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

#161

Post by andrei_says_ » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

rhcom2 wrote: post #58

andrei_says_ wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employee provided health insurance guarantees cheap labor and easy to abuse employees who must make a very hard choice if they are to lose health insurance. Who would lobby for changing that balance and who would finance the campaigns of politicians that support such a reform?

Most of the Democratic primary candidates.

Which is indeed very hopeful. The level of institutionalized corruption including in how money selects who appears on ballots makes this a difficult process.

This is a great reminder of the root issues we need to deal with.

https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_...

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

#162

Post by scarejunba » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 6:08 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…

We need to work because we're barely at the productivity to sustain ourselves given our current obligations.

For instance, in order to fund CalPers, we need a lot of people to do productive work. That's on a multi-decade timer.

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

#163

Post by commandlinefan » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

zamfi wrote: post #72

scottious wrote: post #53

A year ago I had a 6-week paternity leave at 33 years old. It was the first time since I started my career that I was able to unplug for a significant amount of time. This time off was truly a magical time for me, and even though I had to do a ton of work around the house and with the baby, I felt a sense of purpose. I started to feel like a real person again. I came back to work and I made some huge gains for the co…

> I think my employer would rather me be a zombie than to just have some time off to recharge. And you probably don't think you can even ask your employer about this: what would it say about your devotion as an employee?

> don't think you can even ask your employer about this

I wonder how much of that is in our own minds, though - my boss is a pretty cool Chinese guy, and I tell him I need time off to deal with something, he says no problem, let me know when you’re back. But I still feel like I’m being silently judged - not just by him, but by everybody.

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

#164

Post by beat » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #144

beat wrote: post #28

So why do they stay at these awful jobs? Health insurance. Fear of losing, or even changing what they have (sometimes accompanied with some very real and not just anxiety out-of-pocket costs running into the thousands of dollars). Decoupling health insurance from employment is the #1 thing we could do to improve quality of our work. But in the long run, I dream of a day when wage labor is looked back on as nearly as…

Most companies would love to do away with the expense of health insurance and all of the administrative headaches and costs that come with it. But since most full-time white collar jobs offer health insurance, changing jobs might change your coverage some but won't leave you insuranceless. Now if you want to go out on your own or create/work at a startup, health insurance can be a big issue.

The worse the job, the worse the insurance, in most cases. Not all jobs are full-time skilled white collar jobs.

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

#165

Post by olyjohn » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #117

tombert wrote: post #79

In Academia, it's not too uncommon for people to take extended sabbaticals to focus on a project without being distracted with work nonsense, but I haven't really heard of any company doing that in the US. I would love to take around a month every year just to focus on a purely technical problem instead of focussing 20% of my time in technical stuff, and 80% of my time going through bureaucratic hoops that seemingly…

I took a sabbatical for couple of months last year and totally wasted the whole thing lazing around.

That's not a waste at all. Sounds like you probably needed it.

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

#166

Post by kwhat4 » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 6:14 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…

> For a while I worked with only 15 days a year.

Better than the 10 days I've been getting for the past 3 years.

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

#167

Post by CalRobert » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 6:14 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…

I believe the case in question was about a pretty narrow situation - travel nurses whose last case of the day took them particularly far from home, or something like that. It's not as simple as clocking in when you leave for work.

Also, how would you implement this in practice?

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

#168

Post by quxbar » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 6:15 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 think I'm somewhat in the same pattern. My background is that I quit my position as a team lead because I wasn't happy with the day-to-day experience. Now I work for myself (consulting, remote contract work) and I'm much happier. Establishing good practices with my clients has been key, and it makes me realize as an employee, I didn't have the right leverage to work effectively with my employer.

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

#169

Post by beat » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 6:15 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #136

beat wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the trap of equating "work" with "make money". Not all work is economically lucrative, even if it may provide real human value. Consider artists, for example. The arts don't pay very well, to the point that lots of people who would like to be full time professionals cannot afford to do so. But it adds tremendously to our social wealth.

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

#170

Post by CalRobert » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 6:17 PM UTC

scarejunba wrote: post #162

beat wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We need to work because we're barely at the productivity to sustain ourselves given our current obligations. For instance, in order to fund CalPers, we need a lot of people to do productive work. That's on a multi-decade timer.

Which is odd, given that we produce more stuff than ever before.

We have a couple of problems - a lot of the things we need most (dedicated time from doctors, teachers, etc.) are affected by Baumol's cost disease and in other categories, like housing, we have legally mandated shortages (it's illegal to create enough homes near transit, amenities, and jobs) so we will, by definition, never have enough.