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Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#21

Post by savant_penguin »

curiousgal wrote: post #3

Maybe I am too naive but what the heck are they overworking on? It's an app with some basic functionality. Is software dev in such a sad state that you can't deliver a self-standing product that doesn't require teams working overtime to keep it running? I doubt that all of their staff is doing DevOps or maintaining servers which are the only two things that jump to mind as being labor-intensive for a an app with mill…

I'm surprised by how much work at some companies should have been done automatically but instead it's some labor intensive excel+email workflow.

Maybe there's some of that happening in there

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#22

Post by silicon2401 »

asim wrote: post #2

Good. We're taking all of July off at my company. Why? Because covid was an incredibly hard period for all of us and we as humans need a break. Somehow we all just seem to expect things to keep going like nothing changed. We all just seem to be expected to gloss over the pains of isolation, potential death and stress of work and life with no separation or boundaries. We made a conscious decision at my place of work t…

This is a very subjective statement. The pandemic has been bar none the best period of my life. Increased physical and social distance from other people, no need to emote in public thanks to masks, no need to commute, greater accommodation for non-social options like self-checkouts. My physical and mental health have skyrocketed, and as a result I feel like I've been on vacation for a year and half, despite only taking about 3 days of vacation the entire time and starting a new and more intense job.

Those of you who have found the slightly over a year duration of the pandemic difficult have gotten a sample of how miserable pre-pandemic life was for those of us who are more introverted or misanthropic.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#23

Post by base698 »

curiousgal wrote: post #3

Maybe I am too naive but what the heck are they overworking on? It's an app with some basic functionality. Is software dev in such a sad state that you can't deliver a self-standing product that doesn't require teams working overtime to keep it running? I doubt that all of their staff is doing DevOps or maintaining servers which are the only two things that jump to mind as being labor-intensive for a an app with mill…

This reads like someone who has never worked on anything. Here's something I totally made up but have experienced half a dozen times and caused it the other half dozen:

Come in to an exciting new opportunity. The first week you recoil in horror the technical debt. It appears the previous maintainer/builder didn't know one or more of: basic system admin, testing, documentation, packages, coding design, database design, or security.

The incidents start. The code is so interdependent it's terrifying to make even a small change. Fixing a bug in their custom json generator breaks a service you don't know exists and takes out billing. Yes they wrote their own. You lose the confidence of the team already there. Now you are too afraid to make changes.

All you can do is toil or try to think about selling a rewrite. When one or both of those hit burn out you fire up LinkedIn and beg for mercy.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#24

Post by barbazoo »

> collective burnout

> fortnightly manicures, hair trims and "blowouts" which the founder said showed "appreciation for our busy bees"

> Working hours? Not nine to five apparently. Employees can choose the hours they want, just as long as the work gets done

It's all just a bunch of BS. Give your employees reasonable time off policies and encourage them to actually take time off instead of letting them get burned out and then closing the office for a week.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#25

Post by zimpenfish »

curiousgal wrote: post #3

Maybe I am too naive but what the heck are they overworking on? It's an app with some basic functionality. Is software dev in such a sad state that you can't deliver a self-standing product that doesn't require teams working overtime to keep it running? I doubt that all of their staff is doing DevOps or maintaining servers which are the only two things that jump to mind as being labor-intensive for a an app with mill…

> I doubt that all of their staff is doing DevOps or maintaining servers

I should imagine there's a fair few customer support people along with at least a handful of content moderators - considerably more labour intensive than software dev/devops/sysadmin, I think.

Obviously there's also comms teams, marketing, HR, finance, etc. I'd say these are probably also more labour intensive than dev/devops/sysadmin because they tend to involve a lot more human contact, etc.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#26

Post by an_opabinia »

joegahona wrote: post #4

I would love to know how they are measuring the success of this measure -- and I'm not being cynical. How would one even begin to weigh the tradeoffs of closing business for everyone for an entire week against the increased productivity upon return and something woolly like "improved morale." What if giving everyone a week of twice a year was actually beneficial to the company? Or even quarterly? Many companies alrea…

You're getting it backwards. What if you go to work 7 days a week, and the numbers are still going down? Bumble is taking a week off because they're doing poorly. I have no opinions on whether the factors are in their control or not.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#27

Post by michaelt »

curiousgal wrote: post #3

Maybe I am too naive but what the heck are they overworking on? It's an app with some basic functionality. Is software dev in such a sad state that you can't deliver a self-standing product that doesn't require teams working overtime to keep it running? I doubt that all of their staff is doing DevOps or maintaining servers which are the only two things that jump to mind as being labor-intensive for a an app with mill…

Presumably they have a moderation queue, moderated by a bunch of low-paid workers who are highly stressed from looking at awful images full time?

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#29

Post by michaelgrafl »

barbazoo wrote: post #24

> collective burnout > fortnightly manicures, hair trims and "blowouts" which the founder said showed "appreciation for our busy bees" > Working hours? Not nine to five apparently. Employees can choose the hours they want, just as long as the work gets done It's all just a bunch of BS. Give your employees reasonable time off policies and encourage them to actually take time off instead of letting them get burned out…

Yes. It's a bad sign that it had come to this in the first place.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#30

Post by shmel »

silicon2401 wrote: post #22
asim wrote: post #2

Good. We're taking all of July off at my company. Why? Because covid was an incredibly hard period for all of us and we as humans need a break. Somehow we all just seem to expect things to keep going like nothing changed. We all just seem to be expected to gloss over the pains of isolation, potential death and stress of work and life with no separation or boundaries. We made a conscious decision at my place of work t…

This is a very subjective statement. The pandemic has been bar none the best period of my life. Increased physical and social distance from other people, no need to emote in public thanks to masks, no need to commute, greater accommodation for non-social options like self-checkouts. My physical and mental health have skyrocketed, and as a result I feel like I've been on vacation for a year and half, despite only taki…

I keep hearing this over and over. I get it, some people are fairly introverted, some really enjoy WFH.

But what stopped you from distancing from people and using self-checkouts before the pandemic? If you hate people, fine, just go home straight after work, you aren't obligated to hang out with anyone. It is not like the government would fine you for coming home before 11pm, right?

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