
8 Ways To Avoid Burning Out Your Employees - superkinz
http://blog.grouptalent.com/2012/8-ways-to-avoid-burning-out-your-employees/
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jroseattle
Decent article, but I have to nitpick one comment:

> Heavy sprints are important to achieving milestones for major events

No, they are not. Heavy sprints reflect planning.

If we're talking about a one-off, once-in-the-lifetime-of-a-company type of
event, it's understandable.

But in most situations like this, one can usually chalk it up to "lack of
preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part". Whether
you agree or disagree, the net effect is that it kills morale. Absolutely
kills it, as the product development team loses faith in the planning powers-
that-be.

Heavy sprints are most often a reflection of upstream planning, and a poor one
at that.

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superkinz
I suppose that depends on what you mean by heavy sprint. 3-months long is
excessive and burnt me out, but 1 month is not so bad. I totally disagree that
it should be a once in a lifetime of a company type event to do a month long
sprint. Many companies have a couple of major events a year that present an
opportunity to make a big splash. You either take advantage of them, or let
others pass you by.

It can kill morale depending on how it's treated, and how the company culture
rewards. Just because you choose to meet a goal as a team that requires more
than average number of hours put in for 4 weeks does not mean everybody is
being dragged along. What does upset the folks doing the heavy lifting is when
requirements get added at the last minute with "oh, can we please please just
have this one more thing? It would be so awesome" from upper management.
That's pure bullshit, and tends to rip apart morale above anything else.

~~~
jroseattle
1 month sprints are certainly ok, 2 months is rather heavy and 3 months is way
too long.

As for taking advantage of those major events, again it comes down to
planning. Ratcheting up efforts to meet a goal is one thing, but waiting until
the last minute to address those goals is another.

I think we're saying the same things here, just depends on the situation at
hand. I especially agree on scope creep, which I recently heard described for
one project as "flexibility to change gears". The long-term negative effect so
substantially negates the short-term gain, yet project owners are remarkably
blind to the situation.

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xiaomai
Maybe I have been fortunate in choosing employers, but is 1 or 2 days off
really going to make people feel good about the extra 80 hours they worked?
Even considering the "tips" in this article I feel burnt out and awful about
working for a company like that.

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mwhooker
s/Reward them with fun/Reward them with money/

It's ridiculous to expect more than 40hrs/wk from someone without fair
compensation. Need more hours out of someone but can't afford to give them
more money? Maybe they should be cofounders.

This of course with the assumption that 70hrs/wk @ 2 months is the equivalent
of ~ 3.5 months of work at 40hrs/wk, which I don't buy.

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dcpdx
I just left a startup that was doing pretty much the opposite of every point
made on this list. After 4 months of 90+ hour weeks, I woke up one day and
asked myself "Why the hell am I doing this?" Work environments like that are
neither healthy nor sustainable, but unfortunately I think a lot of it stemmed
from the mindset that there's nobility in killing yourself at work and
anything less than that makes you a p __*y. Needless to say, turnover was
ridiculously high and morale was terrible.

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aaronbrethorst
Google cache version:
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