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Burnout Is Real

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Re: Burnout Is Real

#121

Post by jvvw »

zwkrt wrote: post #46
phone8675309 wrote: post #35

Must be nice to be financially comfortable enough to give that up. I’m glad that they’re addressing the issue, but how many people are stuck with the mortgage and the student debt and the family that needs almost every penny of their income to make ends meet for every person that has the resources to do drop out of the tech industry in less than half a year?

Those things you mention aren’t really the chains you make them out to be. You can sell your house and move somewhere affordable. Poor people have kids all the time, a lot of times they are even smart! What you feel chained to is your ritzy lifestyle. Your wife and kids won’t resent you for not providing all that fancy shit, but they will resent you for working yourself until there’s nothing left for them.

I do empathise with people in that bind - it's hard to know if a job paying much less will actually be significantly less stressful - big gamble to make with lots at stake. Affordable areas generally have fewer jobs - just moving somewhere more affordable isn't a trivial thing to do and there are overhead costs in moving house so you need to downsize considerably.

Re: Burnout Is Real

#122

Post by gonehome »

rpmisms wrote: post #103
KittenInABox wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely asking: how do you plan to rent/own property? Where I live working in fast food would only get you a shared bedroom or a small studio, which would be cramped for a couple.

Our mortgage is ~$1000 a month. If you can make the down payment and get approved, owning is almost always cheaper than renting. edit: $400 of that $1k is property taxes. Live outside of town. It's better. I promise.

The Bay Area is a relevant outlier here - $1k/month would not cover the monthly property tax on a mortgage for a crappy place.

Re: Burnout Is Real

#123

Post by immmmmm »

yes it is real and i got struck. i work in academia and was doing the work of four ppl, with pressing deadlines. it really brought me down as nothing in my life before.

4 weeks of rest helped a lot but, to my astonishment, what helped the most was a small dose psylocibin. i was not expecting it as i was doing it more for recreational purposes, but right after the (very mild) trip, it pulled me out of depression and anxiety in sth like 30 minutes. i have no words to explain the feeling of having a functioning brain in such short amount of time, it was a bit like breathing again after 6 months.

Re: Burnout Is Real

#124

Post by asciimike »

I got some "I no longer build software; I now make furniture out of wood."[1][2] vibes from this.

I have occasionally considered auto mechanics if I ever get to the point of software-related burnout, though the way cars are going, I feel like they'll be entirely software by the time I feel the need to switch.

[1]: https://github.com/docker/cli/issues/267#issuecomment-695149... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24541964

Re: Burnout Is Real

#125

Post by rpmisms »

gonehome wrote: post #122
rpmisms wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our mortgage is ~$1000 a month. If you can make the down payment and get approved, owning is almost always cheaper than renting. edit: $400 of that $1k is property taxes. Live outside of town. It's better. I promise.

The Bay Area is a relevant outlier here - $1k/month would not cover the monthly property tax on a mortgage for a crappy place.

The Bay Area is ridiculous in terms of home pricing. We could likely move there and do ok financially, but I'd rather get a nice plot of land in Appalachia and have some farm animals, spend my evenings working on marksmanship and whatever car I'm wrenching on at the moment.

Re: Burnout Is Real

#126

Post by NikolaNovak »

KittenInABox wrote: post #90
rpmisms wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that. My wife and I have a rule: if our expenses go over what we could make working in fast food, we sell some stuff.

Genuinely asking: how do you plan to rent/own property? Where I live working in fast food would only get you a shared bedroom or a small studio, which would be cramped for a couple.

Not the op, but it all depends on location in a few different ways.

First, there's cultural difference around the world about owning property - or if not cultural, than at least pragmatic: FWIW, vast majority of my European friends and family don't plan/anticipate to own a property - ever. Huge percentage of my North American friends and family wouldn't even settle for a condo - it's house or fail. These friends and family are in comparable positions.

Second, location location location. Maybe your high tech jobs leads you to live in downtown of a metropolis, but a low-paying job "forces" you to a small town of boonies or boonies of small town or both. You may or may not find that lifestyle better for mental health.

Finally, size, size, size. I was born and lived HAPPILY as middle-class family in a 3-room apartment as a five-people nuclear family (parents, one grandmother, two kids [ourselves]). It was fine. It was great.

I am now in a house, same family config but a generation down, we have four rooms on top level alone, plus main floor and basement, and we are CRAMPED. We rented a locker until last year when we did a purge. There's stuff everywhere. Not even because we are well to do (though we are), when you have kids in north america the amount of stuff friends and relatives and facebook groups share is awesome but overwhelming. And the household work... GAWD the household work... I don't find peace in it and it overwhelms me just to think of the time and expense owning property entails.

Hey, these aren't even first world problems, these are privileged well-to-do first-world-plus problems, I recognize and address that. But owning sizeable house is by far not the only way to happiness.

Edit: Let's not forget kids vs no kids. That is a huge differentiator as to options, and I think more of us commenting or advising here should be explicit about current state and plans. I didn't think kids were as "life changing" from economics/lifestyle perspective as I'm now aware :P. This is not to say I didn't think they were a huge deal... just didn't realize intuitively internally just how much it is YourLife:Part2. I went through civil war, change of continents and countries, passage of parent, broken heart and ending up with The One... and ALL of that was a relatively similar "Phase 1" compared to the radically different life after we got kids :D

Re: Burnout Is Real

#128

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

matthewh806 wrote: post #44
carlosrg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might need some time off yourself, seeing how an inoffensive Twitter thread made you so mad.

It doesn't make me mad in the slightest, I just think the guy sounds like an idiot and I find it funny to point this out. Feel free to do the same to me if you wish. Edit: On a more serious point i think its actually potentially damaging. Burnout should be recognised as a real problem in industries such as tech. And I don't believe the way to cure burnout is to immediately start jumping into things like: "About 2 wee…

Especially when tax season rolls around and those 1099s start looking a lot smaller than they did on payday.

Re: Burnout Is Real

#129

Post by slumdev »

fullshark wrote: post #50
slumdev wrote: post #19

Burnout is real, but it's not unavoidable. If you can't imagine yourself doing your job for the next 40 years*, then find another one. *If you're a gunner and plan on running the place by then, that's different. Likewise, if you expect to add responsibilities and enjoy some variety, that's also different. But the basic responsibilities and activities shouldn't be abhorrent or even unfulfilling to you.

I've tried multiple careers in my early years due to this, and have decided it just is the nature of the world that works sucks and always will. You are selling your time for a paycheck, that's all it is and all it ever will be. Ultimately I think burnout stems from a terrible attitude re: work as salvation or meaning, and realizing no it's not and that is crushing.

I agree with you, and I use that to set boundaries and find meaning outside of work.

If you surveyed me about my attitudes regarding work, you might think that I have burnout. But if you asked questions about my emotional state or my life outside of work, I don't think you'd get that impression.

Re: Burnout Is Real

#130

Post by gonehome »

rpmisms wrote: post #125
gonehome wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bay Area is a relevant outlier here - $1k/month would not cover the monthly property tax on a mortgage for a crappy place.

The Bay Area is ridiculous in terms of home pricing. We could likely move there and do ok financially, but I'd rather get a nice plot of land in Appalachia and have some farm animals, spend my evenings working on marksmanship and whatever car I'm wrenching on at the moment.

Yeah - and WNY is really great in terms of housing costs (I grew up outside of Buffalo).

There are trade-offs to that cheaper cost too though.

Mostly in terms of job availability (though maybe that's changing with remote work), stuff availability (foods, people), and centralization of knowledgable people in software (not many). Weather.

Schools and variety of public opinion was also not great, but that's a problem most places and only really matters if you have kids. I wouldn't want to raise my kids there though.

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