While the problem of burnout is very real (I’m affected myself), please note that this is partially an ad for Yerbo, and there is no indication that the study was conducted independently.
The state of burnout in tech, 2022 edition [pdf]
21–30 of 116 posts
Re: The state of burnout in tech, 2022 edition [pdf]
#22From what I've seen, across the industry, the folks who are burnt out are almost entirely individual contributors. You rarely see burnout in management, and it's typically in the form of folks who want to go back to being ICs/tried management and hated it. I think companies really need to work on reducing or eliminating the amount of bullshit ICs have to deal with vs management (time tracking, status updates, on call…
This is probably just grass is greener stuff, but I've seen the opposite. Now, that said, this was post acquisition, but my anecdote is that in our case the ICs were shielded from all the office politics shenanigans and were able to just focus on delivering work. Meanwhile, those in management positions were repeatedly pulled into agenda-less meetings, were "voluntold" for tasks unrelated to their jobs, and were gene…
I absolutely agree with all of this. Management burnout is absolutely real and significant, and I'm honestly a little surprised someone would claim otherwise. The only way I can imagine coming to that conclusion is to have either 1) never been a manager, or 2) only worked at companies with ineffective/inactive management.
Re: The state of burnout in tech, 2022 edition [pdf]
#23Something that doesn't seem explored here is the effect of working on ineffective work. Everyone will encounter something like the following in their career 1. There is a problem that your customers and you face - but you are not allowed to solve it for "Reasons" 2. The product area will never work, but you must continue working on things that no one will ever use for "reasons". Ever write exhaustive test coverage fo…
Quote from Office space: http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3u7bxz
Re: The state of burnout in tech, 2022 edition [pdf]
#24Things contributing to my own (severe) burnout: 1 - Lack of variety, leading to boredom. After decades in the industry, I'm super bored with the things I know, and not in the least bit interested in learning more technical minutia of whatever flavor... pretty much all of it feels the same. The things I'm still interested in (like Scheme) are pretty obscure, so I'm unlikely to ever get to work with them. I hate all th…
Quote from Office Space: http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3u7bxz
Re: The state of burnout in tech, 2022 edition [pdf]
#25From what I've seen, across the industry, the folks who are burnt out are almost entirely individual contributors. You rarely see burnout in management, and it's typically in the form of folks who want to go back to being ICs/tried management and hated it. I think companies really need to work on reducing or eliminating the amount of bullshit ICs have to deal with vs management (time tracking, status updates, on call…
I think this is true. Management will shred through IC engineers, getting results but burning alot of them out in the process. Theres no accountability, and in some respects, its good business for them. They get the work done, the burnout really doesnt have that many repercussions.
The overarching issue is:
you need stability/healthy employees at the higher levels, at the lower levels it doesnt matter.
You cant have turn over in management, its a risk to the company. Turnover in engineers, even highly skilled ones, can be recovered from with some extra cost.
Re: The state of burnout in tech, 2022 edition [pdf]
#26End overtime exemption. If an org can push workers for more work without paying them more, why wouldn't they? Solving this problem requires systems-level thinking. Understanding the incentives that result in burnout-creating interactions is key to creating new incentives that don't induce burnout.
The quickest way to not fixing burnout is assuming that it is a natural part of software development, that it's up to individuals to manage their own boundaries, or that the industry is impossible to change. None of these are entirely false nor entirely true, but they do nothing to affect change.
Is the end of overtime exemption a silver bullet? No, but it is a critical step toward creating incentives that do address worker burnout. It shifts a manager's choice from "push the team harder to get out a feature and deal with the consequences later" to "push the team harder and it costs $X."
There is a key piece of perspective that helps to understand this - management rarely has clarity in their business decisions. What drives management toward pushing workers to work more and ignoring burnout is that building product has a more tangible result than burnout. You may ask, "no, management weighs the costs and benefits!" Maybe yours does, but when the benefits are easier to quantify than the costs, the decision is clear.
This is why putting a dollar amount on the decision is so important. It shifts the decision to "possibly build it faster for $X" where the dollar cost amount has more clarity than the benefits. It doesn't mean management chooses not to build faster every time, but the decision framing does change the response. Anyone in management knows what clarity in business decisions means and how it affects outcomes.
Re: The state of burnout in tech, 2022 edition [pdf]
#27Something that doesn't seem explored here is the effect of working on ineffective work. Everyone will encounter something like the following in their career 1. There is a problem that your customers and you face - but you are not allowed to solve it for "Reasons" 2. The product area will never work, but you must continue working on things that no one will ever use for "reasons". Ever write exhaustive test coverage fo…
100% agreed. I'm not sure how big a problem this is, but it's been huge for me personally. 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., t…
When you see the politics behind tech leadership it can be hard to unsee it. Everything is always the previous leadership’s fault, and whatever hot new methodology or design pattern is the current buzzword will solve all the problems that could possibly come up in the future. Everyone knows reality will be much more complicated than implied, but then whoever is working on that code when it happens to fall apart will take the blame. Activity and irrelevant metrics will drive how successful people think the project is, regardless of whether any customers are actually getting helped.
It’s hard to solve for these problems because that tone comes from the top, but trusting people and removing toxic personalities is a good start. Every successful team I’ve been on had a focus on the customer and the end goal and didn’t let politics get in the way of solutions.
Re: The state of burnout in tech, 2022 edition [pdf]
#28Has anyone pivoted out of tech completely? What was your experience like?
Re: The state of burnout in tech, 2022 edition [pdf]
#29Things contributing to my own (severe) burnout: 1 - Lack of variety, leading to boredom. After decades in the industry, I'm super bored with the things I know, and not in the least bit interested in learning more technical minutia of whatever flavor... pretty much all of it feels the same. The things I'm still interested in (like Scheme) are pretty obscure, so I'm unlikely to ever get to work with them. I hate all th…
> I'm not sure that even if I worked for a non-profit doing work I thought was important that it would translate to my own job being something I wanted to do. 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 s…
I have also found that non-profits can become a home to "useless zealots", a perhaps unkind but in my experience accurate term.
They work there because they really believe in the non-profit's cause, but they are not good at their job.
They are either loved or tolerated by leadership because of their belief in the cause, but typically cause more problems than they fix, and can be very difficult to deal with.
Re: The state of burnout in tech, 2022 edition [pdf]
#30From what I've seen, across the industry, the folks who are burnt out are almost entirely individual contributors. You rarely see burnout in management, and it's typically in the form of folks who want to go back to being ICs/tried management and hated it. I think companies really need to work on reducing or eliminating the amount of bullshit ICs have to deal with vs management (time tracking, status updates, on call…
You rarely see burnout in management..
You rarely see burnout in anyone, because everyone does their best to hide it. Their performance drops until they quit. Most people just assume that's incompetence, especially with managers.