Ask HN: How do you deal with work pressure?
But now starting as full-time has changed a few things. More things are at stack, my livelihood and work visa depended on the job. The worst thing that could have happened in the internship was just bad experience and no referral.
I am theorizing that no matter how well someone perform, the leader will keep pushing them to the limit. So I could either give 80%, have a balanced life, but always feel bad and pressurized because I am falling short constantly (but still performing OK to not be fired); or I could give 110%, sacrifice personal life, but might still feel pressurized (although probably less) by the team lead.
Changing company is not viable option for the short term (at least in the order of 6 months).
Would like to know how other people handle similar situation :)
*for cultural context, this is a south-east-asian based company.
16 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 49.8 ms ] threadI'm speculating a bit - but the fact that you perceive this job as a pressured environment, suggests that it's not right for you.
Very simply, brace your self for 6 months and then find a environment that suits you better.
In your specific situation, it would be good to give 80% to 90%. Not take the haranguing personally, see it as the managers trying to impress their bosses by being relentlessly demanding.
Use whatever time and resources you have to research and line-up your next job so as soon as you are able to move on, you have a far better job to go to.
Good luck and take care of your mental health, making sure you have time out for some quality personal life. Hopefully you will have even more of that in your next job.
So what does that mean? Often those modest/weak hands mean the worse that will happen to you is that you will fall out of favor.
If you go into the bet like that, and can live with that, you won’t be scared. If you were matched up against the strongest hand like a royal flush (you will be fired for sure), realize you were up against the strongest possible hand to begin with and weren’t going to come out of that alive.
Usually, if someone has a very very strong hand, they will try to conceal it from you so you don’t even know what you are walking into. It’s the weaker hands that need to convince you that you should be scared and back off from the bet.
The takeaway here is that in each of those situations the pressure is contrived (e.g someone’s got you convinced there’s a ton of pressure, or more scarily, that there’s no pressure, neither of which is ever true).
- either you can, just be calm and act rationally / work within reasonable limit, focus on overall productivity.
- or you won't be able to catch up anyway
makes the case much clearer. I think there would be a category "you might or might not be able to survive, depending on how much work / luck you have" might exist, but the chance to fall on that sweet spot is quite slim.
I like your idea regarding the mind game about hiding/boasting the pressure.
But that's an ideal. Many jobs are transactional; they squeeze what they want from you, and you squeeze what you can from them. In situations like this, you'll have to give it 80%. There's tricks to look like you're working more than you are. If the boss expects you to work at nights, you slack off in the day. You complete a task, read HN for a couple hours, then commit the code later to pad your effort.
But this 80% will make you mediocre in the long run. Going at less effort than you can will decrease your energy. Find something that's closer to your pace. They'll seek to punish you for doing well, so find someone who appreciates your efforts.
This kinda attitude is gonna land you in the bottom 10% of stack ranking.
But that way you end up targeting 211 in a month which at some point becomes impossible.
If you aim for 100% you'll never improve so it's only natural that all managers put you above expectations. However, instead of pushing you to that 40, some learn that by triggering your survival instincts, they can push you over 100. They think it's growth but it destroys you long term.
The other problem is some people know they can do 10 tasks in 8 hours then take on 11 tasks, and end up doing it 9 hours. This leads to some kind of expectations creep and before you know it, you're working day and night but your ability isn't improving.
So the survival mechanism is to do 8, which the manager pushes up to 9 or 10. So to achieve balance, you have external forces pulling you up while internal forces pulls you down. But this wrecks you internally, and you become dependent on external pressure.
I didn't say you can't improve but the way I see it is that 100% is the max you can give. Improving doesn't make it 110% otherwise we're all giving 1100000% from when we started our career.
It sounds like you already established yourself with a good reputation there since they hired you from an internship. Maybe the culture there is always giving all to the company? Based on observations, one option is to make the perception of 110% but fluctuate the performance so you are not stressed. When you are stressed your work will show it.
Anyway thanks so much for your reply! I feel much better now and by other replies too. :)
Just remember how little of your software will be around in five to ten years to get some perspective