A cut about a fifth of the team in March and the surviving work got redistributed onto four of us. I went from roughly 22 real hours a week there to something like 38, and B has not got any smaller. Last week I missed a deliverable at B that I had genuinely forgotten existed. I'm not sleeping properly and I keep telling myself it'll settle down after this quarter, which is what I said last quarter.
Also: stop volunteering at A immediately. Not sabotage, just no new scope. Post-layoff teams have a lot of unowned work floating around and it lands on whoever last said yes.
Track actual hours for one week before you decide anything. Not estimated, actual, in 30 minute blocks. Everyone in this situation is either working four hours a day more than they think or two hours a day less, and you cannot make a good decision on a number you invented.
Seconding, and count the meetings you attend but don't contribute to separately. That column is usually where the recoverable time is hiding.
Not sleeping properly is where I'd draw the line, personally. I did nine months of this and the thing that eventually made the choice for me was health, not money, and I'd rather have chosen while I still had a choice. If the sleep thing has gone on for more than a few weeks it's worth talking to an actual doctor rather than the internet.
Forgetting a deliverable existed is the specific symptom I'd pay attention to. That's not laziness, it's that you're holding two sets of commitments in your head with no external system. Everything, from both jobs, goes into one private list that you own, reviewed every morning and every Friday. It won't fix the hours but it will stop the surprises.
@invoice_ivan · 5mo ago · 3 replies
The workload at A is not going back down. Post-layoff redistribution almost never reverses, because from management's side the experiment succeeded, the work still got done with fewer people.
So the question isn't how to survive this quarter, it's which of the two you're keeping, and you should decide that on purpose rather than by finding out which one fires you first.
In the meantime, make the load visible at A. Written list of everything you now own, sent to your manager, with a line asking them to rank the top five because you can't do all of it well. That does two things: it either gets some work moved, or it gets you a paper trail showing you flagged it. Both are useful.
Reply
Report
@invoice_ivan · 5mo ago
It reads as prioritisation, not weakness, as long as you bring the list and not the feelings. Managers who've just cut a team are used to this conversation and often relieved someone started it.
Reply
Report
@fg_stall · 5mo ago
I've been avoiding that conversation because it feels like admitting I can't cope.
Reply
Report