15 ms·

Being swamped is normal and not impressive

355 points by gk1 4y ago

satisfice 4y ago
This is one of those posts that sounds like wisdom but isn’t. Some people are swamped for good reasons, some are swamped for bad reasons. Some people are not swamped because they are brilliant planners and know their limitations, others are not swamped because they are terrified of commitment or are avoiding responsibility. So what? Please, less writing and more understanding.
metadat 4y ago
A welcome reminder. Thank you.
onion2k 4y ago
Being swamped in a job as a dev (rather than a startup) is a signal that you're bad at saying no to adding things to a sprint, and unable to hand off work to other people. I'm very wary of working with people like that. It ends badly when things finally get too much.
gk1 4y ago
Someone asked me how to get out from being constantly swamped. I highly recommend two books: Essentialism by Greg McKeown, and Deep work by Cal Newport. They haven't fixed all my woes but they gave me something to strive for.
- 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
  “If it isn’t a clear yes, then it’s a clear no.” haven't read the books yet, but this definitely resonates with me (essentialism).
  - gk1 4y ago
    The Derek Sivers version is more spicy and sticks with me better: HELL YEAH or NO (https://sive.rs/hellyeah https://sive.rs/hellyeah)
anoncow 4y ago
Not being swamped is also not a badge of honor.
brightball 4y ago
Early in my career I took a lot of pride in how much work I could take on. It made me feel important. Ended up putting me in the hospital. https://www.brightball.com/articles/what-exactly-happened-to-brightball-for-hire https://www.brightball.com/articles/what-exactly-happened-to...
- mindwork 4y ago
  I ended up in the hospital as well because of the startup that I tried to co-found. 9 years later I still have side effects of that. I was reading your story with interest
- strikelaserclaw 4y ago
  i think working hard is ok but you really got to assess the type of work you are doing. Are you working your ass off to do grunt work other devs wont? If so you won't get any glory, just burn out, many times working on tech debt also falls under this domain, higher ups just don't appreciate people who work hard to keep things stable, they are all about those who can cut costs or increase revenue by coming up with new products/ideas.
jaywalk 4y ago
I like to joke that I've got enough work on my plate currently to last until 2024, which is an exaggeration but not terribly far off. However, I set my own timelines for everything. I will not be rushed, and I will not work more than 40 hours per week. I've also been doing this for a long time, and don't work at a startup. So I realize that not everyone has the flexibility that I do, but it is vital to me. I do not and will not live to work.
daenz 4y ago
Being swamped always made me feel like I should take longer to complete tasks, to protect myself from the stress of working too hard for too long. Then I realized how insane that is...why should I artificially make myself a less productive person? It's like picking up a bad habit, like smoking. Imo the real issue is that management needs to learn how to identify people who actively seek out work as their default state, and not heap work onto them. These people naturally try to work close to their limit, so adding more work does not make them more productive.
- baq 4y ago
  in queueing, this is called backpressure and amazingly it works! so while it may not be logical from efficiency perspective, it might be from the process POV...
- GreenWatermelon 4y ago
  I would say rather than artificially make yourself less productive, you (talking about anyone, including me) should understand your limits, then keep a healthy margin of slack between your average daily effort (ADE) and those limits. This ADE (i.e. after cutting some slack) is what I would call your real productivity, since it's sustainable. IMO, always working close to your limit will surely lead to burnout. Not sustainable, and means you'll be less productive on the long run, thua it's not real productivity. This "extra effort reservoir" should only be tapped into when absolutely necessary (say, Critical issue with production) That said, if your limits are already very high, it means your productivity and output on 80% efficiency is already high, and I see no reason to artificially reduce your output any further. I read an article long ago about the importance of slack for any workers, I think it's this one [1] though I'm not sure. [1] http://www.everydaykanban.com/2012/07/27/slack-is-not-a-dirty-word-how-slack-can-improve-your-products/ http://www.everydaykanban.com/2012/07/27/slack-is-not-a-dirt...
  - tetha 4y ago
    Very much this. Like, I know I can juggle 4-6 different system problems at once, context switching every couple of minutes between them. And during more massive outages, this is necessary to get things under control faster, sure. But it's also extremely mentally exhausting. And when I realized that, I stopped it and limited myself to 2 tasks at once outside of emergencies. Usually a slower-paced task where you fire off something and it does stuff for half an hour, and some smaller chore to do while waiting, or planning for a more involved thing, or reviewing and editing documentation. And if there is nothing to do with both tasks doing stuff... that's fine. Let's go and make some coffee or outside for a minute. Or it's just one thing if it's complex and critical and then I shutdown most communication too. It's noticeably slower, naturally. However, this slower pace is very good for my mental health and it's beneficial for the team, because it allows other people to get involved with the pieces and systems I usually maintain. A coworker is currently wading through some of the marshlands of infrastructure only I tend to go through and constantly pokes me to document another weird nook or cranny. That's good.
adra 4y ago
I just talked about this with my wife just yesterday about her peer. If you're always the hero to take on too much work and you never keep up, you invite various significant structural problems. You're too useful to remove, you may not get attention for corrective measures because of fear of the person leaving. You are often too swamped to effectively get work done smoothly and in an expedient manner. You become a single point of failure (bus factor 1) so that when you take a vacation / hit by a bus, the company suffers significantly. A common personality trait of these types of people seem to be self reliance / control seekers. When they own that authority of work, they are less likely to accept delegation to get them out of their woes. In general, these types of employees may end up being labeled super stars, but they're also potential albatrosses that could significantly wound a company if not properly managed.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  You're also making yourself too vital to whatever you're doing now - if the conceit is that the team/division/practice/company can't function without you doing your job you'll never be able to be promoted out of it.
  - pydry 4y ago
    I've noticed only a few people do this but the ones that did did it out of either ego or anxiety (sometimes a mix). They werent usually angling for a promotion. The anxiety wasnt always unwarranted either. If you're in tons of debt, hate interviewing and work for an organization that doesnt care for people this isnt a wholly irrational strategy.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    That has a pretty simple and effective solution though: just mention that you want to leave. I've just been through getting a healthy amount of equity (as a freelancer no less) because someone else announced they were leaving. If your job is _that_ important, you might not get promoted away, but you'll get the salary as if you were and then some.
    - 4y ago
austinl 4y ago
Possibly my favorite quote from Meditations (the Martin Hammond translation): "... you would never say of him that he 'broke out a sweat': but everything was allotted its own time and thought, as by a man of leisure—his way was unhurried, organized, vigorous, consistent in all". Here, Aurelius is referring to his adoptive father, Antoninus Pius, who was known as one of the good Roman emperors and undoubtedly a very busy man.
asplake 4y ago
And the organisation that allows this is dysfunctional. Its coordination system (technological, managerial, whatever) cannot be regarded as effective.
VyseofArcadia 4y ago
I have worked at both startups and tech companies 40+ years old, and the conclusion I've come to from my anecdata is that every engineer at every company is swamped all the time. Feature requests and bug reports are easy. Writing features and fixing bugs is hard. Your todo list will always grow faster than you can tackle items. Once a senior engineer retired, and I inherited about a hundred of his bugs out of the 600 or so he left behind. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Working at a consistent pace is better than burning yourself out. The work is omnipresent. It will never stop growing. It will consume all if you let it. Unless you're at an early-stage startup, let your manager deal with your giant and ever-growing todo list. Let someone more plugged-in to the business side deal with prioritizing, and focus on technical excellence. Unless you aspire to management yourself, that's already plenty to do. Anyone who tells you every engineer needs to be in touch with every business concern either only works on early-stage projects or is part of a hustle culture that I don't ascribe to. I don't have the energy for technical excellence and knowing everything about the business.
- insightcheck 4y ago
  My worry is that you can be technically excellent and fantastic at what you are assigned, only to find later on that the project you've been toiling over has been cancelled or valued far less than another team's work. I appreciate your experienced perspective greatly and it encouraged reflection (I agree with working at a consistent pace), but I believe there can also be a middle ground to have awareness of business concerns to understand when to switch teams or even companies. It's painful to work very hard at assigned tasks, only to find it wasn't valued due to business priorities.
  - VyseofArcadia 4y ago
    Yeah that happens. More than once I've thrown away a lot of work due to a shift in priorities. The thing to realize is that as an engineer you have very little control here. All you really can do is argue with higher-ups (they likely won't listen) or job hop (you can't do that too often). It's sort of like making a movie. You start out with more material than what you need for the finished product because sometimes you don't know what's going to work ahead of time. Yeah, it sucks when you project gets left on the cutting room floor, but it happens. There's plenty more work to do. It might sound cynical, but don't get attached. In terms of a middle ground, I sort of think about business concerns the same way I think about the news. Be aware, but don't worry, because you don't have much control anyway. If something really important comes around, start preparing to do what you can with what little control you do have (job hop, move out of a place that's about to be a war zone, etc). Don't waste your finite time and attention on day-to-day details. Save it for the big stuff.
Test0129 4y ago
I've been on both sides. A lot of people say people who want to be swamped is a control problem but I've found its more delicate than that. My circumstances require me to have decent insurance so my life will forever be tied to an employer. I don't really get an "escape" at least until obamacare becomes cheaper than $2800/mo. for what I need in order to try out the entrepreneur life. As a result I work very hard. I end up getting a lot of work done, and thus more work on my plate. This is often manageable and I use this as a gauge of my probability of being fired for any given reason. Someone knocking on the door of a PIP likely won't be getting as much work especially if it's reasonably complicated. It's been my experience as work starts to die down to a less-than-consistent level I'm usually out the door (never fired, but often laid off in this industry). However, this burned me when I became staff-level because I'd get so much work that despite trying to reduce the bus factor back to "manageable chaos" I was unable to and ended up leaving the job for another one because I became the smart guy in the room. But overall I aim to walk the razors edge between swamped and normal at all times because it's the only form of security I have. When I am in this condition I am now useful enough I have plenty of power over my employer and my position and for an employee this is an ideal situation to have. Especially when the alternative is extremely expensive "between jobs" insurance, or a less than ideal insurance package from another company.
- zikzak 4y ago
  Have you considered a move to Canada? We always need good people and you can forget about stressing out over healthcare. If I moved to the US right now, I would (as I understand it) probably have a lot of difficulty getting any insurance company to cover me given my pre-existing conditions. If I did find an employer to take me on, it would be stressful knowing I was dependent on them. Here, while I do have an OK health plan to supplement public health care, it is more a nice to have and table stakes for any knowledge work job.
  - vxNsr 4y ago
    > If I moved to the US right now, I would (as I understand it) probably have a lot of difficulty getting any insurance company to cover me given my pre-existing conditions. That’s not how it works here. Insurance companies cannot refuse to cover you.
duxup 4y ago
I like the George from Seinfeld approach: https://youtu.be/rOQmxNPTJwc https://youtu.be/rOQmxNPTJwc Appearances matter, I make sure I look busy / folks know I’m working. I think sometimes the overwhelmed folks feel like they HAVE to be / look like they’re working. I’m not often stressed or overwhelmed, but I do look “busy”.
zetazzed 4y ago
I always think about Agnes Callard's description of the Importance Game: "I’ve noticed that complaining about how busy one is hits a sweet spot of oppression—I cannot manage my life!—and importance—because I am so in demand!" https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/who-wants-to-play-the-status-game-agnes-callard/ https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/who-wants-to-play-the-... I.e. constantly complaining about being swamped is a way of declaring (often just to ourselves) that we must be Very Important.
OJFord 4y ago
Two observations that sound a bit trivial written down, but were quite an influence when introduced to me: - some people love to 'be' (describe themselves as) 'busy', 'rushed off [their] feet', and can't be any other way - phrases like 'not having time' can be a useful shorthand, but are a bit silly, and should be used with the understanding that we all have as much time in the day as each other; we choose how to spend it: 'I don't have time to do x' is more accurately 'I am prioritising other things over x'
andsoitis 4y ago
There's an infinite number of things you can say yes to. Saying no requires discernment, a sense of what's important and what isn't. It requires being intentional about what to do now vs. later vs. never. You cannot be creative when you're constantly task-finishing.
lmeyerov 4y ago
I'm not sure the solution makes sense for a lot of startup people. A mental model for repeatable luck building, especially when in a "yes mode", where just 1 big fast-moving item is unlikely to be the job (networking, partnerships, devrel, customers, investing, ...) , is learning to prioritize bandwidth over latency. This can be true for engineering as well: solutions, bigco, ... . A lot of the above things are unpredictable in when & how they strike. A latency mindset means pick 1-2 things at a time and work through them... but that's stressful when they are big hurry-up-and-wait items that would require heroic efforts to make it faster. Think David vs. Goliath moments in fighting the slow pace of whatever organizations you're working with. Instead, prioritize bandwidth by multiplexing to another item. There's no free lunch even with a bandwidth mentality. Now the issue is being randomly oversubscribed when multiple priorities land at the same time.
civilized 4y ago
Take it from me: even people working at big companies with low expectations find a way to report being swamped constantly. They always find a way to stay 100% busy with meetings that they don't really need to attend and tasks they don't really need to do. At this point I find it more of a negative reflection on a worker's judgment, accountability, and skill than anything close to a badge of honor.
andsoitis 4y ago
“For every parcel I stoop down to seize I lose some other off my arms and knees, And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns, Extremes too hard to comprehend at. once Yet nothing I should care to leave behind. With all I have to hold with hand and mind And heart, if need be, I will do my best. To keep their building balanced at my breast. I crouch down to prevent them as they fall; Then sit down in the middle of them all. I had to drop the armful in the road And try to stack them in a better load.” — The Armful, By Robert Frost
benreesman 4y ago
Ah, the classic “Medium Post with Life Advice for Others”: https://mobile.twitter.com/briansolis/status/647069103815962624 https://mobile.twitter.com/briansolis/status/647069103815962.... I love tech and in some ways even the Valley, but we’re overdue for a new set of obnoxiously accurate stereotypes.
danschumann 4y ago
Being swamped feels bad, and therefore by emotivism standards IS bad, objectively so.
tgtweak 4y ago
I feel like the "I'm swamped" situation is more of a defense mechanic than it is genuine swamping in many cases. Take the following example: You understand parts of the business that are critical. Those parts are high stakes. Someone asks you something about it and you give a legitimate answer that is correct. You will form a habit in that person of asking you since it's lower risk and far easier than coming up with the answer yourself. In many cases, the only way to wean this off is to instead say sorry I can't get at that right away but if it can wait (x) I can look at it. In many cases the solution will come around on it's own as it is time sensitive. Anyone in that position will, over time, recognize this and leverage it. Couple that with the fact that any exceptions that happen out of the ordinary will wind up in your purview. Of course, this is not true of all swamped people - some are just legitimately swamped and don't have enough time in the day to do the workload requested of them - but the guise of a key senior engineer this is usually the case I've seen.
mkl95 4y ago
Being swamped is mostly a symptom of having bosses who don't say no often enough. The root cause could be greed, incompetence, etc. but it's irrelevant from a rank-and-file point of view.
giantg2 4y ago
"Being swamped is not a badge of honor" No, but it seems that's expected just to get a decent performance rating.
notjustanymike 4y ago
I manage a team of 10 engineers and my highest priority is making myself redundant. I'm constantly looking to eliminate (aka delegate) my current responsibilities so I can focus on my next responsibilities.
drewcoo 4y ago
It should not be seen as normal. Whether people or personal-management, it's a management problem. So is the need for the heroics you see when people are swamped. People can't multi-task. Their productivity drops when they work long hours. Etc. Unfortunately, in software we're taught that it's not just normal but desirable. And our managers are untrained in people management, promoted only because they were good at their last jobs.
taytus 4y ago
I'm swamped. I agree it is not a badge of honor. I'm running my own company, we are in the process of raising capital and between that and prod dev and sales... well, it is brutal. I'm not proud of being swamped, but is a reality I have to live with as a founder.
thenerdhead 4y ago
It seems that those who claim to be the busiest tend to get the least amount of work done. The promises were left unfilled, the work would sit for months and even years, and yet they still somehow kept themselves busy. The metaphor I think more people should consider is "working like a lion than a cow". Short, creative, and powerful bursts like a lion hunting rather than a cow constantly chewing grass. There's a competitive advantage in not being busy. Most of what we think we have to do, we don't have to do at all. It's a choice and often it's a poor one.
TameAntelope 4y ago
Oh yeah, the feeling of being swamped is really the feeling of being unable to "fail" at some stuff (which is ultimately just another way to look at prioritization; you "fail" at the stuff you don't prioritize, in some sense). To be good at working in a startup, you have to be okay "failing". Could you be working on That One Feature That Will Finally Fit The Market? Yeah, but you really should eat and work out instead, maybe watch a few episodes of that TV show you like because a healthy/happy you is better than a "swamped" drained you for the company. Being overly confident in yourself is a hack to reach this state, BTW.
_8j50 4y ago
My perspective: it may not be a badge of honor but sometimes you don't have much of a choice. You plan to do things properly then other things break or unexpected things happen. It can't be avoided if you need certain things done and everyone else who can help either won't or won't do it in a timely manner. Personally I like to get things done so if I get help fine, if not I get "swamped" and get it done. This is something managemnt should be aware of and usually they can't hire enough of the right people. But as an ideal scenario I completely agree. Have a ton of smart and well motivated people and share workloads to acheive a common goal.
incomingpain 4y ago
Good Work Is Rewarded With More Work In my experience, if you aren't totally useless you will eventually you will find yourself completely swamped all the time. Scheduled weeks in advanced, but also expected to be achieving much more. Eventually you become a huge problem, you cant take vacation, and your time off in lieu just keeps collecting. You get burnt out and end up in sick leave a short time and your employer melts down because they cant function without you. You find a new job or they fire you and the remaining employees just cant handle reality and they lose lots of customers. Then you get sued for $1.1 million because you're stealing their clients only to find out none of their clients came with. Opps on them.
brikelly 4y ago
This is why things like https://sustainabledev.org/ https://sustainabledev.org/ exist. It’s far too easy to fall into the busyness trap and burn out. Things managers can do to prevent this include: - using a pull model of work flow - enforcing WIP control - using employee vacations to find bus factor problems (“hey, Brent was OOO for 2 weeks and these things were stuck, let’s fix that…”) - creating a culture where backpressure to management is strongly encouraged
fxtentacle 4y ago
As a startup founder, "being swamped" is bad. As an employee, "being swamped" might be amazing: If your skills are so critical to the company's success that management has features wait for your high-quality attention rather than letting a less senior colleague work on it, that basically just means that you get a rockstar salary and the freedom to write your own employment contract. I get why having "swamped employees" is disliked by the company, though. It drives up salaries.
spoonjim 4y ago
It's good that the laboring wealthy are higher status these days than the idle aristocracy but we may have taken it too far
racl101 4y ago
Who said it ever was a badge of honor? I've never heard it described as such.
- fullshark 4y ago
  Tons of people seem proud of their massive workload, as a signal that you are important.
valbaca 4y ago
Being swamped can serve as a form of passive-aggressive back-pressure: a way to indicate to not even be approached with new work as you're at capacity. Unfortunately, sometimes it's the only back-pressure that managers understand. They get so dead-set on having everyone giving "110%!" without realizing that's catastrophic and that slack is necessary to remain resilient, both in services and in people.
alex_suzuki 4y ago
We had this guy at a company I worked for. Always said yes to the attractive assignments that were good for his career and refused others on grounds of having way too much on his plate. Then after a while he‘d delegate the attractive assignments after botching or half-finishing them (often requiring a complete rewrite). Only to accept new ones („I‘d love to do it but i’m currently swamped with XYZ, maybe ABC can take over here? it’s basically done“). I think he deliverately functioned like that, and it got him promoted almost all the way to the top. One reason I left!
IceMetalPunk 4y ago
Any society that thinks being overwhelmed is impressive, good, or normal is a broken society, in my opinion. Speaking as someone currently taking my first steps towards a career change because I'm so fucking burned out at my current job.
thih9 4y ago
Is “normal” is the right word? What do we consider the norm? If we take a generic healthy lifestyle as a reference then being swamped startup style is far from that. Perhaps “being swamped is common” would be more accurate.
deleted 4y ago
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bofadeez 4y ago
You used to be impressed by people who were swamped? Lol
WWLink 4y ago
It's not necessarily a good thing. A coworker of mine hates having an endless queue and prefers to get handed a task, finish it, and have another task handed to him at that time. I guess having too many freaks him out. There's no one-size-fits-all answer to this.

355 points by gk1 4y ago

This is one of those posts that sounds like wisdom but isn’t. Some people are swamped for good reasons, some are swamped for bad reasons. Some people are not swamped because they are brilliant planners and know their limitations, others are not swamped because they are terrified of commitment or are avoiding responsibility. So what? Please, less writing and more understanding.

metadat 4y ago

A welcome reminder. Thank you.

onion2k 4y ago

Being swamped in a job as a dev (rather than a startup) is a signal that you're bad at saying no to adding things to a sprint, and unable to hand off work to other people. I'm very wary of working with people like that. It ends badly when things finally get too much.

gk1 4y ago

Someone asked me how to get out from being constantly swamped. I highly recommend two books: Essentialism by Greg McKeown, and Deep work by Cal Newport. They haven't fixed all my woes but they gave me something to strive for.

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
“If it isn’t a clear yes, then it’s a clear no.” haven't read the books yet, but this definitely resonates with me (essentialism).
- gk1 4y ago
  The Derek Sivers version is more spicy and sticks with me better: HELL YEAH or NO (https://sive.rs/hellyeah https://sive.rs/hellyeah)

anoncow 4y ago

Not being swamped is also not a badge of honor.

brightball 4y ago

Early in my career I took a lot of pride in how much work I could take on. It made me feel important. Ended up putting me in the hospital. https://www.brightball.com/articles/what-exactly-happened-to-brightball-for-hire https://www.brightball.com/articles/what-exactly-happened-to...

mindwork 4y ago
I ended up in the hospital as well because of the startup that I tried to co-found. 9 years later I still have side effects of that. I was reading your story with interest
strikelaserclaw 4y ago
i think working hard is ok but you really got to assess the type of work you are doing. Are you working your ass off to do grunt work other devs wont? If so you won't get any glory, just burn out, many times working on tech debt also falls under this domain, higher ups just don't appreciate people who work hard to keep things stable, they are all about those who can cut costs or increase revenue by coming up with new products/ideas.

jaywalk 4y ago

I like to joke that I've got enough work on my plate currently to last until 2024, which is an exaggeration but not terribly far off. However, I set my own timelines for everything. I will not be rushed, and I will not work more than 40 hours per week. I've also been doing this for a long time, and don't work at a startup. So I realize that not everyone has the flexibility that I do, but it is vital to me. I do not and will not live to work.

daenz 4y ago

Being swamped always made me feel like I should take longer to complete tasks, to protect myself from the stress of working too hard for too long. Then I realized how insane that is...why should I artificially make myself a less productive person? It's like picking up a bad habit, like smoking. Imo the real issue is that management needs to learn how to identify people who actively seek out work as their default state, and not heap work onto them. These people naturally try to work close to their limit, so adding more work does not make them more productive.

baq 4y ago
in queueing, this is called backpressure and amazingly it works! so while it may not be logical from efficiency perspective, it might be from the process POV...
GreenWatermelon 4y ago
I would say rather than artificially make yourself less productive, you (talking about anyone, including me) should understand your limits, then keep a healthy margin of slack between your average daily effort (ADE) and those limits. This ADE (i.e. after cutting some slack) is what I would call your real productivity, since it's sustainable. IMO, always working close to your limit will surely lead to burnout. Not sustainable, and means you'll be less productive on the long run, thua it's not real productivity. This "extra effort reservoir" should only be tapped into when absolutely necessary (say, Critical issue with production) That said, if your limits are already very high, it means your productivity and output on 80% efficiency is already high, and I see no reason to artificially reduce your output any further. I read an article long ago about the importance of slack for any workers, I think it's this one [1] though I'm not sure. [1] http://www.everydaykanban.com/2012/07/27/slack-is-not-a-dirty-word-how-slack-can-improve-your-products/ http://www.everydaykanban.com/2012/07/27/slack-is-not-a-dirt...
- tetha 4y ago
  Very much this. Like, I know I can juggle 4-6 different system problems at once, context switching every couple of minutes between them. And during more massive outages, this is necessary to get things under control faster, sure. But it's also extremely mentally exhausting. And when I realized that, I stopped it and limited myself to 2 tasks at once outside of emergencies. Usually a slower-paced task where you fire off something and it does stuff for half an hour, and some smaller chore to do while waiting, or planning for a more involved thing, or reviewing and editing documentation. And if there is nothing to do with both tasks doing stuff... that's fine. Let's go and make some coffee or outside for a minute. Or it's just one thing if it's complex and critical and then I shutdown most communication too. It's noticeably slower, naturally. However, this slower pace is very good for my mental health and it's beneficial for the team, because it allows other people to get involved with the pieces and systems I usually maintain. A coworker is currently wading through some of the marshlands of infrastructure only I tend to go through and constantly pokes me to document another weird nook or cranny. That's good.

adra 4y ago

I just talked about this with my wife just yesterday about her peer. If you're always the hero to take on too much work and you never keep up, you invite various significant structural problems. You're too useful to remove, you may not get attention for corrective measures because of fear of the person leaving. You are often too swamped to effectively get work done smoothly and in an expedient manner. You become a single point of failure (bus factor 1) so that when you take a vacation / hit by a bus, the company suffers significantly. A common personality trait of these types of people seem to be self reliance / control seekers. When they own that authority of work, they are less likely to accept delegation to get them out of their woes. In general, these types of employees may end up being labeled super stars, but they're also potential albatrosses that could significantly wound a company if not properly managed.

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
You're also making yourself too vital to whatever you're doing now - if the conceit is that the team/division/practice/company can't function without you doing your job you'll never be able to be promoted out of it.
- pydry 4y ago
  I've noticed only a few people do this but the ones that did did it out of either ego or anxiety (sometimes a mix). They werent usually angling for a promotion. The anxiety wasnt always unwarranted either. If you're in tons of debt, hate interviewing and work for an organization that doesnt care for people this isnt a wholly irrational strategy.
- luckylion 4y ago
  That has a pretty simple and effective solution though: just mention that you want to leave. I've just been through getting a healthy amount of equity (as a freelancer no less) because someone else announced they were leaving. If your job is _that_ important, you might not get promoted away, but you'll get the salary as if you were and then some.
  - 4y ago

austinl 4y ago

Possibly my favorite quote from Meditations (the Martin Hammond translation): "... you would never say of him that he 'broke out a sweat': but everything was allotted its own time and thought, as by a man of leisure—his way was unhurried, organized, vigorous, consistent in all". Here, Aurelius is referring to his adoptive father, Antoninus Pius, who was known as one of the good Roman emperors and undoubtedly a very busy man.

asplake 4y ago

And the organisation that allows this is dysfunctional. Its coordination system (technological, managerial, whatever) cannot be regarded as effective.

VyseofArcadia 4y ago

I have worked at both startups and tech companies 40+ years old, and the conclusion I've come to from my anecdata is that every engineer at every company is swamped all the time. Feature requests and bug reports are easy. Writing features and fixing bugs is hard. Your todo list will always grow faster than you can tackle items. Once a senior engineer retired, and I inherited about a hundred of his bugs out of the 600 or so he left behind. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Working at a consistent pace is better than burning yourself out. The work is omnipresent. It will never stop growing. It will consume all if you let it. Unless you're at an early-stage startup, let your manager deal with your giant and ever-growing todo list. Let someone more plugged-in to the business side deal with prioritizing, and focus on technical excellence. Unless you aspire to management yourself, that's already plenty to do. Anyone who tells you every engineer needs to be in touch with every business concern either only works on early-stage projects or is part of a hustle culture that I don't ascribe to. I don't have the energy for technical excellence and knowing everything about the business.

insightcheck 4y ago
My worry is that you can be technically excellent and fantastic at what you are assigned, only to find later on that the project you've been toiling over has been cancelled or valued far less than another team's work. I appreciate your experienced perspective greatly and it encouraged reflection (I agree with working at a consistent pace), but I believe there can also be a middle ground to have awareness of business concerns to understand when to switch teams or even companies. It's painful to work very hard at assigned tasks, only to find it wasn't valued due to business priorities.
- VyseofArcadia 4y ago
  Yeah that happens. More than once I've thrown away a lot of work due to a shift in priorities. The thing to realize is that as an engineer you have very little control here. All you really can do is argue with higher-ups (they likely won't listen) or job hop (you can't do that too often). It's sort of like making a movie. You start out with more material than what you need for the finished product because sometimes you don't know what's going to work ahead of time. Yeah, it sucks when you project gets left on the cutting room floor, but it happens. There's plenty more work to do. It might sound cynical, but don't get attached. In terms of a middle ground, I sort of think about business concerns the same way I think about the news. Be aware, but don't worry, because you don't have much control anyway. If something really important comes around, start preparing to do what you can with what little control you do have (job hop, move out of a place that's about to be a war zone, etc). Don't waste your finite time and attention on day-to-day details. Save it for the big stuff.

Test0129 4y ago

I've been on both sides. A lot of people say people who want to be swamped is a control problem but I've found its more delicate than that. My circumstances require me to have decent insurance so my life will forever be tied to an employer. I don't really get an "escape" at least until obamacare becomes cheaper than $2800/mo. for what I need in order to try out the entrepreneur life. As a result I work very hard. I end up getting a lot of work done, and thus more work on my plate. This is often manageable and I use this as a gauge of my probability of being fired for any given reason. Someone knocking on the door of a PIP likely won't be getting as much work especially if it's reasonably complicated. It's been my experience as work starts to die down to a less-than-consistent level I'm usually out the door (never fired, but often laid off in this industry). However, this burned me when I became staff-level because I'd get so much work that despite trying to reduce the bus factor back to "manageable chaos" I was unable to and ended up leaving the job for another one because I became the smart guy in the room. But overall I aim to walk the razors edge between swamped and normal at all times because it's the only form of security I have. When I am in this condition I am now useful enough I have plenty of power over my employer and my position and for an employee this is an ideal situation to have. Especially when the alternative is extremely expensive "between jobs" insurance, or a less than ideal insurance package from another company.

zikzak 4y ago
Have you considered a move to Canada? We always need good people and you can forget about stressing out over healthcare. If I moved to the US right now, I would (as I understand it) probably have a lot of difficulty getting any insurance company to cover me given my pre-existing conditions. If I did find an employer to take me on, it would be stressful knowing I was dependent on them. Here, while I do have an OK health plan to supplement public health care, it is more a nice to have and table stakes for any knowledge work job.
- vxNsr 4y ago
  > If I moved to the US right now, I would (as I understand it) probably have a lot of difficulty getting any insurance company to cover me given my pre-existing conditions. That’s not how it works here. Insurance companies cannot refuse to cover you.

duxup 4y ago

I like the George from Seinfeld approach: https://youtu.be/rOQmxNPTJwc https://youtu.be/rOQmxNPTJwc Appearances matter, I make sure I look busy / folks know I’m working. I think sometimes the overwhelmed folks feel like they HAVE to be / look like they’re working. I’m not often stressed or overwhelmed, but I do look “busy”.

zetazzed 4y ago

I always think about Agnes Callard's description of the Importance Game: "I’ve noticed that complaining about how busy one is hits a sweet spot of oppression—I cannot manage my life!—and importance—because I am so in demand!" https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/who-wants-to-play-the-status-game-agnes-callard/ https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/who-wants-to-play-the-... I.e. constantly complaining about being swamped is a way of declaring (often just to ourselves) that we must be Very Important.

OJFord 4y ago

Two observations that sound a bit trivial written down, but were quite an influence when introduced to me: - some people love to 'be' (describe themselves as) 'busy', 'rushed off [their] feet', and can't be any other way - phrases like 'not having time' can be a useful shorthand, but are a bit silly, and should be used with the understanding that we all have as much time in the day as each other; we choose how to spend it: 'I don't have time to do x' is more accurately 'I am prioritising other things over x'

andsoitis 4y ago

There's an infinite number of things you can say yes to. Saying no requires discernment, a sense of what's important and what isn't. It requires being intentional about what to do now vs. later vs. never. You cannot be creative when you're constantly task-finishing.

lmeyerov 4y ago

I'm not sure the solution makes sense for a lot of startup people. A mental model for repeatable luck building, especially when in a "yes mode", where just 1 big fast-moving item is unlikely to be the job (networking, partnerships, devrel, customers, investing, ...) , is learning to prioritize bandwidth over latency. This can be true for engineering as well: solutions, bigco, ... . A lot of the above things are unpredictable in when & how they strike. A latency mindset means pick 1-2 things at a time and work through them... but that's stressful when they are big hurry-up-and-wait items that would require heroic efforts to make it faster. Think David vs. Goliath moments in fighting the slow pace of whatever organizations you're working with. Instead, prioritize bandwidth by multiplexing to another item. There's no free lunch even with a bandwidth mentality. Now the issue is being randomly oversubscribed when multiple priorities land at the same time.

civilized 4y ago

Take it from me: even people working at big companies with low expectations find a way to report being swamped constantly. They always find a way to stay 100% busy with meetings that they don't really need to attend and tasks they don't really need to do. At this point I find it more of a negative reflection on a worker's judgment, accountability, and skill than anything close to a badge of honor.

andsoitis 4y ago

“For every parcel I stoop down to seize I lose some other off my arms and knees, And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns, Extremes too hard to comprehend at. once Yet nothing I should care to leave behind. With all I have to hold with hand and mind And heart, if need be, I will do my best. To keep their building balanced at my breast. I crouch down to prevent them as they fall; Then sit down in the middle of them all. I had to drop the armful in the road And try to stack them in a better load.” — The Armful, By Robert Frost

benreesman 4y ago

Ah, the classic “Medium Post with Life Advice for Others”: https://mobile.twitter.com/briansolis/status/647069103815962624 https://mobile.twitter.com/briansolis/status/647069103815962.... I love tech and in some ways even the Valley, but we’re overdue for a new set of obnoxiously accurate stereotypes.

danschumann 4y ago

Being swamped feels bad, and therefore by emotivism standards IS bad, objectively so.

tgtweak 4y ago

I feel like the "I'm swamped" situation is more of a defense mechanic than it is genuine swamping in many cases. Take the following example: You understand parts of the business that are critical. Those parts are high stakes. Someone asks you something about it and you give a legitimate answer that is correct. You will form a habit in that person of asking you since it's lower risk and far easier than coming up with the answer yourself. In many cases, the only way to wean this off is to instead say sorry I can't get at that right away but if it can wait (x) I can look at it. In many cases the solution will come around on it's own as it is time sensitive. Anyone in that position will, over time, recognize this and leverage it. Couple that with the fact that any exceptions that happen out of the ordinary will wind up in your purview. Of course, this is not true of all swamped people - some are just legitimately swamped and don't have enough time in the day to do the workload requested of them - but the guise of a key senior engineer this is usually the case I've seen.

mkl95 4y ago

Being swamped is mostly a symptom of having bosses who don't say no often enough. The root cause could be greed, incompetence, etc. but it's irrelevant from a rank-and-file point of view.

giantg2 4y ago

"Being swamped is not a badge of honor" No, but it seems that's expected just to get a decent performance rating.

notjustanymike 4y ago

I manage a team of 10 engineers and my highest priority is making myself redundant. I'm constantly looking to eliminate (aka delegate) my current responsibilities so I can focus on my next responsibilities.

drewcoo 4y ago

It should not be seen as normal. Whether people or personal-management, it's a management problem. So is the need for the heroics you see when people are swamped. People can't multi-task. Their productivity drops when they work long hours. Etc. Unfortunately, in software we're taught that it's not just normal but desirable. And our managers are untrained in people management, promoted only because they were good at their last jobs.

taytus 4y ago

I'm swamped. I agree it is not a badge of honor. I'm running my own company, we are in the process of raising capital and between that and prod dev and sales... well, it is brutal. I'm not proud of being swamped, but is a reality I have to live with as a founder.

thenerdhead 4y ago

It seems that those who claim to be the busiest tend to get the least amount of work done. The promises were left unfilled, the work would sit for months and even years, and yet they still somehow kept themselves busy. The metaphor I think more people should consider is "working like a lion than a cow". Short, creative, and powerful bursts like a lion hunting rather than a cow constantly chewing grass. There's a competitive advantage in not being busy. Most of what we think we have to do, we don't have to do at all. It's a choice and often it's a poor one.

TameAntelope 4y ago

Oh yeah, the feeling of being swamped is really the feeling of being unable to "fail" at some stuff (which is ultimately just another way to look at prioritization; you "fail" at the stuff you don't prioritize, in some sense). To be good at working in a startup, you have to be okay "failing". Could you be working on That One Feature That Will Finally Fit The Market? Yeah, but you really should eat and work out instead, maybe watch a few episodes of that TV show you like because a healthy/happy you is better than a "swamped" drained you for the company. Being overly confident in yourself is a hack to reach this state, BTW.

_8j50 4y ago

My perspective: it may not be a badge of honor but sometimes you don't have much of a choice. You plan to do things properly then other things break or unexpected things happen. It can't be avoided if you need certain things done and everyone else who can help either won't or won't do it in a timely manner. Personally I like to get things done so if I get help fine, if not I get "swamped" and get it done. This is something managemnt should be aware of and usually they can't hire enough of the right people. But as an ideal scenario I completely agree. Have a ton of smart and well motivated people and share workloads to acheive a common goal.

incomingpain 4y ago

Good Work Is Rewarded With More Work In my experience, if you aren't totally useless you will eventually you will find yourself completely swamped all the time. Scheduled weeks in advanced, but also expected to be achieving much more. Eventually you become a huge problem, you cant take vacation, and your time off in lieu just keeps collecting. You get burnt out and end up in sick leave a short time and your employer melts down because they cant function without you. You find a new job or they fire you and the remaining employees just cant handle reality and they lose lots of customers. Then you get sued for $1.1 million because you're stealing their clients only to find out none of their clients came with. Opps on them.

brikelly 4y ago

This is why things like https://sustainabledev.org/ https://sustainabledev.org/ exist. It’s far too easy to fall into the busyness trap and burn out. Things managers can do to prevent this include: - using a pull model of work flow - enforcing WIP control - using employee vacations to find bus factor problems (“hey, Brent was OOO for 2 weeks and these things were stuck, let’s fix that…”) - creating a culture where backpressure to management is strongly encouraged

fxtentacle 4y ago

As a startup founder, "being swamped" is bad. As an employee, "being swamped" might be amazing: If your skills are so critical to the company's success that management has features wait for your high-quality attention rather than letting a less senior colleague work on it, that basically just means that you get a rockstar salary and the freedom to write your own employment contract. I get why having "swamped employees" is disliked by the company, though. It drives up salaries.

spoonjim 4y ago

It's good that the laboring wealthy are higher status these days than the idle aristocracy but we may have taken it too far

racl101 4y ago

Who said it ever was a badge of honor? I've never heard it described as such.

fullshark 4y ago
Tons of people seem proud of their massive workload, as a signal that you are important.

valbaca 4y ago

Being swamped can serve as a form of passive-aggressive back-pressure: a way to indicate to not even be approached with new work as you're at capacity. Unfortunately, sometimes it's the only back-pressure that managers understand. They get so dead-set on having everyone giving "110%!" without realizing that's catastrophic and that slack is necessary to remain resilient, both in services and in people.

alex_suzuki 4y ago

We had this guy at a company I worked for. Always said yes to the attractive assignments that were good for his career and refused others on grounds of having way too much on his plate. Then after a while he‘d delegate the attractive assignments after botching or half-finishing them (often requiring a complete rewrite). Only to accept new ones („I‘d love to do it but i’m currently swamped with XYZ, maybe ABC can take over here? it’s basically done“). I think he deliverately functioned like that, and it got him promoted almost all the way to the top. One reason I left!

IceMetalPunk 4y ago

Any society that thinks being overwhelmed is impressive, good, or normal is a broken society, in my opinion. Speaking as someone currently taking my first steps towards a career change because I'm so fucking burned out at my current job.

thih9 4y ago

Is “normal” is the right word? What do we consider the norm? If we take a generic healthy lifestyle as a reference then being swamped startup style is far from that. Perhaps “being swamped is common” would be more accurate.

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bofadeez 4y ago

You used to be impressed by people who were swamped? Lol

WWLink 4y ago

It's not necessarily a good thing. A coworker of mine hates having an endless queue and prefers to get handed a task, finish it, and have another task handed to him at that time. I guess having too many freaks him out. There's no one-size-fits-all answer to this.