Slack
Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
by Tom DeMarco · first published 2002
60% recommend38% neutral3% critical
Why HN recommends it
Argues that running people at full utilization kills adaptability and innovation, and that spare capacity pays off. Suited to managers and engineers dealing with burnout, busywork, and over-optimized teams.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…metrics from your project management tools is like looking for your lost keys under the streetlamp because that's where the light is brightest. It is also important to recognize the importance of keeping slack in a system and not over-optimizing it, as explained in Tom DeMarco's excellent book Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency.
on “Useful engineering metrics and why velocity is not one of them” ↗…be profitable when one resource is unavailable, then have more resources. This is as true of hard drives and fire exits as it is of employees. Expanding on a point by brational, see Tom Demarco's book Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency. It makes the argument that if your goal is long-term profitability, you must have some excess capacity in human resources at all times.…
on “Travis CI: From Open to Minimum Vacation Policy” ↗He didn't - IIRC - talk about "20% time" specifically, but Tom DeMarco wrote a whole book about the importance of "slack" time at work. One point he makes is that if everyone is too busy doing the routine stuff 100% of the time, then the firm can't adapt quickly, because nobody has time to learn anything new, do exploratory…
on “Today is Goof Off at Work Day” ↗"Slack" is also a great read: http://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Efficie...
on “3 books every development manager should read” ↗* Thinking Fast, Slow by Daniel Kahneman * Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson * Slack, by Tom DeMarco (also re-read Peopleware). Both of these books are fundamental to anyone developing software within an organization. * Delivering Happiness, by Tony Hsieh. It's not fantastic but it's…
on “Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011” ↗…point of the article. It is definitively not about programming abilities, or speed of these abilities. Many authors have hit TFA's points from different angles. For example, Tom Demarco's excellent Slack[1] introduces uses of "efficiency" (what speed is the organization moving at?) versus "effectiveness" (is the organization moving in the right direction?). DeMarco uses these to illustrate that many…
on “The Case for Slow Programming” ↗This seems like an opportune time to mention "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency" by Tom DeMarco (DeMarco is better known as one of the co-authors of Peopleware). https://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Effici...…
on “Ask HN: What causes an amazing company culture flourish? What kills it?” ↗The article can be summed with with a link to the book it itself links: https://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Effici...
on “Efficiency is the enemy? (2021)” ↗Having worked at a company that did a four-day week, I'll chime in that it was both amazing and eye opening. I say that as someone who had read Tom DeMarco's now-classic book Slack[1] long ago, after a lot of up-close and personal with the antipatterns described therein. Intellectually, I expected something(??) good but the reality was even more suprising. With a four-day work week,…
on “A hundred UK companies sign up for four-day week with no loss of pay” ↗…writing code everyday and wasn't going to follow at practice that I myself had hated. This process worked great until I worked for a PMP-driven company, where projects routinely crashed and burned. Slack by Tom DeMarco should be required reading for all PMPs and their managers.
on “Why are developers expected to estimate tasks at all?” ↗relevant: Slack, by Tom DeMarco https://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Effici...
on “The Tsunami of Burnout Few See” ↗…basically the entire book. In this same category I could also recommend "The Great Jackass Fallacy" by Harry Levinson[5]. Now on the wall between people management and engineering/project management is "Slack" by Tom DeMarco[6], which is about how organizations and managers tend to run their staff at 100% capacity. As the book points out, however, this is a good way to not only burn people out, but it also…
on “Ask HN: Reading for first time managers” ↗…developers: https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-Organizations... It includes, among other things, a link to the Khan Academy Engineering Management Reading List. See especially the first book on the list about a need for "slack" (free time, not the software) called "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency" by Tom DeMarco". The summary: "There is a tradeoff between efficiency (meeting previous…
on “Interviews with developers who became managers” ↗There's a whole book that goes much deeper into this subject: "Slack" by deMarco (of "The Mythical Man Month" fame. Edit: Crap, it was "Peopleware", thanks for pointing it out) It describes some negative effects of 100% utilization efforts. The funniest one is that the…
on “The Myth of 100% Utilization” ↗Tom DeMarco's books are awesome. Slack really opened my mind, instead of optimizing every waking hour, I used a "structured procrastination" approach in getting things done.
on “Be smarter at work, slack off” ↗