[HN Gopher] How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's g...
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How to feel engaged at work: a software engineer's guide
Author : ntide
Score : 246 points
Date : 2022-05-18 11:25 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jasont.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (jasont.co)
| bradlys wrote:
| To me - this article reads a lot like pure copium. This is the
| advice from a selfish manager who refuses to invest in their
| employees and instead tries to be extremely transactional and
| harvest as much as they can before PIPing them and managing them
| out.
|
| Engagement is almost entirely dictated by your employer - not the
| employee. You need a good manager, good team, and decent work to
| stay engaged.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I found this to be an incredibly depressing article. It boiled
| down to, "think about pleasant things that aren't work." For
| example,
|
| > Pick an activity that you've always wanted to try. Don't have
| ideas? Try Wikipedia for a good list of hobbies
|
| I already have plenty of hobbies, and I'd rather work on any of
| them than be at work!
|
| I've always been very self-motivated. I want to work on what I
| want to work on. Being forced to work on things that I don't care
| about in order to draw a salary sucks, and no amount of
|
| > Schedule a 30-minute time block to freely jot down questions
| that spark your curiosity as an engineer. (They don't have to be
| about work.)
|
| is going to change that. If anything, it makes it worse because
| now I would rather be investigating those questions than working!
| scrumbledober wrote:
| i need to purposefully avoid thinking about my hobbies at work
| or i'll get too distracted daydreaming
| [deleted]
| smashface wrote:
| Perhaps not depressing but certainly unhelpful. If I'm spend
| time thinking about other more interesting stuff, I tend to get
| sucked into those things. Which just means I've got zero focus
| on stuff I need to get done.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| In the beginning of a career, I can respect some of the choices
| mentioned in the article. But to be able to stick around in the
| biz you must work with something that feels meaningful.
|
| I wish I realized earlier that changing job is no big thing.
| Even though one should do it for the right reasons. Once you
| feel like you are dying inside at a workplace it is not like a
| hobby will fix that.
| jebarker wrote:
| I thought point 2 addressed engagement well. If you can get
| behind the purpose of the whole company, then understanding why
| your particular cog is important to the machine will help keep
| you engaged.
| zrail wrote:
| My spouse and I do this occasionally, where we pick a
| business off the street that we're walking by and think about
| how they make money.
|
| I think it can work for a small business where you can hold
| the whole thing in your head. It's _much_ harder when you're
| thinking about a multi-thousand-person enterprise with a
| dozen product lines.
| NAHWheatCracker wrote:
| These were my thoughts as well. The article has nothing to say
| about being engaged at work. It's all non-work suggestions.
|
| The best interpretation I could infer was that if you are
| engaged outside work, you'll be able to be more engaged at
| work?
|
| My feelings about cause-and-effect are the opposite. When I'm
| disengaged at work, I'm less engaged outside of work. I'll try
| to do hobbies and stuff outside of work but it makes the
| contrast more drastic, which makes work less bearable.
| [deleted]
| lupire wrote:
| Hypnosis worked for Peter Gibbons.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| These things are always a little funny for me, I'm just a
| longtime wannabe dev and the thing that makes me disengaged in my
| jobs is just wanting to code all the time. I guess the grass is
| always greener.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > make time to be curious.
|
| This is kinda dangerous advice, because I've been involved in
| countless CRUD apps where the developers were bored and made
| things more interesting for themselves; NoSQL databases,
| difficult programming languages like Scala, microservices, CQRS,
| infrastructure-as-code that was never used in practice (it was
| wishful-thinking-as-code), home-rolled frameworks (one involved
| the CTO / lead developer to basically work from home and stay
| underwater for six months before coming out with a C# framework;
| it was just e-commerce that used a 3rd party to do all the heavy
| lifting), etc.
|
| Heed the magpie developer. Choose boring technology. Eat the shit
| sandwich or move on if you think CRUD is beneath you.
| astura wrote:
| I had a sudden realization that this is currently the biggest
| problem in "tech" after reading this hacker news comment -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25968087
|
| Somehow we have an industry of people who believe that work
| needs to be a source of personal entertainment instead of, you
| know, work.
|
| Expectations need to change. Imagine if other occupations were
| like this? You hire a plumber to fix a clog and they spend the
| entire day on fastening some custom device because they felt
| that using a drain snake was just too boring.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| I wonder if a plain old CRUD app in a fill-in-the-blanks
| framework really is the best kind of job for a developer. I'd
| like to try it at least once in my career and see if there is
| any truth to it.
|
| It would also be nice to have a job solving interesting
| computer science problems, like building compilers, tools,
| optimisation systems, etc. But that's unlikely unless you're
| actually a genius, or at least an accomplished academic, but
| some of the things you have to do to get ahead in academia seem
| even more demeaning than writing CRUD apps.
|
| Instead every single job in my career has been the mess that
| you describe, and I'm starting to lose hope that there is
| anything other than it in this industry. I think it's the
| absolute worst of both worlds. You're solving completely
| trivial problems, but you're forced to do it in the most
| convoluted way possible. You sit all day racking your brain
| under maximum cognitive load trying to accomplish something so
| trivial and mundane that every single fill-in-the-blanks
| framework already does for you out of the box.
| kerblang wrote:
| This is reasonable advice but it carries the assumption that
| "simplest is easiest". _It is in hindsight._ People sometimes
| say "It's easy to make a complicated solution for a simple
| problem, but not the other way around," and it's painfully
| true, as Rube Goldberg noticed. But of course that means we
| actually have a real challenge if we get our priorities
| straight.
|
| There are still tedious/repetitive things that come up, though,
| and if the repetition is bad enough, then there are
| opportunities to do something clever... But again: Can it be
| done simply enough to make it worthwhile? Another challenge.
|
| And sometimes you just gotta do the dirty work dirty, and hang
| in there. Admittedly that is part of any job done well, in the
| long run.
| nixlim wrote:
| 100% agree and can relate. Part of our "estate" is exactly that
| type of a project - all that was required was a CRUD app, what
| we got and have to maintain is an app written in functional
| style written with 3 layered frameworks using Hexagonal
| Architecture. In answer to the question "Why?", the response
| was - "We were bored."
| novakinblood wrote:
| Why did I read this as "How to feel enraged at work"? Complacency
| modification?
| EddieDante wrote:
| Why would I want to be engaged at work? I just want to do my job
| and get paid. I think that expecting emotional fulfillment or
| meaning from my job is a trap, a way to con me into working more
| while accepting less pay than I deserve.
|
| Work won't love me back, so why should I love my work? I lost
| interest in unrequited love back in high school when I outgrew my
| Young Werther phase.
| bsedlm wrote:
| but I want my work to be engaging...
|
| it seems like I want this out of an existencial instict; one
| which the modern world has completely disregarded.
|
| I want it, but I know (and I agree with your stance) that I
| will not find it in any "industry" work; academic work, on the
| other hand, does rely on this kind of self-motivated engagement
| much more than industry but has other problems.
| EddieDante wrote:
| > it seems like I want this out of an existencial instict;
| one which the modern world has completely disregarded.
|
| Has the modern world completely disregarded this existential
| need, or have capitalists weaponized it against workers?
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _Why would I want to be engaged at work? I just want to do
| my job and get paid._ "
|
| Because a career spans 40-50 years of being employed in one's
| profession. As the slow but steady stream of Ask HN's that boil
| down to "How do I get out of the software industry?" highlight,
| one pretty must has to derive at least some minimal enjoyment
| of their profession to help avoid becoming jaded or burnt out.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Burning Man taught me an important lesson about expectations and
| satisfaction. You can't go to Burning Man and expect everybody
| else to give you a good time all the time, or you can end up
| bored, bummed out, and alone in a crowd. If you want a fun time,
| bring it with you. Don't spectate, participate.
|
| Give yourself a small purpose and spend some of your work day on
| it. Make it something that feels rewarding. Remember, 1/3 of your
| life is spent at work.
|
| Maybe you only want to focus on the technical. That doesn't mean
| only becoming an expert in one domain, but also pulling in
| knowledge from other domains for perspective and inspiration.
| Maybe you learn how the operating system works, or embedded
| design. Maybe learn how car ECUs work. Maybe in learning about
| cars you notice different companies make different designs,
| decisions, priorities, leading to different outcomes. Maybe you
| learn about NUMMI and the Toyota Production System. Then maybe
| you hear tech buzzwords that come from Toyota and find out how
| they're related. Then maybe you take all those non-technical
| ideas back into your technical work.
|
| If you like to solve problems, you don't have to stop at
| technical ones. You can work on organizational problems,
| financial problems, logistical problems, communication problems,
| architectural problems. There's a million problems outside your
| domain of expertise, and you can learn about _all_ of them. Your
| biggest problem is an overabundance of choice.
|
| If you like to help people, you don't have to help just your
| immediate team. You can look at other teams and see if they need
| help. Maybe not even business help, but personal help. Maybe
| you'd like to join an employee resource group, or organize one;
| or a charity bake sale, or a hackathon. Or work on convincing
| your job to have a donation matching program, or finding a local
| charity to reinvest some percentage of profit into, or convincing
| execs to give everyone the day off on election day.
| posharma wrote:
| Why is someone's name humorous? The name Mr. Tu is humorous to
| the author of the post. I find this mildly insulting.
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| Because the author's name is "Jason Tu". That's what they said
| "no relation".
| posharma wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying. Didn't notice that.
| mertnesvat wrote:
| I liked the article and the wikipedia page for hobbies is very
| interesting, I've found some gems...
|
| - Magnet Fishing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_fishing)
|
| - Binge watching ( didn't know it can be called as a hobby -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binge-watching )
|
| - Constructing languages (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language )
|
| - Tea bag collecting ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_bag )
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| +1 for constructed languages. Fascinating hobby. I've dabbled
| myself.
|
| Bonus: Tolkien would approve.
| kqr wrote:
| Another way to do this that isn't about escaping from your boring
| work is... well, making your work more interesting.
|
| Have a good idea? Coordinate with the right people and go for it.
| Even if nobody asked you to.
|
| You should never feel like you need someone's authorisation to do
| a good job.
|
| Becoming free anywhere, even within one's regular work, is not
| about asking for freedom -- it's about insisting to act as if one
| is already free.
|
| Or, as Grace Hopper put it, "it's far easier to ask for
| forgiveness than for permission."
|
| ----
|
| Sometimes this will lead to wonderful things.
|
| Sometimes, sure, this will get you into a mess, but honestly,
| weren't you sort of already? Spending a 25 % of your life
| somewhere you are unable to engage is messed up.
| imbnwa wrote:
| This is what I try to do, but at the org I work for there's a
| low key assumption that Devs are too stupid to do anything but
| what can be implemented in a sprint, no matter the complexity
| of the problem (which obviously leads to poor engineering
| outcomes). Teams are criticized when there're no 0-burndowns by
| people upstairs so everyone adapted by vastly simplifying
| solutions/work to fit that expectation.
| chomp wrote:
| > Why do web applications have no sound?
|
| Collective trauma in the current web application-building cohort
| from the dark days of the 90s/00s?
| [deleted]
| alfor wrote:
| 99% of effort is wasted. (Naval)
|
| This is especially true with code where the cost of replication
| is zero.
|
| Most company goes out of business, most programming project don't
| get completed or get unused by the actual customer.
|
| In a large company it's even worse as you are far from the user
| and the chance that what you work on is unused get through the
| roof.
|
| But there is a tiny chance that what you do become massively
| useful (http, bitcoin, etc)
| sinenomine wrote:
| My earlier advice continues being relevant:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25509941
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| That was a nice read.
| sharemywin wrote:
| This article was actually interesting.
| jcadam wrote:
| My level of engagement is directly proportional to the pay.
| Wistar wrote:
| I misread this as "How to feel enraged at work," and thought that
| I really didn't need any guidance.
| tstrimple wrote:
| I know that this wasn't the point of the article, but please
| don't ever do this.
|
| > Why do web applications have no sound? Why can't we make boring
| internal tools come to life with sound, in the same way that UI
| on a Nintendo Switch pops and clicks and whistles?
| dairylee wrote:
| Sound can work well on the web[1], as long as it isn't over the
| top, there's no reason it couldn't be used more.
|
| I've been considering adding some sounds[2] to the project I'm
| working on.
|
| 1: https://www.joshwcomeau.com/react/announcing-use-sound-
| react... 2: https://github.com/snd-lib/snd-lib
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| If you add sounds to anything on the web, please, _please_ ,
| make a top-level, easily identifiable mute button.
| twblalock wrote:
| And mute the sound by default!
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Eh. These all seem fine. My route? I work less. I have a typical
| 9-5 but 1-2 days a week I leave a little early and go to do
| something engaging. Never when I have meetings. Never when I have
| deadlines. Never when someone is waiting on something from me.
|
| But I, and I suspect most engineers, have the capacity to get my
| work done for a week in less than 40 hours. I used to spend time
| dicking off on my computer to fill the time. Now I don't. I go do
| something I want to do.
|
| I find that I'm much more engaged in my work because I am
| actually using all my time to get things done. I'm not watching
| the clock till its time to leave for the day.
|
| I'll probably get hate for this but its incredibly sustainable
| since I'm not working at a start up anymore. I suspect whenever I
| take on another job search I'll only consider 4 day work weeks
| since that's similar to what I'm doing now.
| bezospen15 wrote:
| Same, I get all my work done in 4 hours a week. The rest is
| "me" time and chores
| dilyevsky wrote:
| I think Randy Pausch wrote this in his books that once he got
| family he naturally got more productive during business hours
| since he just wanted to get all that stuff done and go spend
| time with his family
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Is your manager just next level laid back? I feel like most
| places are going to notice and be bothered seeing the yellow
| circle on your Teams or Slack status consistently for long
| periods of time.
| huehehue wrote:
| As a manager - my work habits look pretty similar. If you
| don't trust your peers or reports, such that you need to
| monitor the specific hours they're doing asynchronous/solo
| work, then that's a problem.
|
| The challenge is actually getting people to take advantage of
| this. I work with folks who default to overworking, so I have
| to be pretty insistent that they take time for themselves.
| b3morales wrote:
| I currently have a manager like you and honestly this is
| worth a lot. It's basically part of my compensation, almost
| like being paid in _time_.
|
| The peace of mind that comes with knowing that when I say
| "Hey, sorry, I need to take Wednesday off" the reply will
| be "Hope you've got something fun planned!" instead of the
| likes of "Hmm, well, we were ahead last sprint so if we
| slip this one it's okay" is incalculable. (I probably don't
| have something fun planned, but the sentiment is
| appreciated.)
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yup. I've left most jobs in the past because of a bad to
| okay manager. I've stayed at jobs that honestly I should
| have left sooner because of great managers.
|
| Good managers help you improve your skills, give you
| meaningful feedback, facilitate work getting done, and
| get out of your way.
| z3c0 wrote:
| Mouse jigglers are quite liberating.
| dijonman2 wrote:
| I use it as a recruiting tool. I can't compete with FAANG
| salaries so one thing I do is make it clear performance
| objectives are accomplishment based not time based.
|
| Most of the time my team has a good work life balance. They
| will all buckle up if shit hits the fan then we go back into
| normal mode.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Totally. Right now we have a few tickets in the sprint that
| have hard deadlines. I'm actually excited to work on them
| because its a bit of a challenge. Most of our tickets, like
| most tickets regardless of if people want to admit it or
| not, don't have hard deadlines so we can actually get
| things done in a reasonable timeframe.
|
| I don't think there is a single thing that helps retention
| better than WLB. Comp is a close second but someone will
| always pay better that you. You cant win that battle. WLB
| is hard to screen for while interviewing so when you find
| it you are less likely to take a chance on losing it by
| taking a new job.
| ornornor wrote:
| I worked at a place where they watched the im dot color to
| decide whether people were working or not, including
| expecting you to answer voice calls on the first three rings
| every time. This place was brain dead. I had to teach people
| not to call me or not to expect me to pick up, and I built a
| USB hardware mouse emulator that would move th cursor a
| couple px left and right while perfectly enumerating as the
| company's standard issue mouse.
|
| This place was hands down the worst place I've worked at.
| Nothing was ever getting done, everyone was running with
| their hair on fire constantly, it was hell. But managers paid
| a lot of attention to the color of the IM dot instead of, you
| know, fixing actual problems.
|
| Fuck this place. I don't miss it. I hope it gets run into the
| ground by the multiple layers of incompetents at the helm.
| But it's unlikely, their customers are in a regulated,
| captive market.
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| If managers are spending their days watching the color of the
| circles next to their team member's names, maybe the managers
| need more work to do in order to "stay engaged" at work.
|
| Of all the bad heuristics for trying to determine whether
| someone is being productive, this has to be near the bottom
| of the list. It's the digital equivalent of measuring
| engineer productivity by looking around the room and seeing
| who is at their desk. Except that it can be trivially gamed
| by a simple mouse jiggler script.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Totally agree but from a SWE perspective on any kind of
| Agile/Scrum team I think the expectation is usually that
| you pick up another task if you finish early and there's
| still time during a sprint for example.
|
| This also obviously breeds other bad incentives i.e. the
| faster you work the more work you get.
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| It might be time to start looking for a team with a
| better work culture. There are many of them.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| I am definitely willing to concede I may be in a bad
| situation but are there really teams in Agile frameworks
| with fibonacci pointing where you can pick up a 3-5 point
| ticket, finish it before the end of a sprint and not work
| on anything else?
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| Yes, there are, though that question is weirdly specific.
|
| Is it important to you to work on a team using an Agile
| framework with Fibonacci pointing?
| corrral wrote:
| I've seen plenty where a point-a-day pace or somewhat
| under (maybe 0.8pt/day) would be a totally normal pace,
| and is absolutely achievable with under half a day of
| actual work per day, including meetings, if you know what
| you're doing.
|
| But then again, points are incommensurable between teams.
| digisign wrote:
| I don't think you're supposed to do nothing at that
| point. Leisurely improve your tools, read to improve
| knowledge/performance, etc. This compounds your
| efficiency over time, without the stress of more
| deadlines.
| paskozdilar wrote:
| > from a SWE perspective on any kind of Agile/Scrum team
| I think the expectation is usually that you pick up
| another task if you finish early and there's still time
| during a sprint for example.
|
| This is true, assuming that:
|
| 1. the whole team has approximately equal skill
|
| 2. the system is uniform and well-documented
|
| 3. the people actually give a shit about the product
|
| If any of these assumptions are not met, then the
| expectation is naive.
| fatnoah wrote:
| I can't think of any environment that I've been in where
| this is true. I think the closest I've been was as part
| of a team of three people where each of us could really
| handle any task in the codebase. It was also true that
| there were things that we each cared far more about as
| individuals, so, in spite of comparable skills, we tended
| to gravitate to specific stories, anyway.
|
| As a manager, I have every expectation that we won't be
| doing scrum exactly by the book, but that's totally fine.
| I'm more concerned about (reasonably) consistently
| reproducible levels of productivity, not squeezing every
| point out of a sprint. If there's slack time, great. That
| seems to be when people are most likely to contribute new
| stories, learn something new, etc. Besides, rigidly
| following scrum feels anti-Agile, anyway. People and
| interactions over tools and processes.
| nisegami wrote:
| >the faster you work the more work you get.
|
| It took me about 2 months to learn this after getting my
| first job. Nowadays I intentionally add minor bugs that
| turn up during demos so I have stuff to "go back and fix"
| later.
| wreath wrote:
| I'd be careful with this. You dont want to build a
| reputation of building buggy software and have sloppy
| work.
| digisign wrote:
| That sounds... unnecessary. There is always stuff to
| refactor, and tests to add, folks showing up at the last
| minute with new requirements. Or you can just wait a day
| to push commits, etc. More honest, I think.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The point is, that if you demo something and it's
| perfect, someone in the room is more than likely going to
| opine about a way it could be even better. Likely not
| another dev, but a product or biz person. Even if you
| deflect by saying "that wasn't in the story, but we'll
| add it to the backlog" that still takes time and
| unnecessary discussion.
|
| If you leave or introduce some trivially fixable but
| noticable flaw in the demo, that will (hopefully) get
| noticed and everyone can feel that they are doing their
| jobs without needing to make up something.
| corrral wrote:
| Refactoring and adding tests can be (and _very_ often
| are) pushed into the backlog, and then never done.
| "We'll circle back to that after this sprint (narrator:
| they would not circle back to it) but for now focus on
| these new features"
|
| Bugs are more urgent.
| digisign wrote:
| Disagree. This is a misconception junior devs often
| have... that you need to ask permission to do your job.
| (Not unless the boss is dysfunctional, in which case it's
| time to leave.)
|
| Tests and refactoring should be done as part of every
| ticket and typically don't need to be explicitly called
| out. This naturally pushes "done" so you don't run out of
| tickets early.
| corrral wrote:
| Yes, but the point of this was to generate (easy) work
| that _others_ want you to do so they won 't ask you to do
| other (more time-consuming) stuff instead.
|
| You'll have a very different experience telling the
| product owner you spent the whole week working on bugs
| that _they_ noticed and _they_ told you to fix (even if
| you left them in originally on purpose) than telling them
| you spent all week refactoring code. The former is an
| instant "great!". The latter is gonna get a concerned
| look and more questions.
|
| The topic wasn't _correctly_ doing development work, but
| finding ways to slack off while looking good.
| digisign wrote:
| You don't _tell_ non-technical folks technical details,
| you deliver finished tickets on schedule, which makes
| them happy. Would you discuss what algo 's you used with
| them? Database schema? No, then talking about unit tests
| is a non-sequitur as well. Complete snoozefest for non-
| geeks anyway.
|
| In fact I'd be disappointed by a dev that constantly
| introduces careless bugs, it's a dev smell. Most bugs
| should be unique and result from ambiguous/incomplete
| specs.
|
| Don't agree it is good advice to build a career being
| dishonest to others. I'm not even a goody-two-shoes...
| it's just not necessary in all but the most dysfunctional
| of places.
| corrral wrote:
| I agree it's not a great idea, for multiple reasons, but
| I get why the poster who brought it up would prefer
| letting bugs slip through to padding everything with more
| refactoring and adding tests. Deliver features fast(er
| than you really should be, probably), then coast on some
| easy bugs for a bit.
|
| External perception of how well a developer is doing
| often has very little to do with how good a job they're
| _actually_ doing. I don 't think making refactoring and
| test-making your "easy work" would have the same effect
| on appearances as the fast-features-and-some-bugs
| approach, at least at a lot of places.
| [deleted]
| robocat wrote:
| Also called "The Queen's duck".
|
| https://bwiggs.com/notebook/queens-duck/
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I had a manager like this. I eventually got some software
| to keep my computer awake/active from 7am-7pm. It was
| stupid.
| wreath wrote:
| A long Youtube video should do the "trick"
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| A youtube video won't work for me -- my work computer
| goes idle if the mouse or keyboard doesn't send input for
| more than 10 minutes. A lot of my work involves work off
| of my computer, so I just bought a USB mouse jiggler to
| keep my computer awake so I still get instant messages
| from my coworkers when I'm working offline.
| tsol wrote:
| Even if that's true, this unengaged manager still has the
| power to make your life difficult if they think you're not
| doing enough
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| And you have the power to schedule a skip-level 1-1 or
| leave the team.
| lovich wrote:
| Manager here. I do the same thing and I suspect a few of my
| reports are as well.
|
| As long as they continue to complete their work to my
| satisfaction level I don't question them on it. I've made
| clear to them that there's a few core hours they need to make
| sure they can be available for meetings with other teams and
| our 5-10 minute standup is about the only checkin I need. I
| can already see their git commits and jira history so if I
| really really wanted to follow along as they go I check that
| instead of interrupting the devs.
|
| My management might want us to work harder if they found out,
| but every time they've tried to get more productivity without
| increasing pay there's been a mini exodus of employees and I
| think they've(consciously or not) picked up on the amount of
| output they are going to get for their salary.
|
| The common opinion I and other managers I know well enough to
| speak openly with is that this a fantastic event for good
| managers and terrible for bad ones. The good ones work load
| has diminished because we as managers no longer have to do
| performative micromanagement for our bosses or other
| managers. Good managers also already were managing against
| plans or results that don't change whether remote or in
| office. The bad managers have had their workload increase
| because micromanaging remotely doesn't appear to be a solved
| problem
| lmarcos wrote:
| Sure, but what would be their argument against it? "Dev X is
| pushing his features on time, he's a nice college, always
| learning from him, but... Ah yeah, but he leaves work 1h
| before everyone else. Please fire him".
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Sure but I guess depending on the place I'd think unless
| you had an explicit agreement about leaving early that
| there would be pushback. "If you have enough free time to
| leave early you have enough time to pick up another ticket"
| b3morales wrote:
| I've left these "time to lean, time to clean" jobs in the
| dustbin of my teens where they belong. It's a seller's
| market for us geeks right now; we should take advantage
| of it while it lasts and find good conditions for
| ourselves to work in.
| ipaddr wrote:
| How do you filter for that in your job search? Questions
| during the interview help but it's easy to misunderstand.
| b3morales wrote:
| Yeah, fair point. I think the best way is using your
| connections -- i.e. going to work with people you already
| know and whose opinion you trust.
| EddieDante wrote:
| Sure, I have time enough to pick up another ticket at
| 3:30pm. I also have time to fuck it up because I've
| already racked my brain fixing two other tickets,
| attending a morning standup, and sitting through a
| company-wide DEI webinar when I should have been having
| lunch.
|
| So, what would you prefer? That I clock out early because
| I've put in a solid day's work despite not getting to
| have lunch, or that I do a half-assed job just to look
| busy that I'll just have to revert and fix the next
| morning?
|
| One gets so utterly weary of all this Taylorist bullshit
| that managers get in the process of earning their MBAs.
| paskozdilar wrote:
| Which leads right back to the "screw around until the
| clock strikes five" road, which leads to stress, boredom
| and resentment. Humans are not machines. 100% efficiency
| is a pointy-haired manager's pipe dream.
| bluedino wrote:
| An argument could be made that the dev isn't getting either
| enough work or difficult enough work
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| So would it be better for the company for me to take on
| 1-2 more tickets per sprint and then leave 1+ year sooner
| from the company because I'm burned out?
|
| Retention isnt talked about often but if companies spent
| half as much time retaining employees as they do hiring
| new employees then they would be far better off. A new
| hire needs 3-6 months before they are going to be as
| functional as someone who has been with a company for
| several years.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Ha. I refuse to play the game. I set my slack to away the day
| I start and never turn it back to green. I've done this at
| every job during the pandemic. The stupid green bubble vs
| gray or yellow or whatever is a form of always being at your
| desk micro management and it isnt productive.
|
| I'll happily explain that to anyone who asks but I've only
| had a few people ask. Again, if you get your work done most
| people dont give a shit.
| fileeditview wrote:
| Yep. After a while I disabled notifications, so Slack just
| doesn't disturb me when working. Sometimes I just quit it
| completely for an hour or two so I don't look at it because
| it usually sits on screen 3(the laptop) and I see stuff
| moving in the corner of my eye.
|
| If someone would question my work ethic or similar because
| of my Slack status I would explain to them that this is
| bogus. If they insist, I would complain about them with
| their boss. If that all is not futile I would just find
| another job.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yup. Shutting off slack notifications and setting status
| to away is day one things for me.
| corrral wrote:
| Similar hiding-the-signal tricks:
|
| - Set a reminder to go fuck around with your LinkedIn
| profile for a few minutes every couple months, so at no
| point are you _suddenly_ active on it (and so, probably
| thinking about looking for a new job).
|
| - If you have a job in an office with a relaxed dress code
| (like most devs, probably) make a point of dressing
| interview-nice at least a couple times a month, from the
| start. That way it's not notable when you happen to dress
| nice one day and also happen to take a slightly long
| lunch....
| throw827474737 wrote:
| Huh, for what hide that? Would they proactively fire you?
|
| Here, it is always joked that intentionally giving those
| signals is the trick to support getting the desired pay
| raise.. some years ago even saw one guy pulling that off.
| corrral wrote:
| The trouble is if you're just idly searching a bit and
| aren't in a hurry, you might not want your current
| employer (or co-workers) to start planning to be rid of
| you soon. At the very least, it might make things
| awkward.
| corrral wrote:
| Use slack on a phone or tablet most of the time, even when
| actually working. Set a high notification level when "at
| work" so you are notified even for non-mentions. Bonus:
| probably the single most power-hungry and memory-eating piece
| of crap on your laptop, is reduced to using the tiny amount
| of power it takes to send a push message, on a different
| device.
|
| Then it's just normal.
| fruit2020 wrote:
| Wait. Does slack show idleness? Maybe it's disabled in my
| org. Never seen it on any of my colleagues. We are either
| green or gray
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I think there is a yellow state. But yellow and gray are
| both "bad" since they are not green.
| BeetleB wrote:
| One thing I've found to be consistently true: Good managers
| highlight concerns with your performance. Poor managers
| complain about your hours[1]. If they're complaining about
| your hours, then there's something else bothering them, but
| they're using this as a proxy[2]. I don't want to work with
| managers who are not willing to discuss the real issues.
| They're a pain to deal with. So I always start looking for
| another job when this happens.
|
| [1] This is assuming you're not missing meetings, and it's
| not a role that is customer facing with defined hours (e.g.
| storefront that's open for an advertised set of hours).
|
| [2] The way to tell, BTW, is there's always someone else
| who's working less than you're expected to but is getting a
| pass.
| fatnoah wrote:
| >If they're complaining about your hours, then there's
| something else bothering them, but they're using this as a
| proxy[2].
|
| This can also be a sign that the manager doesn't really
| know what you're doing and/or has not set clear goals for
| you, so they have nothing else to measure except your
| hours.
|
| As VP Eng with an org of 35, my CEO was always giving me
| grief about the number of hours people on my team were in
| the office. I always pushed back with our milestone
| tracking. We are on target, and that's all that matters to
| me. People know what they need to get done, and that's what
| I want to manage, not hours in the office, vacation
| balances, or anything else. I'm not their parent. I set
| expectations, support them in meeting those expectations,
| and let them make the adult decision about their time.
| Melatonic wrote:
| If I ever become a manager I was hoping to actually institute a
| rule like this as a policy for people I manage. Obviously an
| emergency or deadline would take precedence. But I thought it
| would generate a lot of good will and respect if you actually
| gave people dedicated hours out of their week (and ideally
| funding or access to learning materials) specifically to work
| on a project of their choosing or take a class / learn material
| of their choosing. Would not have to be work related at all
| (although of course it could be) and there would be no
| expectation of return what so ever.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Pretty much what I was about to say. Instead of finding ways to
| make something mostly out of your control (i.e. work)
| interesting, it's better to do less of it and use your free
| time for interesting projects.
|
| The key, of course, is to get a job that isn't as demanding.
| Personally, I've found that most of those jobs don't pay more
| nor have better career growth anyway.
| jsjsbdkj wrote:
| I used to have so much anxiety about trying to fill 40 hours
| days. It led to me getting great performance reviews but
| feeling like shit and burning out at multiple places.
|
| During the pandemic I work maybe 4 hours a day. I wake up late,
| go for a walk, review some PRs, and then dig into a task.
| Meetings in the afternoon, another walk, maybe a bike ride.
| After dinner if I have something on my mind I'll log back on
| and do an hour or two to get it done. I'm accessible via Slack
| on my phone almost all of the time, but I take ~20 minutes to
| respond.
|
| So far nobody cares. I'm hitting my OKRs, I'm helping junior
| devs, and I get to enjoy the beautiful summer weather.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| This is very similar to my schedule right now. Everything
| gets done. I don't feel burnt out. I'm actually able to feel
| healthy because I can workout during the day. It's great and
| no one gives a shit as long as I'm doing well.
|
| In fact, it's much better for the company in the long run
| because I'm likely to stay for more than a few years because
| I actually enjoy my wlb.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| This happened with me, and I thought to myself "how does
| this work? How am I still as productive as before?" And I
| tried to recall what life was like in the office. Turns out
| a _lot_ of my time was spent trying to look busy, rather
| than actually being busy. It 's not like I was Peter
| Gibbons from Office Space, I wasn't lazy or jaded. But
| sometimes my brain just _wouldn 't do what I needed it to
| do_. And instead of doing the correct thing, which is
| stepping away from the computer and taking a walk, or doing
| the dishes or whatever, instead I just sat there and
| mimicked my working routine. Tons of wasted time, wasted
| potential, and yet it still drags on your energy just as if
| you were actually working. All of that was because of the
| social pressure due to being physically in the office.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yup. It's incredible how often I step away and when I
| come back the solution is obvious to me.
| sandgiant wrote:
| I so the same. Except I'm still spending too much time dicking
| off in front of the computer. I guess partly due to
| embarrassment about not working "full time".
|
| Your comment inspired me to get out and do something instead.
| Thanks for that.
| [deleted]
| mattlondon wrote:
| I want to be _less_ engaged! Leaving work behind both physically
| _and mentally_ at 5pm is important to me.
|
| I want to treat my work as a necessary "transaction" and don't
| want to devote any additonal energy to it than is required. Save
| your mental energy for your own life and activities.
|
| Sure we all want our work to be fulfilling, but from experience I
| would urge against getting too "into" your work.
| some-guy wrote:
| "Fulfilling" work is a huge privilege.
|
| As a high school dropout who eventually did community college
| to a degree in computer science at a UC, I've worked all kinds
| of minimum wage, soul-sucking jobs in between. Just having
| enough money and free time now to do anything else besides my
| job has been such an amazing gift, and I could give two shits
| at this point if I sometimes have to deal with a GWT codebase
| regularly.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| It is utteriy pointless to convince yourself to be exited about
| your job if you cant feel it. And it wont last long. If you
| decline your own emotions its not going to end well.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| ulisesrmzroche wrote:
| Adding my voice to the consensus that this article is trash. As
| always, the blackest of falsehoods are dressed up in platitudes.
| ohwellhere wrote:
| Here's my advice on the same topic after living through burnout
| and "blah" several times:
|
| Make your job the union of what you're interested in and what is
| valuable to the business.
|
| You have to know what is valuable to the business; that knowledge
| is challenging to acquire but will _always_ help you in any role.
| It has to be true and verified with stakeholders, not your gut.
| There are soft skills involved here.
|
| You also have to know what you're interested in, which is also
| not easy after building CRUD apps for years.
|
| And you have to sell it -- more soft skills.
|
| If you can -- you can! -- the result is a job description or
| project that you helped co-create, that you own in the most
| meaningful sense of the word, and that you're more excited to
| work on. The add on results is that you are more valuable to that
| specific company, and you've leveled up soft skills and business
| thinking that makes you more valuable to any company.
|
| I've done this consciously several times in at least 4 companies
| of various sizes. I've ended up building a new mobile
| architecture platform and library, a data warehouse and ETLT
| pipeline, multiple projects in languages I wanted to learn, new
| frameworks and libraries for various other industry-specific web
| dev things, and a few rewrites of legacy software.
|
| I still feel blah a lot of the time, and still think my path
| through this industry has been... non-optimized to say the least,
| but I have a path that helps me reengage when I have the energy
| for internal sales.
| lupire wrote:
| Do you mean intersection, not union? Union is kind of a
| fantasy, getting paid to have your own fun.
| stretchwithme wrote:
| Something that might is timing WHEN you start drinking coffee in
| the morning.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bjxFnAIAiI
| rmah wrote:
| In my experience, one of the key factors of being engaged with
| one's work is feeling a sense of progress or accomplishment. Few
| things sap motivation more than the feeling that you're just
| spinning your wheels and nothing is getting done.
|
| I realize that if you're not a team lead or manager, this is
| difficult to implement. However, sometimes physical
| manifestations of progress can make progress feel more tangible.
| For example, if you have to churn through tickets, make a little
| card for each one. And push them from a pending pile into the
| done pile as you go. This makes your progress more visible and
| tangible than a number on a website. Of course, a big "to do"
| pile may demotivate some folks. YMMV.
|
| Just a bit of food for thought.
| alkonaut wrote:
| My motto is: I don't want to work on a CRUD app. I want computer
| science to actually be part of what I do. Not parsing and
| validation and deployments and migrations.
|
| But finding these jobs where actual "what you do with the data"
| is the majority work, and the fluff around it is a minority, is
| HARD and such jobs seem to be more far between. Perhaps because
| the software jobs that used to be difficult algorithmic problems
| are now so specialised (Data scientist, Game engines, AI, ...).
| And that's a bit sad. For those of us who get a kick out of not
| making a Todo app in an ever cooler JS framework but instead like
| to write the synth/raytracer/fluid sim/game/, the job market has
| become pretty boring. Luckily I have a job that ticks the boxes,
| but it's hard to find another.
| dominotw wrote:
| agree with this 100%. I am considering going into management
| purely because i cannot get myself to write another screen to
| db crud app. Just the thought makes me depressed.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > "Oh, I'm just building another CRUD app",
|
| Sometimes that's all there is to it. This is work - fulfillment
| is optional.
|
| For this reason I try to engage in a measly paid, but interesting
| project from time to time.
|
| I'm currently in one. I won't be buying that apartment I wanted
| any time soon, but I can say with confidence that I like my job.
| jowdones wrote:
| There was an article on HN a while ago saying that basically the
| secret to productivity is ... slack. In other words, excess
| capacity.
|
| I used to have a tight schedule switching from tasks to learning
| to meetings to more tasks and more learning, 50 minutes work, 10
| minutes break, relentlessly, like a robot.
|
| Then I realized I'm not a fucking robot. Now I work 2 hours per
| day at most. Complete my tasks and can do this shit in a
| sustainable way as opposed to burning myself for what?
|
| I'm super engaged. For two hours tops :D
| [deleted]
| lmarcos wrote:
| I don't need to feel engaged at work. I feel engaged with my
| career though. A job is just a temporal contract I do for money.
| I do my best (thankfully I'm not bad at it since I love my
| career), but usually I don't give a damn about feeling engaged
| with my current employer.
| topheroo wrote:
| I try to always work on something that's contributing to
| something I care about in the world. I find that motivation is
| less of an issue if there's intrinsic value to the work I'm
| doing.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I won't spoil the article, but the advice is great. I'll give
| number 4 a try. But the hobbies page of Wikipedia is too long and
| unorganized for my tastes.
|
| Anyone have any cool hobbies?
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| 3D printing is a fun hobby that combines engineering skills
| with actual useful stuff. Just printed a set of tablecloth
| clamps for camping.
|
| Speaking of, camping! Nice to get some fresh air and away from
| screens for a bit. And I love cooking over an open fire.
|
| Speaking of, cooking! Once you get a little practice, you can
| really dazzle yourself and others with some delicious food.
| Especially when you realize that cooking is not actually as
| fiddly as it seems. Once you have enough experience under your
| belt to substitute and improvise and just throw something
| together the real fun begins. I recommend
| https://www.youtube.com/c/GlenAndFriendsCooking . Just pick a
| recipe and go for it, and Glen has very practical advice about
| exactly how unnecessary the fiddly parts of cooking are.
|
| Other things I do: retro video games and related electronics
| projects (currently building a supergun to play arcade games at
| home), learn yo-yo tricks, read books, garden, play music.
|
| Lack of hobbies isn't the problem. If someone would pay me a
| salary just to do my hobbies I'd be extremely happy.
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| I'd love to get into 3D printing, but the sheer amount of
| waste I'd produce is too much for me. I looked into recycling
| wasted filament into new filament, and all the reviews of
| different devices made it seem very hit or miss.
|
| Is there a good way to not generate plastic waste and still
| get into 3D printing?
| willcipriano wrote:
| If you print things that you'd buy anyway the packaging
| would make up for a good bit of waste plastic.
| greggsy wrote:
| I used to collect catalogs when they were still paper based.
| I'd punch 'order catalog' into Google and find all sorts of
| weird manufacturers and retailers selling specialty crap.
|
| Taxidermy supplies, figurines suppliers (from Hummel to
| Gundam), not to mention the tomes from electronics and
| engineering distributors like R.S, which are still available
| (usually at a fee).
|
| Sure you can do it just browsing an ecommerce website, but it's
| not the same.
|
| I think I just liked seeing a snapshot of a specific industry's
| craft.
|
| I opportunistically go to random trade fairs when I'm
| travelling now - there's always one or two in a given major
| city. Similar 'snapshot of an industry' experience.
| ryanchants wrote:
| I mostly just dabble in a bunch of things. I started by looking
| at what classes are offered in my city, and started signing up
| for random ones. So far, I've done some leatherworking,
| metalsmithing, weaving, archery, bike repair, American sign
| language, etc. I also cook a decent amount, and am always
| trying new recipes. Trying to add fermenting and preserving to
| the list this summer. And I've recently reached out to an
| instructor for guitar and singing lessons.
| wincy wrote:
| I got into 3D printing miniatures and statues and stuff during
| the pandemic. Spent one of the stimulus checks on a good resin
| printer, was astounded by the quality. Then realized the
| filament printers were a better idea for some prints and bought
| 3 of them.
|
| Then I wanted painted stuff, so I bought some cheap store
| paints, they were okay so I bought some hobby paints which were
| excellent. It really wows people instead of getting them some
| cheap present for Christmas printing them a cool statue and
| painting it up.
|
| Another thing is that 3D printers are still very hacker ish so
| for me another fun part was analyzing what upgrades were
| actually functional and helped me print faster/more accurately
| and only doing those upgrades. This includes software side like
| compiling your own open source firmware and integrating a
| general purpose CPU in a Raspberry Pi to do the gcode
| processing. It's a good way to do low stakes configuration and
| compiling of software so it's something I'm capable of as an
| SWE and it's fun to tinker with since the worst that'll happen
| is I'll have to reformat my printer.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| "1:1 podcast with you as the guest"
|
| Anyone can call me and say hi. We chat about anything you're
| passionate about, pair program or... rant.
|
| I've met a tonne of fascinating people this way. Another neat
| side-effect of that was filling my backlog with new project
| ideas (mostly thanks to rants).
|
| Come and say hi! http://sonnet.io/posts/hi/
| yaysyu wrote:
| Bouldering seems to be really popular amongst Software
| Engineers I know.
|
| Taps into many things that Software Engineers typically like.
|
| Walls often require problem solving as well as physical
| ability.
|
| Walls are shorter than rock climbing walls (fast iteration
| cycles/"dev loop")
|
| Lots of different difficulties for a clear sense of
| progression.
|
| Indoors (usually). Can be done solo.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| Every one of my coworkers who boulders gets injured (usually
| lightly) on a regular basis. After climbing (on a rope) for
| more than a decade, I've never had an injury.
|
| Due to the fact you have to ramp up the per-move difficulty
| much faster on a bouldering problem as the grade increases,
| the chance per injury on any given move is much higher (e.g.
| if you chopped a bouldering-sized section out of a 5.12a, it
| wouldn't be that hard of a problem, but having to do 3-4x
| such problems in a row is much more grueling). The types of
| injury one gets from such intense exertion will impact one's
| ability to type too (e.g. finger pulley injuries, elbow
| injuries either in terms of the rotation of one's wrist or
| spraining if one does the typical "fall off the wall and put
| your hands behind you" thing I've seen on the bouldering
| wall).
|
| > Can be done solo.
|
| I'd argue this is a bug, not a feature. I've made so many
| great friends at the climbing gym by just asking people on
| the autobelays if they want to pair up for roped climbing (or
| joining an odd-numbered group of people to even it out), yet
| I see so many boulderers just silently do their thing with
| their airpods in.
|
| For software engineers who don't get a lot of reps in social
| situations in the nature of our jobs, this is a very easy
| venue to learn to meet new people in a low-stakes situation.
| leetcrew wrote:
| injuries come from pushing the limits of your skill and
| physical fitness. an aggressive climber is much more likely
| to get injured on a bouldering problem, but you can still
| mess up your hands crimping on a toprope route you haven't
| trained for appropriately. you get to choose whether you
| want to be this person. I never "fall" on bouldering
| problems. I just climb down if I'm not confident I can make
| a dyno. I'll never tackle a V8 this way, but who cares?
|
| as for the social aspect, I'd say that depends a lot on
| your local gym. the toprope area tends to be pretty packed
| where I go. people are either climbing or belaying; it's
| not a good place to stand around and chat. in the
| bouldering area, there's almost always an active
| conversation going about the newest problems. I find people
| are very open to a quick chat between problems.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Bouldering has to be the nerdiest sport. You spend most of
| your time sitting and problem-solving with intermittent short
| bursts of work, you can do it at any level of fitness, and
| there's no competition. I'm kind of surprised nobody has
| combined a math game with it yet, where as you climb you
| uncover numbers that tell you where the next hold is so you
| can't pre-plan your route.
| camtarn wrote:
| I remembered coming across an interactive bouldering game a
| while ago, which used a projector to light up holds to
| create a custom problem each time. I couldn't find it with
| a quick search, but I did find this list of bouldering wall
| games:
|
| http://www.canadarockclimbing.com/games.html
|
| which includes 'Pointer', where a partner uses a broomstick
| to point out the next hold in the sequence just as the
| climber has reached the previous hold.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I make math problems for Math Olympiads for kids, and
| bouldering feels similar. To build an interesting wall it
| must not be obvious, but it must be solvable. From time to
| time I fell in the rabbit hole of a YouTube channel that
| explain unusual solutions " _Beta Break!_ " by Albert Ok: htt
| ps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsfWe31L6Quop7WDY7ky7...
| (Note: I only climb stair, and only if they are not too
| stepped :) .)
| dnndev wrote:
| This feels more like how to not be miserable than stay engaged. I
| would have accepted do it for the money they pay you so much
| money you can retire early and end the misery.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| How do I find work that is worth being engaged in?
| iancmceachern wrote:
| It's not your job to feel engaged. It's your employers job, your
| bosses. You can feel how you want to about it.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| While objectively true, it's silly for employers not to exploit
| the psychology of the engaged employee for the employer's gain.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I disagree. It's exploitive for people in a position of power
| to exploit the psychology of the folks that are in their
| care. You use the word exploit, exploiting folks isn't good
| or moral, in any case. It's never ok to exploit folks.
|
| If we say we are aligning the interests of the employer and
| employee that's different. If we are saying a rising tide
| raises all ships, we all do well when we all do well, etc.
| That's different. None of that is exploitive, it's inspiring.
| There is a difference between inspiring and aligning people
| in powerful ways, and exploiting them. One is ok, one is not.
| One leads to true long term success and prosperity, one leads
| to short term success but long term failure, a flash in the
| pan.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| I was admittedly being facetious, but my point is that
| those who push the "work is for working, not for having
| fun" line are neither doing the employers nor the employees
| any favours.
|
| The other side of the coin is that what employers do to try
| to improve engagement is usually ineffective and often
| quite demeaning. What Erik Dietrich calls "carnival cash".
| You just can't fake the sense of producing something useful
| for the customers and in return getting your fair share of
| the proceeds.
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