The state of burnout in tech, 2022 edition [pdf]

I write software because I like solving problems for people. It's gratifying to build clever things, but for me it has to end in making the world better somehow. Even if it's just one person, which has happened when I'm building in-house tools.

But there's so much out there that isn't about actually getting things done. E.g., the project that is touted as using the hot technology (e.g., ML) because people want to be seen as on the leading edge; actual results would be a hindrance to bragging. Or the executive who wants to respond to public criticism and so launches an initiative that will show a lot of motion and be something they can point to, but will not actually make a difference. Or the big-talking boss who gets promoted based on the size of his project and how tough he looks, so he drastically overstaffs something, causes a lot of chaos, and then makes everybody work stupid hours in crunch mode to hit an entirely artificial deadline. And so on, and so on.

These sorts of bullshit projects are way harder on me than actual hard work, because I experience constant dissonance between my goals (make things! help people!) and the day-to-day of the project.

And I think it's even worse for others, because it's easy to learn the lesson that the important thing at work is just to shut up and play pretend with whatever the bosses want. That's a lesson I absolutely refuse to learn. But many apparently do, and that can ruin a person for their whole career.

Hi! I've worked for a few non-profits over the years. They are no panacea! Many businesses at least have a clear success mode: do good things for people and they'll pay you so you can do more good things for them.

But the business model of many non-profits is something like, "Sell good feelings to rich people, and then use the surplus to Do Good." This is a much messier feedback loop, and it's very hard to build a precise enough agreement of what "Good" means to prioritize and focus. And big-dollar donations often come with strings attached, meaning it can end up feeling like the problems you get in early enterprise software companies, where the tail wags the dog.

All kinds of organization have problems with the sorts of people who really want to be in charge. It's true that non-profits have fewer very greedy people, but they have at least as many people who want to be famous. Or who enjoy exercising power in a hierarchy.

That said, I know people who have found the right circumstances and have had great jobs. And one of the benefits of every non-profit I've worked for is that the people are great. Smart, dedicated, caring, and mission driven. So although nobody should think of it as utopia, I'd encourage people to check it them out.

Just a tip from someone who made that jump: If those five things you listed contributed to your burnout, trust me, moving into management won't help.

1. Management is the same damn slog day after day. You deal with people acting like children, senior management who lack any coherent vision and don't know what they're doing, colleagues who were Peter Principle'd into their roles, and on and on. It's unrelenting.

2. Being a manager is just doing work to make rich people richer, but with extra steps.

3. Imagine being a manager! You keep hearing you're understaffed, that there's enormous time pressure, that you lack resources, that your staff are frustrated, unmotivated, burned out. If you're a good manager you care and desperately want to help. But you can't do a god damned thing about it because the executives don't give a damn.

4. You're literally in the middle of this. As a middle manager you have the choice to parrot the upper management crap, or tell it like it is. Neither is great. And that's ignoring the politics, and the pointless policies, the endless process...

5. That's invariant.

The real issue is that a lot of companies are simply toxic places to work. The job doesn't change that. Whether you're an individual contributor on the ground or a manager trying to improve the lives of your staff, if the company sucks, it sucks for everyone.

The truth is: not all companies suck that badly. Or, at least, they all suck in different ways. As you yourself have realized, the trick is finding that place that fits for you.