Working Hard Is for Suckers
Photo by Alex Kotliarskyi @frantic on Unsplash
“You’re doing WHAT?”
Is something that I would have loved to have shouted down my Zoom call.
I didn’t. I sat politely. I then thought about the consequences of what had been said.
My colleague planned to spend the entire day completing mandatory online training and wouldn’t be completing any of our teamwork for the entire day.
Why should I care? Because I had kept completely up to date, completing training in my own time when necessary. I really shouldn’t care about this stuff, yet it still annoys me.
The Situation
I needed to call my colleague yesterday. We don’t have clear tickets with requirements, so it’s unclear what work the team is doing and what needs to be done at any given time.
We spoke about the work that needed to be done, but they happily informed me of a couple of issues:
they wouldn’t be in a standup as they were walking to get medicine from the town for their sick children. [so much unnecessary detail]
they would spend the whole day in mandatory training, so wouldn’t complete any of our work
My Issue
Now, I don’t want to sound like the schoolyard tattletale, but here’s the problem I have with this situation.
I did that training weeks ago. You know — when it came out. I just knocked out a few courses at a time, mixed in with my actual job, like a responsible adult. Apparently, that was my mistake.
Because now, someone who spent the whole day binge-watching PowerPoint slides gets to pass that off as a day of “solid work.” Meanwhile, I shipped a feature, fixed a bug, and even reviewed some code. No one notices because I didn’t loudly proclaim something like.
“Today, I Completed the fire evacuation training for the office, even though I work at home”
Which I guess makes me a jerk? I’m uncertain on that point. Until today I became more certain.
What Happened Then
Now I can’t quite believe this one. They told me about these training modules on a Wednesday morning as a reason they wouldn’t be too productive on Wednesday.
Then on Thursday morning at stand up… they said the same. More or less 24-hours later they said
“I don’t want to be fired, so I’m going to complete those 30 training courses”
They were met with nods and smiles from management in the meeting. They’ve managed to come up with something to do, and everyone is satisfied. The colleague is delivering, and there is a gold star waiting for them (probably).
I’ve got questions. So many questions.
What corporate dystopia are we living in where thirty different pieces of mandatory training exist?
Why is that worth a full day off from real work?
They’re going on vacation next week, and the deadline was creeping up. So now we all get to pick up the Slack (does that pun work?).
The Outcome
It’s not the training that annoys me. It’s the moral hazard. Do it the right way, as you go along, and you get nothing. Do it all in one go, panic-fueled and overdue, and you get a free pass for the day.
We all seem to work in cultures where procrastination is rewarded and consistency is punished. I get it, it’s not cool to talk about who steadily chips away at obligations.
The fact that you want the kind of engineer who works steadily at things seems to be neither here nor there. Life isn’t about Netflix binging (although I don’t do that either).
Conclusion
In tomorrow’s standup perhaps I should plan a speech to make a point.
“I did my job. I did the training. I did the code. Go me!”
But I won’t. I’ll probably just go write some more code and seethe internally until I give myself an ulcer. That’s the type of thing I do, don’t judge me.