Multi-tasking job messing with my head

St1mpMeister

I'm currently working as a Senior C# Developer in a company that maintains multiple client webapps. The company doesn't work in Agile.

One of the main issues I have in the current job is that I often go in to work planning on working on one project and start into it, to find a client from another project is experiencing a major bug so I need to either work on it, or manage one of the junior developers to get them started on it, or get pulled into meetings at a moments notice.

This constant multi-tasking is messing up my train of thought on the original project and slowing me down, not to mention tiring me out. I work best, and am most productive, when I concentrate on one project at a time in a week.

This is to be expected from companies that manage apps for multiple different clients, so it's really part of the job and not something I can discuss with management to change, but I'm prepared to look for work elsewhere that might better suit my preferred work-style.

I'm wondering what sort of place I need to look for to find a job where you work on one project at a time. Perhaps places that implement Agile methodology and you work in sprints? Or perhaps working in the IT department of a larger corporation so that you only ever work for the one client?

John_C

I had a similar problem in my current company. My solution was to bring in a rule that every developer must do planned work after lunch every day. Meetings and unplanned work all happen before lunch. This way, everyone gets a block of 3/4 hours uninterrupted work every day. We also have a rule that you're not allowed interrupt a developer after lunch unless you have a genuine emergency.

My advice would be to keep a time log for a full week. That way, you'll have a good idea of where you spend your time and how much planned work you can reasonably commit to. Before we brought in the new rules; I kept a log and it showed that I spent 2 hours 45 mins on planned project work that week. I was able to show this to the higher ups and explain to them that, if this kept up, the current project would never get completed.

My plan B was to start working from home 2 days a week. That cuts out a lot of the distractions. This would be avoiding the problem of a poor work environment, rather than fixing it so it's not ideal.

Plan C would be to leave for another job. This might be your plan A, depending on how much you like your current company.

St1mpMeister

Rather coincidentally, I started a time log this past week, for this very reason.

I got about 4 hours of work done on the actual main project I'm supposed to be working on. Yesterday I spent 5 1/2 hours working on a bug in a different project that none of the other staff were able to fix (otherwise they would have handled it normally).

I don't see this changing as I'm not senior enough to bring in a change in the company as there are staff there working longer that are resigned to this way of working, plus management seem pretty set in their ways.

Regarding Plan C, it goes back to my original question: what sort of working environment am I looking for when I go for interviews? i.e. what sort of job or working style makes sure you focus on one project per week (or longer)?

Do I need to look for "agile methodologies" in the job description as I imagine the sprint-focus lends itself to working on a single project at a time?

Or do I just avoid agency-style "web development" companies and stick with a big-name company that do very specific things, like an insurance company or similar?

John_C

These are just my thoughts. I've made a few assumptions about your company. Sorry in advance if I'm wrong about any of it.

By the sounds of it; your company's codebase is buggy. Because of this, productivity is low. My guess is that your company is putting pressure to write quick, buggy buggy code to try to maintain an artificial pace of development.

This is a problem of a short term focus and general bad management. It's not particular to any methodology or industry. A big insurance company, for example, is just as likely to have a buggy codebase as anyone else. An insurance company is probably more likely than average to have people from the business units setting artificial development deadlines.

It can be difficult to filter out companies like this in an interview because they're not going to admit their flaws openly. If I were you, I'd read up a bit about development processes and methodologies. In an interview, be in a position to ask questions about the companies practices. A good starting point would be to ask where they score on the Joel Test and discuss what parts of it they consider important.

Sparks

The amount of time you get to work without interruptions or context switching and whether or not you're using agile are not related. If anything, places that use agile (the way it was supposed to be used, as opposed to the certification industry's take on agile, with things like scrum), seem to have more multitasking rather than less because the idea that you can change direction fast encourages some managers to change direction fast. Even when it's not necessary.


Also, here's a quick exercise for you - find the study that proved that Agile (in any form) works better than any other methodology (hint: there isn't one. We've bet the current industry's farm on something nobody's proven. Again.)

Singer

St1mpMeister wrote: »

One of the main issues I have in the current job is that I often go in to work planning on working on one project and start into it, to find a client from another project is experiencing a major bug so I need to either work on it, or manage one of the junior developers to get them started on it, or get pulled into meetings at a moments notice.

There'll always be distractions and things that need attention quickly.

- Issues with projects that have shipped should be dealt with a rotating person on the team (an oncall), at the very least the issue should be triaged. This does require the team to set things up so that anybody can work on any issue, so has an overhead. However freeing up the rest of the team from distractions is very valuable.
- Block out times where meetings cannot happen. My work has a rule that Tuesdays and Thursdays have no meetings for engineers, and there's a general respect for making sure that meetings are well run and kept to the minimum duration with only the necessary people in the room. Last minute meetings can be very disruptive and should only happen in exceptional circumstances.

Both of these can be started out small - for example blocking some time out in your own calendar for some meeting free time each week. It's important to chat to your team and manager about these problems and talk through proposals to solve them in your own environment.

Seth Brundle

St1mpMeister wrote: »

I don't see this changing as I'm not senior enough to bring in a change in the company as there are staff there working longer that are resigned to this way of working, plus management seem pretty set in their ways.

If your manager us unaware of the issue then they should be made aware of it. Try suggesting it ato a team meeting.
Otherwise the belief coukd be that you're slow when in fact you may not be.
If management are not willing to become more efficient then the company has big problems!

St1mpMeister

Another option of course would be to go the contracting route ?

Do contractors get burdened with other projects they were not hired for?


Relating to an earlier point, the code isn't necessarily buggy, that was just one issue we had to work on due to a client's change-request which caused issues. The problem is with some many concurrent projects running at one time for different clients.

I guess I'm looking to identify a job that has one client preferably (or one client's project at a time).

bpmurray

It sounds like a quite normal progression. You're at that level where your workday is driven by interrupts. Whatever you do, make sure you're not coding anything that's time-critical since you will not get it done in time! Your experience would be much better used to bring up others, managing your replacement, making sure the team are able to do what they're supposed to do with minimal input from you. That way you can get out of their way and focus on the important stuff which, by the way, is not writing more C# code!

14ned

St1mpMeister wrote: »

One of the main issues I have in the current job is that I often go in to work planning on working on one project and start into it, to find a client from another project is experiencing a major bug so I need to either work on it, or manage one of the junior developers to get them started on it, or get pulled into meetings at a moments notice.

Sounds like modern software development almost everywhere nowadays. That and big open plan offices and the expectation you need to spend four hours per day keeping on top of company email.

St1mpMeister wrote: »

This constant multi-tasking is messing up my train of thought on the original project and slowing me down, not to mention tiring me out. I work best, and am most productive, when I concentrate on one project at a time in a week.

Everyone I've ever talked to in the industry would agree. But from Management's perspective, you've got to remember you have this big pool of developers to manage, most of whom are not great and if given the mildest excuse will simply do no work. That's why so much time and effort gets invested in "unblocking" other developers, most of whom could easily unblock themselves with a quick google search but prefer to throw their hands up in despair.

From Management's perspective the overall goal is maximising average productivity, not peak productivity. So, people like you get constantly task switched and you operate at a fraction of your capability.

I learned many years ago that it's not my problem, it's the org's. Simply quadruple your time estimates for everything, and relax about getting anything meaningful done at work. As I've mentioned elsewhere in this forum, keeping a spreadsheet with a rising money count reflecting your time with your bum in the seat can help a lot with that relaxing. Your productivity really is not your problem, it's the org's.

This is to be expected from companies that manage apps for multiple different clients, so it's really part of the job and not something I can discuss with management to change, but I'm prepared to look for work elsewhere that might better suit my preferred work-style.

I'm wondering what sort of place I need to look for to find a job where you work on one project at a time. Perhaps places that implement Agile methodology and you work in sprints? Or perhaps working in the IT department of a larger corporation so that you only ever work for the one client?

Adopting agile usually really means advertising publicly that you're willing to task switch even more frequently because well, you're "agile". I've very frequently seen sprints planned out for two weeks ahead and then two days in, the sprint is wiped in favour of some paying customer critical work that suddenly turned up. Very common. Agile doesn't make that problem better at all, and the short two week sprint duration makes for constant corner cutting to fit all work into no more than 1 week (the other week goes on meetings and the sprint rituals).

In terms of what to do about it other than relax, you'll generally find the more you are paid per hour, the less a company will waste your time. Consultant colleagues of mine on $200/hour spend very little time in meetings and never get tasked switched. Additionally, the easier you'll find it psychologically to spend an entire day in meetings because you can watch that hourly earnings clock tick upwards relentlessly. So a move into contracting certainly can help, the better paid per hour the better.

Remote contracting can be even better again because long meetings are much, much easier over an internet connection. Buy headphones with a long cable and a built in mute button. I very frequently walk around and look outside at the green fields during long meetings, sometimes even doing a 20 minute workout on my exercise bicycle depending on the meeting. I'm being paid hourly and I'm paying attention, going off mute and jumping in when appropriate or called upon to speak, but I'm not physically stuck in a meeting room for six hours and feeling angry. Definitely works for me, and the hourly pay makes it much easier mentally.

Niall

BrokenArrows

Strangely im having the opposite experience.

Used to work in a department where it was all go all the time. Managing multiple projects at the same time, helping support fixing production issues, releasing high priority patches, meetings, talking with customers etc.

I always complained to myself that id love to just be able to sit down and work on one project.

Two years into doing exactly that and im insanely bored. I miss the high pace of the previous work and im finding the work just dragging every day.

Looking to move back to my previous role but not sure they will accept my salary demands (they are seriously understaffed at the moment and very few people know the products so im pushing it a bit ).


However based on your original question: You need to work for a small company with one product.

14ned

BrokenArrows wrote: »

Strangely im having the opposite experience.

Ah, you sound like a people person. I'm definitely not a people person, I'd rather not interact with anyone at all during my work day. Back when I was a permie I found working in big open plan offices absolutely awful, there's like two hundred people all clattering and making noise and moving and talking, and there's only so much noise cancelling headphones can do (and they wouldn't let me erect a "cubicle" around my field of vision, said it wasn't conducive to "spontaneous creativity" or whatever the hell that is). Also, and I know it's a silly small thing, but I super appreciate my own toilet. Getting harried by communal toilets with gaps between the doors so people can look at you drove me bananas. Another thing which annoyed me as a permie is having to eat when others eat, and not being allowed to just walk away from the computer when I needed a break.

I suppose all that sounds quite aspie, but each to their own. Everybody's different, and being onsite always made me feel trapped personally.

Niall

St1mpMeister

14ned wrote: »

Another thing which annoyed me as a permie is having to eat when others eat, and not being allowed to just walk away from the computer when I needed a break.

Was that working in a prison or something?

I've never worked in a place that said I had to eat at specified times, or couldn't wander away from my desk to get some fresh air.

I'd be out of the place within 5 mins if it was like that :pac:

jester77

Sounds like Kanban might be worth a go, just adjust it to your needs. Not a fan of textbook Agile processes, too much bloat. I've been lucky enough to work in teams where we naturally evolve the way we work to suit ourselves. Something in between Scrum and Kanban with no estimates is what is working well for us. We have a large open plan office but I never had an issue with it, we have the rule when headphones are on, then you contact the person over slack/hipchat/etc. Plus we have meeting free afternoons so we can focus on getting things done. And if you really want to focus on a topic, then just work from home for the day.

St1mpMeister

BrokenArrows wrote: »

I always complained to myself that id love to just be able to sit down and work on one project.

Two years into doing exactly that and im insanely bored. I miss the high pace of the previous work and im finding the work just dragging every day.

I'd actually love that now.. but obviously I want to make sure I learn something new as well. I'd get bored pretty quickly if it was the same technology for 2 years and we weren't using the latest tech.

Noted about the small company thing.

Incidentally I've taken on board some of the suggestions here and I'm trialling a new way of working where, before lunch I work on multiple projects but after lunch I concentrate on the main one.

Will see if situation improves. I'm already up 10 hours of work on the main project this week as a result! (compared to 4 hours last week)

14ned

St1mpMeister wrote: »

Was that working in a prison or something?

Heh, no. Brand new modern offices in a well known tech multinational. Supposedly state of the art open plan creativity layout.

St1mpMeister wrote: »

I've never worked in a place that said I had to eat at specified times, or couldn't wander away from my desk to get some fresh air.

There were no rules saying anything, but there was substantial social pressure for everyone to take lunch the same time so you were "available" for spontaneous meetings (yay). Also, the canteen ran out of food at 12.45pm, so I ended up bringing a lunch box and feeling like I was back at school. Regarding the fresh air, the problem was how long it took to get from your desk to outside and back again. Big building. And said building was far out into the countryside, a good 15 min drive from anywhere. Basically it was impractical to escape.

I'd be out of the place within 5 mins if it was like that :pac:

Agreed, I've been a remote working contractor for many years now. Far more tolerable, despite the hefty pay cut.