Comment by Aeolun
2 years ago
People always say that managers work more hours, but I feel like it’d be quite possible to do the job in the time I spend doing my work now. We don’t think it’s normal if programmers work extra hours to get their work done. Why should we for managers?
I think the problem is that eng. managers have not much control regarding how many meetings they have (and at what time they are scheduled). Being meetings the big chunk if their day to day work, that restricts the amount of freedom eng. managers usually have.
For engineers it’s different: we have complete control regarding when to work, and we don’t have as many meetings as eng. managers have. So there’s more freedom in my opinion.
I think it’s not very realistic for a manager to say: I’ll work extra today so tomorrow I’ll work only 1h (because you probably have meetings to attend that you cannot postpone). As engineer, I work whenever I want and rest whenever I need it (as long as I meet deadlines and the like)
Nah, but this ‘meetings to attend that you cannot postpone’ is almost always bullshit. I see a lot of managers in meetings where their presence is more hindrance than help. If they drop those they suddenly have 50% of their day free.
Of course I won’t actually know until I am one myself, but it certainly feels doable if I’m willing to sort of trust my team.
It's not typically the meetings with the team that are the ones you cannot postpone. It's the ones with key people from the business, senior managers, partners, vendors...
If you do become one and find you can control your schedule, please write it up and share!
Quite right! In my experience, it is a combination of people who are ambitious to climb the hierarchy, the difficulty of scheduling meetings when people are actually available, and just quite a lot of fire fighting, where urgent issues have to be resolved quickly.
Obviously, it depends on the organisation you work at.