4 ms·

It's similar to the systems administrator dilemma. Do your job well, it looks you are not doing very much, why are we paying you? Everything is on fire, it lo

It's similar to the systems administrator dilemma. Do your job well, it looks you are not doing very much, why are we paying you? Everything is on fire, it looks you are not doing your job properly, why are we paying you? I've worked with a few engineers over my career like the person you described and frankly they are worth their weight in gold, been able to bank on their output working reliably and consistently over time is hugely valuable, doubly so when what they do is the bedrock of many other things. Of course the unhurried, thoughtful person looks like they are slacking and the hurried, frantically working person looks like they are a hard worker. Fundamentally it's because impact is harder to measure than perception.

Buttons840 6y ago
> Do your job well, it looks you are not doing very much, why are we paying you? > Everything is on fire, it looks you are not doing your job properly, why are we paying you? Option 3: Everything is on fire, be really quick to respond to your manager and then poke and prod at things in production until it kinda works, repeat daily. This guys a hard worker! I'll have to keep him in mind for a promotion.
- high_5 6y ago
  And in the process burnout yourself. Quit the job or exit game of life.
freedomben 6y ago
> Fundamentally it's because impact is harder to measure than perception. Absolutely. Another nontrivial variable is the tendency for managers/team leads to get the "credit" for successful work, even if they aren't trying to. I've had managers before that did nothing but impede a high performing team. Luckily we delivered despite this. But it never failed, the manager would get accolades (often very public) for successfully releases, customer feedback, etc, and would end up promoted up. Meanwhile the team kept doing our thing, getting barely-matches-inflation annual increases and more and more micromanagement from the scrum diehards. Didn't take too long for the team to move on to better things. I have a dream of someday reuniting the super team for a sweet startup idea. Not likely to happen but I can dream :-)
- sroussey 6y ago
  Shoot me the list of these team members. :)
- ncmncm 6y ago
  More important than any of the advice in TFA is: know when to leave. Most of my regrets are for staying someplace longer than was wise. More about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25663767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25663767
ddingus 6y ago
It just occurred to me a sysadmin log would be very valuable: Installed update X to prevent risk Y Wrote script to advance process Z on input A Etc...
- justin_oaks 6y ago
  As a sysadmin, I actually keep a log, but I'm under no illusions that anyone will ever see it but me. I used to track my tasks in Jira with the thought that maybe my boss would look at it and see what I was doing. Of course he wasn't looking at it so I stopped doing it. My log is mostly for me to provide a list of achievements to my boss whenever there's a review, or if I'm questioned about what I spend my time on.
  - ddingus 6y ago
    I did too. But I never did connect the value points to the admin activities. If I sysadmin again, I am going to do that. "Why those trains ran on time."
- dsr_ 6y ago
  I ask my junior sysadmins / new hires to write a daily log for their first year or so. What did you do today? What do you need help with? What went well? What was frustrating? What should we change or fix? When we get together to talk about their day or their week, these logs are extremely useful. Sometimes they generate tickets, sometimes book or course recommendations, people to talk to, sometimes just conversations.
  - ddingus 6y ago
    Nice. Seems like you are doing the work needed to bring them into things right. I had a good mentor when I was doing sysadmin. Not quite as formal as this, but the conversations were similar.
- toyg 6y ago
  It would, but these logs can also feel like oppressive and meaningless bureaucracy. A lot of sysadmins are not even good at typing... It’s one of those things that would probably be naturally suited to voice-activated systems (“Hey Siri, today I updated system X to avoid Y, and I wrote a script to improve process Z on input A” - 5 seconds to say, log saved in the right place, keywords like “updated” and “system X” recognised and formalized into some record, etc), if only such systems actually worked on any word beyond the most trivial (good luck with context-less mentions of pythons, rubies, native-american tribes who somehow serve pages of webs, androids in phones, etc etc).
kstenerud 6y ago
I've been bitten by this. I once worked at a place where the development process for the Windows version of their product was GLACIAL because there was no way to run the CI scripts locally or even set up a dev environment that could build the product. People actually edited code in a text editor and then submitted it to github and waited an hour for the CI job to build a virtual Windows instance, run updates, install Visual Studio, Oracle, and all supporting software, run the compile and bail with a syntax error :(((((( So I made a Powershell script to install everything from scratch on a fresh Windows 10 or Windows Server system using Chocolatey. The script took about an hour to run, but once it was done you had a Windows box (or VM) that could build the project in 2 minutes at most, or just run the CI script directly before committing. Suddenly it didn't take weeks to fix bugs in the Windows client, and corrupted installs or DLL hell was one "wipe", "run script", "walk away while it churns for an hour" cycle to a perfect dev environment again. I was fired 6 months later for "not stepping up enough".
- withinboredom 6y ago
  I lived almost the exact same story. Except when I was fired I was told to go work at a bigger company. So I did.
- sroussey 6y ago
  Management should clearly see impact and that your work multiplier is higher. Their loss for sure. Typically, higher leveled engineers have higher workforce multipliers —- their output is measured not only on their own work but how they move the whole team, division, company, or industry forward.
- tnr23 6y ago
  Tbh your achievement sounds like you added a lot of complexity (treating symptoms) instead of really trying to tackle the core of the problem.
  - castlecrasher2 6y ago
    I'd like to hear an explanation for what seems to be an awful take. Why do you think this?
larrik 6y ago
On the other hand, lots of places have people who they _think_ are this guy, and who are actually just a bad dev who is good at building an impenetrable moat for job security...

Buttons840 6y ago

> Do your job well, it looks you are not doing very much, why are we paying you? > Everything is on fire, it looks you are not doing your job properly, why are we paying you? Option 3: Everything is on fire, be really quick to respond to your manager and then poke and prod at things in production until it kinda works, repeat daily. This guys a hard worker! I'll have to keep him in mind for a promotion.

high_5 6y ago
And in the process burnout yourself. Quit the job or exit game of life.

freedomben 6y ago

> Fundamentally it's because impact is harder to measure than perception. Absolutely. Another nontrivial variable is the tendency for managers/team leads to get the "credit" for successful work, even if they aren't trying to. I've had managers before that did nothing but impede a high performing team. Luckily we delivered despite this. But it never failed, the manager would get accolades (often very public) for successfully releases, customer feedback, etc, and would end up promoted up. Meanwhile the team kept doing our thing, getting barely-matches-inflation annual increases and more and more micromanagement from the scrum diehards. Didn't take too long for the team to move on to better things. I have a dream of someday reuniting the super team for a sweet startup idea. Not likely to happen but I can dream :-)

sroussey 6y ago
Shoot me the list of these team members. :)
ncmncm 6y ago
More important than any of the advice in TFA is: know when to leave. Most of my regrets are for staying someplace longer than was wise. More about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25663767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25663767

ddingus 6y ago

It just occurred to me a sysadmin log would be very valuable: Installed update X to prevent risk Y Wrote script to advance process Z on input A Etc...

justin_oaks 6y ago
As a sysadmin, I actually keep a log, but I'm under no illusions that anyone will ever see it but me. I used to track my tasks in Jira with the thought that maybe my boss would look at it and see what I was doing. Of course he wasn't looking at it so I stopped doing it. My log is mostly for me to provide a list of achievements to my boss whenever there's a review, or if I'm questioned about what I spend my time on.
- ddingus 6y ago
  I did too. But I never did connect the value points to the admin activities. If I sysadmin again, I am going to do that. "Why those trains ran on time."
dsr_ 6y ago
I ask my junior sysadmins / new hires to write a daily log for their first year or so. What did you do today? What do you need help with? What went well? What was frustrating? What should we change or fix? When we get together to talk about their day or their week, these logs are extremely useful. Sometimes they generate tickets, sometimes book or course recommendations, people to talk to, sometimes just conversations.
- ddingus 6y ago
  Nice. Seems like you are doing the work needed to bring them into things right. I had a good mentor when I was doing sysadmin. Not quite as formal as this, but the conversations were similar.
toyg 6y ago
It would, but these logs can also feel like oppressive and meaningless bureaucracy. A lot of sysadmins are not even good at typing... It’s one of those things that would probably be naturally suited to voice-activated systems (“Hey Siri, today I updated system X to avoid Y, and I wrote a script to improve process Z on input A” - 5 seconds to say, log saved in the right place, keywords like “updated” and “system X” recognised and formalized into some record, etc), if only such systems actually worked on any word beyond the most trivial (good luck with context-less mentions of pythons, rubies, native-american tribes who somehow serve pages of webs, androids in phones, etc etc).

kstenerud 6y ago

I've been bitten by this. I once worked at a place where the development process for the Windows version of their product was GLACIAL because there was no way to run the CI scripts locally or even set up a dev environment that could build the product. People actually edited code in a text editor and then submitted it to github and waited an hour for the CI job to build a virtual Windows instance, run updates, install Visual Studio, Oracle, and all supporting software, run the compile and bail with a syntax error :(((((( So I made a Powershell script to install everything from scratch on a fresh Windows 10 or Windows Server system using Chocolatey. The script took about an hour to run, but once it was done you had a Windows box (or VM) that could build the project in 2 minutes at most, or just run the CI script directly before committing. Suddenly it didn't take weeks to fix bugs in the Windows client, and corrupted installs or DLL hell was one "wipe", "run script", "walk away while it churns for an hour" cycle to a perfect dev environment again. I was fired 6 months later for "not stepping up enough".

withinboredom 6y ago
I lived almost the exact same story. Except when I was fired I was told to go work at a bigger company. So I did.
sroussey 6y ago
Management should clearly see impact and that your work multiplier is higher. Their loss for sure. Typically, higher leveled engineers have higher workforce multipliers —- their output is measured not only on their own work but how they move the whole team, division, company, or industry forward.
tnr23 6y ago
Tbh your achievement sounds like you added a lot of complexity (treating symptoms) instead of really trying to tackle the core of the problem.
- castlecrasher2 6y ago
  I'd like to hear an explanation for what seems to be an awful take. Why do you think this?

larrik 6y ago

On the other hand, lots of places have people who they _think_ are this guy, and who are actually just a bad dev who is good at building an impenetrable moat for job security...