I'm going to blatantly ignore this advice for a moment.
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Generally speaking, when I disappear for several days at a time, it's due to work. This week has been busy and stressful, but unfortunately this is not unusual. I got home at around 10:00 tonight, which is also unfortunately not unusual. Even better, I'm already depressed about how much I didn't get done today, which means that tomorrow's pretty much going to suck.
In that spirit, I'm going to post a short manifesto that I wrote in a moment of fury a couple of weeks ago. Names and argot changed for clarity and to protect the guilty.
Current management team issues. In no particular order.
No clear sense of expectations.
It's 5:00 on a production load day. Jim's note said that we load at 11:00. Does it actually mean that we'll load at 11, or is it just by 11? Are we expected to stay until 11? Do you have to check in before you leave? What if your work in done? What if your issue is fixed in staging, but the QA associate is still testing it? What if you have an issue outstanding from a week ago that you have no idea how to fix and no one has said word one to you about it? What if you have an issue outstanding from a week ago that isn't hard and would only take you about two hours to fix, but you just haven't gotten to it and no one has said word one to you about it?
"Absentee" management.
Such as six hour meetings on the days we move to staging. Failure to assign issues until the day of or after the due date. Not reading email on a regular basis.
Unrealistic deadlines and workloads foster a sense that it doesn't matter if you hit your due date.
If you know you can't make it anyway, why not leave at 8, or 6, instead of staying until 10?
Burnout.
No one, no matter how dedicated, can work 50 - 65 hours a week from July to November without serious aftereffects.
No sense of an end in sight.
In that team meeting last month it was a mistake to tell a bunch of burned out people that they need to keep working as hard as they had been (or harder) for the rest of the year.
No sense of anyone at the wheel.
There is a general feeling that management completely lost control of the project roughly four weeks ago, and more importantly that no one has made any attempt to take it back.
3 comments:
I wish I could say I have the same problem, but I've got a great management team above me. Our VP of Engineering and the Engineering Manager are spot on - they watch what is going on, have open door policies and actively watch for employee burn out.
We need a new J2EE engineer/architect... :D
Ooo, tempting. Three problems:
1. Alas, while I took Java in college, the version that I work with from day to day is largely a proprietary version. I know my shit with XML and SQL though.
2. I'm a truly superior systems analyst, but a merely competent programmer.
3. I (and more importantly, the hubby) live in New Jersey.
I'll keep it in mind if I ever pick up a certification though. :)
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
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