Monday: Start new critically important time-sensitive task, (task A). Several interruptions, but have enough uninterrupted time to figure out roughly what needs to be done on it, and a plan to get it done on Tuesday.
Tuesday: Start actually working on Task A, but then get sidetracked with support questions and a request to deploy an urgent hotfix ASAP. Drop what I’m doing and start getting that hotfix ready (including merging it into the mid-branch) then in mid-process get told to hold off because it’s not ready after all, it needs more testing. Then get told that we need to hotfix about 6 other things to 2 systems. Start sorting that out (including how to deploy without accidentally deploying the thing that was already merged), then when I have it figured out, get told to wait on 2 of those because they aren’t ready yet after all, so don’t deploy them.
Work until 3:00 am getting those 2 system deployments done by myself. (Noting that none of that was really time-critical - and they would all have normally been deployed the next night.) In one of them I had to figure out a workaround to bypass standard process due to the fact that that other thing was already pending deployment.
Wednesday: Get almost half a day to work on Task A, before getting interrupted by support questions and then having to prepare the normal deployment, which takes until 2am. That’s 26 hours work in 2 days (not counting breaks). Now I’m tired, but need some personal time to relax.
Thursday: On an hour’s sleep, I declare a late day for myself and tell everyone I’ll be back in the afternoon. That afternoon, I get a couple hours to work on Task A with only a few interruptions. But then one of those interruptions (new Task Z) suddenly takes priority and I get asked to stop working on time-sensitive Task A and work on that instead. Decide to call it a short day.
Friday: Figure out Task Z pretty quickly (but apparently it wasn’t that important after all since nobody bothers to review it). After a few more interruptions, get assigned to take over Task Q as top priority, but I know nothing about it so the person who was working on it has to brief me about it, and nothing’s documented and in the middle of explaining it he goes offline for awhile. Finally start into that and then get told to hold off, don’t work on that after all, it won’t work, they have to do something else instead. Finally, at the end of the day, get back to where I left off on that critical time-sensitive Task A that I started on Monday.
So now I feel like I worked hard all week, long hours, and accomplished nothing. Been in the business long enough to accept it, but still, it’s just meh.
