Tom DeMarco had a whole book about this approach: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/39276/slack-by-tom-...
fantastic book.
Doing nothing at work
41–50 of 168 posts
Re: Doing nothing at work
#42This is written as if you have actual control over the volume of work given to you and/or deadlines.
You sort of do; stop doing work above a certain volume, stop meeting deadlines. This will have consequences, which may include a) firing or b) better volume and deadlines, depending on a number of factors.
Re: Doing nothing at work
#43> 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…
The examples of high impact all seem like things unlikely to receive recognition. If you save a sales deal, they'll cheer the sales staff. And pay them a commission, which you will receive no part of.
And start to build a relationship with sales that, at least in a B2B firm, can be of significant benefit.
Re: Doing nothing at work
#44I've been "Doing nothing" at work for a couple of weeks now, and it's freaking me out. Yes, I have asked for tasking, but the guy in charge is ... I just don't know.
Could you fix some bugs? Please?
The testers have the latest build, and have not reported any bugs. I don't even know if the project I am working on is even going to be funded after a few more months. I am just in this sort of limbo that really sucks.
Re: Doing nothing at work
#45Haha that's me right now, I'm enjoying it, I used to be gung ho wanting to be somebody but now it's fun coasting
I've been focused on going out/socializing more which is unfortunately distracting me in life, all I can think about is going out getting laid
Re: Doing nothing at work
#46This sounds a lot like being on call. If you like that kind of work, why not be an SRE instead? Maybe there also need to be people “on call” for responding to other kinds of events, though?
It also sounds a lot like getting pulled into meetings. People complain about it, but sometimes that’s the job.
Re: Doing nothing at work
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most software engineers in my experience have quite a lot of control, and a large component of growing in your career is learning to perceive the control that you have. One common misconception the article touches on, for example, is that Jira tickets represent latent task assignments, such that you should always be working on some specific Jira ticket and immediately pick up a new one when you finish or are awaiting…
> Most software engineers in my experience have quite a lot of control, and a large component of growing in your career is learning to perceive the control that you have. I've found that most of that autonomy comes with trust, and that trust gets unlocked via good relationships, and good relationships get unlocked by a history of good communication. You are 100% correct that every person has agency, the trick is to g…
Aahhh.
Proactive vs reactive
Re: Doing nothing at work
#48I’ve had a half-written blog post in this vein for a while now using a fantasy RPG analogy: if you play a character that uses mana in any of these games, you’ll learn fairly quickly that using it all up all the time on trivial battles and running around empty leaves you with none when you genuinely need it.
Your mental energy deployed at work is not so dissimilar: keeping some in the tank gives you the option to deploy it strategically, rather than risking your health (burnout) when something unexpected comes up.
If you join a group in one of these games with a player who is bad at managing their mana, you’ll also find that they’re not such great teammates, either.
Re: Doing nothing at work
#49> 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 learned this early in a conservative org. Preventing things is risky. Just keep the solution ready for when things go wrong because then you'll get approval.
Never waste the opportunity a good crisis presents
Re: Doing nothing at work
#50Thank you for this. I'm new to SWE. How to know when it is time to leave an organization versus sticking it out?
If you're being treated poorly and it's causing you stress, leave.
It's going to take time to earn trust from peers and your manager to start getting more meatier work. If you're early career, I think 2 years is a good guideline. Many places hiring someone for their second job will expect you to be leaving your first job around 2-ish years. 2 years gives you the chance to take on larger projects and see the results of your work and get feedback about things you've pushed to production.
You probably shouldn't stay at your first job more than 3 or 4 years. The second job change is the hardest. It's when you realize that different companies do and value things differently. Staying too long at your first job will make it tougher to adjust. It's also good to get exposure to new ways of working while you're still agile enough to soak it up.
If you've left more than 2 or 3 jobs within 2 years it starts to look like a red flag.