[HN Gopher] Being swamped is normal and not impressive
___________________________________________________________________
Being swamped is normal and not impressive
Author : gk1
Score : 318 points
Date : 2022-08-03 14:25 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gkogan.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gkogan.co)
| gk1 wrote:
| Someone asked me how to get out from being constantly swamped. I
| highly recommend two books: Essentialism by Greg McKeown, and
| Deep work by Cal Newport. They haven't fixed all my woes but they
| gave me something to strive for.
| mouzogu wrote:
| "If it isn't a clear yes, then it's a clear no."
|
| haven't read the books yet, but this definitely resonates with
| me (essentialism).
| gk1 wrote:
| The Derek Sivers version is more spicy and sticks with me
| better: HELL YEAH or NO (https://sive.rs/hellyeah)
| civilized wrote:
| Take it from me: even people working at big companies with low
| expectations find a way to report being swamped constantly. They
| always find a way to stay 100% busy with meetings that they don't
| really need to attend and tasks they don't really need to do.
|
| At this point I find it more of a negative reflection on a
| worker's judgment, accountability, and skill than anything close
| to a badge of honor.
| incomingpain wrote:
| Good Work Is Rewarded With More Work
|
| In my experience, if you aren't totally useless you will
| eventually you will find yourself completely swamped all the
| time. Scheduled weeks in advanced, but also expected to be
| achieving much more.
|
| Eventually you become a huge problem, you cant take vacation, and
| your time off in lieu just keeps collecting. You get burnt out
| and end up in sick leave a short time and your employer melts
| down because they cant function without you.
|
| You find a new job or they fire you and the remaining employees
| just cant handle reality and they lose lots of customers. Then
| you get sued for $1.1 million because you're stealing their
| clients only to find out none of their clients came with. Opps on
| them.
| drewcoo wrote:
| It should not be seen as normal.
|
| Whether people or personal-management, it's a management problem.
| So is the need for the heroics you see when people are swamped.
|
| People can't multi-task. Their productivity drops when they work
| long hours. Etc.
|
| Unfortunately, in software we're taught that it's not just normal
| but desirable. And our managers are untrained in people
| management, promoted only because they were good at their last
| jobs.
| taytus wrote:
| I'm swamped. I agree it is not a badge of honor.
|
| I'm running my own company, we are in the process of raising
| capital and between that and prod dev and sales... well, it is
| brutal.
|
| I'm not proud of being swamped, but is a reality I have to live
| with as a founder.
| tgtweak wrote:
| I feel like the "I'm swamped" situation is more of a defense
| mechanic than it is genuine swamping in many cases.
|
| Take the following example: You understand parts of the business
| that are critical. Those parts are high stakes. Someone asks you
| something about it and you give a legitimate answer that is
| correct. You will form a habit in that person of asking you since
| it's lower risk and far easier than coming up with the answer
| yourself. In many cases, the only way to wean this off is to
| instead say sorry I can't get at that right away but if it can
| wait (x) I can look at it. In many cases the solution will come
| around on it's own as it is time sensitive.
|
| Anyone in that position will, over time, recognize this and
| leverage it. Couple that with the fact that any exceptions that
| happen out of the ordinary will wind up in your purview.
|
| Of course, this is not true of all swamped people - some are just
| legitimately swamped and don't have enough time in the day to do
| the workload requested of them - but the guise of a key senior
| engineer this is usually the case I've seen.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Being swamped is mostly a symptom of having bosses who don't say
| no often enough. The root cause could be greed, incompetence,
| etc. but it's irrelevant from a rank-and-file point of view.
| badrabbit wrote:
| My perspective: it may not be a badge of honor but sometimes you
| don't have much of a choice. You plan to do things properly then
| other things break or unexpected things happen. It can't be
| avoided if you need certain things done and everyone else who can
| help either won't or won't do it in a timely manner.
|
| Personally I like to get things done so if I get help fine, if
| not I get "swamped" and get it done. This is something managemnt
| should be aware of and usually they can't hire enough of the
| right people.
|
| But as an ideal scenario I completely agree. Have a ton of smart
| and well motivated people and share workloads to acheive a common
| goal.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Being swamped is not a badge of honor"
|
| No, but it seems that's expected just to get a decent performance
| rating.
| andsoitis wrote:
| "For every parcel I stoop down to seize
|
| I lose some other off my arms and knees,
|
| And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns,
|
| Extremes too hard to comprehend at. once
|
| Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
|
| With all I have to hold with hand and mind
|
| And heart, if need be, I will do my best.
|
| To keep their building balanced at my breast.
|
| I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
|
| Then sit down in the middle of them all.
|
| I had to drop the armful in the road
|
| And try to stack them in a better load."
|
| -- The Armful, By Robert Frost
| asplake wrote:
| And the organisation that allows this is dysfunctional. Its
| coordination system (technological, managerial, whatever) cannot
| be regarded as effective.
| brikelly wrote:
| This is why things like https://sustainabledev.org/ exist. It's
| far too easy to fall into the busyness trap and burn out.
|
| Things managers can do to prevent this include:
|
| - using a pull model of work flow
|
| - enforcing WIP control
|
| - using employee vacations to find bus factor problems ("hey,
| Brent was OOO for 2 weeks and these things were stuck, let's fix
| that...")
|
| - creating a culture where backpressure to management is strongly
| encouraged
| bofadeez wrote:
| You used to be impressed by people who were swamped? Lol
| anoncow wrote:
| Not being swamped is also not a badge of honor.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I have worked at both startups and tech companies 40+ years old,
| and the conclusion I've come to from my anecdata is that every
| engineer at every company is swamped all the time.
|
| Feature requests and bug reports are easy. Writing features and
| fixing bugs is hard. Your todo list will always grow faster than
| you can tackle items. Once a senior engineer retired, and I
| inherited about a hundred of his bugs out of the 600 or so he
| left behind.
|
| It's a marathon, not a sprint. Working at a consistent pace is
| better than burning yourself out. The work is omnipresent. It
| will never stop growing. It will consume all if you let it.
|
| Unless you're at an early-stage startup, let your manager deal
| with your giant and ever-growing todo list. Let someone more
| plugged-in to the business side deal with prioritizing, and focus
| on technical excellence. Unless you aspire to management
| yourself, that's already plenty to do.
|
| Anyone who tells you every engineer needs to be in touch with
| every business concern either only works on early-stage projects
| or is part of a hustle culture that I don't ascribe to. I don't
| have the energy for technical excellence and knowing everything
| about the business.
| Joeri wrote:
| A former coworker went through a stretch where his manager
| deliberately assigned him insufficient work and refused to let
| him do anything but assigned tasks, in order to get him to
| quit, and he said it was the most miserable time of his career.
| Having more work than you can fill your days with is an ideal
| state of affairs, because it means you never run out of work.
|
| Of course, as you point out, to work like that sustainably it
| is important to pace yourself, limiting working time. The
| natural consequence of that is a need for prioritizing the todo
| list, because not all of it will get done. I say "the" todo
| list, because if there are multiple they must be merged so it
| can be determined what tasks come first. It is cumbersome and
| distracting to do this merging and develop a business
| understanding of everything landing in an inbox to be able to
| prioritize it so indeed a natural temptation is to let a
| manager do this toil, and just follow their cue.
|
| The consequence of letting a manager setting priorities is a
| loss of control. You have to have faith the manager will give
| the right kind of work in the right amount. I am not a good fit
| for this approach, so I tend to take control of my todo list by
| proposing my own projects or seizing opportunities as they pass
| by. This does require having good relations up and down the org
| chart and good insights into the nature of the business, so
| ymmv.
|
| Seeing work as finite is imho mistaken. The possible work that
| can be done in a business is effectively infinite, and an
| effective business will find the best set of work to do with
| the resources they have, and an optimal level of resources to
| do enough work to deliver value, but without breaking the bank.
| bbqbbqbbq wrote:
| lovich wrote:
| > Having more work than you can fill your days with is an
| ideal state of affairs, because it means you never run out of
| work.
|
| I think we have very different approaches to work. I can't
| imagine being anything but excited if some asshole boss
| thought I would quit because he was paying me to do nothing
| gambiting wrote:
| It's a well known approach to punishing employees in big
| corporations in Japan - salaried positions are culturally
| "for life" and being fired is extremely rare. But.....you
| can still be assigned a desk far from everyone else and
| given zero work. You are still expected to sit there for
| full day of work, and follow all other rules of Japanese
| culture - not leave before your boss etc.
| lovich wrote:
| If the boss is putting you in a form of solitary
| confinement like the Japanese bosses do, then yea that
| would suck, but I would be surprised that an American
| boss would do that without HR getting involved as
| singling out an employee for extra special rules without
| a pip is an easy court case
| wollsmoth wrote:
| With the magic of remote work, I'd probably either start
| contracting or just see how long I can do 2 jobs at once.
| lovich wrote:
| You could also just enjoy your time. Not every moment
| needs to be filled with labor
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Yeah, but depending on where you are career wise you
| probably want to avoid letting your skills atrophy too
| much. That'd be my main concern. But if I wasn't worried
| about that, and the money was ok, then yeah. Rest and
| vest.
| codethief wrote:
| > A former coworker went through a stretch where his manager
| deliberately assigned him insufficient work and refused to
| let him do anything but assigned tasks
|
| Interesting, even if it weren't to make him quit, in my home
| country (Germany) this would represent a breach of contract.
| insightcheck wrote:
| My worry is that you can be technically excellent and fantastic
| at what you are assigned, only to find later on that the
| project you've been toiling over has been cancelled or valued
| far less than another team's work.
|
| I appreciate your experienced perspective greatly and it
| encouraged reflection (I agree with working at a consistent
| pace), but I believe there can also be a middle ground to have
| awareness of business concerns to understand when to switch
| teams or even companies. It's painful to work very hard at
| assigned tasks, only to find it wasn't valued due to business
| priorities.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| Yeah that happens. More than once I've thrown away a lot of
| work due to a shift in priorities. The thing to realize is
| that as an engineer you have very little control here. All
| you really can do is argue with higher-ups (they likely won't
| listen) or job hop (you can't do that too often).
|
| It's sort of like making a movie. You start out with more
| material than what you need for the finished product because
| sometimes you don't know what's going to work ahead of time.
| Yeah, it sucks when you project gets left on the cutting room
| floor, but it happens. There's plenty more work to do. It
| might sound cynical, but don't get attached.
|
| In terms of a middle ground, I sort of think about business
| concerns the same way I think about the news. Be aware, but
| don't worry, because you don't have much control anyway. If
| something really important comes around, start preparing to
| do what you can with what little control you do have (job
| hop, move out of a place that's about to be a war zone, etc).
| Don't waste your finite time and attention on day-to-day
| details. Save it for the big stuff.
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| The problem is that most places reward you based on
| "impact" somehow, not "impact had we not given you such a
| bad roadmap to follow," so being unplugged from the
| business side is rolling the dice w.r.t. future recognition
| of your work, no matter how well you did
| cactus2093 wrote:
| I don't think that's the best advice. There is no hard line
| between business, product, and technical concerns. There's a
| lot of gray area.
|
| If you want to be great at your job, then understanding the
| context of business and product decisions will let you make
| more nuanced technical decisions that support where the
| business is heading, not just where it's at today. If your
| manager, and PM, and business POCs that you work with are all
| excellent, then maybe you can get this context from them. But
| chances are that at least some of the people around you are
| fairly mediocre, and part of being great at your job is making
| things happen in spite less than ideal circumstances.
|
| Maybe what I would consider being great at the job is what you
| would consider unhealthy hustle culture, and that's fine. If
| you want to just get by and not be exceptional in the role,
| that's much easier. But in that case, why even focus on
| technical excellence? You can get by with less.
|
| Basically, if you're gonna slack off, then you might as well
| slack off across the board. If you want to be excellent, then
| be excellent across the board.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| Frankly I have little interest in being great at my job. It's
| a job. At the end of the day, I have exactly as much loyalty
| for the company as they do for me. None. [1] Furthermore, the
| "rewards" for being great at your job kind of suck, which at
| most companies is just slowly accruing experience until you
| get noticed and someone has the bright idea to make you a
| manager. [2]
|
| I want to be great at software engineering. I want to use
| tech to build things. I see it as coincidence that there's
| enough overlap between that goal and the company's goal to at
| least make me good at my job.
|
| [1] That's a lie. I wish I had no loyalty to the company, but
| my personal pride in a job well done unfortunately means I
| have a non-zero amount of company loyalty.
|
| [2] Just happened to me, actually. My stress levels are
| through the roof, and I didn't even get a raise. Clearly I
| miscalibrated my job performance.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| For most people this would probably lead to exhaustion.
|
| It is doing 2 full time jobs basically. Because you don't
| trust your team.
|
| Lets say 80h weeks are OK there is still the hurdle that most
| corporate structures will actively fight against this level
| of JD-breaking initiative!
|
| If the product is Dropbox you can talk to mates to do your
| primary customer research. But what if it is say defence
| contracts? Gonna be stepping on toes talking direct to
| customers.
|
| If you are not doing primary research you are relying on
| those lackluster colleagues.
|
| If you are doing this kind of stuff the job is just in the
| way, start a business.
|
| For startupish roles where your job might be half coding half
| VP growth it might work.
|
| I think Engineers should know something the product is used
| and why etc. But this can only go so far. Otherwise why have
| other roles at all?
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Fundamentally, I agree. Though you need to draw some
| boundaries between being aware of customer needs and
| advocating for them during development (and alloying them
| with realities in your development environment) and being
| responsible for all customer satisfaction.
| namaria wrote:
| I never met any person who has not claimed in a professional
| set to be swamped with work. It's unwise to seem not busy.
| There is no signal here, just socially acceptable noise.
| volume wrote:
| I had to re-read this a few times. I think you should go 100%
| full effort with double negatives and rewrite the last part:
|
| > There is no noise here, just socially acceptable noise.
| treis wrote:
| Yeah, as developers you usually get to estimate your work so
| estimate for however much free time you want. This is
| especially true the older/bigger the company is. Developers
| with lots of experience working in a specific application can
| barely tell how long stuff will take. Your EM/PM/Whoever
| isn't going to know that you're padding time. As long as most
| of the time you deliver what you say you will when you say
| you will nobody will catch on or care.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| Don't I wish. Currently in the middle of a big thing with a
| director who keeps mandating unrealistic deadlines with
| zero engineer input.
| cm2012 wrote:
| For what it's worth, I polled HN a while back and there was a
| perfect normal distribution on hours worked per day:
| https://imgur.com/qdSltlM. I asked, "How busy are you at work
| on average?". Poll questions here if you want to see them:
| https://strawpoll.com/polls/47x15cf1.
|
| So 25% of people work under 4 hours a day including meetings,
| 50% work 4-8 hours a day, 25% work more than 8 hours a day. And
| seniority does not affect this curve.
| shalmanese wrote:
| If you live in a normally distributed universe, then you get
| ahead by being swamped and incrementally doing more hours of
| work than someone else. But hopefully most engineers hoping to
| have an impact live in a power law distributed universe.
|
| I tell all my DRs that, at the end of the year, I will evaluate
| them on their (self-assessed) 3 most impactful things they've
| done that year with a 60%, 30%, 10% weighting.
|
| There's a couple of different ways of optimizing towards that
| goal, you can try out a lot of little projects and double down
| on the ones that seem like they're working or you can do a
| careful analysis and scope out a few things you think will be a
| big hit.
|
| In truth, there's no ability for me to evaluate them to that
| level of precision, the framework is mainly there to foster two
| skills I regard as vitally missing:
|
| 1. Ruthless prioritization. One of my frequent questions is
| "does this sound like the 4th most important thing you'll do
| this year? If so, why are you doing it?". Being able to cut
| down on the noise and really focus is hard for people,
| especially when they feel like there isn't a permission
| structure in place for it to happen. Even with an explicit
| focus in place, the norms of the workplace make clearing away
| time for deep thought preciously valuable.
|
| 2. Owning of measurement of impact. Being able to measure a
| thing is, I believe, in many ways more important than doing the
| thing in the first place. Measuring forces us to ask hard
| questions that we often skip over: What metrics am I hoping to
| affect via this project? How does this metric tie into the
| larger goals of the company? Are we measuring this metric
| already? If not, how do we start? What change in this metric
| would count as impactful vs other projects I could be doing?
| elcomet wrote:
| But the underlying reason is that some (most?) bugs are not
| worth fixing.
|
| If they were worth fixing, then managers would hire more
| engineers and get through the todo list. So engineers might
| feel swamp but I guess they shouldn't.
| Aloha wrote:
| I've learned as a matter of survival to abstract availability
| for more tasks from my actual capacity.
|
| If I don't do this I'm given more work than I can do because I
| have capacity _right now_ then once I have added tasks
| invariably later everything comes home to roost at the same
| time.
| jollybean wrote:
| Yes, very good point. That said, Big Co. Engineers should be
| brought into the big picture of stuff that's happening, and,
| communicate with Engineers.
| rjh29 wrote:
| You assume that developers don't know how to pad out their todo
| list, or complete things quickly and then do other things
| during work time. I've seen a lot of anecdata to support both,
| but obviously people prefer to say "I'm really busy" or "I work
| hard" over "I only work 2 hours a day".
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| My advice is for engineers, not managers. And as an engineer,
| I'm assuming you already have more than you can do. If your
| todo list is so short that you can just pad it out like that,
| well, lucky you.
|
| It has always, and I mean always, been the case for me than I
| have more to do than I have time to do it. I ask my manager
| what takes priority, and I work on that. I miss some
| deadlines, but I try to hit the important ones, and that's
| just how real life works.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Does anyone have a good reference on how to prioritize in a
| structured manner?
| volume wrote:
| eisenhower matrix and cynefin framework
| notjustanymike wrote:
| I manage a team of 10 engineers and my highest priority is making
| myself redundant. I'm constantly looking to eliminate (aka
| delegate) my current responsibilities so I can focus on my next
| responsibilities.
| benreesman wrote:
| Ah, the classic "Medium Post with Life Advice for Others":
| https://mobile.twitter.com/briansolis/status/647069103815962....
|
| I love tech and in some ways even the Valley, but we're overdue
| for a new set of obnoxiously accurate stereotypes.
| brightball wrote:
| Early in my career I took a lot of pride in how much work I could
| take on. It made me feel important.
|
| Ended up putting me in the hospital.
|
| https://www.brightball.com/articles/what-exactly-happened-to...
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| i think working hard is ok but you really got to assess the
| type of work you are doing. Are you working your ass off to do
| grunt work other devs wont? If so you won't get any glory, just
| burn out, many times working on tech debt also falls under this
| domain, higher ups just don't appreciate people who work hard
| to keep things stable, they are all about those who can cut
| costs or increase revenue by coming up with new products/ideas.
| Test0129 wrote:
| I've been on both sides. A lot of people say people who want to
| be swamped is a control problem but I've found its more delicate
| than that. My circumstances require me to have decent insurance
| so my life will forever be tied to an employer. I don't really
| get an "escape" at least until obamacare becomes cheaper than
| $2800/mo. for what I need in order to try out the entrepreneur
| life.
|
| As a result I work very hard. I end up getting a lot of work
| done, and thus more work on my plate. This is often manageable
| and I use this as a gauge of my probability of being fired for
| any given reason. Someone knocking on the door of a PIP likely
| won't be getting as much work especially if it's reasonably
| complicated. It's been my experience as work starts to die down
| to a less-than-consistent level I'm usually out the door (never
| fired, but often laid off in this industry).
|
| However, this burned me when I became staff-level because I'd get
| so much work that despite trying to reduce the bus factor back to
| "manageable chaos" I was unable to and ended up leaving the job
| for another one because I became the smart guy in the room.
|
| But overall I aim to walk the razors edge between swamped and
| normal at all times because it's the only form of security I
| have. When I am in this condition I am now useful enough I have
| plenty of power over my employer and my position and for an
| employee this is an ideal situation to have. Especially when the
| alternative is extremely expensive "between jobs" insurance, or a
| less than ideal insurance package from another company.
| zikzak wrote:
| Have you considered a move to Canada? We always need good
| people and you can forget about stressing out over healthcare.
| If I moved to the US right now, I would (as I understand it)
| probably have a lot of difficulty getting any insurance company
| to cover me given my pre-existing conditions. If I did find an
| employer to take me on, it would be stressful knowing I was
| dependent on them. Here, while I do have an OK health plan to
| supplement public health care, it is more a nice to have and
| table stakes for any knowledge work job.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| I might actually depending on how things shake out in the US.
| The idea of having to deal with our healthcare system as an
| old person sounds like a nightmare. I can kinda navigate it
| now but it's still a huge pain.
| vxNsr wrote:
| > _If I moved to the US right now, I would (as I understand
| it) probably have a lot of difficulty getting any insurance
| company to cover me given my pre-existing conditions._
|
| That's not how it works here. Insurance companies cannot
| refuse to cover you.
| rrdharan wrote:
| No, but they can increase the costs to your company.
|
| "Not your Problem" is a fine response to that, but as an
| example I had a friend with a serious health condition who
| was afraid he'd jeopardize / bankrupt any small startup he
| joined (and he was probably right).
|
| This was pre-Obamacare but I don't think that aspect has
| changed in terms of the costs post-Obamacare?
|
| Generally I have this in the bucket of one of many reasons
| why startups don't make sense financially for lots of
| people (either directly per danluu.com or more indirectly
| because of stuff like this or inferior coverage for things
| like fertility treatment etc.).
| marcinzm wrote:
| >"Not your Problem" is a fine response to that, but as an
| example I had a friend with a serious health condition
| who was afraid he'd jeopardize / bankrupt any small
| startup he joined (and he was probably right).
|
| I thought most startups were part of a larger group plan
| (ie: through their third party benefits provider) so the
| costs would be distributed across that group plan.
| svachalek wrote:
| I think Obamacare/ACA put a cap on costs. It's high but
| before, it was basically infinity afaik.
| vxNsr wrote:
| This I'm not as clear on and it for sure differs between
| companies. But most if not all small businesses are not
| self-insured. They use a larger insurance company like
| BCBS who pays out, and the company and employees split
| the cost of the premiums. Obviously if an employee has
| high costs that may figure into next year's premiums but
| insurance companies are built for this type of thing and
| it's not as crazy as you might think.
|
| For larger companies (such as T-Mobile, google, or any
| other 5k+ employee company it starts to make sense to
| self insure and only have the insurance company
| administrate the plan, tho for Amazon scale it looks like
| they've started self administrating as well. Point is
| once you reach that scale everything looks different and
| you can absorb an expensive employee.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| As a startup founder, "being swamped" is bad.
|
| As an employee, "being swamped" might be amazing:
|
| If your skills are so critical to the company's success that
| management has features wait for your high-quality attention
| rather than letting a less senior colleague work on it, that
| basically just means that you get a rockstar salary and the
| freedom to write your own employment contract. I get why having
| "swamped employees" is disliked by the company, though. It drives
| up salaries.
| danschumann wrote:
| Being swamped feels bad, and therefore by emotivism standards IS
| bad, objectively so.
| spoonjim wrote:
| It's good that the laboring wealthy are higher status these days
| than the idle aristocracy but we may have taken it too far
| jaywalk wrote:
| I like to joke that I've got enough work on my plate currently to
| last until 2024, which is an exaggeration but not terribly far
| off. However, I set my own timelines for everything. I will not
| be rushed, and I will not work more than 40 hours per week.
|
| I've also been doing this for a long time, and don't work at a
| startup. So I realize that not everyone has the flexibility that
| I do, but it is vital to me. I do not and will not live to work.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| It seems that those who claim to be the busiest tend to get the
| least amount of work done. The promises were left unfilled, the
| work would sit for months and even years, and yet they still
| somehow kept themselves busy.
|
| The metaphor I think more people should consider is "working like
| a lion than a cow". Short, creative, and powerful bursts like a
| lion hunting rather than a cow constantly chewing grass.
|
| There's a competitive advantage in not being busy. Most of what
| we think we have to do, we don't have to do at all. It's a choice
| and often it's a poor one.
| metadat wrote:
| A welcome reminder. Thank you.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Oh yeah, the feeling of being swamped is really the feeling of
| being unable to "fail" at some stuff (which is ultimately just
| another way to look at prioritization; you "fail" at the stuff
| you don't prioritize, in some sense).
|
| To be good at working in a startup, you have to be okay
| "failing". Could you be working on That One Feature That Will
| Finally Fit The Market? Yeah, but you really should eat and work
| out instead, maybe watch a few episodes of that TV show you like
| because a healthy/happy you is better than a "swamped" drained
| you for the company.
|
| Being overly confident in yourself is a hack to reach this state,
| BTW.
| racl101 wrote:
| Who said it ever was a badge of honor?
|
| I've never heard it described as such.
| fullshark wrote:
| Tons of people seem proud of their massive workload, as a
| signal that you are important.
| duxup wrote:
| I like the George from Seinfeld approach:
|
| https://youtu.be/rOQmxNPTJwc
|
| Appearances matter, I make sure I look busy / folks know I'm
| working.
|
| I think sometimes the overwhelmed folks feel like they HAVE to be
| / look like they're working.
|
| I'm not often stressed or overwhelmed, but I do look "busy".
| zetazzed wrote:
| I always think about Agnes Callard's description of the
| Importance Game: "I've noticed that complaining about how busy
| one is hits a sweet spot of oppression--I cannot manage my life!
| --and importance--because I am so in demand!"
|
| https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/who-wants-to-play-the-...
|
| I.e. constantly complaining about being swamped is a way of
| declaring (often just to ourselves) that we must be Very
| Important.
| [deleted]
| thih9 wrote:
| Is "normal" is the right word? What do we consider the norm? If
| we take a generic healthy lifestyle as a reference then being
| swamped startup style is far from that. Perhaps "being swamped is
| common" would be more accurate.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| We had this guy at a company I worked for. Always said yes to the
| attractive assignments that were good for his career and refused
| others on grounds of having way too much on his plate. Then after
| a while he'd delegate the attractive assignments after botching
| or half-finishing them (often requiring a complete rewrite). Only
| to accept new ones (,,I'd love to do it but i'm currently swamped
| with XYZ, maybe ABC can take over here? it's basically done"). I
| think he deliverately functioned like that, and it got him
| promoted almost all the way to the top. One reason I left!
| IceMetalPunk wrote:
| Any society that thinks being overwhelmed is impressive, good, or
| normal is a broken society, in my opinion. Speaking as someone
| currently taking my first steps towards a career change because
| I'm so fucking burned out at my current job.
| OJFord wrote:
| Two observations that sound a bit trivial written down, but were
| quite an influence when introduced to me:
|
| - some people love to 'be' (describe themselves as) 'busy',
| 'rushed off [their] feet', and can't be any other way
|
| - phrases like 'not having time' can be a useful shorthand, but
| are a bit silly, and should be used with the understanding that
| we all have as much time in the day as each other; we choose how
| to spend it: 'I don't have time to do x' is more accurately 'I am
| prioritising other things over x'
| daenz wrote:
| Being swamped always made me feel like I should take longer to
| complete tasks, to protect myself from the stress of working too
| hard for too long. Then I realized how insane that is...why
| should I artificially make myself a less productive person? It's
| like picking up a bad habit, like smoking.
|
| Imo the real issue is that management needs to learn how to
| identify people who actively seek out work as their default
| state, and not heap work onto them. These people naturally try to
| work close to their limit, so adding more work does not make them
| more productive.
| GreenWatermelon wrote:
| I would say rather than artificially make yourself less
| productive, you (talking about anyone, including me) should
| understand your limits, then keep a healthy margin of slack
| between your average daily effort (ADE) and those limits. This
| ADE (i.e. after cutting some slack) is what I would call your
| real productivity, since it's sustainable.
|
| IMO, always working close to your limit will surely lead to
| burnout. Not sustainable, and means you'll be less productive
| on the long run, thua it's not real productivity. This "extra
| effort reservoir" should only be tapped into when absolutely
| necessary (say, Critical issue with production)
|
| That said, if your limits are already very high, it means your
| productivity and output on 80% efficiency is already high, and
| I see no reason to artificially reduce your output any further.
|
| I read an article long ago about the importance of slack for
| any workers, I think it's this one [1] though I'm not sure.
|
| [1] http://www.everydaykanban.com/2012/07/27/slack-is-not-a-
| dirt...
| tetha wrote:
| Very much this. Like, I know I can juggle 4-6 different
| system problems at once, context switching every couple of
| minutes between them. And during more massive outages, this
| is necessary to get things under control faster, sure.
|
| But it's also extremely mentally exhausting. And when I
| realized that, I stopped it and limited myself to 2 tasks at
| once outside of emergencies. Usually a slower-paced task
| where you fire off something and it does stuff for half an
| hour, and some smaller chore to do while waiting, or planning
| for a more involved thing, or reviewing and editing
| documentation. And if there is nothing to do with both tasks
| doing stuff... that's fine. Let's go and make some coffee or
| outside for a minute. Or it's just one thing if it's complex
| and critical and then I shutdown most communication too.
|
| It's noticeably slower, naturally. However, this slower pace
| is very good for my mental health and it's beneficial for the
| team, because it allows other people to get involved with the
| pieces and systems I usually maintain. A coworker is
| currently wading through some of the marshlands of
| infrastructure only I tend to go through and constantly pokes
| me to document another weird nook or cranny. That's good.
| baq wrote:
| in queueing, this is called backpressure and amazingly it
| works! so while it may not be logical from efficiency
| perspective, it might be from the process POV...
| adra wrote:
| I just talked about this with my wife just yesterday about her
| peer. If you're always the hero to take on too much work and you
| never keep up, you invite various significant structural
| problems.
|
| You're too useful to remove, you may not get attention for
| corrective measures because of fear of the person leaving.
|
| You are often too swamped to effectively get work done smoothly
| and in an expedient manner.
|
| You become a single point of failure (bus factor 1) so that when
| you take a vacation / hit by a bus, the company suffers
| significantly.
|
| A common personality trait of these types of people seem to be
| self reliance / control seekers. When they own that authority of
| work, they are less likely to accept delegation to get them out
| of their woes.
|
| In general, these types of employees may end up being labeled
| super stars, but they're also potential albatrosses that could
| significantly wound a company if not properly managed.
| taylodl wrote:
| These are the worst kind of employee, yet so many managers who
| appear too incompetent to find their rear end even when using
| both hands seem to love these people. These employees serve as
| a red flag to everybody else - if these employees are rewarded
| or otherwise encouraged to maintain this behavior then that's
| your sign your work culture is poor and it's time to go. On
| your exit interview don't be bashful to state the actual reason
| you're leaving. I worked at a place once where they had an
| employee like that and many people were leaving as a result.
| Someone in upper management got the message loud and clear and
| the problem was taken care of. I was about to leave when that
| happened and the place turned out to be _awesome_ once that
| problem was resolved. A couple of the people who had previously
| left even came back. Life is too short to tolerate working in a
| culture like that and these people are very draining to have to
| interact with.
| brightball wrote:
| Yea it's tough. As a manager I dealt with this recently.
|
| Had a guy who was an absolute star. Technically very sound.
| Committed to doing things properly. Managed his time
| diligently and productively. Tried to help everybody.
|
| Reacted badly to every attempt I made to find somebody to
| assist him. I wanted to make sure he could take a vacation
| and not get a phone call. Also wanted to make sure the
| company had somebody in place who knew the work in case he
| decided to leave for some reason.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| You're also making yourself too vital to whatever you're doing
| now - if the conceit is that the team/division/practice/company
| can't function without you doing your job you'll never be able
| to be promoted out of it.
| luckylion wrote:
| That has a pretty simple and effective solution though: just
| mention that you want to leave. I've just been through
| getting a healthy amount of equity (as a freelancer no less)
| because someone else announced they were leaving.
|
| If your job is _that_ important, you might not get promoted
| away, but you'll get the salary as if you were and then some.
| paxprose wrote:
| Under my own personal belief system, I don't agree with
| this sentiment. Sure, you might obtain the immediate but
| you're kind of poisoning the well with an announcement of
| expected departure.
|
| I take it as a rule to not ever mention that you're leaving
| somewhere until you're leaving and then follow through.
| luckylion wrote:
| I don't know. If your role is that important, they'll
| make you an offer to make you stay, which, unless you
| really, really, really want to leave, you'll take,
| because it'll be very good. Then they either work on
| making you not the single point of failure, or they'll
| accept you being that important and just go on paying you
| appropriately for it.
|
| I see "wanting to leave" as either absolute ("I hate this
| company, no amount of money can make me stay") or
| relative ("I could make more money / have less work / do
| more interesting stuff elsewhere"). The latter can
| totally be shifted by adding significantly more money, at
| least for most people.
| pydry wrote:
| I've noticed only a few people do this but the ones that did
| did it out of either ego or anxiety (sometimes a mix).
|
| They werent usually angling for a promotion.
|
| The anxiety wasnt always unwarranted either. If you're in
| tons of debt, hate interviewing and work for an organization
| that doesnt care for people this isnt a wholly irrational
| strategy.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I wonder if at-will employment in the US influences this. If
| I'm bus factor 1, they're less likely to fire me.
|
| I have anxiety around losing my job, which makes me more likely
| to say yes to piling on tasks. It doesn't seem so crazy when
| you consider my healthcare is directly attached to my
| employment.
| neon_electro wrote:
| A lack of universal healthcare available to all regardless of
| employment status is absolutely damaging us as individuals.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| Dang, you can easily draw a connection between unstable work
| environments and unstable technical products. It's directly
| in the workers benefit to keep a product reliant on them or
| else they could just die. That's crazy.
| Test0129 wrote:
| When you're reliant on healthcare and live in America that
| is first concern before anything else. Not to turn a post
| political, but the employer-tied healthcare situation in
| America is borderline a form of slavery. In tech it is
| simply well-paid slavery. I rarely if ever take vacations,
| and due to healthcare requirements cannot explore starting
| my own company or being without an employer to take an
| extended sabbatical from work. I am well compensated for my
| role and generally do well but if I lose my health
| insurance my life can be measured in months. It's a
| stressor that is hard to describe.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| Yeah, and it ultimately harms everything. It's so
| interesting that ultimately this system would produce
| lower quality products and suppress innovation. I wonder
| if countries with more flexibility in health-care will
| have more start-ups?
| wizofaus wrote:
| Almost all other developed countries have more
| flexibility with healthcare! Certainly it's never been
| part of any of my career decisions (in Australia). I
| don't believe it has much bearing on the _number_ of
| start-ups, even successful ones - the US has too many
| other factors that overwhelmingly give it the advantage
| there - but I 'm pretty sure it has been shown to affect
| upward mobility in general (America rates quite low on
| that compared to other countries with better safety nets
| and public/single payer healthcare systems, though other
| factors like cost of education almost certainly come into
| play).
| nebulousthree wrote:
| Nothing borderline about that.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Even if they don't fire you, saying no (to anything, ever)
| will come back to bite you when performance reviews (and
| raises and bonuses and stock grants) come around. OP is
| falling into the common internet commenter trap of assuming
| that the way the world _should_ work is the way the world
| _does_ work.
|
| Maya Angelou has a quote that's supposed to be inspirational
| but is actually depressing as hell: "People will forget what
| you did, people will forget what you said, but they'll never
| forget how you made them feel." Want to actually succeed in
| the actual real world and not the fantasy world internet
| commenters exist in? Focus on making people feel, not on
| results. If you say "no", they'll remember you made them feel
| like the person who turned them away when they needed you
| most. If you just say yes to everything and get to what you
| can get to, you'll make them feel like the person who tried
| their best.
|
| Until all of civilization starts rewarding actual results
| over vague feelings (it never has), focus on appearances.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| An "underperforming" worker can consistently underperform
| though, and that consistency might make people feel good.
| Ultimately you're right on a deep level, but perhaps there
| are other ways to produce good feelings than what you've
| suggested.
|
| The recency of the good feelings matters too. If you push
| back now and set expectations for everyone, then a year
| from now your boss will probably remember the consistency
| more than the push-back.
|
| Of course, it will depend on the people involved.
| nisegami wrote:
| This reminds me of the idea that most people's actual job
| is to make/keep their boss happy, and what they think of as
| their job is just a means to that end.
| driverdan wrote:
| > saying no (to anything, ever) will come back to bite you
| when performance reviews (and raises and bonuses and stock
| grants) come around
|
| Any employer that does this is toxic. You should find a new
| place to work. One of the hardest and most important
| professional soft skills is knowing when to say no and
| setting proper boundaries.
| baq wrote:
| so, say "no", but be polite about it.
|
| if somebody is butthurt because you refused to take on more
| than you are able to... that's a bad spot to be in no
| matter if you refuse or not.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > if somebody is butthurt because you refused to take on
| more than you are able to... that's a bad spot to be in
| no matter if you refuse or not.
|
| Okay, but...if you work a job not for fun but because you
| need the money, then you're still better off in the bad
| spot with a job than the bad spot without a job.
| Aeolun wrote:
| You may be better off without a job where you are managed
| by a 5 year old.
|
| I can understand if this is the first time it happens,
| but some people still complain about this after 5 years
| of dealing with the same thing.
|
| At that point it's their own fault.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > You may be better off without a job where you are
| managed by a 5 year old.
|
| If you happen to have access to free food, shelter, etc.
| and were only holding a job for fun, then sure!
| notduncansmith wrote:
| It might feel short-term good to have someone say yes, but
| when they don't fulfill their agreement that leaves a more
| long-term feeling that their answers in the future will be
| unreliable ("Yeah, X told me they'll do it soon, we'll see
| if they actually do...").
|
| Communicating honestly ("If we need that done today, we
| have to deprioritize something else to make time") will get
| you further unless you're dealing with very immature
| management.
| roflyear wrote:
| True! But not every highly-productive person is this. If you
| keep complexity low, you can have a "single point" without it
| being high risk.
|
| Recently I was really proud of being able to take a half of a
| day to document all my systems to have a reasonable assurance
| that the documentation would contain all the info needed for
| someone else to step in if they need to and get something done.
|
| And, it is a lot of systems! But we kept the complexity WAY
| down. And while the engineering is not perfect (is it ever?) I
| feel confident that someone can step in and work on these
| systems if I'm not here.
| singlow wrote:
| Seems like a contradiction. If someone can step in when you
| are not there then you are not a single point of failure.
| pphysch wrote:
| If the maverick in question is an IC, then this responsibility
| is solely on their manager.
|
| Enthusiastic contributors are rare and good.
|
| Lazy managers who hope reports will self-manage are not.
| dnissley wrote:
| It's not solely on the manager if the manager doesn't know
| because the employee in question is not giving feedback about
| their workload. Which isn't to say that the manager isn't to
| blame at all -- there are many things a manager can and
| should do to proactively suss out such issues.
| pphysch wrote:
| If you can't tell whether a direct report is being
| reasonably productive -- that's 99% a management problem.
| You need to set clearer expectations and indicators.
|
| _If_ you identify a concrete issue, _then_ it is the onus
| of the report to truthfully report on what is holding them
| back.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| Makes you wonder what exactly those managers are for if
| everyone is meant to self manage their own workload
| anyway
| random_kris wrote:
| I see myself in this. I am being labeled as superstar.
|
| The thing is that I am very quick to understand things and can
| get a prototype working from a new thing we want to do in a
| week or two.
|
| This way I know a little of of everything that goes on and when
| something breaks I am the one who can effectively debug and
| solve things. Others can too of course but for me it is usually
| <1 hour while for others it would take at least the whole day.
|
| I am passionate about my work and proffesion but on other hand
| don't want to be the albatross you are talking about
| jkaptur wrote:
| Then you need to bring your talents to bear on how to make
| others as good as you are at these things. Mentor, pair,
| teach, write, etc.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| This would imply that everyone has a similar capacity and
| willingness to learn, and that a capable IC's time is best-
| spent mentoring and documenting. I'm not sure these things
| hold true all the time.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Not all the time, but often enough to be good advice for
| the large majority of the time.
|
| If the place is on fire? Maybe not.
|
| The rest of the time? Spreading that knowledge is a force
| multiplier.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| Maybe consider freelancing or launching your own company. It
| sounds like you're cut out for it. It's riskier than a steady
| job of course, but it sounds like you might be getting a bit
| too comfortable.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| Just to add - this can even be a career advancement hurdle. My
| mom told her about a meeting she had with her boss where she
| asked for a promotion because she was doing so well at her
| current role and the boss basically said "yes you're doing more
| than we've seen before and that's why we're going to keep you
| right where you are".
|
| I'm a bit wary of the "peter principle" where people generally
| get promoted until they can't do their job well - but that's an
| institutional concern. From the perspective of an employee it
| might make sense to not excel because it could make you too
| valuable to promote. One of those annoying contradictions where
| you might have to look out for yourself at the cost of the
| company you're also trying to help succeed
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I am often too swamped to get work done effectively. I tell my
| manager this on a weekly basis. I still get new stuff put on my
| plate.
|
| I have 40 hours a week to work. He's welcome to divide that up
| how he sees fit. I'm not going to start working any more than
| 40.
| fezfight wrote:
| Right? OP is victim blaming here. I'm swamped because my
| manager manages based on hopes and dreams.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| When your manager brings you new work and you're already
| swamped with work try asking this question: "I have these X
| other high-priority items on my plate. Which of these would
| you like me to deprioritize in order to work on this new
| thing?" Then set expectations on when you think you can get
| to that new thing, also, it can be helpful to offer reasons
| why you believe certain things are higher priority.
| Prioritizing work is important when your feeling like there
| is too much.
|
| Change the conversation from how much to when.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| > Yes, drop those other things
|
| or
|
| > Well just do this in like the fastest, shittiest way
| possible
|
| :shrug:
|
| We can prioritize and things do get prioritized but if you
| have 40 hours of time and 80 hours of work, some ball is
| getting dropped.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Yes, drop those other things
|
| Reminds me of a previous manager I had. He would come
| with a 20 to 60 hours task, and quite reasonably say
| "that's urgent, drop anything else and focus on this for
| as long as you need".
|
| The only problem is that he did that about twice a day.
| ratww wrote:
| I've definitely had cases where the manager (and on lots of
| cases, the CEO) tried to "turn those conversation around"
| and bullshit me.
|
| The thing they wanted me to do was maximum priority, but
| there was also some other totally unpredictable thing
| (often support related) that I also had to take care of.
| The higher-up was 100% sure it wasn't a real problem and
| assumed I was exaggerating the situation.
|
| The solution to the problem of lack of trust is of course
| to convince them, or to leave. If you can't make changes
| that increase your productivity, you'll become stressed and
| burned out, and will still not be able to do enough. It is
| a decision they made.
| galdosdi wrote:
| If you're doing something you think is important ("other
| totally unpredictable thing (often support related)") at
| work and your boss says they think it isn't important
| ("The higher-up was 100% sure it wasn't a real problem
| and assumed I was exaggerating the situation.") then I
| would assume your boss is right and you are wrong and act
| accordingly (start ignoring or delaying dealing with
| these support-related things when you are busy with the
| "higher priority" work). Either it will turn out your
| boss was right and it won't be a big deal, or it will
| turn out your boss was wrong, and it will be clear to
| everyone, and before you know it a big pronouncement will
| come down from up high saying that that "unimportant"
| thing actually is very important.
| ratww wrote:
| Sure, but "I doubt that's that big of a problem" is very
| different from "isn't important".
| [deleted]
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| But your boss needs that feedback loop or they will
| continue to be wrong.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Which of these would you like me to deprioritize in order
| to work on this new thing?"
|
| At most places, the answer is going to be "you need to
| prioritize all of it. Oh, and by the way, here is even more
| work to put on your plate!"
| LargeWu wrote:
| There are occasionally times when everything is critical.
| Often this is in the early stages of survival for a
| company.
|
| If this is a chronic problem, or it's an established
| company, though, you realistically have two solutions
| that don't lead to burnout:
|
| 1. Don't deliver everything you're asked for
|
| 2. Find a new job
|
| Once that culture is established it's extremely hard to
| change. It certainly will not fix itself.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I agree completely. I was working for a company that had
| been around for over 20 years and when that happened, I
| did both 1&2. It was pretty clear that I had made all the
| improvements I could there and that nothing would get any
| better.
| RalfWausE wrote:
| I worked at a company like this (for f...ing 10 years!),
| beeing fired at the end was the best thing that could
| happen to me, it lead me to a much less stressfull job
| with much better pay
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think my answer to that is something of the kind of:
| "Work is going to be prioritized one way or another. If
| you don't tell me which one you want me to work on first
| I'll pick the one _I_ like best, and we'll see which of
| the problems never gets finished."
|
| I think this only works if you've already set boundaries
| on your time though.
| visarga wrote:
| I usually work on the latest task, last-in-first-out
| system. If someone has a higher priority they should bug
| be more to get bumped up. The reason is that I want to
| finish at least a few tasks without delays. For large
| tasks I ask them to select the ordering.
| johnnylambada wrote:
| I love repeating the phrase "if it's all top priority
| than none of it is top priority"
| valbaca wrote:
| Being swamped can serve as a form of passive-aggressive back-
| pressure: a way to indicate to not even be approached with new
| work as you're at capacity. Unfortunately, sometimes it's the
| only back-pressure that managers understand. They get so dead-set
| on having everyone giving "110%!" without realizing that's
| catastrophic and that slack is necessary to remain resilient,
| both in services and in people.
| andsoitis wrote:
| There's an infinite number of things you can say _yes_ to.
|
| Saying _no_ requires discernment, a sense of what 's important
| and what isn't. It requires being intentional about what to do
| now vs. later vs. never.
|
| You cannot be creative when you're constantly _task-finishing_.
| onion2k wrote:
| Being swamped in a job as a dev (rather than a startup) is a
| signal that you're bad at saying no to adding things to a sprint,
| and unable to hand off work to other people. I'm very wary of
| working with people like that. It ends badly when things finally
| get too much.
| lmeyerov wrote:
| I'm not sure the solution makes sense for a lot of startup
| people.
|
| A mental model for repeatable luck building, especially when in a
| "yes mode", where just 1 big fast-moving item is unlikely to be
| the job (networking, partnerships, devrel, customers, investing,
| ...) , is learning to prioritize bandwidth over latency. This can
| be true for engineering as well: solutions, bigco, ... .
|
| A lot of the above things are unpredictable in when & how they
| strike. A latency mindset means pick 1-2 things at a time and
| work through them... but that's stressful when they are big
| hurry-up-and-wait items that would require heroic efforts to make
| it faster. Think David vs. Goliath moments in fighting the slow
| pace of whatever organizations you're working with. Instead,
| prioritize bandwidth by multiplexing to another item.
|
| There's no free lunch even with a bandwidth mentality. Now the
| issue is being randomly oversubscribed when multiple priorities
| land at the same time.
| austinl wrote:
| Possibly my favorite quote from _Meditations_ (the Martin Hammond
| translation):
|
| _"... you would never say of him that he 'broke out a sweat':
| but everything was allotted its own time and thought, as by a man
| of leisure--his way was unhurried, organized, vigorous,
| consistent in all"._
|
| Here, Aurelius is referring to his adoptive father, Antoninus
| Pius, who was known as one of the good Roman emperors and
| undoubtedly a very busy man.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-08-03 23:01 UTC)