I'm really worried about his health. On one hand he's an adult and I feel he should be able to take care of himself, but he has a history of depression and pushing himself too hard (and feinting from exhaustion). He works 80+ hours a week to keep up with his work, often works all night and the entire next day, and doesn't tell anyone because he doesn't want to get fired for appearing to be slow at his job. Even at 80+ hour weeks he's still behind. He's just not a very fast worker.<p>I feel like maybe I should mention something to his manager. I would feel super shitty if he winds up in the hospital because he pushed too much and I said nothing. On the other hand, he's an adult and it seems sort of shitty to talk to his manager about it.<p>Any opinions?
Don't tell your manager or HR. If your true motivation is concern for his health, you're unlikely to change his behavior that way.<p>If you really want to help him, you first need to talk to him about it. Tell him you've noticed how hard he's working, and you'd like to help if you can. Be clear that you don't mean you're going to help by doing his work for him. Rather, you'd like to listen to his side of the story and see if the two of you could brainstorm some solutions.<p>After you've done this, you may discover that some additional learning/training could help him move faster. That's a best-case scenario. Perhaps he's just not equipped for this job, and he could start job hunting while he's still employed with your firm.<p>You're more likely to notice some things that can't just be fixed. You may discover that anxiety or excessive attention to detail (perfectionism) are causing him to take much longer.<p>Those are issues that only he can work on, and he'd need to work on them only with psychiatric professionals.<p>No matter the size of your company, you're going to encounter people who can't do their jobs very well and are harming themselves and/or the company. It's really none of your business unless A) they're in danger, B) they're doing something illegal, or C) you're their superior. Be very certain that your coworker is in danger before you proceed.
You could offer to sit with him while he works through a similar problem to you, to see where he wastes time, creates work for himself or duplicates tasks. You can then be the voice telling him when to move on.<p>It sounds like he would benefit from a closer inspection of his working practises. Perhaps he needs to be managed in a different way. For example same amount of work just delivered as smaller tasks with shorter deadlines to avoid overwhelm. Maybe to start with, instead of him being part of an hourly weekly meeting, maybe he needs a 10 minute chat per day to help him to catch up, prioritise and plan the next day. This obviously would be the responsibility of his manager to take on.<p>Perhaps some training in planning out his working day in advance would throw out some interesting changes in how he learns to manage his own time.<p>I think the worst thing that could be done is to restrict his working hours which would add an extra level of worry - so he is sitting at home more stressed than if he was working.<p>The most important thing is to help him catch up so he is then receptive to support helping him keep on track.
You might want to suggest to him that he'd probably be more productive if he got a reasonable amount of sleep. Once you're that tired, it's hard to concentrate and you end up making more mistakes, which you then need to spend time debugging or completely re-doing. Fatigue also makes learning new things more difficult.<p>Also, is he really that much farther "behind" than his co-workers, or is he just "behind" based on some arbitrary and unrealistic deadline set by management?<p>And I agree with the other commenter who said that you shouldn't talk to this guy's manager. There are just too many ways that could end badly.