All the Costs of Downtime

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All the Costs of Downtime

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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September 22, 2025 at 12:00 am

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David.Poole SSC Guru Points: 76224 More actions · Answer 1

I've volunteered to be a guest speaker at the Architecting Manchester meetup this Thursday. My talk is called "PebbleOps: A Mission to Remove the Small Stuff That Slows Us Down".

I've called it PebbleOps because of a quote from Mohammed Ali. “It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.” - Muhammad Ali.

The proposition I am putting forward is that the most productivity is gained by removing the small, seemingly insignificant frictions. I'm using a few examples where a friction has been solved, and how we solved it. Those small frictions touch a lot of people and the work they do. In aggregate, those pebbles become millstones. Context switching is definitely one of the pebbles. We worked hard on a lot of stuff, but achieved surprisingly little.

There is never enough time to do it right, but there is always enough time to do it over.”

Yes, and while we are doing it over, we are simply working to deliver what should have been delivered in the 1st place. We are not working to deliver the next step forward.

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Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 738917 More actions · Answer 2

Interesting, I'll have to remember that. The small stuff seems small, but it does wear you down

Doctor Who 2 SSCrazy Eights Points: 8222 More actions · Answer 3

I have a similar problem at work, although I don't work with hardware. I've noticed that over the last 6 months the number and length of meetings have increased. It's gotten to the point where it is very disruptive. My average day consists of 5 meetings per day. I've had up to 7, in one day. What makes it hard is everyone who isn't a manager (I'm one of those) are, by policy, hourly employees. And my employer does NOT want anyone working overtime, unless they get their manager's approval before hand. And that ain't gonna happen. So, have got to get my real work done, but I'm not allowed to do it after hours. All managers seem to only care about scheduling me for a meeting they want to have, ignoring how many other meetings I have that day. It's clear to me that none of the managers care how stressed all their employees are (I know I'm not the only one with 5 meetings per day.) I've brought up this problem during an all-IT meeting and the Deputy CIO sorta recognized that it was a problem but didn't offer anything. My supervisor wasn't happy that I brought this up in an all-IT meeting. My supervisor said that it was their problem. But then my supervisor does nothing about it.

My conclusion is that I have to work overtime without getting any permission to do so, because my employer doesn't want to pay the OT and they want me to work full time at night to get the work done they won't allow any of us to do during business hours, so that I am available full time during the day.

Rod

Jo Pattyn SSC-Dedicated Points: 32513 More actions · Answer 4

Doesn't that show up in timesheets? Time spent actual work : 6 hours, Time spent administration/meetings 34h