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Hmm, nothing in the article indicates that people worked on these items more than [40|45|x] number of hours a week, or that quality-of-life / outside-of-work it

Hmm, nothing in the article indicates that people worked on these items more than [40|45|x] number of hours a week, or that quality-of-life / outside-of-work items were the root cause. At the end of the day, "getting tasks done for the lead/client" is the reason, goal and background for majority of people getting paid a salary in the IT and other industries. From a real-life perspective, effective focus on satisfying client's needs / executing manager's tasks is the purpose and what one is being paid for. If manager tasks are not productive, if client's needs and wants diverge, or there's a disagreement with priorities, that's certainly an important discussion to have and where persuasion skills and ability to understand bigger picture comes in handy; but ignoring them and doing your own thing; let alone doing your own thing poorly; is not the way to go.

Benjammer 7y ago
I meant quality of life at work, not work-life balance. >If manager tasks are not productive, if client's needs and wants diverge, or there's a disagreement with priorities, ... ignoring them and doing your own thing; let alone doing your own thing poorly; is not the way to go. How exactly did you get "do my own thing, probably poorly," from what I said initially? I even said the list is good advice for working in that type of structure where only executing tasks is prioritized. The article even seems to be suggesting that one should ignore all those important discussions and just focus on getting tasks done. It's just so obviously an article for "how to suck up to your manager and do only the things they care about and notice," I'm pretty confused that I'm getting criticized so harshly here. I'm not even denying that these things will materially improve performance reviews of a large percentage of "ICs" out there in the working world. I just don't like the idea that an engineer who chooses to spend a quarter focused more on helping teammates instead of crushing sprint tasks should suddenly be thought of as "stuck." Why must it be thought of as wasted time if an engineer wants to dig around in the architecture or clean up random parts of the code? Are we saying there's no way to make any of these activities pay off for the engineering org and/or the company as a whole? Like pay off directly in the "product value" sense to the same level as any explicitly assigned work. Is anything that doesn't have its value explicitly predicted in advance considered wasted work?
- scarface74 7y ago
  Because at the end of the day, most of us go to work to get money deposited into our account. Why wouldn’t you optimize your time at work to achieving that goal?
  - kragen 7y ago
    That's a good way to prioritize if you're desperately poor, if you have a chance of a quick life-changing payoff, or if you urgently need money for a family member’s medical treatment. Most of the rest of us will do better if we prioritize other things over getting money. If you're old, you should probably prioritize making your time enjoyable, and finishing up whatever projects you want to finish before you die. Time is shorter than you think, and an unexpected heart attack can take productive years from you even if you don't die from it. Money is worthless to you if you don't spend it before you die. This doesn't align particularly, or sometimes at all, with employment. If you're young, most of your earnings are in the future. To the extent that you can trade off $1000 now for $100 every year of your working life, you should. Your future earnings depend on your skills, on your reputation, and on your relationships with your coworkers, not on your manager, unless you're working at Google and don't plan to leave. Your workplace is much more valuable as a source of learning opportunities, mentorship, and connections, than as a source of money. It's worth putting up with bad working conditions in exchange for learning opportunities, but not for mere money.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Why would “prioritizing my projects” include working for less than market wage for a for profit company? And how much career growth and future financial returns do you expect to get from doing PHP for WordPress? Also looking at their salaries after their “trial” they still pay much less than a bog standard Enterprise Developer in Atlanta with 5-7 years of experience. You can do that without having to do a “trial” I’ve already paid my dues. Why would I spend 3 months of my life making less in 2019 than I did in 1999?
      - 7y ago

Benjammer 7y ago

I meant quality of life at work, not work-life balance. >If manager tasks are not productive, if client's needs and wants diverge, or there's a disagreement with priorities, ... ignoring them and doing your own thing; let alone doing your own thing poorly; is not the way to go. How exactly did you get "do my own thing, probably poorly," from what I said initially? I even said the list is good advice for working in that type of structure where only executing tasks is prioritized. The article even seems to be suggesting that one should ignore all those important discussions and just focus on getting tasks done. It's just so obviously an article for "how to suck up to your manager and do only the things they care about and notice," I'm pretty confused that I'm getting criticized so harshly here. I'm not even denying that these things will materially improve performance reviews of a large percentage of "ICs" out there in the working world. I just don't like the idea that an engineer who chooses to spend a quarter focused more on helping teammates instead of crushing sprint tasks should suddenly be thought of as "stuck." Why must it be thought of as wasted time if an engineer wants to dig around in the architecture or clean up random parts of the code? Are we saying there's no way to make any of these activities pay off for the engineering org and/or the company as a whole? Like pay off directly in the "product value" sense to the same level as any explicitly assigned work. Is anything that doesn't have its value explicitly predicted in advance considered wasted work?

scarface74 7y ago
Because at the end of the day, most of us go to work to get money deposited into our account. Why wouldn’t you optimize your time at work to achieving that goal?
- kragen 7y ago
  That's a good way to prioritize if you're desperately poor, if you have a chance of a quick life-changing payoff, or if you urgently need money for a family member’s medical treatment. Most of the rest of us will do better if we prioritize other things over getting money. If you're old, you should probably prioritize making your time enjoyable, and finishing up whatever projects you want to finish before you die. Time is shorter than you think, and an unexpected heart attack can take productive years from you even if you don't die from it. Money is worthless to you if you don't spend it before you die. This doesn't align particularly, or sometimes at all, with employment. If you're young, most of your earnings are in the future. To the extent that you can trade off $1000 now for $100 every year of your working life, you should. Your future earnings depend on your skills, on your reputation, and on your relationships with your coworkers, not on your manager, unless you're working at Google and don't plan to leave. Your workplace is much more valuable as a source of learning opportunities, mentorship, and connections, than as a source of money. It's worth putting up with bad working conditions in exchange for learning opportunities, but not for mere money.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Why would “prioritizing my projects” include working for less than market wage for a for profit company? And how much career growth and future financial returns do you expect to get from doing PHP for WordPress? Also looking at their salaries after their “trial” they still pay much less than a bog standard Enterprise Developer in Atlanta with 5-7 years of experience. You can do that without having to do a “trial” I’ve already paid my dues. Why would I spend 3 months of my life making less in 2019 than I did in 1999?
    - 7y ago