←back to thread

287 points moonka | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
rqtwteye ◴[] No.43562536[source]
I have been in the workforce for almost 30 years now and I believe that everybody is getting more squeezed so they don’t have the time or energy to do a proper job. The expectation is to get it done as quickly as possible and not do more unless told so.

In SW development in the 90s I had much more time for experimentation to figure things out. In the last years you often have some manager where you basically have to justify every thing you do and always a huge pile of work that never gets smaller. So you just hurry through your tasks.

I think google had it right for a while with their 20% time where people could do wanted to do. As far as I know that’s over.

People need some slack if you want to see good work. They aren’t machines that can run constantly on 100% utilization.

replies(25): >>43562590 #>>43562601 #>>43562738 #>>43562748 #>>43562796 #>>43562875 #>>43562911 #>>43562955 #>>43562996 #>>43563116 #>>43563121 #>>43563253 #>>43563309 #>>43563487 #>>43563727 #>>43563795 #>>43563837 #>>43563965 #>>43563995 #>>43564861 #>>43567850 #>>43569250 #>>43569941 #>>43574512 #>>43579456 #
1. saghm ◴[] No.43569250[source]
One time during a 1:1 with who I consider the best manager I ever had, in the context of asking now urgent something needed to get done, I said something along the llines of how I tend to throttle to around 60% of my "maximum power" to avoid burnout but I could push a bit harder if the task we were discussing was essential with to warrant it. He said that it wasn't necessary but also stressed that any time in the future that I did push myself further, I should always return to 60% power as soon as I could (even if the "turbo boost" wasn't enough to finish whatever I was working on. To this day, I'm equally amazed at both how his main concern with the idea of me only working at 60% most of the time was that I didn't let myself get pressured into doing more than that and the fact that there are probably very few managers out there who would react well to my stating the obvious truth that this is necessary