• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Dion Almaer

Software, Development, Products

  • @dalmaer
  • LinkedIn
  • Medium
  • RSS
  • Show Search
Hide Search

“My engineers want to code at night! Oh no!” Oh yes!

September 4, 2015 Leave a Comment

Coding at night

I was talking to someone who was concerned about one of the engineers on his team. This chap was writing a lot of code on the side for a hobby project, and it didn’t feel right to this manager. After listening in to the group for awhile I had to insert myself and ask some questions:

Is he performing his job to a satisfactory level?

In the information age it is hard to measure impact based on the number of hours. At some point the engineering manager has to set the expectations for the engineers job performance. This typically happens already, where it is clear how to meet expectations, exceed them, and more. Putting in the effort to clearly define these levels gives you the tools you need to be much more loosely coupled on items such as time input.

If the engineer is at least meeting the expectations of their role, you shouldn’t be too concerned about what else is going on, but there is always the opportunity to talk about what it means to get to the other levels. At some point the employee may take the trade off to do more in their personal life at the expense of being a role model (not that time is the only way to become a role model).

Measuring the impact that a person has on your business is hard. There are so many complex variables at work, with a myriad of side effects. There is the notion of individual contribution, and also the leverage that you get with the team. A great leader has a huge leverage effect beyond himself, and that is true for any employee.

If he instead spent the same time on a hobby very different to work, how would that make you feel?

The manager didn’t like the engineer writing code on the side, but why? Why does it sometimes make people feel weird if they use the skills they have at work for a hobby, when if they spent the same amount of time on a very different hobby it wouldn’t feel as weird?

If the engineer was cranking away putting hours and hours into becoming a scratch golfer, how would you feel differently?

In some ways you should feel very excited that an engineer on your team loves software so much that he continues to explore it “off hours”. The passion is a great sign that they enjoy their craft beyond a pay check. Understanding the motivations is of course key. The context is what matters here. What are they working on? Is part of the hobby project a way to explore different tech stacks? A different domain? There is a good chance that this “free time” work is a gift. The engineer is growing and you are getting the benefits of that growth, while he is with you.

Is he being paid for work on the side?

It can feel different when someone is hacking on a fun open source side project vs. a paid gig. The incentives are different. On the one hand the golden rule of “as long as they are doing their job” can be applied, but it is still a warning sign. Do they feel they need the money and don’t like what they are doing other than the pay check? Or, is the pay check a happy side effect of working on something genuinely interesting?

When money is changing hands there is another person in the equation: whoever is paying them. If it is consulting work, someone is managing that work. If they are selling an app on an app store, there are customers. When this happens loyalties can be split, so the salient point is “where is the primary focus?” When shit hits the fan and you need this guy, is he around?

In the 24/7 world that we live in, when is it OK to work on this vs. that. Chances are you have had people work for you at all hours of the day. In fact, it may be that some of your engineers work best coding at night, so you should let them do that at times for their day job!

Expectations

As with seemingly so many things in life, it probably all comes down to expectations. You should be able to have an honest transparent ongoing conversion between engineer and manager. You also need to be fair across your work force. You may have some fear that the engineer will leave to work on this hobby, or get another job due to the open source work, but is the alternative of trying to capture someone better?

If you can find a passionate engineer that is creative and wants to explore his craft no matter what, you should probably consider yourself very lucky. If not, what kind of culture are you creating? Whatever you do: don’t just tell them they can’t be creative and put them in a box. If you want obedient fulfillment workers, this is one way to start down that path.

As one of my kids often remarks: “Are you FORCING me?”

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Tagged With: Engineering, Management, Open Source

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Twitter

My Tweets

Recent Posts

  • Generative AI: It’s Time to Get Into First Gear
  • Developer Docs + GenAI = ❤️
  • We keep confusing efficacy for effectiveness
  • The holy grail of a Web SDK
  • The rise of the extensible app platforms

Follow

  • LinkedIn
  • Medium
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Tags

3d Touch 2016 Active Recall Adaptive Design Agile Amazon Echo Android Android Development Apple Application Apps Artificial Intelligence Autocorrect blog Bots Brain Calendar Career Advice Cloud Computing Coding Cognitive Bias Commerce Communication Companies Conference Consciousness Cooking Cricket Cross Platform Deadline Delivery Design Desktop Developer Advocacy Developer Experience Developer Platform Developer Productivity Developer Relations Developers Developer Tools Development Distributed Teams Documentation DX Ecosystem Education Energy Engineering Engineering Mangement Entrepreneurship Exercise Family Fitness Founders Future GenAI Gender Equality Google Google Developer Google IO Habits Health HR JavaScript Jobs Jquery Kids Stories Kotlin Language Leadership Learning Lottery Machine Learning Management Messaging Metrics Micro Learning Microservices Microsoft Mobile Mobile App Development Mobile Apps Mobile Web Moving On NPM Open Source Organization Organization Design Pair Programming Paren Parenting Path Performance Platform Platform Thinking Politics Product Design Product Development Productivity Product Management Product Metrics Programming Progress Progressive Enhancement Progressive Web App Project Management Psychology Push Notifications pwa QA Rails React Reactive Remix Remote Working Resilience Ruby on Rails Screentime Self Improvement Service Worker Sharing Economy Shipping Shopify Short Story Silicon Valley Slack Software Software Development Spaced Repetition Speaking Startup Steve Jobs Study Teaching Team Building Tech Tech Ecosystems Technical Writing Technology Tools Transportation TV Series Twitter Typescript Uber UI Unknown User Experience User Testing UX vitals Voice Walmart Web Web Components Web Development Web Extensions Web Frameworks Web Performance Web Platform WWDC Yarn

Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Archives

  • January 2023
  • September 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • November 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • October 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • January 2019
  • October 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • May 2018
  • February 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012

Search

Subscribe

RSS feed RSS - Posts

The right thing to do, is the right thing to do.

The right thing to do, is the right thing to do.

Dion Almaer

Copyright © 2023 · Log in