While working on the current story, one should also figure out what he has to do for the next story.
Is this good advice? I am skeptical and I would have asked about priorioties of the task given to my manager but at this point it seems pointless to reason things with him that's why asking it here.

While working on the current story, one should also figure out what he has to do for the next story - Is this good advice?

I feel like I am basically surviving in my current job, one story to another, one deadline to another. It was not like this before. Earlier I used to be very passionate about developing stuff. I don't think it's normal. 
I do get my passion by solving some leetcode questions with my friend but that's it. I don't find joy anymore in my work, it feels forced. 
I feel like I should have a life outside my job as well which I don't have right now, and since the joy is not there anymore with my job it feels just bad. 

What can I do to change it?

I feel like I am basically surviving it was not like this before how should I change it?

I have recently joined this company and I am trying to learn and I am clocking 12 hours everyday. Inspite of that I am doubting my abilities and I have manager who doesn't actually listen.. and instead of helping me navigate through this.. he is just on repeat saying I have to deliver this urgently .. and I am not picking up fast enough..

I have manager who doesn't actually listen and wants me to pick up fast

I joined this new company, and since the beginning things were little off for me. i.e.
- the manager when interviewed me I got a gut feeling that he is not a nice guy, I checked with my friend and got convinced that it's okay 
- While onboarding, I talked to couple of my team-mates and they were either disinterested or complete rude to me, I ignored it thinking I might be the most stupid and inefficient one.. 
- While getting some sessions from senior engineer, the guy always made me feel bad about myself, about how I lacked necessary knowledge and how I should just get things.. I ignored that too thinking it's just me who is not smart enough

Since last couple of days, I talked some of other engineers and found that all my team-mates are pretty toxic and, when he shared some of the past experiences, I got now convinced that it's pretty toxic environment especially for my team.
Now my question is that all this time I thought I am the problem.. but it turned out that it was not me.. I am still pretty new here and I am seriously searching for another job now, 
but what did I miss here..?
What could I have done here such that I would have known this earlier? (I know, I could have talked to the other guys earlier but I was not so sure because I had no idea how they would react to that.. I shared my concerns only when it became unavoidable)

I have to provide estimate of a story, to the point where I have to tell how much I will be spending for each sub-story.. although I have given them those with buffer since I am new, I notice a pattern with me which is that I usually need some help which I get either at the end of the day or the next day. This can influence the estimate ofcourse but for some reason my manager wants a very aggresive dates, and it's challenging for me. 

In addition to that, I am not sure what I will say in order to justify if I can't meet the deadline. This process has sucked the life out of the work for me. 
I remember giving estimates in my past companies but they were just estimates, and when I shared my side of the story people usually understood my challenges this is not happening here..

How to give estimates when facing challenge?

Up until now, (before covid basically), I used to go to different people's desk and ask for the the flow that I would have to work on, and be genuinely interested in what they had to say, in short make friends basically and it was good strategy, they were big companies too so there weren't a lot of pressure and people were eager to help me.
After covid I have joined remote-first company which is also a late startup too. I have couple of challenges here
- I don't know many people in the company, and the team is really small, and in addition to that some people whom I have asked for help turned out to be really closed.
- I ended up asking a lot of question to one person which obviously made me look like I ask a lot of questions, and not a good first impression
- on top of it, I even was discouraged to ask questions and was told to work independently from the manager.

In my defence, I am new to all these new technologies, and I have not used to the way they have written the code, that said, I have improved much. But still I have to ask questions because everytime I get stories from different modules which I have no idea about, and there's no way I would know without asking questions.. 

So this is what I was doing in current company which back fired I guess. I was pinging one guy and trying to get his point of view, if that was not enough I used to get on calls and sync up with him for the approach and I have a feeling that although he didn't say directly to me that he didn't like this approach but he might have shared this to our manager. 

Now what I am doing is, I do my work and get all the questions which I have in mind, compile them together so that it's easier to read for the other person and send it accross to the other person asking for help. This strategy is new to me but I like it because it makes me less weak I think.. also it makes me articulate as well. But since I was told that I have bugged people.. I have become scared and confused .. thinking if sometime later my manager come back to me saying you ask too many questions on slack and bug people etc.

I am basically doubting my every move. and in addition to that clocking 12+ hours everyday. it's exhausting..

Egnyte is a software company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It sells cloud-based content security, compliance, and collaboration tools for businesses. Egnyte was founded in 2007 with a focus on modernized file servers, but it has since shifted to selling tools that help users securely collaborate with coworkers and third parties.

Egnyte

Senior Software Engineer

I'm really sorry to hear this - Unfortunately a lot of managers are like this and are just there to crack the whip. 12 hours per day is colossal; that's 50% more than you should be working.

To start, I recommend reading [this Q&A from another engineer that's feeling overwhelmed](https://link.jointaro.com/8KZVjCnDFSmVLyM89). My response there links a lot of other helpful resources as well.

Here are my ideas on dealing with this tactically:
- **Can you prioritize work away?** - This is the biggest one. Software generally follows a power law; only 20% of the code you write will deliver 80% of the impact. For the mountain of tasks I assume you have, can you ask your manager which ones are the most important? You don't need to bring up that your plan is to drop the lower-priority tasks as your manager probably won't like that. From there, you can do the ones that matter the most and see if your manager's perception of you improves.
- **Can you collaborate with others to improve your velocity?** - A common trap I see new engineers fall into is that they don't request for help aggressively enough. I cover this more [in this Q&A about strategies to improve on a lack of productivity](https://link.jointaro.com/N3aRkQQsEoEPrHc8A).
- **Can you build a stronger flow state?** - As a tech lead, expectations were very high for me - I found myself writing 80% of my code on Wednesdays since that was a no meeting day across Meta and Robinhood. Can you do something similar and group up meetings on certain days to have a certain day(s) where you have a massive burst of productivity for being able to focus.

Lastly, I want to leave you with 2 thoughts:
1. If you are unable to reason with your manager, and they're truly toxic and affecting your well-being, please leave the job. No job is worth your mental health.
2. We're here for you! Feel free to reach out to me in the Taro Premium Slack, so we can chat more about how we can make this better for you and feel less overwhelmed.

Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero, PayPal

Alex Chiou

Is your manager asking you to work this much, or do you feel pressure and are self-initiating that?

Be super aware you will end up going slower and producing with lower quality when you are working more than 8 (honestly more than 7ish) hours per day, and 36ish hours per week. I know we “have to” work 40 hours, but need to be honest that a lot of that is not really working.

From there, do you have supports other than your manager, like more senior members of the team?

What is the ramp up plan? Like is there documented stages? A timeline? You’re being told you aren’t ramping up “fast enough”, but what is fast enough and how far behind are you? Do you have a bug or project work that actually has an external deadline? I would argue that is not an effective way to ramp someone up.

From there do you have a mentor outside of your team that can give perspective without bias regarding your manager, and tell you if they believe you are behind? Do you have access to your manager’s manager to ask their opinion of your progress?

From there, the shift is going to be in behavior, perspective, and attitude, not how much time you put in. Ask your manager for regular checkins and hard goals. If you can’t meet them, ask why and get perspective from others on the team.

You were hired for a reason. You aren’t bad at this, but you need time. You may actually  be ramping slower than you “should”, and you need outside perspective on why that is. Maybe you need to just blast through a bug or two with no understanding to just show progress, maybe you need to pair program for a few days to get comfortable, maybe you’re using your tools inefficiently. You need to root cause before you can fix it. Again, no amount of time doing the wrong thing will fix it.

Good luck, god speed!

Staff SWE at Google, ex-Meta, ex-Amazon

Lee McKeeman

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I have manager who doesn't actually listen and wants me to pick up fast

Egnyte

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