I've recently started at a new company about six months ago, but I feel like I'm being overloaded with work. It's just me and my line manager here, as the previous DevOps engineer left suddenly due to family matters. From the beginning, I noticed that my line manager lacks technical knowledge and can be quite confrontational, often making communication challenging. They seem to be relying on the groundwork laid by the previous engineer and don't provide much support.
Initially, I spent a lot of time figuring things out due to inadequate documentation, but I've started to find my way. However, the CTO is constantly pushing for new projects and initiatives, which makes things chaotic. Soon after I joined, I was tasked with migrating services to containers and Kubernetes—a process that was quite new to me. After considerable effort, I accomplished that, and now there's pressure to migrate around 30 existing micro-services from ECS and parts of our infrastructure from Heroku to Kubernetes.
While I genuinely enjoy the work and take pride in my achievements, I feel like the demands are piling up. Besides the migrations, I handle all cloud operations, CI/CD pipelines, and manage support tickets that come in daily. Despite informing my line manager that certain tasks could take time, it seems I get assigned even more work on top of what I'm already managing. I've expressed that the workload might realistically take up to a year to complete, but this only frustrates them. Any advice on how to navigate this situation and communicate effectively? I don't want to leave because I'm learning so much, but I'm starting to feel overwhelmed and burnt out due to their disrespect for my time.
5 Answers
It's tough, but remember that if your workload is unrealistic, it's a management problem, not a personal failure. You might consider dialing back your hours to a more manageable level. Taking care of yourself is crucial, so make sure to step back and realize that you can't do everything. Quality over quantity will serve you better in the long run.
There's no one-size-fits-all answer, but you have to prioritize your mental health. Try to switch to a more relaxed approach: focus on delivering quality work and let your manager handle the prioritization of requests. If they send urgent tasks your way, tell them to coordinate through your manager to keep things organized. This could help shift some responsibility off your shoulders. Remember, if you can't manage a mountain of tasks, it's a business issue, not yours.
It sounds like you're in a tough spot, but you're not alone. When your plate is full, it's essential to renegotiate deadlines whenever a new task lands on your desk. Instead of silently accepting the extra work, push back by asking your manager how new tasks should be prioritized against what you're already handling. If they want to shuffle things around, make sure they acknowledge how that will impact delivery dates—keeping a record of conversations helps, too. You might find a safer space by starting to look for a new job with more supportive mentoring, though, since staying in a toxic environment can lead to serious burnout.
Communication is key here. If tasks are piling up, be transparent about it. Your line manager might frustrate you, but at the end of the day, they need your expertise to keep things running smoothly. Don’t hesitate to remind them of that. You're the one in the know, so use that to set boundaries and expectations.
Glad to hear you appreciate having a job! But just having a job doesn’t mean tolerating unhealthy work environments. It’s important to set boundaries and resist pushing yourself past reasonable limits. It's okay to stand up for yourself or even start looking for a role where your contributions are respected.
Related Questions
How To: Running Codex CLI on Windows with Azure OpenAI
Set Wordpress Featured Image Using Javascript
How To Fix PHP Random Being The Same
Why no WebP Support with Wordpress
Replace Wordpress Cron With Linux Cron
Customize Yoast Canonical URL Programmatically