How To Survive A Stressful Job Without Losing It

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Welcome back, folks. This one is from the comments. It's from Epic Technav. Epic Technav has been here for a while leaving comments, asking questions. Thanks for being here. Thanks for joining the streams on Dev Leader as well. Uh let's go through this question. So, says starts by saying, "Sorry to spam you with questions." Don't be sorry. That's the whole point of this channel, man. So, thanks for being here. Um, how do you deal with a pressure cooker work environment or an environment where the manager is very tough on the team, whether it be with micromanaging or pressing on deadlines tightly? Um, okay. I'll talk through some of this from my perspective. Um, and a friendly reminder for folks that are new to the channel, if you have questions, leave them below in the comments. Like I said at the beginning of this, this whole channel is made for you being able to ask questions about software engineering and career development.

If you're not comfortable writing them in the comments, feel free to send them into Devleer on social media or Nick Causantino on LinkedIn. Devleer is my main YouTube channel. I have C tutorials. I have a podcast there. I have free resume reviews if you're interested and I do a live stream every Monday at 7:00 p.m. Pacific. This is the fun channel where I get to blab and I'm usually in a car because it's code commute, but I'm on call for work this week. Don't got a lot of time for commuting. So, here I am. So, how to deal with a pressure cooker work environment? I think that there's a bunch of different ways to answer this, right? I um I I think it's important for people to understand if something is sort of um what's a good way to put this? Like the word I want to say is seasonal, but I don't know if that's going to come across properly.

Is this like a Is this the new expectation? Is this all the time? Is this because you guys have a release and you guys are working really hard for it and now the pressure is on but it's not the new normal or do you know that yet? Right? Like is it just this release but actually it's going to be next release too and then it becomes a pattern. Right? Is the team in a unusual temporary like temporary situation where yeah there is a lot of pressure because of some reason that actually makes sense if we look into it not because your manager wants to be creating this kind of environment. Um maybe they're kind of at their limits too but there's a lot of pressure from an organizational perspective for some period of time. Um, just a quick example.

What I mean by that is like, um, I talked, if you've been watching the channel for a while, at the end of last year into the beginning of this year, I had a five-monthlong project that was a ton of stress for the entire team. I did my very best to make sure that they weren't getting stressed, but like they're going to based on the nature of the project, right? It's it's sort of inevitable as much as I would like to mitigate that. And even for myself, like I was going through like severe burnout trying to help manage that. So, you know, there's only so much I can end up taking on for myself trying to like relieve that from the team. So much shielding I can do and sort of it ends up happening. Now, all that I can do in those situations is try to communicate as much as possible to the team like, hey, this isn't the new norm.

Thank you so much for all your work. here's all the impact that it's having, right? I need to make sure that they understand like it's not ah like seems like if we just turn the pressure up, you get more work done. So like we're going to keep doing that like that. We can't we can't do that. I need to make sure people understand that. So that's a what I mean by like a seasonal thing. This is something that came up. It sucks for a while and like we're going to get through this. We're going to be better after this. So now if we left that project and then we go into the next thing and we're like by the way like I know we said we were done but you guys did so good on that we're going to do it again. Then I think that's where you start to have a problem.

So the first thing I would like people to ask is like is this a temporary thing or do you even have enough information to know that? Now every individual is also going to be different. I un unfortunately like seem to like do like to a certain degree I can perform better when there's like some type of stress involved. Not because I enjoy it more. Don't like being stressed, but I think that there's something about having like the tighter deadline where I I cannot procrastinate. I have to find ways to be efficient and therefore like I can I can get it done. So there's some level of that that works for me and that level might look different for other people and I'm sure that level has changed for me over time too.

So I I'm trying to say that I think as I try to navigate this question I think people have to kind of figure out for themselves like where they're kind of at on this and you may change your mind about that over time. So it's a reflection you should periodically do. So based on how this question is asked, I'm assuming Epic Technav is either going through something like this or reflecting on it or anticipating. Maybe none of the above. Maybe they're just like, I'm curious. That's fine. But that would be the first thing or first couple things, right? Is like what what are your expectations for like how you navigate this kind of stuff in terms of balancing it? Is it going to wreck your like is it going to wreck your outside of work life or is it like a temporary thing? And then like I was saying, do you have an understanding of what that actually looks like from the team dynamic?

Is this because of a big project? Is this because this is actually just the way the manager is, right? So if it's going to be a temporary project kind of thing, my answer to this becomes pretty short, which is like, you know, if you feel invested in the team and what you're doing, then I I would hope that you can find some motivation to be part of that. I don't know like I don't know the context, so I can't be like, hell yeah, like that's a sweet thing to work on. I don't know. um I don't know what you're doing, but I I would hope that if it's something that you are kind of passionate about, I realize that's hard for a lot of people to find. But if if you can find that and you think it's temporary, I'd say great, like, you know, bust some ass.

You know, you might you might learn new things about yourself and how you manage time and work and stuff like that. Not for everyone. Some people might thumbs down this video right after hearing that and say, "Screw you, man. I don't think that's cool." That's all right. Um, but I I think that if you're like asking yourself these questions, you're like, I don't know. And I don't know, like maybe this is sustained, right? Like I think this is where we have to kind of expand the answer to this question. And it's like, okay, let's assume now I finding myself in a spot where it's not just a a one-off thing and like I think my manager kind of does this or they seem to say they don't want to do this, but we keep doing this and we've been doing it for years and like I'm finally realizing it's not going to change.

Um, you could try um you could try raising awareness to this. This is when I talk about this kind of approach, I always try to remind people like how much energy do you want to put into trying to drive change, right? How much energy do you want to put into try and drive change? I would say a lot of the time when people reach a point of burnout and then they're having this conversation, so you're overworked pressure cooker environment, you're like, man, I I got to get out of here. It's a really hard sell from me to someone else to say, "Hey, like if you really love it, like you want this to work out, like maybe you should go have a conversation and try driving some change." Someone will be like, "Man, like no, like I just want out of this. Like I'm so done." It's it's really hard to go say, "You know what?

I'm going to go put even more effort into this to try and and kind of get things back on track in terms of having a healthy work environment." because odds are I'm assuming based on Epic Technav writing this in I'm assuming he's not the person managing the team and even if he was I'm assuming that this kind of pressure is coming not from him and if that's the case that means you have to go convince someone or multiple people that there's sort of this negative impact happening on a team where it feels like a pressure cooker work environment. Do you feel like you have energy to go sell that to people and try to get things back on track? If you do, and I would like I don't I'm not trying to sound sarcastic or facitious about it. I mean it genuinely like if you're like I really believe in this team.

I really believe in what we're doing and I just think that we're heading in a bad direction in terms of like you know the sort of the work expectations if you feel passionate about it I would I would never want to discourage someone from going and trying to improve that like go have a start having a conversation with your manager start raising awareness of it start advocating for other people on the team make it more evidence-based right it's not just like oh I seem to be having a bad day oh I happen to be having another bad day. Hm. And like not beating around the bush, but raising awareness to it and saying, "Hey, like this is I'm noticing I'm feeling this way with my work. I'm hearing from other people on the team." You can even say like I have some evidence of this. I'm trying to keep people anonymous that have brought it up.

I would encourage you to go talk to the team and see how they feel about this because I think that we're having a bit of an issue. Raise awareness. I would love that if my team would raise awareness about things like that. I don't want to have that situation. I'll give you an example. When we were switching our on call rotation scheduling recently, I had people on the team that were coming to me in private being like, "Hey, just so you know, like people are pretty stressed out about this." And I really appreciate that, right? It's not something that I'm like excited to hear. I'm not excited to hear like, "Oh, teams, they're not happy." Obviously, I don't want to hear that, but it's like I'm happy to know that someone on the team is like trusting me with that to say, "Hey, I I

trust in you that you can do with this information something to to be positive." So, you know, I I don't think that they're happy to come tell me like, "Hey, guess what? People are pissed off." like I don't think that that's how they they thought about it, but they were still able to kind of be I'm going to use the word brave. Be brave to kind of speak up and trust me with that. And that's awesome. So, I don't know what your working relationship is like. And like I said, depending on all these factors, how much energy you want to put into improving it. If you're early in the process and you're observing these things, I would say it might be a great opportunity to put some energy into being like, "No, no, no." like hey just so you know people on the team are

getting like burnt out from this or they're losing motivation or engagement or whatever you are observing raise awareness because in my opinion the worst thing that happens here is I don't know what's worse actually I want to say the worst thing is that you lose your job over it right let's assume that's the worst case scenario try to raise awareness and someone's like we don't like people that talk back and you lose your job is that the worst thing that could happen because it sounds like it was pretty shitty. If that's the case, sounds like it's probably not someone you want to be led by. If that's the case, that might be the best thing that could happen to you. Um, other than that, things not changing is probably the worst case, right? And at least you tried, but now you get to make a decision.

Are you happy working that way still or is it time? So, I think sometimes this this stuff is awkward, right? Because it's a work should be like a comfortable thing. Like you're getting your paycheck, you're doing your job. Like this is a a state we want to I don't know if we want to be in a state where we're working necessarily, but a state where we're like supporting ourselves, right? Our families. That's a state we want to be in. And now there's pressure from it, whatever else is going on. And rocking the boat on that is even more uncomfortable because it's like what's that? What does that mean about this stability of my ability to support? So I think for a lot of people that becomes uncomfortable. I don't blame them. I'm not saying this kind of stuff is easy. I'm just trying to give you perspective about how I might navigate things.

Um, and I guess the other part to this is like if you're like, you know what, like I'm I'm kind of fed up with this and I I don't think it's worth putting in energy to change things. I've been in situations like this. I've put I've been in situations where I've raised awareness. I've tried and I said, "Okay, bye." Like, it's it's no longer worth it for me. As much as I would like to drive change, if I don't have support and buy in to do it, I don't I do not have energy to continue to push, which is unfortunate. But, right, I think I I always want to find myself in a in a place of work where I feel like I want to fight for that. That's how I would put that. I feel like I'm in a good spot. If if something's starting to go off the rails, if I if I'm like, I want to do something to make this better, then I think I'm in the right spot, right?

Not everything's going to be perfect. Not everything's going to stay a certain way. But if I'm noticing that things are changing or going in a certain direction that's not I feel like is not a good path, if I find that I want to fight for that, I feel like I'm in a good spot. Because if I feel like you know what it's not even worth it I don't think that's a place I want to be personally now not everyone is going to have same like luxuries to be able to say guess I'm going to leave this job and just not be employed or something like that right I I don't want to like minimize this and make it sound like anyone at any point can just say I'm leaving and it's whatever it's fine no but I I think that that's perhaps the direction right whether you're switching teams, you're switching companies, whatever.

I think if you're finding that pressure cooker environment is not going to change, is not aligned with sort of your your work life balance. And I kind of already said it, but like the amount of energy you want to put into it, like if that's not all in the right spot, I think it it is pointing into new uh new job time, but that's uncomfortable, right? So, I think that's how I might answer this one. To be honest, I'm just going to go back to double check the question. The manager is very tough on the team. I'll give you examples, too. Um, so as a So, I've been a middle manager for like just under 13 years now. Almost my entire career outside of like internships. Became a manager. Not that I say this just for context, not I'm what I'm about to say is not like, "Oh, I was so good.

They made me a manager when I was fresh out of school." No, they made me a manager almost fresh out of school because it was a startup. That's like that's it. There's by default like, "Hey, you can talk to engineers. Cool. You want to do this? You have no idea what you're doing? Sure. Sign me up." Right? So, I've been doing this for a while and the the reality is that like as a manager, yes, I I could be putting individual contributors in this position where this person's saying like, you know, the manager is creating the pressure cooker environment. They're being micromanagy for sure. But I spent the first eight years of being a manager also being an individual contributor at the same time. And a lot of that experience for me made me realize like there's things I need to do better as a manager so that I don't do these types of things that are shitty to live through almost to a fault.

I feel like some things like micromanaging I almost am so hands off that especially for more junior people now I really have to remind myself hey look a lot more junior people do actually benefit from a lot more structure they need milestones they need check-ins it to me feels like micromanaging but every time I have conversations like this so like this is so much more helpful like it's not ambiguous and I go okay like reassuring myself right This is the kind of thing that I learned from being an individual contributor and a manager for a while. If you fast forward from that, I'm no longer doing individual contributor style roles. Like I am I'm not writing code at work. I write code every day outside of work. Not at work. But I'm a middle manager. That means and what I what I'm about to say is applicable across my entire career.

I'm not talking about like right now. I'm not talking about tomorrow. I'm not talking about yesterday. I'm talking about this will be a factor in my entire career which is if my manager or my manager's manager anyone that's above me if they are creating pressure if they are causing um like anxiety for the team if they are micromanaging I'm in the middle of that right so all of these things that I'm talking about when I'm saying like hey they could apply to the team like I am included in that which means as a manager I have a big responsibility to be able to step in and say no because that's not what I want for my team. I don't want to be propagating the micromanaging kind of tendencies. I don't want to be propagating the anxiety. I have to shield my team from it because that's not what they deserve.

At least under my leadership that's not what I like I am not okay with that. But then you have to ask yourself the question like I'm trying to put as I kind of walk through this right I'm trying to demonstrate that it's not just me saying like oh you as an individual contributor go figure this out. I'm trying to tell you I would have this same type of decision even as a manager which is a hard decision right if I am like if I'm trying to do everything I can for my team and the pressure is still too much and I cannot get change to occur because of factors outside of me that I can't influence how much energy can I put into this at some point if it's not moving in the right direction then it's not the right environment for me. Does that mean I'm abandoning my team if I leave?

Like it would it would certainly look like that, but at some point if I'm not being effective in that environment, I'm not actually helping them. So these are difficult things to navigate. I'm not saying there's an easy solution, but I think that there's some important questions you have to ask yourself first, some important things you have to understand about your environment, and then make decisions based on that. So, I realize this was maybe a little bit all over the place, but um yeah, a bunch of different directions you can go. Epic Technav, thank you very much for the questions. If you have follow-ups on a direction of that, let me know. Add it to the comments. You know the drill. Ask it in the live stream because I'll see you there next time. And same with all of you. Take care.