How to deal with a workplace that spreads you too thin?

Question

I am in a situation that I do not believe is unique. Basically company A is a small company, less than 100 employees, in cyber security industry. There is a ton of work to be done, but lacking the hands. Higher ups don't understand the sheer amount of work that goes into software development and don't believe hiring more technical people is worth the investment, they continue to hire more black suits(non-technical people).

Employee Tom, a software engineer, is spread incredibly thin with multiple deadlines. There are lower level technical employees (that basically do nothing and are incredibly lazy) but if you want to offload work to them, expect to spend 3x the time teaching them (of which they don't care) when you could just do the job yourself the right way. Because, I'd rather do one project 100% than 5 projects half as well. So I have a few questions on how to approach this.

1. How to show higher ups that we desperately need more hands and less black suits without coming off as "lazy" or "unproductive"?

2. More importantly, how to inform them that any additional hiring's need to run through the software developers because we will have to deal with them?

3. At what point do you jump ship and get a job that you believe is ran correctly and you can do your best work?

Note: The job itself is great, flexible, learn a ton and the work is challenging, which I love. This makes a decision that much harder.

Edit: It might seem like I am might be unfair in my assessment. I think it would be helpful to give a few examples of tasks because some believe I am the source of the problem. Tasks such as...

1.) "We need a report for x project, please ask us questions if you don't understand anything." The report comes back with spelling mistakes everywhere, incomplete sentences.

2.) After teaching about our product for 3 months, we ask for a summary. They miss key details that were stressed many times and that only could have been missed if they did not care. We weren't looking for a detailed summary, but testing their awareness in a way.

3.) "Hey we understand you don't know the code base, could you read the code we have written (which is already documented) and document it in your own words and create a flow so you can better understand what we are trying to do?" - They attempt to do so and return a report in 20 minutes that is just lazy by all attempts. We then explain to them how we would like it. Process repeats.

I am perfectly happy and excited to help anyone, regardless of their experience, on anything they need. But when we take precious time out of our hectic schedule to teach them, and they show a 200% lack of interest (spelling mistakes), then I draw the line.

Answer 1

Of course your management doesn't think you need more people, you have people who are clearly not busy.

Never do someone else's work over for them. Miss the deadline and send it back. Every time. You are incentivising them to perform poorly. Stop it. Eventually they will get better or get fired.

As far as you own actual workload. Learn to say no. When you are full up, ask what the priorities are and then drop the lower priority tasks off your schedule. Make sure people know you are doing this. In fact, when they ask, list what you have currently on your plate and ask specifically what they want you to drop to do the work.

Answer 2

One difference between junior and senior levels is the ability to manage yourself. That includes handling a workload that is too big.

Your three allies are delegation, priorities and saying no.

delegation -- this is an art all by itself. I know exactly what you feel, been there, done that. Yes, sometimes you have to give work to people who can't do it as well as you do, as fast as you do, or who need to be trained. Check if the training is repetitive - if you can train them in something once, but afterwards offload similar tasks to them multiple times, the training time will repay itself. The other two - accept it. When you delegate work, one of the most difficult skills is to accept that other people will do it worse, but you essentially have a choice of getting their result or no result.

priorities -- do important things first so that what is left at the end of the day/week/month is the stuff that is optional. There are a billion websites about this topic, the most easy one is to have the two factors urgency and importance. What is both urgent and important gets done first. What is urgent but not important second. What is important but not urgent gets moved to later, what is neither urgent nor important is dropped.

saying no -- when the boss gives you yet another task and you are at 100% capacity or near, simply ask "which other task does this replace?" He will look at you like he doesn't understand, but unless he is a total idiot he does. Explain again that you are at maximum capacity and if you accept this task, something else will not get done. Make it his decision which task gets dropped. This way you can say no without having the responsibility.

delegation will get the lower level people working, priorities will sort out Tom's working schedule, and saying no will prevent additional overload.

Answer 3

"There are lower level technical employees (that basically do nothing and incredibly lazy) but if you want to offload work to them, expect to spend 3x the time teaching them."

Well, if you're going to do the stuff anyway you can still throw out any or all work they did. Just give them a task and don't teach them. You just have to define the task enough so they could understand. Point out their mistakes in a well defined manner on a conceptual level so they can improve. Let them read your code for the same stuff they tried to do later and let them ask you a few big questions. From the sound of it they are sitting around doing nothing.

It seems like you are micro managing too much. People are usualy smart and will figure out what you want, they just need time. Stop them from asking you too detailed questions. Restrict question to the conceptual level.

Also you won't be able to do 100% of all projects perfect. Depending on the country you live in your employer and your customers can only expect a mediocre product by law.

And it seems you have technical, low level, but technical personal sitting around doing nothing. Managment is most likely calculating their time into the projects.

You will have to incorporate them into the projects if you like it or not. Also remember your beginner days. You didn't know everything you do know now, but people probably gave you a chance.

Answer 4

First, find out why they're hiring more black suites and don't assume it's because they don't know what they're doing. I understand your plight as a technologist, but if they're trying to look more attractive to investors or some other reason, your argument is pointless.

Second, it's hard for managers to understand you don't have enough people to get the work done, when the work, is in fact, getting done. There should be clear communication about what everyone is expected to do and how that relates to fulfilling the company's goals. It's difficult to find out who isn't doing their job when someone else does it for them.

Clarify your expectations and get your personal job situation corrected before making any recommendations on how to fix the entire company.

Answer 5

You need a professional project manager.

The project manager would whittle projects into tasks which would be given estimates and start dates. If a resource is over-allocated between projects then that would show up. If a resource doesn't have the technical skills to be assigned to any task on any project, then that would show up too.

Note that a project manager isn't someone who can spin straw into gold. A project manager is someone who tries to keep the situation realistic.

Edit - Another point is that the project manager should manage resource conflicts (same person working on two projects) not the resource.

Answer 6

With your list of failed tasks, you are describing the evidence base for formal action against those junior employees. That could be disciplinary action, reduction in grade, mandatory retraining, including them in the next round of redundancies, or simply sacking them.

Complain informally to your manager. If this has no effect then complain formally, in writing, to your manager and to HR. They may already know that this person is dead weight, and they're just itching for an excuse to get rid of them. They don't have the evidence trail though, and you do.

This shouldn't come back to you. Even if it does though, you haven't really lost out. So a junior guy who never did his job properly in the first place isn't motivated to work with you? He wasn't anyway, so no great loss.

And the point at which you jump ship is if you've flagged all this up and nothing happens. If management really don't care whether their engineers can deliver products to time and quality, then the company will fail, and you're better leaving before it does.