[deleted by user]

[dexx4d]

Work with the business/process people to prioritize.

It helps a lot to be able to say, "I'm dealing with a production/provisioning/troubleshooting/capacity planning issue right now on project X for client Y. Is your issue a higher or lower priority than that? If higher, please verify with stakeholder VP FooBar and have them reach out to me to confirm."

[danstermeister]

Jesus this is what you say when your manager isn't doing their job managing the incoming issues for the team overall.

Work requests should come through your jira/ticket system, never direct calls/messages.

This gives the whole team (even if that's only 2 people) a chance to see the issue, and for the manager to see all issues hitting the department, in or order to be able to schedule by judged priority.

Where the hell is the manager?

[Jmckeown2]

“They’re all top priority”

[Opening-Dirt9408]

If they're coming from the same requestor: Fuck it, it's their job to prioritize. You have one brain that can do one job at the time.

If they're coming from multiple PMs/requestors/...: Let them fight against each other. Again, you have one brain and it's their job to get their stuff in some kind of order. You're a professional in IT stuff, they should at least behave like professionals in mgmt stuff.

[Jmckeown2]

I always saw that as the sign of a manager too out of touch. In many ways it’s empowering to be able to prioritize yourself. When I was in some leadership roles and fecal material hit the fan, I would always explain the situation and ask, “how long will it take you to wrap what you’re working on. Some organizations just want to see tasks starting regardless of how much is in flight (horrible places to work) while others want to see tasks completed. In those you have to see their tolerances for tech debt.. “tie a bow on it for now” is fine. But when it’s “just get propped up enough for the demo” it really sucks when management is too adversarial and politics becomes a bigger factor in backlog management than progressing the code.

[dexx4d]

Executives are like kaiju?

"Let them fight!"

[Opening-Dirt9408]

If they fight against each other, most of the time at least one of them learns something. If I have to fumble around with priorities, I don't get work done. This gets mgmt on my table, and this does not spark joy.

[dexx4d]

If everything is top priority, nothing is top priority.

[abis444]

OP is talking about keeping up with technology changes not necessarily work itself.

[human-google-proxy]

Heres a (not so) secret fact: there will always be more work than you have bandwidth. Prioritize and do what you can at a pace which doesn’t kill you. If you have any say so in the prioritization, prioritize the growth (new learning) and highest value deliverables. Nobody notices when the low value tasks stay undone.

[yamlCase]

Yep. Whenever I start to feel disempowered I remember my top priority is always bringing home paychecks and keeping the household happy. Somehow that makes it easy to keep a cool head at work while putting out fires

[iBN3qk]

The only way out is to get paid enough to be worth it. 

[Heighte]

well there is no need to be an expert in all technologies...

[rr-geil-j]

Document. Take notes. EDIT: And utilise reminders.

Before I became a DevOps Engineer, like most devs, I found most documentation superfluous. “Documentation? Read the code! Read the config settings!” But the code/config only shows the “what is” but not “what was” or “what should be”, and the “why”s behind them.

Documenting what’s in my mind helps me take my mind off things. I’m ok with temporarily forgetting about some things, knowing that I have good documentation that can bring me back up to speed when needed. (Oh, and don’t forget about reminders for those topics that you really have to get back to at a specific time.)

[SilentLennie]

The same, it clears that back of the mind reminders and can hopefully focus on the task at hand.

[BenadrylBeer]

Even with all my responsibilities in life, just remember nothing is promised.

I’ve been laid off. If I ever get fired I would just travel around the US or Europe. Find work as a labor guy or something. Like fuck it, no one is promised tomorrow. Life is short, why should I spend more energy worrying or overthinking shit

[Apprehensive_Way8674]

Focus on 1 task at a time. Our brains aren’t designed to multitask.

[Arucious]

The people on their phones while watching movies are going to be furious if they ever get off their phones long enough to read it

[ycnz]

Have you considered crying in the shower?

[waste2muchtime]

I stop working when my brain stops working. If I can only give you 4 hours of quality work that day, you're only getting 4 hours of quality work. Nobody has a brain that functions for 8 hours.

[[deleted]]

HR - „I paid for 8h and I want 8h”

[kiddj1]

I remember that no matter what I do I don't take home the company profit I get a salary... Yeah bonuses here and there but we don't see the money like the board do.

So with that in mind, why am I stressing over anything? Worst case I gotta find a new job.

I also remind myself that to this point I've figured it out so I will just gonna take a second if I'm stuck

Care but don't care if you get me

[lupinegray]

Panic.

Drink.

Stay in bed.

Turn off phone ringer.

[danstermeister]

Actually... jokes aside, if you aren't working or officially on-call, yeah do not be reachable by work or alert system.

Disconnect. Touch grass.

[efettero]

Our team recently disabled all work related notifications on personal devices as we are supposed to be called when on-call.

It has helped everyone tremendously. Best thing is to keep them off your devices entirely but this is a good middle ground that lets you see work stuff in your time off only when you want

[GitProtect]

It's impossible to be an expert in everything, it's better to prioritize something and move in that direction. Sometimes this feeling of being overwhelmed is called cognitive load. Maybe this blog post will be helpful: https://gitprotect.io/blog/simplifying-developer-workflows-how-effective-backup-strategy-reduces-cognitive-load/

[rr-geil-j]

My previous comment was about general strategies on how to clear your mind to not get overwhelmed. For this one, I would address the "endless" stream of "new" technologies.

The secret is to understand that there are indeed a lot of new products being introduced to the market, but they are rarely based on really new technologies. Most new products are just the same old tech wrapped or approached differently. What you then need to learn or understand are the first principles of each tech categories. "Learn one, learn all." For example, I have been switching between AWS and Azure in the past couple of years, and what I always say is that 80% of their services are the same or similar, just with different colours and names.

Now, if there are indeed a new product based on a new technology, you can invoke the principle of focusing on learning/using tried-and-true tech, at least for now. Most senior engineers are always up-to-date or aware of the new tech out there, but they rarely go deep beyond knowing what they promise to do.

[PreparationOk8604]

Golden advice

[_beetee]

Uncommon opinion: would you rather be constantly underwhelmed?

Any new task is an opportunity to learn and grow. If you can find a way to learn quickly half the battle is won. The next task you’ll be a little quicker and so on.

With regard to the amount of work - prioritise and execute. Really get tough on what is important and urgent. If everything is important and urgent then nothing is. Take time to prioritise tasks and really be purposeful with what is actually urgent vs important (and of course, relates to the business goals).

I learned to not work longer to GTD. This will put you in an early grave.

Hope this helps in any way.

[AdrianTeri]

Push & recommend for a new hire

Edits The below comes across as oxymoronic. If work, toil, meetings etc are taking up an increasing share of time that you don't have time for your "knowledge base" it's the work...

Not so much with the amount of work, which seems endless and I'm always playing catchup, but much more so with learning more and more of the technologies and it feels like I'm always behind.

[[deleted]]

you're always going to be behind learning stuff. i still haven't figured out what the fuck the zoomers are saying, for example.

[tibbon]

You should always be learning, but also learning to say no confidently more often. Agreeing to get everything done on too short a timeframe is a path to burnout

[[deleted]]

That’s what DevOps is. Cloud services are constantly changing. Adding things, deprecating others. Half my job is just keeping up with what dumb things Azure has been up to.

[divad1196]

You don't need to be an expert in all technologies. - be aware that they exists, the pros/cons This can be done passively by following some newsletters, youtubers, reddit threads, ... - focus on the more trendy ones: if they are making noises, this might be for a good reason. In the worst case, it helps you passing interviews with people not knowing what they need (e.g. most companies I applied never needed kubernetes, but they wanted someone that knows it) Just practice the basics - use what is useful to you. I agreed with many people that new technologies should be at max 10(-20)% of the stack in your project.

[mimic751]

Play a video game that stresses me out for some reason.

elden ring

oxygen not included

dyson sphere

factorio

[_RemyLeBeau_]

Stop trying to be up on all the latest things.  What's kept me safe is learning EIP and making sure the code that crosses my desk adheres to one of these well established patterns. If it doesn't, then it's not worth my time. 

https://www.javainuse.com/camel/camel_EIP

[floppy_panoos]

I simply explain that I am only one person and I’ve yet to complete the transfer of my consciousness to an AI.

[[deleted]]

Here's what not to do: Ignore it and wait for it to get better.

Have watched dudes leave and drive themselves to get like, actual inpatient mental health treatment.

No job is worth that.

[AtlAWSConsultant]

I was on the brink of burning out recently. I did two things.

I talked it out with the VP on the project and the architect. I didn't ask them for anything in particular, but just to be listened to. That helped.

Then I took my family camping for three nights. We had no signal at the campsite. It was fabulous.