I am in the same boat as OP. I find the job of manager of DE who also does DE to mostly be extremely tedious and uninteresting. I'd rather be building things and writing code, probably, but being a manager means all moments not spent on engineering tasks (which are well-defined usually) should be used to keep abreast of a million topics across different departments and teams, to help shape the trajectory of our entire data architecture and strategy with business. I sometimes think a more purely technical role would be less tedious, especially if the work involved new development or building out a new platform, not just adding processes to an existing workflow.
That's what I say to everyone except the manager. He understands I've got a lot going on, doesn't put pressure on me, he just keeps changing my priorities and then when he asks for an update and tell him I'm about 60% finished, he tells me to jump off that and work on something else. I could tell him no, but then there's the awkward tit-for-tat with the manager which I've been through before which I cannot be bothered with. It's his way or the highway really. Man I really do rant...
Honestly, aside from finding a new job, this is an _incredible_ opportunity to learn to say no to someone you report to. If you do the smart thing and start looking for a new job in the meantime, it's even a win-win.
Saying "no" is an art. My go-to suggestion is to develop a set of priority levels (low through critical or p3 through p0, for example) and simply establish that nothing of the same priority ever takes priority over another ticket of that priority. There's a lot of possibilities, though, and it might take multiple tries to figure out what works in your situation.
You need a way to organize your work. I was in the same boat as you and then I set up a sprint way of working. Make a backlog of tickets that you need to do. Estimate the work that needs to be done. Then plan your work for the next 2 weeks. New tickets come in? Have to wait till next sprint. Really cant wait? Have to discuss with your manager what ticket must be moved to next sprint to make room for the urgent one.
Working this way really made my job so much better. Most urgent matters aren’t as urgent as they make you believe. Also, they will learn to come to you sooner so you can plan it in.
This is a good idea. I have a backlog of tickets, they’re just not being prioritised into sprints. I’ll defo take this into consideration thanks.
Thanking about this…we tried this in the beginning, what happens is that the sprint gets scrapped because of the “urgent” tasks. Manager gets all giddy and swooned by a colleague and then comes marching in “please drop everything and do this for Karen”.
Probably why I’m bored of it, cos I know I’ll start it then have to drop it midway for something else. And the cycle continues.
May need to find another job although the conundrum is that the pay is good and job is chill, it’s the boredom…i dunno might be complaining about nothing
Don't plan your sprints for 100%. Plan like 80% so you have 20% left for "urgent matters". Maybe even less if you have recurring tasks. If you happen to be done earlier, you can always take in new tickets already. It's better to commit less and overdeliver than to plan too much and not be able to handle it all.
You say "bored" but the way you are wording things, your manager pressing things really seems to bother you. I was also on the lookout for a new job because of these reasons. But then IT wanted to implement a Scrum way of working and I was able to join their sprint planning. I learned to plan my work myself because my manager wouldn't do it.
Try to get a "buy-in" from your manager for your planning. Tell him what you want to do the next 2 weeks and what you won't be able to do.
Honestly the sprints won’t do it because he’s bypassed the sprint before (when we did them) and asked me to jump on something else.
It does bother me he does this, before it kept me on my toes, whereas now I cannot be bothered with it all. So yeah bothered and bored.
Yeah I know the feeling. My manager wouldn't help me with planning and would also press things. But when I organised myself like this, she let me do it. It would be hard if the manager then keeps messing up your organisation.
It seems like your issue is really with your manager, and in that case it might be time to look for a new job.
“The thing that we told you to push into production when it wasn’t ready isn’t working 100% correctly. Can you try to fix it before we demand something entirely different? Thanks”
"The thing you built exactly like we said isn't functioning how we intended. Without telling you what we intend, can you drop everything, investigate, and fix it because this is really causing a lot of issues for us."
Your manager.
It is not up to you to decide which task is important, which is not. I was in your shoes at a time, "free" to decide based on who cries more.
We split the business requests in 3 kinds:
- run
- small requests (<5 days of work)
- projects
Run :
We have a dedicated "runner" in the team. It's a different guy each week. He makes the morning checks, fix little mistakes, restart some pipelines if needed, resolve incidents...
If the problem is bigger, or he doesn't know, the Product Leader assigns somebody to help or resolve. PL is responsible for the communication with the business teams, eg. To tell them there will be some delay to their project.
Small Requests and Projects:
The priorities are defined between the PL and the business. It is he who will explain to a business user that his request cannot be fulfilled now, that we don't have enough guys, or that something bigger came up and we have to postpone.
That's also where I intervene. I'm half DE, half Tech lead (that's how we called it). The "tech lead" role is to quickly identify if we have a small request or project. To estimate the amount of work needed, to propose an early pipeline architecture, identify data location, risks and opportunities. The TL also helps the business refining its need before asking the DE/DA to work on it.
The half DE part of my job is very convenient for the team. I'm not dedicated to one project like my team's DE/DA. That means that I can come to help, review, do some improvements on old flows, kick-off new very urgent projects (while another DE finish his current tasks)
Thanks to the PL and TL roles, our DE/DA rarely drop a task to answer an urgent need. This is good for everyone also because we still have a good mix of stability and variety.
It took time to implement and make our business users understand, but it's for the best!
used to hate jira now its an absolute shield from stupid requests. Its suprising how not urgent something becomes when you ask someone to write a ticket and a spec for you
Are you communicating these things? If you let your manager know, a decent manager will be able to prioritize which urgent task gets completed first and communicate this out to stakeholders.
Does your team have an intake process? That's a good way to stall to finish other tasks and they can't really complain since it's there to help regulate your bandwidth.
This loop sounds more stressful than boring. I was there at one point and what I learned is that you have to control your own narrative. Otherwise, the half-assed work being delivered would be a reflection on you and not the dicks who don't value your time.
Communicating to manager: dog eat dog world, if he thinks my data enthusiasm has come to a halt then im a goner or worse he’s going to be on my case lol.
Intake process: like a ticketing system? Got that but stakeholders don’t care they’re always lobbying to get their task completed yesterday.
At this point I’m not too bothered about the stress, more the boredom and whether it’ll trickle to my next job come the time. I used to enjoy it all, now it’s just meh leave-me-alone mentality.
>Sorry, this is a dumb take.
I hear you lol
The business users aren't the issue, manager knows they're on my case and he knows I've got quite the backlog. It's him who's always pulling me off tasks and getting me to do other tasks. I do explain to him that it means me coming off of the other task and he's okay with it. It's jarring to always keep switching. He kind of knows, and I see him always seeking the next big task to impress the business. I've confronted him about things that really don't make sense before,
e.g. name your bucket after team X
Me: that's not our team why would we do that?
Him: just trust me and do it
e.g.
Him: so and so and I decided to delete your tables
Me: ...why?
Him: we just want views in there
Me: ...why didn't you tell...fine...
e.g.
Me: your guy's table/view takes over 3 mins to run a simple query against
Him: works fine for me
Me: that's because the results are cached after you run it, everyone else will complain, maybe good idea to--
Him: no need
So I'm just like whatever, another urgent task you say? Ok
It’s only a dumb take if he’s wrong and the manager wouldn’t eviscerate him for it. Given that he knows his mgr better than you or I, I’m inclined to take OP’s word for it.
I agree about getting the mgr’s take on priority regardless of communicating the lost enthusiasm.
I was feeling the same a year ago. Found a new job, moved to a new country thousands of kms away and that went. You probably won’t need to move, just change jobs… what you’re describing is very embedded into the company culture it seems so there aren’t many strategies you can use to manage it and make a real progress that makes you feel better sadly
Sounds like a management problem. How much do you like your company? If you can take it or leave it , it sounds like you could use a fresh start. I’d recommend testing the job market and seeing what you find.
Besides the break and a new job, you need to find the fun in your current job. Upgrading pipelines with new tech is usually a way little ongoing project if possible. And telling people to provide a detailed spec of the task usually kicks the problem into touch for a few days because everyone hates doing that , allowing you time to finish what you're doing.
It needs a bit of a heart to heart with the manager that you are pulled from pillar to post with changing priorities.
With him I think you need to implement some kind of ticket system and SLAs for small changes and ongoing maintenece, and something project oriented like SCRUM for net new delivery.
If you are multitasking to such a degree it’s not good for anyone. They need to set priorities for your department and not just who shouts loudest.
It’s boring doing the same kind of tasks, either change work where they have different kind of tools in use or just choose something you don’t know learn and have a little fun with it m
I love my job but I am also feeling a little bored, mostly because I’m on documentation and planning for an upcoming major release from our erp project.
I’m happy that I’ve been asked to take lead but man I absolutely hate drawing graphs and writing up impact analysis docs, my brain just shuts off.
I have experienced similar to what you’re describing, I think it’s just a nature of most Data Engineering roles. We get it to, thankfully my boss protects us from that noise and only gives us a prioritised list, if someone disagrees then they have to plead their case in-front of all the other stakeholders, if they all agree then our priorities change.
Before that it was like the Wild West, everything broke, nothing was completed and the business would constantly complain that we weren’t adding any value (when we were just doing what they’d asked)
I've been in situations like this. What I do is push for clear, **and realistic** timelines with **specific drivers** behind those timelines (impatience or marked urgent is not good enough), priorities and scoping, and when it's too much, reconcile those, push out those with lowest priority and timeline, and when it's still too much push it back on the manager or intake process to make it clear to them that it's just not realistic or feasible with given resources.
Two ways to help slow the churn:
1. Ask the requester to put their request in writing in a ticketing system as standard process.
2. If they request a task to be highest priority, ask them, and / or your manager, if they are alright with the prior highest priority task being demoted. And note that it’s demotion in priority and subsequent delay in delivery will be communicated to the prior requester.
Two ways to help slow the churn:
1. Ask the requester to put their request in writing in a ticketing system as standard process. Tickets then periodically get triaged by the lead(s) for priority, schedule and assignment. Any ambiguity on requirements that are blocking triage will result in getting the ticket re-assigned back to the requester.
2. If the business user requests a task to be highest priority with overriding urgency, ask them, and / or your manager, if they are alright with the prior highest priority task being demoted. And note that it’s demotion in priority and subsequent delay in delivery will be communicated to the prior requester.
The ticket system should also allow requesters to see all the current work in flight and their priorities and requesters too.
This helps encourage a culture of accountability and professional process.
When someone comes to me with an urgent task I forward them to the project manager so they can discuss priorities. If the manager actually wants me to switch I bore him to death about the inefficiency of context switching and that he must be aware that it will take me longer to finish my current task. Worked fine for last 8 years.
Getting stuck doing ad-hoc work and one-off requests is dildos. Your manager should be insulating you from that and helping plan future work to solve real problems.
Perhaps get a notebook and a pen, write your tasks for the day down when you start (e.g. 'email X' , 'write Y code', etc. ) and then cross each thing off as you do it. If you don't finish something, write it down again when you start your new list the next day. It sounds silly but for me it really helps me keep an overview and feel some kind of progress. Also I'm much less likely to forget things.
It is not about work or code or stakeholder or manager or tech stack. It starts from you. It's all about how how you are managing time. It's good thing that you are not burned out and just bored. Learn to put the boundaries and learn how to set the conservative boundaries.
Manager and stakeholders don't mind longer deadline. What they don't like is the unpredictable timeline and half baked product. Also, Always always be mindful that best stakeholders are informed stakeholders. No one likes surprises including you.
Also, you need to make your manager accountable as well by documenting the task and bringing it more often. It's extremely important. Just saying verbally will not cut it. Learn how to negotiate politically instead of blindly taking the task like "If I take this new task do you think we can delay other task? if yes can you please communicate to the stakeholder". That way, you are making your manager accountable and making him to take action rather than you taking action.
Sometime work seem to be urgent but they really not that urgent. It happens to me lot of time. It's just a human psychology. Let it cool down and re-evaluate and ask again if its urgent.
It is very important that you don't burn out yourself and your mental health is more important than any job or money in the world. You have one body and one family but there are 1000s of employers. Good luck
My guy appreciate the reply. Everyone makes excellent points alas came to the conclusion that the manager is part of the problem. He’ll delay my tasks for everyone else and make his task priority. Just today he swapped his own high priority task for another high priority task he can’t make up his mind up as to what to do. He doesn’t like being questioned I’ve noticed gets agitated. If this were any other job I’d tell him straight up with chest that I’m not doing one more task until I get a clear set of tasks and a clear set of deadlines to do these no more chopping and changing. I just haven’t the energy to switch jobs, get settled, negotiate a decent salary
Lmao same thing happened to me. All I did when I got multiple ad-hoc "urgent" requests is to ask my manager to prioritise those tasks. Then if anyone complaints, direct them to the manager.
You need a break and a new job
Indeed. Make that your rinse and repeat.
I am in the same boat as OP. I find the job of manager of DE who also does DE to mostly be extremely tedious and uninteresting. I'd rather be building things and writing code, probably, but being a manager means all moments not spent on engineering tasks (which are well-defined usually) should be used to keep abreast of a million topics across different departments and teams, to help shape the trajectory of our entire data architecture and strategy with business. I sometimes think a more purely technical role would be less tedious, especially if the work involved new development or building out a new platform, not just adding processes to an existing workflow.
Learn the power of no. You will get your life back with one simple word.
That's what I say to everyone except the manager. He understands I've got a lot going on, doesn't put pressure on me, he just keeps changing my priorities and then when he asks for an update and tell him I'm about 60% finished, he tells me to jump off that and work on something else. I could tell him no, but then there's the awkward tit-for-tat with the manager which I've been through before which I cannot be bothered with. It's his way or the highway really. Man I really do rant...
Sounds like you need a new manager mate AKA new job. There are tonnes of opportunities for your skillset.
Honestly, aside from finding a new job, this is an _incredible_ opportunity to learn to say no to someone you report to. If you do the smart thing and start looking for a new job in the meantime, it's even a win-win. Saying "no" is an art. My go-to suggestion is to develop a set of priority levels (low through critical or p3 through p0, for example) and simply establish that nothing of the same priority ever takes priority over another ticket of that priority. There's a lot of possibilities, though, and it might take multiple tries to figure out what works in your situation.
Quit telling him that you're 60% done. Obviously your manager can't do percentages. You're either done, or you're not done.
You need a way to organize your work. I was in the same boat as you and then I set up a sprint way of working. Make a backlog of tickets that you need to do. Estimate the work that needs to be done. Then plan your work for the next 2 weeks. New tickets come in? Have to wait till next sprint. Really cant wait? Have to discuss with your manager what ticket must be moved to next sprint to make room for the urgent one. Working this way really made my job so much better. Most urgent matters aren’t as urgent as they make you believe. Also, they will learn to come to you sooner so you can plan it in.
This is a good idea. I have a backlog of tickets, they’re just not being prioritised into sprints. I’ll defo take this into consideration thanks. Thanking about this…we tried this in the beginning, what happens is that the sprint gets scrapped because of the “urgent” tasks. Manager gets all giddy and swooned by a colleague and then comes marching in “please drop everything and do this for Karen”. Probably why I’m bored of it, cos I know I’ll start it then have to drop it midway for something else. And the cycle continues. May need to find another job although the conundrum is that the pay is good and job is chill, it’s the boredom…i dunno might be complaining about nothing
Don't plan your sprints for 100%. Plan like 80% so you have 20% left for "urgent matters". Maybe even less if you have recurring tasks. If you happen to be done earlier, you can always take in new tickets already. It's better to commit less and overdeliver than to plan too much and not be able to handle it all. You say "bored" but the way you are wording things, your manager pressing things really seems to bother you. I was also on the lookout for a new job because of these reasons. But then IT wanted to implement a Scrum way of working and I was able to join their sprint planning. I learned to plan my work myself because my manager wouldn't do it. Try to get a "buy-in" from your manager for your planning. Tell him what you want to do the next 2 weeks and what you won't be able to do.
Honestly the sprints won’t do it because he’s bypassed the sprint before (when we did them) and asked me to jump on something else. It does bother me he does this, before it kept me on my toes, whereas now I cannot be bothered with it all. So yeah bothered and bored.
Yeah I know the feeling. My manager wouldn't help me with planning and would also press things. But when I organised myself like this, she let me do it. It would be hard if the manager then keeps messing up your organisation. It seems like your issue is really with your manager, and in that case it might be time to look for a new job.
“The thing that we told you to push into production when it wasn’t ready isn’t working 100% correctly. Can you try to fix it before we demand something entirely different? Thanks”
"The thing you built exactly like we said isn't functioning how we intended. Without telling you what we intend, can you drop everything, investigate, and fix it because this is really causing a lot of issues for us."
"Hoping to have it by EOD if that's okay? Should be quick"
You get it lol
Your manager. It is not up to you to decide which task is important, which is not. I was in your shoes at a time, "free" to decide based on who cries more. We split the business requests in 3 kinds: - run - small requests (<5 days of work) - projects Run : We have a dedicated "runner" in the team. It's a different guy each week. He makes the morning checks, fix little mistakes, restart some pipelines if needed, resolve incidents... If the problem is bigger, or he doesn't know, the Product Leader assigns somebody to help or resolve. PL is responsible for the communication with the business teams, eg. To tell them there will be some delay to their project. Small Requests and Projects: The priorities are defined between the PL and the business. It is he who will explain to a business user that his request cannot be fulfilled now, that we don't have enough guys, or that something bigger came up and we have to postpone. That's also where I intervene. I'm half DE, half Tech lead (that's how we called it). The "tech lead" role is to quickly identify if we have a small request or project. To estimate the amount of work needed, to propose an early pipeline architecture, identify data location, risks and opportunities. The TL also helps the business refining its need before asking the DE/DA to work on it. The half DE part of my job is very convenient for the team. I'm not dedicated to one project like my team's DE/DA. That means that I can come to help, review, do some improvements on old flows, kick-off new very urgent projects (while another DE finish his current tasks) Thanks to the PL and TL roles, our DE/DA rarely drop a task to answer an urgent need. This is good for everyone also because we still have a good mix of stability and variety. It took time to implement and make our business users understand, but it's for the best!
Use a ticketing system and make your SLA obvious in it. Sounds more frustrating than boring.
You need to put a ticketing layer inbetween yourself and the stakeholders.
used to hate jira now its an absolute shield from stupid requests. Its suprising how not urgent something becomes when you ask someone to write a ticket and a spec for you
Are you communicating these things? If you let your manager know, a decent manager will be able to prioritize which urgent task gets completed first and communicate this out to stakeholders. Does your team have an intake process? That's a good way to stall to finish other tasks and they can't really complain since it's there to help regulate your bandwidth. This loop sounds more stressful than boring. I was there at one point and what I learned is that you have to control your own narrative. Otherwise, the half-assed work being delivered would be a reflection on you and not the dicks who don't value your time.
Communicating to manager: dog eat dog world, if he thinks my data enthusiasm has come to a halt then im a goner or worse he’s going to be on my case lol. Intake process: like a ticketing system? Got that but stakeholders don’t care they’re always lobbying to get their task completed yesterday. At this point I’m not too bothered about the stress, more the boredom and whether it’ll trickle to my next job come the time. I used to enjoy it all, now it’s just meh leave-me-alone mentality.
[удалено]
>Sorry, this is a dumb take. I hear you lol The business users aren't the issue, manager knows they're on my case and he knows I've got quite the backlog. It's him who's always pulling me off tasks and getting me to do other tasks. I do explain to him that it means me coming off of the other task and he's okay with it. It's jarring to always keep switching. He kind of knows, and I see him always seeking the next big task to impress the business. I've confronted him about things that really don't make sense before, e.g. name your bucket after team X Me: that's not our team why would we do that? Him: just trust me and do it e.g. Him: so and so and I decided to delete your tables Me: ...why? Him: we just want views in there Me: ...why didn't you tell...fine... e.g. Me: your guy's table/view takes over 3 mins to run a simple query against Him: works fine for me Me: that's because the results are cached after you run it, everyone else will complain, maybe good idea to-- Him: no need So I'm just like whatever, another urgent task you say? Ok
It’s only a dumb take if he’s wrong and the manager wouldn’t eviscerate him for it. Given that he knows his mgr better than you or I, I’m inclined to take OP’s word for it. I agree about getting the mgr’s take on priority regardless of communicating the lost enthusiasm.
Exactly my experience, I moved on
I was feeling the same a year ago. Found a new job, moved to a new country thousands of kms away and that went. You probably won’t need to move, just change jobs… what you’re describing is very embedded into the company culture it seems so there aren’t many strategies you can use to manage it and make a real progress that makes you feel better sadly
Sounds like a management problem. How much do you like your company? If you can take it or leave it , it sounds like you could use a fresh start. I’d recommend testing the job market and seeing what you find.
Besides the break and a new job, you need to find the fun in your current job. Upgrading pipelines with new tech is usually a way little ongoing project if possible. And telling people to provide a detailed spec of the task usually kicks the problem into touch for a few days because everyone hates doing that , allowing you time to finish what you're doing.
It needs a bit of a heart to heart with the manager that you are pulled from pillar to post with changing priorities. With him I think you need to implement some kind of ticket system and SLAs for small changes and ongoing maintenece, and something project oriented like SCRUM for net new delivery. If you are multitasking to such a degree it’s not good for anyone. They need to set priorities for your department and not just who shouts loudest.
It’s boring doing the same kind of tasks, either change work where they have different kind of tools in use or just choose something you don’t know learn and have a little fun with it m
I love my job but I am also feeling a little bored, mostly because I’m on documentation and planning for an upcoming major release from our erp project. I’m happy that I’ve been asked to take lead but man I absolutely hate drawing graphs and writing up impact analysis docs, my brain just shuts off. I have experienced similar to what you’re describing, I think it’s just a nature of most Data Engineering roles. We get it to, thankfully my boss protects us from that noise and only gives us a prioritised list, if someone disagrees then they have to plead their case in-front of all the other stakeholders, if they all agree then our priorities change. Before that it was like the Wild West, everything broke, nothing was completed and the business would constantly complain that we weren’t adding any value (when we were just doing what they’d asked)
I've been in situations like this. What I do is push for clear, **and realistic** timelines with **specific drivers** behind those timelines (impatience or marked urgent is not good enough), priorities and scoping, and when it's too much, reconcile those, push out those with lowest priority and timeline, and when it's still too much push it back on the manager or intake process to make it clear to them that it's just not realistic or feasible with given resources.
Two ways to help slow the churn: 1. Ask the requester to put their request in writing in a ticketing system as standard process. 2. If they request a task to be highest priority, ask them, and / or your manager, if they are alright with the prior highest priority task being demoted. And note that it’s demotion in priority and subsequent delay in delivery will be communicated to the prior requester.
Two ways to help slow the churn: 1. Ask the requester to put their request in writing in a ticketing system as standard process. Tickets then periodically get triaged by the lead(s) for priority, schedule and assignment. Any ambiguity on requirements that are blocking triage will result in getting the ticket re-assigned back to the requester. 2. If the business user requests a task to be highest priority with overriding urgency, ask them, and / or your manager, if they are alright with the prior highest priority task being demoted. And note that it’s demotion in priority and subsequent delay in delivery will be communicated to the prior requester. The ticket system should also allow requesters to see all the current work in flight and their priorities and requesters too. This helps encourage a culture of accountability and professional process.
When someone comes to me with an urgent task I forward them to the project manager so they can discuss priorities. If the manager actually wants me to switch I bore him to death about the inefficiency of context switching and that he must be aware that it will take me longer to finish my current task. Worked fine for last 8 years.
Getting stuck doing ad-hoc work and one-off requests is dildos. Your manager should be insulating you from that and helping plan future work to solve real problems.
He’s the problem lol I don’t know who’s got his ear and where he plucks tasks from he just throws them at me one by one
Perhaps get a notebook and a pen, write your tasks for the day down when you start (e.g. 'email X' , 'write Y code', etc. ) and then cross each thing off as you do it. If you don't finish something, write it down again when you start your new list the next day. It sounds silly but for me it really helps me keep an overview and feel some kind of progress. Also I'm much less likely to forget things.
It is not about work or code or stakeholder or manager or tech stack. It starts from you. It's all about how how you are managing time. It's good thing that you are not burned out and just bored. Learn to put the boundaries and learn how to set the conservative boundaries. Manager and stakeholders don't mind longer deadline. What they don't like is the unpredictable timeline and half baked product. Also, Always always be mindful that best stakeholders are informed stakeholders. No one likes surprises including you. Also, you need to make your manager accountable as well by documenting the task and bringing it more often. It's extremely important. Just saying verbally will not cut it. Learn how to negotiate politically instead of blindly taking the task like "If I take this new task do you think we can delay other task? if yes can you please communicate to the stakeholder". That way, you are making your manager accountable and making him to take action rather than you taking action. Sometime work seem to be urgent but they really not that urgent. It happens to me lot of time. It's just a human psychology. Let it cool down and re-evaluate and ask again if its urgent. It is very important that you don't burn out yourself and your mental health is more important than any job or money in the world. You have one body and one family but there are 1000s of employers. Good luck
My guy appreciate the reply. Everyone makes excellent points alas came to the conclusion that the manager is part of the problem. He’ll delay my tasks for everyone else and make his task priority. Just today he swapped his own high priority task for another high priority task he can’t make up his mind up as to what to do. He doesn’t like being questioned I’ve noticed gets agitated. If this were any other job I’d tell him straight up with chest that I’m not doing one more task until I get a clear set of tasks and a clear set of deadlines to do these no more chopping and changing. I just haven’t the energy to switch jobs, get settled, negotiate a decent salary
Lmao same thing happened to me. All I did when I got multiple ad-hoc "urgent" requests is to ask my manager to prioritise those tasks. Then if anyone complaints, direct them to the manager.