
Bored People Quit - filament
http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2011/07/12/bored_people_quit.html
======
edw519
Axiom: Boring work can never compete with Hacker News.

Axiom: Hacker News can never compete with interesting work.

Theorem: The interestingness of my work is inversely related to my Hacker News
participation.

Supporting data: Today I'm regression testing. I'll be here all day, folks.

Idea: Employers, monitor your logs for Hacker News. Occasional spikes probably
indicate boring, but necessary tasks. Chronic use probably means your devs are
bored. Bored devs probably means you better take a deep hard look at
everything else.

~~~
alexgartrell
Hacker news participation can also indicate compilation, as it does for me
right now.

~~~
PaulHoule
Compilation is a form of boredom ;-)

~~~
Lewisham
I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but this is entirely true. I'm sat here
watching a data mining job. It's wasted time, largely brought on because the
job doesn't have unit tests, so I have no confidence it'll actually complete
correctly, so I need to watch the log and see what its doing.

This not a good use of my time, and I hate seeing that console, and I feel bad
for being on HN when I could be productive.

~~~
paulbaumgart

      ./data_mining_job && growlnotify -m "Success!" || growlnotify -m "Failure :-("
    

(season with _while_ , _read_ and _grep_ to taste)

~~~
Lewisham
Hah, if only it was so simple! The integrity of the job is the problem. It's
been coded to failover problems (as the original data integrity its mining
from isn't good), so it will happily do something stupid for hours. That's why
I have to watch it, and make sure its not doing something stupid.

Unit tests would ensure stupidity was not a possibility, and regressions could
be tracked. Too late for that, unfortunately.

So I watch.

~~~
rcfox
Couldn't you write unit tests while you wait?

~~~
Lewisham
Fair point :)

------
nhashem
I think another key point is that _boredom is inevitable,_ at least at any
company bigger than a startup.

Software engineering is about solving problems. You get hired, and solve
problems. Time passes and you get better at solving these problems, so they
give you harder problems in the same domain space. Eventually you get so good
at solving these problems in this domain space that you become The Guy. "Oh
you have a question about the FooWidget manager tool? Ask Joe, he's the
FooWidget guy." By definition, being The Guy has mean you've reached a local
maxima of productivity in the company.

It also means you're bored. It's not a case of possibly being bored, or
eventually becoming bored. Once you are are no longer a problem solver, that
means you're bored.

I've been a lead engineer at two different companies thus far in my career,
and every time I end up wailing the same things to management. "You have to
let me get Joe off FooWidgets. He's been working on it for nearly years and
all you make him do are stupid enhancements nobody actually uses." But then
who will maintain FooWidgets? "Hire someone. You could hire a college kid for
the level enhancements you guys want. Or let me assign it to someone else on
my team. But do something, because he is going to get bored and quit and we'll
have to do this anyway, only Joe won't even be here to help transition." Will
we be able to make enhancements to FooWidgets as fast if someone else works on
it? "Not at first, but within a month--" Bzzt, wrong answer, Joe's still on
FooWidgets. And sure enough, within six months, Joe takes another position and
we're hosed.

So while Rands had some good heuristics for detecting boredom, you typically
don't even need to ask them directly or look for behavior changes. Are they
solving problems? If not, they're bored, and you have a ticking clock to do
something about that engineer before he leaves.

~~~
enjo
I've fought through MUCH more boredom during my startup career than at any
other point.

Startups are great fun while you're building the product. Then you release it,
and while you'd love to be implementing new features you're really stuck
maintaining the beast you've unleashed onto the world.

In a startup there is no one else to give you a hand when things break. There
is no one else to share the load of those boring tasks (deployments, unit
tests, browser/phone compatibility, etc...). Even then you'll spend most of
your time refining existing features, not inventing new technology.

At the end of the day, every god-awful task is on you (or a small team). While
there are spikes of interesting problems, it will be a small part of what you
do.

~~~
i386
Just have to say that your assessment of things was refreshingly unromantic
and honest - founding a startup won't solve your boredom issue. There's still
work to be done.

------
1337p337
I had a boss that took the opposite approach. Whenever I started to lose
productivity, he'd put me on work he knew I'd hate, telling me I'd get to do
more interesting things when I showed him I could be productive. So I started
working on side projects at the office just to keep my mind from going and
became less and less productive until I quit.

He was a talented engineer himself and a good friend. We ended up working
together again at another company. A few months after he arrived, I had a
slump and the cycle repeated itself. This time we had long meetings where he
accused me of being cynical and questioned my dedication; I defended it ("I'm
here making much less than I was before, aren't I?"), which was exhausting in
itself. I thought the problem was all on my side, so I didn't put up much of a
fight when he told me I'd be writing integration tests full-time--no more
"real" coding--until I proved whatever he thought needed proving. I forced
myself to ignore any side projects I had going. He called me in again later to
complain that the tests weren't coming along quickly enough and that they
"read like sketch comedy routines". (They did, actually. I was bored, and the
tests were full of things like, e.g., Eve getting unfriended by Alice but not
Bob and, wounded, trying to spy on Alice. It did tehnically test our access
controls!)

Because I was convinced it was my problem, I stuck around long enough to get
fired this time. I'm lucky enough right now to have very interesting work (at
a big company, of all places), but this article has given me an opportunity to
reconsider what happened at the old job in a different light.

~~~
Lewisham
This person is/was not your friend.

~~~
cema
Not a friend, but more importantly, not a very good boss either.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Definitely not a good boss, but possibly still a friend.

(No, I'm not just trying to fill out the matrix here. ;)

It's important not to take management too personally. Just because this guy
was horrible at understanding motivation doesn't mean he was a bad person or a
bad friend, just that he was a really lousy boss. Lots of people don't
understand how to motivate others. Lots of people don't consciously understand
how to motivate themselves, in fact.

It's probably a good idea not to put up with this forever, but it doesn't mean
you can't be friends. I have many friends whom I would never work for. Most of
us do, I'm sure.

~~~
enjo
+1 insightful.

I've had one job in my adult life go completely sour. I was there for about 3
months and never really found a way to fit in culturally. My aspirations
exceeded my role, and I was probably pretty difficult to deal with I imagine.

After I left the company, I thought that my boss would have a lot of animosity
towards me. He didn't. Turns out, he knew I was struggling and while he wanted
to keep me (I was productive at the very least), he didn't hold any ill-
feelings towards me leaving.

As a boss now, I always try to keep that in mind. I inevitably develop
personal relationships with every employee I've had. Even when that doesn't
work out, I always support them however I can.

------
rlovelett
About 5 weeks ago I quit my job. I was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with
my job role and the level of mental stimulation. So I quit my job.

I walked in told my managers, "Hey, I liked the beginning when I was
challenged. Now I'm not. I want to find something new that does challenge me."
They asked me what I would find challenging, I told them. They asked me to
give them a few weeks before I actually left so they could try to find me
something, and they did. I never had to leave and I got what I asked for,
challenging and thought provoking work; they got what they wanted, not loosing
a worker. It was a win-win.

I can honestly say that attempting to quit my job was one of the best
decisions I've made in years.

------
HNer
I had a nice little company with 30 or so staff, the first employee was a
major asset but made a huge mistake when left in charge, ordered 300k of stock
in one day from suppliers, then went on holiday and was off sick for some time
afterward. The bills wipped out the pre Christmas profits we made and very
nearly bankrupted the company. It was a hard slog for a year to get back into
the blank, during which time I put him out of the office in final checking and
testing. However, after about 8 months of this he landed the bombshell, he was
leaving. Despite all pleas for him to stay, (despite his honest blunder he was
one of those people you need, would do over and above the call of duty), alas
he left. When I replaced him and modernized the management it was less than 16
months later he arrived in my office after I had called him in tears ( I don't
cry) explaining the bookkeeper and general manager had scammed me out of over
100k... later I explained why he was 'demoted' I was astonished to realize he
was oblivious to the problem he had created, how on earth had I managed to
miss that vital information while begging he stay with the company? Being too
involved and too busy, along with not trying to have a blame culture is what
proceeded those events. My utter shock though at his ignorance to the real
problem, and in his boots I guess I would have left too.

------
thirdstation
What about frustrated? Too much process, too many clueless managers, too hard
to get work done?

Sometimes boredom is a result of giving up the fight.

~~~
calloc
Ding ding ding ... we have a winner.

~~~
kboutin
Why am I thinking that calloc and thirdstation are 33+ years old?

------
newobj
Wow. This article knows me better than I know myself. I've always wondered if
that slow creep-in of boredom was a personal failing of mine. Whether it is or
not, it's at least nice to know that this a known phenomenon, that someone
else has managed to describe to a t. Reading this has actually really
empowered me. I really had a lot of shame in feeling bored and bent over
backwards to hide it until I quit in a boredball of boredom. I might be more
forthcoming about boredom in the future.

~~~
phaedrus
Careful I admitted I was bored doing purchase orders of parts (supposed to be
an engineering position) in a previous job and the manager went nuts, got in
multiple shouting matches with me ("this project is the most interesting work
that's come along in a while and yoooou're bored! I'm shocked, just shocked").
Hah. Wrong thing to say to me - if what I was doing then was supposedly better
than their baseline normal, suddenly I had no regrets about quitting.

~~~
Swannie
Indeed. One project I had a boring task with nebulous requirements, and said
as much: "I find this hard to know when I'm done, and progress is slow. What's
next when I _am_ finished". The response? "More of the same!" said with a s
__* eating grin. :-(

At this point I pushed harder for my internal transfer. I later found out this
line manager was "let go". (He'd basically taken all the interesting work for
himself, the whole team productivity was bad when I moved.).

------
ikarous
Rands makes some very insightful points. I became very bored at my old job.
What struck me as odd about the experience in hindsight is that at the time, I
didn't even realize that I was bored. I simply became sarcastic, sullen, and
generally somewhat less than the person I knew myself to be.

Perhaps it is an artifact of my youth, or perhaps it is because the situation
of boredom can arise very gradually, but I strongly suspect that many people
who find themselves unhappy with their employment without being able to
articulate the reasons for their unhappiness are, in fact, simply bored with
their work.

Directly asking employees about it is situational at best, though. Some folks
might misinterpret such a query's intent and say "yes" regardless of how they
really feel. I've often given thought to Google's 20% policy, where employees
are allowed to work on work-related projects of their choosing. While I doubt
that this policy is practical in all situations, it does seem to be a very
clever way of preventing boredom and encouraging innovation simultaneously.

------
s00pcan
This is my last week at my first programming job, my new one starts next
Monday. My boss has other businesses in other states, so he was away from this
office most of the time, meaning I was able to do pretty much whatever I
wanted with my time here. Usually, the office consisted of just my non-
technical supervisor and myself. Of course, small projects beyond my control
would be requested of me would and I would do them, but this couldn't sustain
my interest.

I definitely got bored. But unlike most of you, I had the choice of being
bored. Once I realized this I made every effort I could to work on interesting
projects. First, I had to start spending about half of my time researching the
industry before I would even know what needed to be done. I was then able to
identify what was wrong with our systems here and exactly how to improve them.
Given lots of time to play around on projects and little supervision, some
people might have wasted their time or just did the bare minimum, but I
identified areas that could be greatly improved, then replaced/refactored
projects as necessary. I took on new projects to address problems I had wanted
to fix for a long time regularly.

Being the only programmer here, I didn't get to all of them (I was not working
full time). The website was a mess of outsourced crap and it didn't even use
objects - I avoided working on it in favor of other projects as much as
possible. Back in 2009 I made a prototype replacement website in my favorite
language, earlier this year I started work on two code libraries. I'm
currently refactoring the website to use a new code library I created, which
is going very smoothly. I also spent countless hours (though I logged
everything I did) happily working towards PCI DSS compliance, coming from a
background with no security expertise. I came up and completed many more
projects like these while I've been here. When I was bored it was because I
wasn't working on something interesting.

Those are the days where I can work until close and be completely happy. Well,
until someone tells me it's time to leave.

------
Timothee
I'm honestly glad to see the reactions here that being bored is not
(necessarily) your fault.

What I mean is that job ads tend to look for "self-motivated" people and it's
easy to conclude that if you're bored, you're just clearly not self-motivated
enough.

However, there are many things that a company and management can do (or _not_
do) that contribute to a decrease in motivation. Or even the appearance of
resentment since keeping you bored (or worse, not realizing you are) shows the
lack of interest in what you're doing, and where you're going.

~~~
PotatoEngineer
I swear, "self-motivated" and "detail-oriented" are two of the most over-used
descriptions in job descriptions. Now I'm not sure, when I see those
descriptions, whether they're real, or if they're just boilerplate, or whether
they're code for "you should be a very small load on your manager."

------
gheer
We're in this exact same situation in my company.

A couple of engineers gave notice in the last week complaining about boredom.
They ended up convincing one to stay(salary+ & better projects) but I feel
their pain.

I think what happens in a start-up is that once the company reaches a certain
size, the 'hard-part' is already done. The type of engineer that gets
attracted to working at a start-up is usually one that likes to be in over
their head a bit and trying to solve hard problems. Once that 'problem' is
basically solved unless they move on to other
things(platforms/frameworks/languages/etc), they're inevitably going to get
bored, complain, hate their life and then quit.

I'm forwarding this article to management here, hopefully they'll get the
hint.

------
mmaunder
I think one of the problems is bad hiring. If you hire someone who wants to be
a Ruby developer writing new code to maintain a PHP site, you're going to see
boredom.

Marc Andreessen talks about using hiring and interviews as a filtering process
e.g. "In this company we all do yoga for an hour at 2pm. Do you like Yoga? Are
you going to have fun doing yoga for a hour every day?". [Real example of a
yoga startup IIRC]

Here's the podcast, and it's probably ecorner's best ever if you haven't
already heard it:

[http://www.stanford.edu/group/edcorner/uploads/podcast/andre...](http://www.stanford.edu/group/edcorner/uploads/podcast/andreessen100512.mp3)

------
raghava
Where I work, the original post is actually blocked by websense; and I believe
that says a lot about the firm. And not just that, there is also a strict
auditing of browsing habits. They have already incorporated edw519's
suggestion of monitoring logs for accessing HN/proggit etc. More than a
hundred hits per day and I need to get an approval from four levels above.(SO
was completely websensed and I had to fight for 10 days to get it off the
blacklist).

It's not that people just quit bad managers. Many a times, they quit firms
with ridiculous policies and rules, even though their immediate managers/peers
are good enough.

------
sirn
Great article. I'm bored, and I surprisingly I found myself doing almost
everything described in the article: later arrivals, earlier departures,
increased snark or even skipping lunch. I'm in the category of "I'm bored and
nobody did anything about it" (perhaps my boss know, because I told my co-
worker out loud that I'm BORED) and not I'm not sure what I should do next.

------
jayx
I am a college student who is currently doing my summer internship at a
megacorp as a .NET MVC developer and I would not say the internship was what I
was looking for. I am OK with the technologies they are using, it's just the
boredom caused by endless waiting between each process that frustrates me. I
got hired because I had spent a lot of my spare time working on my own RoR
projects and my web development skills made me stand out. I also turned down
another RoR startup internship as a result of better payment from the big
company, which I regret a lot by now. Lesson learned: money is not the most
important factor when it comes to job decision. The bright side of big corp
job is that I have plenty of time to read hackernews and pick up technologies
I want to learn, which gets me ready for the future startup environment. But
nevertheless, I will never look back after this job.

~~~
jrockway
You'll probably look back. Small companies suck too, just in different ways
than big companies. Same with startups. Everything sucks; what matters is how
you deal with it.

~~~
ikarous
> Everything sucks; what matters is how you deal with it.

Indeed. There are usually positive actions you can take to improve any
situation in a big company or a small one. Joel Spoelsky wrote an article
about working as a low-level developer in an established team that might not
be doing things optimally. His first piece of advice? Just do it.

Search for "Getting Things Done When You're a Grunt." It should be the first
hit.

------
gfunk911
Great article.

Your boss won't always explicitly tell you to take time to experiment. I've
gone to my boss many times and essentially asked for time to experiment. If
you have a good boss, he'll be right there with you. Don't be afraid to ask.

------
F_J_H
_Disclaimer: The following is not related to the topic but is instead a rant
inspired by reading the article._

A good article, but it is unfortunate that it starts by categorically slamming
all authors who write about employee motivation and retention:

 _It’s written by folks who actively use words like motivation and retention
and generally don’t have a clue about the daily necessity of keeping your team
professionally content because they’ve either never done the work or have
forgotten how it’s done._

Why is this necessary? I find it nauseating. In fact, when I read or hear
someone who basically states “everyone is stupid but me, and all who have come
before me have been doing it wrong” in their opening spiel, it’s a good sign
to me that the speaker/author has some blind spots and may not be considering
all perspectives.

Maybe one reason I find it so nauseating is because I have suffered from this
myself, and I’m still tempted at times to point out where others have failed
and where I’m so much smarter. (After all, “we judge most harshly in others
that which we are most guilty of ourselves” – can’t remember who said that.)
It wasn’t until a close mentor confronted me on it, and basically taught me
that life goes a lot better when you don’t walk around thinking you are
smarter than everyone else. Biggest reason? _It shows._ You may think you are
hiding it, but your face may be wearing a subtle smirk while others are
talking, and they can see in your eyes that you aren’t listening but instead
are formulating a rebuttal.

Steve Blank teaches this same concept (i.e. don’t think you are smarter than
everyone else) in some of his blogs, although more related to sales. And good
articles like this on the importance of humility reinforce this for me:

[http://blogs.hbr.org/tjan/2011/07/why-some-people-have-
all-t...](http://blogs.hbr.org/tjan/2011/07/why-some-people-have-all-
the-l.html)

In a Fortune article on “the best advice I ever got”, the CEO of Pepsi, Indra
Nooyi said the best advice she ever received was from her father, who taught
her to “always assume positive intent” which I have found gets you a lot
further than “assume everyone is an idiot”, which has been the stance of many
programmers I have met. (Fortune article link:
[http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0804/gallery.bes...](http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0804/gallery.bestadvice.fortune/7.html)),

I’ve heard it said that “people don’t quit their jobs, they quit their
manager”. Maybe in IT we are boring people by ceasing every opportunity to
show our underlings how smart we are…

*Edit: Typos

~~~
bartonfink
I think Rands is railing against reactive HR departments who wait for problems
(e.g. bored employees) to come to a head before trying to deal with them. It's
too late to salvage a bad situation once an employee is fed up enough with a
job to give notice. Even if you manage to keep her on in the short term, she's
always going to have the stigma of "quitter" and you're just prolonging the
inevitable. The HR directors, etc. who get brought in to circumvent policy and
get these people the raises or transfers they were really after are missing
the point - set things up so that things don't get so bad people need to quit
to make themselves heard.

It's the same problem that gets brought up with software. The hero isn't the
engineer who looks ahead and avoids problems, the hero is the guy who stays
late to fix a problem after putting everyone in a bad position. Reaction is an
anti-pattern no matter where it occurs.

------
gambler
Call me a cynic, but I think most managers in medium-to-big companies would
never believe that there is something wrong with the structure of the work
their handing down, so they would never try to fix it. Developer turnaround of
X percent is expected and simply factored into the process by making people
replaceable. I think that's the root cause of the problem. Not enough people
in change really care that their developers are bored.

------
mpobrien
If you ask an employee, "Are you bored?" there's a good chance they are going
to lie to you, unless you have a strong enough relationship.

~~~
lojack
I think that's why he suggests digging deeper until they are making eye
contact.

~~~
silverbax88
Ha! Good luck with this. Seasoned employees know how to pretend to like a job,
right up until they put in their notice.

~~~
brown9-2
But those people aren't really savable anyway, are they?

If you've grown bored and decided that you aren't going to attempt to
communicate that in any way to your employer, or do anything to change that
boredom, you've already decided that you are on your way out, even if you
haven't admitted to yourself.

------
clintjhill
I would apply the same methodologies to finding out if your problem solvers
are "happy with the solution(s)". There are plenty of occasions where
engineers are handed solutions they aren't totally keen on. The same trap can
be landed in.

It's not always about being bored. Sometimes its about being satisfied with
the solution. And in my opinion, both are equally problematic.

------
a3camero
Sounds a bit abrasive to do this: "You ask, “Are you bored?” Even if you don’t
have a gut feeling, it’s a good question to randomly ask your team. When I
ask, I look you straight in the eyes and if you can’t stare me in the face and
answer, I’m going to keep digging until you look me in the eye."

~~~
clintjhill
Not at all. In fact you should always wait until eye contact. I can't count
the number of times I wish I had stared down a boss to make him/her understand
that I was drowning in boredom only instead to give a quick smile and nod
while continuing to look at my monitor.

It is way to easy to do "manager drive-by" and get absolutely no sense of
reality from employees.

This is on both sides to get right. The manager waiting, and the employee
taking the time to "look them in the eye".

~~~
MarkPNeyer
some people (such as myself) have a really hard time with eye contact. it
doesn't mean i'm not earnest in what i'm saying, it just means that eye
contact makes me very uncomfortable.

i've learned that a lot of people see it as important, so i do an exercise
when i walk to work, making eye contact with as many people as i can. it's
helping but it's still hard for me - i feel like i'm being intrusive and
slightly aggressive by making eye contact with someone.

~~~
a3camero
Especially if you're questioning them with very short direct questions that
are relevant to their job (that may be important to them...) and then not
letting it slide by dogging them until they answer. Not saying that's what the
blog post recommends but it could certainly come off that way if people tried
repeating his tactic just based on what he wrote.

------
dskhatri
_"I’m going to keep digging until you look me in the eye"_

Are you sure you want to do that to engineers? There's a joke that goes
something like:

 _How do you tell an introverted engineer from an extroverted one? The
introverted engineer stares at his/her shoes when talking to you. The
extroverted one stares at your shoes._

I don't think it's a good idea to "keep digging until you look me in the eye".

~~~
Tsagadai
I, personally, find it very difficult to sustain eye contact while I talk to
people. The "I know your lying because you won't look me in the eye" myth was
90% of the reason I was always in trouble at school. It's a myth.

~~~
zackattack
This is interesting. Is it possible it's a truth and actually you're lying to
yourself?

~~~
Tsagadai
I also, often, externally display a different emotion to what I am
experiencing. For example, I often seem angry when I am actually happy as a
pig in mud. I've done a polygraph before in university and the results were
mixed (lots of false-positives and false-negatives). I'm an outlying variable
but it is important to remember there are plenty of other outlying variables
who will throw a wrench into every system or maxim.

~~~
zackattack
Thank you for the feedback. I forget about this.

------
veb
hahahahahhaahahahahahah!!

I sent this to a colleague for a read, who in then... sent it to the CIO. Whom
replied, "this guy sums it up well, I'm going to distribute it and then we'll
talk about it at the round table."

The outcome of this is going to be... hilarious!

------
flipper
This article sums me up. When I started in my current job I had a really smart
guy for a manager who was interested in hearing new ideas from his people and
generally championed them. A couple of years ago we got bought out and I got a
new IT manager with no real interest in technology or my job. Every idea I've
had was ignored or shot down in flames. Unfortunately his attitude was
symptomatic of senior management in our company.

I got disillusioned and got a reputation for being sullen and uncommunicative.
I realized that even if I invented a perpetual motion machine he wouldn't be
impressed (or even know what one was). So what was the point?

The happy ending is I got headhunted last week by my previous employer. My
boss doesn't seem too worried about me leaving so I'm sure now I'm doing the
right thing.

------
DuqE
Already said but great article, I am in this exact situation right now.

------
aculver
If you enjoy this article, the author's book titled "Managing Humans" comes
highly recommended.

~~~
larrywright
And also his second book "Being Geek". It's a career guide for technical
people.

------
acak
Apart from presenting an interesting problem, I'd say presenting an
opportunity to learn something new and valuable is as important.

I developed and maintained an ASP.NET application for a long time and
eventually became bored. My boss tried to make things interesting by giving me
small new application / feature to solve a problem but having to continue
using ASP.NET made my gnash my teeth.

I would have preferring having to figure out some new language/platform where
the discovery process would have been rewarding and satisfying.

So give them not only new ends to pursue, but also new means.

------
PonyGumbo
For what it's worth, people exhibit the same kind of behavior changes when
they think there will be layoffs.

~~~
sethg
If I don’t have a lot of work to do—or if I know the work that I do have could
be done by someone fresh out of college—then I assume that the next time there
is pressure to reduce staff, my name will be on top of the “to be laid off”
list.

------
DTrejo
If your company uses google calendar, I recommend you take a look at your
coworker's schedules to get an idea of how many meetings people are subjected-
to.

~~~
bwilliams
At my old job every in the office had a TON of meetings, except me. That place
got boring really fast.

------
peregrine
Finally a thread I can share some of my limited(!) experiences!

A company I worked at once told me that I shouldn't be bored, but be happy
that I had work and that doing more boring work leads to better less boring
work.

I probably should have gone into overdrive mode to find new work but it
happened anyways about 1.5 years late. Being boring is not an easy thing to
bounce back from when you main retention policy is snacks, soda, and blind
loyalty.

------
techiferous
Relevant: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)>

~~~
civilian
Hah! It is relevant. My manager thinks that I am annoyed when I am distracted
from my task at hand. And that is true, to an extent. But I'm really annoyed
when he bothers me with trivial minutiae that derail (instead of
complimenting) my flow.

------
biggitybones
As someone who's just reached their wit's end at a small startup (I put in my
2 weeks yesterday), I really want to send this article along as a helpful
lesson on what not to do with the next guy.

As others have said, some of the points in the article are things I could feel
but not articulate. Great lessons to be learned from it.

------
pathik
So true. I was bored. And I did quit.

------
dmragone
Love that this was on top of HN this morning. Personally, step 1 is simply
knowing what your employees are doing, what out of that they like, and what
they want to be doing. Then jointly develop a plan to get them more of what
they want.

------
Troll_Whisperer
> _When I ask, I look you straight in the eyes and if you can’t stare me in
> the face and answer, I’m going to keep digging until you look me in the
> eye._

If anybody did anything that psychotic with me, I'd quit and head for saner
pastures ASAP.

~~~
Hisoka
If anybody did that with me, my respect for them would go up 10-fold..
instantly.

~~~
mentat
Yes, waiting for someone's real answer because you care can't be turned on if
there isn't a relationship there, but it is the most essential show of
respect.

~~~
5hoom
Eye contact or lack thereof is a poor indicator of a persons respect. In some
cultures it is considered very rude to look your superior directly in the eye,
& trying to force the issue will just make people very uncomfortable around
you.

------
emehrkay
Didn't read the article yet, but the title is true. I just quit a job two
weeks ago because I was bored (and they lacked focus, and we were getting no
where fast, etc.)

------
gregfjohnson
Great post. I sent the link to my manager.

------
knodi
Very true, having lots of work doesn't mean its not lots of boring work.

------
kwamenum86
Border people who quit are weak-minded.

~~~
known
And who don't quit are
<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Yes_man>

