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Alan Langford

@Dr_Obvious @mike @gsuberland Nope. When that happens I just quit. Spent a year as VP Engineering with a staff of 30. Fixed all sorts of problems, made a bunch of unsatisfied customers happy, put in systems to keep things running, got bored, quit before I started to mess up.

And there is the downside for me: the lean periods between heroic saves. Gig work before it was called gig work.

4 comments
Dr. Obvious

@alan @mike @gsuberland
Fully relateable. I have, although I am young, quite a lot of job descriptions collected. Often it became too boring or too many tasks I just couldn't find motivation for.

I am currently working in a 24/7 high tech production environment. That often leads to panic fire fighter mode reactions where I can shine. That compensates a lot of boring tasks.

William Pietri

@Dr_Obvious @alan @mike @gsuberland I really relate to this, but find that over the years I've mostly lost my taste for firefighting because 99% of the fires were totally unnecessary.

Actual emergency? Yes, great! Let's save the day! Fake emergency because some exec put all the shiny things in a fantasy feature list and then insisted on a launch date that was never achievable? GTFOOH.

So now I mostly do release-early, release-often approaches, which fits my desire for fast feedback and things always happening, and also drive a lot of organizational sanity.

@Dr_Obvious @alan @mike @gsuberland I really relate to this, but find that over the years I've mostly lost my taste for firefighting because 99% of the fires were totally unnecessary.

Actual emergency? Yes, great! Let's save the day! Fake emergency because some exec put all the shiny things in a fantasy feature list and then insisted on a launch date that was never achievable? GTFOOH.

Alan Langford

@williampietri @Dr_Obvious @mike @gsuberland Yeah unrealistic launch dates aren't fun, but if they reached out to me at least there was funding. The ones that I liked the most were "national ad campaign launches in a week and we just discovered one of our vendors lied and is nowhere near ready." Okay, pay my retainer and agree to my rate and let's go!

William Pietri

@alan @Dr_Obvious For sure! If they're paying emergency rates, that makes it easier. And if people still enjoy the rush, more power to them. But I think I burned out on that. youtu.be/aKV7v2Oh71U

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