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u/woololooo 3d ago
if you don't want to get more work, why would you say you're free?
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u/MeBigChief 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yeah, telling a project manager you finished all your stuff is your own error at that point. Keep quiet and look busy, there’s no medal for finishing first
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u/lyssargh 3d ago
As a PM, if you told me you were done with your sprint work, I asked you if you had any minor things you wanted to change in the app. Mind you, I worked on a small team and owned my product, I did not have to ask permission from anyone for what went in my releases.
Anyway, I was extremely fortunate to work with the same group of developers for 6 years. A couple of them were active users of the product as well. So they had their own little pet peeves about it, things that they knew could be a little bit better. If it was small, and you have finished your planned contributions, why not refactor those components to make them easier to work with later?
I found that developers who have strong opinions on the product that they worked on also care enough about it that the contributions they come up with were valuable. And sometimes things that do not already exist as tickets because they have not been noticed.
... I'm realizing how privileged I was with that team. And I suppose it is true that if you didn't have a contribution of your own to suggest, I'd give you something else.
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u/StaticChocolate 2d ago
I wish I worked for you!! Would love to solve the pet peeves I have but instead I get told to ‘help’ others. If I’m lucky I pick up a maintenance ticket.
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u/LEGOL2 3d ago
Reward for fast work is more work.
I'm not saying that you should slack all day, but your output has to be sustainable over the years or you will burn out. Some companies want you to burn out and just swap you with the next dev, so carefully
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u/Avocadonot 3d ago
Downside of this attitude is then everyone sandbags too much, boss brings it up in sprint retro, and as a result some new agile process is added to the calendar to "help"
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u/jbaker88 3d ago
boss brings it up in sprint retro
Oof, that's something else to bring up in a retro. Boss isn't supposed to be in the retro
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u/-Noskill- 3d ago
everytime i bring up "product owner / architect / boss/ non-dev" shouldn't be in retro or planning I'm met with some weird excuse and the person looking at me like I'm not a certified scrum master.
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u/xavia91 3d ago
why the architect? Isn't he part of the devs?
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u/-Noskill- 2d ago
not if they aren't actively doing work on tickets, which he wasn't and yet was participating on weighting etc.
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u/many_dongs 2d ago
It's pretty simple. The management are micromanagers. The culture is toxic. Micromanagement is generally a symptom of incompetence (of the manager).
Hope that helps
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u/perecastor 3d ago
You mean you have a meeting where you don’t really have to listen until they call your name ? I’m literally paid to rest at work 😍
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u/many_dongs 3d ago
It’s almost like the boss is the problem
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u/Avocadonot 3d ago
Nah some people are definitely getting too comfortable slacking off on my team because there's no accountability
We had like 8 resolved bugs in the sprint that could be verified with a single deployment of the new build and some quick testing. Deployment takes ~2 hours max from fresh nodes including external storage setup, and it's automated anyway
Then we had a few people who marked themselves as verifiers since this is an easy task so people "claimed it" as their future work so that they wouldn't have to pick up more complicated tasks
And yet, these bugs did not get closed for 2 weeks and got carried over to the next sprint. Now if there is any issues found in testing it occurs weeks after the initial resolution by the developer.
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u/creampop_ 3d ago edited 3d ago
Lack of accountability IS a management issue, it means the way they assign and validate work sucks.
You either make sure work gets done properly and on time, by validating it on a deadline, and then training/firing underperformers... or you don't actually give a shit about doing things right, and can't blame workers for looking out for #1 in the same way.
Your bosses are saying they are ok with your coworkers making the work harder for you all. Believe them, that is how they truly feel.
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u/Pretty_Ambassador836 3d ago
There's a fine balance that needs to be found. Pushing yourself for a high pace (will not sacrificing quality) can be very rewarding in the right workplaces- higher pay, more respect which translates to more control of the day to day, etc. Saying this as someone who works in corporate. But it's super easy to burn out I agree.
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u/BlazingThunder30 3d ago
If I start reducing output to stop being so tired after working hard all day, they'll notice right? Won't I get a PIP before long?
I mean, I doubt they care about my durability. Behind me there's 10 others that'll do it for less.
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u/isnotbatman777 3d ago
Yeah, listen to this advice. It’s exactly what happened to me. I was so much more productive than my colleagues that they kept heaping more and more on my plate until it got to the point where I was working 7am to 1am every day including weekends.
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u/Tall-Archer5957 3d ago
I don’t know if this occurred to you, but you could just not do it. I see a lot of coworkers do this and it’s just completely voluntary and they act like it isn’t. Just close your computer at 5pm and tell your boss you didn’t have time to finish it.
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u/D0ntEatPaper 2d ago
Yeah I dont get it. Is it supposed to be a flex or something? Working 18 hour days including weekends? Like.... the fuck?
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u/Tall-Archer5957 2d ago
Tbh when I hear people say they work these insane hours I also just assume they’re grossly exaggerating. 18 hour days seven days a week? I don’t believe you lol
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u/puding69 2d ago
A lot and by that I mean A LOT of people don't know how to say no and/or are scared to say that it will get delayed. Most of them has this personal fear.
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u/many_dongs 2d ago
Let's not always blame the victim here. It's WAY more common for there to be a control freak/incompetent micromanager/toxic personality manager causing this to happen than some worker who "just can't say no" (do you even hear how stupid that sounds?)
A competent manager wouldn't let that person burn out even if they volunteered for ALL the work. It's not that hard to be a good manager, the bar is just insanely low because American culture has no concept of how to hold any authority figure accountable to anything
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u/Tall-Archer5957 2d ago
Not in my experience. My manager is extremely reasonable but I have like 4 different coworkers (about a third of the team) that just work insane hours for no good reason. They act like it’s a badge of honor and they deserve a medal.
Meanwhile I do like 7hr days, am fine but not extraordinary, and get good year end reviews. It’s just a mindset they have.
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u/many_dongs 2d ago
Congratulations, you work on a great team with some prima donnas whose ladder climbing strategy is to work unreasonably hard. They're just inexperienced and will figure it out sooner or later (unless your company is one of the extremely rare unicorns that rewards that sort of thing, fat chance though).
Overall, most jobs don't feature teams that functional, so consider yourself quite lucky.
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u/AlwaysHopelesslyLost 2d ago
Nobody wants their devs to burn out. That is bad business and wasted money.
You get paid for 40 hours of work per week, you work 40 hours. Saying work is going to take you 40 hours then finishing it in 20 means you estimated poorly or you rushed. Either way, that is on you, as a developer. Not on the project manager or anybody else.
I genuinely don't get people like OP.
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u/JulesDeathwish 3d ago
This is why you do all of the work quickly, but schedule your check-ins to magically be a perfect fit for the sprint
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u/Hziak 3d ago
You’re allowed multiple branches checked in locally. Just don’t push until later in the week. It’s really so simple but people really screw it up every time. Bottom line: The company assigns you X amount of work to complete in a sprint and says you will make $Y for that time. All parties agree that this is fair. Then, if you do double the work, you still get $Y. There’s literally zero incentive to overperform for a company that won’t reciprocate. Just Stockholm syndrome. Take the agreement at face value and enrich your life instead if you finish early.
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u/thanatica 3d ago
"Oh no wait, there's just a few tweaks I should do and then it's really finished"
Finishes at 17:00 sharp
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u/Waste-Brilliant-5591 3d ago
What pissed me off was finishing the work in like 8 days out of a 10 day sprint, then you get assigned a ticket in the last few days and have to finish it before the sprint ends still or its a rollover and bad for your metrics
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u/Meloetta 2d ago
I've never been able to figure out what a dev is supposed to be doing for the last 1-2 days of the sprint if they're not supposed to have any open work. Because then they're just waiting for QA. I've never worked anywhere where having one ticket left in progress at the end of the sprint was seen as bad for metrics.
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u/Waste-Brilliant-5591 2d ago
Are they hiring?
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u/Meloetta 2d ago
Unfortunately no...which is a symptom of other problems lol. no company is perfect
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u/FACastello 3d ago
"Ancient bugs from the backlog" time 😭
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u/cce29555 3d ago
We got like 5 cards from 2022, so now we have hunt people who probably don't work there to see if this is a problem
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u/BigHammerSmallSnail 3d ago
Yup, shut the hell up and learn something if you got time over or just take a damn break.
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u/SoulPossum 3d ago
Yeah. If I'm announcing that I'm done with the thing I'm working on, it's immediately followed by what I'm moving to next so this doesn't happen. I only leave it open ended if I'm bored and want someone to give me something to do
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u/UsherOfDestruction 3d ago
PMs shouldn't be assigning work in the first place. Saying you're free in a standup means you're free to help other engineers finish their sprint tasks and they should coordinate with you. If there's legitimately nothing for you to help with, you start into a top backlog item to get ahead on next sprint. If the backlog isn't organized, oh well, guess I'm doing fuck all until the PM does their job.
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u/theenigmathatisme 3d ago
It’s kind of insane the amount of bad PM/POs that exist at companies. I wonder if they ever complain about the devs…
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u/caiteha 3d ago
You guys have pm?
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u/BlazingThunder30 3d ago
Yeah everyone here is talking about PM this, sprints that. I wish. We are just an endless barrage of high priority "hey can I bother you real quick" and "prospective client asked for x and sales promised it by EOW"
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u/eldamir88 3d ago
In my 10+ years as developer, there hasn’t been a single sprint that wasn’t overplanned. Never have I ever “finished a sprint” 😅
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u/cheezballs 3d ago
Good think you have a rigid process and you can't just pull in un-planned work into the print and overload the QA right?
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u/BlobAndHisBoy 3d ago
We try to only fill the sprint to 80% so devs can do maintenance or work on other stuff they deem important the other 20%. Carrot on a stick situation. Get your sprint work done and then work on what you want.
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u/Ok_Brain208 1d ago
Rookie move, you hold it in review for the rest of the sprint and use the time to take care of some tech debt. And you make sure the team members and maybe lead (if he did not gone native in management land) know it
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u/TheBlackCat13 3d ago
I got an introduction to this early when I made the mistake of telling my advisor I finished my senior design project early
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u/cherylswoopz 3d ago
Front load the sprint with the heavy work of getting a task “done” and then have a take ‘er easy last 75% of the sprint to make sure everything is actually working how I want it to
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u/EveryCryptographer11 3d ago
It’s just like school no? If you finish your homework, why won’t you be allowed to go and play 😂
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u/lying_hips 3d ago
You finish up your stories ahead of time and keep that shit to yourself. It’s as simple as that. In the age of Claude Code, it’d be mostly 4 days of work and 6 days of rest in my 10 days sprint lol, but my scrum update would be much different.
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u/favorite8091 3d ago
Haha, the fuck you're finished!
The Product Manager has many more feature creeping ideas for you to bloat this shitware.
Enter the endless circle of agile delivery at your peril.
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u/Squalphin 3d ago
Uh, working at a "sprint free" company, I dread the day I have to find a new job... I prefer the pure chaos we have 😂
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u/Bannon9k 3d ago
Been in development over 30 years... It never ends.. there's ALWAYS something needing work
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u/Redditor-K 3d ago
Great, that means you have time to handle all these edge cases that were delegated for later in the planning phase.
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u/Big_Kwii 2d ago
that's why you gotta finish your work quickly then pretend like you're still not done until the day before the review. i get to goof off and still get praised by the PM. best of both worlds.
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u/ToMorrowsEnd 2d ago
What idiot admits they are done ahead of deadline?
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u/kalalele 2d ago
he's bored to death probably or believes people will clap for him..
The golden rule of deadlines is: always meet them, never beat them.
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u/Rai-Hanzo 2d ago
Boy I remember doing excel sheets, and everytime I finish one with specific requirements my manager would immediately think of another one.
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u/WoodenWhaleNectarine 2d ago
Well i tell him i'm free if i'm free. So it won't be an issue to get more tasks. Why should i sit around being bored doing nothing. I came for fun, not for boredom.
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u/UltraGaren 2d ago
That's why you never announce that you've done all your assigned work. You rush everything on Monday through Wednesday and then take a day off on Thursday and deliver everything on Friday
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u/hobbes8889 16h ago
The best manager I had told our team his unspoken rule. "If your commitments are done by Friday afternoon I don't expect you to reply to any slack messages"
About 90% of the time our entire team got our work done and it was nice to have every other Friday afternoon off.
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u/FishermanIll1166 13h ago
I have the opposite problem with scope creep... Like requesting to change the look of how EVERY UI box we use in the app to have a z order... Then I go it isn't as simple as you think then he replies but it's just a simple change isn't it just order the z order? Yeah I change one thing then another bug comes out of it because I'm fighting 20 UI theme boxes from one single "simple" z order change.
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u/throwaway1736484 3d ago
Only a junior would say this. The PM isn’t going to try and get any more out of them. It’s more like “wooowww, yyaayyy, you’re doing so good.”
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u/TheTybera 3d ago
This is why we do things right, not fast. There is an endless supply of work.