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Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

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Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#191

Post by svaha1728 »

mcv wrote: post #44
radcon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 an…

That’s basically what’s going on in Chile right now. Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way...

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#192

Post by phaedrus »

zamfi wrote: post #72
scottious wrote: post #53

A year ago I had a 6-week paternity leave at 33 years old. It was the first time since I started my career that I was able to unplug for a significant amount of time. This time off was truly a magical time for me, and even though I had to do a ton of work around the house and with the baby, I felt a sense of purpose. I started to feel like a real person again. I came back to work and I made some huge gains for the co…

> I think my employer would rather me be a zombie than to just have some time off to recharge. And you probably don't think you can even ask your employer about this: what would it say about your devotion as an employee?

I worked at a satellite office of a medium software company. A fellow programmer asked for more time off instead of pay raises. He was put on a shitlist for even making that request.

The company HQ was in a college town where there was no comparable employer for developers, but our satellite office was in a bigger city. Startups here starting offering 4 weeks vacation as a sign-on enticement. My coworker came back to management with this counter-offer and was told go to Hell. So he took the other offer and left.

One by one, EVERY developer in our satellite office got the same offer, came to our management to ask if they'd match or at least increase the amount of vacation, and all got told to piss off. One by one we watched ALL of our development staff (at the satellite office) leave and not get replaced (interviewees ended up going to the startups offering more leave).

Management (at corporate HQ) demonstrated they would rather ride that sinking ship to the sea bottom than budge on not giving more vacation.

Why?

Because there was a vesting schedule for earning leave, 10 days/yr first 6 years, 15 days/yr 6-12 years, 20 days/yr after 12 years. If they let recent hires jump right to 20 days/yr that's manager compensation territory AND it would invalidate the years those with 11 had been waiting.

(You might think the silver lining is all the new companies without similar hangups employing the programmers who left; unfortunately AFAIK all of those startups folded in the couple years since then.)

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#193

Post by beat »

aantix wrote: post #189
beat wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism has a built-in failure mode. As Peter Thiel (not exactly a commie, him) points out, capitalism only functions in its failure mode. The ideal world that all the economists and conservative politicians argue for, where pure competition sets the price, is a race to zero. In ideal capitalism, profit is impossible. Profit only happens where there is friction that prevents the market from working fully.

And that friction is innovation. Something that adds value. That isn't a commodity. That would be hard to copy. Innovation's biproduct is profit.

Friction isn't necessarily innovation. When you pay $6 to get popcorn at a movie, it's not because they've created better popcorn. It's because they've created a local monopoly where you have no choice but $6 popcorn or nothing.

Really, the vast majority of profit is from non-innovative friction.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#194

Post by aantix »

beat wrote: post #193
aantix wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that friction is innovation. Something that adds value. That isn't a commodity. That would be hard to copy. Innovation's biproduct is profit.

Friction isn't necessarily innovation. When you pay $6 to get popcorn at a movie, it's not because they've created better popcorn. It's because they've created a local monopoly where you have no choice but $6 popcorn or nothing. Really, the vast majority of profit is from non-innovative friction.

You do have a choice - the choice not to go to an overpriced theater. People vote with their dollars all of the time.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#195

Post by jodrellblank »

pmoriarty wrote: post #110
kache_ wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work remotely as well and I observe that a lot of people are available outside their regular working hours. I think remote work is part of the problem: the additional blurring between work and life will askew your work life balance. Pager duty can burn you out, but it really depends on how much you get paged and how many people are on rotation.

Overtime would be a lot easier to swallow if you were paid, say, time and a half for weekday overtime and double for weekends or holidays. But, no, most tech employees aren't paid anything extra for it, so management has no incentive to reduce the amount of overtime you actually work. I had one boss who acted very concerned and would keep telling me not to work so late. But at the same time he wanted the same amount…

> Also, commuting time should be paid as work time.

I can earn more, without working more, simply by living somewhere cheaper and sitting down in a comfortable car for longer? And I don't have to be an Uber driver dealing with the general public? And if I drive slower, I "earn" more? Sign me up!

(Preferably with a self-driving RV, where I can safely be in the back while it's moving, of course).

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#196

Post by empath75 »

gherkinnn wrote: post #50
empath75 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Tracking it is fine. Using it to measure team or individual performance is terrible.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#197

Post by mcv »

commandlinefan wrote: post #151
mcv wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> nothing to do with scrum and agile. Well, I know what you’re trying to say, and technically, you’re correct - if any shred of the agile manifesto were observed, you would be actually correct, too - but “agile as practiced by everybody who practices it” is, for all intents and purposes, “agile and scrum” now, so we may as well stop pretending it’s in any way related to what it was supposed to be. Once the phrase “ag…

That is far too defeatist for my taste, and not my experience at all. The problem is that people subject themselves to bad managers and toxic corporate culture. Then Agile comes along and throws them a lifeline, and they let the bad managers take it, instead of taking it for themselves.

Real Agile is out there, and is being practices very effectively, but you've got to take it and apply it, and not let poor managers corrupt it. And there are many companies that do not have this toxic culture. Or start your own; software developers are in a better position to start their own business than most other professions.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#198

Post by mcv »

commandlinefan wrote: post #152
mcv wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> story points in scrum do not directly relate to time worked Except in the minds of absolutely every single person who applies them to anything.

No. Not in the minds of people who grok the point of scrum.

Just start pointing this out to people every time this comes up. It's not an exact time estimate, it's an abstract complexity estimate. Insist that the idiots get some actual training in Agile before they start corrupting it beyond recognition. If they want Agile, then they should invest in training people for it, and in spreading the culture that goes along with it. Because Agile is perhaps more about culture than about process.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#199

Post by mcv »

tra3 wrote: post #121
nradov wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accurate software estimation is a technical skill that can be learned like any other. It's disappointing that so many developers don't take it seriously or make disciplined efforts to improve their skills. https://stevemcconnell.com/books/

I feel like this is misleading. There’s no magic bullet for software estimation. McConnell’s book talks about various techniques but the takeaway is that you know very little at the beginning of the project. There various techniques for estimation but you can never get away from the essential unknown unknowns.

Exactly. To make accurate estimates of how long it's going to take, you need to know how the team estimates the complexity of the work that still needs to be done, how they estimated the past, and how much they actually did in the past. In this particular team, with this way of working.

Only then do you have the information to make a halfway reliable estimate. Without that, it's just going to be guess work.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#200

Post by mcv »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #99
mcv wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nobody falls for this anymore. Scrum are agile are extremely effective at fostering micromanagement and overworking and burning out developers. It's almost always pushed by management, consultants, PMs rather than the ones that have to carry the weight. "You are doing it wrong, we are here to help" is an old trick.

Tell them to leave you alone. Have your PO keep the stakeholders at bay if they don't know how to behave. Take advice on scrum and agile only from people who actually know what they're talking about. Everybody else is just amateurs.
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