Episode transcript

Ryan Burgess
Welcome to everyone who's watching, we're recording a Live episode of the front end Happy Hour Podcast. I'm excited to be recording live, we've said that we'd wanted to do more with video and doing more live recordings, hopefully more conferences this year. I'm so excited to get that going. i In this episode, we're actually discussing a tweet that Jen posted a couple of weeks ago, the tweet read, coming up on three years of being an engineering manager. My honest take is that at the fang plus level, it's difficult to advance your career only working nine to five. Now, we're going to debate this, we're really going to dig this and you know, understand gems opinion on this and kind of each weigh in on this. To help with this discussion. We have brought back Jason lengstorf, who's joined us many times on episodes. We're excited to have him join us again. Jason, do you want to give a brief introduction of who you are what you your favorite happier beverages and what you do?

Jason Lengstorf
Oh, I okay. I'm Jason lengstorf. I know that one. Good. All right. We

Ryan Burgess
got a good start there. I love it. Favorite

Jason Lengstorf
happier beverage. I would say right now my favorite happier beverage is a Mezcal Negroni. And I don't know what I do. I am currently helping companies make what I'm calling developer TV. And I have a lot of feelings about that. But we don't have time to go through them.

Ryan Burgess
I feel like we need to have like an episode on that even just like learning more about like developer Ed and all the cool things that you're doing.

Jason Lengstorf
Absolutely love to do that. But I don't want to derail today because I'm so ready to fight Jem.

Ryan Burgess
Oh, yes. The gloves are off for this jam. Awesome. And I love the happy hour beverage choice. That's a good one. All right. Well, let's give introductions of our regular panelists. Surely you want to start it off?

Shirley Wu
Hi, my name is Shirley. Whoo. I don't remember what my title is anymore. But I am a human being and attempting to art.

Ryan Burgess
Do I like that? Augustus. Thank you.

Augustus Yuan
My name is Augustus Yuan and I am also a human being.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, jam.

Jem Young
My name is Jem Young. I'm an engineering manager at Netflix. And I think I'm the only one here with a real job.

Ryan Burgess
Or real full time job. I love it. I mean, maybe we all realize that even nine to five is just a bullshit way to get them out if you haven't realized this yet. No.

Jem Young
One automatically because you're all smarter than me.

Ryan Burgess
All right. And I'm Ryan Burgess, the host of front end happy hour. Jim, I mean, I'm gonna let you kick this tweet off. And you know, just like set it up for us, like, what were you thinking? What are your thoughts?

Jem Young
Oh, it's more. So I've been in Netflix years now. And three of those as an engineering manager. And, you know, I think more about engineering management and kind of that different career ladder when it comes to tech and what it takes to kind of make it to the next level. So the next level in this case would be senior manager, cases director, but usually senior manager where you're managing other managers, essentially. And I look around at my peers, I first team, those are pure managers, my organization, I look at other directors, okay, other leaders across the organization. And I noticed something where everybody's working late all the time, everybody I've talked to everybody's working a lot. And I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who weren't, aren't working. I haven't talked to them. But I'm like, is this how it is? Like, is this just the normal level at this level of just engineering that you have to work harder? Because there's not enough time during the day? And so I talked to people and I asked, various people have different experience levels, and they're all kind of no one's like, oh, yeah, Jamie should be working harder. Like no one ever says that. It's, it's totally, totally on the individual. But reading between the lines, everybody's like, Well, yeah, if you want to, if you want to make it, if you want to make it to Director someday or higher, you do have to put in more work. And like, that's just the nature of it. And but again, no one says that I'm not encouraging people to work more, it's, it's just, if you want a little bit extra in your career, you want to keep pushing out to work really hard to get to get really lucky. And I've started reading more about what other engineering managers say, and kind of everybody comes to that same conclusion, which is, you either get lucky you're in the right startup company organization that's growing and hiring at the same time, and you can get more and more people and become a manager, Senior Manager, etc. Or you get you work really hard. And you put in those extra hours to try to make that impact. But that's that's my perspective. I'm curious to see. What do you all think? Yeah,

Ryan Burgess
I think like One thing I want to just hearing you talk jump on like, Okay, I want to maybe chime in a bit are some on round the framing of it. I don't know that I fully agree on the work that you have to work more than nine to five. But I also want to add that I think that the, the, the luck piece is more of an opportunity, right? There's companies who are growing. And so they're like, especially as leaders, I think that's really what the tweet came down to is more around leadership and the levels around leadership. And so when I think about that is, it's you could be the most talented leader. But if there's only like the scope, and the the the work that's needed of just being a manager, and there's nothing wrong with that, is in that particular role. That's all that's needed. Yeah. Why would you be given a director title or VP or CEO? Like, it's like, it's not needed? And so there is this opportunity, right? If a company is growing, and you're hiring 1020 engineers on your team every year, and your team and scope is constantly growing? Yeah, you should be growing with the role. Or you don't, because you're not talented enough to do that. And you know, that could be a thing too. But if you have the talent and the opportunity, I think that growth is there, where my thoughts are on the nine to five piece is, I think you have to be strategic, as a leader, especially about knowing what to prioritize and what not to, you should be dropping things on the floor. And now, when I say that you can be responsibly dropping them and saying, like, explicitly, like, yeah, I don't think that's the most impactful thing that I'm going to focus my time on, or that my team is, and that you should be able to manage your time so that you're not having to work all the time. Now, I know that's, that's not always an easy task, though. I think that is absolutely easier said than done. So that's, that's going to be my start. I have more thoughts, but I want to open it to you all as well. I have lots of thoughts, but go for Oss? No, go for it, man. You're opening it. Yeah, sure.

Augustus Yuan
So you know, I think, you know, gems tweet, for those who didn't see, it's pinned in the Twitch chat. Definitely, for leaders, I 100%. Agree. I also think engineering at some point, it's it also, like, especially when you're starting out, like you do have to work a little more, if you want to get farther ahead. Like, the biggest example is like on call, like, there are times when you're gonna have to be on call like, and if you're running a service or from a software as a service, or a platform, that's 24/7, and you have services that are running 24/7, someone's going to have to manage in be available. And in my experience managers are also on call all the time, if the on call or secondary does not is not there, guess who it escalates to, at Amazon, it will escalate to Bezos if it needs to, for it to get addressed, right. And so it's just like, I am like, so envious is not the wrong, I have so much respect for like directors and leaders who have to manage so much surface area, and still like be involved in even those small day to day things. Now, naturally, if you're a very great leader, like, it probably doesn't come up as often. But I feel like there's always this like, in the back of your head this like fear or something that you have to this idea that you have to be available. And I just hate that. So when I read Jeff's tweet, I was I really resonated with I was like, yeah, it's just It always feels like a grind. Great points, I

Ryan Burgess
guess is I love that you tied it back to the engineering aspect to where it's not just leaders, because, yeah, your point on on call is absolutely an area where even myself, I've encouraged some engineers, if they're wanting to grow impact and like broaden their scope to potential levels, that that is, you know, a way to kind of grow that skill set. I also think when you're starting out, like you said, you kind of have to like you, you learn things on the job, and we all do, but there's things to like really own that craft. And like, I definitely felt like when I first started, I was doing a lot of side projects and coding and things like that just to be better. So that I felt more confident and in the day to day work. So I kind of forgot about that. So I'm really glad you brought that up. Any other thoughts?

Jason Lengstorf
Okay. I probably have. So I guess let me caveat all of this, right. So I worked as a VP, but I worked at a VP at a company that was 300 people. So scale differences, right. I found my my experience with it, at least was that most of the folks in leadership were working long hours. ers. But it was because they kept doing things that created work for them, if that makes sense, like I, so I'll give you an example. I, I, when I was working at Netlify, I had, like, I would get a call at like 7:30pm from from one of the leadership team. And they would be like, brainstorming, and I was like, What are we brainstorming about? And they're like, Oh, well, what if we, what if we put together this program that had this thing, and we could do this thing? And then there was this other thing? And I was like, Sure, what, are you going to fund that? And they were like, oh, no, yeah, you're probably right. And then they would like hang up, and was like, what are you working for right now? Like you, none of what you just did was useful. And if you would have thought about it for 15 seconds, you would realize there's no budget to do that. So the work you're doing right now is you voluntarily ruining your own evening or ignoring your family or doing whatever the thing is that that you could have been doing with your time to like, spitball on something entirely impractical. Right. And I saw this happen a lot where where like, I would be out at dinner at a leadership meeting or something. And the team would go off in these completely unrealistic directions. And as soon as somebody said, Okay, but what about budget, they would go, Oh, nevermind, I was like, Okay, how about we start that question comes up first, like, and then we can just skip the two and a half hours of discussion and say, You're right, we don't have any money. And so I think that, to me, it's, I think that there is a whole lot of pressure when you're in a leadership position, to be generating ideas, right? Like I need to be contributing to the company. And I think that the unfortunate thing about that is that it contributes to a culture of like, unrealistic idea generation. And we've all worked at companies where there's that, that one director or VP that like flies into everybody's DMS and just unleashes chaos and then disappears. And it's like, you know, it's kind of like, that's that Skeletor meme, like, just the worst thing that you've ever imagined. And they're like, until next time, sorry, it was gonna have a soundboard that I just whacked as I was doing my my timing was so good. My apologies. But so I think like the I do agree that the, the active mental effort required at a director plus level is higher. I, but I think that that active mental effort is is honestly, like, the most effective leadership folks, I know, they're not working longer hours, they're just putting intense levels of focus into the hours they're working. And they just preemptively disqualify ideas so much faster, right? Like, I think the the directors that are working, or director plus who are working, you know, incredibly long hours, they're just not very efficient with the way that they think they'll run off on a completely impractical wild hair Chase. And then they they sort of don't realize until the end, but none of that was actually useful, because none of its really practical, given current constraints. Okay, so I'm

Shirley Wu
going to chime in and say that, I'm going to omit something, which is I thought we were talking about streaming in this episode, we were like, I was like, We got Jason, this is gonna be great. I know about streaming I used to, I got, I got. And so I'm gonna just preface, a disclaimer by saying I have not been at a company in any sort of a leadership position for about eight years. And instead, I'm going to try and just ask questions and learn, and kind of like, summarize what I'm hearing. And something that's like, really interesting, that was like, the through line of what everybody said, was that people get promoted a lot of times because of visibility. Like we see them doing something outside of maybe what is like normally asked of them. And we're like, oh, this person is taking that extra step, which I have a lot of thoughts about toxic productivity, but we don't need to get on that rant. Because then I'll have that soapbox. And that's a different episode. But because of that visibility, we promote the person. And then what was interesting about what Jason just last said, was, it almost feels like because that person was like, you know, doing all of these extra things to like, for that visibility. When they get to the director level. They're still doing it for the visibility, but it's no longer serving them or any of the people that are working with them or for them. That was not a question. I guess I was just a summary.

Jason Lengstorf
Yeah, that's a great summary.

Ryan Burgess
Well, yeah, it was a good summary. I'm like, I don't know what else to add. Surely you did a good job. And yeah, we kind of need some of that soapbox leaders too. So which I think you I know surely you'll have good opinions and thoughts as this conversation goes on. So yeah, no worries there. I'd be curious to something Jim said, as he talked about his tweet, and something that he's recently talked to people or as you've been feeling this to gem of having to feel like you're working more than just the hours in the daytime during your kind of allotted nine to five. And is that because of the pandemic? Like, do you think the pandemic has shifted this? Because this is something maybe I'm like answering my own question, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on it too, is I do feel that things have changed drastically, you've kind of have this like blend mode, where there's a benefits of working more remote. And, you know, not all companies were remote prior to the pandemic. So I'm kind of alluding to lots of companies that had to go that way, is that there was no real shut off, where you're like, Oh, I gotta, you know, drive home, I'm gonna get home and do that thing is that you're a lot closer to work. You're thinking about work more. And I think that's kind of been a lot of those boundaries. And so if Jason messages me at 8am, and maybe I guess you're fine. I'll just respond to that. Yeah. Jason, oh, that's a great idea. And we start spiraling. And then Jim hears us at 10am. He's like, you guys, we don't have budget for that, you know, it's like those types of things start to happen. And I think that, that spirals more and more so that that, to me, is something that I think is different. And I think it has changed drastically. I also think that with the big layoffs that have been happening, like we've seen a lot of tech companies doing major layoffs is they're starting to realize, hey, we can squeeze work out of people more, we can run more lean. And when you run lean, it's kind of hard. It's hard to practice what I said earlier of cutting things like you should, you should still be doing this. But it's really, really hard. It's like I don't even have the bandwidth to think what's the important thing I should be cutting? Anyways, that's that's kind of how I wanted to start. This is like, yeah, how was the pandemic shifted this conversation?

Jem Young
Oh, definitely. The, I guess that's a, I don't know if it's caveat. But all of my engineering management experience is post pandemic, during the pandemic. So like, this is my baseline for working? Like, I don't know anything else other than you have to put in extra work. And that's just what it takes. I'd say, Yes, that's absolutely true. Like, managers get squeezed. Because we're, we're not the ones making decisions. So like, return the office, all these other like policies that are controversial. managers aren't, aren't the one saying like, Oh, let's do this thing. We're implementing someone else's idea. Yet, we get squeezed from the top saying, like, you need to do this, make sure your team's there or whatever. And we get squeezed from the bottom. Because it seems like, this is BS, you know, when I signed on this company, you said, I can work remotely forever. Now you're changing that policy. Granted, that's not the case in my team at all. But I'm aware industry wide, that's a thing. So you have that aspect of managers getting squeezed in that way, too. You know, you're being asked to manage like often hybrid teams and remote work, which is something we've never done in history in history, this has never been done before. Yeah, we have this kind of real time experiment going on for the past couple of years, which is hybrid work, which is some people remote, some people in the office, and your job is to kind of navigate that. And there is no playbook for doing that. Because every team is gonna be different, every company is going to be different. And then add on top of that, you have the looming threat of layoffs, which is always if you're not working hard, if you're not being visible, like Shirley said, you can get chopped, someone doesn't know what you're doing. If the director, the VP, whoever doesn't know what you do what your team does, you could be on the chopping block just as easy as everybody else out there. So you have all these factors weighing in. And as a manager, you're carrying all this weight all the time. And there's no support for you. I can say like, there's no one out there to be like, yeah, it's tough. It's tough. Being a manager, we understand that. It's just, you're squeezed, I think that's the only way to put it. So I think that contributes to that, you got to work harder, you got to work harder. And on one, one extra fun wrinkle in there, which is sometimes I go into the office, I drive down the Netflix engineering headquarters in Los Gatos, which is about an hour some change from Oakland. So that's, you know, maybe a three hour round trip for me. I do that about twice a week, because it's good to have high bandwidth communication with people like one on ones things like that brainstorming is more effective in person, it just, it just is. However, the downside of doing that is all the slack and emails and everything else that just gets into a queue for the day because when I'm in person, I can't do that. Versus now on a stream. I could be doing that right now. You don't you don't know any better. But when you're a person, I have to go home and clear out that queue because everybody like Jason and Ryan, everybody who's been in management knows that that email queue does not go away. You can't just like clear your slack, Slack messages and those problems disappear. So I think in a hybrid world regardless of who you are you If you're if you're going to the office a little bit, you have to either set aside time in your schedule to like, read your emails, or you have to do it when you get home. And this is a super common story amongst everybody I've talked to who does like hybrid working. I'll get off my soapbox there. But TLDR Yeah, managers are getting squeezed from both ends. There's not much we can do about it other than just be more open to talk about it.

Ryan Burgess
One thing on the the messages jam, like I don't disagree, I think during the pandemic, they've shot up like 10 acts. I hate slack, actually don't hate it. Now. I think I hated it. Being more in management, where it's like, you had just so many messages and like everyone's message you left, right and center. But I think what I also maybe enjoyed sometimes when you're in person, so me, I don't know if you get this at all, Jim, but sometimes, like leaving your messages are really long time and maybe doing it at the end of the day or the start of the day. Some of those things just kind of get solved. Right? Like, like, Jim, I need this. And oh, no worries, actually, I figured it out. So that sometimes happens, which is really kind of awesome. But if you are sitting, you know, on a video call, like right now, Jim, stop, you know, responding to your Slack messages, you know, and just be in the moment. But you, you tend to do that because someone's like, Oh, can you just pass me that Doc link? Or can you send me what was that repository? Again, they ended up finding it themselves before that, but like, it's so easy to respond when you're all just like, in front of the computer. So maybe there's a little bit of benefit to like not being so accessible. Yeah,

Jem Young
and one analogy that pops up is that's this thing. That's what's difficult about being a manager is like one You're never done. You don't close, you don't go off Friday be like, Well, I did everything I need to do for the week. Let's start Monday fresh, like that doesn't exist. Oh, when is the best comparison is management is not a linear. It's not a linear game. It's not like you do 12345. And then, like, I got to the end, hurray. It's an open world RPG where there's a lot of different directions you can go in, and you have to make decisions. And no one can tell you, if you're doing the right thing at any given time, maybe you should have been on this path for the past three weeks. And you didn't do that. And that's what's challenging. And that adds to like, the pressure and the squeezing that you have to go through. I

Jason Lengstorf
mean, it's almost, I feel like any any kind of like management or tech leadership, it beyond being open world RPG, it's like, what was that game that Hades, where you just die over and over again, because you get it wrong. And every time you go in, it's like kind of the same, but it definitely changed. And now it's harder, and you're like, Well, what is happening? But like, I empathize so much with what you're saying, because it truly like when because I went I went into the management thing, kind of like I did it for a long time. And I promised I would never do it again. And then when I went back into it at Netlify. It was like, you know, I was like, Okay, maybe maybe I'm more mature now. Now I was wrong. It was the problem was management, not me. But I think that the like what I really noticed was, for me, at least the the constant onslaught of emails and messages and all the things that would come in was it was this sort of the, like, I taught the people who worked with me how to respect my time. And so I had to do things that were terrifying to do at first, and then no one ever said a word about it. Like I, for example, my phone doesn't make any noises whatsoever. The only noise that it will make is if somebody on like an improved contact list calls me otherwise the I have to request my phone to tell me what's going on. Like, I don't even get the like unread message panels on my app icons and stuff. It's like all off, I have to open the app physically to check. And when I first did that, I was like, well, I'll be fired. But I was like, I don't care because I'm gonna burn out if I don't do this, right. I was like, Whatever, I'm gonna lose the job. But this is better for my mental health. And then it turned out I was actually better at my job. And then I did some things like I stopped on Slack, I put like, Do Not Disturb blocks in where they couldn't. Like, I wouldn't get notified if somebody sent me a message until like, 9am The next morning. And I was again I was like, Well, I'm gonna get fired, but whatever. It's better for my mental health. And then it turned out like, like Ryan said, like, people would just sort of work it out if it was urgent, and if it wasn't urgent, they would wait and I would answer it when it came back into the office and like life went on. And then the other thing that I noticed as well was that I like by setting those sorts of expectations. It also like gave my peers the an example to follow that like, oh, they could do that as well. And it gave my team permission to set their own boundaries as well. So like my team stopped working out of hours, because they saw that I wasn't working out of hours and it sort of like you know, that made it easier. And then there were other things that we did to like you were talking about the the kind To the squeeze on both ends and how, you know, we were running on leaner teams. And it just leads to like more and more work. I remember there was there was one meeting that was particularly contentious, where like all the different teams were talking about all the different projects that we needed to get done. And it was like, Okay, well, we can't do all this stuff. So what do we want to prioritize? And everybody was like, well, we need to do it all. And they like, wouldn't let anything go. So I just made everybody write their stuff down on post it notes. And then we took each of like, each employee that we had, and we put them on a board, and we were like, Okay, you can put four post it notes on an employee. But that's it. Like, if you get more than four, like, we got to put it somewhere else. And then we ran out of spots. And then they were like, okay, but this one has to get done, or like, what's it more important and, and all of a sudden, the leadership team was like speaking the same language, and we actually prioritized and like, put stuff on a backlog list. It was like when these are done, we'll revisit these and they were like, wow. And then the team, like, hit all their goals, and they weren't stressed out. I wasn't having the emergency meeting that's like, I can't get all this stuff done. What am I going to do? Like I had one of the people on my team, like, I think I've told the story before about how, when I was younger, I got so stressed out that my beard fell out. One, one of my team members, had his beard start falling out. And that was what led me to do this meeting. I was like, No, we're not doing this. Like we're fixing this right now. And it took a couple years, but his beard is back because we we solve this problem. But it's very much like, the part that I think is really hard about leadership is that a lot of times people get into leadership because they're good at something that's not leadership, you're really good. As an engineer, you're really good. As a storyteller, you're really good at making a team feel welcome. But we don't get trained on how to be managers and leaders. And so our training is effectively did we take the time to go read a book like did we all buy Sarah Dreiser's engineering management book, and then we're like, okay, now I have to like, go practice this stuff, but you're not getting feedback, because your manager didn't read that book. So they, they don't know what's going on. Right. So it's, we're sort of like training each other without any formal training. And it puts us in this bad position of like, our coping mechanisms are what engineers do. And that's not what managers should do. So we have to build a different set of, of coping mechanisms and, and like reactions to adverse situations that are very unnatural at first and feel very, like cold hearted and like telling people that I don't have time for you. But it's ultimately like, the control that we take back that we the the systems that we put in place are the things that give people the stability to feel like, oh, you know what, I am safe to not work tonight, I am safe to wait until tomorrow to solve this problem. I am safe to say I don't have bandwidth for this. I'm starting to get into a loop. So I'll stop talking.

Ryan Burgess
I think I love I love what you've said, Jason, because I think like setting those boundaries are so so important. And I want to call out something specific that you said too, was you ended up being better at your job. And that's, that's the funny thing is like, Why do you think we have vacation time? Why do you think we don't work all the time, is because we we just can't be at our best. And so that's why like the prioritization and cutting things is so important, because, you know, you want to focus on those top highest value things, and make sure those are just like, so well done. And those other things, if you didn't get to them, who cares? Like it's better not to to, like knock the other one out, like 110%, and making sure that that thing is really, really great. I unfortunately, worked with a manager that once told me that I mean, there was it was a little bit of an issue in the sense that like, I mean, a lot of the fang companies, since we're talking about that have unlimited vacation. So unlimited vacation is interesting. I think it's a good thing. But they were poking on an engineer for taking like, I don't know, they felt like it was too many, too much time. And I kind of was like, Okay, let's talk about that. And her thought on it was that this engineer could do more, right, could get more work done. My perspective. And that may be true, but my perspective was, Well, are they performing? Well, when they're working? are they performing? Are they getting the work done? are they learning things very well? To me, that's great. So maybe they do need I don't know, maybe there's there's an upper bound, I'm sure like, you can't take a year off, right? Like, did you get any work done six months, that seems like a lot like I don't know what the threshold is. But some people if they take a certain amount of time, or maybe every one Friday a month off or whatever it is to recharge, they might actually be 10x better than working that extra day of the month. Like that's the thing is like knowing your boundaries and understanding. You can actually be better at your job and perform well. It's the same thing as like, if let's use like a sports analogy, like you can't, you know, be like a basketball player and go all 24 hours straight or whatever you need to like, eat healthy, you need to exercise you need to rest you need all these things in order to perform at that game. And so things like that I think we need to consider is like how are you your best performer?

Jason Lengstorf
There's a lot of research like this is the part that's kind of a bummer is like, we have the research that says remote work actually did work like it's it's just provably better. We know that four day work weeks are provably better. We know that if somebody works 40 hours at a sustained pace versus 60 hours at a sustained pace, after about five weeks, the person working 60 hours is so overtired that their error rate goes up high enough that they're less productive than the person working 40. Like we know all this stuff. But culturally, we we have a really hard time like internalizing it, because and I think this is kind of a Western thing, maybe an American thing, we have the American exceptionalism like those, those rules apply to everybody except me. Like, I'm different. Like, I can work 90 hours, and I'll know I'll be fine. And I know that like, that's how I learned is I thought that I was immune to all of the facts. And then my beard fell out. And I was like, wait, I'm gonna die. And then I was like, Okay, maybe the rules do apply to me. So I know, we got to learn the hard way, I had to learn the hard way. But the part that's a bummer to me is that we like we have this research and we just have a really hard time. Like, looking at at that thing that says, you know, an engineer, or really any white collar professional, that does knowledge work, working about 30 hours, 30 to 30 to 35 hours a week is honestly about as effective as they're going to be and anytime beyond that is wasted. And then we grind them into dust with, like, constant pings constant demands on their time, trying to make them fit family time into the cracks between checking emails, it's like, you know, we're all getting worse results, right? Like, we know that right? Which doesn't help the the core problem, which is whether or not you like, what should be isn't what is so like, I don't know if it's relevant to the core of this discussion, but it feels I don't know, this is like, this is my soapbox. I actually,

Shirley Wu
there was something really interesting in there about how like, most of us aren't taught how to be a manager, and we have to figure out on the job, and then. And then when we were because again, when we were talking about when we were like let's say I see and junior engineers, what we were taught to do was like work harder for visibility, like all of that. Like, it really does sound like it's kind of like a hazing thing, like an unintentional hazing. Of like, I worked really hard, and I got here, and so you should also work really hard to get here. And then I think it's, I'm grateful that there are people breaking that chain, like what Jason You said about, like, intentionally being like, this is my boundaries. And we gotta, like, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta, you know, respect that, um, I really, I don't think there's enough of us that do that. And also what you said about now you have to teach your manager, like, you have to manage your manager, to like, also be on the same page as you for doing that. And I think about this all a lot, because I do think that toxic productivity was basically just bred into me from young childhood of like, I remember that I was in, it was ingrained into me to not leave my study desk, um, even if I needed to go to the bathroom until I finished a certain number of problem sets. Um, and that was like, at like, 11 years old. I'm sorry for bringing this up. I, so this is all leading somewhere. And so I think when I started as like a junior engineer, I worked around the clock. Um, but and then as I started my own business, I worked around the clock because I felt like, oh, I need to, like, I need to invest more of my time to make this successful. Like now, not only am I an Icee, I'm also the manager of my own business. Um, and it took me about these, like, it took me like a good five, six years to realize, like, Oh, this is why I'm burnt out and like balance and boundaries is really, really helpful. And this is also why I didn't hire anyone for like, the first six years of my working for myself, because I was like, Oh, I'm going to be the shittiest manager. And I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be subconsciously hazing that person being like, why aren't you working harder like you? Like I would have been exactly what Ryan described of like, Oh, I could squeeze the time out of you because I squeezed more time out of me. And it took a lot of like, intentional effort to kind of let go of that both on myself and also on the people that I do. Now work with and I'm sometimes I'm still like, oh, they could be answering this faster. And I'm like, yo, chill out. Like, they're not even your full time employee. They can answer this. Answer this one, they want to answer this. But here's a little bit to say it's like, going back to the original question or like, you know, the hypothetical statement or of, you know, working outside of the nine to five is what gets you promoted? Um, it kind of sounds like, it really is. Yes, this is currently true, yes, it's very, like, toxic. Um, and it really does seem like there just needs to be more and more people that have that like, intentional mental shift to be like, Oh, I've been on this path before I've burnt out. And I don't think I want to be doing this to other people. Having said all of that, I do have a question of, I do remember that a lot of times, what actually made me work outside of a nine to five is just because I think that I just work better when I don't have to, like work. Like, I just hate sitting in the desk for those eight hours, like, I just work much better when I'm given the freedom of working whenever I want. And so then, um, I, even when I was at a full time job, I wouldn't be working nights and I would be working weekends and and I did work much more than I should have. But part of that was like, I just like during the day, there was just so many distractions in the office. And I had been told by multiple people that I probably have undiagnosed ADHD, and that's a side conversation. But like, there was just so many distractions in the office that like, I will have to take a meeting or like, there'll be a coworker that I'm like, Oh, hello, and we get like, distracted by a half hour conversation, that I just was doing all my coding at night. Um, and I do think that that did make me look busy. And I do think that that did help with my visibility and reputation. Um, and so I kind of want to present this other side of like, I'm not trying to say that my work habits are healthy because I do I do have what they call like the work life integration. I'm in it works for me only because I think that having control of how I spend my time is actually much more empowering than being like, these hours. I will. I'm, I'm being forced to do this. And these hours, I'm being forced to family. And, and so I guess like, Yeah, I'm just trying to be like, the other. The other side of it. So

Ryan Burgess
you're saying, Yeah, I was gonna say I'm like, I think Charlie's just saying, Jim, in order to promotion. Just quit your job and have more flexibility.

Shirley Wu
Joy funemployed.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, like, I think you're doing it wrong.

Jason Lengstorf
Come to us

Augustus Yuan
on the dark side. Japan, right. In

Shirley Wu
Japan, and California.

Augustus Yuan
Thank you. All right, I

Ryan Burgess
got this. Go ahead.

Augustus Yuan
Oh, yeah, I think I get what truly say like, the autonomy to work when you want to work is different. And like, you know, nine to five is a little literal, like, if you if for whatever reason you prefer to work, five to love it. I don't know, what, five plus eight hours like, you know, that's on you. But I get that and like, if that's something you prefer that you should totally do that. And people shouldn't feel pressured to work, adjust their hours for you. I also do, I really liked a thing that Jason kind of brought up, like, indirectly, which is like this idea of culture setting, which is like such an important part of like, breaking that mold that I think we've all been kind of speaking to, like, you know, nine to five, like, how you operate? Like, yeah, sure. You could say like, Hey, don't Don't copy me Don't do that. But it's like, it makes a big difference. If you are also exhibiting, like, what you're preaching, I guess, you know, like, I think it just makes such a big difference to be that culture setter, if that makes sense. And

Jason Lengstorf
I think that that's also like, the the part that's really tricky is I remember I am going to like sort of anonymize the story just to not, you know, but there was a situation where I had the leaders on a team were in in conflict with the employees, and the, you know, one of the hardest parts about leadership is that a lot of times, you know, details that you can't share. And then you have to go communicate to a team that like, might understand if you gave him the details, but you definitely cannot give them the details. And so the the leadership team is like trying to talk through what's happening with the, the, the employees, and there's just this like this complete disconnect there. They're at loggerheads, right. And then we felt like I just started digging into it and was like, What's going on here? Like how, like, what, who is setting this thing up so that people have to do things this way? And the the leadership team was like, nobody was like, What do you mean like that, like the employees are saying that we have this policy, and they're like, We don't have that policy. And so I dug in more and more. And what I found out was that we had, we had evolved and like a norm, it was not policy, it was not a rule, it was just a thing that happened at the company that everybody believed you had to do. It was it was nowhere in our handbook or anything. But when people brought it up to leadership leadership was like, you don't have to do that. And then they would say, but we have to like we feel pressure to do that. And so I think that's why it's was such a big deal for me. And the part that I think bums me out, is that when I do the things that I do in leadership positions, like turning off my notifications or setting Do Not Disturb windows on Slack. I'm doing it because I'm okay losing my job, because I have this tremendous amount of privilege that that says that if I lose my job, somebody else is going to hire me. Right? I know that not everybody can do that. And I don't know that I would have the courage to take that risk. And like tell the company like, I don't care what your what your implicit policy is, I'm going to set up a policy that I think is healthy, and you can either deal with it or fire me, that shouldn't be the default, right? Like that shouldn't be the risk that somebody has to take to set a good example inside of a company. But I think that it, it then speaks to folks like me, who are put into these positions of power, who have the privilege of if this job doesn't work out, I can go get another job to then take that risk, like be the person who who sets that up for the rest of the team and tell everybody that it is okay to not have these bad code, like an emergent cultural norm. Like a really good example, this is actually like, in a lot of companies, there's that whole thing about like first and last out, right. And so people feel like they need to be the first one at the office, and they can't leave until the boss leaves or whatever that is, that's not a rule. And a lot of bosses don't care about this. But once it gets so ingrained in the culture, somebody will get promoted, who remembers that and now it's part of the policy. Like if you leave before me, I had to stay until my boss left it's you know, what Shirley was talking about what the hazing. And so now you've got, like corporate policy that is, is it's completely in the culture, right? And like corporate can say, Don't do that, they'll still have bosses that punish their employees for for doing it, right. So it's, it's got to be the sort of thing like, you almost have to build an opposite culture and what I, what I used to do it nullify, and what I was actually really proud of that company for is they had a culture of like, the opposite kind of, of hazing. Like, if you were on vacation, and you showed up in Slack, you would get absolutely shouted down like they you'd come in, you'd be like, Hey, I just saw this thing everybody like get out of slack don't We don't want to hear what you have to say shut up, get out of here, go on vacation. It to the point that like we had an employee who was out for a few months, and they came in like three times and their manager just deactivated their slack account, they're like, I'll invite you again when you come back. Like you can't be in here. Like be on vacation. And I thought that was so healthy to see from the company because it's it's it's enforcing what we want like we can't say one thing and then tacitly endorsed the bad behavior as if that doesn't build culture. And so yeah, I think like but I also I'm trying not to monologue too much I'm so sorry what Shirley said about the nine to five and like not working those hours I would I would highly walk back anything that I said that implied like set hours because I've never been a set hours person like I've always worked 35 to 45 hours a week on average, but it's at the weirdest times a day like I'll work from seven to nine and then I'll go get like an hour and a half coffee break and then I'll like come back and work a little bit and then take a two hour lunch and work in like seven to nine at night because that's when I felt like doing it. I work weird hours but I work about eight hours a day

Jem Young
I'm gonna throw in a combo breaker because i i Everything you all are saying is 100% Correct. However, a lot of it is theoretical. Like in theory leaders should be like be aware of like how much time their their teams are working and say like, no, don't do this. Want to work late at night do it invisibly. Turn your turn your slack off to so you're off. You don't want to show up online, don't send emails late at night etc. However, I will say all of you are wildly successful, I think any one of you can say you have enviable careers that anybody in the world would love to have. Not a single one of you got there by working eight hours a day, like every one of you coded outside of at night for fun. You did side projects beyond, outside of work and things like that. There's nothing wrong with that, because we have fun doing it. We like it's being creative is like one of the best feelings in the world. And like, like you said, early, like sometimes you can only get that outside of, you know, all the notifications and all that. But we all did work a lot more, especially in our 20s, probably, at our, than our day jobs. So part of that, like I accept going into engineering management, it's a totally different job, it's totally different career, I have to work outside of my job. And I need that creative space that I cannot find during the day in order to like, come up with creative solutions. But I tasked us all to be honest with ourselves and say, like, we all worked a lot more to get where we are.

Shirley Wu
I love this call out. And it reminds me of this comic four panel comic that Alex showed me recently. And I felt equally called out about and there was like, first panel and older lady making a speech about being like, balance, have balanced, maintain, breaks, boundaries, and then someone in the audience being like, but you're rich and successful, and I still need a job and I need to. And then why should I and then second panel, and it was like second panel, but boundaries. And then then and then the and then like third panel like person asks the same question. And then And then last panel is like the lady cutting her off and be like, buy my books. And I do I very much. You're right, I do deserve that call out because I did work. But I worked a lot in my 20s. Um, but also, I don't think this is making me sound better. But I do work a lot. Now also, because I enjoy what I'm doing. And I do think there's something there is something about I was also thinking while and through this conversation of like, if this conversation is within the context of being promoted at a company, what does it mean, for me, as an individual business owner of like, any one person consulting shop? What does it mean for me to be promoted? And I don't have a clear answer on this. I'm but I do like, is it about getting more clients? Is it get about getting more high profile clients? Is it about making more revenue is about expanding my business? And in all of those? In any of those? The answer has been like I do work more, because then it means not only am I working my billable hours, like right now I'm trying to expand my business and I am taking I'm not only doing my regular billable hours, I'm also doing the calls outside of those hours to start the businesses that I am all of this to say like I guess the one difference that I can cite for myself is like I'm doing it to myself. And I don't know, I don't Sorry, that was a bad way to No,

Ryan Burgess
no, I think like you're saying like, you still have like control over that. And like you're ultimately like deciding, like, how do I get to this end goal. And I think like we didn't even really say much on this around promotions. Like to Jim's tweet, I read more into the like, very much like levels, you know, like, it's very specific and clear. But like promotions, that's not everything or growth, I always think of that as growth doesn't necessarily mean that to everyone. It could literally be I want to work with said technology, or I want to be working with you know, for you surely working with a specific client or I want to work with one or two clients a year where I do just a killer job and get paid like millions of dollars for that one project. And you know what I mean? And that could be your goal, and how you get there? It varies, right? Like is it working nine to five? Is it working extra? Is it all those steps in order to get there, but it may not just be like I want to work, you know to be said title, it can mean various things. So I think like that's what you're getting to. And I think another thing that you said that really resonated with me too is you have to have a balance of what you like doing. Like I can definitely sit and work way more hours than it should be when I'm really enjoying that. I enjoy most aspects of my old job of being a manager at like a tech company. There's a lot of things I thoroughly enjoyed. But when that changes where it's like, wow, actually, the percentage of things I'm enjoying is less than less. It's like, why am I doing this? You know, and that to me is, you know, I'm not going to spend more hours in the day doing something that I'm like, This is not useful. It's not impactful, this just as a waste of time, I'm gonna put that boundary and say, like, I'm just not doing it, because I'm not going to be happy. And so, you know, maybe I'll be like, Jason, it's like, well, if they fire me for that, then you know, it's like, it can happen. But there again, that's privileged too. And I get that, and I'm glad Jim brought us back to like, all worked our asses off in some way, shape, or form done more than what we, you know, expected to do than the nine to five.

Jason Lengstorf
I will, I will offer a brief anecdote. I'm going to err, quote, brief, I'm so sorry. I. So, early in my career, I was working wild hours, I was an agency owner, and I was capped out on what I could earn. Because I was so overbooked that like I couldn't work on expanding my offerings or learning more about sales or any of that, because I was just like, wall the wall 90 hours a week, just cranking out these websites that I made very little for. When I, when I actually like my beard started falling out, which was a very like, Okay, this is a reckoning, right? Like, I think that's one of the in retrospect, best things that ever happened to me, was this huge health scare. Because it, it didn't give me a choice, I was like, I am not going to be somebody who dies at their desk, I'm not willing to do that. So what changes for me, and I ended up going into, like, consulting for a company that that, you know, it was a pay cut, but it was enough that I could stay alive. And it gave me a chance to like, think about how I wanted to spend my time and I've actually never worked the the like crank hours. Since then, with a few notable exceptions, where it was like we're gonna put in, you know, a couple of weeks here, and then we'll build in extra time off to the next few weeks to like, even out for that. And what I've noticed is that my, my career progression, rapidly accelerated when I was being more more intentional about how I spent my time. And so I think that the, what I will say is putting more time into something as as a hobby, as extended learning is whatever it is, is a lot of how I got to where I am. And it's still something that I do for fun. It's, you know, one of my hobbies is goofing around with new tech. So I'm not disagreeing with the point that that extra hours make for extra progress. What I would caution against is the belief that all extra hours are created equal. Because I think that it is very, very easy. The joke that I make all the time is this, this career is a pie eating contest, where the prize for winning is more pie. So the thing that you do is the thing that you get offered, right. And so if you are the person who's like the team garbage disposal, where everything bad becomes your problem, they will continue to offer you the worst problems because you're the garbage disposal. If you want to be somebody who's working on the interesting stuff, you got to keep yourself clear, so that you can knock that interesting stuff out of the park. So they want to offer you that next r&d thing, right. And so the extra hours are fine. But make sure that you're optimizing for something that you've got a goal you're working toward with that extra effort. Because otherwise, you're just kind of setting yourself up to grind into dust, cleaning up whatever mess comes your way.

Augustus Yuan
I like that super well said. I just want to like say one quick thing, this like idea of like, how you value time is such an important thing. It kind of reminds me of this tick tock, but it was a workshop meeting. This is like something super, like prevalent in like the design space where I saw this video of this guy, he's leading a workshop and he goes to a business guy, and he's like, designing a logo. And he's like, Oh, how much do you think this logo should cost? He's like, Well, how long did it take you? He's like, Well, why does that matter? And he's like, Well, you know, like, I want to like know how much effort you put into this logo. And like, you know, he's like, he's like, well, so if I made you like the logo spot on took me like five minutes. It's the perfect logo that you want. Like, you're saying you would pay me less than it took me a long time. It's like, well, like you put more He's like, he's like, Well, why would I pay you more? If it took you longer? Like why I'll like add more effort to it. I'll like I'll, I'll put more thought into it. And it's just like this idea that it's like, you know, what are you really paying for and what are you really valuing like, and we have this culture of like valuing time spent, and I think this contributes to the whole idea that you know, if we work longer if we work harder, that looks good, but that's not necessarily true, and we need to like, move away from that. If you're doing solid work in like a shorter amount of time, however you're doing it, like keep doing that, you know? And yeah, yeah. No, I

Ryan Burgess
guess I love that you said that that was like, huge and amazing point. It's, it's like, yeah, that person who made that logo has acquired a skill, they're really good at that. And they built that skill, and they want to focus on doing that skill and can bang that out really fast. Who cares, the end result is still the same. If you know if I went to go design your logo, it's gonna take forever, if you're going to pay me because I don't know what I'm doing. I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to learn while you're paying me. But like what you're doing for someone is you're paying them for that skill that they've acquired. And they're good at doing that. And so I think that's, that's super important to call out. I love that. Yeah, this has been an awesome discussion. Thank you, Jim, for sparking such a good tweet that Yeah, really? I don't know if we've answered it that like you should, or shouldn't, you know, I think there's very in cases of like, you know, nine to five are working after. But I think the biggest takeaway I have here is you have to be really good about setting boundaries, and be aware of what works for you and how you work. You know, and caveat that a little bit too is that you also have to understand how the work culture is and team dynamics. And, you know, there might be meetings that you do actually have to show up for and so you're like, Well, I have to be there. You know, I can't just ditch that. And so I think there were some really good points here. You know, Jason, thank you. As always, thank you for coming and joining us as a guest. It's always a pleasure having you. I know you've been doing a lot lately, but yeah, what where can people get in touch with you if they want to learn more about Jason and learn with Jason all the fun stuff?

Jason Lengstorf
Head to I think the the most active place right now would be the Learn with JSON YouTube channel, or learn with Jason dot dev either. Either spot has links to all the things I do. And I'd love to hang out with you.

Ryan Burgess
Awesome. Yes. And thank you all for joining us on our live stream. I hope to do more of these. This was a lot of fun. I mean, we always have fun on the podcast, but I think having a little bit of an audience is always a lot better. I've always enjoyed that at conferences and everything like that, too. So thank you for joining us and hopefully you enjoyed the conversation as well. And really, you can find front end happy hour, front and happier.com What else like we're on YouTube @frontendhh, Twitter front end. Ah, ah, listen to us on really whatever you like to listen to podcasts on. Thank you for joining us.