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

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

#51

Post by BlargMcLarg »

zwieback wrote: post #43

I'd be interested in the correlation to two metrics: age and size of employer. When I was young I worked at startups: super stressful, high risk of company collapse, constant overload, funding stress, etc. I'm in my 50s now and have worked at hp for 20 years. I feel nearly zero stress and don't know whether it's because I've just been through the cycle enough times to know the world won't end because of me and also t…

It's even worse now. Many juniors can barely get in the industry, let alone for a living remotely close to that a few decades ago (in many places even just a decade-half a decade ago). Tech requirements have grown to ridiculous proportions with many companies unwilling to teach, or trying to profit off the unwillingness of others to teach, at the cost of the potential hire. Meanwhile, corporations haven't really gotten less stressful over time. The improvements in tooling haven't necessary resulted in easier jobs as much as more requirements piled on top.

This doesn't mean IT is worse than most other fields, but it sure hasn't gotten any better given the problems most younger generations run into today.

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

#52

Post by agumonkey »

lumost wrote: post #6

Something 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…

Maybe I'm naive but the 20% of free self directed work (ala Google) seems like an effective cure right ? It might be enough to feed a worker enough deep satisfaction to make the potential bs job acceptable again.

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

#53

Post by Underqualified »

lumost wrote: post #6

Something 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…

David Graeber talks about this in his book 'bullshit jobs'. He also links the rise of bullshit jobs to the rise of burnouts and other mental issues.

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

#54

Post by Maximus9000 »

CalRobert wrote: post #37

The world is burning, carbon emissions are increasing despite a global pandemic, democracy is in backslide, and I'm doing stupid shit that really doesn't matter. My children will grow up in a hotter, thirstier, more dangerous world. Nothing I'm doing is going to improve this. My job is cush. I work remote. I make good money. But I stare blankly at the screen and just can't bring myself to care. I eye climatebase and…

There are companies that you could work for that would be win-win. Companies that are making the world better and still require talented software developers.

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

#55

Post by kradeelav »

candiddevmike wrote: post #9

From 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…

YMMV, but it's personally entirely the opposite with what I've seen in the design industry, which feels somewhat similar to software in the sense we're both building things.

IC's that I've seen on my end to have a little more latitude to actually design things and have a small amount of independence there, wheras managers are stuck with the 'keep the project going' paperwork, people paperwork, shielding the team from the politics, etc.

(I've personally found a way to sidestep a lot of that, but so many of my previous managers have burned out to the above reasons.)

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

#56

Post by brimble »

lumost wrote: post #6

Something 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…

I doubt even 10% of the code I've written over the last 15ish years is still in use, anywhere.

I doubt more than a quarter of it ever had an overall positive effect—monetary or otherwise—large enough to justify the cost of writing it.

I've spent probably a third of my career, spread out here and there, working on projects that all the ICs could tell were doomed for super-obvious reasons (clear failure to find product/market fit then doubling down, entering a market very late and with only a few percent of the investment it would take to have a realistic chance at it, that kind of thing)

Then there are vanity projects like a company's annual investor report app. JFC.

Working in tech feels like being a small part of some kind of horrible random input process that feeds the capitalist pyramid above.

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

#57

Post by uoaei »

CalRobert wrote: post #37

The world is burning, carbon emissions are increasing despite a global pandemic, democracy is in backslide, and I'm doing stupid shit that really doesn't matter. My children will grow up in a hotter, thirstier, more dangerous world. Nothing I'm doing is going to improve this. My job is cush. I work remote. I make good money. But I stare blankly at the screen and just can't bring myself to care. I eye climatebase and…

Your comment drives to the crux and puts the issue in context, thanks.

It is the lack of things to look forward to or be excited about that causes and sustains burnout. Be it in the scope of a single project, or career development, or an entire generational legacy, we have lost hope.

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

#58

Post by uoaei »

casralad wrote: post #48
kelseyfrog wrote: post #26

End 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 ind…

I support this. Overtime is free labor and the market should be regulated by the government to prohibit this. That said, I've been a software engineer for over twenty years and most of those years I've worked under 40 hours a week and rarely worked overtime.

> I've worked under 40 hours a week and rarely worked overtime

That is exactly the slack in the system that makes the endeavor sustainable. There's no way to get quality software out of consistently drained engineers.

Trying to find some "balance" without hedging for the asymmetry inherent in the problem will lead you to burn out roughly half of the workforce, which has nonlinear (very superlinear) knock-on effects for the success of the remaining half.

If you burn out the top half of your workforce, the bottom half will suddenly bear twice the load and burn out that much faster.

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

#59

Post by brimble »

agumonkey wrote: post #52
lumost wrote: post #6

Something 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…

Maybe I'm naive but the 20% of free self directed work (ala Google) seems like an effective cure right ? It might be enough to feed a worker enough deep satisfaction to make the potential bs job acceptable again.

Sitting here mid-career, I suppose (maybe farther along than that—we'll see how the whole age discrimination thing works out in a couple years), I'm now convinced that the problem is doing the same thing week. After week. After week.

I think I'd be absolutely thrilled to be in this industry, still, if I wrote code... I dunno, 25-30 weeks per year, then did literally anything else the other weeks, including any kind of work that didn't involve staring at a screen.

It's doing the same thing almost all damn year that makes is such a grind.

I like working, actually. I hate doing the exact same work 48+ weeks per year. HATE it.

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

#60

Post by berg117 »

To the people who run tech companies, and the corporate system as a whole, burnout is a feature, not a bug. The people in charge are not very smart and they can't recognize talent, so their only way to pick the next generation of leaders (other than through nepotism, which is how 85% of the good slots get allocated) is to subject people to increasing pointless unpleasantness and wait for attrition to create a ranking. It can't be fixed. It will be that way until the whole system is scrapped.

This is not limited to capitalist bureaucracies, of course--the most dysfunctional corners of the Soviet system were eerily similar--but it is arguably most pronounced in the corporate world, because there is no purpose for these hierarchies existing, or indeed no purpose for most of these companies at all except to make money for a small number of people whom there is no good reason to care about.

The WHO is right. Burnout isn't a medical problem or classical mental illness. It is a rational response to living under a socioeconomic system that has no right to exist.

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