One of those nights. You have to work late.
The issue is critical and you’re the one on the job. You haven’t seen anything like this problem. Your progress investigating the codebase stalls and you need help from your manager and tech lead. They promised they’d be around so you email asking for advice.
Nobody bothers to respond.
Desperately you keep hacking away at the code until you give up at 5 in the morning.
You wake up at 7, rush to the office and continue to examine the problem. Finally your manager and tech lead strolls in at 11 AM. All you wanted at night was someone to bounce ideas off or someone to listen. You might not want to take on another important project because you know you wouldn’t get support in time. You might feel a loss of motivation.
Was your project that important if your team could ignore your requests until the next day?
I’ve experienced and observed this behavior too many times. I don’t want my team to feel this way about my availability, so here’s what I do:
If I can’t be around in person, I let everyone know when I’ll be online. I give a timeframe.
“I’m online after 9 PM to midnight.”
I sign into our company chat on Google Hangouts and keep that green light on (meaning I’m active.) My team knows if they see that light I can respond within seconds. Having a mobile phone with a chat app open does not count as being available. Phones provide the illusion of permanent online presence, but I can’t possibly respond at every point of the day. I could be driving, at the gym or just plain not available. Not being able to answer within a few minutes negates the whole point of presence.
Only light up in green if you can respond. Even if you can’t quite answer their question, being there for your team can make the difference in extinguishing a fire. This is the closest thing you can do to approximate physical presence. Being available means you can respond within five minutes. Not 30 minutes later, not an hour later.
I set that expectation for myself. If you work with me, if I say I’ll be around – I will be there.
For your team, if you have someone on call late at night, let them know if you’ll be around. Having your presence around is not something that can be easily quantified or measured. Your team will notice. I’m confident they will appreciate you being available.
You don’t have to do this every night. I understand everyone has a life outside of work. But once in awhile, consider doing this for your team. Especially if you have a junior engineer who is dealing with emergencies for their first time.
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