Engineering teams spend so much time during the year talking about developer productivity. December is a difficult time to keep those metrics up anyway, so why not use the holiday stretch to catch up on your skills and learn new things?
December for engineers
December is perhaps the most inconsistent month of the year, work-wise. Some employees are taking PTO to travel and visit family during various times of the month, and the last week (or two) might be company-wide break.
This makes it nearly impossible to operate to the same goals expected during any other month. Plus, there’s a solid amount of review/administrative work that needs to happen (particularly retrospectives and Q1 planning).
Under these conditions, December isn’t a fulfilling work month for engineers. Yes, the workload is lighter, but the actual culprit is the quality of tasks.
Why set aside time to upskill?
Many people have a never-ending list of new technologies that they want to learn, but rarely are able to get around to. The software space moves so fast, and there’s a constant flow of new tools (especially those that you aren’t using and/or won’t use on the job). Setting aside time to explore these is very much worth it:
- Learning new things is good for your brain, and can improve your problem-solving skills and make you happier
- Doing something different during your 9-5 is a good remedy for the EoY burnout
- You’re going to be on your computer anyway, and it’s likely your work responsibilities have wound down. This is a great opportunity to repurpose that time
- You might pick up a new tool/technology that positively impacts your work
Most of us don’t have time to upskill off the clock, and that can be a real disadvantage in the tech field. There’s a lot you can accomplish during the most prime working hours of your day, and when it’s work that you find engaging/challenging, it can help you re-invigorate before your holiday break. Otherwise, if you’re not engaged during the last week or two, you might dread going back in January even more.
Keeping your mind sharp
December leaves too many devs bored and unfulfilled. Most orgs have a code freeze, so there are fewer (impactful) things to work on. Support and basic maintenance tasks get dull after awhile, which makes it all too easy to mentally check out.
Getting your manager’s encouragement to use this time to learn can help you genuinely enjoy the last couple weeks of work, rather than counting down the hours until break.
If there isn’t anything immediately top-of-mind, you could try one of these topics:
- Contribute to an open source project
- Learn a new devtool
- Take an online course
- Try your hand at Advent of Code
- Create a hobby project with a new stack
- Try a totally different function (UX, platform, design, etc)
This could also be a good opportunity to document your learnings with blog posts. Doing so can help you remember what you learned, and help jog your memory of any challenges you encountered.
How can you implement this as a manager?
As a manager, you obviously want your team to thrive. During busy years, there might be fewer opportunities for devs to learn and grow outside their assignments. So if you’re lucky enough to see tasks wind down in December, you can repurpose this time.
The way you go about this really comes down to each dev’s learning style. Some people thrive with structure, while others prefer to self-manage. You probably are familiar with how each team member excels, so you can make it as rigid or as flex as they need. But as far as rigidity goes, you’ll want to leave this at least somewhat open-ended, so it feels less like work, and more like enrichment. You can step in for accountability, but you shouldn’t have to track their “progress”. It won’t quite work if your devs aren’t excited about what they’re learning, which will also do nothing to improve burnout.
You can work with your team and listen as they set their own goals. Listen to what technologies they want to learn, and what they want to accomplish with them. If you know of any resources, share them. And if a particular dev is overwhelmed with the sheer amount of options they have, suggest something more guided, like an online course or Advent of Code.
Happy holidays to you and your team
So much is in flux during December, especially during the second half. Engineering managers don’t usually expect much in the way of productivity, so why not use this time for upskilling/education/things that get left on the back burner otherwise?
Doing so can be a great refresher and an answer to end-of-year burnout. Help your teammates remember why they were passionate about software in the first place.
