Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week • Hacker News Board

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#131

Post by esotericn » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:10 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #85

esotericn wrote: post #70

As a European (for now, oho) this doesn't surprise me at all. American working patterns are bonkers. You guys have this concept of 'vacation' which well, isn't. 15 days or whatever per year pretty much all just must either get banked for emergencies, admin, or maybe that one Mega Holiday where you fly across the world and spend a week or whatever trying to forget your life. I don't get it at all. It might make sense…

I'm genuinely curious; how many days do Europeans typically get?

UK: https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights

"Almost all workers are legally entitled to 5.6 weeks’ paid holiday a year (known as statutory leave entitlement or annual leave)."

So 28 days.

Personally I've usually had about 25 days + bank holidays in contracts as standard (i.e. before negotiation), so 33 days in total.

The main distinction though is that because we don't have this 'health insurance tied to work' thing going on, it's at least theoretically possible for a median wage earner who hasn't loaded themselves up with debt to take a decent amount of time off by just leaving their job. Whether they actually do it doesn't matter - there's at least the mental release valve of knowing you can quit.

In the US it sounds like you could get away with that as a healthy 20 year old otherwise you'd be playing the lottery.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#132

Post by grawprog » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

volkk wrote: post #4

grawprog wrote: post #2

I work six days a week. I leave my house at 7am return home around 7pm, pretty much have time to make dinner and chill for an hour so then go to bed and do it again. I haven't really been out and done anything for a few years now. My body is in pain constantly, I'm always exhausted but my sleep is always poor. I don't remember what it's like to not feel burnt out. It's been like this pretty much since I was in my ear…

what do you do?

Program and operate CNC machines.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#133

Post by rightbyte » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #34

rightbyte wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Developers are just held accountable or feel accountable for their own forced guesstymates. It was better when managers were guessing becouse they also have the means to change scope.

There's a very good reason why story points in scrum do not directly relate to time worked. You guess story points only in relation to each other. Over time, you can see how many story points you finish per sprint. By seeing how many story points are still on the backlog, you can estimate how long it will take. Add one or two sprints for unforeseen problems, and there's your estimate. Not based on anyone's guess, but…

Maybe. My guess is that Agile etc are suitible for some fields of programming and not others.

I'm just fed up with this Agilescrum thing. My present RnD workplace have been transitioning to it in the last years and it's really bad. The prior V-iteration process was good enough. We are mostly just making up estimates and report time accordingly to make the burndown chart look good.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#134

Post by Mountain_Skies » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:17 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #110

kache_ wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work remotely as well and I observe that a lot of people are available outside their regular working hours. I think remote work is part of the problem: the additional blurring between work and life will askew your work life balance. Pager duty can burn you out, but it really depends on how much you get paged and how many people are on rotation.

Overtime would be a lot easier to swallow if you were paid, say, time and a half for weekday overtime and double for weekends or holidays. But, no, most tech employees aren't paid anything extra for it, so management has no incentive to reduce the amount of overtime you actually work. I had one boss who acted very concerned and would keep telling me not to work so late. But at the same time he wanted the same amount…

Sounds like a way to make urban sprawl even worse.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#135

Post by naringas » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:17 PM UTC

tasuki wrote: post #130

naringas wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This project is nearly complete. wrong, it is already complete. But it's a sort of softer (or blurrier) slavery. one difference between old classic slavery and modern employment slavery is that the slave-employees are not bound to a single master. They are "free" to change employers. But they aren't really free to quit working altogether. Only people who own enough assets are free. And surely it could be argue that…

> They are "free" to change employers. But they aren't really free to quit working altogether. Oh yes they are free to quit working altogether. One can choose to become homeless. The more fortunate ones wouldn't even become homeless and would just have to reduce their consumption. But we love consuming a whole lot. > Only people who own enough assets are free. In some way they're slaves to their assets. Karl Marx wro…

> Perhaps this is all because humans are human?

going even further because the sun shines, and further still all this because time goes on...

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#136

Post by rayiner » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:18 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #60

aantix wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will people be compensated relative to their work value?

Why do we need to work? edit: I am 100% serious about this. It is already economically viable, if society chooses to do it , to simply guarantee food, decent housing, and health care to everyone, whether they work or not. At that point, what we do with our time becomes a choice, more than the choice of "work or go homeless and starve". People could still choose to exchange their time and skills for money, and most wo…

Why should people who work support those who choose not tow work (as opposed to people who cannot work)?

Work is an important value. Whatever economic viability the U.S. has to experiment with weird social ideas, it's because of generations of people who believed in work as a moral imperative.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#137

Post by bpyne » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

I feel burnt out regularly. Earlier in my career I loved reading about software development, both research and practice. But my job isn't particularly stressful. At some points, I feel stress at work, often due to a lack of control over the work environment and vision of the leadership. But they don't push me to work a lot of hours. We're encouraged to use our PTO.

I think the issue, in American culture, is bigger than just employers and career choices. My wife and I discuss this subject often. The problem is that we are a two career couple who are raising a child in a culture that hasn't, and may never, adapt to not having one parent at home. Our society isn't setup for it. Vital services, like healthcare or simply furnace maintenance before Winter, require a person home from 9am-5pm. Doing so requires either working remotely or a promise to make up the time when you get back to the office.

I'm not sure what the answer is. Maybe working remotely will help. Maybe we need to postpone careers until kids are raised like my parents' generation did. (My wife is far better suited to a career. I would gladly volunteer to be at home if we didn't need both pays.)

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#138

Post by rayiner » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:23 PM UTC

Ididntdothis wrote: post #5

Americans really need more vacation time. For a while I worked with only 15 days a year. This never gives you the opportunity to ever really relax. Life becomes just one endless meaningless time of working year after year that kills any kind of creativity . I can see this in a lot of workaholics. They just go through the motions of working hard but don’t get much done. And once you have been in that machine for a whi…

If your premise were true, you'd expect countries offering more vacation time to have higher productivity per hour worked. (I.e. more efficiency, even if less total production.) Instead, the U.S. has among the highest levels of productivity per hour worked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP).... Americans are much more productive, even on a per-hour basis, than people in advanced democracies that have more vacation time.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#139

Post by damq » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #108

WarDores wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see a source for "It is already economically viable...". Maybe at current levels of production, but you can't just assume current levels of output in every sector while removing incentives.

Why do you think incentives are removed? Is "work or starve" the only incentive? I'm not talking about a beachfront mansion and a Ferrari in the driveway for everyone. I'm talking about not starving. Want to be more than the bare minimum? Then choose to work. Don't care? Then don't work - not that people who don't care are effective employees anyway.

Have you tried purchasing health care before? It's not inexpensive. There's no way we could guarantee food, health care, and housing for everybody with no work requirement. Only a really stupid person would believe this could work.

You're really stupid.

Re: Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

#140

Post by nightski » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

codingdave wrote: post #107

CalRobert wrote: post #8

"Conducted by telecommunications company TollFreeForwarding.com, " an odd source, but OK. I work remote from a place outside the US. Last thanksgiving my boss (from the US) was on Slack. So were... all but one of my US colleagues. I see them writing at all hours of the night. On a work trip it was more or less assumed I'd work from 9 AM (8:30 ish really if you count coffee before) until 10 PM. I'm not on pagerduty an…

I work remotely, and absolutely work off-hours, weekend hours, and some holiday hours. I also take long lunches on weekdays, sleep in if I feel like it, go out on long walks when I need a break, and just stop working mid afternoon if I'm not in the zone. Overall, it balances out. I work when I am productive, usually right around 40 hours a week. But I can see why people would think I'm working extra hours if all they…

I'm kind of in the same spot. But while it feels like freedom to do the things you mentioned (go on long walks, stop working mid afternoon, etc...), in the end our lives revolve around work and not the other way around. I'm struggling with this as breaks aside, there are other things I like to do in life.