Axiom: Boring work can never compete with Hacker News. Axiom: Hacker News can never compete with interesting work. Theorem: The interestingness of my work is inversely related to my Hacker News participation. Supporting data: Today I'm regression testing. I'll be here all day, folks. Idea: Employers, monitor your logs for Hacker News. Occasional spikes probably indicate boring, but necessary tasks. Chronic use probab…
Hacker news participation can also indicate compilation, as it does for me right now.
Bored People Quit
21–30 of 156 posts
Re: Bored People Quit
#22If you ask an employee, "Are you bored?" there's a good chance they are going to lie to you, unless you have a strong enough relationship.
I think that's why he suggests digging deeper until they are making eye contact.
Re: Bored People Quit
#23Sounds a bit abrasive to do this: "You ask, “Are you bored?” Even if you don’t have a gut feeling, it’s a good question to randomly ask your team. When I ask, I look you straight in the eyes and if you can’t stare me in the face and answer, I’m going to keep digging until you look me in the eye."
It seems to me that if your employee doesn't want to make eye contact when answering this question, that you already have your answer.
Or maybe the guy is an introverted geek who just wants to get back to coding.
Re: Bored People Quit
#24What about frustrated? Too much process, too many clueless managers, too hard to get work done?
Sometimes boredom is a result of giving up the fight.
Re: Bored People Quit
#25I think another key point is that boredom is inevitable, at least at any company bigger than a startup. Software engineering is about solving problems. You get hired, and solve problems. Time passes and you get better at solving these problems, so they give you harder problems in the same domain space. Eventually you get so good at solving these problems in this domain space that you become The Guy. "Oh you have a qu…
Try introducing your management to the concept of Bus Factors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor
Cross training isn't an avoidable expense so much as a cost of doing business. The question isn't will Joe become unavailable to work on FooWidget, the question is merely when. This needs to be thought about more like insurance than pure development, insurance for an event of significant probability. Of course one must still consider the full costs/benefits for any bit of training, my point isn't that one must always cross-train, but more that it's easy for managers to underestimate the amount of risk they are taking on, especially when business-critical knowledge turns out to be in only one head.
Re: Bored People Quit
#26Axiom: Boring work can never compete with Hacker News. Axiom: Hacker News can never compete with interesting work. Theorem: The interestingness of my work is inversely related to my Hacker News participation. Supporting data: Today I'm regression testing. I'll be here all day, folks. Idea: Employers, monitor your logs for Hacker News. Occasional spikes probably indicate boring, but necessary tasks. Chronic use probab…
Hacker news participation can also indicate compilation, as it does for me right now.
Or a long-running test/spec suite :)
Re: Bored People Quit
#27So true. I was bored. And I did quit.
Re: Bored People Quit
#28If you ask an employee, "Are you bored?" there's a good chance they are going to lie to you, unless you have a strong enough relationship.
They may lie to you, but they will also hear you ask the question.
Re: Bored People Quit
#29Axiom: Boring work can never compete with Hacker News. Axiom: Hacker News can never compete with interesting work. Theorem: The interestingness of my work is inversely related to my Hacker News participation. Supporting data: Today I'm regression testing. I'll be here all day, folks. Idea: Employers, monitor your logs for Hacker News. Occasional spikes probably indicate boring, but necessary tasks. Chronic use probab…
Rands covers this, more generally, when he talks about "changes in routine".
What you're looking for isn't the absolute value of, e.g., HN participation, it's the first or second derivative.
Re: Bored People Quit
#30About 5 weeks ago I quit my job. I was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with my job role and the level of mental stimulation. So I quit my job.
I walked in told my managers, "Hey, I liked the beginning when I was challenged. Now I'm not. I want to find something new that does challenge me." They asked me what I would find challenging, I told them. They asked me to give them a few weeks before I actually left so they could try to find me something, and they did. I never had to leave and I got what I asked for, challenging and thought provoking work; they got what they wanted, not loosing a worker. It was a win-win.
I can honestly say that attempting to quit my job was one of the best decisions I've made in years.