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Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week

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

#171

Post by CalRobert »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #24
nbrempel wrote: post #14

I find that If my work isn’t meaningful, it can really drain the life out of me (even more than truly demanding jobs). I wonder if a couple generations ago people felt just as burnt out. It seems like this generation is the most burnt out but who knows. With everyone connected all the time, I doubt people are getting proper rest between work. If you’re answering emails over lunch, you’re still working and not resting…

I think there are some fundamental things that have changed that are much different than 40-50 years ago: 1. Work was much more compartmentalized 30 years ago. People may have worked long hours, but for the most part, when they were "done" for the day, they were done (obviously there were exceptions, like people on call). Now, though, there is always email and texts and Slack, so it's more difficult to fully decompre…

40-50 years ago if there was an emergency my boss had to pick up a nice, chunky landline phone and call me, and _hope_ that I was home. Now they can just summon me on a whim. Of course, my boss might not even know a thing was broken, because he was at home and not at work too! (Unless he worked for a factory on shifts, power plant, restaurant, etc, - other non 9-5 business)

There's a reason all my vacations are mysteriously vague camping trips to places with terrible reception.

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

#172

Post by beat »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #149
beat wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would everyone stop working? If you were given the choice, would you just sit around and eat M&Ms and watch tv all day? Or would you work anyway? Consider your examples. Who would grow the food? Farmers. Because people would grow food anyway (and do), whether or not they get paid, because it's intrinsically rewarding. Building houses? Jimmy Carter is rich and 90-odd years old and builds houses. Med school? Maybe…

How many hobbyist sewer workers do you know?

How much would I need to pay you in order to be a sewer worker? Today? Would you be willing to do it under any circumstances?

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

#173

Post by thedaemon »

nightski wrote: post #140
codingdave wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Our lives revolve around surviving, not work. Work is a construct of civilization.

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

#174

Post by beat »

wonderwonder wrote: post #118
beat wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would everyone stop working? If you were given the choice, would you just sit around and eat M&Ms and watch tv all day? Or would you work anyway? Consider your examples. Who would grow the food? Farmers. Because people would grow food anyway (and do), whether or not they get paid, because it's intrinsically rewarding. Building houses? Jimmy Carter is rich and 90-odd years old and builds houses. Med school? Maybe…

Considering most farm workers are unskilled laborers making at or close to minimum wage, why would they work if they could get a UBI that covers all their needs? Farmers would still farm but that's because they own the land and directly benefit from it, they would not be able to perform all of the unskilled labor on their own. This could perhaps be offset if we drastically changed our guest worker program to allow un…

If "they do it only for the paycheck" is necessary for important work, how is it different from slavery? How are we not being coerced to do things that are, at the very least, unpleasant, for the majority of our waking hours?

You wind up in a world where freedom vs slavery is a distinction without a difference.

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

#175

Post by eeZah7Ux »

rayiner wrote: post #138
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 democraci…

GDP is completely unrelated to how much effort people put into work, or on how good they are.

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

#176

Post by thedaemon »

bonoboTP wrote: post #141
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…

American professionals (say, in California) have several times less free time and earn several times more money than Western Europeans (say, Germans). Different cultures value different things.

This is the point that previous commenters were missing. Culturally speaking, money is #1 in the USA but not in the rest of the world.

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

#177

Post by thedaemon »

Simulacra wrote: post #20

Job burnout? Try LIFE burnout. The job I've managed to compartmentalize and keep at bay, but life is burning me out and I'm not out of my thirties yet. Things are getting faster and more expensive just to live.

Kids will do that to you. Don't take on a huge burden if you aren't prepared for it.

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

#178

Post by thedaemon »

grawprog wrote: post #77
mcv wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not healthy. Please take some time off for a vacation and return to a normal 40 hour work week. There's a good reason why people fought for a 40 hour work week. Life is not just about work; you need to relax too. I refuse to work more than 32 hours a week, and that's working out very well for me. I have time for my hobbies, my kids, my friends and family, and I have time to just do nothing at all on occasion.…

I have a decent job, but I have student loans, I live in an expensive city and don't really have the ability to move elsewhere, at least half my cheque goes to rent each month, much of the rest goes towards bills and essentials. The overtime I work is the thing that lets me save money at all, otherwise I'd be living cheque to cheque.

What country are you in? Obviously not USA by the use of the word cheque, but USA kind of work hours.

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

#179

Post by thedaemon »

gherkinnn wrote: post #23
arvinsim wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that some managers give the deadline first and then direct the developers to do Scrum to figure out how to do it in that timeline.

“But we need to know how much it will cost us” “External factors demand we implement feature X by that date” “Let’s just hire more people, preferably more PMs” “We have many more ideas in our pipeline. In order to orchestrate these, we need precise estimations.”

My last job kept hiring more PMs and no techs. It was horrible. I kept having to tell the customers "Sorry we can't get the projects done, we have 5 project managers and only 2 techs."

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

#180

Post by beat »

olyjohn wrote: post #155
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…

Also looking for a new job in a pain in the ass. First, you have to make or update your resume... which for me is like facing all of my self-hatred. As I make my resume, I spend hours trying not to feel shitty about all the things that I haven't accomplished, and feel shitty about how I don't really have the requirements for the job I want. I compare myself to everybody else in the field as I look for example resumes…

Totally different perspective from mine, but certainly valid. If you're familiar with spoon theory, the spoons you spend just working are spoons you need in order to look for a new job.
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