Ask HN: Coworker works to unhealthy exhaustion. Should I say anything?

8 points by nhayden 11 years ago | 9 comments

I'm really worried about his health. On one hand he's an adult and I feel he should be able to take care of himself, but he has a history of depression and pushing himself too hard (and feinting from exhaustion). He works 80+ hours a week to keep up with his work, often works all night and the entire next day, and doesn't tell anyone because he doesn't want to get fired for appearing to be slow at his job. Even at 80+ hour weeks he's still behind. He's just not a very fast worker.

I feel like maybe I should mention something to his manager. I would feel super shitty if he winds up in the hospital because he pushed too much and I said nothing. On the other hand, he's an adult and it seems sort of shitty to talk to his manager about it.

Any opinions?

smt88 11 years ago |

Don't tell your manager or HR. If your true motivation is concern for his health, you're unlikely to change his behavior that way.

If you really want to help him, you first need to talk to him about it. Tell him you've noticed how hard he's working, and you'd like to help if you can. Be clear that you don't mean you're going to help by doing his work for him. Rather, you'd like to listen to his side of the story and see if the two of you could brainstorm some solutions.

After you've done this, you may discover that some additional learning/training could help him move faster. That's a best-case scenario. Perhaps he's just not equipped for this job, and he could start job hunting while he's still employed with your firm.

You're more likely to notice some things that can't just be fixed. You may discover that anxiety or excessive attention to detail (perfectionism) are causing him to take much longer.

Those are issues that only he can work on, and he'd need to work on them only with psychiatric professionals.

No matter the size of your company, you're going to encounter people who can't do their jobs very well and are harming themselves and/or the company. It's really none of your business unless A) they're in danger, B) they're doing something illegal, or C) you're their superior. Be very certain that your coworker is in danger before you proceed.

nhayden 11 years ago | |

>excessive attention to detail (perfectionism) are causing him to take much longer.

He has self professed OCD and says this is often why he takes so long. I do offer a lot help in his work but being somewhat new myself I am not always able to tell him how the systems here work.

I'm not trying to change behavior by telling manager, but more trying to have the manager pay attention to the hours he's working and maybe set an upper limit and make him go home after? I don't think his manager wants him hospitalized or burning out any more than I do.

I have suggested searching for other jobs but I think a combination of depression and helplessness prevents him from doing this. He has really low self esteem.

anigbrowl 11 years ago | | |

You could try a cognitive argument; beyond a certain number of hours/day, productivity/day starts to dive because you make more mistakes when you're tired and work at a slower pace overall. Failing that, try encouraging him to visit a therapist/psychiatrist. Maybe you could look into whether your company's health plan covers that sort of thing, often they do.

I feel your frustration. It's not really your problem, and it's irresponsible of his manager to let him wear himself down this way. His 'OCD' tendencies might well be an asset in the right context, like doing code review or QA or something instead of building code that's possibly meant to have a relatively short operating life.

smt88 11 years ago | | |

OCD is very treatable with a combination of drugs and cognitive-behavioral therapy (specifically, exposure and response prevention). There are no other types of treatment that are known to be effective, and drugs are rarely effective long-term on their own. Note that this treatment would force him to decrease his work hours.

If he has self-diagnosed OCD and expressed it to you, you need to encourage him to get into treatment. It may be more comfortable for him to start with group therapy. You should encourage him to tell his family and seek their support.

Helping someone else through their mental illness is incredibly difficult, frustrating, time-consuming, and emotionally draining (depending on how cooperative they are). I know from personal experience. You should do some research to make sure you're giving appropriate advice and to understand what even a minimal amount of support would mean for you.

This is something you should discuss with an expert, ideally a local lawyer, but it's possible that your manager would be unable to immediately fire him without giving him the option to seek treatment first. I'm not suggesting that you tell your manager, only that you know the consequences of doing so.

helen842000 11 years ago |

You could offer to sit with him while he works through a similar problem to you, to see where he wastes time, creates work for himself or duplicates tasks. You can then be the voice telling him when to move on.

It sounds like he would benefit from a closer inspection of his working practises. Perhaps he needs to be managed in a different way. For example same amount of work just delivered as smaller tasks with shorter deadlines to avoid overwhelm. Maybe to start with, instead of him being part of an hourly weekly meeting, maybe he needs a 10 minute chat per day to help him to catch up, prioritise and plan the next day. This obviously would be the responsibility of his manager to take on.

Perhaps some training in planning out his working day in advance would throw out some interesting changes in how he learns to manage his own time.

I think the worst thing that could be done is to restrict his working hours which would add an extra level of worry - so he is sitting at home more stressed than if he was working.

The most important thing is to help him catch up so he is then receptive to support helping him keep on track.

greenyoda 11 years ago |

You might want to suggest to him that he'd probably be more productive if he got a reasonable amount of sleep. Once you're that tired, it's hard to concentrate and you end up making more mistakes, which you then need to spend time debugging or completely re-doing. Fatigue also makes learning new things more difficult.

Also, is he really that much farther "behind" than his co-workers, or is he just "behind" based on some arbitrary and unrealistic deadline set by management?

And I agree with the other commenter who said that you shouldn't talk to this guy's manager. There are just too many ways that could end badly.

nhayden 11 years ago | |

He's given what is in my opinion a very reasonable work load. I say that because I have the same job and work on the same sorts of projects.