Hacker News Reader

Comment by antihero | Hacker News Reader

This becomes especially true with various mental health issues. Take for instance, ADHD - I've found employers love the intensity and focus I can have sometimes (leading to extreme productivity), yet when it comes to the fact that some days I just can't focus or have an intense weekend to blow off steam and am useless on Mondays, they throw a hissy fit.

They seem to think that if I can be 200% focused some of the time, why can't I be like that all of the time?

For some it's all take take take.

View on HN

Employers also seem to tend not to value the notion that employees have different strengths. There are some coders I know who seem to savor working hard on what I would call the "boring stuff", and there are those who can intensely work on a new problem and come up with novel approaches, but they're not going to be as good at doing assembly-line work. Both have their place, but employers want the best of both across the board, which is impractical except when you have the occasional wizard.

I used to work with a guy just like this. He slogged through crap code happily. He did his job and went home. Sadly, the first company I worked with him at fired him. "He wasn't competent, blah blah blah." He did a fine job, people just didn't like that his mentality was different than theirs. I tried to explain to them that the one person who would actually work on their horrendous software was the one they let go. Was he a superstar? No probably not, but he was good and liked his job and went home to his family at the end of the day. A lot of people don't realize a great employee comes in many forms.

This is the part that came very very quickly when I started managing people. I had people who are useless on tech but can pick up the phone and get it sorted,no matter what's the problem.On the other spectrum there were detail obsessed people that would take ages, but when I open that file I know it shows reality. Personally,I find this extremely interesting during the management meetings,where CEOs need have to listen to all of and often make decisions upon given info. I often find myself in a situation,where I can only think ' oh shit, didn't even think about it', while I'm sure other do too. To expect the same office drone functionality from everyone is insanely stupid.

Imagine that you have two employees with complementary skills (one excels where the other sucks, and vice versa) working on the same project. They will probably enjoy it a lot, because from the perspective of each, they can do the "easier" part (easier for them, than is). And the quality will probably be high, because each is working on what they know best, and what they enjoy.

However, from the average manager's perspective...

What happens if one of these two takes a vacation, and you decide to put in the sprint something that the other one sucks at? (Planning? What planning? This is Agile!)

What happens if you later decide you could save some money by moving one of them to another project, and leaving the other one to handle it all?

Also, what if one of them asks for a raise?

I’m in a different, somewhat awkward, but good position where my company champions work/life balance. The pace is slower than I expected and I have ADHD. I struggled at first especially since I want to respect other’s WLB. Sometimes I’d do a weeks worth (or more) of work in a day or two, but I try to spread that work back out so that it seems like things are more consistent. Some days I just can’t/won’t? focus on work. I think it’s because it’s not engaging? Does anyone “have it all,” ie working on interesting things at a challenging, yet decent pace? Has anyone been in a similar position? Do you have any advice?

ADHD here as well. Best thing I've found is when facing tasks of little or no interest, think about the projects/tasks that excite you/you prefer that are on your list, and think of how you'll get to those the sooner you finish the boring stuff.

Also, in terms of focusing, what's helped me is to find a single, non-lyrical, instrumental, ambient track, and just put it on loop for the whole work day. It's been easier to think/less distracting to not hear and process language or have to find the next track that I'm in the mood for, and I believe in some way it helps my mind stay focused on my thought processes related to my work through patterns the mind makes with the looping of the track.

From the employer side: The unfortunate reality is that anything resembling "heroic effort" work becomes difficult for teams to manage. It becomes impossible to plan around an employee who may or may not be able to contribute on a given day. Eventually, it becomes clear that relying on an employee to maybe or maybe not put in a couple of heroic days to catch up each week isn't as good for the team, as a whole, as someone who puts in steady and predictable work, even if the overall pace is slower.

I don't mean to detract from your personal issues. However, I would suggest that you work on finding a position that allows you to average out your productivity better over the course of a week.

Yep, I do much better in startups where I basically have autonomy to "get it done".

This is one reason I hate Scrum. Companies that (I've worked for) have really tried to implement it don't understand that sometimes you just won't be as productive. It's always, "Well you committed to it...." They can't (or don't want to) understand those miracles they want their employees to perform comes at a cost. It means those people are less productive at times while they are exploring an idea or they are just exhausted. If they just want someone to do the minimum set each sprint, that's fine, just don't expect anyone to walk on water when you need to be saved.

Estimates are by nature probabilistic. Saying "two weeks on average" means something like: 20% it is one week, 60% it is two weeks, 20% it is three weeks. And that assumes you are already pretty good at estimating! Most people are not.

This is by sleight of hand changed into a commitment to make it in two weeks, 100% sure. Then, 20% of time, developers are blamed for not fulfilling their committments or not estimating correctly. But they did!

If the most important thing for you is getting your commitments done with as high probability as possible, have a three-week sprint, but estimate only for two. Even this will fail once in a while, but less often. And maybe let developers work on the tasks of their choice in the remaining time. Autonomy, yeah!

"Two weeks on average" literally means it could be less but just as often it could also be more. If it is always two weeks or less, then it is not two weeks on average. What if it is always exactly two weeks, not a day more or less? No, that level of precision simply does not happen in real life.

Many leaders nowadays are very insecure, and that leads to an intense desire for control. It's sick, and sad, that this has happened over the past few decades.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com