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The senior engineer death spiral

285 points · 150 comments · nsavage

  1. sajithdilshan · · focus · HN ↗
    The senior you get the more you realise that the only reward for hard work is more work. Then, you learn to say no more often and set boundaries and negotiate like if you want me to work on project A, then I won’t have capacity to work on project B.

    Unfortunately, this is something you have to learn through experience and cannot be taught by someone else.

    1. coldpie · · focus · HN ↗
      > the only reward for hard work is more work.

      Yup. I work 35-40 hours a week. I do not put work stuff on my personal devices, I do not open my work laptop at home. This isn't something I negotiated or made explicit, it's just what I do. No one has ever objected to my work or output and I keep getting raises every year.

      1. camdenreslink · · focus · HN ↗
        Not possible with jobs with on-call responsibilities (most senior software engineering jobs in my experience).
        1. dietr1ch · · focus · HN ↗
          What I did with oncall was taking the time back from incidents, like working only the afternoon after a midnight page that screwed up my sleep. It's not like I'd have been productive anyway, and people will understand if you cancel a meeting at 2am.

          The real annoying part of it is not being able to detach from work the weeks I was oncall, and having to plan travel to ensure that acting in time remains feasible.

          Now,if a job requires permanent on-call that is just a bs workaround from having the organisational structure to properly deal with emergencies.

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