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Comment by dunkelheit | Hacker News Reader

> SAY NO TO URGENT ONE-OFF REQUESTS FROM MANAGEMENT!!!

The thing is, saying no to requests from management (if it is your management of course) is going to hurt your career prospects too. Instead you should say "sure, but this thing will move the completion date of this hard and extremely important project X days, is it ok with you?" (Not having any hard and important project in the works? Fix that ASAP as the article suggests). Then ideally you reach some kind of compromise (sometimes these requests are urgent and you are the best person to handle them). If instead they say "no, I want you to do this urgent thing and complete your other projects on time, here is a nice weekend that you can use", then it is time to look for a new job.

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There needs to be a process where you can feedback too, like 1-1s and have some influence over what happens. If not, you need to switch jobs. Zero influence jobs where you are directed to so X and Y but your opinion doesn’t count really really suck!

You want to be somewhere where they make sane decisions so when management says “fix this fire” it’s genuinely serious and a rare event.

There is a holistic aspect to this - other things happening in the company, the culture, the history, the industry and even the general culture of the country / city will come into play.

I know it's management's job to manage and obviously they have their own agenda but...

In the past I've seen issues that I know will blow up at some point in the near-future.

Fixing thing them would also make 3 other existing low level problems go away too.

I've explained that to management but as they don't grasp an issue yet arisen they instead let me get half way through something else "important" when the issue strikes and I have to move onto fire-fighting and working through the weekend.

From the comments that doesn't seem to be uncommon. This is the sort of stuff that "agile management" is supposed to fix but because most managers (in my experience) still think in some form of waterfall.

Rule of thumb: The more senior a manager the more they think in waterfall because that's how they see their master plan unfolding.

I know there's exceptions but there aren't enough of them.

When you say, "I've explained that to management" -- was this in writing? It works much better if you do this in writing, especially if this is a public medium you can refer to, like a JIRA ticket or a message in a public channel/mailing list. This way you at least can say, "I warned you but you refused <link to refusal message>"

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