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At the end of a project death-march (at one point I turned in a >100 hour timecard), the division director had a celebratory thank-you dinner for all the manage

by 7402 7y ago

At the end of a project death-march (at one point I turned in a >100 hour timecard), the division director had a celebratory thank-you dinner for all the managers involved in the project. My direct supervisor was at first puzzled as to why I wasn't coming with him to the dinner at the end of the day, and then he was quite appalled - I think he later had words with the director about the whole thing.

hinkley 7y ago
I'd bet money that most of those managers weren't even in the building for most of that death march. I have a standing rule. If I work overtime it's because I fucked up. I said something would be done by Friday but I goofed off, I'll work. If I'm working nights and weekends for business reasons, then my manager is in the building the entire time. A lot of them tone down their rhetoric when you make them put skin in the game. All of a sudden some of the scope gets negotiated down.
- BonesJustice 7y ago
  I have the same rule. If I’m expected to come in on the weekend, my manager had better be there. If it’s important enough to ask me to sacrifice my personal time, then it had better be important enough for him to be there too. Unless it’s because I screwed up and need to fix something post haste. In which case, he won’t have to ask me at all.
  - lamby 7y ago
    You could even passive-aggressively frame it as "oh, but you being around would be highly motivating..."
- tonyarkles 7y ago
  It’s funny to tell this story in a thread about bad incentives, but the “managers not there” part reminded me of it. I worked at a startup that did citizen identity management for government (think SSO for an entire province). Because of gov’t IT policies, we often had to deploy after hours, in a kind of weird “managed IT” process. We still automated the process, but couldn’t press the button without being on a conference call etc. Anyway, we had a deployment go south on Friday night, rolled it back, and decided to come back and try again Sunday. The CEO himself showed up about 10 minutes after we did with a big box of Dilly Bars. Normally that would put this in the category of this thread: “thanks, I’m working overtime for ice cream...” but what he said made it all better: “I know this sucks to be here today. Help yourselves to ice cream. And I’ll be in my office all day, stop by if you need anything. And please let me know when you’re done so I know I can go home.” Awesome awesome dude.
  - dbcurtis 7y ago
    Yes, having a manager just be there showing appreciation is huge. My story is trying to crack a hot, high-impact bug that got reported days before product launch. Daily 8:00AM and 5:00PM status meetings on Saturday and Sunday reporting to multiple VP's kind of hot. So the debug lab manager had little clue how to hang a logic analyzer probe any more, and no clue how to read the traces. But he brought in take-out 3 meals a day and did whatever else to keep us well-fed and caffeinated during the ordeal. And if we wanted to consult with somebody, he tracked them down and got them on the phone. Basically just hung out and said "Thanks" often.
    - tonyarkles 7y ago
      That is 100% awesome. I've had a few managers over my career that got that. The counterpoint (funny enough, at the same company as the ice cream) was a different exec who came close but just missed the mark. Weekday evening deployment (started at 5:30pm) and he orders pizza. A lot of pizza. Things go smoothly and since we're just sitting and watching monitoring for a bit to make sure all is good, he decides to head out. Ten minutes after he leaves, we get a call about a third-party site that broke after the deployment... guess we're not leaving. So the debugging drags on, and around 11pm we start getting hungry. AHA! Leftover pizza in the fridge! We go to the kitchen to discover... he took all of the leftovers home. Like 4 pizzas worth. So what's our conclusion? "Fuck it, we'll fix it in the morning. Let's go home." All it would have taken waa leftover pizza...
brokenmachine 7y ago
Call me ungrateful but I can't think of anything I'd less like doing than being forced into a dinner with coworkers that I already spend more time with than my family or friends. Get the money, then go home.
- rv-de 7y ago
  You better not let this attitude shine through in a job interview, though :D
  - brokenmachine 7y ago
    "Doing your job then going home is frowned upon in this workplace".
- c0vfefe 7y ago
  People with a greater emphasis on work-life balance probably wouldn't stay at a job requiring occasional massive overtime, like the comment you replied to. At that point, the dinner after work is no longer the issue.

by 7402 7y ago

hinkley 7y ago

I'd bet money that most of those managers weren't even in the building for most of that death march. I have a standing rule. If I work overtime it's because I fucked up. I said something would be done by Friday but I goofed off, I'll work. If I'm working nights and weekends for business reasons, then my manager is in the building the entire time. A lot of them tone down their rhetoric when you make them put skin in the game. All of a sudden some of the scope gets negotiated down.

BonesJustice 7y ago
I have the same rule. If I’m expected to come in on the weekend, my manager had better be there. If it’s important enough to ask me to sacrifice my personal time, then it had better be important enough for him to be there too. Unless it’s because I screwed up and need to fix something post haste. In which case, he won’t have to ask me at all.
- lamby 7y ago
  You could even passive-aggressively frame it as "oh, but you being around would be highly motivating..."
tonyarkles 7y ago
It’s funny to tell this story in a thread about bad incentives, but the “managers not there” part reminded me of it. I worked at a startup that did citizen identity management for government (think SSO for an entire province). Because of gov’t IT policies, we often had to deploy after hours, in a kind of weird “managed IT” process. We still automated the process, but couldn’t press the button without being on a conference call etc. Anyway, we had a deployment go south on Friday night, rolled it back, and decided to come back and try again Sunday. The CEO himself showed up about 10 minutes after we did with a big box of Dilly Bars. Normally that would put this in the category of this thread: “thanks, I’m working overtime for ice cream...” but what he said made it all better: “I know this sucks to be here today. Help yourselves to ice cream. And I’ll be in my office all day, stop by if you need anything. And please let me know when you’re done so I know I can go home.” Awesome awesome dude.
- dbcurtis 7y ago
  Yes, having a manager just be there showing appreciation is huge. My story is trying to crack a hot, high-impact bug that got reported days before product launch. Daily 8:00AM and 5:00PM status meetings on Saturday and Sunday reporting to multiple VP's kind of hot. So the debug lab manager had little clue how to hang a logic analyzer probe any more, and no clue how to read the traces. But he brought in take-out 3 meals a day and did whatever else to keep us well-fed and caffeinated during the ordeal. And if we wanted to consult with somebody, he tracked them down and got them on the phone. Basically just hung out and said "Thanks" often.
  - tonyarkles 7y ago
    That is 100% awesome. I've had a few managers over my career that got that. The counterpoint (funny enough, at the same company as the ice cream) was a different exec who came close but just missed the mark. Weekday evening deployment (started at 5:30pm) and he orders pizza. A lot of pizza. Things go smoothly and since we're just sitting and watching monitoring for a bit to make sure all is good, he decides to head out. Ten minutes after he leaves, we get a call about a third-party site that broke after the deployment... guess we're not leaving. So the debugging drags on, and around 11pm we start getting hungry. AHA! Leftover pizza in the fridge! We go to the kitchen to discover... he took all of the leftovers home. Like 4 pizzas worth. So what's our conclusion? "Fuck it, we'll fix it in the morning. Let's go home." All it would have taken waa leftover pizza...

brokenmachine 7y ago

Call me ungrateful but I can't think of anything I'd less like doing than being forced into a dinner with coworkers that I already spend more time with than my family or friends. Get the money, then go home.

rv-de 7y ago
You better not let this attitude shine through in a job interview, though :D
- brokenmachine 7y ago
  "Doing your job then going home is frowned upon in this workplace".
c0vfefe 7y ago
People with a greater emphasis on work-life balance probably wouldn't stay at a job requiring occasional massive overtime, like the comment you replied to. At that point, the dinner after work is no longer the issue.