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>> Being overworked is not a good reason to hire. Instead, hire to be ready to catch opportunities, not to survive the current battles. > I disagree - if you h

by ptero 9y ago

>> Being overworked is not a good reason to hire. Instead, hire to be ready to catch opportunities, not to survive the current battles. > I disagree - if you have overworked people, that is usually a red flag. Overworked people is a red flag indeed, but it is usually a symptom of a deeper problem that is unlikely to be solved with more hires. I think the author hits the nail on the head here -- first and foremost hire for future opportunities.

hashset 9y ago
Perhaps the deeper problem is the lead who committed to the deliverables isn't doing a good job and should be removed.
geezerjay 9y ago
> Overworked people is a red flag indeed, but it is usually a symptom of a deeper problem that is unlikely to be solved with more hires. Not necessarily. Accepting a new project or extra responsibilities in exchange for a generous sum may increase your company's workload unexpectedly, which leads to overworked people while the company struggles with the hiring process. Another example is losing a team member right before crunch time.
- ptero 9y ago
  Sure, there are exceptions. For example, I do not see a team flying out for a 2 60+ hour week test campaign as a red flag as long as the participation is mostly voluntary and the team gets an ample opportunity to detox after the fact. The exceptions, for me, have three key properties: (1) they are temporary, (2) overworked people know that it is temporary and have a clear (maybe not 100% realistic) date for return to normalcy and (3) this state of affairs is seen by most of the team as acceptable at the moment: not pleasant, but bearable and probably least bad of all options. If (1) and (2) hold, (3) is usually easy to achieve with sweeteners: $x bonus, T extra vacation, etc. But break either of the three and you have a clear red flag. Just my 2c.
MBCook 9y ago
Agreed. At a previous (small) job the IT department was VERY overworked. They tried to hire to fix it and it didn’t work. Because it wasn’t the problem. The problem was unsustainable methods of doing everything. Every job was unique for no good reason. It was all managed by hand, monitoring monitored the wrong things. Each existing thing generated a ton of work due to how it was setup and required constant tweaking. Any new thing just piled additional work on, often causing issues with what already existed. Because of the lack of any kind of system or useful documentation new employees only made things worse as they tried to understand what existed, had to ask constant questions, or failed to take into account hidden gotchas that they had no way to watch out for. Until they started standardizing and stabalizing the base things couldn’t be improved. Yes there are times you have 10 developers worth of work and 5 developers. But there are times you have 4 developers worth of work and 6 developers worth of mess they have to tip-toe around, but only 5 people.
nerdponx 9y ago
"Overworked" does not need to mean your engineers are pulling 14 hour days. Even just having a massive backlog that never gets knocked down is, to me, a form of "overwork". Even if the work life balance is fine, it's very difficult to stay motivated when you are constantly chasing bugs and never getting to actually build anything, or your manager is having to defend your team against second guessing from the outside. Having too many things to do and not enough people to do it can really kill morale.

by ptero 9y ago

hashset 9y ago

Perhaps the deeper problem is the lead who committed to the deliverables isn't doing a good job and should be removed.

geezerjay 9y ago

> Overworked people is a red flag indeed, but it is usually a symptom of a deeper problem that is unlikely to be solved with more hires. Not necessarily. Accepting a new project or extra responsibilities in exchange for a generous sum may increase your company's workload unexpectedly, which leads to overworked people while the company struggles with the hiring process. Another example is losing a team member right before crunch time.

ptero 9y ago
Sure, there are exceptions. For example, I do not see a team flying out for a 2 60+ hour week test campaign as a red flag as long as the participation is mostly voluntary and the team gets an ample opportunity to detox after the fact. The exceptions, for me, have three key properties: (1) they are temporary, (2) overworked people know that it is temporary and have a clear (maybe not 100% realistic) date for return to normalcy and (3) this state of affairs is seen by most of the team as acceptable at the moment: not pleasant, but bearable and probably least bad of all options. If (1) and (2) hold, (3) is usually easy to achieve with sweeteners: $x bonus, T extra vacation, etc. But break either of the three and you have a clear red flag. Just my 2c.

MBCook 9y ago

Agreed. At a previous (small) job the IT department was VERY overworked. They tried to hire to fix it and it didn’t work. Because it wasn’t the problem. The problem was unsustainable methods of doing everything. Every job was unique for no good reason. It was all managed by hand, monitoring monitored the wrong things. Each existing thing generated a ton of work due to how it was setup and required constant tweaking. Any new thing just piled additional work on, often causing issues with what already existed. Because of the lack of any kind of system or useful documentation new employees only made things worse as they tried to understand what existed, had to ask constant questions, or failed to take into account hidden gotchas that they had no way to watch out for. Until they started standardizing and stabalizing the base things couldn’t be improved. Yes there are times you have 10 developers worth of work and 5 developers. But there are times you have 4 developers worth of work and 6 developers worth of mess they have to tip-toe around, but only 5 people.

nerdponx 9y ago

"Overworked" does not need to mean your engineers are pulling 14 hour days. Even just having a massive backlog that never gets knocked down is, to me, a form of "overwork". Even if the work life balance is fine, it's very difficult to stay motivated when you are constantly chasing bugs and never getting to actually build anything, or your manager is having to defend your team against second guessing from the outside. Having too many things to do and not enough people to do it can really kill morale.