100% in Silicon Valley
Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week
41–50 of 218 posts
Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really. Developers are just held accountable or feel accountable for their own forced guesstymates. It was better when managers were guessing becouse they also have the means to change scope.
There's a very good reason why story points in scrum do not directly relate to time worked. You guess story points only in relation to each other. Over time, you can see how many story points you finish per sprint. By seeing how many story points are still on the backlog, you can estimate how long it will take. Add one or two sprints for unforeseen problems, and there's your estimate. Not based on anyone's guess, but…
If nearly everyone is doing it wrong, the problem is Scrum.
Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week
#43"Conducted by telecommunications company TollFreeForwarding.com, " an odd source, but OK. I work remote from a place outside the US. Last thanksgiving my boss (from the US) was on Slack. So were... all but one of my US colleagues. I see them writing at all hours of the night. On a work trip it was more or less assumed I'd work from 9 AM (8:30 ish really if you count coffee before) until 10 PM. I'm not on pagerduty an…
> It depends on the industry but there's too many people who are de facto actually at work every waking moment If "at work every waking moment" means "needs to be able to respond to emergencies", then this is actually the norm for everyone in the world until very recently. Anyone who doesn't have an employer is "at work every waking moment" by this definition. Peasants, housewives, aristocrats... Given the nearly 100…
Given that chauffeuring is driving and we were driving before Uber existed, it seems strange that people expect compensation when driving for Uber and count it as part of their labor time?
Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not healthy. Please take some time off for a vacation and return to a normal 40 hour work week. There's a good reason why people fought for a 40 hour work week. Life is not just about work; you need to relax too. I refuse to work more than 32 hours a week, and that's working out very well for me. I have time for my hobbies, my kids, my friends and family, and I have time to just do nothing at all on occasion.…
> Please take some time off for a vacation and return to a normal 40 hour work week. You might as well say "Please win the lottery". Seriously though, please tell me you're not so out of touch with reality that you actually believe the sentence you wrote is meaningful advice. People can't just snap their fingers and create a better job out of thin air.
People should and people have. A century ago, unions declared massive strikes for these and other issues.
A normal, sane job is not as rare as winning the lottery. Entire countries have people working very normal, sane hours. Americans need to stop tolerating these ridiculously long hours. Do 8 hours of good work for 5 days a week, then relax, sleep well, so you start your next day well-rested and ready to deliver another 8 hours of good work. This is a sane balance. Working more than you rest is not. Sacrificing your health and your life for your employer is idiocy.
Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week
#45I work six days a week. I leave my house at 7am return home around 7pm, pretty much have time to make dinner and chill for an hour so then go to bed and do it again. I haven't really been out and done anything for a few years now. My body is in pain constantly, I'm always exhausted but my sleep is always poor. I don't remember what it's like to not feel burnt out. It's been like this pretty much since I was in my ear…
If you're a developer, in the USA, and you don't work on your life's work...why? There are limitless companies where you can put your 40 in and not literally burn yourself out to death.
Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week
#46Sprints? I love sprints...I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel day in, day out. Seriously, screw scrum and 'agile'
This has nothing to do with scrum and agile. Or if it does, then they are part of the solution, because one of the rules is that you don't do overtime. If there's too much work to include all features before the deadline, you drop some of the features. Scrum is meant to help estimate based on real work by developers, rather than on overly optimistic planning by managers. They empower the developer and give them the a…
I like some of the principles of agile but like the problem is the ceremonies chew up so much time. I have an none technical project manager who is absolutely in love with everything agile. I am in a project where basically 3 of us are going to do the work. I sit next to one of the people but we still have to have daily stand ups. I am one of those people who works in longish chunks, I can sit for two solid hours or more and not move if I am in the zone. But now because Agile says we need all these meetings and ceremonies I feel like half my week in is in the agile meetings or preparing for these meetings. Yes I have raised these issues but been overwritten by management. I am in Africa so I cannot just get another job.
Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week
#47So why do they stay at these awful jobs? Health insurance. Fear of losing, or even changing what they have (sometimes accompanied with some very real and not just anxiety out-of-pocket costs running into the thousands of dollars). Decoupling health insurance from employment is the #1 thing we could do to improve quality of our work. But in the long run, I dream of a day when wage labor is looked back on as nearly as…
Employee provided health insurance guarantees cheap labor and easy to abuse employees who must make a very hard choice if they are to lose health insurance.
Who would lobby for changing that balance and who would finance the campaigns of politicians that support such a reform?
Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week
#48Sprints? I love sprints...I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel day in, day out. Seriously, screw scrum and 'agile'
You’ll love Lab Rats by Dan Lyons. Highly recommended.
Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week
#49I find that If my work isn’t meaningful, it can really drain the life out of me (even more than truly demanding jobs). I wonder if a couple generations ago people felt just as burnt out. It seems like this generation is the most burnt out but who knows. With everyone connected all the time, I doubt people are getting proper rest between work. If you’re answering emails over lunch, you’re still working and not resting…
A couple generations ago people didn't have the luxury of feeling burnt out. They just had to get to work if they wanted to eat; asking about burn out wasn't even a relevant question. That situation still obtains for most people in poor countries today.
Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. The notion of sprints doesn’t seem to be healthy at all. There’s always the next big thing on the horizon. No time to reflect on what you’re doing. Closely tracking velocity, knowing full well that it’s a futile exercise in controlling what’s happening. >inb4 “you’re doing it wrong” If so many people get it wrong, I see it a problem inherent to scrum, not its various implementations.
Not everyone is doing it wrong. My current sprint team is pretty laid back. I put my foot down against tracking velocity as a performance metric early on, though. But my argument against it was mostly that it was stupid and counterproductive.
Interesting. Tracking during sprint or generally speaking?