

Ask HN: Coworker works to unhealthy exhaustion. Should I say anything? - nhayden

I&#x27;m really worried about his health. On one hand he&#x27;s an adult and I feel he should be able to take care of himself, but he has a history of depression and pushing himself too hard (and feinting from exhaustion). He works 80+ hours a week to keep up with his work, often works all night and the entire next day, and doesn&#x27;t tell anyone because he doesn&#x27;t want to get fired for appearing to be slow at his job. Even at 80+ hour weeks he&#x27;s still behind. He&#x27;s just not a very fast worker.<p>I feel like maybe I should mention something to his manager. I would feel super shitty if he winds up in the hospital because he pushed too much and I said nothing. On the other hand, he&#x27;s an adult and it seems sort of shitty to talk to his manager about it.<p>Any opinions?
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smt88
Don't tell your manager or HR. If your true motivation is concern for his
health, you're unlikely to change his behavior that way.

If you really want to help him, you first need to talk to him about it. Tell
him you've noticed how hard he's working, and you'd like to help if you can.
Be clear that you don't mean you're going to help by doing his work for him.
Rather, you'd like to listen to his side of the story and see if the two of
you could brainstorm some solutions.

After you've done this, you may discover that some additional
learning/training could help him move faster. That's a best-case scenario.
Perhaps he's just not equipped for this job, and he could start job hunting
while he's still employed with your firm.

You're more likely to notice some things that can't just be fixed. You may
discover that anxiety or excessive attention to detail (perfectionism) are
causing him to take much longer.

Those are issues that only he can work on, and he'd need to work on them only
with psychiatric professionals.

No matter the size of your company, you're going to encounter people who can't
do their jobs very well and are harming themselves and/or the company. It's
really none of your business unless A) they're in danger, B) they're doing
something illegal, or C) you're their superior. Be very certain that your
coworker is in danger before you proceed.

~~~
nhayden
>excessive attention to detail (perfectionism) are causing him to take much
longer.

He has self professed OCD and says this is often why he takes so long. I do
offer a lot help in his work but being somewhat new myself I am not always
able to tell him how the systems here work.

I'm not trying to change behavior by telling manager, but more trying to have
the manager pay attention to the hours he's working and maybe set an upper
limit and make him go home after? I don't think his manager wants him
hospitalized or burning out any more than I do.

I have suggested searching for other jobs but I think a combination of
depression and helplessness prevents him from doing this. He has really low
self esteem.

~~~
anigbrowl
You could try a cognitive argument; beyond a certain number of hours/day,
productivity/day starts to dive because you make more mistakes when you're
tired and work at a slower pace overall. Failing that, try encouraging him to
visit a therapist/psychiatrist. Maybe you could look into whether your
company's health plan covers that sort of thing, often they do.

I feel your frustration. It's not really your problem, and it's irresponsible
of his manager to let him wear himself down this way. His 'OCD' tendencies
might well be an asset in the right context, like doing code review or QA or
something instead of building code that's possibly meant to have a relatively
short operating life.

~~~
smt88
I'm assuming that by "OCD tendencies", you do not mean a literal, clinical
case of OCD. However, I think OP is describing OCD, the illness, not run-of-
the-mill conscientiousness.

Despite the way it seems, OCD is not a rational illness, nor does it make you
"better" at anything. It's purely emotional, and you can't reason with it. The
sufferer feels a huge amount of fear/anxiety related to issues that seem
insignificant to a typical person, and they can't choose which issues they
are.

In fact, telling him that he makes more mistakes when he's more tired may give
him greater anxiety, which would feed the vicious cycle of "doing more work to
make sure I didn't screw up" that's going on in his mind.

~~~
anigbrowl
I qualified it because I can't really tell from the limited information the OP
gave, is all; that's why I made a point of suggesting professional help. I
have relatives with fairly severe OCD and have autistic spectrum disorders
myself, but I'm also aware that self-professed medical conditions don't always
line up with the DSM definitions so I take them with a pinch of salt.

------
helen842000
You could offer to sit with him while he works through a similar problem to
you, to see where he wastes time, creates work for himself or duplicates
tasks. You can then be the voice telling him when to move on.

It sounds like he would benefit from a closer inspection of his working
practises. Perhaps he needs to be managed in a different way. For example same
amount of work just delivered as smaller tasks with shorter deadlines to avoid
overwhelm. Maybe to start with, instead of him being part of an hourly weekly
meeting, maybe he needs a 10 minute chat per day to help him to catch up,
prioritise and plan the next day. This obviously would be the responsibility
of his manager to take on.

Perhaps some training in planning out his working day in advance would throw
out some interesting changes in how he learns to manage his own time.

I think the worst thing that could be done is to restrict his working hours
which would add an extra level of worry - so he is sitting at home more
stressed than if he was working.

The most important thing is to help him catch up so he is then receptive to
support helping him keep on track.

------
greenyoda
You might want to suggest to him that he'd probably be more productive if he
got a reasonable amount of sleep. Once you're that tired, it's hard to
concentrate and you end up making more mistakes, which you then need to spend
time debugging or completely re-doing. Fatigue also makes learning new things
more difficult.

Also, is he really that much farther "behind" than his co-workers, or is he
just "behind" based on some arbitrary and unrealistic deadline set by
management?

And I agree with the other commenter who said that you shouldn't talk to this
guy's manager. There are just too many ways that could end badly.

~~~
nhayden
He's given what is in my opinion a very reasonable work load. I say that
because I have the same job and work on the same sorts of projects.

