As A Developer, How Do I Know When To Take On More Work?

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Hey folks, I'm headed to CrossFit here. We're going to It's early, man. Uh we're going to YouTube um for a follow-up question. And um this one is from Epic Technav. I'm not reading it out directly. I got to pull my map back up. Um and the question was essentially around um if they're taking on work, right? So they're working through uh different work items uh and trying to gauge uh whether or not they should be taking on even more work or how to balance that. So sort of managers open up to say hey like you know if you're ready for for more things like let me know. And this person's kind of contemplating like how do I how do I balance this right? like um if they're newer to a team and they're working on things that are maybe um not huge, not super critical, how do they start taking on more how do they start taking on larger, more ambiguous things?

And then something that I thought was interesting about what was written in the question was like, how do I know that I'm not being taken advantage of? And I kind of wanted to start at this part because I found it quite interesting. Um I realized that I guess like I feel like I've been pretty fortunate my career that I don't feel like I have managers that take advantage of me. But um I I must say that based on like not personal experience, but just conversations I've had or read online, um apparently there are managers out there that do take advantage of people. So, uh, I just want to say that if you're in a place where you are concerned that your manager is taking advantage of you in terms of the work you're doing, uh, I would I think I would be having a different conversation around how do I know if I should be picking up more work?

Uh, and it would just be a different conversation of like why am I still here? Um, so it's hard for me to answer that part of the question, like how do I know if I'm being taken advantage of? Because if you are concerned that you might be, I just feel like you're not you're not in a good spot to begin with. And I don't know about optimizing the amount or types of work you're doing to be totally transparent. I just think it's a different conversation that needs to be had. Um now again like I it's perhaps not as uh straightforward as that for some people. So I want to acknowledge that but um I I'm trying to think like on when I joined my current team that I'm managing um this is a team actually both teams that I've had at Microsoft are teams that have been established and then they added people to them.

So like team is operational, they're adding more people and because they're adding more people, they bring on me as a manager um to help with that team growth. And so it means like I'm new to the domain, then there's some people that have been operating there for a while and other people that are new uh to that domain as well. And I've told especially the new people, right? Especially the new people. Um, and when I say new, not only new to the team, but perhaps like early in career as well. Um, what I've always told them, look, especially for where we're at, um, some of the when it comes to deploying changes that go across the entire world. Uh, there are certain many scenarios where we go slow on purpose. It's like uh slow and controlled. And like I said, it's on purpose. like I worked on the deployment team and managed part of the deployment team for Office 365.

So like that's I did that for three and a half years. Uh so can the technology go fast? Absolutely. Do we let it go fast? Absolutely not. And that's because we want to be able to make sure that things are controlled as they're going out because it's across the entire planet, right? Like it's it's a pretty big deployment. So I tell people like, "Hey, look, like if you're only working on one thing, what's going to happen is that you'll code it, be going through the development part, you'll get it up for review, and as soon as you're waiting on anyone, that's going to feel like you're doing nothing. Like, it's not going to feel good. It's not like, "Oh man, I have so much free time. This is awesome." It's going to feel like, "Uh, what am I doing here?" And then when it's at a review and it's getting deployed, like you need to be watching for metrics.

You need to be ensuring that things are healthy with the deployment. Um, obviously there's things in place to help protect, but like is your feature actually working as expected? Is your bug fix working as expected? That kind of stuff's on you to go figure out, and that's not like a a full-time job when you're watching that stuff. So, do you just kind of sit and have like nothing to do cuz you only have one thing to work on, right? So, uh the answer is no. But then how many things should you be working on? Like I don't know. And so it depends a lot on the complexity of the work and sort of the stages of the work. But I let people know that. I'm like, "Hey, look, like I don't want you to feel like you're sitting idle like there's nothing to do." I'm like, "There's tons of work to do.

So, I want you to be able to work with me to find that balance where you're not overloaded, but you also feel like you're not like, "Oh, there's nothing to do." Because both of those are bad. I don't want you to feel like, "Oh, there isn't work." Because there absolutely is. And I don't want you to feel overloaded like you you are personally trying to juggle too many things at once because that's just not valuable. So, these are conversations that I try to regularly have in one-on ones. Uh, so that it's not like, yeah, you could do that for like some of our sync meetings and stuff, but I don't want people to have to like try and defend uh or explain their their balance of work to the entire team if they're feeling overwhelmed or underwhelmed. Um, I feel like that's a that can be a better conversation in private.

Um, but that doesn't mean like obviously if people in sync meetings are like, "Hey, I'm wrapping up and I'm ready for the next thing." Like to totally fine. It's more about the capacity. I'm like that's a better conversation to have private. But we do have these conversations. We talk about it and I always try to be transparent, especially if someone's getting down to like one thing that they're working on. I will say, "Hey, like let me know if you feel like you can start on the next thing." And generally how this looks and this isn't it's not a perfect science by any means but it's generally like someone's actively coding something and they'll usually have something that's being flighted out or in code review.

So sort of like two things and sometimes there's like a third which is maybe something that's in design phase or um you know they might have a couple things flighting and something that they're coding but generally there's like two to three things that are kind of in progress uh at the same time. And this isn't my like I don't love this personally from like a I don't know sort of like team capacity planning and how we approach work like I would love to have fewer things in progress but the nature of how we roll changes out means that we have to wait. So, um, like when I was at the digital forensics company before Microsoft, um, we would talk about like whip limits, work in progress limits, and trying to make sure as a team we weren't doing like 30 things all at once if there's only five of us.

And, um, it's it's less realistic to do that on this team or on the even the two teams like the deployment team and I'm on the routing plane team now. So it it's just a lot less feasible. So I have to kind of navigate that differently with individuals. But um going back to the original question, like this is a conversation I as the manager have with my employees regularly, right? I want to know if the work is engaging. I want to know if it's challenging. I want to know if they find it too challenging. I want to know if they're juggling too much. But like I care about that. I assume they care about it from our conversations and I like need to let them know that it's not a matter of overloading them. And I've absolutely had conversations with people where they're, you know, talking about it from one side where they're like, "Hey, yeah, like I think I can take on more at this point.

I only have like this one thing and it's it's reaching a point where like I'm not on it all day. So cool. Okay, great timing. Let's talk through it. And um and then after a little bit of time, things go the complete opposite way where they're like, "Hey, like I feel like, you know, a couple things popped up since we last talked and like now um now I have some like live site investigations I'm doing on top of those other things and it's starting to feel overwhelming and like I don't really know what I should focus on from a priority perspective." So like we touch base and talk through that. But the reason I'm talking through these examples like this is because for Epic Technav who asked the question um I think that it is a balance. You have to kind of find it and like your environment might be very different than the one I'm describing.

like if you don't need to wait for changes to roll out and like you know once you're finished developing and it's been reviewed and you you know the PR gets merged if it's like hey it's done then like you're juggling fewer things altogether um so it just might look very different but I think you need to like couple things one is that You need to be able to kind of feel for yourself what feels like an okay capacity, right? If you're feeling overwhelmed like all the time, I don't think that that's healthy. I think that what can be healthy is giving yourself a little bit of a challenge, right? It's like I I think that some and I don't know, maybe this is just my perspective and I'm completely alone here, but I I think that a lot of people have this idea that like, oh man, it would be so awesome to like have nothing to do at work because I could just like kick back and coast kind of thing.

But I actually think that that's like the worst spot to be in if you are at work and have nothing to do. Like that feels terrible. Um I don't know. And I think maybe as a kid or something when I was a lot younger, maybe that seemed like appealing to me too. You're telling me I can go to work and they're going to pay me and I don't have to do anything. like sure sounds cool, but like when it's your career, I just feel like that's probably um probably not great because if you if you're not actually working on anything, that's like not something that you like you can't hide that. It's uh it's just not a good spot to be in. And I feel like it starts like feeling very bad when you're like, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing instead of it being like this is awesome.

I don't have anything to do. So I I think that for every individual, like obviously if you're getting down to like I don't have anything to do, like try to try to get on top of that before that happens. That's part one. Um, are you doing too much? Hard to know, but if you're feeling overwhelmed all the time, doing too much. Um, but I do think like a little bit of a stretch is nice. And I say that because it's like I find like anything, right? If you if you're like, "Hey, I would like to be able to take on more things or more challenging things." Cool. The answer to that is not to like, you know, quadruple your workload and hope you can do it. It's to add a little bit and see like is this a little bit uncomfortable? Yeah, maybe it's a little bit uncomfortable and you're still working effectively and you're proving to yourself now like yeah, I can do this.

But what you don't want to do is like blindly try to like keep stacking up work like this. Uh because at some point if you're not paying attention and I think it's easy to fall into this trap is that like you're just overwhelmed. You're like, "Oh, I was trying to stretch to do more and I was like staying late every day and I was working on weekends." So now you're like, "Hm, I'm still trying to stretch to do more, but like I work all of the time and I don't have any holidays and like not sustainable." So, I think pushing yourself a little bit is good. Um, but this is kind of from like your side as the individual contributor. And then I would say the other part that you want to be doing is the same thing we say on this channel all of the time, which is level set expectations with your manager.

Because if you are like, "Oh yeah, man. I'm crushing it. I'm getting all this work done." and your manager's like, "Look, like from a, you know, at your level, the expectation is that there's more." Like, you need to have that conversation to understand things so that there aren't surprises. Um, and that like again, that's a good one-on-one conversation. It's uh you know maybe not something that you have to have like every week in your 101 ones or something but like getting a feel for that and saying like hey like what are your thoughts on this like in terms of the throughput that I'm having and the impact that I'm having. You can try to guide them too like guide your manager a little bit. So like I'm here's the things I'm working on or have been you know working on for the last little bit. Some of them have landed whatever here's what I still got.

like do you feel like this is a good balance because sometimes what happens is you know what you've discussed with your manager is like one or two things that you're working on let's just say okay and what happens is that I was giving you the example of like you know even an individual on my team who's like hey like now since we last talked I'm actually doing a few investigations for partner teams and stuff and like now it's getting overwhelming there's going to be stuff that like I don't see happening as a manager because I'm not like talking with every single person on the team at all times of the day. So, I think it's important to try and, you know, bring visibility to your manager cuz if you're like, "Do you think I'm, you know, is this a good amount of work?" And you're working on these other things that you haven't even talked about, you're going to be getting sort of like the wrong feedback.

But I do think it's important to have that conversation because their expectations might look different than what you have in mind. And doesn't mean necessarily that either one of you is 100% right or 100% wrong, but that's a conversation that can go a little bit both ways. And I think it's important to have um if just to give you an example, if your manager is like, "Hey, yeah, like I you know, at this point I kind of would expect that we can uh add a little bit more to your capacity." Um if you're like, "Oh man, like there's absolutely no way." Well, why? Like that's an interesting topic of conversation. Are you feeling like it's uh is it just so much uh to to balance in terms of priorities? Are you finding that um you know the the areas of code are too challenging? Um there like there's a million directions that that could go.

Okay. Like is it just overwhelming to try and juggle so many things like to try and keep that in your head or like do you need help doing that? Um so many ways that can go. So that's why I'm saying it's not like a right or wrong or whatever. It's it's a great conversation starter because if you have a manager that doesn't suck ass, hopefully that they can have that conversation with you and you guys can discuss like what things can we do to make that better, right? Maybe you need support in some way and it hasn't really been obvious and going through that conversation you can uncover it, right? Like, yeah, you know what? probably could do a little bit more except I find that like um I'm going through these things and like it's really difficult for me to navigate the code base still.

Okay. Like cool. Like let's talk about that. Is it the language? Is it like the tech stack we're using? Like is there something more that we could be doing? Could we pair you up with someone to to help you get through some of these things in particular? Um so many directions. But if you don't have the conversation and it never gets surfaced, then how do you expect things to get better? So hopefully that's some perspective. Uh, Epic Technav, I hope that helps. And, uh, friendly reminder for folks, if you have questions, leave them below in the comments or you can go to code.com. And otherwise, I have a couple other YouTube channels. So, Devleer is my main channel with my car.net and AI programming tutorials. There is the Dev Leader podcast where I interview software engineers and uh, do my live stream every Monday at 7:00 p.m.

Pacific. And then Devle leader path to tech is where I do my resume reviews and I will be having some interview tips as well. So thanks so much for being here. I will see you in the next one. Take care.