
| skilled work: whatever your employment arrangement, treat
| yourself as an old-fashioned professional.
|
| Like a doctor or barrister, more tied to your profession than to
| one job. You need to be effective in your role, build your
| reputation by demonstrating your skills are beyond the bare
| minimum, and continually develop yourself as you go along.
| Ideally you get lots of win-wins: your 'extra' is a win for the
| company in the long run, and you come out of it a little wiser,
| and over time you're more effective due to the effects of past
| 'extra'. The benefits of these win-wins can be pretty intangible,
| but they do build up over time.
| IanCal wrote:
| > In the end, I hope it's clear that I'm not arguing that we
| neglect our Normal Work.
|
| But you are. Choosing extra is choosing to ignore the prioritised
| work for something you want to do instead.
|
| Just because the estimate was too low this week doesn't suddenly
| mean there's no more work.
|
| While I think what they describe as Extra is valuable, I think
| there are reasonable paths to it:
|
| * Get paid by the project, not the hours. Then the time is yours.
|
| * Get buy-in to spend a reasonable amount of time doing "extra"
| things.
|
| The latter has the obvious benefit of not only happening when
| people estimate things wrong.
| ksvarma wrote:
| This is absolutely valuable on small teams and I repeatedly have
| seen people on engineering and product do extra (not only on own
| team, but helping others) and there is this terrific positive
| environment every time we interacted with cross-domain teams.
| Overall a win.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Never do more. Never do extra. Always do less.
|
| Still homeworking? I recommend playing the piano for the rest of
| the week after you finished your properly overestimated tickets.
| Any other instrument will do. You can also cook one new dish a
| day, work out or learn any other new hobby! Feeling uninspired?
| Just clean, do a spa day or watch tv.
|
| Trapped at work? Read a book! You could also try audio books if
| reading isn't your thing.
|
| It's important to always overestimate tasks and blow them out of
| proportion. Have careful conversations with team members to
| encourage them to overestimate and teach them this skill. Keep
| 10x rockstar developers out of the team, if at all possible. Be
| an inspiring leader to help manage the worklife balance of your
| teammates!
|
| Never forget to prepare something to say in the standup for every
| day. Do more work at the beginning of the week.
|
| You will pick up new skills this way and have lots of things to
| talk about.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Sixteen years in and I agree with the definition of extra but I
| do that in the bracket of normal work. As in I do the 'extra'
| stuff and take time out of my working day to do it.
|
| I'm honestly not convinced it has much to do with developer
| longevity though.
| otikik wrote:
| I gotta wonder how long these people's backlog is.
|
| I do the thing until it is good enough (which sometimes is less
| done than initially requested) and then move on to another thing
| from the pile if I have time. Or I will answer support questions,
| or review pending pull requests.
|
| "Extra" sounds a bit like "gold plating".
| melvinmt wrote:
| > Doing More would be completing those two screens and then
| taking on a third screen that's just like it. Yes, this would
| help move the project along faster and make your manager happy,
| and that's great, but in the long-run, More doesn't give you
| much.
|
| Always doing Extra (and not being appreciated for it) is a great
| recipe for Burnout.
| simorley wrote:
| Wrong. Business is about relationships. Be competent and do what
| is minimally required. Do extra networking or befriending your
| manager/boss/etc.
|
| People who get ahead build relationships. The slaves stick around
| to do the extra work.
|
| Competence + relationship > competence + extra work
|
| It's so funny how all the business advice is about how to be a
| good slave rather than what really gets you ahead.
| Shadonototra wrote:
| Well said!
| mjfl wrote:
| What about competence + relationship + hard work? Establishing
| relationships can be a part of work, and also hard work can be
| relationship building with a boss, who can then promote you...
| However, I share your aversion to being "a slave" and I also
| don't like to work for other people. But the only solution
| seems to be to work for yourself, which requires hard work just
| to survive. I thus feel like to satisfy the requirement of "no
| hard work" while working for someone else (because working for
| yourself is hard), requires the seeking of a position which is
| highly political and not really outcome dependent (otherwise
| your soon to be boss will have more incentive to filter you
| out), which sounds like the formula for some kind of
| bureaucratic cancerous cyst inside of a company, tbh. Which is
| something you would ideally not want to be a part of.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| > It's so funny how all the business advice is about how to be
| a good slave rather than what really gets you ahead.
|
| This is almost literally the opposite of what the article is
| advocating.
|
| The author is suggesting that should you complete the work
| required of you then you should spend any spare time you might
| have on things that benefit _you_ rather than necessarily
| benefiting your employer. The author spends the first half of
| the article explicitly distinguishing this from doing
| additional, unrequested work that contributes obvious business
| value. The caveats the author provides are to encourage people
| to do this in a way that isn't going to get them into trouble,
| pretty much.
|
| Relationship building for engineers nearly always happens
| outside of the context of the actual work, so I don't think
| that's particularly relevant.
| akarki15 wrote:
| i agree that going off-roads from the main task is useful but i
| disagree with the way the author is suggesting to do it.
|
| > Assume there's a reasonable amount of work you need to do to
| fulfill the base expectations for your job (i.e. your Normal
| Work) and then there's a little time left over. (I know some may
| argue this "left-over time" thing, but just go with me)
|
| this assumption fails at a lot of companies, especially smaller
| startups. with tight sprints and PMs breathing down your necks to
| get every ounce of work out, there is no "left-over" time. a lot
| of people who choose to do "extra" are in reality taking time
| from what would be family/friends/leisure time. i'd take being a
| mediocre dev than sacrificing my personal time.
|
| i have found things at FANG company to be different tho- they
| don't use sprints and as such I can set my expectations so that I
| can have my "extra time" during company time.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| I think the author's point is "if you have leftover time, do
| this" not "everyone has leftover time."
| p2t2p wrote:
| Not unless I'm getting paid or recognised in some other way for
| going extra mile.
|
| More often than not no one (bug some rare customer probably)
| gives a damn about you going extra mile. Often it is actually
| punished, not directly but I've had plenty of examples when
| people instead of doing extra ventured into doing some fun shit
| for other teams and uh-oh, cross-team impact, here's your
| promotion while your actual team is struggling to get right the
| boring but actually money bringing stuff.
|
| So no, money first please.
| darioush wrote:
| :) There will be recognition if you perform tasks that
| continually uplevels your team. There is only so many buttons
| one can push in a day (doing more). What the author calls
| "Extra" is often called "Glue" work (think improving test
| coverage or isolation, creating a bank of interview questions,
| improving onboarding documents).
|
| If you ask for "money first", response will often be "IDK,
| we're not too sure about that". If you improve the
| organization, there will be money & promotions. There will be a
| gap in this reward.
| pydry wrote:
| While ideal and even natural, I often find that "normal work"
| usually comes in such fits and starts that it typically make this
| approach difficult or even impossible.
|
| The most recent time when I had plenty of time and few "normal"
| stories on my hands there was no normal work to align the extra
| to. This wasn't as much fun as I thought it'd be. It led to some
| rather out there "extra" work (from the whole team) that ended up
| being rather pointless.
|
| There have been a few exceptions where I had really good product
| managers that ensured a steady work stream that made this
| possible. Indeed, I found that if the worksteam was steady, it
| seemed like the _obvious_ thing to do.
| humbleMouse wrote:
| I can't stand working with people like the OP. He probably sat
| front row in every class and raised his hand for every teacher's
| question too. Cringey, unprofessional... brainwashed. People like
| OP need to go for a walk outside instead of doing more work.
| nahnahno wrote:
| I completely disagree - do enough, or failing that, nothing. That
| is enough to solve the well-defined problems.
|
| Giving extra to your employer for the same money is a recipe for
| exploitation. Additionally, "extra" tasks are less defined and
| therefore more likely to be wasted effort.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| This comment does not make sense as a rebuttal to the article.
|
| The author is arguing that you should use spare time you have
| after doing "enough" on things that enrich, educate, and grow
| yourself instead of simply doing more of your "normal" work.
| They state very clearly that they think you should not do
| additional work items that provide clear value to the business.
| They are saying you should give extra to yourself, not your
| employer.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > It's never something we need to hide, but instead it's
| something we're eager to share with our teams - ala "hey, I did
| some research on X, and maybe this is something that could be
| valuable for us to try".
|
| I'll give good odds that in most shops, if you pull this line
| more than a couple of times, your management chain is going to
| decide you aren't picking up enough work in sprint planning...
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| I think the author needs to elaborate more on "extra". I've
| been on both sides and I know what Ben is referring to.
|
| This isn't about showing off so that your boss thinks you're
| not busy. I think OP is trying to encourage people to _care_
| about their job to the point where they want to do it better.
|
| I think what he means is: doing _extra_ is insurance. It is
| knowing your job more than just punching a clock and getting
| the sprint done before going home and drinking. It is engaging
| in your task deeply so that you can do it better, whether that
| means architecting defensively, or being more nimble when
| something blows up because you went one step further and know
| it better.
|
| I've had programmers that look at their sprints, see they have
| to do Task A, B and C, and do _exactly_ tasks A, B and C. No
| more, no less. That 's fine. That's better than doing task A
| and being overwhelmed (or whiny).
|
| But some programmers do A, B and C and then look it meta-task D
| that is a "why A B and C?" task. They then see those tasks in a
| more holistic fashion.
|
| No one ASKED them to do that. They took the initiative.
|
| Those folks get promoted.
|
| No one gets promoted from doing A, B and C and that's it.
| That's called status quo, or simply, "Doing your job." That's
| why your paycheck clears.
|
| Sorry, but that's how it works.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > I'll give good odds that in most shops, if you pull this line
| more than a couple of times, your management chain is going to
| decide you aren't picking up enough work in sprint planning...
|
| If planning is very top/heavy and ticket centered, that's a red
| flag for the organization.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| > your management chain is going to decide you aren't picking
| up enough work in sprint planning
|
| A trivial workaround: "hey team, a month ago I did some
| research on X, and maybe this is something that could be
| valuable for us to try". It's mathematically the same, but
| shhh.
|
| You don't need to lie. It's actually better to reflect for some
| days on any new research.
| abraae wrote:
| That will work well .... for a month.
| User23 wrote:
| It's been done. In one of his books Feynman describes how
| the scientists on the Manhattan project would "estimate"
| their results as what they had accomplished in the prior
| quarter. It's a bit messy to get it started, but once
| you've got a cadence you can always maintain that three
| months of buffer.
|
| Edit: Now I'm thinking about what kind of tooling I'd want
| to make the process seamless.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| It depends. "Let's change to <new JS framework for no reason>"
| is annoying. But if you do a little more research and reframe
| the problem to make it simpler, that's just good senior dev
| work.
|
| Understanding the problem and finding what the business really
| needs instead of diving in.
| IanCal wrote:
| That sounds like normal work to me. Identify business value,
| communicate, prioritise, build.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| That's actually a great point and a downside to extra work.
| Maybe the middle ground would be to do extra work for fun and
| not bring it up, or just finish work early and work on
| something altogether separate on the side?
| handrous wrote:
| Do extra work, and do present it, but pretend it only took 30
| minutes when it actually took five hours.
|
| Congrats, now you get credit for the extra work _and_ you 're
| a "10x rockstar".
| vkou wrote:
| Yes, and the next time a 50-hour task comes up, they'll
| expect you to do it by tomorrow.
|
| The problem with faking your way into being a 10x rockstar
| is that expectations grow faster than compensation. The
| other problem is that if you can't sustain the pace, you're
| going to burn out and your life will be utter crap.
| taneq wrote:
| Either I, too, faked my way into being a 10x rockstar, or
| expectations always grow faster than compensation.
| vkou wrote:
| > expectations always grow faster than compensation
|
| They always do, especially if you never switch jobs, but
| there's no need to unsustainably accelerate this process.
|
| Do good work, don't burn out, get paid. Keep things
| simple.
| handrous wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you're supposed to catapult into doing
| training and speaking stuff, and "leadership" roles that
| have you writing blog posts and attending meetings all
| day while taking credit for what your team is doing,
| after faking your way to a "10x" reputation.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Does anybody have good examples of 'extra' work they've done? I
| agree with the author's assertion that doing extra benefits one a
| lot more than baseline or more work. It's essentially a way to
| inject creativity and studying into one's normal work, as opposed
| to just flat-out working on a different project or straight up
| studying documentation. That comes with the benefit of being able
| to show it off in various ways that studying or a side project
| don't offer (value add, taking ownership, etc).
|
| However one thing that I find challenging about the idea is what
| to do. I know that kind of comes down to asking "how to be
| creative", but if anyone has concrete examples of the kind of
| 'extra' work the author describes, that would be helpful as a
| model to use.
| oneepic wrote:
| On the topic of 'looking around for potential
| improvements/optimizations': I pretty much eliminated my team's
| several-GB memory spikes we got from time to time. We all knew
| they were a problem from our dashboards, but no one
| investigated it, or wrote a ticket for ourselves. I felt
| curious one day during some downtime @ work, checked logs,
| debugged locally, and submitted a tiny patch with pictures of
| the memory savings during a single test run.
| Cerium wrote:
| Here is one recent example: My project was to write a script to
| support a mechanical engineer in life testing some buttons that
| I interfaced with. The script development went faster than I
| expected, so with my "extra" time I decided to learn how to use
| a new testing technique on the project.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| A lot of my time as an entry level engineer at a FAANG was
| doing "extra" work.
|
| It included:
|
| * Migrating our applications from Java 8 -> Java 11.
|
| * Identifying that our fleet was way over provisioned and then
| downscaling leading to a _huge_ reduction in infra cost.
|
| * Refactor our infrastructure-as-code package to be more
| maintainable.
|
| Most of those things were useful but not prioritized. I found
| them interesting or worthwhile, so I took the initiative and
| drove them to completion. Most of these tasks were on the
| timescale of months on the side from my assigned work. I didn't
| overwork myself to do this -- I very rarely worked more than 8
| hours a day.
| rtikulit wrote:
| I was developing designs in a complex problem domain, and I
| spent some time prototyping an ontology and inference thing to
| automate part of the design work. Didn't work out -- my time
| box circuit-breaker triggered -- but it helped clarify aspects
| of the problem domain in my head. I would say my "extra"
| compulsion over decades has enriched my career hugely, for both
| me and my employers.
| glic3rinu wrote:
| Building on the web form example given by the author, there is
| a lot of _extra_ that one could do: Improve the design, improve
| user experience, improve performance, format /cleanup the code,
| add some extra features, add flags to enable alternative
| behaviour ...
| dkarl wrote:
| Oh, God. This sums up one of my coworkers. Smart, productive,
| generates lots of LOC that almost always do the right thing, but
| oh my God, the "Extra." Dig into any of his code and you'll
| always find something Extra, like the front end is built in
| SomeObscureLanguage.js, or the business logic is expressed in a
| custom DSL implemented by macros, or some piece of the app seems
| to be mysteriously absent, until you discover it's injected via a
| custom plugin for the build tool.
|
| Everything he does can be theoretically justified by DRY or some
| other principle of software engineering (it's almost always DRY,
| and when it isn't, it's type safety) but the payoff for the extra
| complexity is always an order of magnitude away. Like, the custom
| build plugin would make sense if we had a bunch of apps that were
| structured the same way, but we only have one. The custom DSL for
| the business rules would make sense if there were a hundred
| rules, but there are only a dozen or so. Using
| SomeObscureLanguage.js might theoretically (for the sake of
| argument) give us an edge that would be worth it if this were one
| of our reputation-critical consumer UIs supported by dedicated
| team, but it's an internal tool, and the bugs never get fixed
| because there's only one person who knows SomeObscureLanguage.js,
| and he's always doing something more Important.
|
| I don't disagree with the article. Extra will distinguish you
| more than More, and if done right, it can speed up your team.
| Just be sure that all the Extra you do makes your teammates Extra
| productive, and that you aren't adding Extra burdens that slow
| everybody down and make software development Extra responsible
| for the slow pace of launching products for new markets.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Have you considered he just might be prepping for his next job?
|
| How's the pay/option package at your current place?
| detcader wrote:
| Justifying coding choices using a single SE principle ignores
| the others you have to weigh it against. Everything is a trade-
| off, or else the code could just write itself!
| pedalpete wrote:
| I feel like the people who do "extra", never feel like they're
| doing extra, they feel like that is part of the job.
|
| The example of "creating two screens", you make the screens, and
| then look at them and think...is this the best I can do? Is there
| a better way to protect the security? Is there a way I can reduce
| the boilerplate? Can I refine this so it's easier for somebody
| else to maintain later?
|
| That's the job, as far as I'm concerned. It's the same in many
| other professions.
|
| I like Ryan Holidays perspective on this in Perennial Seller. As
| a writer, you're not done when you write the chapter. That's the
| start, now you've got editing, and re-writes, promotion,
| sales...that's the work.
| oneepic wrote:
| If you follow this path, I think it's important to remind
| yourself that you're doing extra, otherwise you might just
| forget that that's one thing that separates you from many of
| your peers. It can be an important point of pride and
| continuing growth.
| Hokusai wrote:
| So, learn on the job. Why we do not have the same learning time
| that doctors. Time to learn, time to go to conferences, time to
| share knowledge with colleagues.
|
| Study at home makes no sense if society expects people to have
| children and educate them, or just to not burn out and leave the
| field for good.
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(page generated 2021-10-13 23:01 UTC)