Ask HN: How do you deal with work pressure?

[kucing]

So I have just started on a new Software Engineering Job as a fresh grad. I had interned in the same company before. The company is quite notorious for it's high pressure and fast environment. However I managed to pull through the internship quite okay.

But now starting as full-time has changed a few things. More things are at stack, my livelihood and work visa depended on the job. The worst thing that could have happened in the internship was just bad experience and no referral.

I am theorizing that no matter how well someone perform, the leader will keep pushing them to the limit. So I could either give 80%, have a balanced life, but always feel bad and pressurized because I am falling short constantly (but still performing OK to not be fired); or I could give 110%, sacrifice personal life, but might still feel pressurized (although probably less) by the team lead.

Changing company is not viable option for the short term (at least in the order of 6 months).

Would like to know how other people handle similar situation :)

*for cultural context, this is a south-east-asian based company.

[runawaybottle]

I can give you a protip for dealing with this. No guarantees, but often the poker hand that leadership has is an ‘ok’ hand. Maybe two pairs, maybe one pair, sometimes just a high card, sometimes just two face cards. To translate, their hands are often not as good as you think. You may believe they have a three of a kind, or a straight (you will be fired), but the bet you have to make is most likely they got a modest hand.

So what does that mean? Often those modest/weak hands mean the worse that will happen to you is that you will fall out of favor.

If you go into the bet like that, and can live with that, you won’t be scared. If you were matched up against the strongest hand like a royal flush (you will be fired for sure), realize you were up against the strongest possible hand to begin with and weren’t going to come out of that alive.

Usually, if someone has a very very strong hand, they will try to conceal it from you so you don’t even know what you are walking into. It’s the weaker hands that need to convince you that you should be scared and back off from the bet.

The takeaway here is that in each of those situations the pressure is contrived (e.g someone’s got you convinced there’s a ton of pressure, or more scarily, that there’s no pressure, neither of which is ever true).

[kucing]

This is really interesting. I never really think of it from their perspective. And the case of:

- either you can, just be calm and act rationally / work within reasonable limit, focus on overall productivity.

- or you won't be able to catch up anyway

makes the case much clearer. I think there would be a category "you might or might not be able to survive, depending on how much work / luck you have" might exist, but the chance to fall on that sweet spot is quite slim.

I like your idea regarding the mind game about hiding/boasting the pressure.

[JayDustheadz]

If you don't mind a personal advice, keep the following in mind: that there's no point in even a well paid job if you're going to spend the entire paycheck (or even more) on meds/healthcare. High pressure jobs ALWAYS leave a mark on you, always affect you (even if you're not at work). People tend to ignore this when they're young, I did as well, and I very much regret doing so. Whatever you do, good luck and stay safe and healthy!

[GianFabien]

Many managers will create pressure upon the workers no matter how hard you work. So working 110% is only encouraging them to demand 130%, etc. You just can't win.

In your specific situation, it would be good to give 80% to 90%. Not take the haranguing personally, see it as the managers trying to impress their bosses by being relentlessly demanding.

Use whatever time and resources you have to research and line-up your next job so as soon as you are able to move on, you have a far better job to go to.

Good luck and take care of your mental health, making sure you have time out for some quality personal life. Hopefully you will have even more of that in your next job.

[doublejay1999]

Seems like the real pressure, rather than perceived pressures, is your Visa dependency.

I'm speculating a bit - but the fact that you perceive this job as a pressured environment, suggests that it's not right for you.

Very simply, brace your self for 6 months and then find a environment that suits you better.

[muzani]

Some people exploit this to work you harder than you would otherwise. I've seen this in several colleagues who are on a visa and can't get a better job back home, especially more junior ones.

[muzani]

Ideally it's good to give it 110% and then take a lot of rest. This is how you improve. But there needs to be trust there. So find a job which you can trust, and which trusts you. Your colleagues and boss should have your back, like a military squad would. If one of you needs to be away, you'll cover up the workload for them or they'll cover for you. If your leader feels you're tired or overworked, they'll try to push work away from you.

But that's an ideal. Many jobs are transactional; they squeeze what they want from you, and you squeeze what you can from them. In situations like this, you'll have to give it 80%. There's tricks to look like you're working more than you are. If the boss expects you to work at nights, you slack off in the day. You complete a task, read HN for a couple hours, then commit the code later to pad your effort.

But this 80% will make you mediocre in the long run. Going at less effort than you can will decrease your energy. Find something that's closer to your pace. They'll seek to punish you for doing well, so find someone who appreciates your efforts.

[Graffur]

It's impossible to give more than 100%

[muzani]

Say, your record is 10 push ups. You try to do 11. That's how you improve. You might actually be able to do 40 in a group session or 131 if your life depended on it, but there's no record of that.

But that way you end up targeting 211 in a month which at some point becomes impossible.

If you aim for 100% you'll never improve so it's only natural that all managers put you above expectations. However, instead of pushing you to that 40, some learn that by triggering your survival instincts, they can push you over 100. They think it's growth but it destroys you long term.

The other problem is some people know they can do 10 tasks in 8 hours then take on 11 tasks, and end up doing it 9 hours. This leads to some kind of expectations creep and before you know it, you're working day and night but your ability isn't improving.

So the survival mechanism is to do 8, which the manager pushes up to 9 or 10. So to achieve balance, you have external forces pulling you up while internal forces pulls you down. But this wrecks you internally, and you become dependent on external pressure.

[Graffur]

If 10 pushups is 100%, then you won't make 11. If you do 11, that is 100% of the pushups you can do, not 10.

I didn't say you can't improve but the way I see it is that 100% is the max you can give. Improving doesn't make it 110% otherwise we're all giving 1100000% from when we started our career.

[tra3]

That’s not how we think at awesomesoft; there’s no “I” in team. We always give 110%!

This kinda attitude is gonna land you in the bottom 10% of stack ranking.

[throwaway24124]

Spend as much time as possible prepping for interviews and the minimum amount of time you can at your current job. Hope that you don't get fired within the first 6 months and begin actively applying for other roles as soon as possible and when you are ready. The expectations of your current role sound impossible for anyone to maintain. Working hard at your current job will only leave you burnt out. You should put all your energy into interview prep so you can land a job that will not leave you exhausted like this one.

[mattbrewsbytes]

Is it possible the pressure, or some % of it, is self-induced? How much?

It sounds like you already established yourself with a good reputation there since they hired you from an internship. Maybe the culture there is always giving all to the company? Based on observations, one option is to make the perception of 110% but fluctuate the performance so you are not stressed. When you are stressed your work will show it.

[kucing]

Yeah there's part of me that feels "I want to prove I can do this on time / accountable". And that partly is reinforced when I get comments like "Oh okay good progress! But keep watch of the deadline, seems like we are a bit behind." (no sarcasm intended by the commenter). Maybe I can simplify it by saying like "there's little empathy" (?). The turnover rate is already quite high and I doubt they will worry too much about me (of course it's still not easy to find good hire but probably they are used to losing one).

Anyway thanks so much for your reply! I feel much better now and by other replies too. :)

[fiftyacorn]

There will always be some emergency, deadline, ...

Just remember how little of your software will be around in five to ten years to get some perspective

[kucing]

Thanks so much for all your support and sharing your thoughts. It means a lot to me. :)