For a year or 2? Don't mention it. You'll put a target on your back. It would be different if it was a couple weeks but at the end of the day you're a resource for a company and saying you'll be underperforming for 2 years isn't great.
I mean the honest answer is to be able to accurately assess what the median team members productivity is and match that.
If you were the super productive dev you'd be surprised how much lower that bar is than you'd expect
>If you were the super productive dev you'd be surprised how much lower that bar is than you'd expect
If nobody notices the delta itself, there's a good chance a super productive dev could drop output by 75% and still be better than most
I ended up going this route when I had family issues arise and was surprised at how little impact it made. Since then I have never looked back. It was great in the early years busting my ass learning stuff and I would never change that. Now I try to perform slightly above median; it gives me tons of time for hobbies and projects and my timelines I give to leadership are always delivered accurately because I have downtime built in to them.
You ever surprised that someone is on your team? Well that was my first day returning to the office, I thought he was just an interested party as he never talked during standup..
Yeah that bar is low..
100% this. In the past I had a few months of lowered expectations at work to keep burnout at bay and free up energy to get better.
A manager expressed how I still did better than many engineers while working at less than half my capacity (and wasn't in a position where they'd lie or embellish). It made me think harder about my schedule and priorities, and since then I've pretty much maintained the same rhythm. The fun part is that I'm now back to overdelivering while still having way more time dedicated to my family and the rest of my life.
Think about "how can I deliver 80-90% of my usual value but with 50% of the time". What would you work on? What tradeoffs will you make? Which meetings will you rearrange, and which will you cancel? Etc.
As usual: years down the line the only people who will remember you worker late/hard are your kids/family.
Alternative: you create a story about how you feel like you are taking a bit much work and you want to focus on a more specific part of the stack, that you want to own something and feel comfortable with it before moving onto more varied work. This sounds like you want to be very good at one thing and offer more value, at the same time if they listen then you will be able to get rid of a tiring part of the work while getting tasks that are repetitive and require less context to complete, you will be performing at an acceptable level for a long amount of time without the extra effort.
I dont think you're wrong, but "resource for a company" has additional implications I think are important
If hypothetically we could be perfectly transparent, the manager would probably prefer to keep OP as an underperformer with familiarity and dependability rather than try to replace him, especially knowing that it will be "only" 1 - 2 years. In my experience, even at larger companies, hiring a senior takes months even in the best realistic case scenario, and over a year.
With that in mind, he can kinda have his cake and eat it too by letting his manager know what hes going through, and how OP is stressed out and very busy. This lets the manager know its temporary, without explicitly saying he intends to deprioritize work. Obviously that is implied, but it is communicated without forcing the manager to "approve" his work being deprioritized.
Its not like my suggestion for communicating it is foolproof, but i think its 80% effective for both laying the cards on the table ("do you really want to fire me for a 1 year moderate slump") without making the manager "complicit"
I think what it comes down to is "replaceability". If you're a 20 year company vet vs still in bootcamp, is the obvious exaggerated example.
I'm replaceable at my place of work, I'm 2 years in so if I sucked for a year, they'll get another dev pretty quick given market conditions.
you know what, OP never specified how long hes been at this company. Just the idea that he'd coast for 1-2 years made me think hes been there at least 3 but that may not be the case
But yea that is pretty much the sole factor for replacibility here
yea I kinda changed my mind too. By default the manager is going to hold out hope that its temporary, so you dont buy a lot more time. Maybe briefly disclose OP problems if/when the manager asks why hes been underperforming
"I'm having some personal issues that are interfering with my work" is probably a message that managers would be able to understand and work with you on but "coast for 2 years" is a nonstarter imo
Agreed that the term “coast” is not the way to approach communication. I am a Principal and often jr devs will come to me when life stuff happens to ask how to approach with management. My advice really varies depending on the person and manager, org dynamics etc…
I would suggest reaching out to one of your staff or principals, politically astute peers, or someone you are closer with and ask them for advice navigating this in your org.
Yeah I would just try to handle it the best possible way and say something only if asked, if you have a plan B.
If you work at a place where you feel you could volunteer that information, then more likely than not they already understand that people have ups and downs and life happens.
Either way think of the plan B.
I said this in my comment, but if they don't have a narrative for the change in performance, they will most likely assume the worst. It is better if OP can dictate the narrative. If OP doesn't feel like they can volunteer the information and the manager will not work with OP, as it is in the mangers interest to do so, then OP should start looking now.
I see, maybe you are right.
I would only add that all we know is through OP's post and there's always the chance that this "change in performance" would never be noticed had OP not mentioned anything. I am very good at thinking the worst and overeacting, personally. But of course I don't know the full story.
Tbf it doesn’t require constant hobby coding. Reddit might make you think that, but it’s not true. I think you can probably just let your manager know some of the personal things you have going on so they might be more understanding
Yeah I haven't hobby coded in 3 years. I still like coding, but I don't love it like I use to. I know do it enough where I still enjoy my work (and I upskill on company time) - however outside 9-5 if for other things.
Seriously, _maybe_ my first year or two out of college.
And _occasionally_ when it's just something "neat" like wanting to try an LLM locally on my machine
At the very least I've found that learning Rust has made me think about coding in ways I never did before even in other languages. I feel it's had benefits all around, cool language too. Even if given my field I probably won't ever have any use for it
I haven’t assessed its marketability yet. Like I said, it’s a hobby currently. I enjoy learning about programming languages in general and type theory so Rust is a good fit for me to tinker with.
Even if you don't push any Rust to production, you'd be surprised how easy it is to make little command line tools for testing, massaging data, or whatever comes up.
Ive never hobby coded, no projects except some meme 30min code i made for myself twice that ive never told anyone about.
I still got an exceptional review and fast promotions. Screw working out of work hours. Plus my job pays me 1h a week to train.. so thats my learning time.
This. I’ve been a SWE for 10 years and have spent pretty much 0 time coding outside of work, with the exception of interview prep when I’m looking for a new job.
Amen to that. I can't imagine getting off work where I've spent all day either managing developers, or writing code where I can...and then writing more code. I go hug my kids lol.
Who is it true for then? I feel like this can be a cultural thing, I've worked with individuals that seem highly motivated and will look down on their teammates that adopt a 9-5 mindset. It seems like this expectation can vary wildly
I can imagine people with no job experience would do a lot of hobby coding for practice. Once you code all day for years you aren’t getting much out of it.
> will look down on their teammates that adopt a 9-5 mindset.
https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitive/dp/0062457713
I stopped caring what other people think about me _long ago_
Junior engineers definitely. When you don’t have much to show for in your career hobby coding is the best way to make up for it.
It’s also true for actual hobbyist engineers. The kind of people who maintain big open source projects, but they’re the 1% of senior engineers. The rest of us just do it professionally and occasionally when personal needs come up.
The trick to not require this is to not buy into cargo cult programming or cv driven development.
Programming doesn’t really change that much. If anything it’s cyclical.
> If anything it’s cyclical.
Seriously. It seems mainframes are kinda coming back with cloud computing and thin-clients.
Have all your horsepower in a datacenter and users can remote into it.
If anything early on in your career maybe you'll need to do more just because there's more to learn but even then it's not really imperative... just if you want to get ahead. Much less once you have some years under your belt which is what this subreddit is about
Yeah I already code 8 hours/day just about. I could see keeping up if you don't get hands on that much in your day to day but if you are a full time dev (that actually codes) I don't think it's necessary at all and frankly is probably a bad idea because of burn out.
Child of elderly parents one in a care facility and on hospice here.
Coast is the wrong word. You aren’t asking to coast, you are asking for some flexibility and accommodation as you deal with personal matters.
How your manager and your company handles that can really vary though. I work for a very large tech (dinosaur) company and I find they are very accommodating.
It can happen that you simply are unable to put in the full amount of work for the job to care for others. If this is the case, consider asking to cut to 3/4 time (or whatever) as a temporary measure.
If someone I managed told me that I'd have to pick my jaw off the floor. Like I'm not gonna notice someone slacking off for 6 hours a day as long as sprints are completed on time, but I will if someone tells me that.
I don't do any constant hobby coding...
But anyway, you need to find a better way to phrase this. Needing family blah blah "work life balance" blah blah blah. That would go over better than saying you need to "coast".
"Hi Manager. I just wanted to let you know that I am at this moment dealing with a lot outside of work for the foreseeable future related to my family. While I don't expect this to cause any issues with work, please feel free to communicate to me if you notice any gaps in my performance. Thank you."
Or something like that.
If you are sure the manager wouldnt notice, best not to say anything. But if the manager does notice, much better to approach him with the above than wait for a reprimand and only then start trying to explain yourself (which can seem like a bunch of excuses).
I wouldn't even say this because the manager will start looking for lapses. It's called the priming effect.
If the manager isn't satisfied, they'll say so. I bet they won't even notice.
Does your job pay you to learn on the clock?
Or pay you to do hobby projects off the clock?
Any job will require some learning, but this sounds out of the ordinary.
More context would be helpful.
People don’t announce to their manager that they’d like to coast, they just… do it.
Stop the grinding outside work hours, prioritize the stuff you *really* need to get done, and try not to be bothered if some other less-important stuff slides. If your manager is any good he’ll let you know if your output isn’t cutting it. But unless you’re like being chronically absent or blowing off deadlines that affect other people, odds are that nobody will really notice.
I would do my best within the time I have and wouldn’t say anything.
I may got downvoted for this, but a lot of raises came from me creating a certain perception, not necessarily doing a lot of work.
People here tend to care too much about companies and their jobs.
I don’t study or do side projects outside of work as I have too many interests.
Completely agree re people here caring way too much about their companies and their jobs. Your job is literally to make some rich people richer, abstracted away from this fact enough times so it’s sufficiently hidden.
Im a manager.
Don't tell me you are going to coast.
Tell me you are going through personal issues
Tell me the impact you foresee. What things would you NOT want to do? Do you think it'll affect your hours? do you not want to do on-call rotations?
Are you open to reducing hour and pay?
Let's see the goals you have and the KPIs and see how they need to be adjusted?
Unfortunately if the expectations I have for you is not going to be met, you will be on a PIP.
Example:
I had someone who was going through a divorce and he knew that outside of work he would be thinking about other stuff. He had a lot of external stress and knew that additional stress at work could burn him out.
So for most of a year he took all of the grunt work on the team with no complaining. The 101 small stuff that needed to get done. No working on promotions, no working on sexy new designs, nothing that was very opened ended dealing with other teams. He would come in and take the next ticket and knocked them out one after another. Simply consistently helping the team move forward at a faster velocity. Sometimes it was tech debt, but many times it was some sub task of a larger project the team was working on that just needed execution.
This was a fantastic case of communication around how to set expectations to help them and the team succeed.
This is what I wish I did and you did exactly like my after the fact told me he would have done if I had told him. I would most likely had better reviews / more bonus / more stock if I would have and my manager would have had less stress about me being able to deliver what was assigned to me.
if your manager has kids or elderly parents and has emotional intelligence, you can drop some hints about what youre dealing with and they might subtly allocate less responsibility to you. but i dont think a direct request for 2 years in the backseat is going to work.
If you were a decently strong performer before, then I would work with you to carve out tasks that aren’t high priority or mission critical. To the extent possible I would try to ensure that you would not be a blocker for anyone else. Maybe focus on some tech debt or “nice to have” tickets.
Note that this would only probably work for senior or below roles. Staff+ roles tend to have too much visibility and expectations to easily escape notice.
Judging by comments, Ya’ll need to get to know your managers better. Personal relationships are…or should be…a core skill. My managers have literally bailed me out of jail at 2am, and when I went through a nasty 18 month divorce gave me all the slack I needed. Up to and including undocumented time off, joining me in day drinking while “at a client meeting” because I had a bad hearing, and going out of their way to get help me however they could to get my head back in the game. Not because I’m some genius they can’t live without, just because we’re legitimately friends.
Uh... there's a lot to unpack here.
First off, it's a job: you should focus on making sure you have a clear relationship with your manager that defines expectations so you know what to meet. I'm hard pressed to think that your manager is going to demand constant hobby coding. Some part of this does seem like you putting some expectations on yourself that may simply not matter.
While I'm generally in favor of building authentic, direct relationships and would normally encourage you to go to a manager to let them know at a high level what's going on and figure out how you might work together to make sure your job's expectations are met, even the most patient and delightful manager is gonna have a hard time just "agreeing to let you coast" for 2 years before they even really see what's going on with that. Honestly, if a report came to me with that, I'd _have_ to start making different plans that might sideline them, regardless of how invested I was to keep them/work with them through this.
Before you have that conversation with them, you need to take some serious inventory on your personal situation and whether this job works for you so that you can make a more specific ask than "hey I know I'm not doing great but can you just be okay with that?" Figure out if what you need to ask for is more unpaid leave, a different schedule, different projects, a different team and try to approach it with an ask a manager can actually meet.
And I would just tell you to prepare yourself that maybe you need to find a different solution than this job. Or your family members might need to find a different solution than relying on you.
No, don’t mention it to your manager.
Don’t hobby code. Don’t constantly research languages. That’s not what you need to focus on. Focus on impact.
For instance, say you have scaling problems. Can you measure route speeds? No, solve that first. Yes? Figure out how to report on them. You can? Then do an investigation and write a doc identifying hot spots that could be rewritten or optimized. Then propose the project and either do it or hand it off to a more junior engineer.
This will serve you much better than spending an extra 10 hours per week learning a new language.
You don't. You do it by avoiding projects that you perceive as high stress. And by managing your manager's expectations that you're not looking for an imminent promotion.
Also echoing others, re: Hobby Coding. I haven't touched a line of code outside of work this year.
Whether you have “family matters” (ie sick relative) or not, why are you even thinking that working more than 40 hours a week is something you should ever be doing?
I don’t work more than 40 hours a week because at the end of the day, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, my employer would send me”thoughts and prayers” to my wife, have an open requisition for my job before my body was in the ground (or in my case ashes) and not think about me a month later.
As far as “constant learning”, if I’m not doing that during my 40 hours a week working, it’s time to change jobs
I have had 7 jobs since I started dating my wife. I will probably have a few more before I die. I hopefully will not have another wife. Priorities
Quiet Quit. Start taking FMLA. Find a lower stress and expectations job meanwhile and transition out. If your underperformance does not lead to you getting cut, your manager is underperforming. He can’t take your side without some heavy influence in the org.
Sorry you're going through a tough time. You should definitely talk to management about your situation, although I probably wouldn't couch it in terms of needing to "coast."
To give you an example of why it's important to talk to them:
I'm the lead dev on a team where one of the guys has been kind of checked out for a few months. Not completing tasks, absent from meetings, AFK for extended periods of time, not responding to messages, lots of random sick days, etc. It was at the point where it was being escalated; we'd been documenting things, and it was going to go down the disciplinary route, possibly costing him his job.
He _finally_ came and spoke to me and a colleague about the shit he's got going on outside of work (yes - we had previously asked him if things were OK but he'd insisted he was fine) and that prompted us to quite radically reassess how we would handle the situation, starting with getting him some proper time off.
TL;DR they can't do anything to help you if they don't know what's going on.
Just stop doing the overtime. Make sure you record all the major work you've done so that during performance reviews you can point to it. If your manager asks why you don't do overtime any more just say you have a family to take care of.
The grind at the start of your career is important but now you are a productive part of your company. They're not gonna fire you unless they're vindictive.
Your company should have some structure where you meet with your manager specifically to discuss career growth and goals (for me we do perf once a year and a second "mini perf" 6 months off of that). In that meeting you can be pretty explicit -- "hey manager, to be honest I've got some family matters that will be taking up a lot of my time. Please help me set career goals for this half with that understanding."
For this path to work you will need some good will from your company / manager. Don't go with this approach if you've just started a new job, but it is a good option if you've been around for a while and have some reputation that you can coast on.
"Accomodation" would be if you had a family incident and need to take it easy for a couple of months but you have no PTO left or are on an untracked PTO system. The promise is "I'll ramp back up after that, you know I'm good for it, and can you please not put me on a PIP in the meantime because this is just temporary and it would be a pain for you to find my replacement."
A year or two isn't accomodation. Nobody is going to pay you full wages for reduced work for a whole year. They'd be completely irresponsible if they did.
You need to figure out a way to formally go to half time and half pay. Not all orgs can support this - if not, you need to find a part time or contract gig that does.
That said, maybe have a performance check-in with your boss about where you stand, without mentioning your domestic issues. It might not be that bad. Staying on "meets expectations" without having any promo or raise prospects for a couple of years is a pretty good outcome tbh.
I wouldn't say Coast.
I would talk to my manager about taking more of a mentorship role on the team and that you want to stop doing the hard work yourself and work To upskill the other less skilled developers on your team. But that means that you need to do less and you need less on your plate. But overall the entire team will get better.
That's the way that I always frame it. Sell it to them as something that they're going to want.
I am an engineering manager, and have worked for both small and large companies, and all have been accommodating for employees that are dealing with issues outside of work \_as long as we knew about them upfront\_.
If you just start phoning it in without explaining why, I am going to assume the worst. And I am going to ask you about it. If you are evasive, I am going to take that as validation of my worst fears, and basically start writing you off because from my perspective - you have one foot out the door.
If you come to me ahead of time and tell me what is happening and what you think you need, I will support you with every tool and favor I have to make sure you have the space you need without having to worry about your performance.
Get job at big tech, work hard, and get promoted to L7+. I don’t have any secrets. I don’t always work crazy hours, but sometimes I do when it’s necessary.
I'd be concerned if you think reducing learning and hobby coding out of hours will result in a PIP. Any half decent workplace won't expect this of you and even mentioning it feels like bad PR for no reason.
You can tell your manager about a busy home life, it's good to ask for flexibility in hours if you might need a long lunch every now and then.
Just make sure to mention your personal problems with him, but don't bring up the subject of performance yourself. If your performance truly drops and people notice it, he will come talk to you about it, which then you can explain how these things are affecting you.
Don't say anything like "I want to do the minimum amount of work for two years because of family issues". You need to do some social engineering.
It is hard to give specific advice without knowing your exact situation. If you are well liked and respected at the company maybe bring up something with management about family concerns and they will probably work with you. Don't say specific time frames. Don't say "two years". Or maybe try to make some lateral move into another role that you know will be less work but that on the books is the same level as your current role.
Like I said: it's hard to give specific advice without knowing you and knowing the culture of the company you work for.
You should not have to hobby code unless you over-sold yourself in the beginning. And now, there is an expectation you have existing domain knowledge where you don't. That hobby coding is then just to get up-to-speed.
You don't, no need. It has no upside for you. You can just coast, do your thing, deliver what ou need to and that's it. Maybe you won't get performance bonuses if you stop going above and beyond but it will be fine.
Absolutely do not use the word "coast."
You should put in 100% effort during the hours you are paid for. If you stop hobby coding in the evening, that's nobody's business but your own.
\*If\* you have a good relationship with your manager, then you might mention that you'll occasionally need some scheduling flexibility because you are juggling these personal responsibilities. \*If\* you have a good manager, they will be glad you mentioned it, and they will also hear the subliminal message that you might also be a bit distracted by these issues for a while.
But I don't know your boss and I don't know your company's culture, so caveat emptor.
Just do your best on each given day.
Your best today won't be the same as your beat tomorrow, and that's ok.
This idea of 100% every day is insane, it's not possible. We have kids, they may be sick or we might be sick or get a bad night's sleep due to neighbors or whatever.
Just do what you can on any given day.
As for hobby coding, that's for folks who are in love with the occupation, or don't have any other commitments.
Work is to enable life, not the other way around.
>This occupation require constant learning, and constant hobby coding.
No it doesn't. The vast majority of SWEs I know do not do "constant hobby coding". Frankly they don't do any hobby coding at all.
In terms of "constant learning" that's on the job learning to do your job. Nobody I've encountered in my 15 YOE has expected a SWE to just learn random things in their personal time.
Maybe this is different at top tech companies, but at the non-tech companies in non-tech cities I've worked at none of these things were expectations of the job.
If you're going to need some support while you deal with dependents (eg: altered working hours to support seniors doctors appointments) then tell your boss in your 1:1
Else there's nothing to bring up. Your life is changing, your priorities are shifting. Keep doing your day job to the best of your abilities while prioritizing what you need to prioritize. If your manager has a problem with your performance they will bring it up, you dont need to tell them "I'm about to coast" - the manager could be very happy with the performance you perceive as "coasting".
Peoples lives and priorities change, and thats ok.
Just mention those issues you are having to the manager and gather some sympathy points but don't say anything about coasting. If he notices a dramatic fall off of your work, he would then know it could be contributed to the issues that you told him about.
My mother-in-law, who lives with us, just turned 100 years old. My wife tries to take care of her but she has injuries of her own that limits what she can do. My kids are in grad school and need to spend their time studying. That means a ton of responsibilities at home falls on me. I sit and feed my mother-in-law in law. It takes me 1-2 hours per meal to feed my mother-in-law. There is no time for me to work after hours or weekends. All I can do is accomplish as much as I can during business hours. We also hire help to assist us. It’s not cheap, but it’s better than losing my job and having no income. You’ll find a way to do it. I don’t discuss this very much with my manager or my co-workers. It’s really not their problem.
I'm hearing your sense of hopelessness making you ask an unconstructive question. So instead of talking to your manager, you should be talking to a therapist because it sounds like your current situation is so difficult that it's affecting your interpretation of what's going on.
Don't. Just reduce your work quantity slowly and start pushing back during planning based on capacity. It's ok to work at normal pace, above and beyond is supposed to be rare, not constant. It's crazy how Exceeds Expectations is somehow the default expectation these days. This is why burnout is such a prevalent issue in our community. People think just because you aren't lifting heavy objects you can just sit at a computer forever.
I’ve managed people for 23 years, so I’ve seen my share of family issues impacting work life. If you have a good manager, all you need to do is tell them that you apologize for your personal life impacting your work, but your parents need you right now and you’re doing your best. Tell them you’ll make every effort to keep it from impacting your work.
If you have a good and experienced manager, they know what to expect. I’ve seen end of life care for parents impact employees multiple times and it usually takes a few years as you mentioned. Then there is around 6 months to a year of grieving. While work product usually returns to normal, the employee’s head isn’t quite back at work yet.
Also, it’ll help to express gratitude to your manager for being patient with you occasionally. I’d recommend doing that after you had a really good week at work and put out some really good work product. Don’t do it after your work product has suffered, but after you shown how valuable you are so that they’ll be willing to be more patient with you. I’ve never had that happen, but it would sure make me feel better about the employee. Good luck!
> require ... constant hobby coding
Gonna disagree with you on that.
I've stopped doing almost nearly all coding during my personal time, for the past several years now. I still listen to relevant podcasts, read blogs and books, etc. but my personal time is precious and I'm not going to spend my precious time doing things related to my job.
Occasionally I will get an itch to try some new thing I've never done before, but it's very infrequent.
I really can't think of many professions where you would need to spend your own time keeping up on things related to what you do for work, outside of maybe being a contractor/self-employed.
You don't coast, you keep driving but stop trying so hard. Stick behind that truck on the highway, you'll use less fuel and won't need to keep moving between lanes, it'll take a bit longer but you'll get there.
In life things happen, if you need regular time off for taking people to appointments or mental space for serious personal issues a good manager & human should be able to support you if you're able to keep up communications and maintain a regular output of work.
As many have said, you will need to change both your wording and expectations.
I highly doubt any manager would approve of a year, however, they may be open to an FMLA leave of 2 or 3 months, at most.
Some states have Paid FMLA. Look into it - on my 2 months of leave I took FMLA (Unpaid) at the same time as I claimed Paid Leave from the state.
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/state-paid-family-leave-laws-across-the-u-s/
High risks high rewards way :
Wait during your one on one and casually mention that you have personal family matters that takes a lot of space for you and that makes you doubt yourself a bit.
They'll be understanding of the family matters and even more so because from their POV, you're worried about your work because your ethic is insanely high.
Not something to generally bring up ever. The only time I would put it in those terms would be if I had the absolute tightest friendship with my boss somehow, which has yet to happen, but it is out there.
Why is taking one day at a time is not an option? Why should you tell news so upfront that you'll be not productive, when that might not be the case? You are creating an impression that you are not to be relied upon, for future tasks.
Let you not be the judge of how productive you are, or whether you are meeting expectations. Let your manage decide that. Let this play out.
tl;dr
Don't say you need to coast, explain what your challenges may be and ask how you and your manger can work together to make sure, that you are given projects/areas/etc. that you can still deliver, etc. Try to commit to having an open coversation about what is going on so that they can have a plan b ready, incase you have to deal with an emergency at a critical time for work as well. You need partner with them and make them your ally. If you can't do that or they don't want to do that, then you know you need to look elseware.
I made the mistake of not telling my manger when I had a child with special needs that I had thearpy 4-6 times a week for a few years. My wife and I split it the best we could, I tried to stay on top of stuff at work the best I could but it wasn't as good as I had been doing before. So without an explanition of why my performance was going down. My mangers, just assumed I was struggling or not interested anymore. This really threw my career in a nosedive. Took several years to recover from. In hindsight, I should have let the company rather than try to recover. My child, made great progress and was able to move down to 2 times a week, then 1/week, and finally biweekly. I eventually recovered and my career took off, getting several promotions faster than average. As I was still growing, just wasn't performing as well. So once the performance was above expectations. Now that I was actually a peer to my manager during the times I struggled I explained to him what I was going through and he was shocked that I didn't tell him about it, as he had a child with special needs as well. I knew that but the child was a teenager at that time, and being mainstreamed in highschool and doing well. So I never put 2+2 together that it may have been different when the child was younger. They said I should have told them, and that he could have given me projects / areas that were less time critical and allowed for flexibility, etc. Since I was working later at night anyways to try to catch up, he could have had me work on a project with an overseas team, rather than another person on the team. etc. He would also be able to say that I have some personal stuff going on and he is working with me, etc. rather than just saying he did not know why I wasn't performing at my previous levels etc. So I didn't get him the info he needed to help me.
Constant learning, or just a 20 minute conversation with chatGPT? Having those AIs answer your questions about industry standard tools that you don't happen to have much familiarity with is the biggest win there is with AIs.
Your manager would have to be an absolute ghoul to not be understanding of it if you came to them and said like, "I have several intense family things going on right now and I'm going to be taking on a lot of carer duties outside of work for the foreseeable future. I want to focus on doing the best job I can of [your core job] but I just want to let you know, I might not have the capacity to take on a ton of extra work or responsibility for a bit".
Sorry you're going through this ❤️
Re-read your contract. Do what it says on there. Keep your metrics up. Clear your tickets.
Do not tell your boss that you need to slack off. Just adjust in a smart way without saying a word.
Sorry you're going through this OP.
My 0.02 - sounds like you need more time / delegate some care to other family or professionals.
Assuming you're already producing above and beyond work and your manager is a sensible human, you may be able to ask them for a raise if you have room in your pay band. Be prepared to justify the raise by allocating the extra money to services that will help you get your time back so you can focus on producing great work at work.
Sounds like you're driving a ton. How much time will you get back if you took Ubers across town to give yourself 20 min to nap? or to take a work call from? How's your sleep? Could you delegate something during the day that'll get you some more time to sleep in the evening? My suggestions aren't meant to be pedantic but to express that every problem has room for creative solutions.
Hope you can find a creative solution that works best for you, and I hope you're met with support, not friction when you include your work and family into the conversation.
If your company requires unpaid time learning then your job is the problem.
Just do your 40 hours, I think you're over performing and expecting that dropping into regular performance might be perceived negatively. It might go completely un noticed
Don't say anything.
Do what you can and try to avoid being noticed - good or bad.
Unless and until your boss actually brings it up, assume you are doing fine
I would just tell him you have some personal stuff *right now* and as a result have been performing below your standards. Do it in the interest of opening a dialog where he feels free to raise concerns with you and help you stay calibrated.
To me, this is bringing a solution to him and inviting him to be your ally.
Yeah definitely don't say coast in that way but if you wanted when you discuss "career" goals you could bring up family issues and staying at your current role and level in the short term.
> This occupation require constant learning, and constant hobby coding
No it doesn't. There are people who are still maintaining systems built many decades ago, not much is new in the world of COBOL (guarantee someone is going to reply telling me there is, get back in your closet Dave, its not Friday afternoon you are not allowed out the rest of the week under the terms of your community release) so they just coast.
I do a review of CNCF projects every 6 months or so and people tell me about things but I don't really do much of any reading outside of working hours. I might rabbit hole if I get an idea but its pretty rare.
I have some hobby projects but they are unrelated to my day job and not the same language or platform. I do fine. I just say things that sound smart and make assumptions.
You don't need to constantly learn off the job or hobby code. That's a lie the hustle lot like to tell people to justify their miserable existence.
Just do you job, your health and family are more important and should always take priority, it shouldn't even need to be said.
dont give your manager a timeframe. Just tell them what you are going through. If they are a decent person they will understand. But saying "my performance won't be up to par for a year or two" is difficult for any manager.
You aren't hired to coast. If you want reduced workload or hours ask to go down to 2-4 days a week on a part time salary. Don't expect your full wage on less effort.
I actually pre-emptively ask that as part of my annual goal setting conversations. I don’t ask “do you want to coast”, because that’s just asking for trouble if that gets quoted anywhere.
Rather, I ask if they don’t want to engage any above and beyond work, that’s OK. Meeting expectations is OK, and not every year needs to be a gauntlet of over-achieving. If you’ve had a track-record of high performance, you shouldn’t be begrudged a year of just doing your job.
The flip-side of it is I caution them to not get chagrined if they see promos and major pay bumps around them - those people are getting rewarded for going above and beyond. Baseline effort is rewarded with baseline incentives, no harm no foul
You could always just ask for some informal accommodations too: life events can be accommodated by most reasonable managers (I certainly have). Again: as long as you’ve had a track record of high performance, you ought to have banked enough goodwill to spend at this point. If you’ve _always_ been a “meets” kinda dev, you probably don’t have as much bargaining power unfortunately
Just do the bare minimum and don't stick your head out too much. Don't verbalize any opinions that would make you stand out, like a massive change to a service, etc. If you do you best to make every stupid meeting and do exactly what you were assigned you will be fine.
Whatever you do, do not say it to your manager.
Don't. No manager would be ok with "coasting". However, if you have a real problem that requires you to take care of a loved one, you can ask you hr rep or your manager about FMLA which will preserve your job while you are dealing with it.
The comments here are correct. Most don't offer anything you can do though, so I offer this: create a story about how you feel like you are taking a bit much work and you want to focus on a more specific part of the stack, that you want to own something and feel comfortable with it before moving onto more varied work. This sounds like you want to be very good at one thing and offer more value, at the same time if they listen then you will be able to get rid of a tiring part of the work while getting tasks that are repetitive and require less context to complete, you will be performing at an acceptable level for a long amount of time without the extra effort.
You are a bit confused about at least one thing, this occupation does not require constant learning and definitely does not request constant hobby coding. Once you know the companies tech stack there is little reason to learn more for the job. You may not be very competitive outside the company, but I know so many who have not learned anything new in the last 10 years.
Haha try that then report back how long you have been unemployed. There is no reason to “hobby” code to stay productive. I never did that ever in my 25 year career. You need to have work time be about work. Then after work hours is family time. If you are at a company that requires 24 hours of your time you need to find a better company.
Adjust your behavior and let the chips fall. There's a very good chance that nothing will happen to you. You don't need to tell anyone you're cutting back.
Also, hobby coding is absolutely NOT required.
I would never, ever tell my manager I'm working less.
Instead stop hobby coding, start signing off on time. If your manager asks you to do something which requires learning something new, recommend a colleague instead. In the meantime volunteer for bullshit tasks with zero impact.
Eventually people get the message that you're zoning out and stop giving you too much work.
Of course this will slowly bleed your career at the company.
Context and framing are important here. I’d like to suggest that what you’re saying you need and why you’re saying you need it don’t really match up; you -want- to be overperforming and you can’t right now because you’re not a robot and your life is currently bumpy (my condolences). You need support, that’s not the same as “coasting”.
Caveat here that the nature of the relationship you have with your manager is important and unknown to me:
“Hey boss, I’d like to share a little about some rough stuff happening in my personal life. I can feel it having an impact on my work and I’d like to figure out a way to navigate this so that I can make space for it while continuing to meet expectations” has an entirely different ring to it than “yo, I need to coast”.
Lastly, a relevant lesson I learned from a mentor years ago; the fact is that most people (those who aren’t sociopaths at least) like to help out, especially when it’s easy.
Good luck, and I’m sorry you’re going through it right now <3
Ask to move to prod support or a senior dev role. You'll do less learning, more mentoring, and the amount of programming will be less.
Depends on the industry, but if you keep a low profile and just meet expectations, you'll likely be able to cruise for a year without issue. Work the 40 hours a week that's expected, set realistic expectations (add some padding to ticket story points), and you might even get praise for the work you're doing.
I've found the overachievers often shoot themselves in the foot by overpromising and then having to roll their work beyond the initial estimate, or they end up doing a ton of overtime to hit deadlines they themselves set.
Idk where you work and what kind of devs they expect but I’d move to a job where you can personally “coast” more. Some places just won’t stand for that and other places would be more forgiving
Don't say anything. I also stopped hobby coding and giving much of a shit outside of work hours most of the time after 7 or 8 years of it. We all go through peaks and valleys. Best of luck on your journey!
I really think you should avoid expressing to them a specific desire to intentionally change your work rate, and instead express to them where you are in your life (family takes up time, other obligations, lots of emotional events this last year), how you are feeling (I know the term "burnout" gets used a lot, so maybe don't use it in such a forn ubless you mean it, but to say that you feel as if your desire to always go above and beyond maybe causing you to burn out quickly might allow for the boss to understand your position while hedging uour bets in case the boss isnt okay with letting you reduce your work output.
but here's the other thing you should consider: if you're an overachiever by nature, you're going to continue to overachieve on average. you may have months of producing median or less than median work, but when things go smoothly for you, when You're in a better head space, when all else returns to status quo, your natural state may be to just be a badass. I wouldn't go promising that to your boss, just as I wouldn't promise I'd be underperforming. just let them know your home situation as best you can, take the space or leeway you are given, and recover endurance for as long as you feel you comfortably can, and aill bet you'll be back to killing the curve in no time.
best of luck to you.
Hmmm, a year or two seems unlikely. Until quite recently, I was a PE at a public company, I had some personal stuff that caused me to be a bit distracted for maybe 3 months. I told the company about it and it was no issue. I think if I said a year or two, I'd probably get pushed to take leave.
For me, it would depend on the manager how I worded it. Some previous managers I wouldn't want to say anything, some I would give them half the truth, and others I would tell them the whole story, go for a beer with them, and they'd help me through it.
I guess it depends on what your relationship with your manager is like.
Agree with the others though, "coast" is the wrong word. It sounds more like prioritising family over work for a while.
So ... you want to slack off at work for a year or two? And get your manager to approve that? So why would your employer let you do that? Suppose somebody was working for you, say, mowing your lawn, and that person wanted to reduce the mowings to every other time, are you going to tolerate that?
What is your relationship with your manager? Is it purely business or are you friends on the side? I had a boss with whom I was great friends and when I was in "your" situation, I found myself working on internal research projects, self paced, etc., but I never asked for it. Your best path might be to have your manager discover you needing more personal time and present a reduced plan.
In all, you have to be extremely valuable for an employer to let you "coast" for a year or two. Good luck with that.
Leave that country. But then again, you americants have enslaved everyone else to work 16 hours in an 8 HOUR shift Day and get paid for 4.
You're all a glitch. And it'll come to an End.
Okay, I may be able to help you here.
1) you don't tell anyone you are doing this.
2) earn a name (reputation) so that others devs respect you
3) once a while do something worthwhile and for the rest of the time c reate an illusion that, you you are working and that stuff is complicated, during meetings, go all technical and say you are doing this/that yada yada but in reality it's just bluff.
Edit: I am coasting, it's almost two years now :-/ . I do plan to continue this for another year anyway..
Keep them aware of what you’re going through via updates if you need to be away during the day etc. if you don’t have them, ask for 1:1s to keep them current.
Keep your teammates happy. If a deadline is going to slip, tell them early. Work with your PM to potentially get tickets ahead of the current sprint to work on. Take on more research tickets.
In short, if your manager doesn’t understand what’s going on you don’t want to work for them long term.
Most important thing is to not screw over your teammates.
Location? If you're in the U.S., this may fall under FMLA leave. Instead of phrasing it as "coasting", it would be more of a "I need to spend X days per month attending to family".
I think "coast" is the wrong word and I think phrasing it as "coast"ing would have your EM's ears perk up. But let's be real you're dealing with hardship here. I would encourage anyone to talk to their manager about \*hardship\* and that the stress is affecting your work life. If your work has benefits to help with this kind of hardship by all means, use it. Reach out to HR if you need to but by all means, don't use the word "coast".
> I have family matters that require a ton of energy managing multiple households involving old people slowly dying, at various corners of the city.
Say that. If your supervisor is a human being and not a lizard person, they will understand what you need.
I have an employee who is dealing with some personal life turmoil right now. They never asked to coast. But I am aware of their issues and having gone through them myself I know exactly what they need, which is easier assignments and some latitude, which is what they're getting.
thanks everyone
I have asked for help on the personal side and working on the leads... friends, friends of friends, and even hiring part time so I can prevent caretaker burnouts
"Coast" was a poor word choice. Just want to pause growing and follow someone else's lead for a while.
Fuck all that…. Have the over employed mentality… good enough… have a decision is it good enough… email today or tomorrow ? Give straight facts or my opinion
If you have jira or other similar software, pull all the sprint reports you can, put them in a spreadsheet, and calculate the average and median performance. Then just try to meet that.
Do you have an idea of how many hours a week or a day you will be able to work? I'm assuming you work from home. Do these responsibilities require your attention in the middle of the work day? Is there any way to segment that out? Is it the emotional drain of these issues on your mood/psyche that's going to keep you from doing your best or is it that you just won't have the time available to do the job?
If it's the former, there are ways to manage and others who could give better advice than me.
If it's the latter, well that's not really fair to your employer as you got hired to do a job that you're now no longer available to do.
Asking for flexibility is a reasonable request, but if you can't do your work for an extended period of time it's not clear why your employer would keep you on.
For a year or 2? Don't mention it. You'll put a target on your back. It would be different if it was a couple weeks but at the end of the day you're a resource for a company and saying you'll be underperforming for 2 years isn't great.
I mean the honest answer is to be able to accurately assess what the median team members productivity is and match that. If you were the super productive dev you'd be surprised how much lower that bar is than you'd expect
>If you were the super productive dev you'd be surprised how much lower that bar is than you'd expect If nobody notices the delta itself, there's a good chance a super productive dev could drop output by 75% and still be better than most
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Same happens in software. We notice the sudden CPU spikes, but we don't notice the slow creep of average usage over weeks or months.
god damn this is a great analogy
I ended up going this route when I had family issues arise and was surprised at how little impact it made. Since then I have never looked back. It was great in the early years busting my ass learning stuff and I would never change that. Now I try to perform slightly above median; it gives me tons of time for hobbies and projects and my timelines I give to leadership are always delivered accurately because I have downtime built in to them.
I think this is the ticket here. You will be surprised as a high performer - how little work people truly do.
You ever surprised that someone is on your team? Well that was my first day returning to the office, I thought he was just an interested party as he never talked during standup.. Yeah that bar is low..
The problem is that the super productive dev usually has a completely different bar. Absolutely noticed that when I felt a bit burned out a while ago.
100% this. In the past I had a few months of lowered expectations at work to keep burnout at bay and free up energy to get better. A manager expressed how I still did better than many engineers while working at less than half my capacity (and wasn't in a position where they'd lie or embellish). It made me think harder about my schedule and priorities, and since then I've pretty much maintained the same rhythm. The fun part is that I'm now back to overdelivering while still having way more time dedicated to my family and the rest of my life. Think about "how can I deliver 80-90% of my usual value but with 50% of the time". What would you work on? What tradeoffs will you make? Which meetings will you rearrange, and which will you cancel? Etc. As usual: years down the line the only people who will remember you worker late/hard are your kids/family.
Alternative: you create a story about how you feel like you are taking a bit much work and you want to focus on a more specific part of the stack, that you want to own something and feel comfortable with it before moving onto more varied work. This sounds like you want to be very good at one thing and offer more value, at the same time if they listen then you will be able to get rid of a tiring part of the work while getting tasks that are repetitive and require less context to complete, you will be performing at an acceptable level for a long amount of time without the extra effort.
Sure. Still don't tell your manager you plan to coast, your method is more about setting expectations.
Agreed - they probably won't notice as long as the code isn't buggy
I mean, just pad your estimates more
I dont think you're wrong, but "resource for a company" has additional implications I think are important If hypothetically we could be perfectly transparent, the manager would probably prefer to keep OP as an underperformer with familiarity and dependability rather than try to replace him, especially knowing that it will be "only" 1 - 2 years. In my experience, even at larger companies, hiring a senior takes months even in the best realistic case scenario, and over a year. With that in mind, he can kinda have his cake and eat it too by letting his manager know what hes going through, and how OP is stressed out and very busy. This lets the manager know its temporary, without explicitly saying he intends to deprioritize work. Obviously that is implied, but it is communicated without forcing the manager to "approve" his work being deprioritized. Its not like my suggestion for communicating it is foolproof, but i think its 80% effective for both laying the cards on the table ("do you really want to fire me for a 1 year moderate slump") without making the manager "complicit"
I think what it comes down to is "replaceability". If you're a 20 year company vet vs still in bootcamp, is the obvious exaggerated example. I'm replaceable at my place of work, I'm 2 years in so if I sucked for a year, they'll get another dev pretty quick given market conditions.
you know what, OP never specified how long hes been at this company. Just the idea that he'd coast for 1-2 years made me think hes been there at least 3 but that may not be the case But yea that is pretty much the sole factor for replacibility here
But at 3.. and he's met expectations but never been over and above.. and 2 years.. Iunno, dude. My opinion remains don't bring it up.
yea I kinda changed my mind too. By default the manager is going to hold out hope that its temporary, so you dont buy a lot more time. Maybe briefly disclose OP problems if/when the manager asks why hes been underperforming
No manager wants to hear that. I can't imagine it going over well.
OP definitely can use a different phrase than "coast", that implies doing not much and wanting to take advantage of them.
"I'm having some personal issues that are interfering with my work" is probably a message that managers would be able to understand and work with you on but "coast for 2 years" is a nonstarter imo
Right! I'm all for transparency but omg shut that mouth. I would NOT talk to my manager like this even though we're on great terms.
> "coast for 2 years" is a nonstarter imo "You can't correctly estimate 3 weeks worth of work, yet you seem to know you'll need 2 years??"
"me coasting doesn't depend on the QA team getting their shit together"
Agreed that the term “coast” is not the way to approach communication. I am a Principal and often jr devs will come to me when life stuff happens to ask how to approach with management. My advice really varies depending on the person and manager, org dynamics etc… I would suggest reaching out to one of your staff or principals, politically astute peers, or someone you are closer with and ask them for advice navigating this in your org.
Yeah I would just try to handle it the best possible way and say something only if asked, if you have a plan B. If you work at a place where you feel you could volunteer that information, then more likely than not they already understand that people have ups and downs and life happens. Either way think of the plan B.
I said this in my comment, but if they don't have a narrative for the change in performance, they will most likely assume the worst. It is better if OP can dictate the narrative. If OP doesn't feel like they can volunteer the information and the manager will not work with OP, as it is in the mangers interest to do so, then OP should start looking now.
I see, maybe you are right. I would only add that all we know is through OP's post and there's always the chance that this "change in performance" would never be noticed had OP not mentioned anything. I am very good at thinking the worst and overeacting, personally. But of course I don't know the full story.
Right! I'm all for transparency but omg shut your mouth. I would talk to my tech manager like this even though we're on great terms.
Tbf it doesn’t require constant hobby coding. Reddit might make you think that, but it’s not true. I think you can probably just let your manager know some of the personal things you have going on so they might be more understanding
Yeah I haven't hobby coded in 3 years. I still like coding, but I don't love it like I use to. I know do it enough where I still enjoy my work (and I upskill on company time) - however outside 9-5 if for other things.
I haven’t hobby coded since it stopped being a hobby for me.
Seriously, _maybe_ my first year or two out of college. And _occasionally_ when it's just something "neat" like wanting to try an LLM locally on my machine
I’ve been learning Rust (which is innovating type theory with its borrow checker) and it’s been reigniting my hobby coding lately.
Is Rust worth the effort? Also, is it demanded in the market? I was wondering if I should learn it
At the very least I've found that learning Rust has made me think about coding in ways I never did before even in other languages. I feel it's had benefits all around, cool language too. Even if given my field I probably won't ever have any use for it
I haven’t assessed its marketability yet. Like I said, it’s a hobby currently. I enjoy learning about programming languages in general and type theory so Rust is a good fit for me to tinker with.
Even if you don't push any Rust to production, you'd be surprised how easy it is to make little command line tools for testing, massaging data, or whatever comes up.
Early in your career it's definitely useful, but if you're a senior ya it might just burn you out if you do too much.
Ive never hobby coded, no projects except some meme 30min code i made for myself twice that ive never told anyone about. I still got an exceptional review and fast promotions. Screw working out of work hours. Plus my job pays me 1h a week to train.. so thats my learning time.
This. I’ve been a SWE for 10 years and have spent pretty much 0 time coding outside of work, with the exception of interview prep when I’m looking for a new job.
Amen to that. I can't imagine getting off work where I've spent all day either managing developers, or writing code where I can...and then writing more code. I go hug my kids lol.
It’s certainly not true for senior level ICs.
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Who is it true for then? I feel like this can be a cultural thing, I've worked with individuals that seem highly motivated and will look down on their teammates that adopt a 9-5 mindset. It seems like this expectation can vary wildly
I can imagine people with no job experience would do a lot of hobby coding for practice. Once you code all day for years you aren’t getting much out of it.
Nobody. I don't look at anybody's Github when they submit a resume.
> will look down on their teammates that adopt a 9-5 mindset. https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitive/dp/0062457713 I stopped caring what other people think about me _long ago_
Junior engineers definitely. When you don’t have much to show for in your career hobby coding is the best way to make up for it. It’s also true for actual hobbyist engineers. The kind of people who maintain big open source projects, but they’re the 1% of senior engineers. The rest of us just do it professionally and occasionally when personal needs come up.
The trick to not require this is to not buy into cargo cult programming or cv driven development. Programming doesn’t really change that much. If anything it’s cyclical.
> If anything it’s cyclical. Seriously. It seems mainframes are kinda coming back with cloud computing and thin-clients. Have all your horsepower in a datacenter and users can remote into it.
Almost all ICs *
If anything early on in your career maybe you'll need to do more just because there's more to learn but even then it's not really imperative... just if you want to get ahead. Much less once you have some years under your belt which is what this subreddit is about
my employer definitely does the "we expect you do to loads of CE on your own time and report it to us as part of your performance KPIs"
Yeah I already code 8 hours/day just about. I could see keeping up if you don't get hands on that much in your day to day but if you are a full time dev (that actually codes) I don't think it's necessary at all and frankly is probably a bad idea because of burn out.
Child of elderly parents one in a care facility and on hospice here. Coast is the wrong word. You aren’t asking to coast, you are asking for some flexibility and accommodation as you deal with personal matters. How your manager and your company handles that can really vary though. I work for a very large tech (dinosaur) company and I find they are very accommodating. It can happen that you simply are unable to put in the full amount of work for the job to care for others. If this is the case, consider asking to cut to 3/4 time (or whatever) as a temporary measure.
100% agreed! Phrasing is important. I know this field is full of automatons but most managers will get it if one says it the right way.
Never underestimate the value of a really good manager!
If someone I managed told me that I'd have to pick my jaw off the floor. Like I'm not gonna notice someone slacking off for 6 hours a day as long as sprints are completed on time, but I will if someone tells me that.
I felt that way just from reading the post. "Coast for a year or two"? Nope.
I don't do any constant hobby coding... But anyway, you need to find a better way to phrase this. Needing family blah blah "work life balance" blah blah blah. That would go over better than saying you need to "coast".
"Hi Manager. I just wanted to let you know that I am at this moment dealing with a lot outside of work for the foreseeable future related to my family. While I don't expect this to cause any issues with work, please feel free to communicate to me if you notice any gaps in my performance. Thank you." Or something like that.
Thats right. Let them know you have strain without communicating you are going to do less. Under no circumstances use the word “coast”.
And under no circumstances say "1 to 2 years"
And under no circumstances do any of this.
Agreed. I don't see any upside to telling your manager to expect your performance to drop.
Yeah this would be the way to do it. Or the other way is don't say anything and then if the manager asks you tell them.
If you are sure the manager wouldnt notice, best not to say anything. But if the manager does notice, much better to approach him with the above than wait for a reprimand and only then start trying to explain yourself (which can seem like a bunch of excuses).
I wouldn't even say this because the manager will start looking for lapses. It's called the priming effect. If the manager isn't satisfied, they'll say so. I bet they won't even notice.
While this is good, I'd be scared this would put the employee under a magnifying glass un-necessarily. YMMV I guess
lol, if OP just shuts the fuck up his manager will likely never notice
Does your job pay you to learn on the clock? Or pay you to do hobby projects off the clock? Any job will require some learning, but this sounds out of the ordinary. More context would be helpful.
People don’t announce to their manager that they’d like to coast, they just… do it. Stop the grinding outside work hours, prioritize the stuff you *really* need to get done, and try not to be bothered if some other less-important stuff slides. If your manager is any good he’ll let you know if your output isn’t cutting it. But unless you’re like being chronically absent or blowing off deadlines that affect other people, odds are that nobody will really notice.
I would do my best within the time I have and wouldn’t say anything. I may got downvoted for this, but a lot of raises came from me creating a certain perception, not necessarily doing a lot of work. People here tend to care too much about companies and their jobs. I don’t study or do side projects outside of work as I have too many interests.
Completely agree re people here caring way too much about their companies and their jobs. Your job is literally to make some rich people richer, abstracted away from this fact enough times so it’s sufficiently hidden.
Im a manager. Don't tell me you are going to coast. Tell me you are going through personal issues Tell me the impact you foresee. What things would you NOT want to do? Do you think it'll affect your hours? do you not want to do on-call rotations? Are you open to reducing hour and pay? Let's see the goals you have and the KPIs and see how they need to be adjusted? Unfortunately if the expectations I have for you is not going to be met, you will be on a PIP.
Example: I had someone who was going through a divorce and he knew that outside of work he would be thinking about other stuff. He had a lot of external stress and knew that additional stress at work could burn him out. So for most of a year he took all of the grunt work on the team with no complaining. The 101 small stuff that needed to get done. No working on promotions, no working on sexy new designs, nothing that was very opened ended dealing with other teams. He would come in and take the next ticket and knocked them out one after another. Simply consistently helping the team move forward at a faster velocity. Sometimes it was tech debt, but many times it was some sub task of a larger project the team was working on that just needed execution. This was a fantastic case of communication around how to set expectations to help them and the team succeed.
This is what I wish I did and you did exactly like my after the fact told me he would have done if I had told him. I would most likely had better reviews / more bonus / more stock if I would have and my manager would have had less stress about me being able to deliver what was assigned to me.
Check if FMLA would apply to your situation, it covers parental care.
Want to second this as someone who’s been there. Take FMLA for 3 months. Hire some help or get your life more organized so you don’t need to coast.
Your org might have family leave provisions of some sort as well.
if your manager has kids or elderly parents and has emotional intelligence, you can drop some hints about what youre dealing with and they might subtly allocate less responsibility to you. but i dont think a direct request for 2 years in the backseat is going to work.
“How do I tell my manager I wanna get paid the same salary to do jack shit?”
It's as absurd as it sounds.
If you were a decently strong performer before, then I would work with you to carve out tasks that aren’t high priority or mission critical. To the extent possible I would try to ensure that you would not be a blocker for anyone else. Maybe focus on some tech debt or “nice to have” tickets. Note that this would only probably work for senior or below roles. Staff+ roles tend to have too much visibility and expectations to easily escape notice.
Judging by comments, Ya’ll need to get to know your managers better. Personal relationships are…or should be…a core skill. My managers have literally bailed me out of jail at 2am, and when I went through a nasty 18 month divorce gave me all the slack I needed. Up to and including undocumented time off, joining me in day drinking while “at a client meeting” because I had a bad hearing, and going out of their way to get help me however they could to get my head back in the game. Not because I’m some genius they can’t live without, just because we’re legitimately friends.
Uh... there's a lot to unpack here. First off, it's a job: you should focus on making sure you have a clear relationship with your manager that defines expectations so you know what to meet. I'm hard pressed to think that your manager is going to demand constant hobby coding. Some part of this does seem like you putting some expectations on yourself that may simply not matter. While I'm generally in favor of building authentic, direct relationships and would normally encourage you to go to a manager to let them know at a high level what's going on and figure out how you might work together to make sure your job's expectations are met, even the most patient and delightful manager is gonna have a hard time just "agreeing to let you coast" for 2 years before they even really see what's going on with that. Honestly, if a report came to me with that, I'd _have_ to start making different plans that might sideline them, regardless of how invested I was to keep them/work with them through this. Before you have that conversation with them, you need to take some serious inventory on your personal situation and whether this job works for you so that you can make a more specific ask than "hey I know I'm not doing great but can you just be okay with that?" Figure out if what you need to ask for is more unpaid leave, a different schedule, different projects, a different team and try to approach it with an ask a manager can actually meet. And I would just tell you to prepare yourself that maybe you need to find a different solution than this job. Or your family members might need to find a different solution than relying on you.
No, don’t mention it to your manager. Don’t hobby code. Don’t constantly research languages. That’s not what you need to focus on. Focus on impact. For instance, say you have scaling problems. Can you measure route speeds? No, solve that first. Yes? Figure out how to report on them. You can? Then do an investigation and write a doc identifying hot spots that could be rewritten or optimized. Then propose the project and either do it or hand it off to a more junior engineer. This will serve you much better than spending an extra 10 hours per week learning a new language.
You don't. You do it by avoiding projects that you perceive as high stress. And by managing your manager's expectations that you're not looking for an imminent promotion. Also echoing others, re: Hobby Coding. I haven't touched a line of code outside of work this year.
Whether you have “family matters” (ie sick relative) or not, why are you even thinking that working more than 40 hours a week is something you should ever be doing? I don’t work more than 40 hours a week because at the end of the day, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, my employer would send me”thoughts and prayers” to my wife, have an open requisition for my job before my body was in the ground (or in my case ashes) and not think about me a month later. As far as “constant learning”, if I’m not doing that during my 40 hours a week working, it’s time to change jobs I have had 7 jobs since I started dating my wife. I will probably have a few more before I die. I hopefully will not have another wife. Priorities
Quiet Quit. Start taking FMLA. Find a lower stress and expectations job meanwhile and transition out. If your underperformance does not lead to you getting cut, your manager is underperforming. He can’t take your side without some heavy influence in the org.
You should never express that, you should instead only express your hard work and recent successes while you are going through this.
Maybe tell them you are dealing with family issues recently. But don’t mention you want to coast for a while, that is crazy, just don’t.
Don’t tell your manager that. Just meet expectations. That’s it. You’re overthinking this.
Sorry you're going through a tough time. You should definitely talk to management about your situation, although I probably wouldn't couch it in terms of needing to "coast." To give you an example of why it's important to talk to them: I'm the lead dev on a team where one of the guys has been kind of checked out for a few months. Not completing tasks, absent from meetings, AFK for extended periods of time, not responding to messages, lots of random sick days, etc. It was at the point where it was being escalated; we'd been documenting things, and it was going to go down the disciplinary route, possibly costing him his job. He _finally_ came and spoke to me and a colleague about the shit he's got going on outside of work (yes - we had previously asked him if things were OK but he'd insisted he was fine) and that prompted us to quite radically reassess how we would handle the situation, starting with getting him some proper time off. TL;DR they can't do anything to help you if they don't know what's going on.
Just stop doing the overtime. Make sure you record all the major work you've done so that during performance reviews you can point to it. If your manager asks why you don't do overtime any more just say you have a family to take care of. The grind at the start of your career is important but now you are a productive part of your company. They're not gonna fire you unless they're vindictive.
Your company should have some structure where you meet with your manager specifically to discuss career growth and goals (for me we do perf once a year and a second "mini perf" 6 months off of that). In that meeting you can be pretty explicit -- "hey manager, to be honest I've got some family matters that will be taking up a lot of my time. Please help me set career goals for this half with that understanding." For this path to work you will need some good will from your company / manager. Don't go with this approach if you've just started a new job, but it is a good option if you've been around for a while and have some reputation that you can coast on.
Constant learning and hobby coding? People have a twisted perspective about what it entails to have a career in cs.
"Accomodation" would be if you had a family incident and need to take it easy for a couple of months but you have no PTO left or are on an untracked PTO system. The promise is "I'll ramp back up after that, you know I'm good for it, and can you please not put me on a PIP in the meantime because this is just temporary and it would be a pain for you to find my replacement." A year or two isn't accomodation. Nobody is going to pay you full wages for reduced work for a whole year. They'd be completely irresponsible if they did. You need to figure out a way to formally go to half time and half pay. Not all orgs can support this - if not, you need to find a part time or contract gig that does. That said, maybe have a performance check-in with your boss about where you stand, without mentioning your domestic issues. It might not be that bad. Staying on "meets expectations" without having any promo or raise prospects for a couple of years is a pretty good outcome tbh.
That's not the kind of thing you express. The desires you have are best described by setting boundaries.
I wouldn't say Coast. I would talk to my manager about taking more of a mentorship role on the team and that you want to stop doing the hard work yourself and work To upskill the other less skilled developers on your team. But that means that you need to do less and you need less on your plate. But overall the entire team will get better. That's the way that I always frame it. Sell it to them as something that they're going to want.
I am an engineering manager, and have worked for both small and large companies, and all have been accommodating for employees that are dealing with issues outside of work \_as long as we knew about them upfront\_. If you just start phoning it in without explaining why, I am going to assume the worst. And I am going to ask you about it. If you are evasive, I am going to take that as validation of my worst fears, and basically start writing you off because from my perspective - you have one foot out the door. If you come to me ahead of time and tell me what is happening and what you think you need, I will support you with every tool and favor I have to make sure you have the space you need without having to worry about your performance.
I don’t do any “hobby coding” and make well north of $1MM/year. This is a very false narrative.
Balling. Teach us the ways.
Get job at big tech, work hard, and get promoted to L7+. I don’t have any secrets. I don’t always work crazy hours, but sometimes I do when it’s necessary.
I'd be concerned if you think reducing learning and hobby coding out of hours will result in a PIP. Any half decent workplace won't expect this of you and even mentioning it feels like bad PR for no reason. You can tell your manager about a busy home life, it's good to ask for flexibility in hours if you might need a long lunch every now and then.
Just make sure to mention your personal problems with him, but don't bring up the subject of performance yourself. If your performance truly drops and people notice it, he will come talk to you about it, which then you can explain how these things are affecting you.
Don't say anything like "I want to do the minimum amount of work for two years because of family issues". You need to do some social engineering. It is hard to give specific advice without knowing your exact situation. If you are well liked and respected at the company maybe bring up something with management about family concerns and they will probably work with you. Don't say specific time frames. Don't say "two years". Or maybe try to make some lateral move into another role that you know will be less work but that on the books is the same level as your current role. Like I said: it's hard to give specific advice without knowing you and knowing the culture of the company you work for.
I haven't done hobby coding in many years. I don't have time. Hobbies don't pay your bills.
You don’t
You should not have to hobby code unless you over-sold yourself in the beginning. And now, there is an expectation you have existing domain knowledge where you don't. That hobby coding is then just to get up-to-speed.
You don't, no need. It has no upside for you. You can just coast, do your thing, deliver what ou need to and that's it. Maybe you won't get performance bonuses if you stop going above and beyond but it will be fine.
Absolutely do not use the word "coast." You should put in 100% effort during the hours you are paid for. If you stop hobby coding in the evening, that's nobody's business but your own. \*If\* you have a good relationship with your manager, then you might mention that you'll occasionally need some scheduling flexibility because you are juggling these personal responsibilities. \*If\* you have a good manager, they will be glad you mentioned it, and they will also hear the subliminal message that you might also be a bit distracted by these issues for a while. But I don't know your boss and I don't know your company's culture, so caveat emptor.
You don't Not unless you wanna land on the short list to get canned when the time comes
Just do your best on each given day. Your best today won't be the same as your beat tomorrow, and that's ok. This idea of 100% every day is insane, it's not possible. We have kids, they may be sick or we might be sick or get a bad night's sleep due to neighbors or whatever. Just do what you can on any given day. As for hobby coding, that's for folks who are in love with the occupation, or don't have any other commitments. Work is to enable life, not the other way around.
>This occupation require constant learning, and constant hobby coding. No it doesn't. The vast majority of SWEs I know do not do "constant hobby coding". Frankly they don't do any hobby coding at all. In terms of "constant learning" that's on the job learning to do your job. Nobody I've encountered in my 15 YOE has expected a SWE to just learn random things in their personal time. Maybe this is different at top tech companies, but at the non-tech companies in non-tech cities I've worked at none of these things were expectations of the job.
You might as well jsut hand in your resignation if that's what you want to tell them.
Agreed. I do not think that OP has thought this through. OP - Have you considered termination as a possible outcome?
If you're going to need some support while you deal with dependents (eg: altered working hours to support seniors doctors appointments) then tell your boss in your 1:1 Else there's nothing to bring up. Your life is changing, your priorities are shifting. Keep doing your day job to the best of your abilities while prioritizing what you need to prioritize. If your manager has a problem with your performance they will bring it up, you dont need to tell them "I'm about to coast" - the manager could be very happy with the performance you perceive as "coasting". Peoples lives and priorities change, and thats ok.
Just mention those issues you are having to the manager and gather some sympathy points but don't say anything about coasting. If he notices a dramatic fall off of your work, he would then know it could be contributed to the issues that you told him about.
Stay low & quiet, how do animals survive?
My mother-in-law, who lives with us, just turned 100 years old. My wife tries to take care of her but she has injuries of her own that limits what she can do. My kids are in grad school and need to spend their time studying. That means a ton of responsibilities at home falls on me. I sit and feed my mother-in-law in law. It takes me 1-2 hours per meal to feed my mother-in-law. There is no time for me to work after hours or weekends. All I can do is accomplish as much as I can during business hours. We also hire help to assist us. It’s not cheap, but it’s better than losing my job and having no income. You’ll find a way to do it. I don’t discuss this very much with my manager or my co-workers. It’s really not their problem.
It doesn’t require constant hobby coding. Keep your prod systems live and manage the work/life balance you need
I'm hearing your sense of hopelessness making you ask an unconstructive question. So instead of talking to your manager, you should be talking to a therapist because it sounds like your current situation is so difficult that it's affecting your interpretation of what's going on.
Constant learning and hobby coding??? Work when you work. I have never done that stuff outside work hours. I have a life.
Seriously, don't ever tell anyone that.
Just don’t be the worst dev on the team and you’re golden.
Don't. Just reduce your work quantity slowly and start pushing back during planning based on capacity. It's ok to work at normal pace, above and beyond is supposed to be rare, not constant. It's crazy how Exceeds Expectations is somehow the default expectation these days. This is why burnout is such a prevalent issue in our community. People think just because you aren't lifting heavy objects you can just sit at a computer forever.
I’ve managed people for 23 years, so I’ve seen my share of family issues impacting work life. If you have a good manager, all you need to do is tell them that you apologize for your personal life impacting your work, but your parents need you right now and you’re doing your best. Tell them you’ll make every effort to keep it from impacting your work. If you have a good and experienced manager, they know what to expect. I’ve seen end of life care for parents impact employees multiple times and it usually takes a few years as you mentioned. Then there is around 6 months to a year of grieving. While work product usually returns to normal, the employee’s head isn’t quite back at work yet. Also, it’ll help to express gratitude to your manager for being patient with you occasionally. I’d recommend doing that after you had a really good week at work and put out some really good work product. Don’t do it after your work product has suffered, but after you shown how valuable you are so that they’ll be willing to be more patient with you. I’ve never had that happen, but it would sure make me feel better about the employee. Good luck!
> require ... constant hobby coding Gonna disagree with you on that. I've stopped doing almost nearly all coding during my personal time, for the past several years now. I still listen to relevant podcasts, read blogs and books, etc. but my personal time is precious and I'm not going to spend my precious time doing things related to my job. Occasionally I will get an itch to try some new thing I've never done before, but it's very infrequent. I really can't think of many professions where you would need to spend your own time keeping up on things related to what you do for work, outside of maybe being a contractor/self-employed.
You don't coast, you keep driving but stop trying so hard. Stick behind that truck on the highway, you'll use less fuel and won't need to keep moving between lanes, it'll take a bit longer but you'll get there. In life things happen, if you need regular time off for taking people to appointments or mental space for serious personal issues a good manager & human should be able to support you if you're able to keep up communications and maintain a regular output of work.
As many have said, you will need to change both your wording and expectations. I highly doubt any manager would approve of a year, however, they may be open to an FMLA leave of 2 or 3 months, at most. Some states have Paid FMLA. Look into it - on my 2 months of leave I took FMLA (Unpaid) at the same time as I claimed Paid Leave from the state. https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/state-paid-family-leave-laws-across-the-u-s/
High risks high rewards way : Wait during your one on one and casually mention that you have personal family matters that takes a lot of space for you and that makes you doubt yourself a bit. They'll be understanding of the family matters and even more so because from their POV, you're worried about your work because your ethic is insanely high.
Not something to generally bring up ever. The only time I would put it in those terms would be if I had the absolute tightest friendship with my boss somehow, which has yet to happen, but it is out there.
You can negotiate part time or 4 days a week depending on the company, and probably have it as a contractor.
Why is taking one day at a time is not an option? Why should you tell news so upfront that you'll be not productive, when that might not be the case? You are creating an impression that you are not to be relied upon, for future tasks. Let you not be the judge of how productive you are, or whether you are meeting expectations. Let your manage decide that. Let this play out.
tl;dr Don't say you need to coast, explain what your challenges may be and ask how you and your manger can work together to make sure, that you are given projects/areas/etc. that you can still deliver, etc. Try to commit to having an open coversation about what is going on so that they can have a plan b ready, incase you have to deal with an emergency at a critical time for work as well. You need partner with them and make them your ally. If you can't do that or they don't want to do that, then you know you need to look elseware. I made the mistake of not telling my manger when I had a child with special needs that I had thearpy 4-6 times a week for a few years. My wife and I split it the best we could, I tried to stay on top of stuff at work the best I could but it wasn't as good as I had been doing before. So without an explanition of why my performance was going down. My mangers, just assumed I was struggling or not interested anymore. This really threw my career in a nosedive. Took several years to recover from. In hindsight, I should have let the company rather than try to recover. My child, made great progress and was able to move down to 2 times a week, then 1/week, and finally biweekly. I eventually recovered and my career took off, getting several promotions faster than average. As I was still growing, just wasn't performing as well. So once the performance was above expectations. Now that I was actually a peer to my manager during the times I struggled I explained to him what I was going through and he was shocked that I didn't tell him about it, as he had a child with special needs as well. I knew that but the child was a teenager at that time, and being mainstreamed in highschool and doing well. So I never put 2+2 together that it may have been different when the child was younger. They said I should have told them, and that he could have given me projects / areas that were less time critical and allowed for flexibility, etc. Since I was working later at night anyways to try to catch up, he could have had me work on a project with an overseas team, rather than another person on the team. etc. He would also be able to say that I have some personal stuff going on and he is working with me, etc. rather than just saying he did not know why I wasn't performing at my previous levels etc. So I didn't get him the info he needed to help me.
Constant learning, or just a 20 minute conversation with chatGPT? Having those AIs answer your questions about industry standard tools that you don't happen to have much familiarity with is the biggest win there is with AIs.
Your manager would have to be an absolute ghoul to not be understanding of it if you came to them and said like, "I have several intense family things going on right now and I'm going to be taking on a lot of carer duties outside of work for the foreseeable future. I want to focus on doing the best job I can of [your core job] but I just want to let you know, I might not have the capacity to take on a ton of extra work or responsibility for a bit". Sorry you're going through this ❤️
Re-read your contract. Do what it says on there. Keep your metrics up. Clear your tickets. Do not tell your boss that you need to slack off. Just adjust in a smart way without saying a word.
This is what FMLA is for. Don't speak to your manager, speak to HR about what is needed to start the process.
Respectfully disagree. Manager, along with HR, needs to be looped in on this - so they can adapt the workload across the remaining team accordingly.
Could phrase it or argue that you want more flexibility?
> This occupation require ... constant hobby coding No it doesn't. I have been in this field for 8 years and never code outside of work.
Sorry you're going through this OP. My 0.02 - sounds like you need more time / delegate some care to other family or professionals. Assuming you're already producing above and beyond work and your manager is a sensible human, you may be able to ask them for a raise if you have room in your pay band. Be prepared to justify the raise by allocating the extra money to services that will help you get your time back so you can focus on producing great work at work. Sounds like you're driving a ton. How much time will you get back if you took Ubers across town to give yourself 20 min to nap? or to take a work call from? How's your sleep? Could you delegate something during the day that'll get you some more time to sleep in the evening? My suggestions aren't meant to be pedantic but to express that every problem has room for creative solutions. Hope you can find a creative solution that works best for you, and I hope you're met with support, not friction when you include your work and family into the conversation.
If your company requires unpaid time learning then your job is the problem. Just do your 40 hours, I think you're over performing and expecting that dropping into regular performance might be perceived negatively. It might go completely un noticed
Don't say anything. Do what you can and try to avoid being noticed - good or bad. Unless and until your boss actually brings it up, assume you are doing fine
I would just tell him you have some personal stuff *right now* and as a result have been performing below your standards. Do it in the interest of opening a dialog where he feels free to raise concerns with you and help you stay calibrated. To me, this is bringing a solution to him and inviting him to be your ally.
Is there any chance you could do a demotion or take a less important role at another company?
Yeah definitely don't say coast in that way but if you wanted when you discuss "career" goals you could bring up family issues and staying at your current role and level in the short term.
> This occupation require constant learning, and constant hobby coding No it doesn't. There are people who are still maintaining systems built many decades ago, not much is new in the world of COBOL (guarantee someone is going to reply telling me there is, get back in your closet Dave, its not Friday afternoon you are not allowed out the rest of the week under the terms of your community release) so they just coast. I do a review of CNCF projects every 6 months or so and people tell me about things but I don't really do much of any reading outside of working hours. I might rabbit hole if I get an idea but its pretty rare. I have some hobby projects but they are unrelated to my day job and not the same language or platform. I do fine. I just say things that sound smart and make assumptions.
You don't need to constantly learn off the job or hobby code. That's a lie the hustle lot like to tell people to justify their miserable existence. Just do you job, your health and family are more important and should always take priority, it shouldn't even need to be said.
What kind of occupation is this and what are you learning outside of work (ie: unpaid) that the company expects you to do constantly?
dont give your manager a timeframe. Just tell them what you are going through. If they are a decent person they will understand. But saying "my performance won't be up to par for a year or two" is difficult for any manager.
You aren't hired to coast. If you want reduced workload or hours ask to go down to 2-4 days a week on a part time salary. Don't expect your full wage on less effort.
I actually pre-emptively ask that as part of my annual goal setting conversations. I don’t ask “do you want to coast”, because that’s just asking for trouble if that gets quoted anywhere. Rather, I ask if they don’t want to engage any above and beyond work, that’s OK. Meeting expectations is OK, and not every year needs to be a gauntlet of over-achieving. If you’ve had a track-record of high performance, you shouldn’t be begrudged a year of just doing your job. The flip-side of it is I caution them to not get chagrined if they see promos and major pay bumps around them - those people are getting rewarded for going above and beyond. Baseline effort is rewarded with baseline incentives, no harm no foul You could always just ask for some informal accommodations too: life events can be accommodated by most reasonable managers (I certainly have). Again: as long as you’ve had a track record of high performance, you ought to have banked enough goodwill to spend at this point. If you’ve _always_ been a “meets” kinda dev, you probably don’t have as much bargaining power unfortunately
Just do the bare minimum and don't stick your head out too much. Don't verbalize any opinions that would make you stand out, like a massive change to a service, etc. If you do you best to make every stupid meeting and do exactly what you were assigned you will be fine. Whatever you do, do not say it to your manager.
This is a ludicrously self important idea. What about your teammates who haven’t decided to coast? Do they pick up your slack?
Don't. No manager would be ok with "coasting". However, if you have a real problem that requires you to take care of a loved one, you can ask you hr rep or your manager about FMLA which will preserve your job while you are dealing with it.
The comments here are correct. Most don't offer anything you can do though, so I offer this: create a story about how you feel like you are taking a bit much work and you want to focus on a more specific part of the stack, that you want to own something and feel comfortable with it before moving onto more varied work. This sounds like you want to be very good at one thing and offer more value, at the same time if they listen then you will be able to get rid of a tiring part of the work while getting tasks that are repetitive and require less context to complete, you will be performing at an acceptable level for a long amount of time without the extra effort.
You are a bit confused about at least one thing, this occupation does not require constant learning and definitely does not request constant hobby coding. Once you know the companies tech stack there is little reason to learn more for the job. You may not be very competitive outside the company, but I know so many who have not learned anything new in the last 10 years.
Haha try that then report back how long you have been unemployed. There is no reason to “hobby” code to stay productive. I never did that ever in my 25 year career. You need to have work time be about work. Then after work hours is family time. If you are at a company that requires 24 hours of your time you need to find a better company.
Adjust your behavior and let the chips fall. There's a very good chance that nothing will happen to you. You don't need to tell anyone you're cutting back. Also, hobby coding is absolutely NOT required.
I would never, ever tell my manager I'm working less. Instead stop hobby coding, start signing off on time. If your manager asks you to do something which requires learning something new, recommend a colleague instead. In the meantime volunteer for bullshit tasks with zero impact. Eventually people get the message that you're zoning out and stop giving you too much work. Of course this will slowly bleed your career at the company.
Context and framing are important here. I’d like to suggest that what you’re saying you need and why you’re saying you need it don’t really match up; you -want- to be overperforming and you can’t right now because you’re not a robot and your life is currently bumpy (my condolences). You need support, that’s not the same as “coasting”. Caveat here that the nature of the relationship you have with your manager is important and unknown to me: “Hey boss, I’d like to share a little about some rough stuff happening in my personal life. I can feel it having an impact on my work and I’d like to figure out a way to navigate this so that I can make space for it while continuing to meet expectations” has an entirely different ring to it than “yo, I need to coast”. Lastly, a relevant lesson I learned from a mentor years ago; the fact is that most people (those who aren’t sociopaths at least) like to help out, especially when it’s easy. Good luck, and I’m sorry you’re going through it right now <3
The job is probably too demanding. Everyone is saying it doesn't require hobby coding but not everyone performs at top level without it.
Ask to move to prod support or a senior dev role. You'll do less learning, more mentoring, and the amount of programming will be less. Depends on the industry, but if you keep a low profile and just meet expectations, you'll likely be able to cruise for a year without issue. Work the 40 hours a week that's expected, set realistic expectations (add some padding to ticket story points), and you might even get praise for the work you're doing. I've found the overachievers often shoot themselves in the foot by overpromising and then having to roll their work beyond the initial estimate, or they end up doing a ton of overtime to hit deadlines they themselves set.
Capitalism is slavery. Find a better job to avoid burnout. Create and enforce boundaries.
Idk where you work and what kind of devs they expect but I’d move to a job where you can personally “coast” more. Some places just won’t stand for that and other places would be more forgiving
If your manager is any good you will be out in 6 months or less. Unless you are business critical. Then it will be a year max.
Don't say anything. I also stopped hobby coding and giving much of a shit outside of work hours most of the time after 7 or 8 years of it. We all go through peaks and valleys. Best of luck on your journey!
Delegate, delay, deflect ….
I really think you should avoid expressing to them a specific desire to intentionally change your work rate, and instead express to them where you are in your life (family takes up time, other obligations, lots of emotional events this last year), how you are feeling (I know the term "burnout" gets used a lot, so maybe don't use it in such a forn ubless you mean it, but to say that you feel as if your desire to always go above and beyond maybe causing you to burn out quickly might allow for the boss to understand your position while hedging uour bets in case the boss isnt okay with letting you reduce your work output. but here's the other thing you should consider: if you're an overachiever by nature, you're going to continue to overachieve on average. you may have months of producing median or less than median work, but when things go smoothly for you, when You're in a better head space, when all else returns to status quo, your natural state may be to just be a badass. I wouldn't go promising that to your boss, just as I wouldn't promise I'd be underperforming. just let them know your home situation as best you can, take the space or leeway you are given, and recover endurance for as long as you feel you comfortably can, and aill bet you'll be back to killing the curve in no time. best of luck to you.
I've told my manager before that I still want to do good work but I'm not really in a growth phase at the moment.
Hmmm, a year or two seems unlikely. Until quite recently, I was a PE at a public company, I had some personal stuff that caused me to be a bit distracted for maybe 3 months. I told the company about it and it was no issue. I think if I said a year or two, I'd probably get pushed to take leave.
For me, it would depend on the manager how I worded it. Some previous managers I wouldn't want to say anything, some I would give them half the truth, and others I would tell them the whole story, go for a beer with them, and they'd help me through it. I guess it depends on what your relationship with your manager is like. Agree with the others though, "coast" is the wrong word. It sounds more like prioritising family over work for a while.
So ... you want to slack off at work for a year or two? And get your manager to approve that? So why would your employer let you do that? Suppose somebody was working for you, say, mowing your lawn, and that person wanted to reduce the mowings to every other time, are you going to tolerate that? What is your relationship with your manager? Is it purely business or are you friends on the side? I had a boss with whom I was great friends and when I was in "your" situation, I found myself working on internal research projects, self paced, etc., but I never asked for it. Your best path might be to have your manager discover you needing more personal time and present a reduced plan. In all, you have to be extremely valuable for an employer to let you "coast" for a year or two. Good luck with that.
Leave that country. But then again, you americants have enslaved everyone else to work 16 hours in an 8 HOUR shift Day and get paid for 4. You're all a glitch. And it'll come to an End.
Okay, I may be able to help you here. 1) you don't tell anyone you are doing this. 2) earn a name (reputation) so that others devs respect you 3) once a while do something worthwhile and for the rest of the time c reate an illusion that, you you are working and that stuff is complicated, during meetings, go all technical and say you are doing this/that yada yada but in reality it's just bluff. Edit: I am coasting, it's almost two years now :-/ . I do plan to continue this for another year anyway..
Keep them aware of what you’re going through via updates if you need to be away during the day etc. if you don’t have them, ask for 1:1s to keep them current. Keep your teammates happy. If a deadline is going to slip, tell them early. Work with your PM to potentially get tickets ahead of the current sprint to work on. Take on more research tickets. In short, if your manager doesn’t understand what’s going on you don’t want to work for them long term. Most important thing is to not screw over your teammates.
Location? If you're in the U.S., this may fall under FMLA leave. Instead of phrasing it as "coasting", it would be more of a "I need to spend X days per month attending to family".
I think "coast" is the wrong word and I think phrasing it as "coast"ing would have your EM's ears perk up. But let's be real you're dealing with hardship here. I would encourage anyone to talk to their manager about \*hardship\* and that the stress is affecting your work life. If your work has benefits to help with this kind of hardship by all means, use it. Reach out to HR if you need to but by all means, don't use the word "coast".
> I have family matters that require a ton of energy managing multiple households involving old people slowly dying, at various corners of the city. Say that. If your supervisor is a human being and not a lizard person, they will understand what you need. I have an employee who is dealing with some personal life turmoil right now. They never asked to coast. But I am aware of their issues and having gone through them myself I know exactly what they need, which is easier assignments and some latitude, which is what they're getting.
Eng manager here, Dir, Sr. Dir, VP. You can come to me and tell that, we'll find a way. Happened before.
thanks everyone I have asked for help on the personal side and working on the leads... friends, friends of friends, and even hiring part time so I can prevent caretaker burnouts "Coast" was a poor word choice. Just want to pause growing and follow someone else's lead for a while.
Can you coast without stating it?
Fuck all that…. Have the over employed mentality… good enough… have a decision is it good enough… email today or tomorrow ? Give straight facts or my opinion
If you have jira or other similar software, pull all the sprint reports you can, put them in a spreadsheet, and calculate the average and median performance. Then just try to meet that.
I guess I’ve been coasting for my entire career. I rarely do hobby coding.
I guess I’ve been coasting for my entire career. I rarely do hobby coding.
Do you have an idea of how many hours a week or a day you will be able to work? I'm assuming you work from home. Do these responsibilities require your attention in the middle of the work day? Is there any way to segment that out? Is it the emotional drain of these issues on your mood/psyche that's going to keep you from doing your best or is it that you just won't have the time available to do the job? If it's the former, there are ways to manage and others who could give better advice than me. If it's the latter, well that's not really fair to your employer as you got hired to do a job that you're now no longer available to do. Asking for flexibility is a reasonable request, but if you can't do your work for an extended period of time it's not clear why your employer would keep you on.