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Doing nothing at work

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Re: Doing nothing at work

#141

Post by pjc50 »

elevation wrote: post #115
wiseowise wrote: post #58

> I also believe that being too helpful leaves you vulnerable to predators. Tech companies are full of people who want to extract uncompensated work from software engineers4. This is different from work that arrives via normal channels, and for which you’re compensated by promotions, bonuses (and just your normal salary). I’m talking about work that arrives via backchannels, from people who don’t have the ability or…

> willingness to ensure that work is formally recorded under your name Where I work the title "Principal Engineer" is a coveted, well compensated, and rarely achieved. Those I've worked with are all highly effective and personable, but I interviewed one about how he achieved the title at his previous company. His strategy had been to help people and actively give away the credit. In 1 on 1s or in meetings with multip…

This is one of those things where you have to be aware of the Prisoner's Dilemma; to a certain extent you can elevate a place by better pro-social behavior, or forming a pro-social clique within it, but you need to be aware if/when other people are playing Defect against you.

(one such way to retaliate against defectors is similar workplace anti-social behavior. For example if someone asks you to do something off the books, you can agree and then just flake on them and not actually do it, while hinting that if it was in the ticketing system it would be prioritized)

Re: Doing nothing at work

#142

Post by bravetraveler »

wiseowise wrote: post #119
elevation wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> willingness to ensure that work is formally recorded under your name Where I work the title "Principal Engineer" is a coveted, well compensated, and rarely achieved. Those I've worked with are all highly effective and personable, but I interviewed one about how he achieved the title at his previous company. His strategy had been to help people and actively give away the credit. In 1 on 1s or in meetings with multip…

I know a guy who did all what you've listed and the only thing he received was a burnout.

Now you know two, hello. I'd take those nights back, the credit (hah), and peace of mind in an instant. Short of the learning experience, I regret nearly every bit. The good will I built was... useless to say the least.

I got the bump in the end. How? Finding new company, both literally and figuratively. Overextension/sacrifice played no part and I'd like a refund, were it possible.

Re: Doing nothing at work

#143

Post by bob1029 »

> One thing I recommend for engineers new to on-call is to avoid rushing: take a few breaths before joining the call or before speaking, and in general try to “think in slow motion”.

The more difficult it becomes to remain silent, the more likely it is that silence is the correct action.

Ego is a hell of a drug. I've been on some calls where things go sideways in prod infrastructure simply because of incessant yapping about things that are tangentially related to the tasks at hand.

Being clever tends to be a lot easier than being the other things, especially now that we have chatgpt and friends.

Re: Doing nothing at work

#145

Post by johnbcoughlin »

Arainach wrote: post #97

This is a good post, but once again incentives rear their ugly head. > Second, preventing or mitigating an incident early (even by just knowing the right feature flag to turn off) can save huge amounts of money: both immediate lost revenue during the incident and future lost revenue from customers who would have pulled their business or refused to sign pending contracts. Time and time again at many companies, includi…

The quoted section is about stepping in early with the right knowledge to fix an incident that's in progress. That is, putting out the fire.

Re: Doing nothing at work

#146

Post by johnbcoughlin »

hintymad wrote: post #35

> Second, preventing or mitigating an incident early (even by just knowing the right feature flag to turn off) can save huge amounts of money: both immediate lost revenue during the incident and future lost revenue from customers who would have pulled their business or refused to sign pending contracts. Not to be sarcastic but just to offer an observation: in a sufficiently large or bureaucratic organization, prevent…

I read the section you quoted as being about saving the day in an incident that's already in progress.

Re: Doing nothing at work

#147

Post by johnbcoughlin »

zem wrote: post #71

the bit about glue work is interesting, because in my time working for megacorps this has been an explicit part of the annual performance review (google called it "citizenship" which I think captured the essence of it - basically "what work did you do to make things better for the rest of the company"). on one hand it does seem a bit messed up - this was not in my "job description", so it was technically unpaid work…

That does sound nice. I think the author would say that if it's part of your annual performance review, then you are being paid to do it. That's the real test, not the job description, which can't be expected to describe every single thing you end up doing once employed.

Re: Doing nothing at work

#150

Post by bumby »

nevdka wrote: post #131
bumby wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only true if you define efficiency as the inverse of redundancy. Sometimes efficiency is gained by reducing waste, not redundancy

Redundancy is easy to misclassify as waste, particularly for someone who has incentives to find more ‘waste’ they can cut and claim credit for.

I would add it's also easy to misclassify when dealing with high-risk, low-probability events. The fact that someone hasn't witnessed something happen in their entire career can lead them to think any mitigation against that event is waste.
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