Comment by EarthMephit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by EarthMephit | Hacker News Reader

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I agree completely

In fact I could be that other engineer (I'm not, but I'm in a very similar sounding situation)

I was the most senior engineer and first to join a new startup with a bunch of colleagues from an old work place. I put in ridiculously long hours for the first year and a bit to get the product started, and got completely burnt out and my family life suffered

After we brought on a few more engineers I reduced my hours to a more normal 40 hours a week, and made use of the flexible start-up hours to pick up my kids from school some days and come in late on others (A great way to manage the stress of being in a busy startup)

Now I also spend a lot less time writing code and more time managing product requirements, an overseas team, on system architecture, and all those dev-ops tasks (big time-sink) that no-one else wants to do

I don't completely know the original-poster's situation, but quite often the senior person on the team is often shielding the other developers from all the daily crap that is going on in a company so that they can be as productive as possible, and you might not be completely aware about everything that is going on

Your situation doesn't sound like my coworker. I hate the idea of counting hours, but if I had to, the coworker does about 20 per week. He abuses our very lax schedule (we don't have an office) and vacation policy to spend as much time as he can doing other things. I know what he works on, and what he's dealing with since our team is very small. The facts are that he works as little as possible, and only has excuses to show when we try to confront him about what should have been done.

That sounds like he's burnt out or just doesn't enjoy his work. Have you talked to him about what type of work he prefers and hates to see if perhaps you could trade tasks? I know he's your schedule, but that doesn't mean dialog can't flow both ways. You don't even have to mention the productivity issue directly, just keep it somewhat casual.

If you manage to resolve it, that'll look really good to the founder and could help the company succeed. If you fail, you still look good because you're trying to make changes to help the company.

We had an employee that was underperforming and would work the bare minimum. It turned out that he felt overwhelmed, so work was very stressful for him and he would duck out as a defense mechanism. We changed his role somewhat (internal tools dev instead of product, product manager working with partners, main handler of support issues that got past tier 1) and he was a lot happier and ended up working more hours and meeting goals.

Working at a startup/small company can be very difficult, so finding the right fit in a team can be the difference between burnout and success. If he likes what he's working on, he'll make time to get it done.

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