5 ms·
Once upon a time I learned the most useful phrase: "Sure, which of these projects would you like me to deprioritize?" You're still saying no, but you're also s
by Swizec 7y ago
Once upon a time I learned the most useful phrase: "Sure, which of these projects would you like me to deprioritize?"
You're still saying no, but you're also saying yes. It gives your manager the opportunity to make the tradeoff. Sometimes they realize their ask really isn't that important and put it on your list for later. And sometimes they decide the new thing is indeed more important than what you're doing, which is a big win. You should always work on the most important thing you can be working on.
Your manager's job is to prioritize your work. Let them.
- hobs 7y agoAnd often they say "I need both." and walk away in a huff.
- wil421 7y agoYou’re working for a terrible boss if that’s their response. I’ve had good bosses say that in jest but they were never serious.
- hobs 7y agoAbsolutely - I have worked for a TON of terrible bosses. As far as I am concerned, they are the majority. I got this advice on how to handle prioritization early in my career and it made a lot of sense to me, so I tried it with every boss I had. For maybe the first 10 years of working never had a boss who answered this question with anything but "figure it out yourself" or "that's your problem" or "both."
- karmelapple 7y agoHow many bosses did you have in your first 10 years of working? That sounds awful and I’m sorry you went through that. I used to work at a very large company, and perhaps because of that, when I couldn’t get something done on time, asking for help was something I felt empowered to do. Now that I’m a co-founder of a much smaller company, we don’t have as many people to help if someone gets overworked... but that means we’re much more careful about asking for too much over a given amount of time. Software development comes with all kinds of unknown unknowns when you first begin on a change, so we generally plan for that. Having a small team - and strongly wanting everyone to have a 40 hour week, not a 60 hour week - has helped me understand how essential prioritization is to our success.
- hobs 7y agoAt least 19? I worked a few jobs, then had two different mini-stints for about 4 years each, moving through the ranks. I appreciate your empathy, and I'd agree - one of the things I learned and used over and over again is that if you want good work out of people you need some sort of alignment of outcomes - if they trust you to treat them right and have reasonable expectations and goals, then you can build a really excellent team.
- karmelapple 7y agoThanks for answering! Out of curiosity, were these bosses all at technology companies, in what would frequently be considered a "white collar" job?
- hobs 7y agoDefinitely white collar, but not all tech companies. Real estate, call centers, then operations/support for tech companies moving into data management and DBA work. I guess in retrospect the call center stuff was somewhat blue collar, but its really knowledge and process work instead of making things or buildings things.
- isostatic 7y ago"I give you flexibility to prioritize yourself" "I shouldn't need to micromanage your time"
- krustyburger 7y agoDo you have that TPS report?
- eloisant 7y agoThen I give you my deadlines
- bena 7y agoAh yes. The freedom to choose what I'll be punished for.
- marcosdumay 7y agoThat one moved from an incompetent manager to a narcissist sociopath quite quickly.
- KineticLensman 7y agoThis can be a real problem in situations where you simultaneously work on two or more projects that have different managers. If they aren't part of an obvious command chain then it can be hard to find someone who can make the prioritisation call. Resulting in extreme pressure on you if they refuse to back down. It is even more challenging if the two managers don't get on / actively work to frustrate the other. It seems very common in matrix-managed organisations where multiple command chains are the norm.
- draw_down 7y agoIndeed, but I still wouldn’t think of it as saying no. I look at it like, my employer bought my time, and if they’d prefer for me to work on X or Y instead of Z then that’s fine with me. Outcome independence, basically.