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Comment by nhayden | Hacker News Reader

>excessive attention to detail (perfectionism) are causing him to take much longer.

He has self professed OCD and says this is often why he takes so long. I do offer a lot help in his work but being somewhat new myself I am not always able to tell him how the systems here work.

I'm not trying to change behavior by telling manager, but more trying to have the manager pay attention to the hours he's working and maybe set an upper limit and make him go home after? I don't think his manager wants him hospitalized or burning out any more than I do.

I have suggested searching for other jobs but I think a combination of depression and helplessness prevents him from doing this. He has really low self esteem.

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You could try a cognitive argument; beyond a certain number of hours/day, productivity/day starts to dive because you make more mistakes when you're tired and work at a slower pace overall. Failing that, try encouraging him to visit a therapist/psychiatrist. Maybe you could look into whether your company's health plan covers that sort of thing, often they do.

I feel your frustration. It's not really your problem, and it's irresponsible of his manager to let him wear himself down this way. His 'OCD' tendencies might well be an asset in the right context, like doing code review or QA or something instead of building code that's possibly meant to have a relatively short operating life.

I'm assuming that by "OCD tendencies", you do not mean a literal, clinical case of OCD. However, I think OP is describing OCD, the illness, not run-of-the-mill conscientiousness.

Despite the way it seems, OCD is not a rational illness, nor does it make you "better" at anything. It's purely emotional, and you can't reason with it. The sufferer feels a huge amount of fear/anxiety related to issues that seem insignificant to a typical person, and they can't choose which issues they are.

In fact, telling him that he makes more mistakes when he's more tired may give him greater anxiety, which would feed the vicious cycle of "doing more work to make sure I didn't screw up" that's going on in his mind.

I qualified it because I can't really tell from the limited information the OP gave, is all; that's why I made a point of suggesting professional help. I have relatives with fairly severe OCD and have autistic spectrum disorders myself, but I'm also aware that self-professed medical conditions don't always line up with the DSM definitions so I take them with a pinch of salt.

OCD is very treatable with a combination of drugs and cognitive-behavioral therapy (specifically, exposure and response prevention). There are no other types of treatment that are known to be effective, and drugs are rarely effective long-term on their own. Note that this treatment would force him to decrease his work hours.

If he has self-diagnosed OCD and expressed it to you, you need to encourage him to get into treatment. It may be more comfortable for him to start with group therapy. You should encourage him to tell his family and seek their support.

Helping someone else through their mental illness is incredibly difficult, frustrating, time-consuming, and emotionally draining (depending on how cooperative they are). I know from personal experience. You should do some research to make sure you're giving appropriate advice and to understand what even a minimal amount of support would mean for you.

This is something you should discuss with an expert, ideally a local lawyer, but it's possible that your manager would be unable to immediately fire him without giving him the option to seek treatment first. I'm not suggesting that you tell your manager, only that you know the consequences of doing so.

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