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Part of being senior is having enough business context to know when to pull late nights and weekends. If you're doing it because the gantt chart some PM created

by mjr00 3y ago

Part of being senior is having enough business context to know when to pull late nights and weekends. If you're doing it because the gantt chart some PM created 18 months ago said project X would be done by next month but everything is off the rails, yes, it's foolish and unfair to work nights and weekends to make it happen. If you're doing it because re:Invent is in a month and your team has a new AWS service to announce, that's a much better reason. Or in the startup world, if there's a major client demo next week and you're quickly hacking in a new feature they've been asking for.

simonbarker87 3y ago
Maybe but then you are reinforcing bad planning and behaviour from management. Far better to reduce the scope or content so you don’t hit that deadline totally spent.
lolinder 3y ago
I agree that sometimes you need to do it in order to not totally screw up the business, but I think any case where you make that decision should require a postmortem where everyone involved in that deadline gets together and figures out why it couldn't happen during the team's regularly scheduled hours. If you do it quietly without making it very clear to the business that this was abnormal and should not happen again, then you're still feeding the false idea that it's okay to plan around late nights and long hours. An early stage startup is a possible exception as long as your entire team is on board with it and getting a satisfactory amount of equity compensation. But the entire team has to be on board with working extra hours, it can't just be you deciding that for the team.
from-nibly 3y ago
As your project manager I now know I just have to come up with a "good reason".
- OmarShehata 3y ago
  The good news for everyone is, you can't just make up a good reason out of thin air! (unless you're lying). There's either a critical business need, or there isn't. This of course requires this senior engineer to be business-savvy enough to discern when there's a legitimate business reason given, and at big companies that may require knowledge of politics among the higher ups which may be opaque to most folks.
  - from-nibly 3y ago
    That's a whole long list of caveats you got there.

by mjr00 3y ago

simonbarker87 3y ago

Maybe but then you are reinforcing bad planning and behaviour from management. Far better to reduce the scope or content so you don’t hit that deadline totally spent.

lolinder 3y ago

I agree that sometimes you need to do it in order to not totally screw up the business, but I think any case where you make that decision should require a postmortem where everyone involved in that deadline gets together and figures out why it couldn't happen during the team's regularly scheduled hours. If you do it quietly without making it very clear to the business that this was abnormal and should not happen again, then you're still feeding the false idea that it's okay to plan around late nights and long hours. An early stage startup is a possible exception as long as your entire team is on board with it and getting a satisfactory amount of equity compensation. But the entire team has to be on board with working extra hours, it can't just be you deciding that for the team.

from-nibly 3y ago

As your project manager I now know I just have to come up with a "good reason".

OmarShehata 3y ago
The good news for everyone is, you can't just make up a good reason out of thin air! (unless you're lying). There's either a critical business need, or there isn't. This of course requires this senior engineer to be business-savvy enough to discern when there's a legitimate business reason given, and at big companies that may require knowledge of politics among the higher ups which may be opaque to most folks.
- from-nibly 3y ago
  That's a whole long list of caveats you got there.