Ask HN: What should I say to my manager when my performance starts suffering?

190 points

5 years ago

A question like the following has been asked a number of times to me, and I've never quite known how to handle it well. Instead, I always lose my job or quit. Usually this happens when I've stopped meeting my manager's expectation somehow, likely as a result of burnout on the horizon. Now however, it's happening to my non-tech working partner, who's been working remotely for about a year on mundane work. Her performance is suffering, because she just doesn't really feel like she can put in the same hours on the same work week in week out anymore, while sitting in our apartment with the sun shining outside. It doesn't seem like there is another option for horizontal mobility within the company, and she needs the money.

The message goes something like:

"Hey X, hope you're doing well. Just wanted to check in and see if you'll still be doing N things from here on out, or if you've been spending more time doing ___. If there's anything I can help with please let me know."

To me, it just seems like disingenuous manager speak for "I've noticed that you're slumping, and really there are not other options, but let me know if you're planning on quitting or doing less".

Is there another interpretation? Is there a way to negotiate different or better terms at this point? How should she approach this?

The broader question is, how can a company expect to retain employees/contractors if the only work available is the same tedium over a long period of time, and no way to change that? It seems like everyone would inevitably just start performing worse over time, if they chose the performance indicator to be arbitrary and high. In software this would be the equivalent of just writing components or html for an extended period of time without any variety, which is soulcrushing.