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The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

pratik.is

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Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#31

Post by phkahler »

adamwong246 wrote: post #9

As far as I'm concerned, it always was and always shall be "work faster or die". I was unaware that we were given a third choice?

>> As far as I'm concerned, it always was and always shall be "work faster or die". I was unaware that we were given a third choice?

Yeah, it turns out you get to define things in your life, including your pace at work. Be productive but don't burn yourself out. Most likely nothing will happen. Worst case you dodge a bullet and find a more reasonable company. Either way you will be working at your pace.

Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#32

Post by cdnsteve »

My reflection is this is a symptom of North American work culture. In the end, it manifests stress, lost time to decompress and a significant impact on your health.

After traveling to LaTam, we have it all backwards. Focus on happiness, family and health are where energy needs to be invested, before anywhere else.

Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#33

Post by wjnc »

paxys wrote: post #3

There comes a time in everyone's career when they realize that the "emergency situation" they are in never really ends. There is always a fire to put out. There is always a P0 bug that will sink the entire company if not fixed. There is always a release that absolutely cannot be delayed for any reason, and everyone must work nights and weekends to get it out. The best you can do is learn to tune out management bullsh…

As a (middle) manager: I sincerely hope many employees learn this. The best processes, systems and tools have people engaged deeply enough that they care about and work on future performance, UI/UX, efficiency, etc of that processes / system / tools. There’s nothing I like more than kindly being put in place for having unrealistic expectations. However, it is of my opinion that most don’t learn this. Those that do turn into MVPs. Not everyone is a MVP. And that’s not bad. I do think we can teach all people to speak out concerns in a positive way. It’s up to management to listen and take that to heart. That’s good culture. In my open office I hear chit chat comments and worse all the time, but constructive feedback a lot less.

Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#34

Post by wonderwonder »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #23
lubesGordi wrote: post #10

I left silicon valley because of agile development. Sprinting all the time was the thing that lead to my burnout, and when we finally released our app, the company was pivoting and 'going epic mode'. I quit then. In retrospect it would've been fine if I had taken a more relaxed attitude towards it all. Sprints don't mean you have to literally sprint. Epic mode is just a narrative. Work at your pace and it'll be fine.

>I left silicon valley because of agile development. Sprinting all the time was the thing that lead to my burnout... Hard work doesn't cause burnout. Constantly feeling like you have no control or impact causes burnout.

You are right but to expand on it, hard work with an arbitrary often impossible deadline without working OT definitely contributes. One can only run on the treadmill for so long before something breaks.

Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#35

Post by AndrewKemendo »

paxys wrote: post #3

There comes a time in everyone's career when they realize that the "emergency situation" they are in never really ends. There is always a fire to put out. There is always a P0 bug that will sink the entire company if not fixed. There is always a release that absolutely cannot be delayed for any reason, and everyone must work nights and weekends to get it out. The best you can do is learn to tune out management bullsh…

This in and of itself is the problem

When every system is *critical system for somebody* and the downtime means loss of capacity, then people are actually hurt, and there are real problems when these things do go down. So you become numb, like a triage nurse, to real suffering because you’re in a system that doesn’t actually give people the resources to fix these things.

Most of the harms in the world are when large systems filled with a lot of people, who have no alternative, break in ways that don’t have compensatory measures. It’s coming for the food supply soon too.

I’ve been in senior leadership positions in very large organizations multiple times, and I promise you that there are critical workloads not just in tech, but in medicine, defense, etc. who only have one or two poorly paid people who are there to make sure that whatever the system is, doesn’t break. And when it does? Welp tough break.

The reality is there should be many people as back up and as compensatory measures however, companies are not incentivized to pay for those back ups because in “normal” times everything looks fine. It’s not broken right now so we don’t need extra support. We’ve all heard the story.

The problem I see is that the world is increasingly filled with these unsustainable debt fueled “critical services”, and humans live within dozens of these large complex systems with no direct alternatives. The workers there are holding on by threads because no company can maintain their business in an environment of forever margin chasing (rat race) and all profits go to insulating owners from downside risks rather than making systems more robust to shocks. So the workers are blown out, owners have half a foot out the door in case of emergency and customers and users are just along for the ride.

Sounds great

Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#36

Post by LegitShady »

paxys wrote: post #3

There comes a time in everyone's career when they realize that the "emergency situation" they are in never really ends. There is always a fire to put out. There is always a P0 bug that will sink the entire company if not fixed. There is always a release that absolutely cannot be delayed for any reason, and everyone must work nights and weekends to get it out. The best you can do is learn to tune out management bullsh…

For a while I worked in a government role that was very close to the political layer of government - one or two people separate you and many elected politicians.

The emergencies and surprises never stopped. Timelines would change quickly - “start working on it but no deadline” would regularly turn into “this is due at the end of the month” and then “Can you have this done in two weeks” and then “what can we accomplish by the end of the week” and then “this needs to be complete in the system by 4pm tomorrow” sometimes all within a few days. Sudden weekend work including absolutely ridiculous requests that I can’t talk about was pretty normal. Many people involved essentially volunteered large portions of their non-work time to the government because their positions did not include overtime compensation and they thought if they put in the work eventually they’d climb to a position where it would be worth it.

Every meeting was a potential crisis, and the bosses between you and the politicians were no better because of downhill shit theory. Some of the non political leadership were helicoptered political allies instead of technical specialists in the thing we were supposedly supposed to be doing.

I realized about 6 months in that even though in meetings they kept saying “we know workloads are higher than normal but we think we’ll get back to a more reasonable period soon” was just lip service, and that we were actually just in a permanent state of crisis of after crisis handed down to us by politicians who would take days off to go golfing. All this at wages that were not comparable to private industry but on the other hand less worries about tracking hours for billing like I would have had to do outside the public service.

I am glad to have left it behind. My health, both mental and physical, suffered even though I couldn’t tell at the time when I was going through it. There is no reason to live your life that way.

Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#37

Post by Loughla »

wjnc wrote: post #33
paxys wrote: post #3

There comes a time in everyone's career when they realize that the "emergency situation" they are in never really ends. There is always a fire to put out. There is always a P0 bug that will sink the entire company if not fixed. There is always a release that absolutely cannot be delayed for any reason, and everyone must work nights and weekends to get it out. The best you can do is learn to tune out management bullsh…

As a (middle) manager: I sincerely hope many employees learn this. The best processes, systems and tools have people engaged deeply enough that they care about and work on future performance, UI/UX, efficiency, etc of that processes / system / tools. There’s nothing I like more than kindly being put in place for having unrealistic expectations. However, it is of my opinion that most don’t learn this. Those that do tu…

Working with employees on what the difference is between bitching and exploring concerns is a skill that most managers do not have, or do not teach.

A good manager communicates well, a great manager teaches everyone around them how to communicate well.

Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#38

Post by skydhash »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #2

I view my work at AWS as being paid to deal with meetings and other people. Hadnt I bills to pay and mouths to feed, I'd be doing this "work" for free. Well, almost, I'd be coding all day, but I wouldn't set foot on a single meeting. Maybe it's a matter of perspective? It sure helps that I am working on interesting projects. Maybe the diff is that this is how I am having fun.

Enjoy it while you can. I love computer science and programming. But there’s so much CRUD apps you can work on before it stops being exciting. Now, I just do my job in the work hours, then move to personal stuff in my spare time. Unless it’s for myself, I wouldn’t work on anything if not for the money.

Re: The hustle never ends and I'm so over it

#40

Post by wonderwonder »

rhyme-boss wrote: post #28

I'm jealous of older generations that were at least compensated for their hard work. We're expected to hustle all the time, for no benefit in our personal lives. Software engineering is a "high earning job", yet the basic shit it affords you isn't even to the level of "low" and "middle" paying jobs of the past. You can grind yourself to the bone for years and still not be able to afford to buy a home and raise a fami…

I think it depends where you live. Its relatively easy to land a 100k plus job after a couple years in software in the US. If the argument is things are just way more expensive now, then preach on, its insanity how much a trip to the grocery store costs now.
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