Dear [manager], re: your wondering about scheduling the next server-synch, and uneasily pointing at the steaming pile of unfinished tasks we have left that I've had zero help with:
I'm just wrapping up the 'EWF' (which you drafted the spec for) that took about 2 weeks to do properly rather than the ~8 hours that you tagged it as needing. I'm not overjoyed to be getting a call for info about all of the other things that were set to one side in order for me to focus on the DS-creator that would bear immediate fruit. Each in turn, when other things are ready, you'll see them in the appropriate repo since I actually push my commits on a relatively regular basis (unlike you and [the data-manager]). It often bothers me that I have to write you separately with duplicate information that you could just read in the commit-logs; either you're too busy to bother reading anything more (meaning you value your time more than you do mine), or you're not interested in learning to speak my language (which is English). In either case this seems dysfunctional given we’re part of a team.
I'm trying not to even think about doing any kind of server-synch in the near future; the tightness of our development-cycle is ludicrous; there's approximately no time for robust testing, and no time for code-review, sprint or project retrospectives, or even for refactoring bad or duplicative code. My choices right now are either to gird myself for another set of 'workends' and all-nighters, or just walk. These synchs are physically and mentally taxing on top of being a (bad,) nonstandard practice, which I pointed out well before we adopted our current workflow. I was then blithely ignored. It's injury to insult to insult that I have to hold everything together every time this nerve-wracking process is required, despite having explained that it was going to be dirty to operate this way. On top of that, a server-synch is never so much 'scheduled' as "careened into at dangerously high speed". So again, I don't want to think about it.
More broadly, the pressure of this job pretty much never *ever* lets up; even when I ask for time away it's loaded with stipulations about what has to happen not only before I can go but also while I'm gone. The time itself is garnished with minor rescue-missions and messages asking about status that to me read like signs of mistrust, inattention, or both. I can't go off-grid and I can hardly sleep in without worrying that something's gone wrong without my constant attentions. I know it's your job as a manager to crack the whip on everyone, but this turns toward the negative when I generally feel neither respected nor heard. Since you know maybe 15% as much as I do in terms of coding, you also can't offer sensible tips as to how to be more efficient. You basically only tell me to write slippery hacks or stopgaps to finish things faster if you think they’re taking too long
I've raised flags before (in person and writing) about basically everything I've mentioned in this message, including that our team is unbalanced in terms of important skills (and the corresponding workloads). For years now, these observations have pretty much entirely fallen on deaf ears at least from where I stand. Although the pay-raise you and [the bossman] managed for me recently was a good gesture, money is just part of the picture; quality of life is lacking, which I'm losing my ability to cope with; I continually find it difficult to just *get away*. Getting a web-developer in isn't ultimately going to help, since – even if we find someone good who won't need babysitting – they will not have the ops experience to handle crises, and they may be out the door anyhow by the time they do, since we couldn't secure funding for more than a year for them. Introducing another teammember is also going to be an ops and security fiasco, stemming largely from the fact I can rarely get time to work on a build-system for the database, as setting up a local stack for experimentation is a days-long process, rather a simple shell-script that would handle the steps. You wouldn't understand this because you don't really care about security, or the lengths I go to smooth things out for everyone else.
All that said, I'm hereby #done. Do enjoy dealing with all the things you drove me to neglect while I was with y'all, and with all the hours you'll wish you spent working and learning side-by-side with me, rather than riding on my back most of the way.
Sincerely,
[Seldom]
