Slides from my talk at DevOpsDays Stockholm 2017

1. Building a Healthy Work
Life Balance

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Jon Cowie
Web Operations Manager

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Etsy’s WebOps Team

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Potted Summary of Me
▪ 5.5 Years at Etsy
▪ 5.5 Years fully Remote (from the UK)
▪ Former IC, now Manager
▪ 10 direct reports, based in Dublin & US

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Where I Work

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Where I Play

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But First, a Note on
Privilege.

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Those rights, benefits and
advantages enjoyed by a person
or body of persons beyond the
advantages of other individuals

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Privilege

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Privilege
▪ If you look approximately like me, you have it.
▪ If you can call out problems to your leadership,
you have it.
▪ If you can change jobs, you have it.
▪ This list is not comprehensive, because I have it.
▪ Privilege exists whether or not we know about it.

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Expectations

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Managing Expectations
▪ Three types of expectation
- Explicit
- Implicit
- Self

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What can we do about
expectations to achieve a
healthy work / life balance?

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Explicit Expectations
▪ Often set by your company / management
- Contracted working hours
- On-call schedule
- “Reasonable Overtime”
▪ Usually written down or explicitly communicated
▪ Reasonably easy to identify

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Explicit Expectations - What to Do
▪ Managers
- Make sure they’re necessary & proportionate
- Compensate your employees for their time
- Clarify to your employees what you expect of them
- Listen to their concerns
- But don’t assume they’ll come to you with problems

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Explicit Expectations - What to Do II
▪ ICs
- Know & research your rights
- If you can, go to your manager with concerns
- If you can’t, try to find trusted peers to advocate
on your behalf

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Implicit Expectations
▪ Still often set by your company / management
- Team members often stay late
- Boss is there after everyone else leaves
- People respond to emails out of hours
- Management object when people don’t ^^
▪ Nasty tricksy expectationses

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Implicit Expectations - What to Do
▪ Managers
- If you need them, make them explicit
- If you don’t, make that explicit too
- Make it easy & safe for your reports to speak up
- Don’t assume they necessarily will

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Implicit Expectations - What to Do II
▪ Managers
- Pay attention. Who’s staying late? Why?
- Explicitly but *privately* discuss unhealthy
habits
- Lead by example

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Implicit Expectations - What to Do III
▪ ICs
- Support your peers who might be struggling
- Question the status quo if you can
- If you can’t, try to find a trusted signal booster who
can
- Set a good example, especially if senior

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Self Expectations
▪ The expectations that you hold yourself to
▪ Often (and crucially) different from those your
company hold you to
▪ Very hard to rationalize your way out of
▪ Especially common for new-hires

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Self Expectations II
▪ How to spot it
- “I don’t feel like I’m progressing enough”
- “My teammates are so far ahead of me”
- “I’m learning things so slowly”
- “I wasn’t working late, I just wanted to finish
this one thing…”

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Self Expectations - What to Do
▪ Managers
- Talk to your reports. Often.
- Give feedback on how they’re meeting *your*
expectations
- Realise that privilege is a big player here
- Make sure your team do not adversely influence
each other’s self expectations

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Self Expectations - What to Do II
▪ ICs
- Support & give credit to your peers
- Be patient with new hires & give them feedback
- Be mindful of privilege and how it impacts your
peers
- Communicate mindfully and empathically

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Thanks!
Questions?
@jonlives / http://jonliv.es / jon@etsy.com