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Bored People Quit

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Re: Bored People Quit

#51

Post by georgieporgie »

munin wrote: post #47
nhashem wrote: post #6

I think another key point is that boredom is inevitable, at least at any company bigger than a startup. Software engineering is about solving problems. You get hired, and solve problems. Time passes and you get better at solving these problems, so they give you harder problems in the same domain space. Eventually you get so good at solving these problems in this domain space that you become The Guy. "Oh you have a qu…

quit immediately. if you have a job where you have a "lead" or "manager" title but have to ask someone else before making personnel/project decisions, you are not a lead or manager of anything, just a scapegoat.

Managers and leads aren't all-powerful. They answer to their managers and, in some sense, to their peers.

Re: Bored People Quit

#52

Post by Lewisham »

andrewcooke wrote: post #18
edw519 wrote: post #5

Axiom: Boring work can never compete with Hacker News. Axiom: Hacker News can never compete with interesting work. Theorem: The interestingness of my work is inversely related to my Hacker News participation. Supporting data: Today I'm regression testing. I'll be here all day, folks. Idea: Employers, monitor your logs for Hacker News. Occasional spikes probably indicate boring, but necessary tasks. Chronic use probab…

(1) joking aside, please don't monitor logs like this. instead, treat your employees like real human beings and understand what they feel. not only is it more efficient than trying to reduce complex humans to a few "metrics", but it will allow you to detect more than just "boredom". (2) if you're thinking "how can they be bored when everything is so busy and there's so much to do?" maybe you are one of those over-man…

I worked for a 30 person database consultancy for my first job out of uni. Their Intranet home page contained a large and prominent link to "Internet access by user", which listed the amount of bandwidth being consumed by each person through their HTTP proxy. I have no idea who instituted that policy, but I instantly disliked the company .

You could download large binaries for only so long to cover your tracks, so I just ended up running a constant SSH session to a Lynx browser, so casual passersby would think I was working.

I quit about 6 months later for many other very good reasons, boredom being a huge one. A couple of months earlier I had asked if I could transfer to a new role (from developer to admin), which was flatly denied. When I announced I was leaving, one of the three senior management came up to me and said that in the last management meeting he had said I was bored and that they needed to find something more for me to do. Apparently he was shouted down (metaphorically).

The last I heard of the company was that as a result of my departure, they would no longer hire graduates with A grades. They would look for B or C grades from now on. I can't imagine a worse lesson to learn, but there you go.

Re: Bored People Quit

#53

Post by acak »

Apart from presenting an interesting problem, I'd say presenting an opportunity to learn something new and valuable is as important.

I developed and maintained an ASP.NET application for a long time and eventually became bored. My boss tried to make things interesting by giving me small new application / feature to solve a problem but having to continue using ASP.NET made my gnash my teeth.

I would have preferring having to figure out some new language/platform where the discovery process would have been rewarding and satisfying.

So give them not only new ends to pursue, but also new means.

Re: Bored People Quit

#54

Post by MattBearman »

edw519 wrote: post #5

Axiom: Boring work can never compete with Hacker News. Axiom: Hacker News can never compete with interesting work. Theorem: The interestingness of my work is inversely related to my Hacker News participation. Supporting data: Today I'm regression testing. I'll be here all day, folks. Idea: Employers, monitor your logs for Hacker News. Occasional spikes probably indicate boring, but necessary tasks. Chronic use probab…

I can vouch for this, as boredom at my job has gone up, so has my HN usage, I'm probably over an hour a day right now.

I'll be handing in my notice as soon as possible.

Re: Bored People Quit

#55

Post by Lewisham »

PaulHoule wrote: post #14
alexgartrell wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker news participation can also indicate compilation, as it does for me right now.

Compilation is a form of boredom ;-)

I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but this is entirely true. I'm sat here watching a data mining job. It's wasted time, largely brought on because the job doesn't have unit tests, so I have no confidence it'll actually complete correctly, so I need to watch the log and see what its doing.

This not a good use of my time, and I hate seeing that console, and I feel bad for being on HN when I could be productive.

Re: Bored People Quit

#56

Post by Hisoka »

Troll_Whisperer wrote: post #31

> When I ask, I look you straight in the eyes and if you can’t stare me in the face and answer, I’m going to keep digging until you look me in the eye. If anybody did anything that psychotic with me, I'd quit and head for saner pastures ASAP.

If anybody did that with me, my respect for them would go up 10-fold.. instantly.

Re: Bored People Quit

#57

Post by paulbaumgart »

Lewisham wrote: post #55
PaulHoule wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compilation is a form of boredom ;-)

I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but this is entirely true. I'm sat here watching a data mining job. It's wasted time, largely brought on because the job doesn't have unit tests, so I have no confidence it'll actually complete correctly, so I need to watch the log and see what its doing. This not a good use of my time, and I hate seeing that console, and I feel bad for being on HN when I could be productive.

  ./data_mining_job && growlnotify -m "Success!" || growlnotify -m "Failure :-("
(season with while, read and grep to taste)

Re: Bored People Quit

#58

Post by Lewisham »

1337p337 wrote: post #49

I had a boss that took the opposite approach. Whenever I started to lose productivity, he'd put me on work he knew I'd hate, telling me I'd get to do more interesting things when I showed him I could be productive. So I started working on side projects at the office just to keep my mind from going and became less and less productive until I quit. He was a talented engineer himself and a good friend. We ended up worki…

This person is/was not your friend.

Re: Bored People Quit

#59

Post by [deleted] »

edw519 wrote: post #5

Axiom: Boring work can never compete with Hacker News. Axiom: Hacker News can never compete with interesting work. Theorem: The interestingness of my work is inversely related to my Hacker News participation. Supporting data: Today I'm regression testing. I'll be here all day, folks. Idea: Employers, monitor your logs for Hacker News. Occasional spikes probably indicate boring, but necessary tasks. Chronic use probab…

[deleted]

Re: Bored People Quit

#60

Post by lambda_cube »

georgieporgie wrote: post #51
munin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

quit immediately. if you have a job where you have a "lead" or "manager" title but have to ask someone else before making personnel/project decisions, you are not a lead or manager of anything, just a scapegoat.

Managers and leads aren't all-powerful. They answer to their managers and, in some sense, to their peers.

Sure, all managers answer to another manager, except the CEO. But it's also normal to delegate responsibility when it comes to hiring and working assignments in projects. If you're sufficiently high up in the manager hierarchy (which shouldn't be that high up IMO), you should have the power to make decisions like that.
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