Is it me or do you also get put on numerous projects simultaneously?

I don't know why companies do this. To save money, probably. What were they thinking? It's not efficient to put a developer on several different projects at once, much less projects that are not in their field.

What do you get when you put an employee on 5-10 different projects simultaneously? A nerve-wracked, stressed out, easily-burnt-out employee. I've seen it myself.

Working in some kind of outsourcing? Hmm, probably invoiced twice or smth. I wouldn't be happy with that.

@retoor Kind of, yes. Invoice is same. lol. Just underpaid.

I've had to juggle a couple of projects and being put in a project lead position for some time now. Never more than 3 at the same time, and the one ongoing project is one I architected that's the easiest to maintain due to the simplicity and automation.

Another project I'm working on has led to severe burnout because of the amount of technical debt, on top of another legacy project that is a warehouse of fucking spaghetti code, also contributed to this burnout.

That's why I'm quite a pain in the ass about code maintainability.

I'd be fine with this

my company barred me from working on other projects... to go work on a project that had no work

I also hate it when I just have one ticket. why can't I just take tickets out as I want to. I'll assign myself to them and do them as a batch, because I generally pick ones in the same area of code. it's so highly efficient. why the hell did we have whole meetings so they can give me 1 ticket to do over 3 days??? and it's like some super simple REST endpoint or something omg

and if I burn out on one project or there's no work, then my time can be overflowed to other projects...

but noooo. irrationally management regarded me as "too important". hate it

if you're put on many projects and overwhelmed, focus on one project at a time until you acclimate to them

also have management tell you the priority of projects, tasks, etc (and their schedules, like if they have release plans or demos for clients etc), so you know which is important for them and when

and if they're irrational then schedule out your projects/work and share your schedule with all the stakeholders so they can be aligned

I had 3 managers once and like 4 projects. I liked it though but I am ADHD. I also collected the projects slowly over time instead of being thrown into them all at once... once you know a project it's not overwhelming but if they're all new your brain could mistake one project for another. organization skills might be required for this but I never lacked them

I've worked in consulting for 6 years. The aim is usually 80% utilisation but when you're at 100%, what's another 100%? Weeks have 15 days, right?

@jestdotty Aah.. the true agile way of working: "In an agile environment, the assignees get to pick the work from the backlog and discuss it, rather than work being forced upon them". I'd be glad to have three days for such a ticket. I'd say: 1 day business analysis, 1 day documenting (ok maybe much) and 1 day testing.

Too important, hm. So that sounds like they want to put you on valuable projects.

@jestdotty

Ah yes, not to worry on the priority etc, those are defined at the start of the agile stage, when specifying epics etc. What helps is them telling me how important each project actually is, which they do and I appreciate - it helps me focus. Like say, it's more important to focus on a client project rather than on an internal one.

I like the idea of the acclimatization, even though what bothers the bleep out of me is those damn Slack interruptions and then the expectation of being available all the time. That's some balance I have to work on as well. You're working on an important project and then some people from the lesser project act like their project is super important. ping ping ping bloop, ping, bloop. Yes, alignment with the shareholders, classic stuff. I dislike all that extra management.

It makes me go crazy when I am context-switching. Yes, I organize well as well, but here is the kicker: stress throws my organization into hell. lol. Something to work on.

@CaptainRant I don't like agile. too many meetings

I got free reign before management stepped in. just go browse and assign yourself as the dev on the ticket. you didn't need to have meetings. you could just do this anytime

then I'd assign a tester to the ticket when I was done. and documented everything in the ticket. and if they had questions they dropped by to ask.

meetings themselves sound like the worst way to do anything. everyone just wants to escape the meeting and everybody is awkward, and there's always someone who wants to tell everyone else what to do or try to force some kind of "this is the way we do things here" which might not fit everybody. like I can't remember what I did yesterday. but I can write notes of what I'm doing and reference them. once an event is passed why would I devote mental energy to keeping it around? I just move on.

but in agile you have to devote mental energy or you're viewed badly which is ridiculous

@CaptainRant oh I had a really bad slack problem also... that situation didn't work out. my lead went at me saying I needed to be aware of everything that was going on in every slack channel... but I didn't even have context for what project each slack channel was about so that was useless and management backed the criticism which made no sense...

it's good they communicate importance. I've been in situations where that is not communicated and then I got blamed for it again. sigh

if people from lesser projects ping you mention you're currently working on the more important one. when I had multiple managers and a less important person wanted my help I said "I'd have time to do this at X but if it's important and you want it sooner you should take to Y manager whose work I'm currently focusing on", so then they can fight it amongst themselves like that, and that worked to keep people happy at the time

@CaptainRant didn't like context switching either. my ADHD or something makes it TERRIBLE. having to switch from something I'm focused on to some nonsense is literally the most painful thing

I saw some people advocate that they need focus time or set themselves on busy on slack to denote when they're in focus mode, and it seemed to be respected

for me I can handle a little bit of shallow conversation without dropping everything but if someone wants to have an extended conversation for 20 minutes out of nowhere where I have to load up their context it was pretty bad...

I think "deep focus" is an acceptable excuse at workplaces though and they might understand the need for that. I only had issues with interruptions when I was in an open office and management thought it was so great anyone could drop by to ask me about anything... text doesn't knock me out but someone physically wanting my attention does 😭

also i'd only do emails morning and before I'd leave, slack also

@jestdotty Management sur likes to get their grubby hands on everything and pretend they're managing. lol.

Oh, but what about having meetings to discuss the scope and requirements? Well.. write them down. Okay, sure, you can have separate meetings to discuss uncertainties.

In a lucky world you get a tester. In a less lucky world you are all roles: dev, tester, DBA, analyst, etc. Fun huh? And then getting snarked at for not writing enough (types of) tests. Spending 1/3rd of your time testing the hell out of everything. lol. "You wrote it, it's your responsibility".

I've had those annoying "this is the way we do things here" meetings, with a PM specifically. Yes, that's annoying. I also agree on the progress notes - just put them in jira or SharePoint. lmao. And the annoying thing of having to keep in mind eeeeeverything everyone is doing on the project because "team" bla bla.

Yes, ridiculous.

@jestdotty Thankfully I hate silent mode on my OS, which is great. Management just likes to point fingers lol.

Sorry to hear about your situations. We must find the best environments.

It's not always easy to tell people off politely - another skill for me to learn. Even to some are so dense that I politely tell them I'm currently occupied on something else, they still hammer on as if it can't wait. The manager referencing is nice. lmao. Managing expectations.. requires such energy. No wonder I'm tired lately.

@jestdotty Baah.. I tried the busy thing. The same annoying person still pinged me. What works is going offline altogether, or setting yourself to meeting indefinitely. lmao

Yes, contexts carry over.

Thankfully I can book meeting rooms for people to leave me the bleep alone. Even then.. sometimes someone thinks it's funny to knock and ask me through the window if I'm going to join their stupid party. No, I'm not. lol

I read somewhere that e-mails in the morning is throwing off your concentration. I try to automate things as much as possible in software. Swish, swish, e-mail filters. Hah. If from management_software and task_assigned > move to tasks. If from newsletter > idgaf. If from jira, filter it out to separate folders.

@CaptainRant would throw concentration off for some people but I'm one of those people who wake up with a blank head and can't think very quick in the mornings so it's the perfect time to get some chores out of the way before I fully boot

good advice is to go with your own understanding of yourself in terms of advice. I kept trying to follow other people's advice when I knew about myself better and that just causes frustration lol. I can say I gave it a fair shot but in retrospect I knew myself already so...

@jestdotty That reminds me of the analogy that your brain hard drive has to purge yesterday's page file (sleep) before it can store and access new information efficiently. Not doing so will leave you feeling sluggish (access from hdd rather than memory). I understand that feeling.

What's this? What's this? A recursive advice! What's this! ♫ Yes, self-knowledge is wisdom. You hold the mirror to your own reality and you shape it. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the wisest of them all? lmfao. It is good to know thyself - it saves more energy.