I get lots of dandruff when i am stressed continuously for a few days? This has been a great indicator. Does any one know of any study or feel the same?
Ask HN: Burned Out. What Now?
201–210 of 277 posts
Re: Ask HN: Burned Out. What Now?
#202Do something completely different. I've been having a lot of fun putting fibre up on poles for the last few years. It's rewarding in a way that software isn't. Software is all about worrying about the mistakes I've made or might have made, whereas building real world infrastructure has an actual "it's done" aspect to it that software never has that is incredibly satisfying. And it works! Well, until a drunk driver or a propane delivery takes out a couple of poles or spans of fibre in the middle of the night and you have to go do some emergency splicing in -25C weather.
Re: Ask HN: Burned Out. What Now?
#203For tech and burning out, it's important to know that the lack of a clear output or goal can increase the likelihood of burnout. Double that if you have little control over your environment due to technical decisions made where you had not useful input. If you're at severe burnout, which it's definitely sounding like, consider taking a leave of absence (LOA). Time can vary between a couple of weeks to a couple of mon…
Did you consider medical leave instead of LOA? Medical leave should be paid at some capacity.
I took a medical LOA. Who... did not pay out. I'm glad I'm in Washington State in the USA, they gave medical leave pay, as opposed to the STD and LTD insurance I assumed would actually help.
Re: Ask HN: Burned Out. What Now?
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
How utopian. I manage a team with hundreds of engineers on it. If I have someone who is taking a year off (with pay I presume), I have to give their work to people. Once enough people do that, I have exhausted the capacity of the team and will surely see the team enter a spiral of burnout that I can only solve by adding dramatically more people or radically reducing our commitments. This will negatively affect our bu…
Maybe pitch less work for your team? Set more realistic goals ? Fight for them? Not every business is a startup fighting to survive or grow like hell within a year. Some businesses have been around for decades and are in a comfortable place, they can very easily ramp up or down the amount of work they have to accomplish to keep talent happy. And how can you manage hundreds of engineer?
I listen to the whole team. Including the people who have to pick up the work left by the person on leave. Don’t get me wrong, I insta-approve leave requests that are measured in months. A year is just too long.
Re: Ask HN: Burned Out. What Now?
#205The bad news is it’s going to take a long time to heal. The good news is you can come back happier than you can imagine. In an ideal scenario you would quit working entirely to focus on your health, but I’m guessing this is not an option. You need to focus on the body first. The most important is sleep, but that is also difficult to address directly, so it’s best to focus on diet and exercise. You’ll likely have to d…
> Try the Whole 30 program first. It’s a way of eating that eliminates inflammation causing foods. DONT TRY TO LOSE WEIGHT! Weight loss is important for overall health but you’ll usually sleep worse during a weight loss phase. That said you’ll probably lose weight naturally anyway Can't stress this enough. I've spent the last decade trying to lose weight and failing, always yo-yoing up a little bit higher and losing…
> Setting up a home gym to lift weights and trying to eat healthier...
Does a treadmill work instead of weight lifting? Curious to know based on your experience.
Re: Ask HN: Burned Out. What Now?
#206There's no right answer for those questions. I've burned out twice. Both times I quit. Took a year off between the two. I travelled both times, and then just had my own routine at home. I had no problem finding another job when it was time to come back. - You can tell your boss. Expect sympathy, but, any plan that works for you is probably one you'll have come up with. - If you leave, I'd recommend not dictating when…
> I've burned out twice
When you say "burn out" can you describe what it feels like? Is it like depression?
Re: Ask HN: Burned Out. What Now?
#207Well, here goes a brief version of my story for giving some background and some advice:
I’ve been a Devops engineer for almost 7 years now. I genuinely love my profession and I am very passionate for what I do.
The burn out came a couple of years ago: I worked in a project with tons of technical debt. The company had a plan of moving the project into a different cloud. Their plan was “lift and shift” but I insisted on the fact that this was a perfect opportunity for doing things well. I presented my plan and they allowed me so I commited to refactor it from top to bottom. I worked for many more hours than agreed by contract and even weekends. Those months feelt like one giant day of work. I did all that not because I wanted to gain more money or respect. I did it because I take the “doing things right if I have the knowledge” as some kind of moral obligation.
It was a huge success. Everyone in the team and in the company was impressed and happy with the results and they saw the benefit. But, despite all the good outcome, I started to feel that something was not right on me. I felt intellectually and even physically exhausted. My mind was cloudy all the time. I started to have insomnia. I struggled to focus and I developed a very low tolerance to stress reacting to it with anxiety and frustration. I lost my good memorisation capacity. I went down into a hole where everything in my life started to be blurry: my technical knowledge, my personal decisions, my plans for the future etc. I felt insecure. I hated myself for not being able to cope with stuff anymore and I hid it for not looking “weak” in front of coworkers, family and friends.
My advice from the lessons learned is:
1 - Communicate your status to your superiors (and she/he will give you advice on how to comunicate it to your team), family and friends. Be open, realistic and clear. What you are feeling is normal so there’s no reason for dramas from anybody.
2 - Be honest with yourself.
3 - Have mercy for yourself.
4 - Accept your limitations. This doesn’t mean you accept you’re weak. This means you are potentially taking the first step to develop a strategy to overcome those limitations.
5 - Break the pattern by moving to a different project/department or even move into a different company.
6 - Take at least a minimum of one month of time off and allow yourself to be plain lazy. Forget about your company and duties during that time off. Enjoy yourself even if that implies to be for 5 hours in a row watching garbage on Netflix eating buckets of popcorn.
7 - Find a hobby: I’ve done from lockpicking, to learn an instrument, to electronics (arduino stuff), to videogames, sport, yoga, reading novels etc. Is gonna be good in the middle/long run not only for resting your mind but also for improving as a computer engineer even if the hobby is not directly related.
And that’s it. I hope you find it useful.
Re: Ask HN: Burned Out. What Now?
#208- I didn't tell my team because I didn't have the energy to. They called me and asked what's wrong. Then I took 3 months off. Then got back with 25% basically staring at a screen doing nothing then walk home. I did this for another month. - Summer came. - I started therapy and joined a group that helped me understand my behaviour of perfectionism etc. Most helpful 12 week programme. - I played video games to offload…
Can you provide details about the 12 week programme that you mentioned? What kind of a program is it?
Re: Ask HN: Burned Out. What Now?
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Try the Whole 30 program first. It’s a way of eating that eliminates inflammation causing foods. DONT TRY TO LOSE WEIGHT! Weight loss is important for overall health but you’ll usually sleep worse during a weight loss phase. That said you’ll probably lose weight naturally anyway Can't stress this enough. I've spent the last decade trying to lose weight and failing, always yo-yoing up a little bit higher and losing…
> Setting up a home gym to lift weights and trying to eat healthier... Does a treadmill work instead of weight lifting? Curious to know based on your experience.
No, it needs to be anaerobic exercise.
Re: Ask HN: Burned Out. What Now?
#210No post body was provided.