[ToucanLoucan]

> but the most concrete is that your behavior in this job has an impact on getting the next one.

[ citation needed ]

Every job I've worked at has specified when we provide references, we're to say "X was employed from Y to Z" and if we would hire them again, yes or no. The employee described here would get a yes from me. The fact that they didn't go "above and beyond" will not help them get a job, at least if they happened to work for any of the companies I have.

> If people know you are a standout contributor then you will be hired quickly into desirable roles.

I guess we could quibble over definitions then, because I as a senior dev managing other devs am perfectly happy with someone who clocks in, does the work on-time and to-spec, and then clocks off as a "standout contributor." I've chastised a few people in my time for committing code on the weekends too, not because I don't appreciate their contribution, but because I consider it part of my job to prevent burnout, voluntary or otherwise.

Burned out devs turn out worse work, and they feel worse in the bargain. Textbook definition of a lose-lose. Whatever code is being a pain in the ass today is just that; code. It will be there when you get back from the weekend, it will be there when you get back from a doctor's appointment, it will be there when your kid is done being sick. Life matters. Code... does, but to a lesser extent.

> On top of that, carrying around bitterness and cynicism is just bad for you.

Which is why I don't want people feeling bitter about their job, and putting in the extra work to, by your own admission, be just as damn likely to get the axe for reasons that are out of your control? That's embittering as fuuuuuuuck.

> Pride in good work and pleasure in having an impact on customers and coworkers is good for you.

False dichotomy. I love what we build, and I want my subordinates to have fulfilling, happy lives. And I proportion my energy to both of those things in accordance with their importance.

[9rx]

> I've chastised a few people in my time for committing code on the weekends too, not because I don't appreciate their contribution, but because I consider it part of my job to prevent burnout

The best way to avoid burnout in my experience is to work when you have "the itch" to do it. If you're feeling it on a Saturday, why not go for it? You might not be feeling it on Monday and will need the break then instead. If you forego the prime opportunity and then force yourself to do it later when you are not in the right mindset, that is when the burnout is going to get you.

[pavel_lishin]

Answering the rhetorical question - because it may set a bad example for other, more junior employees; it may set a new expectation; if the good manager who prevents burnout gets fired, and is replaced with a worse person, they may come to expect you to work six days a week, and instead of preventing burnout by working when you want, you're now being burned out by working not only 5 days a week without any break, but also on one of your weekend days.

[ryandrake]

Exactly this. I worked for a place long ago, where we had this junior guy who basically didn't have a life. He just wanted to code. He stayed late every day, and would occasionally come in on the weekends and code all day. He was not making any extra (in fact since he was junior he was probably making much less than the rest of the team). He was not angling for a promotion from what I could tell. He just liked to code and that was his entire life. Well, his manager gave him some public praise once over E-mail, basically saying the project was moving along much faster due to how productive you are. That's all it took. Suddenly, the whole team felt pressure to pull 60-80 hour weeks and burn themselves out. And we didn't really get that much more done, because it was 80 low-quality burned out, demoralized hours, not 40 high-quality hours. The team eventually disintegrated along with the company during one of the tech downturns. All that wasted stress because one guy doesn't have a family or hobby.

[9rx]

> All that wasted stress because one guy doesn't have a family or hobby.

It reads like the real problem was that the other developers fell into what developers seem to love more than anything: Pedantry. Instead of playing along with the false praise, they set out to prove the claim in the email wrong.

[pavel_lishin]

Regardless, there was a problem.

[9rx]

Yes, no doubt the person who sent the email ended up feeling a little silly when the pendants showed him.

[gedy]

There sounds a lot more issues with that team, personalities, and company vs "one guy doesn't have a family or hobby"...

[roguecoder]

This is what open source was made for.

I once had a coworker like that who hadn't taken a vacation in two years. I told him that vacation time was how the company funded his open source work, and suddenly he took his full five weeks off each year to recharge by coding different code.

[ToucanLoucan]

To add: it also sets bad expectations from other leadership. If managers consistently see your guys putting in off the clock hours:

a) it makes me look a bit of a moron, because it implies they can't get their work done within office hours, and my job is to ensure that

b) they then expect that level of work regularly and will feel slighted if it stops being put in. See aforementioned comments about burnout.

[9rx]

> within office hours

You are running a factory over there? That makes the weekend perspective a bit more reasonable, given the constraints. Tech work, on the other hand, descends from agriculture. You work when the sun is shining and rest when it is stormy, metaphorically speaking. There is no reasonable concept of defined working hours. The brain doesn't operate on a set schedule like that, and trying to ignore that reality is where the burnout stems from.

If we were talking about tech, you certainly would look foolish applying factory concepts to an entirely unrelated field.

[roguecoder]

I was at one place where we tracked every bug introduced, and discovered more than 90% were in code written after 5pm. We dramatically cut our bug rate just by shutting down PRs outside of business hours.

The problem is that when our performance declines, so does our ability to judge our performance. We can feel more productive while actually doing a much worse job.

[9rx]

> more than 90% were in code written after 5pm.

Intriguing. Did you find that remained true through DST periods, assuming DST observance? Meaning, did you find that it was literally the clock that determined when bugs would seep in, or did bugs also increase if you didn't counteract times changes for whatever human factor (circadian rhythm?) made 5 PM significant?

> The problem is that when our performance declines, so does our ability to judge our performance.

Sure, but what sees performance magically decline at 5 PM?

If it was the clock, did you try removing the clock from the equation? Did bugs show up the same if developers had no idea what time it was?

If it was some other human factor, did you see uniformity across all participants? Were the "night owls" who were just getting started at 5 PM just as likely to introduce bugs after 5 PM as those who had been working since 9 AM?

[bckr]

If it were me, I would write the code, commit it, and open the PR Monday afternoon

[9rx]

That is what the individual is going to end up doing if they encounter the guy who thinks software is built on an assembly line, but is not ideal. The reviewer might get "the itch" before Monday. It would be a waste to see him fall into burnout because he had to artificially wait because you had to pretend to wait.

[ToucanLoucan]

Not a matter of when the office is open, it's a matter of how many hours have been worked vs what's expected. I'm obviously fine with folks working whenever they want, that's half the benefit of work from home in the first place. What I'm not fine with was this particular dude clocking in code at all hours all week, then putting even more in on the weekend. And mind you this is not simply from commits, it's from when he's emailing me his time spent on various tasks and I can see he's wildly passing the 40 hour mark.

[9rx]

> it's from when he's emailing me his time spent on various tasks and I can see he's wildly passing the 40 hour mark.

I'll grant you that it is red flag that he would want to take your energy telling how long something took. It doesn't even mean anything in the given line of work. An interesting problem might be given hundreds of hours of thought – in the shower, while sleeping, etc. – but only take 15 minutes to type afterwards. What would you report? The 100 hours? The 15 minutes? Invent some kind of weighting system to offset parallel activities? And for what? None of them mean anything.

The manager's job is to take the unnecessary burden of externalities off the rest of the team, but it is a team and that means it has to cut both ways. The rest of the team has to take the unnecessary burden of internality off the manager. If that was the best political way to say "please stop, you are needlessly wasting my energy", then that makes sense, I suppose. Or, perhaps a good manager is brutally honest above being politically sensitive? A team is, after all, characterized by their willingness to remain bonded even amid strife. Without that, you just have a group of people.

[9rx]

1. Will you survive to see a new manager if you don't work on the weekend? Without that, under the given scenario you are either:

- Forcing yourself to work on Monday. Burnout ensues. Will you be able to continue while burnt out?

- Skipping Monday too, seeing you only work four days a week. Will you be able to continue under performance expectations?

2. Do you really need to worry about this hypothetical future? If the bad manager shows up, are you going to stick around even if working hours remain the same? He is still going to express his badness in many other ways. He wouldn't be bad otherwise.

[pavel_lishin]

> Without that, under the given scenario you are either:

I reject the false dichotomy that my options are "work on the weekend when I'm excited to write code, or suffer and burn out during the week". Maybe that works for you, but I have to show up on Monday regardless of whether I wrote something inspired on Saturday.

> 2. Do you really need to worry about this hypothetical future? If the bad manager shows up, are you going to stick around even if working hours remain the same?

Weirdly, the bank expects monthly mortgage payments regardless of whether my manager is bad or not.

[9rx]

> I have to show up on Monday

For what, exactly? If it is simply to appease the whims of your manager, you already have the bad manager. Another hypothetical future bad manager is the least of your concerns at that point. Chances are the hypothetical future bad manager will be less bad than the horror show you are already in.

> the bank expects monthly mortgage payments regardless of whether my manager is bad or not.

There is some risk there, but most tech people already price in that risk by demanding much higher than normal compensation at their job, allowing them to have their mortgages discharged before the bad manager arrives. You might get caught in the unlucky case, but on balance the good managers don't disappear that quickly.

[roguecoder]

Do you not have coworkers?

There are more people involved in software creation than just you and your manager.

[pavel_lishin]

If any of that cohort of most tech people has enough money left over to pay off my mortgage, I'd be open to that. But I'm not a member of that hallowed club.

[_dark_matter_]

FYI that burnout is not "working a lot". Burnout is the feeling of little control, ineffectiveness, COMBINED with stress. Working weekends could instead be an indication of excitement and enthusiasm, which as a manager is worth nurturing. Over time those kinds of people should be given broader ownership and the ability to delegate, where they see fit.

[pbhjpbhj]

A response to a feeling of ineffectiveness or lack of progress can be 'I need to catch up' which can result in weekend work. That IME can be a spiral. You don't get the rest you need. You feel less effective...

[codr7]

Yeah, but what always happens is the more you give, the more they squeeze, until you have nothing left.

[pavel_lishin]

I don't think it's references that matter, as much as reaching out to former coworkers who have jobs elsewhere, and can be your "in" to a new job.

[roguecoder]

If people are seeing the only way to be a "standout contributor" being about putting in more than 40 hours a week, we may have found the disconnect.

I don't work more than 40 hours a week, but when I slack off I just do the work put in front of me. Rather than hours, it's about energy.

If companies want more than 40 hours a week, we can negotiate overtime. But I put extra energy in during the work week not because I think it makes me extra money or protects me from layoffs. I do it just because I think it is better.

[seanc]

We're not as far apart as you might think. Clock time is correlated with performance, but by no means determinative. More important is initiative, enthusiasm, leadership, reliability, etc. All in, I work very little overtime.

And you're right, this is a marathon, and working sustainably is absolutely the most important thing. One can do both. If you love what you build and you're leading a balanced life then I would say you're Doing It Right.

[code_for_monkey]

spoken like a person with other people in their lives that they care about. You seem good to work for. Thanks.