
Ask HN: How to handle a workaholic colleague? - SoulMan
How to handle the situation when the grown in the company (Salary raise, Bonus, Stock, Promotion ) is measured by &quot;relative performance&quot; and you are stuck with a workaholic team mate who keeps sending update emails at weird hours in the night . Its good for team productivity but not for general team health and peer&#x27;s growth in company.<p>Update - I am been rated above average in the current appraisal system and quite happy with the work I do. Changing job would be resetting all the good will and trust that I have built here. But after advent of this colleague, I see everything declining as exceptions are changing, sometimes portaged as &quot;irresponsible&quot;. I can work like donkey but I like to continue to spend tine with friends and family and follow all my hobbies unlike the peer.<p>I don&#x27;t really want to portray my peer as bad(He is mostly nice on the face), just need honest opinion if this job is still a right fit for me.
======
ronnier
I work a lot. I'm working right now (took a break to read HN). I just enjoy
getting things done and it's paid off well for me. I've learned though that my
ability to work many hours and my drive to do so doesn't mean I should enforce
that on others, so I don't let my teammates know when I work outside of normal
hours. I don't send emails at night or weekends. I don't send code reviews on
nights and weekends. I try to stay invisible outside of normal work hours to
avoid creating an environment where people feel like they must work as much as
I do. I realize that also means it might look like I produce a lot more code
during my 40~ hours, but I think that's better than the team receiving non-
stop emails and code reviews from me.

I figured I'd work hard while I have any bit of youth and energy left and
relax later in life.

~~~
wheelerwj
This is the right answer without really being an answer.

I work a lot too, its not uncommon for me to 2x the hours my coworkers put in.
And i don't care because I enjoy it. I'm passionate about the work I do and
the company I'm contributing to.

I do need to be more mindful of the hours I send emails and slack messages. My
current justification is that while I may send outbound communications 24/7, I
only follow up during work hours. I could use a tool to queue messages and
make me seem less active I guess.

I don't really know what OP is expecting, but if OPs colleague is open to
feedback, maybe a quick aside to let them know how they are being perceived is
in order. Short of that, VW shuts off email after-hours, maybe OP could do
something similar:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16314901](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16314901)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
What motivates you to send emails 24/7?

Unless you're actively involved in incident response, I find it hard to
imagine a scenario that necessitates sending regular email at 3 in the
morning.

~~~
jakobegger
I guess it's convenient when you've eg. fixed an issue at 3AM in the morning
to send an email to affected people right away (so you can focus on the next
thing) instead of remembering to send the email in the morning.

~~~
webmaven
There are solutions to write and 'send' an email now for scheduled delivery.
Gmail users for example can use Boomerang:
[http://www.boomeranggmail.com/](http://www.boomeranggmail.com/)

~~~
pc86
Wouldn't this potentially result in the same person receiving multiple emails
from you at 8:01 am (for example)?

I would think a better solution would be a manual summary email early in the
morning of everything you did since the office closed the prior evening.

~~~
webmaven
_> Wouldn't this potentially result in the same person receiving multiple
emails from you at 8:01 am (for example)?_

Boomerang lets you set the time the email will be sent differently on each
scheduled email. Or you could go with "send in 8 hours" for each, and they
will be spaced out by however long it took to write each one.

------
jsaxton86
Most of the comments in this thread are ridiculous.

Just as you (hopefully) get to choose how many hours you work, your coworkers
also get to choose how many hours they work.

I'd ask yourself two questions:

1: Are you happy with your current work/life balance?

2: Can you achieve your career goals at your current workplace while
maintaining your desired work/life balance?

If the answer to either of those questions is "no", you should have a
conversation with your manager.

~~~
aji
Seconding this suggestion. These are the sorts of things managers are expected
to deal with, and it's important to engage them when you're unhappy with your
team's situation. Knowing what's expected of you will make it easier to decide
if changing jobs is the right choice for your career. If you don't feel
comfortable talking to your manager about this, that's also a data point worth
bringing into the decision.

------
notahacker
How to handle him? Ignore him.

If the company evaluation process is so bad that one person on a team
signalling - plausibly or otherwise - how hardworking they are with a few late
emails reduces your salary raise then you should probably consider moving to a
different company anyway, depending on how much you care about that raise.
It's not that individual's fault the process is broken, and that individual
changing their behaviour isn't going to fix it. If the company process isn't
that bad or nobody in management bothers to read the timestamps on his emails
when they read them the following morning anyway, then who cares about his
showing off (or unusual pattern of organising flexible work)?

tbh if you have remote email access and sending the odd late email _actually_
counts in your favour, and you actually care about the internal politics of
appearing to be harder working than you actually are, it's not that difficult
to hit the send button on an email you drafted in working hours after you've
sat down at home and had your dinner. Or use a plugin to automate the process
with some email systems.

------
3pt14159
Sun Tzu: When you cannot win the battle, deny the field.

Switch teams or departments, or mention to your manager that you're getting
discouraged by how the incentives are set up in your company. Most managers
are happy to have a hard working team member, but not at the cost of their
other 5 good team members leaving or getting discouraged.

~~~
cableshaft
This seems to be paraphrased. Is this the quote you meant?

"If you cannot win the battle it is better to withdrawal and think of another
plan rather than losing."

I can find that in a google search, but not yours.

------
brudgers
To me:

1\. If there is a direct correlation between hours worked and productivity for
the team, then compensation is not relative.

2\. To the degree that emails late at night is cast as toxic office politics,
so are attempts to normalize the productive efforts of the coworker.

3\. Pathologizing a coworker as 'workaholic' delegitmates the person and their
values. It tends to provide an excuse for treating the individual poorly 'for
their own good' rather than accepting the individual as what they are: a hard
worker.

~~~
jacques_chester
Pathologising a preference for sustainable pace provides an excuse for
treating everyone poorly "for the company's good" rather than accepting all
the individuals as what they are: ordinary folk.

Good luck.

~~~
brudgers
To me, that smells like a management influenced workplace culture issue not a
coworker issue.

------
Yoric
In my experience, workers send emails late at night to explicitly demonstrate
that they work more than others. I believe that it's unhealthy and it's pretty
clear that it's not correlated to work quality.

This may be due to any number of reasons – from proving false a manager
claiming that they don't work to impostor syndrome to office politics to
actually compensating that they don't really work – but that's probably
something you want to address directly with the mate. That's also a reason for
which a number of places/teams I've worked at/with tend to normalize reports
to once per day or once per week. That and the fact that managers just can't
cope with twenty reports per night.

You also want to address the issue with the manager and make sure that you are
not judged by number of emails but rather by actual impact. If that fails,
you're probably working in the wrong place.

P.S.: When I write "in my experience", I've been the "worker who sends emails
at all hours of night", in my case because of an abusive manager and an
ongoing burnout.

~~~
shostack
And when all else fails, it's time to learn how to use your emails software's
tools for scheduling when you send your email updates.

------
ChuckMcM
In my experience managing people I find a much prefer predictable, low noise,
task completion. Every time someone who reports to me sends something I have
to read it because it _might_ be a critical issue that needs to be immediately
addressed. As a result I appreciate folks who limit their off hours
communication to more urgent matters, and I would rather something be done, as
committed too, in a couple of weeks to someone trying to get it all done in a
week or less.

But I also try to establish that understanding with folks I supervise early
on. I have known managers who use someone in their group who is really over
working to "get everyone to be more productive" (usually by praising the level
of output of the over working employee). It always blows up the team in my
experience and they wonder why nobody wants to work for them.

------
johnwheeler
You'd be surprised how little weight hard work carries relative to positive
attitude coupled with an acceptable amount of work (former manager here).

Performance reviews aren't usually that objective. If you're getting dinged,
it might be a problem with your attitude vs your performance. It's unfair, but
you're working with humans, not vulcans.

Said another way: If management likes you personally, and you work hard
enough, you're not going to get bad performance reviews.

If this coworker is a ball hog, that's a different story, and management will
pick up on it over time. The best thing you can do in the meantime is worry
about your own output and do good work with people who do want to work with
you.

------
JoshTriplett
The problem isn't that your co-worker works much more than the rest of the
team. Based on your description, it sounds like the "relative performance"
evaluation has a serious flaw in it. For the purposes of raises, bonuses, and
stock, you should be compared to your peers _at a comparable level of
promotion_ only, not against people at a higher level. Likewise, for the
purposes of promotion, you should be compared to your peers at the level you'd
be promoted to, not people multiple levels higher. If your workaholic
colleague has received a promotion, then after that happens they should be at
a level where the rest of the team's compensation and potential promotions no
longer depend on the now-promoted person.

If your company's evaluation doesn't work that way, you need to have a talk
with management about why it should.

(Also, if your co-worker is working long hours but not actually more
productive, and your management can't tell the difference between those two
but you can, you may need to have a conversation with management about that
too.)

------
jacquesc
From a fellow workaholic:

Talk with him and see what really excites him. Suggest that you work together
with him on an open source side project (possibly related to a something your
team is building). A piece of the project he can get excited about and occupy
his excess energy.

Help him promote it so he can get him some recognition / feedback outside of
just the internal company employees. And your team might still get some
additional benefits from the open source project he's working on.

~~~
jacques_chester
I should note for future reference, we are not each other's alts.

------
rohit6223
In my opinion, you need to understand the difference between hard work and
smart work. Software development is like an art. A person may spend 18 hours a
day to create something that just works while another may spend just 8
creative hours to create a masterpiece. There are many disadvantages of being
a hard worker / workaholic:

* The expectation of your manager will get elevated and if one fails to be consistent in working for long hours, it's a negative.

* One does not have much room to accommodate something else at times of need. Think of an outage, you have already worked for 18 hours and fail to deliver at that crucial time.

* It's very difficult to innovate in an insomniac state.

Remember, doing hard work is easier that smart work. It requires much more
learning and thinking. But, if you are able to do it, you will be able to
contribute much more.

Appraisal based on relative performance: This sounds logical. If a person
contributes better to the company's goal, he/she should be appreciated for
that. Think yourself being that person it should make sense.

Note: I am not taking the political aspects of your office into consideration.
If your manager loves late night availability, long emails at weird hours, it
is his weakness. Probably, you can be smart and automate sending 'corporate
bullshit' emails at night ;)

Or just find yourself a right workplace.

~~~
alasdair_
>Appraisal based on relative performance: This sounds logical.

I don't think it does. People should be rewarded based on the absolute value
they bring to the company, not on their relative ranking.

For example, relative ranking means that you always want to work with the
worst possible teams (so you are relatively the best) not the best. It also
means that politics becomes more important than ability.

~~~
sjbase
I agree that total value is a good ideal, but it's really hard to measure in
some cases. Forgetting the inaccuracy of things like LoC, # of bugs fixed,
etc. How do you measure the performance of someone who isn't directly on the
product value chain? graphic designer delivered, office manager, technical
writers, etc. Sometimes the most quantifiable and accurate method is by
comparison.

------
isidoreSeville
Well your relative performance is worse, so either tolerate that or work
harder. Nobody's work-life balance is someone else's decision to make.

~~~
tex0
That is a very american attitude, I'd say =)

I consider it a management duty to stop people from working too much (which is
a rather european attitude :D).

~~~
phkahler
>> That is a very american attitude, I'd say =)

It always amazes me that most people here don't know what Mayday is, or why
other countries have it.

~~~
Yaziyumaru
I mean I'm a Canadian working in Germany and to me it seems like Mayday is
very similar conceptually to the American/Canadian Labour Day idea, but I will
agree work-life balance is better here.

------
allendoerfer
Create your own company and hire the guy.

~~~
happy-go-lucky
Becoming an astute businessman :)

------
Gigablah
The whole team bands together and gives your teammate their full support, so
that he/she is promoted into management as soon as possible.

~~~
kelvin0
So once he's promoted, he can now email/text you all night and 'improve' your
productivity.(Being Sarcastic, of course)

~~~
webmaven
No, at that point you get HR involved because they are creating a hostile work
environment and demoralizing the team (bonus points if any of you have
significant familial obligations such as caring for an elderly parent or other
relative).

Mandatory sensitivity training FTW!

------
znpy
I am reading so many different opinions here.

I wonder what would you all reply to an "Ask HN" thread like "I am working day
and night and sending emails even outside business hours, but my colleagues do
not reply unless it's business hours and that is really bugging me".

Btw, did you all consider that maybe that guy just needs or wants really hard
that promotion or that salary level-up and is "just" working as hard as he can
towards such goal? He/she/They might have duties you do not have (kids, family
members, health expenses or other stuff).

@OP: I'd say, as long as you feel honest about your output and feel you're
working fairly hard for your company you are okay. You might just want to take
a break and think if there is any way to improve/optimise your output.

~~~
webmaven
Ask HN and you shall receive:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12722587](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12722587)

~~~
znpy
Woah that was totally unexpected

~~~
webmaven
Here on HN you must _expect_ the _unexpected_!

Or, I suppose you could expect the Spanish Inquisition.

~~~
webmaven
_No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!_

 _Our chief weapon is surprise, fear and surprise; two chief weapons, fear,
surprise, and ruthless efficiency!_

 _Er, among our chief weapons are: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and
near fanatical devotion to the Pope!_

 _Um, I 'll come in again..._

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf_Y4MbUCLY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf_Y4MbUCLY)

------
ensiferum
It's not about working hours but your value proposal. You can't compare
yourself to him in hour to hour comparison unless you work some mundane job
where your appreciation and productivity is only measured in terms of hours of
work put in.

Since it seems like you want compete with this guy but not put in the hours
(and I don't think you should) you need to work smarter. Look up some posts
about value proposals and find a way to increase your value for the team. I.e.
focus your efforts in increasing your output per worked hour.

------
deepaksurti
>> I am been rated above average in the current appraisal system...But after
advent of this colleague, I see everything declining...as "irresponsible"

I see this as a huge red flag. It is clearly evident that you may not be
marked above average for the next appraisal. Obviously being marked as
irresponsible shows that the upper level is expecting you to work like a
donkey!!!

I would just start preparing for my next move.

>> Changing job would be resetting all the good will and trust that I have
built here.

To this, I can say from experience, that our job is to look for the next
better job. While this is a bit sarcastic maybe, but really, as we know, that
companies won't think of that goodwill when the next round of letting go
people comes along. And going by your description, your goodwill is because of
your quality of work, so if you plan/prepare/put the efforts for the next move
while you are in this job, you will really be better off.

>> I don't really want to portray my peer as bad(He is mostly nice on the
face),

Most likely and I think you imply politely that he is not nice really and he
understands the game being played and is playing it. You don't want to play
that game, which is fair enough, but you will lose as a consequence.

So overall, just my opinion, is that now this job is no longer the right fit
and moving on seems the most sensible thing to do.

------
Chyzwar
You and him have different aspirations. You want to put minimal effort and
still somehow progress in your career. He want to put maximum effort and
advance faster. Clearly he is going to become your manager even if he do not
have seniority. You will stuck in the same position or hop to new job. He will
get exploited by organisation and discarded when not needed.

1\. Losers - the biggest group of employees. they are easy to manipulate and
will easily follow the lead. These people trade their life for paycheck and
are worse off in economic sense. Over productive losers get promoted to
Clueless.

2\. Clueless is group of employees usually middle management that personally
believe in organisation. These people will put insane amount of work because
they what company to succeed. Even if they are only getting slightly more,
they carry way more responsibility.

3\. Sociopaths/Founders/Stakeholders is top layer in any organisation. They
want organisation to be predictable, It don't matter if organisation fails
they will succeed anyway. They need Clueless as insulation layer to Loser.

[http://www.makingitanywhere.com/escape-your-
job/](http://www.makingitanywhere.com/escape-your-job/)

------
atmosx
I think you should raise the issue to the team (most likely they feel the same
as you) and in a meeting raise the issue to him as well.

However, if this is going for a long time, then it's just bad management.

I recall that I was working on a project and was hooked, I mentioned in the
meeting that I'm planning to do some extra work while on vacation. My lead
engineer specifically told me absolutely NOT to do so and he went as far as
assigning the task to another engineer while I was gone, mostly to avoid
having me do any _progress_. He knew that I was killing my self trying to show
off my work and was trying to protect me (from myself). I admire him deeply
for his conduct, he set a great example.

Just when you talk to the guy who's doing such damage or to other guys, be
away that might be feeling that he needs to _prove_ himself. I might be wrong
of course as each one has a different personality.

------
0xmohit
If you're working at a place where your "performance" is determined by the
number of emails that you send at a given hour of the day, then you'd do
yourself good by finding an alternative.

(If you really love the place and want to _fight_ your "workaholic" team mate,
start scheduling a couple of your emails at random times during weird hours.)

------
jstandard
Welcome to life. A place where there is always someone who works harder or
smarter than you. If your workaholic colleague is bringing more value to the
company, she should be promoted faster and receive larger compensation than
you.

The key word here is value. Take a big step back and consider what value your
colleague brings to the company. What "jobs" and "roles" does she fulfill
within the team? Is she staying up late fixing random bugs or doing things
others don't want to do? Is she staying late making sure a release goes well
or delivering insights to execs to push the product forward?

You used the phrase "stuck with" which suggests negativity and possibly a
sense of "it's unfair to me". Is she actively working against the team or is
she outperforming others?

Consider what value you bring to the team. Do your manager/people in charge of
your compensation recognize the value you bring?

As with most "soft skill" conversations the details of a situation are key.

------
rurban
Set your Don't Disturb settings properly, so you won't see it at night, only
during work hours.

Accept that he wants to be better.

Overall the end product and performance will be measured, not how many hours
were needed to make it.

------
happy-go-lucky
This discussion reminds me of something an Indian poet once said. It’s along
the lines of: No country has any proud history. The entire history of human
race is awash with habitual exploitation of others.

------
rokhayakebe
Send Later plugin. Write emails and set them to go at 1:15AM, 2AM and 4AM.

~~~
bbcbasic
And a SaaS was born

~~~
webmaven
And that SaaS is called Boomerang.

------
bdcravens
The problem isn't your co-worker, it's the company and how they relatively
value that. I'm definitely a workaholic, but my coworkers who work "normal"
hours are equally valued. (but we're a small company, so we don't have a
rigorous review process, and soft skills are highly valued)

In general, and true in my situation, when you work crazy hours, other aspects
of your work life may be subpar (for instance, another team member may be a
better communicator or a thoughtful architect)

------
bendixso
This kind of reminds me of clients who send emails late at night. My general
policy is to just make myself unavailable, or simply send a polite reply
telling them I will address it first thing in the morning. I figure if I do
that enough, it will nudge them toward understanding which times are
appropriate and which ones aren't.

------
jeremycabral
I recently wrote a blog post which might change his perspective on things:
[https://medium.com/@jeremycabral/how-a-5-minute-ignite-
talk-...](https://medium.com/@jeremycabral/how-a-5-minute-ignite-talk-helped-
me-re-prioritize-my-life-16db16a9ed4c)

I think sometimes people need something shocking to happen in their lives to
force them to change for the better

------
Spooky23
Everyone is very nice and proper on this thread. There's another option if
he's affecting you negatively -- burn him.

If he likes to work, arrange to dump the worst, tedious gigs on him. Nitpick
random bullshit. Blame him for stuff. If you don't he'll set the benchmark for
everyone.

------
elechi
Well, I'm a bit of a workaholic, and I do tend to do things at all hours of
the day. But it's more related to the fact that I have terrible sleep
patterns, and I've worked 6am to 3pm, to about 1pm to 10pm, and so on and so
forth. I've just explained to my team that I have horrid patterns, and to not
look into it more than basically tracking how I'm sleeping.

------
rsmsky1
Sometimes people just wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble
falling asleep so they send emails or do other boring stuff, so they can fall
asleep again. I've done that on occasion. If it were me, I would just
concentrate more on my job and less on what my coworkers were doing.

------
sidcool
I have met people that have God complex. They feel that things cannot run
without them.

------
MPSimmons
I think it's really up to the manager of the group not to normalize the
workaholic's behavior. It's possible to not let someone "break the curve"
while still appreciating the extra work that they put in.

------
gnicholas
Don't assume that late-night emails/updates are bona fide. I've had colleagues
who bragged that they would write emails during the day and then send out late
at night.

------
dmourati
Hint: emails to execs throughout the night are mostly unwelcome.

~~~
SoulMan
:) but they measure hard work with volume of text and charts contained in all
the emails combined

~~~
AlexCoventry
How does that align with their business goals?

------
jsprogrammer
Changing jobs doesn't reset good will and trust. When you change teams, you
get to build even more good will and trust with others.

------
throwaway_45
You want to stop people from working too hard because they want to get ahead?
This is like un-american.

------
kelvin0
Changes jobs.

~~~
e_py
I think that's not your problem, but your manager's. They should discourage
that kind of behavior at work. Also, you can talk about it with other team
member, I am sure there will be more people who think the same.

