I am old. I’ve been through so many waves of hustle culture. Outside of occasional crunch times, the overwork is always unnecessary, performative nonsense that provides cover for some combination of bad ideas, abusive leadership, disorganization, a total lack of strategy etc etc.
I did development work in IT for about 20 years and it got progressively worse as various “project management” methodologies were deployed. “Daily standups” (“show-and-tell”) do NOT speed things up; development cannot proceed in one-hour chunks and there’s no way to “explain” something in progress.
"get in nerds, we're doing Agile" actual Agile implementation*: you're scheduled for two hours today on this project you've never coded on or even looked at bc developers and development time are all fungible *not an exaggeration
It also forces people into the same development mindset, which actually is NOT a good thing.
last shop I was at it was senior devs who got the worst of it: some weeks virtually every morning you found your day being auctioned off to whichever accounts asshole yelled the loudest. and it destroyed what had been a good working environment
That was my experience; I retired 2-1/2 years in (after having to do this remotely destroyed my marriage) and live in poverty as a result.
feel ya. I got laid off (at 58) but would've had to quit anyway since the place was ruining my health, and I've had to burn through my savings bc good luck getting hired at this age for anything but piecework
I’m doing some AI stuff which is problematic but I need the money.
And yes… health… I retired after a few seizures. Haven’t had any since.
deadline stress at the last job turned into chronic pain for me: I tried just picking things up here and there but at the insistence of my trigeminal nerve my coding days (any hobby projects aside) are definitely over
Strange how neurological illnesses seem to be a common result.
This is exactly what I’m talking about.
sAFE agile? 😂 running a marathon as a series of 466 hundred yard dashes.
A lot of trashing about, chasing the puck, building nothing of durable value.
Every. Single. Time.
if they overwork you, you're too tired to look for another job
Amen.
I’m a consultant. I’ve seen inside every kind of organization. Good managers/leaders doing important work don’t run their teams ragged, and especially don’t brag about it.
Agreed, and they also don’t sleep on low performers. If a team member isn’t up to the task, they fix it or move on to someone who is.
that’s right
Remember there was "HustleCon" in SF, just before the pandemic? I ran into the two organizers at one event and joked it was funny how the name was two synonyms for "swindle" or "hoax". They thought that was zero percent funny.
You’re spot on. Sounds like we both have a lot of stories and lived experiences with this. Do you write or talk about this anywhere? Would love to hear more from you.
on the cursed site known as linkedin while I deal with other forms of writers block and my latest talk is related: conffab.com/presentation...
My husband’s workplace is in crunch mode right now, and it’s entirely because management agreed to a timeline that was not realistic.
SERIOUSLY. We've all grown into the Waldorf/Statlers of Hustle culture. Those bozos still won't clear the damn stage, though.
this makes me sound like a massive asshole, but i live by the mantra that there is no such thing as a user research emergency
management hates to see me coming with: -There are no design emergencies -it's just an app, calm down -this software isn't saving lives -our deadlines are just some guy's opinion
I get you. But if you see a car crash in slow motion - don’t you still feel the urge to prevent the worst, before it’s too late?
Save yourself and bring along the people who won't fight the rescue. Trying to grab the wheel from the driver will just make you share the blame.
Solid advice. Also: don't expect recognition. Nobody likes the kid who said I told you so.
nope. my experience with trying to prevent the worst is that you'll have conflict with the guy who thinks he's driving great, nothing actually meaningfully improves, then you get dinged on your evaluation with words like "pushy" or "stubborn"... the car crash still happens.
Yes. This is what usually happens.
Hate to read this, but also kinda needed to read this. 🙃 For me, the struggle is when I want to help prevent the crash because I want to help the people I work with whose work it is - but yeah, the higher ups doing the driving don’t often change, and nothing’s actually on fire.
My strategy is usually to do the work I can that I believe will be useful, and keep adding, "And by the way, the car is going to crash," messaging to all upward communication. if they don't acknowledge that you were right or listen the next time, you're wasting your energy & skills.
That’s helpful, thank you!
I come from mechanical engineering, where problems can actually kill people, sometimes at scale. "Business oops" is barely a blip.
A business oops won’t kill, but it can trap us, our colleagues and - most of all - the users (whose voices we were supposed to amplify… you know the drill) in its reality for years.
t will make people miserable, burned-out. It might exclude some, exploit others. And all that could have been prevented, if only… I think this where the urge comes from - and I am not saying I shouldn't learn to resist it.
Depends who's crashing
*nervously flipping pages* It’s… uh… humans. Yep. It says we are centering on humans.
In a car crash ppl die. Not applicable.
Every time I get a new boss, I tell them I don’t push work email to my phone because nobody has a research emergency outside office hours. If new boss needs help with something when I’m not in the office please text or call me. Gotten that text no more than 5x in 30 yrs. Don’t make it easy.
Exactly. It usually seems like management sees a person with literally minutes of free time each day, and thinks "that's time that should be focused on making me richer." Just trying to extract literally every moment of effort and energy from workers.
co-signed