Many years ago I take a week of vacation after almost year of 60+hr weeks. Got fired on return, no official explanations. Unofficial reason- senior manager don't happy about me absent on weekly meeting.
Ask HN: Discuss burnout with boss?
71–80 of 102 posts
Re: Ask HN: Discuss burnout with boss?
#72My manager and I had a 10 year relationship going. I had just transitioned to a new role, had a new born and taken on too much. I was feeling it for 6 months but finally broke at around 9 months. I told him I couldn't do it anymore and that I wanted a sabbatical. I told them that my backup plan was to just quit. He talked me off the ledge and within a day had transitioned my troublesome projects to others and moved m…
Any manager which cares about their employees would say that, "you should have come to me sooner." Only issue is how many managers are actually empathetic?
At the line manager level, probably many, even most. Empathy is selected against for promotion at most corporations, so if the OP is reporting to someone who is already a senior manager or aspiring to become one, it's unlikely.
That said, even the most cold-blooded bastard is going to make an effort to keep any middling-or-better employee right now. It's too hard to find competent replacements.
Re: Ask HN: Discuss burnout with boss?
#73There is no such thing as burn out. You're either progressing or regressing in your job. Burnout, work-life balance are man made excuses.
I mean this sincerely because I truly am curious. This is a person that is obviously going through a tough period in their life. Why did you find it necessary to attempt to make them feel even worse than they already feel? Is this some kind of tough love thing? Do you get satisfaction from kicking others while they are down as some kind of ego boost? Or quite possibly some other reason that I don't understand? Again, I'm not trying to judge you or put you down. I very much am curious about your motivation here.
Re: Ask HN: Discuss burnout with boss?
#74It's great your trying to improve yourself, but that also adds stress when you can't manage expectations well (which isn't easy anyways for many people).
You can leave and take a break. Or talk to your boss. I don't know what your responsibilities are but it's never worth it to go burnt out for a long time. You risk breaking yourself.
I experienced that and it sucks, big time. I'm becoming stronger because of it. However, I'd rather see people learn without going through that.
I suspect you're worried about the consequences of talking to your boss. If he's an asshole chances are that was already contributing to burnout. You'll win if you get canned. It doesn't reflect on your skills so don't let your ego get bruised because of a trifling matter. If your boss is semi-human, you also win.
What helped me a lot was therapy and yoga/meditation. In yoga, good instructors reinforce forgetting about worries of life for a "mere" hour and focusing on myself. Once I stopped resisting that concept, life started improving rapidly. It's a hard thing to go, dropping "everything". Finding someone to talk or a group of people who understand is really important and there are many people who have gone through these kind of things.
Many don't learn or understand the meaning of priorities until the experience something traumatic.
So talk to your boss and don't quit before finding a new job. Or quit and take a long break.
Re: Ask HN: Discuss burnout with boss?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would like to interject: This heavily depends on the boss. I've seen great bosses who will make stuff like this happen, and I've seen terrible bosses who don't give a shit. Make sure you work for the right-kind of boss if you are going to take this approach!
Speaking as a boss who I'd like to think falls into the former category... If you don't ask you won't know what they'll do for you or not. Could be your boss doesn't help or makes it worse then you know exactly what to do next - quit,move to another team, or take it to hr id its really hostile. That dick boss is probably the reason for your burnout (aka situational depression caused by work) so the solution is in mov…
[Also as a boss] I'm fully convinced that a lot of the badmouthing you hear about "bad bosses" comes from people who never made any effort to create a functional bidirectional trust relationship with their boss. There certainly are bad bosses, and I would never claim otherwise, but I think we'd all be better off if there was as much employee development training on "how to build a relationship with your boss" as there is "how to be a boss" training.
Re: Ask HN: Discuss burnout with boss?
#76I could share my personal experience, such as the time when I told a boss of mine with whom I had a great relationship that I was going to take a day off before I got close to burning out, using the actual words "burning out", but even though all the anecdotal responses are heart warming and all,...
1) this sort of thing is almost completely situational; i.e. depends on your specific context
2) you won't know exactly how it will play out until you've said words that you can't take back
3) at which point, if you miscalculated, you employer now has info that puts you at a disadvantage
4) company-employee relationships by definition and structure give the company asymmetric advantages in issues such as information, financial negotiations, and time-line strategies.
I say all this, not to be a wet-blanket, but rather to offer an alternative. You can accomplish the same thing using different words. If you're burning out, don't ask for understanding from your company, do the right thing for yourself and do what is necessary to put yourself back on a sustainable path. If this includes giving a different reason for how you end up dealing with it, tell them what they need to hear, but, do not add 'worried about your job' to 'burnt out'.
Re: Ask HN: Discuss burnout with boss?
#77I burned out and it took me 6 years to recover. Still to this day I deal with it. Two weeks ago I turned in my notice to a job that exceeded the stress level I wanted in my life, and just for kicks I looked for a short term contract a few days later. Immediately I was able to double my rate and get a reduced stressed position. There is no way I would have been able to ace the phone interview for the new shot term contract stressed out, working 60 hours a week, and in crisis mode. Then, the old contract cut me lose early and I got a week off to do some needed remodeling in my house before starting the new gig. So it was a win for everyone.
Re: Ask HN: Discuss burnout with boss?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speaking as a boss who I'd like to think falls into the former category... If you don't ask you won't know what they'll do for you or not. Could be your boss doesn't help or makes it worse then you know exactly what to do next - quit,move to another team, or take it to hr id its really hostile. That dick boss is probably the reason for your burnout (aka situational depression caused by work) so the solution is in mov…
[Also as a boss] I'm fully convinced that a lot of the badmouthing you hear about "bad bosses" comes from people who never made any effort to create a functional bidirectional trust relationship with their boss. There certainly are bad bosses, and I would never claim otherwise, but I think we'd all be better off if there was as much employee development training on "how to build a relationship with your boss" as ther…
This is a great point. More times than I'd like to admit I've found out someone working for me had worked themselves up worried about something that we could've resolved in 5 min with a simple conversation. If you're anxious about something at work just come our with it and find out where you really stand. The thing about worrying is the vast majority of the time it's wasted on things that aren't true or will never happen.
Speaking on behalf of all non sucky bosses don't let issues fester - just tell us what's up. Maybe we can help.
Re: Ask HN: Discuss burnout with boss?
#79Disclaimer : I never had good relationship with any of my bosses in 10+ years, may be my fault or may be theirs. I cant change my attitude.(i'm not bootlicker and all my boss's expected that in my Indian environment/culture)
There are quite lot of good comments on approaching boss and talking about your issue. I agree with them but let me ask:
your boss doesn't know that you are overloaded ? Can't he see there are people in this team working less and probably getting paid more than you? If that's the case, why he didn't act so far? Is he biased towards few members?
Bottom-line is , if your boss doesn't know that you are overloaded and work is not split fairly- you can explain him about burnout issue, I'm pretty sure he will solve the issue.
If your boss doing all this intentionally, in order to make you to fall in line. I'd highly recommend getting a new job and then talk to him. Just to be on safer side, if talks didn't go well.
Again read my disclaimer :)
EDIT : Oh..wait..there is one boss. He's kind of technical guy,which i admire & respect. I can say I had one only good boss in these 10+ years. I changed 4 companies and met around 10 boss's in different projects.
Re: Ask HN: Discuss burnout with boss?
#80As a manager, if an employee of mine came to me and said "I'm burning out, what do I do?" I'd do whatever I could to help them rediscover their passion for the job they're doing. But as an employee, I made the mistake at my last job of telling my boss that I wasn't happy. Instead of trying to help, he pushed me out the door. I'm glad to not be there any more, and my happiness levels skyrocketed, but I'll be wary in t…
If you were happy after you left the job, didn't your boss do you a favor?