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Vacation isn’t the answer to employee burnout

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Re: Vacation isn’t the answer to employee burnout

#101

Post by cstejerean »

bb88 wrote: post #57
beerandt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlimited PTO is crazy to me. It takes the principles of spelled-out employment terms and throws them in the trash. The "flexible hours" policy was bad enough at my last job. Wildly varying interpretations between different managers and department heads under the same roof.

There's a lot of companies in the world where "vacation" is offered, but the managers will many times terminate those who take it. All it takes is for one or two employees to be terminated after just getting back from a vacation to send a message to the rest of the employees. The right to use benefits has to be enforced by the CEO. If people aren't using their vacations (and effectively losing them), then that sets t…

Some people add negative value and it’s sometimes not clear until they step away for a couple of weeks.

Re: Vacation isn’t the answer to employee burnout

#102

Post by emdubbelyou »

blendo wrote: post #99

At my last job I took a 20% cut in pay to get a 4 day workweek. Every Thursday evening became “Yay! Three day weekend!”

I was thinking of various 80% flexible working models and there are some great set ups.

4 on, 3 off is usual

But if you break it up to two week cycles you get: 4 on, 2 off, 4 on, 4 off 4 on, 1 off, 4 on, 5 off

And even wilder if you do three week cycles: 6 on, 2 off, 6 on, 7 off

Imagine a full week off every third week! Of course, this likely is not very realistic because it would not line up with collaborators well.

Re: Vacation isn’t the answer to employee burnout

#103

Post by math-dev »

karaterobot wrote: post #53

When I've been burned out or hated my job, I didn't take vacations, because the crushing realization that I'd have to return to work was almost worse than losing myself in the uninterrupted, repetitive, dead-eyed grind. While on vacation, I'd start thinking about the countdown to the end of the vacation. > Well, root out the real causes of burnout. I'll offer the definition that's made most sense to me. I didn't come…

Great, great post. Agree completely and wasn’t aware of this until you wrote it down.

Re: Vacation isn’t the answer to employee burnout

#104

Post by shoo »

karaterobot wrote: post #53

When I've been burned out or hated my job, I didn't take vacations, because the crushing realization that I'd have to return to work was almost worse than losing myself in the uninterrupted, repetitive, dead-eyed grind. While on vacation, I'd start thinking about the countdown to the end of the vacation. > Well, root out the real causes of burnout. I'll offer the definition that's made most sense to me. I didn't come…

Jennifer Senior's excellent article on burnout, "Can’t Get No Satisfaction" [1], contains this gem of a quote, from psychotherapist & burned-out burnout researcher Prof Barry Farber:

> [...] their level of caring couldn’t be sustained in the absence of results

> Farber often calls burnout “the gap between expectation and reward,”

Also:

> “My clients are perfectionists,” says Alden Cass, a therapist to both corporate attorneys and men on Wall Street. He’s young, about the age of a hungry broker, and he looks like the men he treats—strong features, dark teased hair, Turnbull & Asser striped shirt, nice watch. “They have very rigid ideals in terms of win-lose,” he continues. “Their expectations of success are through the roof, and when their reality doesn’t match up with their expectations, it leads to burnout—they leave no room for error or failure at all in their formula.”

> Yet ask Cass why his clients are burning out, and his answer isn’t any different for a banker than it would be for a public-school teacher; there’s a gulf between what they expected from their jobs and what they got. “I can’t tell you,” he says, “how many people come into my office and ask, ‘How come I have this money and I can’t find happiness?’ ”

> So what does he tell them? “That happiness equals reality divided by expectations.”

[1] https://nymag.com/news/features/24757/

Re: Vacation isn’t the answer to employee burnout

#105

Post by runawaybottle »

kekebo wrote: post #95
runawaybottle wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. Thanks for making my day better. Edit: But to add to the comedy (all comedy is tragedy, and all tragedy is comedy according to the Greeks), that’s pretty much the reason why I don’t take vacations. It’s not going to change anything, so I much prefer to take days off so I don’t completely lose it. The sadness is hilarious.

They may not fundamentally change ones attitude towards a job, but when carefully planned and executed vacations may have the potential for creating some worthwhile times and memories

It depends on how your personal incentive structure is modeled. Behaviorally, everything for me is goal oriented. I reward myself when I accomplish something (hard), this is how my parents raised me. Psychologically, I didn’t earn a vacation yet.

I only take days off to rest, physically and psychologically.

Re: Vacation isn’t the answer to employee burnout

#106

Post by tinyhouse »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #86
tinyhouse wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speak for yourself. Sorry for being blunt, but you clearly know very little about burnout (good for you). If people say that they are burned out because of a bad manager, believe them instead of saying they don't know what they are talking about. There are many reasons for burnout. Working on things that don't pay off is just one of them.

"you clearly know very little about burnout" You may disagree with my statement about the cause of burnout, and you may be correct about that. But it's unlikely you know enough about me to judge how much I know (or don't know) about burnout.

You are right and I apologize. It also applies to your statement about other people.

Re: Vacation isn’t the answer to employee burnout

#107

Post by noirbot »

sjs7007 wrote: post #82
noirbot wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it's possible to have a system where this is easy, but giving HR more things to track to prove their value to the company does tend to make no incentive for them to make it trivial. I'm sure systems exist for that that we could buy, but we didn't, so we don't, so someone's got some ad-hoc something in some Oracle DB somewhere, and now taking vacation is an added hassle for my already overworked manager.

Then really it's a failure of management at your company, not the limited vacation system.

Sure, but so is letting "unlimited" just turn into looting by the privileged or some sort of toxic "my manager won't let me take more than a week off". Which is what I've been getting at. People love to condemn Unlimited PTO as some sort of toxic trap, and it certainly can be, but it all comes down to if your HR department is competent and cares. If your management is bad, having fixed PTO isn't going to save you from them.

Re: Vacation isn’t the answer to employee burnout

#108

Post by mhitza »

awsthro00945 wrote: post #26
dbs wrote: post #21

I would bet that flexible work hours are contributing for higher employee burnout.

I agree. In my experience, "flexible work hours" is often code for "everyone works weird fucking hours so instead of having a set routine, you have to be quasi-available at all times to respond to the person who decided to wait until 8pm to do the work you were waiting on". It's great for the person who needs flexibility, and shitty for everyone that depends on that person. Flexible working arrangements are great whe…

> I have yet to see a team that really does asynchronous work right.

I think the Linux kernel developers can be considered the biggest software team that does asynchronous work, and it works just fine.

Honestly just some basic mailinglist software installation goes a long way.

And an organization can still have a process in place on how to get synched when its needed (scheduled calls, impromptu emergency response situations, etc).

Re: Vacation isn’t the answer to employee burnout

#109

Post by jrockway »

labster wrote: post #83
beerandt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlimited PTO is crazy to me. It takes the principles of spelled-out employment terms and throws them in the trash. The "flexible hours" policy was bad enough at my last job. Wildly varying interpretations between different managers and department heads under the same roof.

My last job implemented an unlimited PTO policy. In 2020, I took about 7 days off, and worked at least 20 days on weekends. With the increased responsibilities, there just wasn’t any time that was good to leave… until I left for good. It was definitely a factor in my current burnout. The funny thing was before the VCs bought the company, I had two weeks but in practice could ask the CTO for as much time as I wanted.…

Yeah, if I ever start a company, mandatory vacation will be a thing. If you don't use up your 4 weeks of vacation before Thanksgiving, don't come to work for the rest of the year. Don't worry, there will still be work when you get back.

Another thing I like are company holidays. When nobody is working, there is no email / code reviews / Slack to miss. That's a real vacation!

Re: Vacation isn’t the answer to employee burnout

#110

Post by quickthrower2 »

I’ve been suffering from chronic fatigue which is different but I wonder if there are similarities.

To adjust I have dropped many responsibilities at work, halved my hours to 19 and practice pacing I.e scheduled rest, consistent level of activity day to day.

This has helped a lot.

While not everyone can go part time I wonder if scheduled breaks of even 5 minutes each hour (with no exercise, screen time or chat) would be beneficial to most people.

The other side I feel is companies keep inventing initiatives, kpis, okrs, goals and pushing that down the chain. Dumping more and more onto people and companies evolve from “cool” to “overly bureaucratic” over time.

The most stress is when you need to do X to get the job done but !X to meet some other master, maybe a beloved process. (Looking at you, scrum!)

It’s more stressful if when you try to negotiate out of this you are met with dogma. I tend to leave such work but I’ve seen it enough that it’s a pattern common between companies.

Apparently many companies think they have mastered creative process and people management and everyone else is wrong ;-).

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