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The Reality of Developer Burnout

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Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#101

Post by user837387 »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #99
user837387 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is the rational approach, but we are emotional beings and we cannot always be completely detached.

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#102

Post by RUG3Y »

lobotryas wrote: post #70
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."

Unless work is the difference between home and homelessness. I've been close to burnout (read:complete and total apathy at work) a few times before I wizened up, but I kept skating to a minimum because I needed the money.

Not everyone has the luxury of avoiding burnout. Sometimes life itself is one huge burnout.

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#103

Post by MrLeap »

cjbenedikt wrote: post #71

Interesting subject. When WWII was over women in the UK and Europe who had lost their husbands often had to rebuild their homes, look after their children and had to put food on the table each day. All that after having lived/suffered through 6 years of war. However, none ever mentioned burnout except perhaps when referring to their homes...just saying

This is a provocative piece of information, but I think there's some truth in it.

When I burned hard out at my last job, I resigned and decided to take some time off. Writing code felt disgusting. I had a timeline when I was going to get back in to work and the hope was that I'd be good.

Welp, the one month I gave myself turned in to two, and that turned into three and I still felt just like garbage. I normally work as hard as anyone and yet the inertia to write even the simplest code was insane.

My cat got sick and was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and the vet trips and treatment obliterated my savings. Within _two_ days of this starting I found the mental blocks removed. This is fortunate because I was starting to get pretty scared I'd end up homeless and starve to death.

Necessity caused by crisis seems to have cured my burnout. I've paid the rent on GARBAGE upwork jobs, most of them have paid minimum wage or worse while looking for full time work. All my clients have given me 5 stars and, while it's not fun, rewarding work, it's necessary and I can do it. I can say with 100% honesty that I physically could not have done it back in September when I was flush with cash and still reeling from my last work experience.

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#104

Post by jventura »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #99
user837387 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honest question: is anything supposed to happen when you get towards negative karma points? I use a forum where there's a limitation on how much posts you can write on a given topic depending on your number of "karma" points..

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#105

Post by jraines »

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.

Prompted by this, I went through and aggressively pruned my follow list.

I was struck how most of the most interesting people I was following pretty much don't tweet any more.

Not sure if that speaks to how they became interesting, how much Twitter squandered what was once a special community, or both.

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#106

Post by dom0 »

grillvogel wrote: post #100
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

Because most other people pretend the same.

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#107

Post by dom0 »

gideon_b wrote: post #30
zzzcpan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's different in software, people can't do their jobs when this happens. Otherwise it shouldn't be called a burnout.

That's a great point. It's not specific to software but knowledge work and creative work are nearly impossible to do without intrinsic motivation.

These comments here mostly speak for the fact that the commenters did, in fact, never experience burnout, depression or other heavily psychologically draining issues.

Because you literally cannot do things. Which things is completely and utterly irrelevant.

I don't understand why people still

a) think that "knowledge professions" are some kind of unicorn job where special snowflake sauce is required, and it's obviously totally different from those gritty "manual labour jobs" and you have to constantly set yourself apart (how arrogant is that?!)

b) purport this strange notion that psyche has little to do with the body. Digger won't dig? Just whip'em, it'll work for sure.

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#108

Post by [deleted] »

gideon_b wrote: post #30
zzzcpan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's different in software, people can't do their jobs when this happens. Otherwise it shouldn't be called a burnout.

That's a great point. It's not specific to software but knowledge work and creative work are nearly impossible to do without intrinsic motivation.

[deleted]

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#109

Post by flukus »

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…

> Say anything blunt, not rude but blunt, and you will get down-voted to oblivion.

I think that's because HN is full of pedants. Blunt messages don't cater to exceptions.

Re: The Reality of Developer Burnout

#110

Post by cr0sh »

paganel wrote: post #56
alexmingoia wrote: post #20

I speculate that burnout is more psychological than physical. Ultimately, I think it stems from the shame arising out of the realization that giving 110% instead of 70% at your job accomplishes little but making things harder for yourself. A software engineer doesn't get more money giving 110%, and if they work to finish something quicker they're just rewarded with more work. Often engineers (being human) will want t…

I've been writing code for a living for 11 years now and I don't think I've ever set out myself to give "110% on an important project", apart from the couple of tight deadlines which used to show up every 6 to 9 months (which required some weekend work). I regard laziness, "less is more" and YAGNI as real virtues for programmers.

> I regard laziness, "less is more" and YAGNI as real virtues for programmers.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Slack

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