How to handle too much work without project engineers or coordinators
When headcount is locked and budgets are trimmed while project volume stays the same, everything funnels through a single manager who ends up working through evenings on clerical tasks. This prevents them from doing a quality job and leaves senior staff working 50-hour weeks just to put out fires.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1working through the evening on the clerical side of thingsDid this help you?
- 2working on a laptop in the car while in between going from one site to anotherDid this help you?
- 3Pushing back project timelines and forcing stakeholders to prioritize existing tasksDid this help you?
- 4Blocking off dedicated project time on calendarsDid this help you?
- 5Cutting out meaningless meetingsDid this help you?
- 6Offering remote work flexibilityDid this help you?
- 7Building utilization matrices to justify cutting low-priority workDid this help you?
- 8doing less and skipping nonessential tasksDid this help you?
- 9switching to a different grade level like elementary musicDid this help you?
- 10leaving right after contracted hoursDid this help you?
- 11Offering remote opportunities on flexible time in a part-time roleDid this help you?
- 12Paying well to attract experienced people who want a side hustleDid this help you?
- 13Mapping out position responsibilities and researching what competitors call the roleDid this help you?
- 14Spending evenings and weekends creating lessons and materials from scratchDid this help you?
- 15Considering taking a casual Educational Assistant position in a public school districtDid this help you?
- 16trying to give myself graceDid this help you?
- 17trying my absolute best to get as organized as possibleDid this help you?
- 18dropping clients before they drop the firmDid this help you?
- 19looking for alternative employment elsewhereDid this help you?
- 20trying to mentally clock out of work through a firm and clear routineDid this help you?
- 21going for a walk or to the gym to vent and decompressDid this help you?
- 22attending therapyDid this help you?
- 23looking for other workDid this help you?
- 24saying no to things and letting tasks dropDid this help you?
- 25Applying for lower-level roles (like Senior Accountant) to reclaim work-life balanceDid this help you?
- 26Switching from industry back to public accountingDid this help you?
- 27Pursuing side careers like writing to leave accounting altogetherDid this help you?
- 28Switching to government accounting jobs for better work-life balance and less overtimeDid this help you?
- 29Saying no and letting the client find someone elseDid this help you?
- 30Subbing work out to a freelancer and hoping quality holdsDid this help you?
- 31Having a standing arrangement with another shop or smaller implementerDid this help you?
- 32Client education to empower them to manage things themselvesDid this help you?
- 33Time expectation management and clarity with clientsDid this help you?
- 34Doing mental arithmetic about inadequate staffing during behavior meetingsDid this help you?
- 35Accepting poor staffing ratios as a comparative winDid this help you?
- 36Watching students fall through cracks due to lack of resourcesDid this help you?
- 37trying to bring it up tactfully to the bossDid this help you?
- 38pushing back on things directlyDid this help you?
- 39Working long hours (10 hours a day and 9 hours on Saturday) to catch up on workloadDid this help you?
- 40Relying on supportive management despite their own overworkDid this help you?
- 41Debating on giving in and just asking to become the development managerDid this help you?
- 42Taking things one day at a timeDid this help you?
- 43Working through the weekend and late nightsDid this help you?
- 44Having a frank conversation with administration about boundaries and workloadDid this help you?
- 45Working through the weekend and long hoursDid this help you?
- 46Consuming candy and energy drinks like Red Bull to stay awake and power throughDid this help you?
- 47Looking for alternative tools like Prowler or lower-cost product tiers like Wiz GoDid this help you?
- 48Writing internal rules to filter and defer non-critical findings until patch weekDid this help you?
- 49Using macros to streamline workflowsDid this help you?
- 50Using AI to search for files and do quick tax law researchDid this help you?
- 51Building AI-driven budget tracking tools and dashboardsDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I’m incredibly burnt out from trying to hold it all together.”source ↗
“Am I just doomed to work 50-60 hours a week for the rest of my life as an Accounting Manager?”source ↗
“We got 12 more days and I got 78 more tax returns to finalize before the 15th.”source ↗
“Senior associate here and I have been working overtime pretty much everyday.”source ↗
“I have multiple projects that I have been trying to balance with little to no support because we are understaffed.”source ↗
“To top it off, I get an angry email from a partner for being slightly behind on a project.”source ↗
“I’m tired of trying to hold the shit show together with duct tape and prayers.”source ↗
“The money isn’t worth the stress for me anymore.”source ↗
“Are government tax auditor jobs also severely understaffed and overworked the way public accounting tax jobs are?”source ↗
“Ugh - the worst part is that it doesn’t end. Even if you catch up at some point the work will be there again tomorrow, if not more.”source ↗
“Boss thinks it's still doable to get them all done, but then again he just skims and signs them, so he's pretty disconnected from the actual prep work and what goes into it.”source ↗
“Tomorrow is going to be my long day this weekend. I’m dreading it”source ↗
“78 returns is brutal.”source ↗
“I’ve been tasked to see where it can used to make my already full plate less full. We had a pretty lean department when I started working at my current job, and it’s only gone down without hiring replacements.”source ↗
“Got a lean team too and the macro-to-AI pipeline feels like the only way to keep up”source ↗
“Luckily they made copies for Thursday but left no plans so my teammate and I scrambled to get plans for today and we have a plan for Monday. After that… we’ll be taking it a day at a time I guess.”source ↗
“Normally I do not work at home, but it’s either do work this weekend or work very late nights most of next week.”source ↗
“My first building was Title I and we had one counselor for 800 kids, and she spent the first six weeks fixing schedules because there was nobody else to touch it.”source ↗
“Current building, 400 to 1, and I catch myself calling that a win.”source ↗
“The interventionist is shared with two other buildings, and the counselor can see a kid for twenty minutes every three weeks if the schedule holds.”source ↗
“I LOVE teaching. And I don't want to quit. But I'm starting to face burnout.”source ↗
“The kids are good, but schedule and workload before and after school is getting the best of me.”source ↗
“Over a month later, I’m still taking it one day at a time.”source ↗
“The numbers are the reason we accomplish so little.”source ↗
“They haven’t hired a long term sub yet since it was so sudden. It falls on me and my teammate because, if we didn’t make some sort of plan, there wouldn’t be one.”source ↗
“My biggest issue is workload. This semester I have 5 different preps, and next semester I’ll have 6.”source ↗
“Right now I’m spending most evenings and weekends creating lessons and materials from scratch while trying to make sure everything aligns with the curriculum.”source ↗
“Headcount is locked, budget is trimmed by 15%, but company growth targets and project volume stayed the exact same.”source ↗
“My senior engineers are working 50+ hour weeks just keeping lights on and putting out fires.”source ↗
“I can feel the morale slipping, and if my key people walk, we're in real trouble.”source ↗
“I'm completely and utterly overwhelmed by the size and scope of basic project management this is going to entail.”source ↗
“They have absolutely no infrastructure - nor any grants module a part of their CRM which is Bloomerang.”source ↗
“My portfolio was only ever 10 grants at a time. What advice do you have?”source ↗
“I want to help usher in a new ED, but I am am starting to feel myself maxing out after being in hyperdrive for the last 2 months and the stress has been hard to manage.”source ↗
“I have to work hard to have any semblance of a weekend and am generally clocking about 45 to 50 hrs a week”source ↗
“I am taking any and all advice on how to stave off burnout and keep my mental health afloat during this challenging time.”source ↗
“My job quickly became HER job, but with the added pizzazz of being completely blind and only discovering tasks as ppl come looking for things that obviously haven't been done.”source ↗
“I am constantly playing catch up over the things I wasn't told about, I'm responsible for major undertakings that I've never done before and no one can help me with so I get stuck grinding in lots of overtime without pay”source ↗
“lately the workload seems like it continues to grow out of control.”source ↗
“We don't have any PEs or PCs, so pretty much everything goes through me.”source ↗
“I find myself working through the evening on the clerical side of everything.”source ↗
“it feels like I'm getting by but I'm not doing a great job, at least not as good of a job as I could be doing.”source ↗
“When a client asks for something outside your current capacity, whether that's a full implementation while you're slammed, a migration you don't have someone free for, or a specialty build like custom automation or a messy data cleanup, what's the actual playbook?”source ↗
“Feels like there's a gap between 'say no' and 'hire someone full time' that nobody's really solved cleanly.”source ↗
“As we grow we have run into these kinds of issues.”source ↗
“When I joined three years ago, I wanted to learn everything, so I took on the assistant's admin tasks so that I could be her backup... but it's now gotten out of control, to the point where I feel that I am constantly drowning in these tasks.”source ↗
“When I do push back on things, she tends to get passive-aggressive with me.”source ↗
“I am so fking stressed out. This job is draining me so much and I’m just hating every moment of life. All I want to do is cry since I’ve taken it”source ↗
“We trialled Wiz and the visibility is genuinely good and the price is hard to justify at our size.”source ↗
“Another console with a thousand weekly findings would sit unread. What I want is fewer things to fix rather than a better list of them.”source ↗
“We also couldn’t justify the cost of Wiz”source ↗
“So our company is growing well and my partner in the company (who owns 50%) is clearly getting overworked.”source ↗
“She's handling most of the closing of new clients and doing the service to clients (this a high ticket tourism sort of agency/company), it's getting to the point where she's starting to forget sometimes to buy the tickets in time for clients, follow up with them or (I think) not properly handling the closing funnel of new clients.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 11How to work on low energy days without feeling guilty
- 5How to delegate repetitive tasks without giving too much system access
- 22Why is project management just doing admin and updating trackers?
- 2How to handle an overinvolved co-teacher who crosses boundaries
- 40Why are teachers expected to be available 24/7?
- 14Doing senior IT work alone on helpdesk pay