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Wellbeing, even when it's sincere, is a top-down effort - as in way up the tree-tops - and usually raining down diagonally from a different org. Meanwhile, dow

Wellbeing, even when it's sincere, is a top-down effort - as in way up the tree-tops - and usually raining down diagonally from a different org. Meanwhile, down on the leaves of the org tree, you have delivery pressure from users, peers, and so on. If the pressure is high, no amount of messaging about wellbeing will make any difference. Taking time off, whether it's some kind of leave or for some wellbeing meetings of some kind, just takes time out of your workday, resulting in increased pressure because now you're even further behind. It's quite hard not to become cynical about the disconnect between aspirational messaging and these pressures. There are answers, but they require cultural and managerial enforcement. Heroism needs to be discouraged. Delivery slippage and failure to make dates need to be seen as organizational process and planning failures, and not as individual failures: feedback that schedules are too tight, expectations are unsustainably high, resourcing isn't right. If your team or org has a culture of heroism - people risking burnout, working into the night, on weekends, on holidays, to make deadlines - stop it. Don't reward it. It's not sustainable, it creates peer pressure to do the same, and it is one of the most damaging things you can do to employees' wellbeing.

granshaw 5y ago
Let me tell you, delivery pressure exists even right at the very top. You think there’s no pressure as a CEO/COO beholden to 30% top line growth this quarter? I sometimes think about being in that position and it seems pretty scary too
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  I’ll take it with a golden parachute. Why not? Can’t lose.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  Delivery pressure increases as you go higher in the management structure. The most stressful part is that as you transition from IC to manager and work your way up the org chart, you become more abstracted away from actual being able to do the work and influence the outcome yourself. More responsibility, less direct influence. Some managers struggle with this pressure and resort to trying to make their teams feel as much of the pressure as possible. Good managers learn how to set a healthy cadence, manage expectations upward, and keep a healthy but reasonable amount of delivery pressure on the team. There is no realistic scenario where teams have zero delivery pressure, but it needs to be kept in balance. Burning everyone out all the time only works if you have a constant stream of replacement employees as everyone leaves, but then you lose institutional knowledge and reputation tanks. Managers who use these tactics need to be coached or removed from the company.
  - cjrp 5y ago
    > you become more abstracted away from actual being able to do the work and influence the outcome yourself You're definitely less able to do the work yourself, but ideally you can still influence the outcome by getting the right people to do the work and making sure they're not blocked, etc.
    - lazide 5y ago
      You can if you’re thinking clearly and able to be a good manager that can attract those people. Easy to fall down the hole of overwork, over stress, over pressure others.
- danaris 5y ago
  Ah, yes. The pressure to deliver on specific growth targets in a nearly-completely arbitrary marketplace, which, if met, will result in massive compensation here, and if missed, will result in....massive compensation, then a shift to doing the same thing somewhere else for also-massive compensation. Truly, my heart bleeds for the plight of the beleaguered CEO.
- joefife 5y ago
  Of course there is. But I'd hope the CEO revives compensation to make that worth while.
- shoto_io 5y ago
  I came here to say exactly that. There is pressure everywhere. CEOs are scared of boards. Boards are scared of shareholders. It's just not that visible because there is no tool like "OfficeVibe" showing this transparently. Sure, they get paid well. So you could argue that they have to take the pressure.
  - kenjackson 5y ago
    And there are people who say we’re paid well. There’s always someone who thinks you need to suck it up because of how much you get paid.
    - shoto_io 5y ago
      I’m not saying it’s fair. I’m simply articulating what most people think, I believe.
  - geofft 5y ago
    Stop having boards and shareholders then. Or, at least tell them, our growth target this year is 2%, our growth max is 10%, if we grow more than that I'm concerned about the pressure on my employees and my goal is to have a great and sustainable place to work and not to fill the universe with paperclips, and I'm going to start laying off sales and marketing if we're taking on more commitments than we can handle. We're not letting you into the board if you disagree with it, and you'd better price this assumption into the stock if you want to hold stock. You don't have to grow forever just because you're a company. (I think I've heard companies register as a public benefit corporation to make it easier to push back on growth-seeking entryists.)
    - ghaff 5y ago
      A private company can do more or less what the owners want. Of course, they'll probably have less access to capital and employees should expect commensurate compensation/no opportunity for public stock appreciation/etc.
    - Narnach 5y ago
- chasd00 5y ago
  you know, now that i think about it, all the tears shed on conference calls i've been on have been from either senior management or directors. The pressure at the level is pretty intense, everyone is nipping at your heels to expose any weakness and take your spot.
- koonsolo 5y ago
  As a leader, you will have to decide if you push a short or long term vision. When it's short term, put pressure. When it's long term, plan. In a sense, a company run by the owner is more inclined to think long term than one where some CEO takes the wheel for 5 years.
- telmo 5y ago
  Yes, but the typical CEO/COO does not have to worry about their family becoming homeless if they lose their job. Let us not be disingenuous about the stakes here.
  - belval 5y ago
    Employees targeted by workplace wellbeing efforts are employees that need to be retained, almost always because of limited availability (see software). Let's no kid ourselves into thinking that in 2021 a software engineer will go homeless if they lose their job.
    - ErikVandeWater 5y ago
      Software engineers can go bankrupt on healthcare costs alone. Either for them, or their family. Losing a job on top of high healthcare costs can force bankruptcy.
    - pdimitar 5y ago
      That, my friend, is called a privilege and a filter bubble. I envy you how you have no idea how many devs are almost literal slaves. Not me, but I know plenty.
      - belval 5y ago
        That statement does not make sense, if the devs you are referring to have no work mobility why are their employers even doing "workplace wellbeing"?
        pdimitar 5y ago
        To deflect responsibility and employee resentment to other people. They don't care whether their almost-slaves are happy at the workplace but they want to maintain the status quo because even for them, losing devs and retraining new ones is costly.
- boringg 5y ago
  100%. However the bias for people to write comments are through the lens they see the world. Most people are in the middle to lower strata of an organization (just as a numbers part) therefore they only see their own lens. That and a general narrative from the news media that C-Suite has it pretty good relative to the rest of the world (financially they definitely do).
tails4e 5y ago
I agree. We're inundated with wellbeing emails and events, and while I appreciate the effort, it is just a token as only the lucky few with spare time can go to these things. When the balance is way off, taking more time for such meetings feel like a distraction rather than a fix. What was great was one Friday off per month, for the last year. It was just so nice to have a 3 day weekend so reguarly.
- bombcar 5y ago
  This is the takeaway - it has to be REAL and not just boil down to a few emails and some seminars. And the only real way to make it real is for management, starting at the Board, being willing to take some pain - real pain like "we didn't get X done because we were concerned about employee wellbeing" instead of the "pain" of a budget item for some consulting company.

granshaw 5y ago

Let me tell you, delivery pressure exists even right at the very top. You think there’s no pressure as a CEO/COO beholden to 30% top line growth this quarter? I sometimes think about being in that position and it seems pretty scary too

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
inter_netuser 5y ago
I’ll take it with a golden parachute. Why not? Can’t lose.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Delivery pressure increases as you go higher in the management structure. The most stressful part is that as you transition from IC to manager and work your way up the org chart, you become more abstracted away from actual being able to do the work and influence the outcome yourself. More responsibility, less direct influence. Some managers struggle with this pressure and resort to trying to make their teams feel as much of the pressure as possible. Good managers learn how to set a healthy cadence, manage expectations upward, and keep a healthy but reasonable amount of delivery pressure on the team. There is no realistic scenario where teams have zero delivery pressure, but it needs to be kept in balance. Burning everyone out all the time only works if you have a constant stream of replacement employees as everyone leaves, but then you lose institutional knowledge and reputation tanks. Managers who use these tactics need to be coached or removed from the company.
- cjrp 5y ago
  > you become more abstracted away from actual being able to do the work and influence the outcome yourself You're definitely less able to do the work yourself, but ideally you can still influence the outcome by getting the right people to do the work and making sure they're not blocked, etc.
  - lazide 5y ago
    You can if you’re thinking clearly and able to be a good manager that can attract those people. Easy to fall down the hole of overwork, over stress, over pressure others.
danaris 5y ago
Ah, yes. The pressure to deliver on specific growth targets in a nearly-completely arbitrary marketplace, which, if met, will result in massive compensation here, and if missed, will result in....massive compensation, then a shift to doing the same thing somewhere else for also-massive compensation. Truly, my heart bleeds for the plight of the beleaguered CEO.
joefife 5y ago
Of course there is. But I'd hope the CEO revives compensation to make that worth while.
shoto_io 5y ago
I came here to say exactly that. There is pressure everywhere. CEOs are scared of boards. Boards are scared of shareholders. It's just not that visible because there is no tool like "OfficeVibe" showing this transparently. Sure, they get paid well. So you could argue that they have to take the pressure.
- kenjackson 5y ago
  And there are people who say we’re paid well. There’s always someone who thinks you need to suck it up because of how much you get paid.
  - shoto_io 5y ago
    I’m not saying it’s fair. I’m simply articulating what most people think, I believe.
- geofft 5y ago
  Stop having boards and shareholders then. Or, at least tell them, our growth target this year is 2%, our growth max is 10%, if we grow more than that I'm concerned about the pressure on my employees and my goal is to have a great and sustainable place to work and not to fill the universe with paperclips, and I'm going to start laying off sales and marketing if we're taking on more commitments than we can handle. We're not letting you into the board if you disagree with it, and you'd better price this assumption into the stock if you want to hold stock. You don't have to grow forever just because you're a company. (I think I've heard companies register as a public benefit corporation to make it easier to push back on growth-seeking entryists.)
  - ghaff 5y ago
    A private company can do more or less what the owners want. Of course, they'll probably have less access to capital and employees should expect commensurate compensation/no opportunity for public stock appreciation/etc.
  - Narnach 5y ago
chasd00 5y ago
you know, now that i think about it, all the tears shed on conference calls i've been on have been from either senior management or directors. The pressure at the level is pretty intense, everyone is nipping at your heels to expose any weakness and take your spot.
koonsolo 5y ago
As a leader, you will have to decide if you push a short or long term vision. When it's short term, put pressure. When it's long term, plan. In a sense, a company run by the owner is more inclined to think long term than one where some CEO takes the wheel for 5 years.
telmo 5y ago
Yes, but the typical CEO/COO does not have to worry about their family becoming homeless if they lose their job. Let us not be disingenuous about the stakes here.
- belval 5y ago
  Employees targeted by workplace wellbeing efforts are employees that need to be retained, almost always because of limited availability (see software). Let's no kid ourselves into thinking that in 2021 a software engineer will go homeless if they lose their job.
  - ErikVandeWater 5y ago
    Software engineers can go bankrupt on healthcare costs alone. Either for them, or their family. Losing a job on top of high healthcare costs can force bankruptcy.
  - pdimitar 5y ago
    That, my friend, is called a privilege and a filter bubble. I envy you how you have no idea how many devs are almost literal slaves. Not me, but I know plenty.
    - belval 5y ago
      That statement does not make sense, if the devs you are referring to have no work mobility why are their employers even doing "workplace wellbeing"?
      - pdimitar 5y ago
        To deflect responsibility and employee resentment to other people. They don't care whether their almost-slaves are happy at the workplace but they want to maintain the status quo because even for them, losing devs and retraining new ones is costly.
boringg 5y ago
100%. However the bias for people to write comments are through the lens they see the world. Most people are in the middle to lower strata of an organization (just as a numbers part) therefore they only see their own lens. That and a general narrative from the news media that C-Suite has it pretty good relative to the rest of the world (financially they definitely do).

tails4e 5y ago

I agree. We're inundated with wellbeing emails and events, and while I appreciate the effort, it is just a token as only the lucky few with spare time can go to these things. When the balance is way off, taking more time for such meetings feel like a distraction rather than a fix. What was great was one Friday off per month, for the last year. It was just so nice to have a 3 day weekend so reguarly.

bombcar 5y ago
This is the takeaway - it has to be REAL and not just boil down to a few emails and some seminars. And the only real way to make it real is for management, starting at the Board, being willing to take some pain - real pain like "we didn't get X done because we were concerned about employee wellbeing" instead of the "pain" of a budget item for some consulting company.