Management’s Definition of a Hardworking Software Engineer is WRONG ❌

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

If you’re conscientious, the evidence says you’re likely to earn more money in your software development career.

Yet it appears that while Microsoft has worked out what makes a good software engineer, they have misattributed “hardworking” to be the type of employee that can simply exploit. This is something that should worry software engineers whether they work for Microsoft or not.

Hardworking, or Taken Advantage of?

I take exception to this quote, attributed to a SDE2, Web Applications at Microsoft in the original paper.

“I remember it came down to the last day. He is going on vacation and we needed to ship and he stayed late and was there all night… even delayed his vacation by a day, so that he could get it done and get it out the door so we could ship on time … he got high praise for it from the management.”

So, this software engineer did what they were supposed to do. They went a little but further and made sure shipping happened right on time. They even received a level of appreciation for their efforts which is nice.

Yet Microsoft could have been nicer.

Did management award a bonus? Did they get that vacation time back (and more in compensation? Did Microsoft run a postmortem on what led to this, or did it not matter because an SDE2 fixed the poor planning with their own efforts?

The Microsoft Message

An incredible work ethic might lead to praise for the ideal Microsoft employee, which is the message that we receive.

Deep within this paper though there is a hidden sentiment that engineers were expected to be hardworking, even if it disadvantages them personally.

Software engineering is oftentimes a time-consuming job, and when you approach a deadline (that may be artificial) you are unlikely to have the product where it needs to be to ship. That means working extra hours, and Microsoft are effectively confirming this with their white paper.

The Consequences

We all know that we should be defining boundaries between our work and home life.

For some this will work as “I’m not going to work extra hours,” and I think ultimately that hurts their career. There are good software engineers that draw boundaries but I think they all need to be careful about how they communicate that to management.

I remember a software developer I worked with, who simply wouldn’t work extra hours. I think he had children, but that’s not really the relevant thing here. The point is that every point at about 5:55 they would log off or reply to Slack messages later in the day with “one for tomorrow”. I think their credibility got damaged in the group, and certainly, it never felt like they were one of the “dedicated” few who management shone favor on.

Conclusion

It’s a shame we are still in a situation where devs need to justify not working extra hours.

It’s more of a shame that companies feel that they should celebrate devs working extra hours without accompanying remuneration, but here we are.

Do you think it’s time these things changed? Let me know in the comments.