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Bored People Quit

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Re: Bored People Quit

#91

Post by enjo »

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…

I've fought through MUCH more boredom during my startup career than at any other point.

Startups are great fun while you're building the product. Then you release it, and while you'd love to be implementing new features you're really stuck maintaining the beast you've unleashed onto the world.

In a startup there is no one else to give you a hand when things break. There is no one else to share the load of those boring tasks (deployments, unit tests, browser/phone compatibility, etc...). Even then you'll spend most of your time refining existing features, not inventing new technology.

At the end of the day, every god-awful task is on you (or a small team). While there are spikes of interesting problems, it will be a small part of what you do.

Re: Bored People Quit

#92

Post by enjo »

lambda_cube wrote: post #60
georgieporgie wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

CEO generally reports to the board.

Re: Bored People Quit

#93

Post by enjo »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #89
cema wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a friend, but more importantly, not a very good boss either.

Definitely not a good boss, but possibly still a friend. (No, I'm not just trying to fill out the matrix here. ;) It's important not to take management too personally. Just because this guy was horrible at understanding motivation doesn't mean he was a bad person or a bad friend, just that he was a really lousy boss. Lots of people don't understand how to motivate others. Lots of people don't consciously understand h…

+1 insightful.

I've had one job in my adult life go completely sour. I was there for about 3 months and never really found a way to fit in culturally. My aspirations exceeded my role, and I was probably pretty difficult to deal with I imagine.

After I left the company, I thought that my boss would have a lot of animosity towards me. He didn't. Turns out, he knew I was struggling and while he wanted to keep me (I was productive at the very least), he didn't hold any ill-feelings towards me leaving.

As a boss now, I always try to keep that in mind. I inevitably develop personal relationships with every employee I've had. Even when that doesn't work out, I always support them however I can.

Re: Bored People Quit

#94

Post by munin »

ZoFreX wrote: post #90
munin wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you are managing a team of people and you do not have at least firing power, in my experience, you are not actually managing a team of people.

But if you could take a valid reason for firing someone to your manager, and they would be fired, I think that would be enough to manage the team right?

in a perfect world, yes. but now you're relying on 2 competent, motivated people instead of 1 competent and motivated person. why rely on 2? why not just give the project manager the authority?

is there something about their ability in this regard you don't trust? then, why are they a project manager? the success or failure of the project could impact the jobs of all of the members of the project, and potentially everyone in the company. why will you trust this responsibility to them, but not the ability to fire individual members of their team?

Re: Bored People Quit

#95

Post by 1337p337 »

rcfox wrote: post #77
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…

Sounds a lot like, "The beatings will stop when morale improves."

It sort of was. At one point, he said to me, "What are you complaining for? I haven't even started the death-march yet."

Re: Bored People Quit

#96

Post by Lewisham »

rcfox wrote: post #75
Lewisham wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, if only it was so simple! The integrity of the job is the problem. It's been coded to failover problems (as the original data integrity its mining from isn't good), so it will happily do something stupid for hours. That's why I have to watch it, and make sure its not doing something stupid. Unit tests would ensure stupidity was not a possibility, and regressions could be tracked. Too late for that, unfortunately…

Couldn't you write unit tests while you wait?

Fair point :)

Re: Bored People Quit

#97

Post by phaedrus »

newobj wrote: post #37

Wow. This article knows me better than I know myself. I've always wondered if that slow creep-in of boredom was a personal failing of mine. Whether it is or not, it's at least nice to know that this a known phenomenon, that someone else has managed to describe to a t. Reading this has actually really empowered me. I really had a lot of shame in feeling bored and bent over backwards to hide it until I quit in a boredb…

Careful I admitted I was bored doing purchase orders of parts (supposed to be an engineering position) in a previous job and the manager went nuts, got in multiple shouting matches with me ("this project is the most interesting work that's come along in a while and yoooou're bored! I'm shocked, just shocked"). Hah. Wrong thing to say to me - if what I was doing then was supposedly better than their baseline normal, suddenly I had no regrets about quitting.

Re: Bored People Quit

#98

Post by 1337p337 »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #89
cema wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a friend, but more importantly, not a very good boss either.

Definitely not a good boss, but possibly still a friend. (No, I'm not just trying to fill out the matrix here. ;) It's important not to take management too personally. Just because this guy was horrible at understanding motivation doesn't mean he was a bad person or a bad friend, just that he was a really lousy boss. Lots of people don't understand how to motivate others. Lots of people don't consciously understand h…

He was a friend before, which is why I spent as much time as I did trying to convince him to join the company, and trying to convince everyone that he'd be a good hire for VP of Engineering. We'd hang out on occasion, talk shop on the phone, etc. He's a pretty cool guy, but I don't especially care to see him again. (I was not the only or first one fired; I didn't make any efforts to conceal what I thought about our sysadmin getting fired.)

Re: Bored People Quit

#100

Post by Timothee »

I'm honestly glad to see the reactions here that being bored is not (necessarily) your fault.

What I mean is that job ads tend to look for "self-motivated" people and it's easy to conclude that if you're bored, you're just clearly not self-motivated enough.

However, there are many things that a company and management can do (or not do) that contribute to a decrease in motivation. Or even the appearance of resentment since keeping you bored (or worse, not realizing you are) shows the lack of interest in what you're doing, and where you're going.

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