The Six Steps to Saying No — Why Being a Team Player is Not Necessarily Great
Frequently, saying no is better than saying yes. Our teams can concentrate on the highest value work if we set clear boundaries.
Welcome to the Scarlet Ink newsletter. I'm Dave Anderson, an ex-Amazon Tech Director and GM. Each week I write a newsletter article on tech industry careers, and specific leadership advice.
Free members can read some amount of each article, while paid members can read the full article. For some, part of the article is plenty! But if you'd like to read more, I'd love you to consider becoming a paid member! The original version of this article was written in 2021. I love the topic, so I’m re-writing it.
While many growth tech companies have rough working hours, Amazon is famous for it. Over the years, Amazon built a reputation for being the type of place that burned out employees.
And I wouldn’t want to discount an individual’s experience. I absolutely believe that any company can have bad managers, and rough working schedules.
However, I have direct anecdotal evidence of people repeatedly doing this to themselves.
I was busy reading Reddit, trying to figure out how to season my cast iron pans, when one of my new mentees Alejandro knocked on my door. They worked in a cousin organization in another building. So they’d likely walked a few minutes to get to my office.
“What’s up?” I said politely. You always want to be polite, even if you’re incredibly busy with learning cast iron technology.
Alejandro looked a bit uncomfortable. “Do you have a few minutes?” he asked.
I looked at my screen to emphasize that I had critical work I was in the middle of, and then resolutely squared my shoulders. “No problem! I can work on this later,” I said magnanimously. I made a point of locking my screen to show him my dedication. Absolutely having nothing to do with blocking his view of my Reddit screen.
Alejandro sat down in my guest chair and sighed. “I’ve been here for 4-months, and I’ve learned a lot. But I think I’m going to give my manager my 2-week notice. Amazon just isn’t for me. I’ve been working 10 plus hour days, and most weekends. I’m exhausted.”
I frowned. If nothing else, the guy with 4-months of experience can’t possibly know enough to be worth keeping in the office for long hours. And working weekends (in my experience) was extremely rare.
“Have you talked to your manager about your workload?” I asked. “Have you said that you’re not available on the weekends?”
Alejandro looked surprised. “No, I couldn’t do that!”
Alejandro was unwilling to tell his manager that he couldn’t complete his work. He was unwilling to set boundaries. He was essentially going from telling his manager “Sure, no problem” to “I quit” in response to work requests.
This was unfair to Alejandro, but it was also unfair to his manager and Amazon. Because unless his manager was an unrelenting ogre, they likely didn’t want Alejandro to work those crazy hours.
As a side note, because readers often ask about these truncated stories — I browbeat Alejandro into telling his manager that he was feeling burned out. I essentially told him that it was rude to quit without giving his manager at least one chance to fix things. I also spoke to his manager, who was surprised and said that they had no idea he was working that hard. And they got things fixed.
There’s a common illness in the workplace. It’s called being a “team player.”
A team player does the extra work that is falling on the floor. The team player stays late to ensure that the weekly sprint completes on schedule. The team player comes in on Saturday to shepherd the new build. The team player also burns out and quits.
I know because I’ve repeatedly had discussions about this in my organization. With people who reported to me.
“Dave, I’m getting burned out. I might need to quit, as much as I love our group.” said a highly valuable manager who reported to me.
I’m surprised, and distressed. I was working roughly 7 hours a day (if you don’t count my 2-hour lunches) because we were in a fairly calm part of the year. I was not burning out, other than my commute. I hate commutes. “How are you burned out? What’s going on?”
They gave me a long list of things they were doing. Many of which were low priority in my opinion. Far below the priority of retaining this manager.
“Ok, this is doable.” I said. “Lots of these things don’t need to be done. I want you to say no to things instead of quitting. So here’s my first idea. Stop going to that project review meeting on Tuesdays. I don’t think you need to show up.”
The manager shook their head. “No, that project is at risk, I need to be there to ensure we’re on track.”
“I disagree, I don’t think it’s worth your time.” I said. “But it’s your choice. How about instead we cancel that project you said was behind. It’s low priority anyway. I’m fine telling the PM that we can’t do it this quarter.”
The manager shook their head. “No, I think we can catch up, we’re close to meeting the date.”
And the discussion continues. Why? Because saying no is hard. Even if you’re given explicit advice from your manager. And this wasn’t a rare situation. Every year I had a few people threaten to quit (or sometimes actually quit) because they burned themselves out. While specifically told by their manager (me, or someone who reported to me), “please do less, we want you to stay around.”
What’s the issue? How do employees frequently consider their only options are to work long hours or quit? Below I’ll walk through the arguments to say no, and the six steps to take when saying no.
Oh, and I’m also going to show you a very tall photo of trees.
Weighing the cost and benefits of overwork.
The boss asks you just this one time to take on one extra project. Your entire team is pressed for time. You'd like to be a team player (ewww). So you say Yes.
Just this one time ends up becoming a regular thing. You find yourself working long hours and weekends to keep your head above water. The stress of long hours limits your time with family, tires you out, increases your anxiety. You eventually decide it's time to search for a new job.
What’s the benefit to your manager and the company? They briefly get more work out of you. While longer hours tend to be less productive hours, you can certainly crank out more work if you’re willing to put in the time.
If that one project is the most critical project of the year, it’s worth the time to the company. If the extra work is because there’s a huge operational issue going on? Well, perhaps everyone needs to lean in and help.
What about you, the employee? If the “just this one time” is at a critically valuable time to the manager or company, it can certainly be valuable to your career. More than once, I agreed to do something particularly hard because I knew the visibility and value was worth the cost to my personal time.
But that’s only if you believe this is a temporary situation, and you’ll be rewarded at the end. Because our projects are rarely that critical. Our operational events are usually chronic, not a one-time thing. And sadly, our personal investment of extra time is rarely rewarded, or even noticed.
There’s a popular saying at tech companies. We say that our work is a marathon, not a sprint. That means that we’re out to create value over years, not over months. If you’re expected to do something which cannot be sustained for years, it’s a defect, and it should absolutely be temporary.
Building a team of employees to repeatedly deliver value is a marathon. A tenured team working sustainable hours will accomplish more over the course of years than an overworked team with low tenure. Those additional long hours may gain you brief productivity, but they’re insignificant compared to the cost of replacing your best employees.