[HN Gopher] Burnout can exacerbate work stress, further promotin...
___________________________________________________________________
Burnout can exacerbate work stress, further promoting a vicious
circle
Author : rustoo
Score : 160 points
Date : 2020-11-10 17:25 UTC (5 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.uni-mainz.de)
| [deleted]
| dirtybirdnj wrote:
| Its like being a cat trapped in the washing machine on spin
| cycle. The only hope for escape is a power failure and mercy of
| someone who is aware you are inside.
|
| Stuck in a job completely burned out, there is nothing worse than
| the realization of the futility in any struggle to either escape
| or improve. The knowledge that your output has dropped, the
| feeling that it's your fault combined with nobody interested in
| helping you because they are annoyed about your lack of output.
| There are no doorhandles on the inside of this washing machine.
|
| My only advice is to meow as loud as you can.
| marsrover wrote:
| Looking back on a previous job, I can now see that I was either
| becoming burned out or was burned out. This is a very apt
| analogy.
| amelius wrote:
| Sleep as long as you can.
| ciceryadam wrote:
| In one of my jobs I ended up in a position where at the end
| of it I hated going to work. So I stayed up late, so the
| dreaded work would still be a sleep away. So I was getting
| more and more upset about my position, fueled not just by
| being between a rock and a hard place, but also by this
| voluntary sleep deprivation. Human mind is weird, well, at
| least mine is.
| NortySpock wrote:
| Sure, if you can sleep.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| For those of us who are working from home right now,
| sleeping is easier than ever.
| mancerayder wrote:
| Insomnia is pretty high on the list of pandemic lockdown
| issues at the moment, not to mention burnout symptoms.
|
| Some people I know can sleep sitting on a plane, and
| others can scarcely sleep at night, horizontal, in a
| quiet room, on a soft bed.
| yters wrote:
| A hard workout, waking up early and avoiding caffeine
| help me a lot with insomnia.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| Respectfully, mental health is way more complex than that.
|
| Psychologists have to study for 15+ years...
| echelon wrote:
| I just want a no-pay sabbatical. Three months, total reset of
| energy levels.
|
| We should all have that option.
|
| I would take a lot less money (-$50k or more) if I got to take a
| quarter off every year.
|
| Four day work weeks would be another compelling alternative. Two
| days a week are not enough time to get chores done. There's no
| time for relaxing.
|
| If I ever create a company, I'd love to offer these options.
| thelean12 wrote:
| Plenty of big companies allow you to do this. I know several
| people who have taken 1-3 month long unpaid vacation while at
| FAANG companies.
| nprz wrote:
| I was laid off near the tail end of a very stressful, deadline
| driven project and it actually came as a huge relief. Luckily I
| had money saved and took my time (about 3 months) looking for
| the next job. Was also given 2 months severance, so I didn't
| even end up losing much income. By end of my time off I was
| getting bored and happy to be working on something new. Highly
| recommended.
| tartoran wrote:
| A layoff could come as a blessing sometimes, especially if
| you're not in the middle of other problems. As devs we're
| still privileged to be able to do this. For many a layoff
| comes as dreadful news.
| tartoran wrote:
| Absolutely. We need to carve a new normal. I personally would
| be a lot more productive after a 3 months of rest. I asked my
| former employer if I could take some unpaid time off, and of
| course I was flexible on timing so that their impact was at a
| minimum. The answer was no.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| Been in this case a couple jobs; both MSP jobs naturally. When
| you're burnt out you just don't see it. In both of my previous
| jobs the burnout also had a boss who was consistently
| micromanaging and saying you aren't working hard enough.
|
| This is one of the weaknesses of government. A fundamental law
| that governments should have is that your employer cannot harm
| your health. Even in mental cases like burnout, the employer is
| almost certainly trading the employee's health for money. An
| employee's health is not something an employer should be allowed
| to trade.
|
| In more physical injury, someone lifting 200lbs hurting their
| back or some ancient machine that lacks any safety features
| leading to injury. The employer is trading their employee's
| health in place of profits in not having safety.
|
| Even with workplace safety measures, who ultimately pays is the
| government and therefore tax payers for these injuries. These bad
| employers get to keep their $.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Plenty of jobs trade their employees' health for money. If they
| didn't, the economy would literally cease to function. Oil rig
| workers, miners, lumber workers, fishermen, roofers, pilots,
| farmers, even truck drivers have significantly elevated
| mortality rates.
|
| The reality is that there are many jobs that require a
| sacrifice in terms of health and safety. Until we're living in
| a post-scarcity economy, they always will. We can do things
| like make those jobs as safe as practically possible. Or make
| sure workers are aware of the risks before they sign up.
|
| But, it's unrealistic utopian thinking to believe that no one
| will ever be asked to sacrifice their health or safety for
| their job.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >Plenty of jobs trade their employees' health for money. If
| they didn't, the economy would literally cease to function.
| Oil rig workers, miners, lumber workers, fishermen, roofers,
| pilots, farmers, even truck drivers have significantly
| elevated mortality rates.
|
| You're completely right.
|
| >The reality is that there are many jobs that require a
| sacrifice in terms of health and safety. Until we're living
| in a post-scarcity economy, they always will. We can do
| things like make those jobs as safe as practically possible.
| Or make sure workers are aware of the risks before they sign
| up.
|
| I disagree. The point I am making is that we must make that
| illegal. We should require the employers to solve that
| problem. All of these have known hazards that which can be
| solved. We simply decide that we let employers profit off it.
| That's wrong.
|
| >But, it's unrealistic utopian thinking to believe that no
| one will ever be asked to sacrifice their health or safety
| for their job.
|
| There are some exceptions that obviously do need to exist.
| Military or law enforcement for example will have harms in
| their life that are by definition.
|
| I look at your list of examples of higher mortality employers
| and I agree they exist, I even understand what makes them
| dangerous. Truck drivers for example is simply the Diesel
| Exhaust. Electric semi trucks is a thing now, but HEPA
| filters have existed for how long?
|
| There's a fix for every single one of those industries.
| ed312 wrote:
| I think truck drivers its more a function of 1. driving
| lots of miles (the more you're on the road, the more risk
| you're in) plus 2. sedentary job.
|
| There is definitely not a fix for every industry - and some
| people are happy with taking that risk for more money than
| a lower risk job/profession. "Just make dangerous job
| conditions illegal" is a naive view of the world. Even if
| you could pass such laws, you'd get a massive skills drain
| and/or black market work to get those jobs done.
| kaybe wrote:
| > A fundamental law that governments should have is that your
| employer cannot harm your health.
|
| A small note: Germany does have a law like this. (I cannot find
| anything about it in English though.)
|
| https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Pretty sure the Health & Safety at Work Act (UK) [1] meets
| this requirement. There's various common law things related
| to duty of care and negligence that probably apply less
| specifically too.
|
| I'd really expect every democratic country to have some form
| of law requiring employers take care of their employees --
| they should expect to do _something_ in return for leeching
| off ones production of value.
|
| [1] https://www.hse.gov.uk/legislation/hswa.htm
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >A small note: Germany does have a law like this. (I cannot
| find anything about it in English though.)
|
| The more I know about Germany's government the more I like
| about it.
| dasKrokodil wrote:
| There have been worse German governments than the current
| one.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _who ultimately pays is the government_
|
| At least in the US, I believe that employers are required to
| pay for workers' compensation insurance to cover injuries on
| the job.
| TheDong wrote:
| > This is one of the weaknesses of government. A fundamental
| law that governments should have is that your employer cannot
| harm your health
|
| I think there's a better way to deal with this. Rather than
| legislate that certain abuses of health aren't okay, let's
| instead make it so people aren't stuck working jobs if they
| don't think it's worth it. Right now, the main reason
| workplaces can abuse employees so much is that employees can't
| quit, or else they'd starve on the street.
|
| If we had a livable universal basic income, that would allow
| anyone to, at any time, decide if their job's extra income +
| the meaning it gave them was worth the stress and other issues.
|
| We already have good evidence that this wouldn't result in no
| one working since, well, quite a few of the people born wealthy
| enough to never need to work do work anyway.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| > Rather than
|
| Why not both?
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >I think there's a better way to deal with this. Rather than
| legislate that certain abuses of health aren't okay, let's
| instead make it so people aren't stuck working jobs if they
| don't think it's worth it. Right now, the main reason
| workplaces can abuse employees so much is that employees
| can't quit, or else they'd starve on the street.
|
| I know where you're going and I'm a fence sitter.
|
| >If we had a livable universal basic income, that would allow
| anyone to, at any time, decide if their job's extra income +
| the meaning it gave them was worth the stress and other
| issues.
|
| Here in Canada we have tried basic income systems and even
| have a current system for some of our people. It's a
| disaster. It single handedly increases poverty and crime like
| no other policy.
|
| Have you ever heard of a negative income tax rate?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM
|
| >We already have good evidence that this wouldn't result in
| no one working since, well, quite a few of the people born
| wealthy enough to never need to work do work anyway.
|
| Only when you exclude systems that arent by name which is
| common for socialist/communist/collectivist/postmodernist or
| whatever the new brand is that they go by today as the old
| name becomes tarnished.
|
| There's tremendous evidence that welfare system in general
| have never been successful. When we have a problem that which
| the welfare system is proposed as the fix. The problem gets
| worse as the welfare system is implemented. Then the fix is
| that the welfare system needs more money and as they get more
| money the problem becomes worse.
|
| In fact many of these systems are not designed to help the
| poor even though by name they are supposed to be.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Every time I approach burnout my body reacts with some funny
| symptom I had never suffered before. The human brain can be
| really imaginative at asking you to stop.
| jofer wrote:
| In my experience, most of burnout is being held responsible for
| things you don't have control over. That may not be true for
| everyone, but it's been consistently true for me.
|
| As a result, the "work more efficiently" comments from
| management/etc are just incredibly unhelpful.
|
| Most of the discussion so far seems to center on "work more
| efficiently", not "find a way to be supported". The latter is
| usually the only thing that will help, in my experience.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Clicked for me recently that working hard is like driving in
| first gear. Necessary initially, but if you don't shift up into
| higher gears, you're probably not doing it right, and not getting
| as far as fast as you probably should. If I'm tired, it's
| necessarily because I'm mismanaging my work and time, and that's
| a signal it's time to step back and figure out what's wrong.
|
| Some people are really good at that initial torque boost on
| projects and can sustain it longer than others, but if work
| doesn't get easier it's because you're doing something wrong.
|
| From a market-fit perspective, I think startups that drive around
| in first gear never get very far either. Things are only hard
| because we're being stupid. Nobody ever looks at a person driving
| a ferrari and thinks, "wow, they must have washed a _lot_ of
| dishes to afford that car, " and yet we still think "if I just
| wash these dishes hard enough I'll drive a ferrari one day."
|
| I'm guilty of this as much as anyone, but burnout is my body
| intervening to tell me I'm being stupid.
| outworlder wrote:
| > If I'm tired, it's necessarily because I'm mismanaging my
| work and time
|
| Is it though? What if you are (always) on call? What if you get
| a message from your boss late evening asking for stuff for
| early morning? What if you have late night meetings or very
| early morning meetings (and what if both are present)? What if
| coworkers from other timezones are messaging you outside work
| hours (if you even have defined work hours) with 'urgent'
| requests?
|
| Often, the time mismanagement is external.
| pjmorris wrote:
| True. That's a case where 'change your organization or change
| your organization' applies. Like it or not, that decision is
| more in your own hands than in those of the external
| mismanagers.
| WJW wrote:
| That's still mismanaging your work and time, but indirectly.
| Find a better job where your colleagues respect your personal
| time.
| outworlder wrote:
| Fine. As long as we recognize that's a very privileged
| position. Many people on Hacker News have skillsets that
| are in high demand (across most geographical locations) so
| they have the luxury of moving on a whim.
|
| This is not the case for many (most?) people.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| Are you familiar with the /r/wowthanksimcured/ subreddit?
| Might want to check it out.
|
| There are several problems with your statement:
|
| - find a better job: the job market is not ideal right now
| from the worker's perspective. Not to mention the
| difficulty of onboarding remote employees which is a
| stressor in itself.
|
| - finding and landing a job is stressful. Assuming we're
| talking about jobs in CS, the prep is long, takes a lot of
| your personal time and ultimately you need to deal with a
| good amount of rejection. Stressful af.
|
| - after landing a job, figuring out if it's a better job is
| hard. You really can't. There are yellow/red flags you can
| notice during interviews along with other intelligence you
| can get from insiders but more often than not the situation
| on the ground is more or less a crapshot.
|
| - respecting personal time is subjective. Also a thing
| which you can't really figure it out unless you're in the
| specific situation and see if it matches your expectation.
| tartoran wrote:
| That's a stretch too far in my opinion. Sometimes we end up
| in situations that are unpleasant and the time it takes to
| change those situations is not necessarily short. As usual
| it's easier said than done. But it is doable, sure, I
| agree. But they still take a huge toll. Think about the
| hiring interview wall that's been going up recently. If
| stressed already one doesn't feel like jumping to leets
| code in preparation for an interview. Also there are other
| circumstances that make some of us not leave a job right
| away when we feel something is not right.
| bot41 wrote:
| What if you're on 3 different projects with 3
| standup/checkins a day?
| WalterSear wrote:
| Then you need to follow the advice of health professionals:
|
| https://www.theonion.com/health-experts-recommend-
| standing-u...
| TOGoS wrote:
| In that case 'mismanaging my work and time' means 'not
| finding a different job[1]' :)
|
| [1] Or forming a union and demanding better conditions, but,
| y'know, programmers.
| joemazerino wrote:
| Communication is important, too. Your teammates should have a
| rotating schedule and understanding of client deliveries so
| an exhausted person can rotate off for a fresh one.
| [deleted]
| hansvm wrote:
| Counterpoint: If driving a fancy car is your highest priority
| then most places in the developed world you can skimp in other
| places (family, time off, apartment size, etc) and save for a
| few years to pay cash for one if you haven't drawn a
| particularly short stick in life. A brand new GT-R costs
| something like 5-10yrs savings for a slightly-above-full-time
| pizza delivery driver who avoids most other luxuries.
| fakedang wrote:
| > Nobody ever looks at a person driving a ferrari and thinks,
| "wow, they must have washed a lot of dishes to afford that
| car," and yet we still think "if I just wash these dishes hard
| enough I'll drive a ferrari one day."
|
| I'm saving this quote to tell people this later on.
| codecamper wrote:
| If you are reading this make sure you get a colonoscopy before
| 40, but also a 23andme to see if you have genetic susceptibility
| to colon cancer. If you have susceptibility, then don't smoke and
| a colonoscopy by 30 or smoke and a colonoscopy by 25. Don't drink
| a lot of sugary drinks either.
|
| Writing this because too many young people are getting colon
| cancer & it's a completely preventable cancer.
| outworlder wrote:
| I upvoted this because, even though it's not on topic, it's an
| important recommendation.
|
| That said, I don't see colon cancer listed in 23andme's
| website. Are you sure they screen for that?
| mottosso wrote:
| And just like that you added the stress of worrying about
| cancer to my list. Thank you stranger!
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| One of the most frustrating parts about it for me was that I'd
| seen the trope many times in fiction, non-fiction, and with my
| own eyes, and I could see all the parallels, knew logically what
| was happening, and I still found myself pushing harder into the
| cliff. A real mindfuck.
| lovehashbrowns wrote:
| There are so many things like that which can affect you, you
| see it happening, and there's nothing you can do about it. I
| have occasional manic episodes, and ADHD. I can see both
| happening, I know what they are logically, and I just get to
| see myself walk closer and closer to the cliff's edge.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| If you are burned out watch the talk "Pushing through friction"
| by Daniel Na.
|
| That talk inspired me and saved my job.
| ajb wrote:
| That's interesting, but its not the only cause of burnout.
| christophergs wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation, talk was indeed banging:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bxZuzDKoI0
| andrewem wrote:
| Can someone summarize the lessons or approach of that talk?
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Day one mentality, how to deal with pushback and frustration,
| how to steer feedback towards constructive outcomes, how to
| succeed at a medium sized company, how to recognize and avoid
| normalization of deviance, why these things are important...
|
| I don't know if I can summarize every excellent talk point in
| that presentation. The delivery is also great.
|
| Kudos to Dan Na and Dan Luu for creating such great content.
| outworlder wrote:
| That was an awesome recommendation.
|
| However, I'd argue that that talk is more useful _before_ you
| start to burn out. Pushing through friction is akin to swimming
| upwards a waterfall if part of the friction comes from within.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I have to support my family somehow. Who cares if that means I'm
| burnt out.
| echelon wrote:
| A lot of millennials will never have families because of this.
| Lammy wrote:
| My belief is that's _why_ many things are the way they are in
| our modern world. It's resource /population control by proxy.
| rychco wrote:
| Myself and most of my millennial peers feel this way exactly.
|
| Some are still hopeful that they'll own a home & raise a
| large family like their parents and grandparents did, but the
| rest of us aren't so sure.
| UseStrict wrote:
| Millennial peer, I feel like it's been a treadmill, forever
| running but no progress. Living in first in Ottawa then
| Toronto, I watched affordability of housing slip from
| attainable in 3-5 years after graduating to virtually
| impossible without being extremely house poor. That's
| excluding the crazy high cost of living in general, and the
| feeling like employers are working to crush an ever-
| increasing amount of time out of employees. Why bring a kid
| into this prison? So they can work harder and fall even
| further behind than I am?
| giantg2 wrote:
| I have a house and one kid. My wife wants another kid and
| complains that out house is too small (it's 1800 sqft). I
| hate my job but have no other options to support us.
|
| I honestly wonder how I did not listen to all the advice of
| other people about not getting married. Even at this same
| job I was much happier years ago. Part of that was because
| I hadn't been disillusioned yet, but I think part of it was
| also that I had the option of just quitting and taking a
| lower paying job or moving. Now I'm not allowed to try
| either of those options.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _My wife wants another kid_
|
| Please, for god's sake, make sure you are using a condom
| and don't take her word for it that she's on birth
| control.
|
| (I'm a former full-time homemaker, fwiw.)
| giantg2 wrote:
| Thanks, I'm careful.
| mancerayder wrote:
| Is it allowed to tell wives who push husbands like that
| to get jobs themselves?
|
| Is it really believed that housework is as hard and
| stressful as a tech job? I feel like we're not really
| supposed to voice that aloud, but how else is that to be
| challenged?
| giantg2 wrote:
| My wife works about 25-30 hours per week. However, she
| spends most of that on her hobby (more than I spend on
| the mortgage). She doesn't contribute to any bills other
| than her gas and tires. I pay all the bills, benefits,
| utilities. I do all the shopping, cooking, baking,
| mechanic work, handyman work, projects, legal research (a
| case she got us involved in because she won't listen to
| me), medical research (our son has an issue), etc. Of
| course I watch the kid pretty much as soon as I get off
| of work most days and on the weekend. She won't let us
| move to a cheaper area or for me to pursue a different
| job. For example, there's a position at Google in
| Pittsburgh that I would have liked to interview for. I'm
| guessing I wouldn't get it, but I'd like to try. But my
| feelings and opinions aren't worth anything.
| omginternets wrote:
| Your marriage sounds like it's completely dysfunctional
| and a living hell. Finances and work balance aside, the
| bit about the legal trouble is quite the red flag.
|
| I don't presume to know what the right move is for you,
| but it sounds like you need to do _something_. Your
| situation is not normal. Have you considered couple 's
| therapy?
| yters wrote:
| Very tough situation. I suppose it is difficult to
| discuss the imbalance.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I've brought it up. She doesn't care. She tells me
| unrealistic things too.
|
| For example, she says that I should pursue my expensive
| hobbies too, like track nights with the 1LE Camaro (which
| I felt I had to sell when getting married). Where would
| that money come from?! Should I just not pay the
| mortgage, or stop saving for retirement? She has also
| said if I don't like my job that I should quit. I've
| explained that it would be a significant pay cut since I
| have experience in non-marketable tech (FileNet and
| Neoxam). Again, where will that difference come from?
|
| I've suggested she pay portion of the bills, but she
| won't. If she makes 30% of our income, then why can't she
| pay 20% of our shared bills (mortgage and utilities). I
| even explained it that way, but she won't do it. Not even
| a counter offer.
| echelon wrote:
| Divorce. You have one life.
|
| I know you have a kid, but they'll grow up to resent you
| if you stay the course because they don't understand the
| weight you carry on your shoulders and your wife will
| have more energy for them.
|
| Divorce will actually be better for your kid. You'll
| still be able to see them and shape them. Over time, they
| may favor spending time with you.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Nah, I'll stick it out. Family court would f me over more
| than this.
| zo1 wrote:
| That's ridiculously unfair and I'm sorry borderline
| abusive. If you guys are in a potentially precarious
| situation financially, then there is absolutely no
| justification why she should spend most of her earnings
| on entertainment whilst the bulk of your earnings go to
| necessities. Any excess earnings from _you and her_
| should go towards your family savings for future
| financial security, your children and retirement.
| Entertainment /hobbies should be put on the end of the
| list of things to use excess money on.
|
| Please put your foot down and draw some boundaries (don't
| ask or beg). Be stern, and give her no choice but to
| spend her income on the family instead of selfish
| individual hobbies.
| WJW wrote:
| GP never said his wife doesn't already have a job?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Is it allowed to tell wives who push husbands like that
| to get jobs themselves?
|
| Certainly its a sign that much better communication is
| needed in the relationship (and probably, honestly,
| should have happened before the relationship proceeded to
| either children or marriage, but aside from warning to
| people not yet in the situation [0], that's kind of
| moot.)
|
| That communication probably needs to be a lot more
| nuanced than "tell wives [...] to get jobs themselves".
|
| > Is it really believed that housework is as hard and
| stressful as a tech job?
|
| Having done both, I believe it. Of course, there's
| probably people for whom housework is less or a tech job
| more "hard and stressful" than is the case for me.
|
| > I feel like we're not really supposed to voice that
| aloud, but how else is that to be challenged?
|
| Why should it be challenged? Winning some abstract
| argument about the generalized relative strenuousness of
| different activities doesn't seem particularly useful.
|
| What is needed in a relationship is mutual communication
| and working arrangement that functions well for the two
| parties involved. Abstract generalities are mostly a
| distraction.
| 1_2__4 wrote:
| I tried to explain this to my wife once. Easy to say I should
| take a break or not be so hard on myself but if I screw up
| neither of us have food or a home. There is no other option.
| meaydinli wrote:
| I am going through this right now. I have constant tension
| headaches and doc says I should stay away from stress, stress
| triggers and chocolate/coffee/etc. How am I supposed to do that
| with work/life/COVID and everything 2020?
|
| I have a big project on me, and there is no way I can get the
| rest I need to recover properly. I took 2 days off, and my
| colleagues are rallying to help as much as they can, but some of
| the info is silo'd on me so I need to work on it.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| > but some of the info is silo'd on me
|
| What's preventing you from sharing this information or making
| it accessible to your other colleagues?
| meaydinli wrote:
| Thank you, that is a good question. I haven't thought of it
| from that POV. Nothing is preventing me aside from my work-
| load, and the feeling that I am letting everybody down every
| second this project is further delayed.
| nitrogen wrote:
| I'm paraphrasing a story whose origin I can't remember at
| the moment, but basically if you have 6 hours to chop down
| a very large tree, you should spend 5 of those hours
| sharpening your axe.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I'm suddenly feeling a little better about all the time I
| spend investigating better/different ways to approach
| technical problems, even when I know that I can't apply
| them to the problem that is immediately in front of me.
|
| I mean, obviously at some point you need to cut down the
| tree, and sometimes you're just carving down your ax
| without making it any sharper, but still.
| zo1 wrote:
| It's a crap cake most times I try the long-approach on a
| problem:
|
| I spend time researching, investigating, figuring out the
| best way to do it, implementing the solution and
| potentially being pulled off to something else in the
| meantime. And then comes along some spiffy "throw hammer
| at the problem" person that can't stand spending too much
| time on a problem, who then proceeds to solve it in some
| crappy way that "kinda works". Then goes ahead and
| convinces everyone to go with it because "hey it's
| already done and kinda works and why throw away work",
| nevermind the "work" you did figuring it out and them not
| even bothering to ask you for your info (or downright
| ignoring it because it wasn't quick enough for their way
| of operating).
|
| And then when you raise it with management, you get told
| to "call a meeting" to discuss the issue with the team in
| such a way that precludes the need for management to get
| directly involved and tell that other person to sit down
| and listen - because hey "they're a code ninja that gets
| shit done" and look at all these things they've done.
|
| Oh and we generally have to spend weeks afterwards fixing
| all the corner cases they never bothered to think about
| or investigate. And more meetings get called to discuss
| it instead of them just listening to you _telling_ them
| what the solutions are. Because hey, the whole team has
| to have a say right? We wouldn 't want them to think
| their opinion doesn't matter. 50/50 chance of that, or we
| end up rewriting it after we come to the realization that
| the solution sucks, but that code-ninja has already moved
| along to the next team where "they urgently need help of
| someone that can just get things done".
|
| /rant
| pmiller2 wrote:
| That story is often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, IIRC.
| It may be apocryphal.
| HomeDeLaPot wrote:
| I think I've heard it attributed to Abe Lincoln. I
| imagine he didn't mean to sharpen it all up front, but
| after every few swings.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Quote Investigator is a good site to go for origin
| stories of a quote (the number of suggested hours/minutes
| for axe sharpening varies wildly):
| https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/29/sharp-axe/
| jrumbut wrote:
| I know this is basically impossible, but often everyone is
| better off if they know in advance something is impossible
| to maintain/accomplish.
|
| I've made this mistake plenty of times and been in
| situations where it was easy to prevent early in the cycle,
| so I'm sure if this was an easy environment it would be,
| well, easy.
| bird_monster wrote:
| I've wanted to write about my (only; last) experience as a
| manager for a long time, as I think it's a pretty textbook
| definition of the trap that is getting burnt out by a shitty job.
|
| My mood worsened because I felt like I was failing all the time.
| Being in a shitty mood and feeling deeply ashamed made the
| quality of my work (meaning: the way I treated my team and
| stakeholders) worse. It was this terrible loop of failure and
| frustration and shame. My bosses were inept but empathetic to my
| position for a while, until they also succumbed to the
| burnout/failure process that shitty companies usually cascade
| downward. My team hated me, because I was tasked with firing some
| of them and fundamentally changing the way that they worked. My
| manager, who I replaced as my team's manager, was very open that
| he didn't have it in him to fire anyone, and that my job was
| awful mostly because of the amount of things he didn't feel
| comfortable addressing while he was in my role (but needed
| addressed). This meant some employees had spent literal years
| exhibiting bad behavior, and I (a new hire) was being tasked with
| addressing it. It was awful. To make matters worse, as soon as my
| manager stopped managing the team, he seemed to totally forget
| what it was like working with that team, which meant that my
| requirements and performance were measured off of totally
| unobtainable feats of success with the team we had. I was
| expected to get a team that couldn't ship a feature in 10 weeks,
| to ship features in 2.
|
| Ultimately it culminated with a meeting between me and my grand-
| manager, where I told her there was an opening as an IC on a
| neighboring team/product and I intended to take it, and she
| responded by saying "Maybe, I'm not sure we'll be able to
| accommodate that request." Which I responded for the first and
| only time in my career with the ultimatum of "In 30 days I will
| not be on this team, one way or the other." I felt sick going
| into that meeting because it felt like I was admitting that I was
| a total failure, but also that sickness was 1/1000th of the
| sickness I felt waking up every day getting crushed by my actual
| job.
|
| Now, some time out, I am on good terms with everyone other than
| that grand-manager, who I haven't spoken with since. I even work
| at a new company founded by former coworkers.
| baxtr wrote:
| I quit my stressful job end of August. Luckily I have a
| smartwatch. By chance I checked my resting heart rate recently. I
| was quite shocked to see a stunning continuous 20% drop since
| then. I guess it was the right decision to quit.
| gjvc wrote:
| ...from the department of the bloody obvious.
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