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The Reality of Developer Burnout

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Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#91

Post by jwtadvice »

debt wrote: post #78
1_2__3 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're actually making the issue worse by conflating burnout with simple... I guess laziness? In fact the whole reason why burnout is such a fascinating phenomenon is because it takes otherwise highly productivity people who do not hate their job and turns them into minimal-productivity people who do hate their jobs. That's nothing at all like you're describing.

So people who love their jobs can also burn out? I don't buy it. Personally, I've never heard of or met anyone who loves their job and has burned out. Have you?

I have met a large number of people who love their jobs and have burned out. I'm not really sure that anecdotal evidence is going to satisfy people in this thread of the conversation, so I suspect my volunteering of this is of little utility.

Maybe another way to look at it is the "burn out rate". Different companies have a tendency to turn excited new tech employees into minimally-productive ones in different time frames.

For example Amazon has a burn out rate of about a year, whereas Google and Facebook are about two years and Microsoft four years.

Why should this be the case? I think people above in the thread would argue that it has to do with culture and working conditions, with moral and with levels of individual autonomy.

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#92

Post by wott »

lukaszkups wrote: post #34
Animats wrote: post #11

This is not developer burnout. This is Twitter burnout. "So, I unfollowed everyone on Twitter" he writes, which apparently fixed his problem. That has nothing to do with development.

IMHO not exactly. I feel the same and decreased list of following people couple times. Couple days ago I've thought about switch to HackerNews & Publish only mode because I feel like everybody around has great life, skills, projects and work for awesome companies. There's too many successful stories around that sometimes can cause depression more than stories about failures. It's a bit hard to explain properly in sin…

When you're depressed, the last thing you want to see is happy people. They are infuriating and depressing. It is much better to see other people with problems, because it makes your own look less terrible in comparison, and because you're not an odd beast in their eyes, that one should pity or avoid as if you could be contagious. The problem, then, is not to stay locked in this circle forever.

It's like all the suicides in springtime: that's the time when the people and the nature are full of energy and joy and life and everything. And you are not, so the contrast is extremely painful and hopeless.

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#93

Post by ekidd »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #46
wmccullough wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find myself doing the same thing with HN. Most of the time I love it, but it seems once in awhile the contrarians come out to play, and meaningful discussions drop to zero.

As someone who is feeling more and more contrarian lately in my comments here and regretting it, I think it's because after a decade of HN, everything starts to the look the same. Everybody is trying to sell a framework, a startup, a language, or their own personal brand and it turns into a big circlejerk of everyone patting themselves on the back because they've got some secret knowledge. Sometimes it doesn't seem l…

> Should you replace your C codebase with Rust... or Go?

Handy sanity tip: If your question begins "Should you replace your ____ codebase?", you can automatically answer "No." If you're really starting to hate your codebase, you're allowed to rewrite one module using a new tech stack, but only if that tech stack seems uniquely well suited to the task at hand.

Maybe it will suck. Maybe it won't. If it doesn't suck, you can use a bit more of the new technology in other places.

This will lower your stress and give you an opportunity to futz around with something promising every now and then. As a strategy, it will probably work best if you occasionally enjoy new technologies, but you're conservative about what you're willing to use in production. It also helps if you have occasional throwaway open source projects for trying out stuff that looks too new for professional use.

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#94

Post by thenomad »

debt wrote: post #78
1_2__3 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're actually making the issue worse by conflating burnout with simple... I guess laziness? In fact the whole reason why burnout is such a fascinating phenomenon is because it takes otherwise highly productivity people who do not hate their job and turns them into minimal-productivity people who do hate their jobs. That's nothing at all like you're describing.

So people who love their jobs can also burn out? I don't buy it. Personally, I've never heard of or met anyone who loves their job and has burned out. Have you?

Frequently.

Burnout is a huge problem in the creative industries, amongst people who have fought, worked for years or decades, and clawed their way into a job they love and have wanted to do their entire adult lives.

For example, as Ron Moore (I think) says in the documentary "Showrunners", there's a reason almost no TV showrunner is much older than their early 50s. The job (which is insanely intense) burns you out, no matter how much you love it.

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#95

Post by Oogoo »

debt wrote: post #78
1_2__3 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're actually making the issue worse by conflating burnout with simple... I guess laziness? In fact the whole reason why burnout is such a fascinating phenomenon is because it takes otherwise highly productivity people who do not hate their job and turns them into minimal-productivity people who do hate their jobs. That's nothing at all like you're describing.

So people who love their jobs can also burn out? I don't buy it. Personally, I've never heard of or met anyone who loves their job and has burned out. Have you?

One's feeling towards their job is not some binary love/hate thing. I would say I do not hate my job, but do I love my job? Everyday? Do I never tire of my job?

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#96

Post by bhalp1 »

matmo wrote: post #7

The worst part for me was going from being a "rockstar developer" on the team to having to explain why I suddenly can't meet the overly ambitious deadlines handed down from above due to anxiety, depression, panic attacks and extreme insomnia.

I feel you, man.

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#97

Post by RUG3Y »

user837387 wrote: post #55
wmccullough wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find myself doing the same thing with HN. Most of the time I love it, but it seems once in awhile the contrarians come out to play, and meaningful discussions drop to zero.

HN is full of contrarians. Say anything blunt, not rude but blunt, and you will get down-voted to oblivion. And not even that, say something in a polite way that people cannot discredit but still not like and you will get down-voted. I feel like you have to mold yourself to the hive mind if you want your stuff to be up-voted. Not sure if this is really how it is or if it is just me. On the other hand, a lot of times…

There are a lot of great things here on HN but people can be pedantic and the hive-mind mentality is strong. There are a lot of conversations that I avoid because of this.

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#98

Post by proto-n »

derefr wrote: post #64
paulcole wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say this about any field. A ditch digger loses "intrinsic motivation" and chooses to not dig a ditch. The ditch digger can't do their job because of burnout. But somehow it is different in software development?

You can whip a tired ditch-digger until they dig more. You can't whip a tired programmer until they write working code. You'll only get broken code. A good analogy might be to the division between rank-and-file soldiers in the military, and military officers. You don't need to think to shoot a gun. You do need to think to decide where to send people to shoot their guns.

I think it's all about creativity. When you burn out, your creativity dries up. Most of programming (and generally thinking) is done by your subconscious, and when it says 'I've had enough of this, I'm not helping any more', you are SOL, no amount of willpower will help with that. That's why digging ditches is different.

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#99

Post by maverick_iceman »

user837387 wrote: post #55
wmccullough wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find myself doing the same thing with HN. Most of the time I love it, but it seems once in awhile the contrarians come out to play, and meaningful discussions drop to zero.

HN is full of contrarians. Say anything blunt, not rude but blunt, and you will get down-voted to oblivion. And not even that, say something in a polite way that people cannot discredit but still not like and you will get down-voted. I feel like you have to mold yourself to the hive mind if you want your stuff to be up-voted. Not sure if this is really how it is or if it is just me. On the other hand, a lot of times…

I always wonder why people care so much about getting downvoted. I get downvoted all the time but who cares, these votes are just some meaningless statistic.

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#100

Post by grillvogel »

paulcole wrote: post #9

> It happens to everyone that writes code all day long More like "It happens to everyone." I know this is a developer-focused site, but this isn't a problem unique to people in software. An old joke, "Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called everybody, and they meet at the bar."

software engineers love to pretend that their profession is totally unique and unlike any other, i've never understood why that is
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