He watches MST3K

With the recent news that a young and aspiring social media developer had died at the age of 22, you have to ask yourself, “how does it happen”? At the time that I am writing this, there is no official word as to the cause, only speculation of suicide or heart problems possibly brought on by work related stress. While thinking about these rumors, I began to roll around a lot of thoughts in my head about work related stress and the desire to succeed. I wanted to share my personal experiences with a couple of themes I see that often reoccur in the technology industry. Obsession is a common one that is sometimes thrown around as a positive. Obsessed with quality, obsessed with customer satisfaction or obsessed with accuracy. My only problem with this comes from the fact that obsession is never a positive notation. You can be focused on a task or concentrate on a subject. But the thought that you have to be obsessed about sends a person down a dark spiral. Obsession is a destructive trait in the sense that it permeates into other aspects of your life where there is no need for it. Thinking about an important deadline coming up while you are out with friends. Watching a show on Hulu while at the same time checking for errors in your proposal for next weeks status meeting. With this concept comes another feeling that I’ve seen personally in a few people. A false sense of importance. Not a perceived importance to others, but a perceived importance to ones own self. “This company needs me, with out me, they are doomed”. “They have no idea I run this place! The building would burn down if i don’t work overtime!”. My first example comes from a coworker I’ve had for numerous years.

My coworker spent most the five years I worked with him, ghosting hours. This is the practice of working 50-60 hours a week, but only marking down 40. To most this sounds insane, why would anyone work for free. But this was due to the obsessive need to make deadlines, coupled with a intense false sense of self importance. He felt he had to help the company save money any way he could, and one way was to ghost hours. Working through the night on projects to get it done without telling anyone. This sounds like the employee of the month. But this action always came with consequences. Code had little to no documentation. Code was confusing, due to lack of peer review. And when new estimates were required, his estimates were off in orders of magnitude since he never really knew how long it took him to code anything. His work plan always stated 3-4 weeks, but in reality it was a two months, plus extra work after the release in secret. Working from home, weekends, 4am log ins. Obsession consumed him and still does to this day. It not only potentially harms his family life, but it harms the firm because future estimates are always off by immeasurable amounts.

This case was extreme and it taught me a few things. One is to never let a project leave the boundaries I define. If I put a months worth of work in the work plan, and I see it will take longer, I raise it to my superiors immediately. The cost of fixing a problem before it happens is always cheaper than after. It also taught me that it’s ok to let go, it’s ok to let the company handle itself. If the place I work for needs me to work for free without telling anyone…the company has more problems than just making deadlines.

Next on my list is a friend who has hopped from shady job to shady job. Always filling the role as “IT Handy man”. He is normally the only IT guy on site, always saves the day and is never treated fairly.

My friend has held maybe 3-4 jobs in the last few years. They are all usually similar job descriptions. IT Lead, Systems Engineer, IT manager..Systems administrator. Basically, the do-it-all tech guy who can fix your network connection or your cell phone. He spends most of time putting out fires and saving the day. The only problem is, he always seems to end up at failing or shady companies. Places with no health benefits, upward mobility or rules. He likes the feeling of importance to the point he would sacrifice the a fore mentioned benefits, because he’s keeping the company running. People see this, take advantage, and reap the benefits themselves. I always ask, why don’t you just quit and get another job. The answer always blows my mind. “I can’t do that to them, without me, this place would fail”. My reply is normally, “Who gives a shit?? It’s your life!”. But after hearing it so many times, I just shrug my shoulders and say “ok”. To this day, he works at a dead end job, mostly for a false sense of importance and an obsession to help out the wounded bird.

This person is continuing to teach me this day that sometimes, you can’t mend a broken wing and you just have to give up and walk away and let nature takes it course…. 

My next story is obsession and how it can impact your reasoning.

When I was a junior developer, I was full of great ideas. My manager let me run with these ideas often because they drew much praise from the client. One day I heard that my manager had been sent to the hospital for some internal issues. I passed it off as some random health issue. But in reality is was a self induced hospital visit due to obsession and a desire to be the best. My manager was working long hours as some did. While not ghosting the hours, she never took the time to watch her health. She lived out of a vending machine until her body began to fail. Here was a manager at the top of her game, in the hospital because she only worried about getting some numbers right in a spreadsheet. Shortly after this, she quit the firm, became a mother and is now recently getting back into the sports she played in college. She taught me that sometimes you need to step back, realize it is just a job and walk away.

If this is an interesting topic for you, please check out This Developers Life podcast. Here is a link to one specifically around this topic.