andrewducker | Interesting Links for 31-07-2022

It should not be a "tactic", it should be just how work is. I don't trust bosses on renegotiation of conditions, who have proven to ignore the provisions of the original employment contract(s).

Ok yeah, the odd bit extra work is ok - IF the compensatory time off is prompt (same week). IF it's only seldom. IF there is genuine, respectful give and take.

But chronic understaffing and bad contingency planning by management are not my problem. (Unless I AM management).

Preserving my own health and, actually, my consistent longer term work performance, are not at all useless.

Hear, hear.

Way back around 2000, there was a new idea in software engineering called Extreme Programming. That got picked up by the management consultants and turned into Agile, with all the less management-friendly edges sanded off, but the original version was better, at least for programmers.

One of the rules of XP was that you should work a 40-hour week -- no less and no more. A hard and fast principle of XP was that routine overtime was viewed as a process break, and indicated that you were doing it wrong.

I've taken that and tried to mostly live by it ever since. There are lots of good reasons to maintain work-life balance, and I am extremely frank with employers that, if crunches happen more than rarely, that's an indication of bad management and I will not support it. I've become deeply intolerant of companies that say things like "we want everyone to be giving 150%!", as if that is a good thing.

Hear hear.

(I'm also older than XP. We were part of the DSDM in the early 90s ..)

Interesting Links for 31-07-2022

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