Scrum Manager. Developing Architect. Fullstack Developer/Designer. The new roles are popping up left and right these days. Some are clearly just another way to say "generalist", but others are roles that have a very high chance of making people sick. Why do we see these ads? I think it is because the people writing them do not know the craft.

For me, who actually is a generalist with pretty decent competence in multiple fields, I find these ads very amusing. Rather than writing that they need multiple roles filled, but only have budget for one, they make up new roles. Presumably in the hopes of getting someone who can do most of what they think they need.

Because this is the thing, most people that write these ads don't really know what they need. I have seen ads that sound like someone making a frankensteins monster out of the roles. Clearly with little to no understanding of what the different roles actually mean. Some ads just try to mix the best of two worlds, like the Scrum Manager that combines the caring/facilitating aspect of the Scrum Master with the managing/controling role of the Project Manager.

From the person who write the ad it probably makes sense and that is because they do not understand the work involved. From their perspective they probably see a scrum master and a project manager as both having management descriptions, so it should be ok to mix. The fact that they work in different directions where the scrum master work down towards the team and the project manager work up towards the steering group does not seem to occur to them.

In most cases this is not so much of an issue because what you will get in most cases is a generalist. A Scrum Manager for example will be a general manager with some understanding of the scrum process and some understanding of the financial side of project management. The person will not be optimized for any of the roles, but will get things done. Sometimes at the expense of either the project or the team. Or both.

The biggest risk with making these combined roles is that unless you really know that you are compromising the roles you can cause serious damage. Not just to the deliveries and the teams as they do not get the attention they need, but also to the individual you are trying to hire. It is very easy to burn someone out with a combined role, especially if the expectations if that you should do both roles at 100%. The very least you must always do when defining combined roles is to define the ratio. How much time should be spent where and why.

For anyone looking to fill a combined role, here are some examples and some sugegstions on how to approach them:

1. Scrum Manager - Focus on the Scrum Master part. By making the team working well you will get most of the work as a project manager for free. Deliver reports to the steering with focus on risk mitigation and finance. Progress will come of itself if you focus on the Scrum Master part correctly. If put in a compromised position, always protect the team. It will serve you best in the long run. This is a sure way to burn yourself out if you try to do both at 100%, so be weary of the signs and make sure you get plenty of time to actually work and not just sit in meetings.
    
2. Full stack x - Most designers or developers are full stack, kind of. We do take an interest in what is around us and we dabble in the surrounding fields naturally. So just make sure you are not expected to actually be responsible for anything you are not comfortable with and you will be fine.
    
3. Developing Architect/Scrum Master - This is one of the most devestating roles you can have. As an architect or Scrum Master you will be in meetings constantly, whch means that any attempts to actually develop anything will be a massive source of frustration. If you will attempt this, dedicate blocks of time to development that can not be disturbed. Preferably you work from home or in a separate room with phone, mail and other distractions turned off. Minimum of 4 hours blocks, but I suggest full days for focused work. Avoid this if possible or accept that the amount of developing you will do is most likely next to nothing or will happen during weekends and night time.
    
4. Scrum Master and QA - While most Scrum Master will assist in QA by doing tests or gathering requirements, that is not their actual job. Being a tester or a reuirements analyst is a full time job, just like being a scrum master. If you are going to split your attention between the two, make sure you understand the cost both to you and your team. You will not be doing any 40 hour weeks, but rather do 60 hour weeks to make this work and the stress will be intense.

Be mindful of combined roles as they can spiral and become very stressful. What may look like an opportunity to show your skills, especially if you are new in the role(s) can put you on the bech for years if you are unlucky.

If you are looking for people to join your team, always look towards who need that role. Is it for management taking care of the need of the people above, then hire a manager. If the person is taking care of the team, then hire a scrum master. If you need someone to do focused develop, hire a developer. If you need someone to take responsibility for the code structure, hire an architect, or elevate a development lead. And so on...

Combined roles have always been a part of working in IT. As long as you know what you are expected to do and know you can handle it even when things get rough, then ignore the title and do the job. Also be careful about dividing your work because that also can cause serious health issues.

Above I have some of the combined roles I see a lot.
What roles do you see and how do you handle them?

In the last 3-4 years I have noticed an increase in the speed of which things are done within companies. By that I do not mean that we produce things faster, I mean that we take decisions or share information faster. That may sound like a good thing, but as always when things are done fast the quality drops. What I see however is even worse and that is that people, often young people, are getting hurt.

Management is not an easy profession, regardless of position in an organization. There are important decisions to make, ton of information to absorb and people that need to be cared for. This is nothing new, but what is relatively new is a sense of urgency,  that seem to spread to an almost frantic pace these days. In some cases it's more like full panic mode even.

I have seen organizations that spend more time in meetings than actually do anything on a management level. Some organization even take this to a whole new level. The lack of proper communication and a complete lack of trust within the organization lead to hundreds or even thousands of people who spend most of their days shuffling information back and forth in meetings.

This is a very, very dangerous situation because when managers process information with no context and little to no actual knowledge of the topic they process then poor decisions are taken. If you add a constant stress to that situation where managers spend 30+ hours in meetings with other managers then the decisions quickly become erratic and irrational.

I see this in many large organizations these days and I hear it from friends and colleagues in other organizations as well. Most agree that while this has always been the case in management to certain extent, it has never been as bad as it is today. No one seem to think that this is something that will change anytime soon either. Quite the opposite as we have seen this slowly escalate over the years and it has come to the point where people are getting hurt mentally and physically.

I have seen people pass out in meetings and more than one person that leave mid day to never come back to their work again. I see daily people in the development areas with dark rings below their eyes and tired eyes. I hear people almost weekly that ask to leave their assignment due to health issues or mental fatigue.

Everywhere I see the same tragic trend and that is that management is running frantically making poor decisions with little to no communication. People are frustrated, confused and more often than not they are becoming defensive as their managers mistrust everything they do. More often than not there will be control mechanisms that are implemented to control rather than improve the work.

This will make people feel like they are constantly being judged and mistrusted. With an increased pace from the managers demands that comes with unclear information and little to no access to clarification there is no wonder people are breaking down. In some companies there are even activity based offices as icing on the cake to make things even more stressful for the already battered employees.

People are getting hurt from this and you have most likely seen more than one employee cringe when you mention the Agile word or the Activity based Office. That is not because they are against these things, it's just that they are so abused by managers to avoid taking proper responsibility for making sure that communication and interaction are working.

There is still hope!

It is easy to blame the managers for the situation, but the fact is that most managers are really, really great people. They are also suffering from the situation of an increased pace and stress.  I know more than one manager that have taken a time out in the bathroom where they silently cried over their hopeless situation. So the managers are not the problem, it is the collective sense of urgency and lack of control.

Step 1 - Reduce the meetings.

Meetings are the cause of many issues today. We have meetings for almost everything with little to no thought of why we have them. Many managers are easily in 20-30+ hours every week and most meetings include 10+ people where half is just there to make sure they do not miss information. If you want to measure something, then this is something to measure to reduce waste of resources and cost.

Make it mandatory with one full day with no meetings. This allow managers to process the information and make educated decisions what to do next. For best effect, make it the same day for everyone.

Also follow up on meeting statistics to make sure that no more than 15 hours each week can be allocated to meetings. That is 3 hours each day, which should be more than enough if you have the communication and information strategies in place.

Step 2 - Establish trust.

Control is a big problem if there is no trust in the organization. The reason for that is that no matter how well the development teams are doing it will not matter of the management chain can not feel sure about that. If all managers are always sitting in meetings, then how will they get the information they need and how will they have time to forward this information up the management chain? The first step is of course to free up time by reducing the time spent in meetings.

The second thing is to clarify responsibility. It is very difficult to provide the right information if you do not know what is expected from you. Once you know what information you need to provide, then the flow of information will improve with relevant information.

Once you clarify responsibility and expectations you will reduce confusion, which in turn will reduce frustration. Clarity also will make it possible to provide accurate information from the development teams when it comes to estimations. This will make it easier for manages to feel that they can trust the information from the development teams. This is done by having clear role definitions and a proper process for clarifying requirements for the development teams.

Step 3 - Establish proper communication channels.

The last "easy" fix is to make sure you have communication channels. One thing that I see often is that just to implement a documented decision process will improve the understanding in the organization a lot. If you can understand what a decision mean, why it was taken and who took the decision, then it is much, much easier to understand. Verbal decisions are easily misunderstand, easy to override and easy to ignore. So make sure that important decisions are clearly documented and easily accessed.

No common way of working is also a big problem. You should define a baseline for everyone to avoid that everyone in your organization create their own way of working. This is especially important in the handover points where you handover information between different groups. If this handover is done in dozens or hundreds of different ways, then that will not only cause confusion and frustration, it will cost thousands upon thousands of dollars.

Having a common way of working does not mean that you can not have different ways of working. It just mean that you can understand the reason for having a different process as there is some need that the common way of working can not fulfill. The changes are not arbitrary as they are when there are no common way of working.

Step 4 - Take care of your people

No matter where you are in the organization you have people around you that you work with every day. Make sure you take a moment on a regular basis and look at the people around you. If you see someone that does not seem to feel well, then make sure you act on that. You can support the person by talking to them and listen to their problems, you can tell your manager or your managers manager and you can contact HR. 

If we fail to see the people around us that are slowly being broken down from stress, then that person could end up being sick. Some refer to this as "hitting the wall", others being "burned out". This is one of the most devastating events in  a persons life and it is something that you never really get over.

So take care of yourself, the people around you and please, please....
stop running, because people are getting hurt.

Almost every day I see someone posting about stress related illness. I meet people who I see are close to hitting the wall and burning themselves out on a regular basis and it makes me sad. Why do we struggle with this and for what purpose? How can you come back once you hit the wall and what do you do to come back?

25 years ago I hit the wall. I burned myself out and spent a year in rehab. It was so bad that I once went to the store to buy milk, but had to stop halfway home and call a friend to drive me home. I lived 10 minutes from the store. This experience is one of the worst I have ever experienced and the effect of it will never go away.

This is why I react when I see people do the same stupid thing as I did and work yourself to the brink of exhaustion. No one will ever thank you for getting burned out and the road back is very long indeed. The worst part is that it is almost impossible for anyone to understand the way getting burnt out feel, so it is hard to find someone to talk to.

How to burn yourself out

Working hard is not the same as burning yourself out. Working hard is for me how you should work. It is when working hard under constant negative stress happen you risk burning yourself getting burned out. The tricky part with this however is that everyone have different things we respond to with negative stress. This makes it hard to know when you are risking your health and when you are just working hard.

Stress is when we trigger our natural defense mechanism called "fight-or-flight" or stress response. This is one of our strongest subconscious mental responses and as such it is often something we are not even aware of. In short it is the way our mind defend itself from harm. What we protect ourselves from varies from person to person and it is triggered differently in different people.

You can for example be a person that handle chaotic environments such as restaurants well, but get stressed over meetings with authorities or economic problems. Other people can be very sensitive to uncertainties and require structure and order to avoid stress. Since this is individual it is very hard to know when you are hurting yourself from stress, or even what type of stress that is harmful. There are symptoms however that you can look out for to help you identify these types of issues

These symptoms are borrowed from WebMD.

Emotional symptoms of stress include:

• Becoming easily agitated, frustrated, and moody
• Feeling overwhelmed, like you are losing control or need to take control
• Having difficulty relaxing and quieting your mind
• Feeling bad about yourself (low self-esteem), lonely, worthless, and depressed
• Avoiding others

Physical symptoms of stress include:

• Low energy
• Headaches
• Upset stomach, including diarrhea, constipation, and nausea
• Aches, pains, and tense muscles
• Chest pain and rapid heartbeat
• Insomnia
• Frequent colds and infections
• Loss of sexual desire and/or ability
• Nervousness and shaking, ringing in the ear, cold or sweaty hands and feet
• Dry mouth and difficulty swallowing
• Clenched jaw and grinding teeth

Cognitive symptoms of stress include:

• Constant worrying
• Racing thoughts
• Forgetfulness and disorganization
• Inability to focus
• Poor judgment
• Being pessimistic or seeing only the negative side

For me the most common symptom is low energy. I call this "the hole" as it feels like you are trapped in a dark hole mentally. I get this quite often and that is because of my duality in personality where I am both extrovert and introvert. That means that I spend a lot of energy being extrovert at work, but then I need time for reflection for my introvert side to balance that out.

Not having enough time for reflection at work is one of the most damaging things you can have. This is why the word NO is so important as well as the ability to dedicate time for reflection. Many organizations adapt a policy called No Meetings Day, which basically locks time from being used for meetings. This is so time can be spent on work and focused reflection.

I have a theory that the reason why so many poor decisions are made in organizations is because everyone is constantly running. With no time to reflect decisions are made in the fight or flight mode. The problem with that is that when you are in that mode you suppress your prefrontal cortex. This area of the brain is often referred to the "modern brain" since this is where our ability to plan and take long term decision. This area is also responsible for empathy, which is why some managers appear to be assholes.

How to avoid getting burned out

Balance you energy
The first thing I suggest you do right now is to make a list of things that give you energy and what drain you of energy. This is your balance list. This list will help you understand how you are doing mentally and you should update this often in the beginning. For me for example it cost energy to go to parties and I gain energy from writing or watching movies. For you it can be that it give you energy to go to parties and it cost energy to write reports. It all depend on your personality and there are no right or wrong answers.

Do you have time to do your work?
The second thing you should do is to look at your work. Do you have enough time to do your job? If the answer is no, then you will burn yourself out sooner or later. This is why many people in stressful jobs jump between employers as the time constraint trigger the fight or flight response. You either get into conflict with your employer or you leave if the stress get to much. So if you are in a situation when time is not enough, then you should talk to your employer to reduce the workload. If that is not possible, then find new employment if possible.

Do not forsake reflection due to social demands
Thirdly, and this is mostly for my introvert peers out there, make sure you do not forsake reflection in order to be socially accepted. I know many introverts who feel obligated to go to parties or be social when they should spend time reflecting. This is especially problematic when you are young or when you invest heavily into social media. Do not be afraid to shut down, even if you feel that people think you are weird. You are not weird and everyone that actually matter will not only understand, they will support you in that decision.

Reflect and listen
This is important, because it is when you stop to reflect that you can see the signs of you being in danger of burning yourself out. For me I write things like this and as I write I reflect on my own state of mind. For you it can be a walk in nature, mindfulness or just having a cup of tea on the terrace. Also listen to what others are saying. If people ask if you are ok, then stop and reflect instead of instantly respond that you are ok. I actually had members of my team ask me this a coupe of years ago and it led to me taking a few days off as I was getting burned out

What do I do if I burn myself out?

Ask for help!
This one is the most difficult one for many. Asking for help is for some strange reason considered to be a weakness, but it is in fact a strength. The ability to ask for help prevent many, many issues in life and I think it is also a prerequisite for personal growth. So do not be afraid to ask for help if you start to feel some of the symptoms above. Go talk to a doctor and also consider talking to a therapist as the injury you have sustained is a mental one. Only the symptoms are physical.

Accept that you are injured
Being burned out is not something you can "get over" or "snap out of". It is not you being lazy or weak. It is a mental injury as well as a physical one as your long term exposure of stress hormones have damaged your central nervous system. You need to treat this as a physical injury and by this I mean that you need to give it time to heal. Just as you would not keep running on a fractured leg you should not continue working in the same stressful way with a stress related injury. Let it take the time it need for you to heal.

Talk to someone who understand
This is extremely difficult to do, not just for you, but also for the people around you. Many who get burned out are people that naturally work very hard. To these people it is difficult to handle the situation as it conflict with their self image. As people around you do not understand and tell you to "get over it", that affect your self image even more. For this reason you should find someone to talk to who has been in the same situation as you have. Understanding that you are not alone and that this is not something you can just get over will help with those feelings.

Fill up on positives and cut away all demands
Nothings feels as heavy as having things that you must do. It can become paralyzing to the point of giving you panic attacks just to meet someone for coffee. So try to cut away on all things that you feel must be done and focus on things that fill you with energy. If you feel like meeting someone or doing something social, make sure that you give yourself a way out if needed. When I meet with people who have suffered a stress related injury I always tell them that if they need to cancel they just send a text. No explanations or excuses are needed. I also advice them to tell others that they are meeting that if they can not make it they will send a text and that they don't need a text back. Most people will understand that and it reduce a lot of the stress.

Drugs is not the answer!
When stress related injuries happen your instinct is to avoid the pain it brings. Most turn inwards naturally and avoid people to protect themselves. For some this is either not enough, or they can not handle the social demands. So they turn to drugs to take the edge of the pain and to hide from the world in a sense. An increase of substance abuse, regardless if it is alcohol or drugs is not actually helping however. In fact since your mind is already experiencing depression and low self esteem combined with a reduced capacity of your rational thinking adding drugs and alcohol will only increase the risk of self damage such as suicide.

Know that you will be ok
Depression often comes with stress related injuries. Self doubt and the sense of being worthless is common. These things can lead to thoughts of suicide as you see no way out of your situation. This is why it is important to get help early because no matter how bad your situation is and how deep into the darkest corners you find yourself I promise you that you will be ok. Just like all injuries they will heal in time and just like all pain it can become unbearable if you carry it alone. So ask for help and know that the pain you go through is temporary and will eventually fade. 

You will be ok.

Take care of yourself out there
Getting burned out is becoming more common these days as we sacrifice empathy on the altar of efficiency. So take care of yourself and balance those energy levels. Talk about it often with friends and family and reflect on your current state of mind regularly.

No one will ever thank you for working yourself into the wall. Surprisingly enough most people will appreciate you for saying no if you have to much to do. Saying no takes courage and it has nothing to do with weakness.

You are an amazing person and you deserve a wonderful life. So take care of yourself and make sure you never hit that wall.