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A lot of have been talked about stress at the workplace, those are visible and bold like toxic managers, unrealistic deadlines etc. A very few people speak about silent stressors that are very much invisible but damages more in the long run as very less is done to eliminate them. When I had begun working, hardware was very expensive. In some companies they used to use the machine across multiple people in shifts. I got a machine assigned to me and over the course of 4+ years it was never replaced. It was impossible to run an IDE so I had to rely on text editors to code. What this meant is a constant loop of editing code, going to the console to compile and come back to figure out errors in the editor by comparing compiler outputs. The days just dragged on in endless loops.

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One of the other types of stressors were unplanned working days. At the hands of a novice manager, days get difficult to plan. Developers need unbroken time and reduced ambiguity, but constant interruptions and ambiguity feels like a constant droning in your head. Detachment from family and social life, this stressor builds up slowly and is a secondary stressor often a result of other ones. In my younger days, I have missed many of my friends’ weddings, found it difficult to be at the side sick parents/grand parents at home town and slowly the immediate circle is only acquaintances from the office which is a deep echo chamber.

Identifying these stressors early is a key to good mental and physical health. I did not realise this for a long time, once I figured out and eliminated it then it improved my quality of life. Ask these simple questions, a single no requires you to reconsider what you are doing?

  1. Are you able to finish your work week within ~40 hour window and still find it fulfilling/ having a sense of achievement/ being recognised? (Some lean weeks and some tight weeks will be fine, but the average should be around 40)
  2. Do you find time for friends and family?
  3. Are you able to eat, sleep and exercise well?
  4. Do you like going to your office, is your 1 way commute less than 30 minutes or if it exceeds do you have a commute routine that is engaging (like reading, audio books, podcasts or simply enjoy the drive)

Ask yourself these questions? Find out the root silent stressor and figure out a way to eliminate it. The stressor could be anything from poor hardware, bad planning, noisy environment, gossip culture, poor management, tough competition etc. Don’t cope up with any kind of stress, just remove it.

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I come across people in the spectrum of extremely laid back to extremely driven. Laid back ones or happy me go lucky ones have a strong belief in destiny and are often victim of systems. The driving factor for them is that there is very little one can influence on what is about to happen to them. On the other hand, people with an extreme drive try to keep altering every aspect of what they do to control their destiny leading to a high anxiety state. You can read more in detail about it here on what is locus of control.

What is the healthy state to be in? It is not the middle path, it is towards the internal sense of control that is desired but not on the extreme end. Kids in the initial days have an external sense of control, the sense of control gets more and more internalised as their learning horizon expands and they begin to understand cause and effect very well. This is not a inborn trait, our environment around us and self reflections will shape our sense of control.

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Environment shapes how an individual’s locus of control is established. A workplace that is toxic, promotes favouritism, has tight command and control will eventually prime the individuals to adopt an external locus of control. They become less engaged, more laid back and often make poor choices which slowly bleeds into their personal life as well.

It is crucial that a workplace promotes psychological safety if they need individuals to develop a healthy locus of control. Individuals should also understand that complete control is impossible and should develop the mindset to accept things that cannot be controlled, which will result is less anxiety and move on to next set of challenges.

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In the early days of my career I have observed professional managers hired to lead the projects in software development, who go by numbers, processes, tasks and objectives, the more and more I observed them, I started to dislike their leadership style as it was very disjoint from what the team was doing. To add more to the dislike, low performers were termed ‘Manager material’ and an option was given them to train on professional management, giving a bad example for leadership aspirants. Not just me, a lot of individual contributors like App developers, QA, Infra developers started to lose the respect for managers as the only leverage these managers had was coercive powers like say on appraisals, leaves, working hours, weekend work etc.

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For many years this thought made me stick to being an individual contributor until I was no longer able to push what I can achieve through my work. Work got super boring and monotonous, also started feeling helpless many a times. Long working works, weekend work as a result of poor planning became the norm. At the same time, I read two books – Fish! and Who moved my cheese. These two books just drilled the following points in my head.

  • Work does not have to be a boring, repetitive, stressful affair
  • Create a work environment that people along with you enjoy being there and doing it
  • Change is inevitable, which means I should not resist growing up to managing people, just see how to grow into that role
  • Comfort zone will make you rot eventually

This made me ready to ditch the individual contributor tag and take up the lead role. To my surprise, my tech skills did not vanish, instead I was able to get better at abstractions and multiple tech stacks. I was able to influence task breakdown, planning, onboarding and knowledge management which in turn created an easy environment for people to work. Better work environment led to less stress and I observed that the team was always in a mood to help each other out instead of hammering away at their task lists. As a result we were able to deliver what was thought to be an aggressive 4-5 month plan in just 2.5 months without breaking a sweat.

It was a great start for me to become a multiplier and shun the fears of becoming a manager. Techies fit the best to lead other techies. Management does not mean pure management, people can manage while still retaining their tech exposure on a day to day basis.