> I’ve seen managers cry multiple times, and this is one of the places that happened.
What sorts of places are they working that they have seen this multiple times?! Maybe I’ve been very fortunate, but I’ve worked for a Fortune 500 company for 20 years and I cannot think of a single times things have become so stressful that anyone was close to tears. Usually things are very calm and when managers talk about work life balance they really mean it and walk the walk and don’t just talk the talk.
i wrote and then deleted a comment. I work in consulting and I'll just say that tears on conference calls are rare but do happen from time to time.
I've seen it at the bottom of the org chart all the way to almost the very top and even client side. It's not uncommon for race cars to be pushed until the engine blows and it's not uncommon for people to be pushed (or push themselves) beyond what they can bear. Everyone has their limits and there's no shame in reaching/crossing them. I've been there and it sucks, it really does.
I've seen it particularly when it's about things that are (or seem to be) important but the business has neglected supporting the team accordingly. When you're in this position and don't have a good place to quickly jump to it's easy to think "I'll just put in as much as they do and live on" but when something goes wrong and that team is the only one that can fix important (or "important") thing inevitably many just go through extremely stressful situations.
"By this point, I was crying harder, and Bob looked like he might start crying at any moment now, too. We were also pretty far from Bandley 4 by now, and it was starting to get dark. The tone of the conversation seemed to shift as we both realized that we should start heading back."
But I guess that was 39 years ago...
On a more serious note: I haven't seen it in a long time but I've definitely seen it on some of the hardware teams. It was when Apple was smaller and we were continually trying to fit two weeks of work into one week. At that pace everyone eventually breaks down and some do it differently than others.
Apple being huge now has its disadvantages but one advantage is I haven't heard of months of project death marching in a long time.
What sorts of places are they working that they have seen this multiple times?! Maybe I’ve been very fortunate, but I’ve worked for a Fortune 500 company for 20 years and I cannot think of a single times things have become so stressful that anyone was close to tears. Usually things are very calm and when managers talk about work life balance they really mean it and walk the walk and don’t just talk the talk.