> you're meant to tell your manager "hey, I have spare cycles, what do we need to get done?".
That's absurd, unless it's accompanied with a raise. If the employer is content with the worker's output, why should the worker volunteer to perform more work without additional compensation?
This is an oversimplistic view of tech work, especially software. If you're a contractor who doesn't care about the product beyond doing your well-delineated part properly, then sure, that attitude is perfectly reasonable (no sarcasm - that's not intended as a put-down of contract work). If you are an actual part of a team working to create a product you ostensibly all care about, you obviously will work together to distribute work; to account for surprises; to fix problems without being assigned a ticket that tells you exactly how to fix it; to make a good product. It's a fluid bag of work that naturally fills into any holes that develop in people's schedules. Work of that nature isn't "doing more than you're asked", because that kind of teamwork is in fact exactly what is asked.
I feel the inverse. Joyless “take tasks off the board and wait for more tasks” work is low-creativity and low-engagement work. Allowing people the freedom to not be slaves to the almighty kanban board mitigates burnout because people can actually experience some satisfaction rather than endless grind.
It’s interesting we came to different conclusions on this one — I think there’s something here worth comparing notes on, but I’m not quite sure what it is. In my experience, working a consistent 7 hours every day will quite rapidly burn me out.
I think it’s the definition we’re using for “work.” When I work, I work hard, and I dedicate my entire mental focus on the task. Doing that for seven hours straight sometimes feels like a small marathon in itself. Perhaps you’re just more effective.
I can’t imagine working any way other than this. A system where you are assigned precise little tasks with hard deadlines that sum to precisely your compensation is a low trust environment. I’d much rather hand people projects or work as a team to solve large problems than need to micromanage the hell out of people so that they’ve got enough shit to do to justify their wage without overburdening them. That sounds exhausting.
“Hey, I pay you to work on my team and build something with the team” is a much healthier and happier system. It also gives people agency about how to tackle problems and the ability to propose work or even experiment. The alternative is a joyless factory line.
I here this all the time from the people on my team. We have a mutual understanding that I expect you to put a full week in every week, but I'm not going to micro manage your week.
If youre not keeping yourself busy, it becomes pretty obvious, very quickly.
That's absurd, unless it's accompanied with a raise. If the employer is content with the worker's output, why should the worker volunteer to perform more work without additional compensation?