4 ms·

Answering the rhetorical question - because it may set a bad example for other, more junior employees; it may set a new expectation; if the good manager who pre

Answering the rhetorical question - because it may set a bad example for other, more junior employees; it may set a new expectation; if the good manager who prevents burnout gets fired, and is replaced with a worse person, they may come to expect you to work six days a week, and instead of preventing burnout by working when you want, you're now being burned out by working not only 5 days a week without any break, but also on one of your weekend days.

9rx 2y ago
1. Will you survive to see a new manager if you don't work on the weekend? Without that, under the given scenario you are either: - Forcing yourself to work on Monday. Burnout ensues. Will you be able to continue while burnt out? - Skipping Monday too, seeing you only work four days a week. Will you be able to continue under performance expectations? 2. Do you really need to worry about this hypothetical future? If the bad manager shows up, are you going to stick around even if working hours remain the same? He is still going to express his badness in many other ways. He wouldn't be bad otherwise.
- pavel_lishin 2y ago
  > Without that, under the given scenario you are either: I reject the false dichotomy that my options are "work on the weekend when I'm excited to write code, or suffer and burn out during the week". Maybe that works for you, but I have to show up on Monday regardless of whether I wrote something inspired on Saturday. > 2. Do you really need to worry about this hypothetical future? If the bad manager shows up, are you going to stick around even if working hours remain the same? Weirdly, the bank expects monthly mortgage payments regardless of whether my manager is bad or not.
  - 9rx 2y ago
    > I have to show up on Monday For what, exactly? If it is simply to appease the whims of your manager, you already have the bad manager. Another hypothetical future bad manager is the least of your concerns at that point. Chances are the hypothetical future bad manager will be less bad than the horror show you are already in. > the bank expects monthly mortgage payments regardless of whether my manager is bad or not. There is some risk there, but most tech people already price in that risk by demanding much higher than normal compensation at their job, allowing them to have their mortgages discharged before the bad manager arrives. You might get caught in the unlucky case, but on balance the good managers don't disappear that quickly.
    - pavel_lishin 2y ago
      If any of that cohort of most tech people has enough money left over to pay off my mortgage, I'd be open to that. But I'm not a member of that hallowed club.
      - 9rx 2y ago
        If you are not a member of the tech club then you don't have the tech risk. So, yes, while that may mean it will take longer for you to pay off the mortgage without a high tech salary, you aren't under the pressure that necessities the high tech salary to get the mortgage paid ASAP.
    - roguecoder 2y ago
      Do you not have coworkers? There are more people involved in software creation than just you and your manager.
      - 9rx 2y ago
        I don't have coworkers who buy into mob programming. If I write code on Saturday and withhold pushing the commit until Monday afternoon or write the code Monday morning and push the commit thereafter, nobody is ever going to be able to tell the difference. You must work in one of those cults that stand around the meeting room to recite the commit log as if nobody in the place knows how to read, exclaiming "no blockers" to signify that the metaphorical torch is being passed on to the next person?
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
To add: it also sets bad expectations from other leadership. If managers consistently see your guys putting in off the clock hours: a) it makes me look a bit of a moron, because it implies they can't get their work done within office hours, and my job is to ensure that b) they then expect that level of work regularly and will feel slighted if it stops being put in. See aforementioned comments about burnout.
- 9rx 2y ago
  > within office hours You are running a factory over there? That makes the weekend perspective a bit more reasonable, given the constraints. Tech work, on the other hand, descends from agriculture. You work when the sun is shining and rest when it is stormy, metaphorically speaking. There is no reasonable concept of defined working hours. The brain doesn't operate on a set schedule like that, and trying to ignore that reality is where the burnout stems from. If we were talking about tech, you certainly would look foolish applying factory concepts to an entirely unrelated field.
  - bckr 2y ago
    If it were me, I would write the code, commit it, and open the PR Monday afternoon
    - 9rx 2y ago
      That is what the individual is going to end up doing if they encounter the guy who thinks software is built on an assembly line, but is not ideal. The reviewer might get "the itch" before Monday. It would be a waste to see him fall into burnout because he had to artificially wait because you had to pretend to wait.
      - roguecoder 2y ago
        You don't burn out because you weren't working. That's not a thing. I am concerned about how you describe coding as an addiction. That sounds like something worth bringing up with a therapist & investigating the root cause of. It can be literally dangerous to identify that much with only our work, especially in this economy. But if you don't want to do that, if you have some rare code-or-die health condition, just contribute to some Apache project instead. The entire internet is build on projects people wrote that their companies didn't pay them to write. We don't have to give our whole creative selves to our employers.
ryandrake 2y ago
Exactly this. I worked for a place long ago, where we had this junior guy who basically didn't have a life. He just wanted to code. He stayed late every day, and would occasionally come in on the weekends and code all day. He was not making any extra (in fact since he was junior he was probably making much less than the rest of the team). He was not angling for a promotion from what I could tell. He just liked to code and that was his entire life. Well, his manager gave him some public praise once over E-mail, basically saying the project was moving along much faster due to how productive you are. That's all it took. Suddenly, the whole team felt pressure to pull 60-80 hour weeks and burn themselves out. And we didn't really get that much more done, because it was 80 low-quality burned out, demoralized hours, not 40 high-quality hours. The team eventually disintegrated along with the company during one of the tech downturns. All that wasted stress because one guy doesn't have a family or hobby.
- gedy 2y ago
  There sounds a lot more issues with that team, personalities, and company vs "one guy doesn't have a family or hobby"...
- 9rx 2y ago
  > All that wasted stress because one guy doesn't have a family or hobby. It reads like the real problem was that the other developers fell into what developers seem to love more than anything: Pedantry. Instead of playing along with the false praise, they set out to prove the claim in the email wrong.
  - pavel_lishin 2y ago
    Regardless, there was a problem.
    - 9rx 2y ago
      Yes, no doubt the person who sent the email ended up feeling a little silly when the pendants showed him.
- 2y ago

9rx 2y ago

1. Will you survive to see a new manager if you don't work on the weekend? Without that, under the given scenario you are either: - Forcing yourself to work on Monday. Burnout ensues. Will you be able to continue while burnt out? - Skipping Monday too, seeing you only work four days a week. Will you be able to continue under performance expectations? 2. Do you really need to worry about this hypothetical future? If the bad manager shows up, are you going to stick around even if working hours remain the same? He is still going to express his badness in many other ways. He wouldn't be bad otherwise.

pavel_lishin 2y ago
> Without that, under the given scenario you are either: I reject the false dichotomy that my options are "work on the weekend when I'm excited to write code, or suffer and burn out during the week". Maybe that works for you, but I have to show up on Monday regardless of whether I wrote something inspired on Saturday. > 2. Do you really need to worry about this hypothetical future? If the bad manager shows up, are you going to stick around even if working hours remain the same? Weirdly, the bank expects monthly mortgage payments regardless of whether my manager is bad or not.
- 9rx 2y ago
  > I have to show up on Monday For what, exactly? If it is simply to appease the whims of your manager, you already have the bad manager. Another hypothetical future bad manager is the least of your concerns at that point. Chances are the hypothetical future bad manager will be less bad than the horror show you are already in. > the bank expects monthly mortgage payments regardless of whether my manager is bad or not. There is some risk there, but most tech people already price in that risk by demanding much higher than normal compensation at their job, allowing them to have their mortgages discharged before the bad manager arrives. You might get caught in the unlucky case, but on balance the good managers don't disappear that quickly.
  - pavel_lishin 2y ago
    If any of that cohort of most tech people has enough money left over to pay off my mortgage, I'd be open to that. But I'm not a member of that hallowed club.
    - 9rx 2y ago
      If you are not a member of the tech club then you don't have the tech risk. So, yes, while that may mean it will take longer for you to pay off the mortgage without a high tech salary, you aren't under the pressure that necessities the high tech salary to get the mortgage paid ASAP.
  - roguecoder 2y ago
    Do you not have coworkers? There are more people involved in software creation than just you and your manager.
    - 9rx 2y ago
      I don't have coworkers who buy into mob programming. If I write code on Saturday and withhold pushing the commit until Monday afternoon or write the code Monday morning and push the commit thereafter, nobody is ever going to be able to tell the difference. You must work in one of those cults that stand around the meeting room to recite the commit log as if nobody in the place knows how to read, exclaiming "no blockers" to signify that the metaphorical torch is being passed on to the next person?

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

To add: it also sets bad expectations from other leadership. If managers consistently see your guys putting in off the clock hours: a) it makes me look a bit of a moron, because it implies they can't get their work done within office hours, and my job is to ensure that b) they then expect that level of work regularly and will feel slighted if it stops being put in. See aforementioned comments about burnout.

9rx 2y ago
> within office hours You are running a factory over there? That makes the weekend perspective a bit more reasonable, given the constraints. Tech work, on the other hand, descends from agriculture. You work when the sun is shining and rest when it is stormy, metaphorically speaking. There is no reasonable concept of defined working hours. The brain doesn't operate on a set schedule like that, and trying to ignore that reality is where the burnout stems from. If we were talking about tech, you certainly would look foolish applying factory concepts to an entirely unrelated field.
- bckr 2y ago
  If it were me, I would write the code, commit it, and open the PR Monday afternoon
  - 9rx 2y ago
    That is what the individual is going to end up doing if they encounter the guy who thinks software is built on an assembly line, but is not ideal. The reviewer might get "the itch" before Monday. It would be a waste to see him fall into burnout because he had to artificially wait because you had to pretend to wait.
    - roguecoder 2y ago
      You don't burn out because you weren't working. That's not a thing. I am concerned about how you describe coding as an addiction. That sounds like something worth bringing up with a therapist & investigating the root cause of. It can be literally dangerous to identify that much with only our work, especially in this economy. But if you don't want to do that, if you have some rare code-or-die health condition, just contribute to some Apache project instead. The entire internet is build on projects people wrote that their companies didn't pay them to write. We don't have to give our whole creative selves to our employers.

ryandrake 2y ago

Exactly this. I worked for a place long ago, where we had this junior guy who basically didn't have a life. He just wanted to code. He stayed late every day, and would occasionally come in on the weekends and code all day. He was not making any extra (in fact since he was junior he was probably making much less than the rest of the team). He was not angling for a promotion from what I could tell. He just liked to code and that was his entire life. Well, his manager gave him some public praise once over E-mail, basically saying the project was moving along much faster due to how productive you are. That's all it took. Suddenly, the whole team felt pressure to pull 60-80 hour weeks and burn themselves out. And we didn't really get that much more done, because it was 80 low-quality burned out, demoralized hours, not 40 high-quality hours. The team eventually disintegrated along with the company during one of the tech downturns. All that wasted stress because one guy doesn't have a family or hobby.

gedy 2y ago
There sounds a lot more issues with that team, personalities, and company vs "one guy doesn't have a family or hobby"...
9rx 2y ago
> All that wasted stress because one guy doesn't have a family or hobby. It reads like the real problem was that the other developers fell into what developers seem to love more than anything: Pedantry. Instead of playing along with the false praise, they set out to prove the claim in the email wrong.
- pavel_lishin 2y ago
  Regardless, there was a problem.
  - 9rx 2y ago
    Yes, no doubt the person who sent the email ended up feeling a little silly when the pendants showed him.
2y ago