Delegation

I talk about delegating tasks to others, including when and how I do that.

[gg-ke]

Tim . You’ve unironically aged into the overseer from fallout 1 .

[mlkmn]

Two things.

First. I want to thank you for this channel. I could listen to you talk for 24 hours straight and not be bored.

Second for creating the best game ever. During one of the darkest times of my life your game was the light that got me through. So I thank you for that sir.

[JademusSreg]

The first time I was a design lead on a game, I learned a hard lesson in delegation. For the first month or so, I was doing everyone's work; I had to learn to step back and trust the team to do the work, and to find ways to better define their responsibilities, documentation, schedules, deliverables, reviews of their implementations, manual and automated testing, et cetera. The lesson was hard-learned, but all the more valuable.

[Gulpathfinder]

8:58 ... Re swapping tasks. As a manager, you want to be very careful with this. Only have direct reports swap tasks if both are ok with it. Otherwise it would appear like you're punishing the person who is either more skilled, more efficient, and/or more willing to sacrifice to get things done ... and you're rewarding the person who is the opposite of those.

I've been on the receiving end of this before. I got my stuff done very quickly. Instead of being rewarded for it, I was assigned to work on stuff that my teammates had not been able to do. It was a 6 month project. There was 1 month left. Teammate had nothing written down - he'd point to his head and say "specs are all here, brotha!" While working on this dumpster fire, I had to undo all their prior work (because it was all wrong). I believe I actually worked 4x 100 hour weeks on the dumpster fire as well as my other smaller tasks. In the end, it wasn't enough to meet the deadline. We delivered late. I got reprimanded by higher ups. My manager didn't stick up for me and instead rewarded me with formal warnings. Teammate emerged unscathed.

[Esure]

Yes please more delegation and empowering people to do their jobs. Any Enterprise Architects reading this, please don't give tasks to your SAs and then insist you attend all their meetings delaying it by 2 weeks because you aren't avaliable.

[ndles]

You are helping a lot more software engineers become better at their job and at life than you might realize

[nehuenbec]

As an Organizational Psychologist, this topic is pretty refreshing; thanks for sharing this from your perspective and high experience Tim! Have a great week!

[IamHomelander]

“Want to have authority to make a decision, but don’t want the responsibility” man that rings true in so many aspects of life, not just a job in the gaming industry. Thanks Tim, i always enjoy watching your content!

[prodbysalem]

I just wanna say that I love your videos. I have literally been binging your channel for the past few days and all of the topics you talk about are so interesting. You definitely have earned a sub from me. Don’t stop making videos. I really appreciate your content.

[alekseylibernikel]

After the show my players asked me to run a Fallout game on GURPS set in USSR. Thank for your work. Your YT chanal gives a lot of insparation for me.

[Nitronium]

Oh dear. You went from nice boss to scary boss!

[ChernobylComedyAndWings]

As an indie dev, the thought of managing other people and making sure everything is being done correctly sounds like a nightmare ! wish me luck!

[evanmann]

Hey Tim! I just wanted to say that I discovered your channel a few days ago and I've been really enjoying going through your videos.

I just started Fallout for the first time, I've been wanting to play it since I first saw the cover when I was a kid, and I'm having a blast! It holds up so well, I'm really looking forward to playing your other games, especially Arcanum.

Thanks for the time you put into your channel, it's really fun to get a behind the scenes on not only Fallout, but game development in general.

And although I started with 3, as a huge fan of Fallout, thanks for creating such a fantastic ip that I have a lot of great memories with. I hope you have a great day!

[PetrifiedPenguin]

Sometimes I see the title of one your videos and think "this ones probably not for me" and it's then followed up by the most interesting peek into parts of the industry I had no idea I'd enjoy hearing about 10 minutes ago. Thanks for your video's Tim, absolutely joy to watch.

[ianharper]

Tim. This is one of your best videos. Thank you.

[SheeshFr]

Super helpful! Folks in most fields would benefit from hearing this -- especially knowing you've previously tried a flat hierarchy.

[DeathKnot]

Thanks you for the great videos as always Tim!

[JacobHarvietheSinger]

Been diving deep into your back catalogue of these. I'm not even into game development but the concepts and the way you process and explain things apply to so many areas. This isn't just a game development channel, it's a philosophy channel too.

[brian]

I am a relatively new mid-level manager in my company. Mid-Covid job market, right place right time.

The hardest thing for me to learn was that I shouldn't do it all myself. As a worker, there's no delegating - your tasks are your tasks. It still feels like I'm passing off work when I delegate, but if I don't I won't succeed AND my direct reports will be waiting for something to do.

Delegation is so important.

[renaigh]

Delegating delegation to just one delegate can only lead to chaos.