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throwaway67678 15 minutes ago [-]
Also applies to research. Keep leeway to open yourself up for collaborations and you might score lots of easy wins even as you struggle with your 'main' project (it also makes you a more well-rounded, sociable scientist)
o_nate 3 hours ago [-]
There's a lot of wisdom in this. In addition to reserving some capacity for when true high-value work comes along, I think software engineering is not the type of job that you can do well if you're constantly busy. Trying to write some code as quickly as possible seldom yields the best design. This article doesn't get into another important aspect of this, which is how to get away with working at 80% capacity without getting in trouble with your manager. This takes a bit of care around communication and estimation of work. One of the first good pieces of advice that I got from older seasoned developers when I started my first real programming job has stayed with me to this day: take your estimate of how long it will take to do something and double it before communicating to your manager/users. As you get more experienced that ratio can come down to maybe 1.5x instead of 2x, but the principle still applies.
tjadfsaj 4 hours ago [-]
Thank you for this. I'm new to SWE. How to know when it is time to leave an organization versus sticking it out?
erelong 5 hours ago [-]
It sounds like you could have a little "buffer time" where you "do nothing" to prevent burnout when you need that free time for something that pops up and to take adequate breaks to pace yourself cognitively speaking
Otherwise I don't see why you couldn't do lower value tasks with flexibility to abandon them if something higher value comes up
jazz9k 8 hours ago [-]
This is written as if you have actual control over the volume of work given to you and/or deadlines.
tonyedgecombe 7 hours ago [-]
It's surprising how often people dig their own grave.
whattheheckheck 3 hours ago [-]
You can say no thats too much work load, we're understaffed or its too tight of a timeliness for the results.
But understand the ecosystem. People make promises that arent entirely dependent on them to be able to deliver
tonyedgecombe 2 minutes ago [-]
[delayed]
holografix 3 hours ago [-]
Don’t you? You can always say no verbally or with non-delivery. Are you working under a continuous and immediate threat of dismissal?
harimau777 44 minutes ago [-]
> Are you working under a continuous and immediate threat of dismissal?
Definitely! It's been that way everywhere I've ever worked. Unless you are churning out code at maximum speed then it's only a matter of time before you get fired.
Schiendelman 31 minutes ago [-]
You may not like hearing this - setting boundaries is a skill, and a difficult one to learn. It's also one of the most valuable skills for you, especially you personally, to learn, based on this comment.
galleywest200 3 hours ago [-]
When customers that pay you a lot of money demand resolution to issues from your higher ups, you sort of have to. Especially true if their product is not working.
zamadatix 3 hours ago [-]
It has to be a really really small place for "you're the only person we can say yes with" to be a fair note on a request. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people stuck with such jobs at bigger places, but it doesn't make it any more reasonable an excuse and pretty much still boils down to constant fear of being dismissed if you say no in the end.
SpicyLemonZest 3 hours ago [-]
Most software engineers in my experience have quite a lot of control, and a large component of growing in your career is learning to perceive the control that you have.
One common misconception the article touches on, for example, is that Jira tickets represent latent task assignments, such that you should always be working on some specific Jira ticket and immediately pick up a new one when you finish or are awaiting review on the last one. That's not how the most successful engineers work, and often it's not even really what management wants.
gorjusborg 18 minutes ago [-]
> Most software engineers in my experience have quite a lot of control, and a large component of growing in your career is learning to perceive the control that you have.
I've found that most of that autonomy comes with trust, and that trust gets unlocked via good relationships, and good relationships get unlocked by a history of good communication.
You are 100% correct that every person has agency, the trick is to get yourself into a social dynamic where it is acceptable to assert it.
projektfu 1 hours ago [-]
Picking up Jira tickets could be a good way to accomplish the other goals. Suppose the ticket has a request from a user you don't chat with, it's a good time to go chat with them. Maybe you don't understand a part of the code base. Looking into a Jira ticket related to that part gives you a reason to read through it. If there's lots of tickets related to a subsystem, you might have a conversation with the product owner about what direction they're taking it. What you might not want to do is accept responsibility for the ticket until it's time to actually hammer it out.
SpecStudioHN 6 hours ago [-]
doing LOTS of nothing can also be a huge power move. i was in software development, technical writing contracting in Silicon Valley back in the 80s. i stepped away to do something completely different for 40 years. curiosity in AI brought me back. the background acquired from my exploration of an apparently unrelated field enabled me to develop some very advanced software concepts relevant to the problems with AI, and implement them in working code.
Otherwise I don't see why you couldn't do lower value tasks with flexibility to abandon them if something higher value comes up
But understand the ecosystem. People make promises that arent entirely dependent on them to be able to deliver
Definitely! It's been that way everywhere I've ever worked. Unless you are churning out code at maximum speed then it's only a matter of time before you get fired.
One common misconception the article touches on, for example, is that Jira tickets represent latent task assignments, such that you should always be working on some specific Jira ticket and immediately pick up a new one when you finish or are awaiting review on the last one. That's not how the most successful engineers work, and often it's not even really what management wants.
I've found that most of that autonomy comes with trust, and that trust gets unlocked via good relationships, and good relationships get unlocked by a history of good communication.
You are 100% correct that every person has agency, the trick is to get yourself into a social dynamic where it is acceptable to assert it.