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Mental health in software engineering

vadimkravcenko.com

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Re: Mental health in software engineering

#131

Post by tossandthrow »

jghn wrote: post #96
tossandthrow wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at least where I am at, the contractor rate is more than double the FTE rate.

Yes. Contractors typically get more per hour. It still works out cheaper for the company as they don't have to pay for the benefits, PTO, and that sort of thing. And of course the contractor still has to pay for insurance, covering their own PTO, etc.

I think it is a bit different depending on you country. I believe it is comparable in the us with the steep Healthcare prices.

in Europe it usually makes sense to contract if you only have smaller projects.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#132

Post by kayodelycaon »

paulcole wrote: post #14

> You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” “I’m taking the day off.” Your coworkers don’t need a reason. If your employer demands one, then that’s a different issue.

I like using Out of Office for everything not work related. It shows up when anyone tries to schedule a random meeting on me.

This is also a rare circumstance where having a disability is an advantage. Companies are legally required to allow me to prioritize my health over my job without discriminating against me. They aren't allowed to ask.

I wish it didn't require having a disability to be treated like a human being instead of a disposable resource on somebody's balance sheet.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#133

Post by jajko »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #102
dvas wrote: post #37

I think it is so important to be able to disconnect from whatever it is that we are doing, even for a very short period of time. Go for a walk, brew a coffee or simply close your eyes and breathe. Many times, stress is created artificially. It hurts our performance and deteriorates our ability to think. Encountered numerous situations where work was "urgent" and would likely land a contract or sales for the company,…

> Encountered numerous situations where work was "urgent" and would likely land a contract or sales for the company, and everyone would be a superstar if they delivered this "crunch". > After 2 months of pulling all-nighters and sleeping for 3/4 hours, we deliver the project ahead of time In my career, none of these have ever paid off. Every time I've crunched this way on something dramatically urgent like this, it h…

Absolutely 0 had ever paid off. Probably worst was trusting too much a colleague perceived by everybody as Oracle/plsql guru, when troubleshooting vendor's abysmal performance of DB queries during some bigger migration (up to half an hour easily, for trivial 30 million rows). He didn't see any issue on DB side, pointed to useless oracle hints, crappy JDBC drivers, spring's jdbc templates, possibly my not-optimal code etc.

I went over my head, did probably the most complex code in my life, massively parallel, over weekends and evenings. That wonderful cathedral didn't move performance a zilch, just made debugging and further changes much harder. After few hours of actual debugging afterwards he found out vendor defined responsible DB table in such an obscure and bad way way that we had to literally copy whole table to another more sane one, and perform all the work there in maybe 5% of the time. In fact I suggested exactly same thing initially but it was quickly dismissed by him, and who questions the guru, right.

This didn't even come from management just colleague's incompetence/ego, hard deadlines, tons of pressure to deliver, and starting project already 2 months late. Closest I've been to burnout yet. I am still a bit pissed off on him, but I know it was not malice so that eases emotions quite a bit.

And to similar request coming from the top - been there, done that too, regretted that time & energy put in it. These days, 8 hours days, if I am not making it on time, I communicate early & clearly and that's it. They handle it, and if they don't, well there is always next job. Life is about priorities.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#134

Post by bluefirebrand »

np- wrote: post #110
bluefirebrand wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Encountered numerous situations where work was "urgent" and would likely land a contract or sales for the company, and everyone would be a superstar if they delivered this "crunch". > After 2 months of pulling all-nighters and sleeping for 3/4 hours, we deliver the project ahead of time In my career, none of these have ever paid off. Every time I've crunched this way on something dramatically urgent like this, it h…

Agreed. Even if by some miracle you do deliver, and are considered a superstar, then what? What do superstars get? Probably just even more crunch work, since you've proven you're willing to do it.

You imagine that it will catapult you ahead in your career, your income will skyrocket, you will be respected and loved by your company and peers

But in reality no one really cares much, you'll get the same raise everyone else gets, your bonus is still gonna be capped by your contract, and you will be better off finding a new job if you want more money

Man sometimes I want out of tech so badly it hurts but I don't generally think it's better anywhere else

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#135

Post by jajko »

tossandthrow wrote: post #131
jghn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Contractors typically get more per hour. It still works out cheaper for the company as they don't have to pay for the benefits, PTO, and that sort of thing. And of course the contractor still has to pay for insurance, covering their own PTO, etc.

I think it is a bit different depending on you country. I believe it is comparable in the us with the steep Healthcare prices. in Europe it usually makes sense to contract if you only have smaller projects.

Did both in few parts of Europe. Initially its normally better to contract (but you need to have some chops, nobody hires juniors on contract), but not all countries make this easy or even viable. Once you want to settle, if you want to settle, permanent job under normal circumstances offers better overall package.

Maybe not outright amounts, but if you count in things like sickness, holidays, off for kids, social contributions, being treated better among colleagues, and for me personally having much more freedom whenever personal I need to do like bureaucracy (but that may be current circumstance only).

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#136

Post by paulcole »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #132
paulcole wrote: post #14

> You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” “I’m taking the day off.” Your coworkers don’t need a reason. If your employer demands one, then that’s a different issue.

I like using Out of Office for everything not work related. It shows up when anyone tries to schedule a random meeting on me. This is also a rare circumstance where having a disability is an advantage. Companies are legally required to allow me to prioritize my health over my job without discriminating against me. They aren't allowed to ask. I wish it didn't require having a disability to be treated like a human bein…

I just say "Taking PTO today."

> Companies are legally required to allow me to prioritize my health over my job without discriminating against me. They aren't allowed to ask.

Assuming you're not in the US?

In the US, companies are required to provide reasonable accommodations for disabilities as part of ADA but can and (often) do ask for documentation of the disability and the specific accommodation requested.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#137

Post by jajko »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #45
TimPC wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good advice if you have the appropriate financial resources or support network, but plenty of us don't have the option to move back in with our parents for six months and need to adult on hard-mode.

I figured most of us in software would have at least a few months of buffer. Of course I don't have kids so

That's the gist, with kids (and potential mortgage) the buffer is so huge, even if its there it creates its own pressures. Nobody normal likes to burn through tens of thousands if not more, so they often stave it off, for better or worse (and worse it usually is)

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#138

Post by P_I_Staker »

n4r9 wrote: post #57
xyst wrote: post #11

This is a person that should have never been in a leadership position. I have worked under these types of people that were great engineers themselves but couldn’t lead worth shit. No trust in the team. Always doing shit themselves. No discussion. Backdoor discussions. Always bending to the will of management. Everything is “important”/“critical”. It’s micromanaging to the worst degree. At the same time, I would likel…

It's an oversimplification to say they "should have never been" a leader. In truth, they could have used specific training in prioritisation, delegation, and emotional intelligence. I find it's rare that this sort of training is provided. Instead, good performers are thrown into the deep end to see if they can hack it.

I have no idea where he's getting it from either. Dude seemed to just stress himself out too much. Organizations encourage it, and promote people that do it.

It's also incredibly exclusionary. If you have the slightest neuroses, never be a leader!

You'll find this is often a race to the bottom too. While presumably not applicable to him, you'd be surprised how many people and organizations have opinions about how impossible it is to hire anyone with mental health problems.

Then it becomes "just flip burgers like a loser and go to prison addicted to stimulants you useless eater, all of you people"

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#139

Post by dasil003 »

btilly wrote: post #112
steve_gh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is an organizational failure, because the organisation has just promoted, without training someone to be a leader. You wouldn't expect a manager (from a non-technical background) to just start coding, so why would you expect a coder to just start managing.

Don't say "the organization has just promoted". That's taking the face off of where the blame belongs. Say, "the CEO". The same CEO who is trying to manage through deadline pressure, placed into leadership someone who could be managed through deadline pressure. And who would transmit that pressure down the chain. Why? Because the CEO believed that this is how people should be managed. Which means that a leader who re…

Sure, the buck stops with the CEO. That said, if things are so dysfunctional that your only goal is to ascribe blame—which, incidentally, is a common behavior of bad managers—then you are already fucked.

High performing teams require trust. Workers need to trust that management has a sense of what's reasonable, not take estimates out of context and generally listen to the pain points/challenges on the ground. Upper management needs to trust that teams understand the vision enough to make the right tradeoff, not sandbag every estimate or fixate on the wrong details (because ground-level details matter, but some more than others from the business perspective).

I realize many people have spent their whole career in such adversarial circumstances between workers and management that the above sounds like a fairy tail. I will say though, that it is possible, but requires a healthy understanding of the limitations of human communication, and the recognition that good intent is necessary but not sufficient to avoid dysfunction. You need a critical mass of folks spread throughout the org, able to do the necessary bridge-building, and (at times) emotional labor to work through all the challenges and differences of opinion. It's very easy to describe a problem and solution from one person's perspective, but much harder to prioritize and solve the 10 most important problems out of a group of 100 people where viewpoints differ and cooperation is needed to improve anything.

Re: Mental health in software engineering

#140

Post by P_I_Staker »

xyst wrote: post #11

This is a person that should have never been in a leadership position. I have worked under these types of people that were great engineers themselves but couldn’t lead worth shit. No trust in the team. Always doing shit themselves. No discussion. Backdoor discussions. Always bending to the will of management. Everything is “important”/“critical”. It’s micromanaging to the worst degree. At the same time, I would likel…

I'm saddened to see such disgusting ablism at the forefront of HackerNews. More evidence that SV is filled with close minded fascists. These are people, not useless eaters.

Given my experience with HN this type of criticism is high likely to result in scrutiny by the admins. The biases on this site really need to be re-evaluated.

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